Crazytown (The Darren Lockhart Mysteries) Read online

  Lockhart thanked Joy and left the police station. He stepped into the streets of Crayton, nearly rolling his ankle on the uneven pavement. He hadn’t given much notice to the town on his way in. He was a myopic man when it came to his job. At forty-two, he had been with the FBI for almost two decades. The last fifteen of those twenty years spent investigating violent crimes and serial offenders. He had sacrificed having a family or sharing funny work stories around the coffee maker because he believed he had been summoned by a higher calling.

  Now, on the sidewalk of a town he hadn’t known existed a day earlier, he let the silence envelope him. It was peaceful with only the slight murmur of distant cars and people going in and out of the stores and gas station. In the air lingered the scent of pine, an aroma he had only really known from Christmas-tree shaped taxi cab air fresheners. The wind blew gently through the streets carrying the sounds of birds Lockhart couldn’t name. Some people—certainly most—would have found the serenity comforting but Lockhart grew tense in the stillness. The silences in his life were often interrupted by blood. He was overcome with a sudden sense of urgency to occupy the penetrating silence; he needed to find the chief of police.

  chapter 2

  Lockhart opted to walk to Dan’s Café, allowing him to survey the town and the people. He hoped to get an idea of the people, but he was far from camouflaged for easy infiltration. It was a t-shirt-and-jeans kind of town and Lockhart was garbed in a tailored suit and Italian leather shoes. It would have come as no surprise to him if someone had instantly suspected him of being a fed.

  Special Agent Lockhart had learned early on that a job like his could break a man down. There is only so much reality a person can take before wishing they didn’t know the extent of humanity’s savagery. Thus, he took pleasure in the little things that helped him stay out of a straightjacket. Eighties music and nice clothes made him feel like a person, an individual instead of one of the nameless, faceless members of the multitude, destined to end up on a cold metal autopsy table. Lockhart was no victim, so if that meant wearing a suit from Hugo Boss, Dolce & Gabbana, or even the occasional Armani—at the expense of the paychecks he rarely had time to spend on anything anyway—then so be it. His Ralph Lauren Black Label Anthony Dot Stripe suit cost more than most of the cars in town, a fact that instilled both pride and depression.

  The atmosphere inside Dan’s Café was boisterous. Families and neighbors chattered over breakfast and a steady flow of coffee being grabbed from the service window. A line cook could occasionally be seen in the kitchen, his head always down, even when setting a plate in the window accompanied by the food order ticket. About twenty tables and booths were crammed into the small space, and there was a line at the door. People loitered around inside the entrance and even on the sidewalk, waiting for an open table at what seemed to be the town hot spot.

  Lockhart had to excuse himself to the head of the line and asked the young hostess, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, where he could find the chief of police. She pointed to the counter-seating area at a gray-haired man with a retired boxer’s build. He wore a large green coat that hid any evidence of a gun or other police equipment.

  Lockhart maneuvered through the crowd of people until he was nearly touching the chief, who was hunched over a bowl of bran flakes, reading the newspaper.

  “Chief Donaldson?” Lockhart asked.

  The Chief turned his head slightly, barely enough to notice the special agent at all, keeping his attention firmly locked on the newspaper. He had a weathered face and reminded Lockhart of an aged silver gorilla in a zoo—something that was obviously once so powerful but was now resigned to relative captivity, refusing to move unless absolutely necessary. He certainly didn’t look too interested in Lockhart’s presence. “You the Fed?”

  A few patrons turned to look when he uttered the remark.

  “I’m Special Agent Lockhart.” He paused, waiting for a reaction that never came. “From Washington.”

  “Yeah, I assume that’s where you all come from,” the chief said to the crease of his newspaper. He chuckled at his own comment.

  “Chief, do you mind?”

  Chief Donaldson sighed before reaching for his wallet. He set a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Thanks, Joanne. See you later, sweetie.”

