The Unseen - A Mystery (The Baudin & Dixon Trilogy Book 2) Page 2

  “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” Dixon asked.

  “I dunno. I might get bored of it.”

  Dixon nodded. “I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

  The Mustang rolled away. Dixon watched it a second then turned to the run-down building his apartment was in. It always smelled like cooking food. Some Africans, Nigerians he thought, lived beneath him, and a little Mexican family lived next door. So his apartment was constantly filled with the scent of frying this and boiling that.

  He walked up the stairs to his door and unlocked it. He’d left the air conditioner on. Few things bothered him as much as wasting money when he didn’t have to. Money wasn’t necessarily tight—he made sixty-two grand a year, and the cost of living in Cheyenne was one of the lowest in the country. But growing up, money had always been tight because of his father’s drinking. After his mother ran out on them, the drinking got worse, and every spare dime they had went to that. Dixon had always been the one to turn off the lights or cut open tubes of toothpaste, anything to stretch a dollar just a little bit farther.

  Dixon left his shoes by the door and went to the fridge. He was hungry, but all he had were the makings of a sandwich, and he didn’t feel like a sandwich. He took a bottle of beer and went out to the balcony. After popping open the bottle, he sat in one of his patio chairs and kicked his feet up on the railing.

  The apartment complex was quiet. The only ones who lived there were too young, or too old, to have kids. Dixon liked the quiet. It had been hard to get used to at first, but he found he had trouble remembering what life was like when there had been noise.

  He slipped out his phone and went to his photos. He opened a photo of Hillary and stared at it a long time. It was a selfie she’d taken at Disneyland two years ago. Her hair was shorter, but the sparkle in her eyes never faded. One day, he had been in love, and the next, he couldn’t talk to her without feeling the urge to vomit.

  Her lover, the father of her child, was dead—at Dixon’s hands. In a moment of pure rage and panic, he had shot him in the head. He had wanted to call it in, but Baudin wouldn’t have it, and Baudin never talked about what happened to the body. Dixon lived with that now. It seemed, in his memory, as though a different person had pulled that trigger. In that moment of pain, he was a different man, and he understood what the term temporary insanity really meant.

  Dixon breathed out forcefully and turned off his phone. He sat up, guzzled the beer, and set the empty bottle down on the balcony before going to the fridge to get another.

  Dixon wasn’t sure how long he’d sat on the balcony, but he guessed two hours. Dark blanketed Wyoming. He leaned back in the chair and watched the stars, trying to count them. He’d always done that as a kid, but he’d always lost count after about fifty.

  Eight or nine empty beer bottles stood before him. He’d lined them up like soldiers in a firing squad. Reaching out with his leg, he knocked the first one over into the second, and each tinkled then toppled over.

  Though exhausted, he knew sleep wouldn’t come on its own. Just like every night for the past eight months, he would have to take drugs to force his body to sleep. But before he did that, he wanted to do one thing.

  Dixon turned on his phone and dialed his wife’s cell.

  After three rings, she picked up. “Hello?”

  Hearing her voice was like hearing a piece of music he hadn’t heard in a long time, a piece of music that had value above being something pleasant to listen to.

  “Hey,” he said.

  A long silence came from the other end then, “Do you have a new phone?”

  “Yeah. I lost my other one.” That was a lie, but he barely noticed telling it. He’d dropped the other one in the toilet while he was drunk.

  “Randy misses you.”

  Dixon swallowed. He put his hand over his eyes and felt the tears coming, but he fought them back as much as he could. “Yeah… that’s, that’s too bad.”

  “Kyle, come over. Come over right now, and let’s talk.”

  “Did you fuck him in our bed?”

  “Kyle, don’t do this.”

  “Just answer me,” he said forcefully. “Did you fuck him in our bed?”

  She hesitated. “Call me when you’re not drunk… I love you.”

  With that, she hung up. He let the phone drop out of his hand.

  5

  Baudin had never been a day person. The night calmed him. The sunlight didn’t comfort him like it did other people. But night cloaked everything, brought down barriers in the mind, and revealed people for what they really were.

  He sat on his porch and smoked, leaving the light off so he could see the red tip in the dark. A car pulled up just then, and his daughter, Heather, hopped out. Keri, the mother of Heather’s friend Gina, waved to Baudin, and he got the distinct impression that she’d wanted to see him. She was always texting and stopping by to say hello. Though Baudin had the same urges any man did, he had always been better at controlling them than most were. Sex, to him, was a function that occasionally needed to be engaged in, but shouldn’t run a man’s life. In the end, it clouded thinking, and that was something he wouldn’t allow unless it was necessary.

  He rose, tossed his cigarette, and sauntered over into the street. He leaned down over the driver’s-side window, one arm up on the roof.

  “How was she?” he said. “Not too much trouble?”

  “Never. She’s a dear.”

  Heather playfully struck Baudin in the stomach then kissed his cheek before running inside the house, waving goodbye to her friend. Baudin looked into the car. He noticed a book about tantric sex lying on the passenger seat. Keri noticed that he noticed, and she was blushing.

