Death Deserved (A Detective Jackson Mystery) (7 page)

Later, at her desk, she wolfed down the taco salad she’d bought from a cart vendor, then wrote her lead:
A man and a woman were shot early yesterday morning in a marijuana nursery on River Loop 2. Josh Stalling, the homeowner, is believed to be dead, and a female companion was taken to North McKenzie Hospital.

She still had to confirm that Stalling was the property owner and check on the woman’s condition. Sophie cranked out a few paragraphs about the dispute over the smell in the neighborhood, then saved her file. Before she could do more research, she had to let the night editor know she had late copy coming in. As she stood, her cell phone rang. “This is Sophie.”

“Hi again. This is Alexa. I just remembered that I did see that gray car yesterday too, at the gas station on the corner. I was on my way home from work. At least, I think it was the same car.”

Had the killer cased the marijuana nursery, watching for an ideal time to attack?

CHAPTER 8

Wednesday, December 2, 2:15 p.m.

Evans found the shooting victim’s room three doors down from Sergeant Lammers’. The same nurse she’d encountered earlier was injecting something into an IV bag. The sleeping patient didn’t respond when she came in.

“Me again.” Evans pulled out a fingerprint kit and held it up. “I need to get the victim’s fingerprints.”

“That sounds intrusive.” The nurse cocked his head. “And if she’s the victim, why do you need her fingerprints?”

Why did he care?
“Many reasons. Mostly to distinguish her prints from the shooter’s.”

“Oh.” The information seemed to surprise him.

Evans grabbed the tray stand next to the bed and set up her inkpad. The nurse watched from the side, clearly done with his tasks, but curious. She hadn’t done this in a while, but it was easy. Most fingerprints were taken at the jail when suspects were booked into custody. Or occasionally at the department when they came in for questioning. This was her first time fingerprinting an unconscious person. She grabbed the woman’s right hand, lifted it to the pad, and slowly rolled each finger in the special black ink. As she moved the victim’s hand to the ten-print card and pressed the index finger down, the woman woke up. The patient jerked her hand away and tried to sit up.

Shit!
Evans glanced at the card. The print might still be okay. But maybe not.

“What are you doing?” The victim stared at the ink on her hand.

“Fingerprints. Tell me who you really are, and I’ll help you clean that off instead of trying again.”

“Kayla Benson.” Her blue eyes were bright, clear, and slightly alarmed. But her hair was bleached and frizzy, and her nails were short, uneven, and had splashes of fuchsia polish from the week before. Her overall appearance didn’t seem to match her clear, focused eyes. “I took a print before you woke up, so I’ll know your real name soon.”
If
the victim was in the system. “If you lie to me, you’ll look like a suspect. Even if you weren’t the shooter, you could have been working with the perp.”

“I was shot?” The woman lifted the white blanket and looked down at her belly.

Great
.
Another victim who either didn’t remember anything or wasn’t willing to admit she did. Considering that the woman was probably using an alias, Evans wasn’t buying the act. “Cut the crap and tell me who you are and what happened this morning.”

“I don’t know!” Distress in her voice now. “The last thing I remember is driving out to help my boyfriend.”

“What’s his name?”

“Josh Stalling. Is he all right?” Wide-open eyes.

“Not really. Tell me everything you know about him.”

“I don’t feel well.” The patient glanced at the nurse. “Can you bring me something for pain and nausea?”

What was she hiding?
“Who shot you?”

“I don’t know.” She seemed near tears.

The nurse moved toward Evans. “I think you should leave now. You’re upsetting her, and we don’t want the bleeding to start again.”

“Just give me your real name, and we can finish the rest of this conversation later.”

The woman closed her eyes and lay back down.

Damn
.
Evans gathered up the fingerprint kit, except for the card, which she held by a corner. It still had to dry for a moment. Before leaving, she glanced back at the woman. She’d rolled on her side, facing away from Evans.
Phony
.
Not just her blonde hair, but also her name, her lack of memory, her distress. It all seemed contrived.
Please let her prints be in the system.

Evans climbed into her car. A troubled thought hit her. Was Kayla Benson able to leave the hospital? That seemed unlikely. But would she do it anyway to avoid talking about the incident? Evans started to call Lammers to ask for patrol-officer support, then realized her mistake. For now, Jackson was the person in charge of allocating the team’s resources. She pressed the first contact in her speed-dial list and waited for him to pick up. Would he trust her instinct about Benson? Or would he be conservative with his new authority?

All of it was speculation. Kayla Benson might simply be afraid to talk to the police about her presence in a marijuana nursery. But instinct told Evans that something bigger was going on. Jackson didn’t answer, so she left a message, requesting police presence at the hospital. At the last moment, she added, “Unless you need me for something else, I’m headed to the address listed on the victim’s driver’s license.”