  The middle-aged waitress across the gaudy teal Formica counter blushed as she thanked the chief, as if he was some kind of celebrity leaving a tip, or perhaps she was a schoolgirl with a puppy-dog crush.

  Chief Donaldson stood with what Lockhart viewed as a combination of effort and annoyance, as if “the fed’s” very presence was a major inconvenience. The chief was a large man who had no problem standing eye-to-eye with Lockhart at just over six feet tall, but Donaldson had at least forty pounds on the agent, most of which was probably muscle at one time. He had a somewhat ex-military look about him, but years of simple living had caught up to him. His deep-set gray eyes looked tired, and his silver hair only dusted the top of his head. He walked past Lockhart and out the door without a word.

  Lockhart followed after an awkward, silent moment of staring at the waitress.

  “Hope you don’t mind. I’m going to drive back to the office.”

  Lockhart assumed that he meant he had a ride back to the police station, but before he could even grab the passenger-side door handle, Donaldson had the car in drive and his foot on the gas.

  “See you there,” the police chief said as he jerked away.

  The agent actually had no idea how to react to what just happened, so he walked back toward the law enforcement office. He quickly saw that the chief had circled around the block and parked outside his office.

  Lockhart took a deep breath. He wasn’t used to working on his own, and local police typically hated having federal agents around, so any cooperation they did offer on their own freewill tended to thin with time. Lockhart figured Donaldson’s apparent distain for all things FBI probably started at the crime scene, with the agents from Bemidji, and it would only get worse if he didn’t take charge and remedy the situation. He needed to keep his relations in the best shape he could. He was all alone out there in the Northland woods. Even with offices in nearby Bemidji and Duluth, those agents would not have his level of familiarity with violent crimes, and while they could be there to assist if it became necessary, he was still working from a town that was beneath the radar—or at least beneath Google Maps.

  Joy greeted him again as he entered the office, and Lockhart found himself smiling in response. He moved past her toward Donaldson’s desk.

  The police chief had already taken off his shoes and was rubbing his feet. “Gout,” he explained, with a sigh of relief as he focused on his bare foot. “Feel like a cripple half the time. Gotta drive everywhere when it flares up.”

  Lockhart smiled in the way he would have grinned at his grandfather and then took a look around the office. He was sure it must have been a living room at one point. The desks were crowded together against several adjoining file cabinets. The walls were covered with pictures of townspeople at local fund raisers and carnivals. His eyes stopped on the wall-mounted gun case, noticeably unlocked; in fact, there wasn’t even a lock on the thing. Inside it were three scoped rifles and two shotguns, there for the taking.

  The chief looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry, junior. We keep the shells locked up.”

  He was none too fond of casual nicknames like “junior,” “buddy” or “sport,“ but he thought it best not to bother mentioning it—at least not yet. “You’re not concerned with the potential theft of departmental firearms?”

  Chief Donaldson laughed. His smile made him look even older, forming deep creases and valleys all across his face. He looked weathered, a byproduct of vicious northern Minnesota winters. “Son, most of the farmers around here have bigger armaments than I got here. Those are more for show than anything.”

  “So there are a lot of guns around? Mainly rifles or are there handguns as well?” Lockhart prodde
d, his own heavy-handed way of getting to the investigation.

  The chief’s face smoothed and tightened as he grew more serious. “Some smaller-caliber stuff for getting rid of squirrels or scaring crows, maybe stuff to put down a wounded buck, but that’s about it.”

  “Has anyone reported any guns missing in the last few weeks?”

  “Nope.”

  “What caliber was used in the presumed homicide?”

  “Nothing presumed or assumed about it. That boy had no quarrel with anyone and it wasn’t an accident.” The chief put particular inflection on the final word.

  Lockhart would have preferred that the town and its police remain unbiased until the evidence proved otherwise, but it was a small town, and a boy had died, seemingly for no reason. He knew at that moment he would have to do his best to keep emotions at a minimum.

