Murder Mountain: An Eli Quinn Short Mystery / Prequel Read online

  DeRouin looked like a thousand other fresh recruits in his Army photo. Buzz cut, narrow features but a strong jaw. Six-two, I learned. An inch taller than me. The blue-eyed kid staring back at me was twenty years old when the picture was taken. Too young to drink legally in most states, old enough to be shipped halfway around the world to kill or be killed.

  The newer image, the DUI mug shot, revealed a tired man in his mid-forties. Same strong jaw, same blue eyes but seated in a more sunken place. Prematurely graying hair, still a buzz cut, and a couple day’s growth of facial stubble. Nobody looks good in a mug shot, but DeRouin looked angry. I guessed they could’ve taken the picture ten times and he’d look angry in every one.

  ***

  My iPhone buzzed. It was DeRouin’s mother, three weeks after I’d visited her. Said she’d forgotten about Cheryl Markstrom, a girlfriend DeRouin had told her about. The only one he ever mentioned.

  “When were they together?” I asked.

  “Perhaps five years ago,” Mrs. DeRouin said. “She lived in Phoenix, same as him. I don’t know much else about her. Just that Devin called me out of the blue one day to tell me about her. He never did that.”

  “How long were they together?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” she said. “I just heard about her that one time.”

  An hour later I had an address for Cheryl Markstrom and was in my red Jeep Wrangler, top down, Solo in back grabbing wind in his jowls as we headed west from Pleasant on the 101 to the 17. I’d found Cheryl in court records. She’d been arrested multiple times for possession. The most recent address was in Glendale, along Route 60, which cut diagonally through some rougher urban areas. It turned out to be a motel that rented by the month. The owner thumbed me toward the second-floor apartment. I rapped on the door.

  Cheryl Markstrom was a wisp of a woman, maybe five-four and not much more than hundred pounds, deflated cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. She puffed on a cigarette incessantly.

  “Yeah?” Her voice was raspy, deep and sad.

  “Cheryl Markstrom?”

  “What are you, a fucking detective?”

  “No ma’am. Name’s Eli Quinn. I’m looking for Devin DeRouin.”

  She ducked behind the door and tried to slam it, but I wedged my foot in.

  “I’m not going to make any trouble for you,” I said. “Just have some questions.”

  “I got no answers.” She shoved on the door. I was glad I’d worn my loafers, not my running shoes. They held firm.

  “He killed my wife.”

  She stopped shoving, peeked around the door.

  “That was your wife?”

  I nodded.

  “I saw on the news.”

  “May I come in?”

  She let the door drift open, backed her way to the bed and sat down, deflated into a clump. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. It was a standard motel room, one single bed, a small bathroom, and a dresser with a hot plate and a coffee maker and a bottle of cheap whiskey. The place was neat, but reeked of smoke. I had made Cheryl Markstrom for late fifties at first, then upon closer inspection figured maybe thirty-five or forty. I couldn’t think of anything conversational to say.

  “You know where he might be?”

  She shook her head, looking at the worn carpet, faded gold. She raised the cigarette and took a long drag.

  “Ms. Markstrom, I have to find him. Please.”

  “I thought he was a good man at first,” she said, fidgeting with her fingers and talking to the carpet in a soft voice, defeated. “He was nice to me. He had money. Took me out to dinner. Then one day he said he had to go, and disappeared for three months.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Wouldn’t tell me.” She looked up. “If he finds out I talked to you he’ll kill me.”

  “Nobody knows I’m here,” I said. “Help me find him, then he can’t hurt you.”

  She looked through thin dirty curtains out a dusty window onto the tired parking lot, took another drag. “He came back with pot,” she said. “Lots of it. And cash. He stayed a couple months, then gone again.”

  “Was he buying it or selling it?”

  “Growing it,” she said.

  “But you don’t know where.”

  She shook her head.

  “I got tired of waiting for him, so I left. Next time he comes back, he tracks me down and beats the crap out of me. Then that’s it. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “Sounds like a great guy.”

