Magic City Murder Read online

  I vaguely recognized the voice. “Oh, right. How did that go?” I asked.

  “Well, we have some things you might be interested in seeing. Can you come by the office today downtown and take a look?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  I got directions from Deputy Marshal Bean and hung up.

  Eve and I decided she would go and start moving her stuff from the house to her new apartment. The following day would be when the movers would help her with the washer, dryer, and a few other pieces of furniture. She was packing light and intended to have an estate sale to get rid of everything that was left in the house and then to sell it as well. It would take her a while dealing with lawyers since technically it was still in her dad’s name and Stephanie was the one who had power of attorney over his affairs.

  We followed each other to Billings in our respective vehicles and then she went west to her house and I went east towards downtown. The marshals were located at the federal courthouse. I had darkened the doorway of enough courthouses over the years while working at the bureau and had no interest in seeing the inside of another one, but I guess my luck had run out.

  I parked across the street and went inside. I was greeted by security who wanted to know who I was and where I was going. I signed in and then went through the scanning procedure which seemed more thorough than going through security at the airport. After putting my belt and shoes back on, I waited in the lobby for them to call Bean for me.

  A stocky man in his 30s with a long black beard came out and shook my hand. Bean looked a little different when the was not dressed up for battle.

  I followed him back to his office and we exchanged pleasantries along the way. We arrived at what I guessed to be his cubicle where several stacks of paper were around a workstation and a laptop sat next to it. Bean grabbed the laptop and offered a chair to me. I accepted and he sat next to me.

  A few keys strokes later, he had some video pulled up. “When we arrested our guy, he gave us consent to search his phone because he probably figured he didn’t have anything on there we would be interested in, which was more or less true. However, we did go through the video archive for his video doorbell which was downloaded to his phone and were able to find something you might be interested in.”

  Bean started the video. From the time stamp, I could see it was the night when Stephanie had died. The guy across the street told me nothing got recorded unless it was on his property. After seeing the first few seconds, I realized what had happened. Someone had parked a dark color truck in Stephanie’s driveway and when they backed the truck out, they swung their headlights into the neighbor’s yard just enough for the doorbell to think there had been motion in the zone it was monitoring. The video showed a young male hauling ass out of the house, getting in the truck and driving off. I could not make out if anything was in his hands.

  “Can you zoom in enough to get a plate?” I asked.

  Bean chuckled. “I’ll do you one maybe two better than that,” he said. He opened a drawer and handed me a folder.

  Inside the folder was a DVD and printouts for the vehicle registration and the driver’s license information of who it was registered to with a picture. The picture looked similar to the person in the video.

  I eyed Bean suspiciously. “I’m not used to this level of cooperation,” I said.

  The bearded man laughed. “I happened to mention your name to a pal in Dallas and he said you had worked with him several times and you were a solid guy.”

  My past had helped me for once. I grinned and shook my head, “Carlos?” I asked.

  Bean nodded. “He said he had some great stats when you were working at HIDTA. Apparently, that wasn’t the case after you left.”

  I had always tried to be a team player and get other agencies involved even if we were doing the majority of the heavy lifting. There were different viewpoints on that. Some folks did not like to play outside of their own sandbox when they were doing the majority of the heavy lifting. My thoughts were that if I helped someone from another agency out this time and got them some easy pats on the back, then they might do the same later. Task forces thrive when people are selfless and work together because the greater good will be served. Unfortunately, the pressures from management within agencies to show how great they were disrupted teams. If the guys in the field drank the Kool-Aid their bosses were pouring, it became the typical government shit show I loathed working in.

  “Carlos was a great guy to work with. How is he doing these days?” I asked.

  “Pretty good, he’s close to retirement. Everyone’s great when they know what day they get to give their office the finger and not look back. Why did you punch out so early? Get tired of the bullshit?”

  I nodded. “Something like that. I limped away from the job as fast as I could after I shot myself in the foot, metaphorically of course.”

  Bean laughed. “Yeah, I heard about that too. Just wanted to see if you’d mention it. That was a tough break. I would have probably sued and made them keep me in for a few more years.”

  I shrugged. “I would have been in the rubber gun squad for the remainder of my career if I had managed to stay and I was becoming too cynical. I couldn’t imagine myself sitting at a desk all day making six figures answering phones while people were out there doing actual work.”

  “Well, it’s too bad. Carlos spoke highly of you,” said Bruner.

  I thanked him for the information and shook his hand before leaving. Law enforcement is kind of a small world and it seems like the bigger your cases are, the smaller that world gets.

  I sat in my Jeep and looked over everything Bean had given to me. He went out of his way to help me out. Cliff Dove was the individual who drove a black 2016 Ram Sport. It had to be the same truck Noel had described seeing in front of the house when I first interviewed Eve. I looked up his address which was in the Heights. It was the afternoon and I wondered if he would be there in the middle of the day or at work, wherever that was.

  There was not much else to go on, so I made my way to Billings’ most northern neighborhood. It was a weird little community cut off from the rest of the city. It could have had its own township, but that would probably never work with the lack of infrastructure and the general aversion the aging population had to paying taxes.