The Colonial Village was one of the last redbrick buildings downtown. The others had all been replaced by big apartment structures with multicolored blocks of cheap siding and not a tree or shrub in sight. The new units were more expensive, and many were yet to be occupied by the University of Oregon students who were supposed to be moving to Eugene in droves.

Evans climbed out of her car and felt for the apartment keys in her jacket pocket. She’d slipped them out of the victim’s purse while looking for her ID. Searching the home of a homicide victim was standard procedure. While looking for the purse, she’d come to realize the woman didn’t live in the farmhouse. She’d done a quick search of the Honda in the driveway at the crime scene and found nothing. The cleanliness of the vehicle bugged her now too.

Apartment five was on the ground floor in the middle of the building and had no lights on. No music or voices filtered through the door either. Good. She’d be able to search freely. Evans knocked loudly, announced her presence, then waited five seconds. No response. The key turned easily in the lock, and she reached for her weapon before stepping inside. The living room was overly warm, and she could hear the baseboard heater working. Evans locked the door, pulled off her jacket, and hung it on the knob. Technically, a search warrant would have made this more clearly legal, but her gut told her that Kayla Benson had something to hide and would never make an issue of it.

Evans glanced around the dark room, noting only a few items of furniture. Clicking on lights as she progressed, she did a quick tour through the rooms to clear the space. No one was hiding in the closets. But not much else was in the closets either. Some clothing and a few cleaning supplies. Clearly, the occupant hadn’t been here long. Kayla Benson, or whoever she was, traveled light.

No computer anywhere either. Also unusual. Evans pulled on gloves and began a methodical search, starting in the bedroom. The single dresser held the basics: jeans, T-shirts, and a couple of sweaters. No occasional-use items like a bathing suit or formal dress. A small jewelry box held earrings and nothing else. She went back to the closet and checked the top shelf. Nothing.

Weird
.
Did the woman not own a computer, or was she hiding it? Some young people relied totally on their phones for internet use, but the phone in the victim’s purse was a small cheap model. Her boyfriend, Stalling, didn’t seem to have a computer either, so maybe they got by without. Evans searched the nightstand and found only a few paperbacks—humorous chick lit with bright covers.

On a whim, she grabbed the mattress and lifted it.

Well, well.
A small black handgun and a slim laptop. What was this woman into? Evans shifted the weight of the mattress to her left hand and retrieved the items one at a time, setting them on the nightstand. After she let go, Evans sat on the bed and examined the weapon. A small semiautomatic Colt pistol. The serial number had been filed off, and the gun was probably untraceable. She sniffed it and didn’t detect any trace of it having been fired recently. But only comparing it to the shell casings at the crime scene could determine if it was the murder weapon. Evans set the gun down and opened the computer. She turned it on and waited. A dialog box appeared, asking for a password. More secrets.

Evans tried a few easy numeric passwords, then various combinations of the name Kayla Benson. This wasn’t her field of expertise, and after ten minutes she gave up. Evans stared at the gun and laptop for a long moment. Why would a pothead keep these items hidden in a room that didn’t look lived in? Who the heck was Kayla Benson?

Evans pulled out her tablet computer, logged on to Facebook, and searched for Benson. Her photo loaded at the top of the results page, followed by several women with the same name. A quick search of her account revealed that it was new—her first status update had been posted only a few months earlier, and she had only fifty-six friends.

The explanation for all of it came together in a flash. The woman was probably an undercover operative, most likely a federal agent.

CHAPTER 9

What now?
Evans wanted to put the gun and laptop into evidence bags and turn them both in to the specialists. If the victim had died, that would have been the procedure. But this was a weird gray area, and she wasn’t sure of the legalities. If Kayla Benson was a federal agent, Evans didn’t want to interfere with her investigation. Was she FBI? More likely DEA. Benson had been shot inside a marijuana nursery. Was the business part of a bigger drug-smuggling ring? And why hadn’t the agent identified herself when Evans had confronted her? If Benson didn’t cooperate, Evans would get a search warrant that included both items.

She put the gun and laptop back, took photos of them in their hiding place, then conducted a quick search of the bathroom and kitchen. Nothing revealed the occupant’s real identity or was otherwise significant. But it didn’t matter as much now. As an undercover agent, the victim didn’t likely have a troubled past or an enraged boyfriend who was responsible for her being shot. But if the assailant had known Benson was law enforcement, that may have been his or her motive.

Evans left the apartment, locked it behind her, and climbed into her car. She checked her phone: 3:25. She had time to run back out to the hospital and question Benson again before the task force meeting. She headed for the expressway and called Jackson. He still didn’t answer. What the hell was he doing? He’d probably gone to notify Josh Stalling’s family and couldn’t answer his phone. She left another message with a brief update: “Hey, I think our female victim is an undercover DEA agent. I’m stopping at North McKenzie to question her again. See you at five.”

