Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1) Read online

  VANISHED

  A Mystery by

  VICTOR METHOS

  Man is the cruelest animal.

  ― Friedrich Nietzsche

  1

  Tommy Hatcher’s guts tightened as he stepped out of the police cruiser. Something wasn’t right. The spruce-lined field in front of him didn’t look any different from the thousand other times he’d been out to McCabe’s property. But something was off—a smell in the air.

  Blood had a particular scent. He hadn’t known that before he joined the department. He thought it was odorless. The thing it smelled most like was wet copper. Even that didn’t describe it, though. The odor of human blood was unique.

  He shut the door and took a few steps through the tall grass. This part of Laramie County had more cows than people. There was no one and nothing within thirty miles of where he stood, and he suddenly felt stupid for his bravado in not calling for another deputy.

  A breeze blew, and the scent was unmistakable now. Like human blood, a dead human body had a distinct smell, too—nothing else like it. Animal carcasses didn’t even come close. When someone smelled a dead body, they knew it was a dead body.

  He pulled out his firearm, a .38, and held it low. Dispatch said a hiker who didn’t want to be identified had called it in. Sometimes kids liked to pull pranks on the cops. They’d call in an injured hiker or something similar and then hide in the bushes, trying not to laugh as the deputies ran around. Tommy couldn’t guess why someone would find that funny. But kids nowadays were far different from when he’d been growing up.

  “Hello?” he shouted. “Anybody here? Sheriff’s Department.”

  The breeze rustled the spruce and grass. The sky above was a deep blue with a few scattered white clouds. Perfect weather for hunting. Tommy wondered if he could knock off after this and go up to Fiddler’s Gorge. Two years ago, he and his brother-in-law had landed a ten-point buck at seventy yards.

  The familiarity of the memory calmed him. This was a prank. It had to be. His nose was playing tricks on him. Nothing ever happened up here besides teenagers getting drunk and having sex. McCabe was a cranky old fart and liked to call up the sheriff’s department and complain about the kids. But the kids never really did much.

  Tommy strolled through the grass into the trees, confident he wouldn’t find anything worth looking at.

  He was about to pass some spruce trees when he heard it: branches cracking and breaking. He froze. His heart raced as he scanned the line of trees. The breeze kept everything in motion, making it difficult to discern what should and shouldn’t be moving. He gripped his .38 with both hands and cautiously stepped farther into the thicket of trees. He kept his eyes up, constantly scanning around him. The fear was crowding everything else out of his mind. Right on the periphery, though, he could pick up something: the odor of decay was getting stronger.

  A branch snapped to his right. He spun toward it, the weapon in front of him. A shadow moved away from him, close to the ground.

  “Sheriff’s Department, hold it! Hold it!”

  The shadow ran. Tommy knew he should run back and call it in. He shouldn’t be out here in the woods chasing people down by himself.

  The adrenaline was too much. He ran into the trees.

  The branches whipped his face, dropping itchy needles down his collar. He braced his hand in front of him as though he were a receiver with the ball, and the linemen were closing in. His heart pounded so hard he could only hear his pulse in his ears.

  He came out of the trees into a small clearing and saw the shadow. Four legs and fur. A coyote.

  Tommy replaced his weapon and put his hands on his knees, hunched over, and breathed deeply, feeling as he had when he was forced to run the mile in gym class. The sweat dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes, and his legs felt on fire. But damn, if that wasn’t a rush.

  As he stood up, the sun in his eyes, another shadow came into view. Something larger.

  He saw her.

  Nausea gripped him as he stared at the body. His stomach churned and bubbled, and before he could stop it, vomit burst from his mouth.

  He fell to his knees and retched onto the grass.

  2

  Interrogation room two was soft beige from the carpet and chairs to the elongated tabletop. Kyle Dixon sat across from the young woman and ran his finger along the edge of the table. Silence was sometimes more powerful than words. He stayed silent a long time.

  The woman stared down at the table, her eyes glistening with tears. She looked like a kindergarten teacher, not a murderer. But appearance never counted for much in Dixon’s estimation. What lay in the soul mattered, and this woman’s soul was diseased.

  “You loved your baby, didn’t you, Danielle?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “No one questions that. I got a baby, too. Four months old. Little boy. Tyson was about four months when he passed, wasn’t he?”

  “Thirteen weeks.”

  “Thirteen weeks,” he said with a smile, pulling out a package of gum from his breast pocket. He unwrapped a piece and shoved it into his mouth before offering the pack to her. She took it but didn’t unwrap it. “Thirteen weeks… and you loved him. I get that. I get that you didn’t want him to suffer. That’s why you did what you did, ain’t it? You loved him so much, the thought of that little boy growin’ up in this world was unbearable to a mother who loved him as much as you did.”

  “This world is filled with nothing but pain,” she said quietly. “Darkness and pain.”

  “That’s right. And you spared Tyson that. You didn’t give darkness a chance to sink itself into him. For that, I have to commend you. It takes guts to do something like that.” He paused a beat. “But how’d you do it? Did you drown him? ’Cause we found him in the bathtub.”

