Crazytown (The Darren Lockhart Mysteries) (12 page)

Chapter 23

Maybe it was the three bowls of hearty soup and the half-loaf of fresh-baked sourdough bread; maybe it was the chorus of chirping crickets that seemed to surround the house like an army, devoted to keeping Lockhart awake; or then again, maybe it was working a murder with no leads, but Lockhart couldn’t sleep.

He lay there and watched the seconds tick by on the hanging wall clock across from his bed. The swinging pendulum did nothing to relax him; it just ticked seconds off his life.

Finally, at about eleven p.m., Lockhart got up and walked over to the window. The town was largely asleep, and only a few buildings were still lit up. In the distance, Lockhart saw the tree line that blended into the horizon. For a moment, it looked as though lights danced from tree to tree like squirrels, but then they were gone. He quickly dismissed it as his own mental and physical exhaustion or just another thing he didn’t understand about the North Woods.

Since sleep seemed to be avoiding him, he decided to throw on a pair of pants and go get a drink. He had been running through the details of the case, with nothing but the sound of his own thoughts, as such, he was only growing more and more annoyed by it all. He wanted a drink, but he didn’t really want to have to deal with anyone, which shouldn’t be a problem, after the town meeting, either people wouldn’t recognize him out of his suit or they would likely want to avoid him. Besides, liquor stores were closed, and he was sure the sisters wouldn’t have anything stronger than some box wine in the house.  It was time to check out the Crayton night life. First hand.

It was late enough at night that he figured a plain white t-shirt was probably okay to satisfy the Northern Minnesota dive bar dress code. He grabbed his jacket and quietly crept down the stairs of the sleeping house. Each step groaned under his weight, and he did his best to minimize the annoyance. The married couple from the Twin Cities, Bob and Cindy, had left that morning and were replaced by another couple, Adam and Mandy, and their young daughter Lily. The family seemed unaware of the crime, and he didn’t intend on filling them in. They would be gone in the morning, no worse off for not knowing that they’d slept in the town where a boy had recently been killed.

With the risk of Mr. Weber being at Izzy’s, Lockhart decided to drink at The Pit Stop instead, a small hole-in-the-wall saloon with a bar that ran nearly the length of the building. It wasn’t a particularly big place and only had room for a half-dozen tables near the front. A person would almost have to turn sideways to get past the bar to the back. The floor was covered in peanut shells and discarded pull-tabs. Pictures of fishing expeditions and hunting trips hung, crooked, around the room. There were no other patrons in the bar, and Lockhart considered that it might be closed.

The bartender, a younger man around twenty-five was wiping down bottles. He was dressed in a tank top, showing off tattoo-covered arms, and when he looked up from the bottles he was wiping down and saw Lockhart, he grimaced. He then looked at the neon clock that hung over his shoulder. It was eleven thirty p.m. “Slow night. Closing at midnight,” the bartender said.

“Not a problem,” Lockhart said as he walked, half slid to the end of the bar and took a seat at the corner so he could watch the entrance. “Boilermaker.”

“Drop-shot or separate?”

“Separate.”

“Whiskey?”

“Got Bushmills?”

“White label okay?”

“My brand.”

“Beer?”

“Got anything local?”

“Local? We got Lienie’s Honeyweiss or Grainbelt Nordeast on tap.”

“Which is darker?”

“The Nordeast.”

Lockhart nodded his approval. He appreciated the brevity of it all immensely. The bartender seemed to be in no mood for chatting, and that suited Lockhart just fine. He sipped the amber-colored beer and found another reason to like Minnesota, or at least one less reason to dislike the place. It was a full-flavored beer, but not bitter like darker ones. He was hard pressed to think of a time when a beer had tasted better, though he wasn’t sure if it was the beer or simply the intense desire for a drink. Lockhart picked up the shot just as a familiar face sat down next to him.

“Soda and lime, Trev,” said Chief of Police John Donaldson, still dressed in his blue uniform. Lockhart hadn’t noticed that the chief’s green wind breaker hung on a hook around the side of the bar.

Lockhart was mildly annoyed that his peace had been disturbed. “Are you following me, Chief?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. I’ve been here since ten. Ain’t that right, Trevor?”

The bartender, evidently named Trevor, set the club soda and lime in front of the police chief on a round cardboard coaster. “Yes, sir,” he said as he tossed the bar towel over the inky tiger on his shoulder and wandered into the back room.

“You’ve been here more than two hours drinking club soda and lime?” Lockhart asked, staring down into the amber depths of his beer.

“Can’t drink ‘cause of the diabetes. I used to come here after my shift to unwind, and booze or no booze, I can’t seem to get out of the habit.”