  She shook her head again, closed her eyes. Then she stood, folded her arms the way a cold person does. It was a pleasant eighty-five degrees outside, same inside. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About your wife.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “What’ll you do if you find him?”

  I didn’t say anything. As a reporter, I’d learned how to get information, how to ask the questions, and when to keep things to myself.

  She nodded, gave a thin smile of understanding, not happiness.

  I’d have to work on my poker face.

  ***

  The beer went down easy on the hot afternoon in my backyard while pondering the light Cheryl Markstrom had shed on the case, so I opened another.

  I called Sam and asked if she’d come over. I hadn’t been out much, and the pit of Jess’ death, her memory, the emptiness, the loneliness, was all still in my stomach. Told Sam I wanted to review what we knew. And that was true. But also, I just felt better when she was around.

  “Quinn, it’s four in the afternoon.”

  “And?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk.” I shook my head. I had a nice buzz on, definitely not drunk. But it was the first time Sam had ever said anything about my drinking. It made me angry. Not really at her. I felt my face flush, tried but couldn’t control it.

  She pointed to the sixpack of Sierra Nevada on the counter, full of empties.

  “Only had two today,” I said. “The rest were from last night. Christ, Sam. It’s hot out. It’s the weekend. My wife is dead.”

  Sam understood. She always did. She gave me a moment to get past the anger. That didn’t work.

  “I’m just worried, Quinn. It’s been two months. Of course you’re still grieving. And I know you can control the drinking.”

  “Then why bring it up?”

  “Because it’s four in the afternoon. I want to make sure you continue controlling it.”

  “That your job?”

  “It is.” She said it with finality. Her chin was tilted up and her dark eyes were fierce, challenging.

  I set my beer down reluctantly and waved for her to follow me outside. We sat on the iron chairs around the flagstone fire pit, across from each other. I told her what I’d learned from Cheryl Markstrom.

  “The portrait of the man is filling in,” Sam said.

  “Broad brushstrokes. I was hoping you could paint some fine lines with your Ph.D.”

  “Master’s,” she said. “Can’t you get that straight?”

  “I’m impressed either way. So give me your best psychologist’s analysis of DeRouin.”

  Sam was a reporter by trade, but her degree in psychology helped her get inside peoples’ heads, which made her a better reporter. She shifted in her chair, tapped her fingers on the arms, looked around the backyard.

  “Clinical definition would be he’s a psychopath. But frankly we don’t really understand what’s going on inside the mind of someone who packs that label.”

  “Give it a shot,” I said.

  “Events in childhood could have something to do with it. Could be more about biology. What we can say for sure is he doesn’t feel guilt. And he enjoys the killing.”

  “I could have figured that out.”

  “But you don’t have a degree in psychology,” she said. “It would be just guessing.”

  I smiled. Barely. First in weeks, I realized. It felt good. I wiped it off just as quickly, since feeling good didn�
�t feel good just yet.

  “Would he kill randomly, or is he meticulous or purposeful or whatever?”

  “Hard to say. He might have a target in mind. Or a situation. Or an outcome.”

  “Or an event, like an anti-gun rally.”

  “Right. Psychopaths are opportunists. They can be impulsive.”

  “I can be impulsive,” I said.

  “But you don’t kill people.”

  “Not yet.”

  Chapter 5

  ~ ~ ~

  The chase had started eight minutes ago. DeRouin began with a quarter-mile head start. On the way into his pot farm, I’d found the trip wire where the dreadlocked Markus Simper told me it would be. I’d picked up a heavy, dead branch, backed off, and tossed it on the wire.

  Two shots rang out, deafening shotgun blasts, rigged to the trip wire and meant for me or anyone who tried to sneak up on DeRouin. DeRouin would’ve heard them, wouldn’t know if the intruder he’d presumably killed had company. He might come straight at us to find out. Or he might sit tight on his herb garden and shoot us when we burst in. Or he’d head for his camp site, six miles down one slope, up and over the mountain in the other direction, avoid getting caught growing an illegal crop.