Evans parked up front in the hospital’s loading zone and rushed into the main lobby. She wished she hadn’t tipped her hand earlier by asking for the woman’s real ID. But how could she have known the victim was undercover? What did the agent have to fear from a detective anyway? Was the DEA that protective of its operations and operatives? She’d never worked undercover and didn’t want to. She wasn’t a good liar, and her face tended to reveal her true emotions. Jackson had warned her about it enough times, and she’d gotten better at keeping her face impassive, but pretending to be someone else? She couldn’t do it.

Too worried to waste any time, Evans took the elevator. She ran down the hall of the ICU and hit the buzzer twice. After what seemed like a five-minute wait, a young female nurse opened the double doors. “Who are you here to see?”

“Kayla Benson in room three twenty.”

“I think she’s getting some fresh air.”

No!
“You mean she walked out?”

“Who are you?”

“Detective Evans, Eugene Police. When did she leave and where did she go?”

“I saw her in a wheelchair a few minutes ago, with an older man. She said they were just going out to the patio for a smoke.”

Shit!
“Where’s the nearest exit from that area?”

“The east elevator. It opens into the parking garage.” The nurse puckered her mouth in worry. “Is the patient in danger?”

Evans spun and ran toward the other end of the building. Her car was parked out front. But she might catch the pair before they made it out of the parking garage. The elevator was stuffed with a noisy family, so she ran for the stairwell and pounded down to the ground level. She raced across the darkened parking garage to the exit. What now? Wait to see if they came out? Evans had no idea what Benson and her helper were driving, or if they were still in the structure.
A few minutes
could mean anything. They could be on the freeway in a medical transport van headed to Portland by now.

An engine rumbled in a distant row of cars, and she turned toward it. Another vehicle was coming down the circular exit pattern. The best she could do was stand here and watch for a while, then stop the vehicle if she spotted Benson. But if the patient was lying down or hiding inside the vehicle, Evans wouldn’t be able to see her.

Evans’ hope of intercepting the agent—and witness—faded. The nearby car, an older Toyota with a young man behind the wheel, drove toward her. He stared at her as she stood by the exit like a hall monitor. She nodded and he rolled slowly past. The second vehicle rounded the last curve. A dark van. Her pulse escalated. As the van neared, she moved to the middle of the lane and held up her hands. The van slowed, and she noticed the driver was an older man.

He rolled to a stop about ten feet away and leaned his head out. “What’s going on? I’m in a hurry.”

Evans walked toward the vehicle, but didn’t get out of its way. “Eugene Police. I’m looking for a witness to a shooting. Is she in your van?”

“Good grief.” Gray hair, tanned smooth face, dark pullover. “No, of course not.”

“I’d like to look inside.”

“Be my guest.” The man gestured toward the side panel door.

Staying close to the vehicle, Evans eased to the side, then started for the van door. She kept an eye on the driver, whose hands were on the wheel. As soon as she was past his line of sight, the van lurched forward. Tires squealing, he raced out the exit.

Damn!
Evans looked for a license plate and didn’t see one.

She watched the vehicle turn onto the lane leading out of the complex, then sprinted along the front of the hospital to her own car. Her first instinct was to follow the van. But if the driver was a federal agent who didn’t want to be questioned, he would use evasive moves, and she wouldn’t have much hope of catching him. She climbed in her car and drove toward the exit anyway. With her earpiece in place, she called Jackson again.

This time, he answered. “What have you got?”

“Did you listen to my other messages?”

“Yes, I was just going to call you.”

“I think our vic just left the hospital in the back of a van driven by another federal agent. I’m following now, but I’m not optimistic.”

“Plate number?”

“No plate in back. What should I do?”

“Stay with the van if you can. I’ll make some calls. If you lose it, don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m on it.”

A compact SUV pulled out of the medical building next to the hospital and cut in front of her. Evans had to hit the brakes. She tapped her horn lightly, then passed the car in the wrong lane. When she reached the main intersection, the van was gone.

Evans called the DA’s office, pleased to get Victor Slonecker on the line. She explained what she’d found and asked for help. “I should get back to the apartment and not waste time driving around. I need an ADA to crank out a warrant, walk across the street to get it signed, then email it to me.”

“I have a few minutes, so I’ll do it myself.” Slonecker confirmed her email address, then hung up.

Evans hurried to her car and raced out of the parking lot, even though she knew it would take at least twenty minutes for the warrant to come through.

Still, she was too late. When she reached the apartment, the gun and the laptop were gone.