  “That’s for…”

  “Research?”

  “Yeah. For work.”

  The two of them looked at each other then smiled.

  “That came out so wrong,” she said. “I mean, I’m a teacher at the community college. You know that. It’s for a class on gender and sexuality.”

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  She smiled. “When we going out again?”

  “Friday?”

  “I’ll pick you up. The girls can watch themselves for a few hours.”

  Baudin stood upright and tapped the roof of the car. Keri waved as she pulled away, and Baudin watched the headlights disappear into the black. He then headed up the porch and went inside.

  They had moved after Heather’s suicide attempt last year. Baudin didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he certainly believed in energy, and certain places just held bad energy. So they’d picked up and bought a rambler in a neighborhood with better schools and more minivans in the driveways. Heather had made several friends, and her grades had improved. She still went to a counselor once a week, but the counselor had assured Baudin that his daughter was doing better.

  It didn’t help comfort him. No one really knew what another person was thinking or feeling. He still kept a close eye on his daughter.

  “You have fun?” he asked, coming to the door of her bedroom as she kicked off her boots.

  “Yeah.” She paused. “So, are you and Keri boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  He smirked. “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Gina says she always talks about you. But her grandma said that men like you don’t get married.”

  “I was married to your mom.”

  “Married again, she meant. Gina said her grandma told her that men like you only have one love in their life, and they never find another.”

  Baudin leaned his head against the doorframe, staring at his daughter. She looked more and more like her mother every day. The eyes, the nose, the hair, even her thin fingers and middle knuckle that protruded just a little too much… he had to look away.

  “Your mother was the love of my life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love anybody else. I love you, don’t I?”

  “Yeah, but it’s different.” She sighed. “I hope you marry Keri. Then G
ina and I would be sisters.”

  He smiled. “Brush your teeth and get to bed. You have school in the morning.”

  Baudin went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of organic apple juice, then headed to his basement. The wooden stairs creaked when he walked on them, as though they would collapse at any second. He flipped the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and went to the center of the room. A single hanging bulb illuminated the space, and there were no windows. Up on a pinboard were photos of thirty-six men. They had all gone to the University of Wyoming and been members of the Sigma Mu fraternity. At the very top was a photograph of Mike Sandoval, the current district attorney of Laramie County.

  Baudin took a step back and sat in a chair. He took out his cigarettes and lit one. He exercised, rarely drank, and never did drugs. He was even a vegan who avoided junk food, but smoking was the one vice he held on to. He’d started in Robbery-Homicide in Los Angeles and hadn’t been able to kick it. More than anything else, it kept his hands busy while he thought.

  He inhaled and then held the cigarette low, looking through the dim blue smoke at Mike Sandoval’s official photo for the district attorney’s office. He was smiling, but Baudin could see behind his eyes, could see what drove him. Baudin thought that if he could see what drove a person, their lives would fall into place. Everything around them would make sense. Humans, he believed, weren’t random. They were just controlled by forces that seemed random.

  “Dad!”

  “What, babe?”

  “Are you smoking again?”

  He put the cigarette out in a paper cup that sat on a table in the middle of the room. “No. Go to bed.”

  He rose and went to the light switch. Before turning it off, he glanced once more at the photo. He wanted Mike’s face to be etched into his memory—the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing he thought of before bed.

  He switched off the light and was swallowed by darkness.

  6

  The sunshine broke through the window and warmed Dixon’s face. Grudgingly, he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then he threw off the covers, rubbed his face with both hands, and rose.

  After using the bathroom and showering, he dressed in jeans, a white shirt, a tie, and a sports coat. He found the ritual of dressing unpleasant, and he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. His wife used to help him pick out his clothes every morning.

  Dixon took a bottle of scotch from the cupboard and poured himself three fingers in a tumbler. He finished it in two pulls then made toast and smeared peanut butter on it before running out the door.

  He drove with the windows up and the radio off. Muffling the rest of the world was better than having to listen to it. It didn’t have much to tell him anyhow.

  He got to the station just before eight and strolled past the reception desk. The bullpen, what might have been called the “homicide table” in other jurisdictions, was just desks and cubicles shoved together to make room for all the detectives. Dixon sat down at his desk. Baudin normally sat across from him, but he wasn’t in yet. He had a new stack of books on his desk with titles like The Psychopathology of Group Murder and Lust Killing Paraphilia: Theory and Investigation. Whenever there was a slow moment, other detectives were checking on their fantasy football teams, browsing the sports page, watching Netflix, or just talking. Baudin read.

  Baudin walked in and collapsed into his chair. Unlike Dixon, he wore a brown leather jacket and jeans. Their captain, Bill Jessop, never said anything about it anymore, not since the chief of police had been killed. Jessop, Dixon suspected, was nervous of what they might find in his background.

  Though not a member of Sigma Mu, Jessop had clearly known more about the chief’s activities than he’d let on. Just how much he knew might never come to light, but Dixon could never look at him without thinking about it.