Lockhart drank his shot and reveled in the oaky taste that burned its way slowly down his throat. He let out a long exhale, almost as if he was literally letting off steam, and then he sat there in absolute silence.

The chief walked around the bar. “What are ya drinkin’?”

Lockhart just looked at him.

“Oh, don’t worry. Being part owner of this place has its perks. And don’t look so surprised. It’s a small town; it was just a good investment.”

Lockhart shrugged and blinked slowly. “Bushmills.”

“You an Irish whiskey man?”

“Just Bushmills.”

“Creature of habit, huh? I can respect that.” The Chief poured Lockhart another shot, with an unexpected flair. He started the stainless steel spout close when he first started the pour and ended with the bottle a good two feet away. Clearly, the man was no stranger to slinging liquor. He set the bottle on the bar. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

Lockhart shrugged as he threw the shot into the back of his throat, then chased with a large gulp of beer.

“What did you do with the other cases? I mean, I’m sure you still have this one pegged for your Shooter theory, or at least you have your suspicions. Am I right? So what was next on those other cases? Maybe something that can help out here.”

Lockhart looked at his shot glass, then peered at Donaldson, who grabbed the bottle and poured another shot. Lockhart picked up the glass and stared at it, watching the caramel swirls as the liquor settled. “Well, I interviewed potential witnesses, re-interviewed families and friends. I ran background checks and generally dissected everyone’s lives. I did everything I could with the resources of the federal government at my disposal. And then…” Lockhart dropped the full shot of whiskey into the half-full glass of beer, causing a slight splash followed by a small, rolling wave of foam. He picked up the glass and slammed it all down in one large chug, then slapped a twenty on the bar and placed the empty glass on top of it. “Then, after nothing happened, I left—just another dead body because the killer is smarter than I am.” Without another word, Lockhart left the bar.

He somewhat awkwardly ambled along as the alcohol absorbed into his blood. As he walked down the street, he felt like the town was closing in on him. He passed by the empty building he and Donaldson had staked out in. He stared at the blurred words of the “Lee’s Laundry” sign and the blacked-out windows. He was definitely drunk.

Lockhart staggered up the hill to the Bed-and-breakfast and wished he was home.

Chapter 24

Lockhart spent the majority of the next three days working split shifts between the Duluth and Bemidji FBI field offices. While he had the chief and deputy re-interviewing people around town, particularly those who had seen Mikey at least forty-eight hours prior to his death, he had Bemidji agents doing background checks on the same people, not because he didn’t have faith in the Crayton police, but because they just didn’t have the same resources or experience. It also gave him excuse to get out of the town for a while. His frustration had been mounting as the days dragged on and he felt far more comfortable in the drab and somewhat sterile environment of the FBI offices than he did among all those trees. The Duluth agents were busy going through any Internet and school files they could find for Michael Weber Jr.

The case was growing colder by the minute, and Lockhart wanted to feel like he was at least accomplishing something before being called back to Washington DC. Each day that he called or e-mailed in his status update, he expected to be reassigned, but Director Chalmers always offered the same response: “Proceed with your investigation.”

On the fourth day, Lockhart ran a background check on Dr. Heath, and the results came back exactly as expected: Ivy League education, prestigious internships, government grants, and so on, but then it all just stopped. The information was there one minute, and in the next, it suddenly wasn’t and Lockhart didn’t have clearance to access it. For a five-year period, there was no public record of Dr. Heath, and he remained completely under the radar. Finally, as he faced a roadblock he couldn’t get around, in particular one that pushed him past the brink of silent curiosity: Lockhart had to ask his superior officer, exactly what was going on.

“You are to proceed with the investigation as you would for any other murder,” Chalmers told him.

“With all due respect, sir, in any other investigation I would have had more experienced agents working with me. And, given the amount of information we have to go on, there isn’t much to investigate at this juncture—not to mention the fact that one of the people involved with the victim has a confidential file.”

Assistant Director Chalmers paused on the other end of the phone, before he flatly blurted out, “Dr. Heath is not a person of interest in this case.”

Lockhart didn’t bother to point out the fact that he had never mentioned Dr. Heath by name, and it was suddenly clear that Dr. Heath’s involvement was the reason for the added investigation. Lockhart needed to be cleared up. “Director, what was Dr. Heath involved in that I’m not cleared to know?”

“There is a reason you are not cleared to know, Special Agent.” There was another pause. “However, in the course of your investigation, should you learn of any involvement or connection between Dr. Heath and the victim, besides as an educator, that may change. That said, until then, the particulars of Dr. Heath’s background will only be deemed important and of consequence if you are able to ascertain the necessity through your own investigative skills.”

“Yes, sir,” Lockhart said with a deflated tone as he hung up his phone.