  Based on Markus’ advice, I gambled on the latter, but kept the other two possibilities in mind.

  It’d been a risk to plunge ahead, into unfamiliar territory where several growers, thieves and local vigilante citizens had been killed in the Humboldt County marijuana wars. Solo accepted the risk without hesitation. There’d never been any doubt what I would do.

  We had settled into my six-mile training pace to close the gap quickly. I knew DeRouin would be in shape from long hikes, but it was a fair assumption that he couldn’t run six-minute miles back-to-back. I could put in six of them if I needed to, and after years of training runs, my body knew almost to the second what pace it was holding.

  We hadn’t seen DeRouin until after passing through his plot of herbs on a south-facing plateau that broke through the fog, a good growing spot bathed in sunlight. That’s where Solo picked up his scent. It was another half-mile along the narrow trail when we caught our first glimpse. He didn’t see us. He ran, or rather jogged, but his form was bad. He would grow tired. Might average an eight- or nine-minute mile pace, maybe slower, depending on the terrain.

  Then we’d slowed our pace. Running up on DeRouin too quickly would, more than likely, just get us shot. And for now, it was an advantage that he didn’t know I was a runner. He knew nothing about me. He couldn’t possibly know I had one goal, and it had nothing to do with his crop.

  Just after DeRouin shot at me from across the ravine—our second sighting of him—I watched his back disappear over the next ridge, then studied the topo map.

  He had another mile to go, uphill, before the trail forked. Murder Mountain’s rounded top, unnamed on the map, was two miles away. One trail crested the top, another ran side-hill to the left, a shorter route and less of a climb. Fair bet DeRouin would stay left, but I couldn’t be sure. There was a third option. About twenty yards back, another trail curved off this one, went around the right side of the mountain. The trails came back together and crossed just this side of his camp. The right-side route was longer by about a mile.

  We were five miles from DeRouin’s campsite. If he averaged nine-minute miles—my best guess—he’d be there in forty-five minutes. If I took the longer path and ran seven-minute miles—a challenge in soggy shoes on uneven terrain—I’d be there in forty-two minutes. We’d both go slower on the uphill stretches, faster downhill, but the averages were fair assumptions.

  The other wild cards in my three-minute cushion were the estimations of distance, which were admittedly crude, the inevitable twists, turns and obstacles that didn’t show up on the map, and the unknown condition of the trails. There was no time to waste worrying about all that.

  I memorized the map as best I could in a few seconds, then stuffed it back in my pocket while Solo and I doubled back to take the other trail.

  Chapter 6

  ~ ~ ~

  Four months into our investigative slog, I was ready to give up, when Sam called and said she had a lead. We met at Lulu’s Grind, just off the central traffic circle in Pleasant, a view of Ringo the giant saguaro cactus smack in the middle of the circle, serving as a town mascot. Lulu’s was a daily ritual, because Lulu made the best coffee I’d ever tasted.

  It was mid-July, mid-morning on a day that would become sweltering. Our conversations tended to raise eyebrows, so Sam and I avoided the crowd inside, found a shady spot on the outdoor patio, then pretended to ignore the heat and humidity.

  Solo curled up on the patio next to me. A waiter came. We both asked for coffee, and I ordered one of Lulu’s unsurpassed pastries, a blueberry tart.

  Sam waited for the waiter to leave. “I found a robbery at a gas station on I-10 about six miles west of Phoenix, just after six p.m. the day Jess was shot.”

  “You found it? Now? I don’t understand.”

  “It was about an hour after the mug shots of DeRouin hit the evening news,” Sam said. “It was a shot in the dark, but I dug into some databases of crime that day and for a week afterward, assumed he was on the run, maybe smart enough to not use a credit card or an ATM, might need cash.”

  “And all our other searches and inquiries have come up empty,” I said.

  “There’s that, yeah. I was running out of ideas. Anyway, guy uses a pistol, makes off with eighty bucks. Unsolved.”