  “That boy was smart as they come,” Donaldson continued. “It’s a darn shame. Anyway, we haven’t got the results back from your FBI coroner, but it looked like a 9mm at close range, single tap to the back of the head, execution-style by the looks of it,” the man spoke with his first indications of experience and professionalism.

  The chief looked Lockhart square in the eyes and said, with some level of pride, “I did two tours in ‘Nam.” His pride waivered. “I haven’t seen anything since that made me sick… at least until the other day when we found was left of that boy.”

  A solemn look came over his eyes as his mind drifted. Lockhart recognized the look; it was similar to the one he’d had seen in his own father’s eyes, a Vietnam veteran himself. One tour had been enough for him, or maybe too much. He had only talked about his time over there once, when Lockhart was fourteen. His father was drunk and decided it was time for his son to be a man. So, he poured Lockhart a shot of whiskey. Lockhart sipped it, like the obedient son he was. His mouth burned and he coughed uncontrollably at the moment of consumption. His father laughed and patted him on the back. As he continued to drink, he decided that if his son was man enough to take a shot of whiskey, he was man enough to know the truth about how horrible life really was. His words were a jumble of macabre images and uncharacteristically racist remarks: “chinks, gooks, slopes, and zipper-heads”—words Lockhart had never heard before and didn’t understand. Lockhart didn’t press the matter with his father then, and he wasn’t about to press the matter with Chief Donaldson.

  After a few moments lost in thought and painful reminiscence of tunnels and fallen friends in foreign jungle, the chief’s eyes snapped back, and he looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I just…”

  Lockhart held up a hand, cutting the man off, saving him from explaining what didn’t need to be explained.

  An appreciative nod was given in return.

  “Tell me about the boy,” Lockhart said.

  Donaldson let out a long, whistling sigh, “That boy…” He trailed off and just shook his head.

  Lockhart took the notepad out of his jacket pocket.

  “Like I said, that boy was as smart as they come, smarter than the school knew what to do with. His folks aren’t too well off, but they set up something on the library computers for him to take some of them Internet classes. Only fifteen years old! Not even old enough to get a driver’s license, but taking college classes.”

  Lockhart nodded and jotted down the facts in his notepad.

  The Crayton chief of police went on. “Nice kid too, He was kinda quiet, but the smart ones always are, right? Anyway, it's a family of good Lutherans. Whole family, all six, in church every Sunday.”

  “You said he had no enemies. No petty kid grievances? Sibling rivalries? Puppy-love crushes or girl trouble?” Lockhart asked.

  “Huh?”

  Lockhart tilted his head. It was far from an unheard-of scenario in larger cities, but small towns were another matter. He explained, “By your own admission, there are a lot of guns in this town. Kids are surrounded by violence, on TV, in music, in movies and on the Internet. Even videogames. Their brains aren’t finished developing yet, even at fifteen, and they don’t understand consequences. It wouldn’t be the first time a disagreement turned bloody.”

  Donaldson looked appalled. “You’ve got a pretty sick mind, Agent.”

  Lockhart sighed and closed his notebook. It was time he explained exactly why he was the agent assigned. “Chief Donaldson, please understand that first and foremost, I am here to solve a murder. However, you must also be aware that I was specifically chosen for the task because over the past two years, I have personally investigated thirty execution-style homicides involving U.S. citizens. None of the victims can be linked to each other or to known violent individuals. All of the cases resulted in minimal to no evidence, few suspects, and no arrests. The only thing that ties them together is the ballistic proof and the modus operandi, as it were. All the murders were committed with a 9mm handgun, execution-style. Most on their knees. With the exception of the victims being described as ‘intelligent,’ there is no connection between age, gender or race. The youngest was only ten years-old, and the oldest was seventy-three.”

  Chief Donaldson eyed Lockhart thoughtfully. “Besides the position of the bodies and the caliber of the weapon used, what makes you think any of those cases are connected to this one? We don’t have a ballistics report back on the bullet.”