  “How do you read that shit?” Dixon asked, motioning to the small stack of books with his chin. “That’d depress the hell outta me.”

  “Gotta know what you’re looking at if you’re going to understand it. Otherwise, you’re just stumbling in the dark.” He paused. “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “What time you get to bed?”

  Dixon shrugged. “I don’t sleep much anymore.”

  He didn’t have too much on his calendar that day. Just a backlog of probable cause statements to write on cases that would be sent to the district attorney’s office and screened for prosecution, and then half a dozen reports and supplemental narratives that needed to be drafted. So he stayed at the station all day and wrote, taking only a quick break to run across the street for a sandwich at a café called Fat’s.

  Baudin did about the same, but he didn’t eat. During his lunch hour, he had a smoothie he’d brought from home and read quietly at his desk.

  By six o’clock, Dixon’s back was screaming, and he sat up and stretched. Baudin yawned as he finished writing something and turned off his computer.

  “Wanna get a drink?” Dixon said.

  “Sure.”

  Before becoming a police officer, Dixon had thought it was a myth that cops tended to congregate at certain spots. They allegedly had their favorite bars, their favorite restaurants, and their favorite motels if they needed to sleep one off before a shift. But after only a month at his first job after becoming POST certified, he found it was absolutely true.

  My Ex’s Joint was a favorite of the detectives division. The dive bar in a dive neighborhood had about the best nachos and Philly cheesesteak Dixon had ever eaten. Most of the space was taken up with pool tables, dartboards, and arcade games. Music was always blaring, and women who either wanted to date cops or had married and divorced one came through every Friday and Saturday night.

  A few hollers met Dixon as he led Baudin inside. He ordered two beers on tap then jumped into the fray.

  He played pool—he’d found out a few months ago that Baudin was nearly an expert—and drank beer after beer. The pitchers blurred until he realized he was drunk, and on top of that, he felt sick. But he didn’t stop drinking.

  “No way,” Dixon said as he watched Baudin make what looked like an impossible shot.

  “Believe it, brother.”

  “Did you not work in LA? Just play pool?”

  “I was undercover with the White Killers for six months, prison gang down there. This is all they did when they got outside, man. Drink, drugs, and pool.”

  “Six months? Why so long?”

  “That’s how long it takes to get in with ’em. They were trafficking girls, man. Some of them weren’t older than Heather. Just kids being prostituted to the most disgusting, violent men this country has to offer.”

  Baudin cleared the table as Dixon took another sip of beer, though he knew he shouldn’t.

  “How’s this end for you?” Dixon said.

  “What d’ya mean?”

  He made a circular motion with his hand. “This whole thing. I seen your basement. You gonna try to bust over thirty people ’cause they belonged to the same frat twenty years ago?”

  Baudin shook his head as he sat on the table, the cue between his legs. “Nah, man. We can’t get them all. That’s impossible. But we can get the key ones. The ones that are still in power, still pulling strings.”

  “You know what your problem is? It’s that you believe in all them conspiracies. You think this is some big fuckin’ scam. The chief of police was just crazy. That’s all.”

  Baudin shook his head. “Those girls were raped by dozens of men. And I bet more than one of them has killed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the fantasy, man. People like the ones we’re after fantasize about women, then about rape, then about murder. The fantasy becomes everything to them. Then when they kill, it’s never as good as the fantasy, and they get depressed. So they get trapped. They’re disappointed with reality, but they can’t return to fantasy because they’ve actually acted
it out now. They have a crisis of identity, man. They don’t know who they are, and they panic. And they try to perfect reality, to make it just like their fantasies. And they’ll kill over and over and over, trying to reach that dream of perfection that’s unattainable.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “You are one upsetting son of a bitch to be around, Ethan.”

  He shrugged. “Takes one to know one,” he said flatly.

  7

  Walking into the station at eight in the morning, Dixon had a massive hangover and kept his sunglasses on. He took his sports coat off and slung it on the back of his chair. Jessop was in his office, speaking on the phone, and he glanced at Dixon through the glass then turned away.

  Baudin was already there, but he didn’t have sunglasses. Instead, his eyes were closed as though he were in meditation.

  Detective Hector Sanchez came over to their desks and sat down on the edge. “Hangover?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Dixon mumbled.

  “It’s caused by dehydration. You gotta drink more water.”

  Dixon leaned back in his chair, his eyes turned toward the ceiling. “Or cut my head off.”

  “That, too.” Sanchez took a sip from the Styrofoam cup in his hand. “You boys see that we caught a body last night?”

  “No, what was it?”

  “Don’t know. Some marathon runner saw fingers sticking out of the dirt near Sky Gorge.”

  “Where?” Baudin asked, opening his eyes.

  “Just off I-15. Up a dirt road. Real tucked away. Someone was trying to hide it.”

  “You got an ID?” Baudin asked.

  “No, get this—it’s just an arm. We’re trying to get some warm bodies together to go up there and search with the dogs. I bet we’ll find the rest of him, too.”