  “Sheriff doesn’t have time to chase down all the robberies in the Valley.”

  “Not even close,” Sam said. “And this place didn’t have video cameras, so there was nothing but a police sketch to go on.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yep. I found the owner, who hooked me up with the guy who was on duty during the robbery. I emailed him the photo. He thinks it’s the same guy. He also thought the gun might be the same.”

  The waiter arrived with our coffee and the pastry. We leaned back, waited until he left.

  “He noticed the silencer?”

  “When I showed him the picture.”

  “How sure?”

  “Ninety percent, he said.”

  “Better than anything else we’ve turned up,” I said.

  “Our only real lead so far. So I assumed DeRouin, if it was him, was headed west. I widened the search, confined it to a geographic funnel…”

  “Sam.” I interrupted, rolled my hand in circles. “I know where this is going. You can skip ahead.”

  She nodded. “Another one in Blythe a couple hours later. Same MO, same answers from the clerk.”

  “If it’s DeRouin, he’d crossed into California,” I said. “Less chance a robbery would be tied back to a murder case in Phoenix.”

  “Especially if they don’t have me looking into it.”

  “Especially.”

  Sam smiled, curled a strand of her long black hair behind one ear. I was angry with myself for the strange feeling that swam through me. I’d known Sam three years. We were tight colleagues, had become friends beyond the workplace. My wife had been murdered four months ago. I blinked, looked away, and committed to not having any more thoughts or feelings about any of that. We both drank coffee and I took a bite of the pastry.

  “So then I confined the time frame to how long it’d take to drive to the Bay Area or LA, and now I’ve got an MO to plug into the algorithm.”

  “This is great stuff,” I said through a mouthful.

  “The sheer number of robberies in the cities made it impossible to surface anything of use,” she said, “So I extended the time frame again, expanded the geography, got a ton of false-positives…”

  “Sam.”

  “Sorry. Got a pretty good hit just north of San Fran, on the 101. Bedroom community called Petaluma.”

  “Odds?”

  “I’m gonna say seventy-thirty,” she said.

  “So if all these hits were DeRouin, he migh
t be somewhere in Northern California now.”

  “Or Oregon,” she said.

  “Or Washington.”

  “Or on a plane to anywhere.”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s not much,” Sam said.

  “But it’s something.”

  ***

  I’d had one too many, and I knew it, when I poured another glass of Merlot and took it into the backyard. I sat on one of the chairs Jess had picked out and stared up at the stars. The random nature of Jess’ murder kept gnawing at me. Why her? Why then? Why there? Sam had suggested a guy like DeRouin probably doesn’t act so violently, so decisively, just once. I thought about that. The answer was right there, so obvious, in the stars. A bunch of them. Too many to count.

  The next morning, my head fuzzy and throbbing, I met Jack Beachum for breakfast at Lulu’s. Beach was sitting in his favorite spot on the patio, in the shade, leaning his chair back against the wall. He squeezed a red rubber ball in his fist, flipped it to the other hand, and squeezed some more.

  Jack Beachum was a lifetime lawman, retired now, early seventies. He volunteered on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office posse. It gave him a uniform, a gun, and much of the authority of a deputy. Only difference was posse members were supposed to call for backup whenever anything dangerous happened. Beach sometimes did.

  “Old man, you’re looking chipper.”

  “Young man, you’re looking hung-over.”

  “It shows?”

  “Does.”

  “Coffee?”

  “On its way,” Beach said.

  “Thanks. So what’d you find?” I’d called Beach from my backyard last night, asked him to look into my hunch.

  “Good hunch,” he said. “Murder back in 2012 in Tempe, Arizona State student rally against the war.”

  The coffee showed up and the waiter left. It was too hot to drink. I hunched over it, elbows on the table, and sipped anyway. “Which war?”

  “Whichever one we were in then. Doesn’t matter. Point is, like you thought, same MO. Ballistics pegged it for a pistol. Lack of sound means it was a silencer. Nobody saw the perp. Unsolved.”