  The neighborhood seemed established and middle-class. I guessed that Dove lived with his parents and was in school, he was the right age to be a college kid. His driver’s license picture showed he was pale with short brown hair, brown eyes, and had this shitbag look in his eyes I had recognized in Stephanie’s neighbor. I never asked Bruner what the charges were against him, then again, I guess I didn’t care.

  I parked across the street from Dove’s house. His truck was also parked on the street. I did not want to confront him out there, especially during the day, so I grabbed a small box out from the back of the Jeep. It was about the same size as a cell phone but thicker and had a very strong magnet inside as well as a tracker. Now, this is where some of my methods after retirement changed. Some of what I did in my private investigator business blurred the lines of proper and unacceptable. OK, sometimes it was downright illegal, but only if you get caught. I had become very jaded by a criminal justice system that seemed to favor the criminals and decided once I was on my own, I would level the playing field whenever possible.

  I checked the tracker and made sure it had fresh batteries. It would be good for a couple of days, but I was hoping to have it back off by that evening. I would get an alert on a handheld device when the truck moved.

  After looking around to the neighbors’ houses, I was mildly confident no one was taking an interest in me being parked on the street. I saw no cameras on any of the houses so decided to take my chances. I slipped out and casually walked to the back of the black pickup. I quickly slapped the tracker on the inside of the wheel well and walked back to the Jeep. I drove off while looking around, still quiet.

  I headed over to a restaurant n
earby for some chicken wings and a beer. I probably had time to kill so I decided to hang out there for a while until I got an alert. Time came and went and I was feeling a little tipsy so I decided to leave there and find some coffee. There was still nothing from the tracker. With my luck, the little bastard was probably out of town.

  After drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper, I was getting bored. I called Eve to check on her and she seemed to be making progress with moving her stuff. I had no idea how the two of us would work out. I was twice her age and was not looking to be serious with someone still in college. I doubted she was looking to be serious with someone old enough to be her dad. Her taking her clothes off for other men suddenly bothered me. I forced those thoughts from my head. Stripper, dancer, whatever you wanted to call it, she was doing it before I met her so it would not be my place to say anything, especially if I would not make an offer to provide for her, which I had no intention of doing. It was still nice having her around, maybe she felt the same. Maybe we just needed certain things from each other now and would eventually go our separate ways.

  I drove near the airport and pulled the Jeep over to what would be considered the top of the rimrocks that line the north side of Billings. The rimrocks were remnants of where the river had flowed thousands of years ago. It overlooked the city which had a strange beauty to it at night. I lit up a cigar, cracked my window and stared out at the twinkling lights below. As I puffed on my cigar, a refinery in the distance let off steam from tall stacks in a strangely charming way.

  My cigar was about half gone when my handset beeped. The truck was on the move. I started up my own vehicle and drove towards where it was. The data on the handset was a little delayed but I got a general idea of where the truck was heading.

  As I drove, I wondered if Cliff Dove had murdered Stephanie and what his motive could have possibly been. He had never shown up in any of her social media accounts, then again, I had never seen Stephanie’s phone so there was no telling what contact they had previously.

  The truck had stopped and after a few minutes, I was near him. The truck was parked at a gas station. I saw Cliff Dove emerge from the convenience store walking with a forced swagger. He had a puffy black coat on and a black and silver cap turned backward. In the window of his truck was a logo for the Oakland Raiders. Calling them the Las Vegas Raiders was going to feel strange.

  Dove got back in the truck and headed towards downtown. Before reaching downtown though, he turned west and went towards MSU-Billings. He pulled into a dorm parking lot and exited the truck. I pulled in a few rows back and watched. He seemed to look around a lot as he walked. To my surprise, he returned after only a minute or two. I got out of the Jeep and walked towards Dove. There did not appear to be anyone else in the parking lot as I approached him, so I did what any reasonable person would do. I closed the distance quickly between us before he could get into his truck and grabbed the collar of his coat. He had one foot up in the truck so the other slid out from under him. Dove landed on his back with a thud. He started to object when I hit him across the face. I was wearing gloves with reinforced knuckles that made him bleed from his mouth. I didn’t realize it, but I still had a cigar hanging out of my own mouth.

  I stood him up, inadvertently blowing smoke in his face as I did. Dove’s eyes winced and he coughed, choking for air. He was apparently not the fighting type. I had also dropped him on his head then punched him in the face, so he was probably seeing several tweety birds flying around his head.

  “What did you do to Stephanie?” I demanded. My heart was racing and I was ready to tear his head off.

  Dove coughed and spat blood while squinting. “What? I didn’t do nothing, man.”

  “You were at her house the night she died. Why?”

  He shook his head and looked to the ground. I reached my arm back to hit him again when he winced and put a hand up.

  “Okay, okay!”

  I unclenched my hand and did a quick search of his coat and pockets. He had a folding knife I put in my own pocket.