  It was a good question, and Lockhart appreciated it, regardless of the obvious condescension in the chief’s voice.

  “Besides the weapon, it is only my theory that some as-of-yet undiscovered connection exists between the victims. It wouldn’t be the first time a weapon was used in multiple crimes, though I’ve never heard of a string of so many murders. Beyond that, this one took place on federally owned land, a national forest.” With that, Lockhart held his tongue. There was much more he wanted to say, but he knew it would have served no purpose, and he didn’t want to compromise his investigation by intimidating, discouraging, or angering the local head honcho.

  The chief nodded in concession. He looked like any of 100 men Lockhart had seen in bars: old, tired, and full of war stories. The difference was that while those men got to spend their time on barstools, dealing with memories by downing shots of liquid amnesia, Chief of Police John Donaldson had to deal with it sober. Michael Weber was his reality.

  Lockhart fidgeted slightly, trying to keep himself on task with a police officer who didn’t seem particularly intent with just going along. With one hand, he adjusted his tie on his collar. “Listen, you were in Vietnam. My father was, too, so I do have some idea of how tough it was to go through all that, but I assure you, Chief, that this isn’t the same thing.”

  It was true. While on duty, Lockhart had seen methed-out parents put their baby in an oven thinking it would dry a wet diaper. He had seen kids shot by adults as punishment for spraying them with a squirt gun, all in broad daylight. He’d seen wives who’d been violently beaten and raped by their husbands. His duty required of him that he might have to see torture and malice worse than anything the Marquis de Sade could have fathomed and then go explain it to the next-of-kin.

  Lockhart finished his habit of fiddling with his tie and moved his hands to his shirt cuffs. “Chief, I have no doubt that you want to find the killer, but for you, he is the person who killed a boy you know. It will make the investigation more difficult especially if we find out some things you never wanted to know, which is highly possible.”

  “What kinds of things?” Donaldson finally stopped rubbing his swollen feet and ankles and began to put his sock back on.

  “It was a murder, Chief Donaldson, so we must investigate each and every lead. To do that, we are going to have to go digging into people’s lives. If that means finding things out about the… wait, how many people are in the town? Did the sign say 642?”

  Donaldson leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows. “Probably something like that.”

  “It will be important for the actual investigation. How many people are there in this town, officially speaking?”
>
  “Officially?” The chief looked nervous. “Officially, we’re not really sure. The census guy said over 700 a few years back, but he wasn’t sure of our town limits. Records would show about 640, but people come and go a lot around here. No real way to be sure at any given time how many people actually live here. Sometimes people just leave, and other times they just show up again.”

  Lockhart rubbed the back of his neck in the hopes that it would help to relieve a little of the tension that was piling up. “Well, let’s say there are 642 people in the town. That means we have to get into 642 lives. Are you ready for that?”

  The chief nodded as he tied his shoe with a frayed lace that was missing its aglet.

  Lockhart took a seat across from him. “All I want is to find a killer and make sure he’s forgotten by history. Can you please let me see your current report? After that, I’ll need to have a look at the crime scene.”

  chapter 3

  Lockhart looked out the window of the cruiser with an almost childlike wonderment. Immediately outside of the Crayton city limits was a sea of green; forest enveloped the road on either side. The last time Lockhart had been in Minnesota, he had spent all of his time in north Minneapolis, a different sort of forest entirely. Here, there was nothing but rows and rows of trunks and branches, a woven maze of timber that immediately felt intimidating and confining, as if it knew secrets that it didn’t want to share with anyone. Lockhart’s comfort was in concrete, asphalt and steel. He felt defensive being in a place so foreign.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lockhart could see the chief turn to look him up and down. “Ever been to Minnesota?”

  Lockhart kept looking out the window. “Yeah, about fifteen years ago.”

  “Ever been up this far north?”

  Lockhart was confused by the question. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You just have that look of awe that first-timers get up here. You strike me as the kind of guy who hasn’t had much occasion to venture into the woodlands very much.”