  She shook her head. Her hands were trembling, but a slight smile came over her lips. “No. He was asleep, and I took a pillow and… he never even woke up.” The tears came down her cheeks. “My angel’s in heaven now, and he never even woke up. I washed him after.”

  Dixon shifted in his seat. “Have you ever done this before? Anyone else you sent to heaven?”

  She shook her head.

  “I believe you,” Dixon said.

  “Can I go now? My girls will be coming home from school soon.”

  Few things surprised Dixon anymore. He felt as if after six years in homicide, he’d seen just about everything on God’s green earth. But what she’d just said made him sit in stunned silence for a few moments before he could answer. “No, you can’t go home just yet, Danielle.” He rose, glancing at the video recorder set into the ceiling, and left the room.

  Next door in the observation room, his captain Bill Jessop stood with his arms folded, staring through the one-way glass.

  “Nice job,” Jessop said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sick bitch doesn’t even know she just confessed her way to a life sentence.”

  Dixon watched her through the glass. She had leaned back in her seat and wiped the tears away with her fingers. He couldn’t shake the feeling that what she looked like on the outside was nothing like what she looked like on the inside.

  “How long you been without a partner?” Jessop said.

  “Three months, twelve days.”

  “You been keepin’ count?”

  Dixon shook his head, his eyes still on Danielle. “Nope.”

  Jessop grinned. “New hire’ll be here today. Transplant from LAPD. I’m pairing you two.”

  “LAPD? What the hell’s he doin’ out here?”

  Jessop shrugged. “Who cares? He’s a warm body.”

>   As Jessop left, Dixon kept his attention on Danielle. She looked calmer now, almost peaceful. The other inmates would not be kind to her. Even in a place filled with murderers and thieves, the sin of hurting a child was not forgiven lightly. Danielle’s life would be one long, living nightmare from now on.

  He turned away from the glass and left the room, going down the corridor to the bullpen. The bullpen was nothing more than desks pushed together based on partnerships. Dixon had sat across from an empty chair for the past three months.

  The Cheyenne Police Department had a detective division, but unlike larger cities, they weren’t split up into subgroups like property crimes and robbery-homicide. The detectives had all developed certain specialties over the years, and it was understood that some were homicide, some sex crimes, some property or white collar, but that any of them at any time could catch something outside their specialty. It’d never bothered Dixon much to go from a homicide to a broken car window. Cheyenne didn’t have that many murders to begin with, and he liked to stay busy.

  After an hour of typing up his report on Danielle and preparing a screening packet for the District Attorney’s Office, he saw someone on the periphery: a man wearing a black jacket, carrying a box.

  Dixon looked over. The man had jet-black hair, and sunglasses hung from his collar. The jacket was leather, and he wore jeans. The receptionist pointed the man at Dixon.

  “Ethan Baudin,” he said, placing the box down on the empty desk opposite. He held out his hand. Dixon shook it.

  “Kyle Dixon.”

  Baudin sat down with a sigh and leaned back. “Looks like we’re paired.”

  Dixon kept typing. “Looks like it.”

  Silence fell, and Baudin began taking things out of the box. A pen holder, folders, books that he stacked on his desk, and a photograph of a young girl and a woman. Dixon kept typing but glanced at the books. He didn’t recognize any, but one was From Freud to Jung: A Comparative Study of the Psychology of the Unconscious. Another was 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade.

  “So how long you been with the CPD?” Baudin said.

  “Ten years. Six years homicide.”

  “No shit? I was told there weren’t any divisions—that they might have us writing parking tickets.”

  “I haven’t written one in eight years, so I doubt it.”

  Baudin rocked lightly in his chair, scanning the bullpen. “Everyone I’ve met has been nice so far.”

  “It’s a good group.”

  Dixon finished the report and saved it. He rose, stretched his back, and took his suit coat off his chair.

  “You leaving?” Baudin said, still arranging his desk.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Baudin looked up. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry. It’s only four. I thought you and me could get a beer or something.”

  “Can’t right now. I volunteer at my parish serving food. They need me from four-thirty to six.”

  “Well, I’ll come with ya. I could use some charity work.”

  Baudin rose. Dixon began walking out, and Baudin fell into step. When they reached the door, Dixon turned and said, “Listen, you seem like a nice guy, but I got my space, ya know? We’ll do all the bonding, male-hugging bullshit later, but I like my space.”

  Baudin held up his hands as though in surrender. “I understand. Just being friendly.”

  “I appreciate that. But give it a little time.”

  Dixon was almost through the door when he heard Baudin say, “Asshole.”

  “Excuse me?” he said, turning around. “You say somethin’ to me?”

  Baudin took a step forward, staring him in the eyes. “I said you’re an asshole.”

  A beat of silence passed.

  “You got somethin’ you wanna say to me?” Dixon said.