  “I didn’t do anything to her but sell her some pills, man! That’s it!” he pleaded.

  “What pills?” I asked

  “Dexies,” he said.

  I put a hand around his throat, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Adderall, man, I sell my scrips for cash on the side.”

  “Well, they didn’t find any Adderall in her house. So, what’s your next story?”

  Dove shook his head. “No, I didn’t sell her any, I went to sell her pills, but I saw her hanging there, so I freaked and left.”

  I forced him to look me in the eye. “How much of my crime scene did you fuck up?” I growled.

  He shook and stammered. “N-n-none of it. I just--well, I just took her phone.”

  “You gotta be shitting me. Why did you take her phone?”

  “Because we were texting about slinging pills, man, I didn’t want the cops seeing that shit. My parents will kill me if I go to jail.”

  I tightened my grip on his throat. “You still worried about your parents?” I asked.

  Dove shook his head no.

  “Where’s the phone now?” I asked.

  “I pitched it in the river,” he said. “Well, I tried to.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Tried?”

  He was having a hard time talking so I let him go. Dove coughed and wiped his mouth. “I was driving across the bridge and tossed it over, but I guess I didn’t throw hard enough. It hit the rail and bounced into a snow drift. I couldn’t stop and grab it so I just kept going.”

  I had Dove explain exactly where he was and on which bridge when he had attempted to get rid of the phone.

  “Are you going to arrest me now?” asked Dove.

  “I’m not a cop,” I replied.

  He stared at me with a blank expression. “So, I’m not going to jail?”

  I shook my head and chuckled. “Not tonight.”

  “Can I have my knife back?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, definitely.” I unfolded the knife and walked to the rear wheel well where I had put the tracker. Making sure my back was to Dove, I reached under with one hand to get the tracker and used the other to stick his knife into the sidewall of his tire.

  “What the fuck? Why’d you do that?” demanded Dove.

  I walked away, sliding the tracker in my coat pocket. Calling back to him, I said, “That’s for being a drug dealer.”

  After I was back in the Jeep I took off, noticing a few kids who might have seen at least some of the altercation. No one had their phones out recording anything, so that was positive.

  I drove a couple of miles away and parked my Jeep on the dark side of a bar. It was probably a good idea to stay off the street for a while before heading back home. I also wanted to wait until later in the evening to go looking for the phone Dove had attempted to toss.

  I sipped a couple of free beers while I played video poker. That was probably the slowest way of losing all your money in the casinos. Even at a nickel a hand, my two free beers ended up costing me about $30. I was never very lucky.

  When it got close to 9 p.m. I headed to the bridge I had seen on the laptop that was also described by Dove. Since it was the middle of the week, the sidewalks basically rolled up in Billings. I headed over the bridge going southeast across the Yellowstone River as Cliff Dove had done the night of Stephanie’s murder.

  I slowed down on the bridge since there were no other cars around and stopped in the middle of the river with my hazard lights on. Carefully, I stepped out onto the road and scanned the snow next to the guard rail for any signs of a phone. The snow on the side of the bridge was snow that had been plowed and had melted and refrozen a couple of times so it wasn’t the fluffy stuff most people envisioned when they thought of snow. I had walked about ten feet when I saw something between the snow and the concrete barriers the railing was attached to. I quickly retrieved an iPhone with a broken screen and jogged back to my Jeep. The whole
search had taken less than a minute, not bad at all. If no one had gone looking for the phone the snow would eventually had melted, and the phone would have no doubt slipped into traffic.

  Chapter 9

  I phoned Eve and filled her in, then she invited me to stay at her place since it was late. She was staying in a one-bedroom apartment on the west end of town in what seemed to be a decent neighborhood. When she answered the door, she had her hair pulled back and was in jeans and an old long sleeve shirt. She looked like she had been working hard getting things unpacked and settled. There were already a few pictures on the walls. Eve apologized for the lack of furniture. Her room had a sleeping bag on the floor with a pillow until the movers came in the morning with the rest of her furniture.

  In the kitchen was an opened case of bottled water missing a couple of bottles. She offered me a bottle and I gladly accepted, feeling a little dehydrated from all the beer I had drunk that day. I pulled the phone I had found out of my pocket and asked if it was Stephanie’s. It was dirtied and banged up, but Eve was fairly certain that it had belonged to her sister. I had tried turning it on, but the battery was dead. Eve had a charger that fit so we plugged it up for the night.

  I sat down on the floor of her bedroom and eventually laid flat on my back. The hardness of the floor felt surprisingly good. Eve laid next to me and put her head on my shoulder.

  “I know you and I will never work out,” she said.

  I raised an eyebrow in her direction, but she couldn’t see it. “Yeah, I like spending time with you though.”

  She hugged me close. “You make me feel safe.”

  “You are,” I said. “And you’re right. Us is a terrible idea, but however long this lasts, I’m really enjoying it.”

  “What is this?” she asked. She seemed more philosophical than upset.

  I pondered the question but did not have a great answer. “Two ships passing in the night? I don’t know.”