Lockhart left the Bemidji offices to head back to the self-proclaimed Crazytown. While it was a good thing he had accessibility to two FBI offices, they were both just too far away from Crayton and the scene of the crime. He needed the FBI offices for research, but the longer he spent away from the town, the colder everything would get in his mind, and he needed things to stay fresh. He needed to be seen by the people. He hoped maybe one of them, someone out there, held the information that he needed.             

Just outside of Bemidji, his phone rang. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, Darren. Have you heard from your father?”

“Yeah, Mom. He actually gave me a call from the bar. He stopped by there on his way home from the store to catch up on the score of the game. He just wanted to call and gloat over the Redskins this year.”

Lockhart could hear the sigh of relief on the other end. His story had sounded convincing enough, at least that time. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right story, detail, and inflection to make sure his mother wouldn’t spend the rest of the day worrying about a husband who would never come home.

This time, at least, it had worked.

His mother spent the next twenty minutes telling him about his pregnant cousin and how she wasn’t sure she was marrying for the right reason. Lockhart knew she was right, because the marriage had only lasted about a year. The son his cousin had given birth to that year had trouble with the law, and Lockhart was asked to lend a hand. It was all history he didn’t want to relive. Fortunately, he got to town before too long and said goodbye to his mom.

The porch swing on the front patio of the bed-and-breakfast creaked under Lockhart’s weight. He sat there silently and gently pushed himself back and forth as his eyes scanned the town in the distance. He watched the occasional car roll down the street and saw children run, screaming and giggling, down the sidewalk under the ever-vigilant eyes of their wary parents. It was like something out of a postcard. Lockhart wondered what secrets the town really held.

He sat there for over an hour before hunger set in and he took a walk down to Dan’s Café for a takeout order. Lisa Weber was standing at the counter when Lockhart walked in, with her fingers tapping nervously on the countertop. She was dressed in a pair of torn jeans and a pink sweatshirt with its hood hanging out of the top of a small denim jacket. Her hair hung in front of her face, like she was trying to hide. Lockhart didn’t see Deputy Lind in the kitchen and wondered if Lisa was waiting for him.

“Hi,” he said from behind Lisa.

She spun quickly, startled. “Oh, um, Darren, right? I’m sorry, I just…” she rambled.

Lockhart couldn’t help but notice that she looked as tired as he felt.

“Are you okay, Lisa?”

She let out a long breath, and her eyes looked like they were about to well with tears. “I’m sorry. I just stopped in for some food. We don’t have anything at the house, and I really didn’t want to go to the grocery store. It just feels like everyone is staring at me. I thought this would be faster, but—”

Lockhart gently touched her arm, trying to offer her some comfort. “Lisa, breathe. Calm down. It’s okay.”

Lisa looked him in the eyes with a changed gaze. Her face had suddenly hardened. “All due respect, Agent Lockhart, it’s not okay. The school suspended me while everything is being investigated with Mikey.”

“They can’t do that. You’re not a suspect in this.” Even as Lockhart said the words, he wasn’t sure if he meant them.

“Sure they can. They just don’t call it a suspension. According to them, it’s a ‘sabbatical’. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Lockhart chewed his lower lip. She wasn’t the same girl he had talked to earlier. She had spent days locked up in a house that probably felt like a prison. She sounded bitter, and it wasn’t an ideal time to talk to her, but he would take any opportunity he could get. At least until her order was up, he had some time. After that she would no doubt disappear out the door.

“How have you and Deputy Lind been holding up?”

She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Freddie doesn’t like talking about this stuff much. I think he’s taking it really hard.”

There was an opening. “I can imagine. I’ve been there. Not only did he know Mikey, but he was the first one on scene. I bet he would have rather been cooking.”

Lisa looked down the length of the counter. She hadn’t picked up on his questioning. “He
was
cooking.”

“He got called while he was working on the line? I thought he was just part time.”

Lisa shrugged, with her eyes still on the search for her food. “He is, but they must not have been able to get in touch with the chief so they called him.” Her head swiveled back to Lockhart the second the last word left her mouth. There was a look of betrayal burnt into her eyes, as if Lockhart has just tricked her into potentially implicating Chief Donaldson in a crime. She stood there, staring at Lockhart, rendered speechless.

Lockhart didn’t feel guilty in the least at first, but the longer she stared at him, the more he started to feel like he had stolen something from her. There was no doubt she trusted the chief, now Lockhart had forced her to admit that things weren’t what they seemed. Lisa had emerged from her house to get food, maybe even to find some comfort, but instead of nourishment and encouragement, she got Lockhart and reality.

A waitress set a large folded-over brown bag on the counter; Lisa snatched it without looking and darted out the door.

Lockhart offered no words of protest. He had to remind himself it was to solve her brother’s death.