  “I’m just trying to be friendly to my new partner, and he’s treating me like some punk. It’s fine. I get it. You’re the big bad wolf, and you work alone. Me too.”

  Dixon chuckled. “I don’t know what kind of horseshit you pulled in LAPD to land your ass in the middle of farm country, but ’round here we respect our seniors. I’ve been here ten years. You’ve been here one day. You got a problem with that, then you get your ass in Bill’s office and ask for a transfer.”

  Dixon turned and left without waiting for a reply. He’d never been good at the partner thing, but this had to be some kind of record for getting into a pissing contest. Dixon was angry with Baudin, but he was angry with himself, too. Something about Baudin rubbed him wrong. Maybe his swagger, the fact that he was big-city homicide and probably thought nothing of these yokels he was forced to work with… could’ve even been his jacket. Whatever it was, Dixon thought he could’ve handled it better than he did.

  Once out the double doors of the precinct and into the warm Wyoming air, he stopped and put his hands on his hips, glancing back at the building. Maybe an apology was in order? No, he thought. Partners got shuffled around all the time. They probably wouldn’t be together long enough for it to matter, anyway.

  He got into his black Ford truck and drove to his church.

  3

  When Ethan Baudin had first walked into the Cheyenne Police Department, he thought the building looked like an ugly box. Two stories with a blue and black sign that read Police Department on the south end of the building, it looked like something built fifty years ago that just hadn’t decayed quite enough to be torn down.

  He marched up the steps and found the detectives’ division on the second floor. In Los Angeles, everything was compartmentalized into subdivisions, units, and cells. People developed specialties over years, and that brought a certain something—instinct, maybe. But the detectives also lost the freshness the rookies had. Hardened homicide detectives with a decade of murder under their belts tended to see the world a specific way, and it was almost impossible for them to see it any other.

  CPD, though—this would be something new. The days, at least Baudin hoped, would be varied and interesting. No two days alike.

  After Dixon had stormed out, Baudin went back to his desk and sat down. He looked at the murder board up on the far wall. A white SMART board had the names of victims written in columns with updates on the case in various cells across the board. CPD had exactly two open homicides right now. When he had left the homicide table in West Hollywood, they had had seventy-six.

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Jessop said as he sauntered over and leaned against Baudin’s desk.

  “I’m good. We all have bad days.”

  “His last partner, the man you replaced, was shot and killed on duty.”

  He was silent a moment. “Oh. I wasn’t told that.”

  Jessop nodded, looking down at his shoes. “Why’d you come out here, Ethan? No one from LAPD applies to come out here.”

  “I have a daughter. Just didn’t want her raised in LA. I wanted someplace quiet where everyone knows everyone else.”

  He grinned. “Careful what you wish for.”

  The first day in most new jobs consisted of meetings to go over sexual harassment policies, vacation time, retirement, and the myriad other things the department felt it needed to cover. That was all given to Baudin in a single packet, and he was told to consult the packet should he have any questions. He was also told he probably wouldn’t be catching any cases today. He was put into the rotation but would have to wait until his name was called.

  So he spent his entire first afternoon online reading about Cheyenne and its history. He’d done research back home, a lot of research, and spoken to a cousin who lived here. Everything seemed to indicate that it was a quiet city where not much at all happened—exactly what he’d been looking for.

  When six o’clock rolled around, Baudin headed to the parking lot and found the Mustang he’d had for almost ten years. When he pulled out of the lot, a few detectives were milling around in front of the building. He waved hello, but they didn’t wa
ve back.

  The cost of living was cheap enough that Baudin could afford a rambler with a fence for him and his daughter, and enough yard for a dog. He parked in the driveway and stared at the home for a minute. He’d lived in condos and apartments so long that he hadn’t been sure he’d ever get into his own house. But there it was.

  Baudin got out and sat on the porch for a while, staring at the cars passing by. Children played at one of the houses, and their squeals echoed around the neighborhood. A neighbor across the street, a woman in flood pants and a tank top, waved to him, and he smiled and waved back.

  The bus dropped his daughter off a few minutes later not half a block from his house. She stared at the sidewalk as she walked, her black hair falling forward, and danced with the motion of her awkward teenage gait.

  “How was the first day?” he said.

  “Fine,” she mumbled and went inside.

  For a moment, he didn’t move. He looked over at the school bus and watched as it pulled away before he rose and went inside.

  The house was clean. He considered himself a minimalist and tried not to have clutter because he thought the external world a person saw every day influenced the internal. Messy homes would lead to messy thinking.

  “Did you make any friends, Heather?” he said as he sat at the dining table.

  She pulled out a half gallon of almond milk and poured a glass before searching the cupboards for snacks. “Not really. The kids here are weird.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. They all know each other from church or something.”

  “You wanna go to church?” he said, taking out a package of cigarettes and lighting one.

  “No.”

  “Let me tell you something, Heather, if someone tells you they know the secrets of the universe and all it takes is sacrifice, you run the other way. ’Cause you can bet your ass that sacrifice will be yours, not theirs.”