Page 26 of A Dirty Shame

I kicked my legs against the bottom of his desk, making an obnoxious racket, until he finally turned to look at me with murder in his eye. That’s the thing about two people who knew each other so well. We knew the exact thing to do that would drive each other crazy.

“I saw Reverend Thomas and Lorna were back from their trip. You have time to talk to them yet?” I stopped kicking my legs against the desk and saw the anger drain inch by inch from his shoulders.

“That’s where I was when I saw you drive by,” he finally said. “I talked to Lorna again. Turns out she did know about Oglesby and Vaughn. I got an earful about how if I was a good friend I’d try to make Vaughn un-gay, but other than that, she didn’t have much to add to the investigation. She did, however, tell me the list of things that made her good wife material. I appreciate organization in a woman.”

I saw the devil gleam in Jack’s eyes before he turned back to his board, and I sat back and tapped my fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair. He was still irritated with me, and now I was irritated because I didn’t like the thought ofanyoneas Jack’s wife.

There was a quick knock at the door, and Jack called out a quick, “Enter.” Colburn, Lewis and Martinez walked in. “Close the door and take a seat,” Jack said, taking command. He glanced at each of us, and it was then I could tell that the anger ran deeper than whatever I’d done. Something had happened in Westmoreland County and it wasn’t good.

“I’ve chosen each of you to form this task force,” Jack said. “The main reason, with the exception of Doctor Graves, is that you’re not home grown. I can’t trust anyone whose family is local. Not even from the damned state. I know each of your backgrounds, and I promise I know you better than you do by this point. I can’t trust the cops outside this room or the people in this county. This case is going to get messy, and it’s going to be dangerous. We’re going to be looking at other cops. Everyone’s a suspect. I need to know now if anyone has a problem with that.”

Silence was the only answer and Jack gave a sharp nod. The others found seats and Jack turned back to the empty boards and began placing crime scene photos in rows with magnets, each one labeled with a date and location.

“What we’ve got is six similar crimes over the course of the last thirty years. I’ve still got feelers out, but I’m expecting I might have a few more to add here when it’s all said and done. None of these took place in the same county, and only our vic and one other was branded with the Aryan symbol, which is the most likely reason the deaths were never linked before. There are variations to the torture, but when you look at them as a whole, they’re the same.”

“I did the background like you asked,” Colburn said. “Virginia has one of the largest chapters of the Aryan Nation in the whole United States. They’ve been cited for a few riots and protests, but nothing else blips on the radar. They’ve got a fucking website with propaganda and how to join, but the general membership list is private. We need a warrant to access, and I’ve already contacted Judge Wilbourn. But it’s just weird that they’d come out like this and make a statement so boldly. Something’s off here.”

“Agreed,” Jack said.

Colburn slouched back in the chair and crossed his boots. “Doctor Gregory Vance came in voluntarily for questioning. He’s waiting for you in interview once we’re done here.”

“Who’s Doctor Vance?” I asked.

“The current president for the Aryan Nations, Virginia Chapter.”

“He’s a doctor? A medical doctor?” I asked Colburn.

“Yep. Got a private practice down in Gloucester. General practitioner.”

“That’s certainly convenient,” I said, looking at Jack with my brows raised.

“I thought so too,” Jack said. “Everything is falling into place nice and tidy. Vance is fifth generation Virginian. His parents and grandparents are dead, but there’s some history there. He’s also got two sons. Ages thirty-six and thirty-eight. One followed in dad’s footsteps and is a cardiologist over at Augusta General. The other owns a couple of car dealerships. One in Richmond and one in Fairfax. They’re both worth taking a closer look at.”

Jack sat on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms as he studied the board. “I spent the morning with the asshole sheriff over in Westmoreland. We’ve got a like crime from his county,” Jack said, pointing to the first crime scene photo. “Almost a year ago. Julie Lawrence was an African American attorney who was taken from the courthouse parking lot. Surveillance cameras were conveniently broken during the kidnapping. Twenty-nine years old with a husband and two-year old daughter. Husband reported her missing when she didn’t show for dinner that evening. They found her body three days later when it was dropped in the same parking lot they’d taken her from. She’d been raped and tortured extensively, many of the methods matching our current victim, including the lashes with a sharp piece of metal attached to the implement.”

“There were no suspects?” I asked. Jack tossed me the copy of the file and there were exactly two sheets of paper inside.

“Not much of any police work done at all. A Sheriff Cole was in charge of the investigation. Questioned the husband extensively and the family of the man she’d been in the middle of prosecuting. And then all of a sudden two weeks after the murder Cole gets a wild hair up his ass and decides he and his entire family need to move to Utah. So he resigns and away they go.”

“That’s handy,” Colburn said.

“You want me to track down the Sheriff?” Martinez asked.

“Already made a pass at it and did a run on Sheriff Cole,” Jack said. “Looks like he and his wife were killed in a house fire a couple of months after the move. It was ruled homicide. Whole damned house was covered in gasoline. Went up like a match. No suspects. No witnesses.”

“Jesus,” Lewis said. “What did the new sheriff have to say? I assume he took over the investigation.”

“Yes,” Jack said between gritted teeth. “Good old Sheriff Anderson, who was the deputy sheriff under Cole. It’s in his cold case files. He said there wasn’t a trail by the time he took office, and there hasn’t been anything since, so he’s chalked it up to being a random act of violence. Incompetent asshole.”

“I want to follow up on the case Julie Lawrence was working. The accused was a small-time meth dealer named Ronnie Campbell. The DA was trying to get him to roll on bigger fish, but Julie Lawrence goes missing and then all of a sudden there are enough holes in the case you can pour water through it. Campbell goes free and was killed when his meth trailer was blown all to hell during the cooking process.”

“It’s unstable,” Colburn said. “And with all the wooded areas in these parts, I know there are more labs popping up than the DEA can keep track of.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “But they found parts of Ronnie Campbell for fifteen blocks. Police shut the case down pretty quick, saying it was an act of stupidity instead of a homicide, but from everything I read out of Julie Lawrence’s files, she said Campbell wasn’t smart enough to be anything but a deliveryman. And a low level one at that. He wouldn’t have been cooking anything in that trailer. So we need to look closer. See if we can find a connection between Julie Lawrence and Daniel Oglesby. I put out a few feelers to some other counties and got these other hits. I’ve got all the notes, all the suspects. It’s a shitload of paperwork to follow up on. It’s your lucky day, Lewis.”

Jack dumped a stack of papers as thick as two phone books into Lewis’s lap. Parker Lewis wasn’t my idea of a normal cop. He was originally from Chicago and still slick with the city image. He was thin and bony, a couple of inches taller than me, and his hair was dark blond and gelled within an inch of its life. He had bright green eyes and compensated for his weak chin with a goatee. He and Martinez had been partnered up for a couple of years and worked the streets, such as they were, but Jack wouldn’t have put him out there if Lewis couldn’t handle himself.

Lewis sighed and looked at the thick stack of paperwork. “Thanks, boss. I guess I didn’t need that date tonight.”

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