Deadly Bonds (A Detective Jackson Mystery) Read online

  Books by L.J. Sellers

  The Detective Jackson Series

  The Sex Club

  Secrets to Die For

  Thrilled to Death

  Passions of the Dead

  Dying for Justice

  Liars, Cheaters, & Thieves

  Rules of Crime

  Crimes of Memory

  Deadly Bonds

  ~~

  The Trigger: An Agent Dallas Thriller

  The Lethal Effect (previously published as The Suicide Effect)

  The Baby Thief

  The Gauntlet Assassin

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 L.J. Sellers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477824306

  ISBN-10: 1477824308

  Cover design by Paul Barrett

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902951

  CONTENTS

  Eugene, OR

  Cast of Characters

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cast of Characters

  Det. Wade Jackson: Violent Crimes Unit / task force leader

  Katie Jackson: Jackson’s daughter

  Derrick Jackson: Jackson’s brother

  Kera Kollmorgan: Jackson’s girlfriend / nurse

  Danette Blake: Kera’s daughter-in-law

  Det. Lara Evans: task force member

  Det. Rob Schakowski (Schak): task force member

  Det. Michael Quince: task force member

  Ed McCray: ex-detective / private investigator

  Sgt. Denise Lammers: Jackson’s supervisor

  Sophie Speranza: newspaper reporter

  Rich Gunderson: medical examiner (attends crime scenes)

  Rudolph Konrad: pathologist (performs autopsies)

  Jasmine Parker: evidence technician

  Joe Berloni: evidence technician

  Victor Slonecker: district attorney

  Jim Trang: assistant district attorney

  Amanda Carter: young mother / homicide victim

  Benjie: Amanda’s toddler son

  Dylan Gilmore: Amanda’s neighbor

  Lucille Caiden: Amanda’s grandmother

  Christy Blesser Chadwell: Amanda’s best friend

  Carl Wagner: Amanda’s benefactor

  Logan Grayson: football player

  Jake Keener: Logan’s roommate

  Danica Mercado: Logan’s girlfriend

  Trey Sandoval: Danette’s boyfriend / football player

  CHAPTER 1

  Tuesday, September 3, 1:15 p.m.

  “How much cash did you log into the evidence system?” The state detective was thirty-something and eager.

  Too young for this investigation, Wade Jackson thought. “$125,540.”

  A flicker of disbelief. “Who took possession of the money?” The man asking questions sat across from him in a conference room at the Eugene Police Department. At least they’d come to him.

  “Ethan Young.” One of three officers at the evidence lab under investigation for misplacing thousands of items of evidence—including drugs, guns, and money. Jackson shifted, not used to being on this side of an interrogation.

  “The evidence log says only $100,540 in cash was submitted.”

  Thieves and idiots! “The log was altered. You can ask my partner, Rob Schakowski. He was with me when we logged it.” The money had been recovered from an old robbery case, and they’d taken it in together to avoid this exact scenario. He hated the pall of suspicion, but he expected to be cleared. His phone beeped, and the other man nodded. The state detective understood the nature of Jackson’s job.

  The text was from Kera: I need you at the hospital. There’s been a car accident.

  A shiver shot up Jackson’s spine. Had she been hurt? Even if she hadn’t, his girlfriend was a strong woman who rarely asked for anything. This had to be bad. “I have to go.” He didn’t bother to explain.

  Jackson charged from the room and almost bumped into Lara Evans.

  “What’s wrong?” Evans, the only female detective in the Violent Crimes Unit, grabbed his arm.

  “Family emergency.” Jackson paused. “An accident.”

  “Is it Katie?”

  No one else in the department knew his fifteen-year-old daughter had run away from home months earlier. “The text was from Kera. I have to go to the hospital.”

  “Is she okay?” Evans’ blue eyes filled with compassion, and her heart-shaped face pulled him in. She was often the best part of his workday.

  “I think so.” He trotted down the wide hallway and out the door leading to the back parking lot.

  Twenty minutes later, he found Kera pacing the emergency waiting room. Even from a distance, she was striking—tall and broad-shouldered, with wide cheekbones, full lips, and a long copper braid. Micah, her toddler grandson, played nearby with colorful blocks. Another family huddled in the opposite corner, but most of the seats were empty.

  She heard his footsteps and turned. Wordlessly, she fell into his arms and he held her tight. When she was ready, she would tell him. After a long moment, Kera pulled back and glanced at the boy on the floor. Micah grinned, drool running down his chin.

  “It’s Danette. She and Trey crossed the center line on Highway 58 and smashed into a truck. Trey was driving and he’s critical, but”—Kera choked back a sob—“Danette might die. They’ve given her six pints of blood, and she’s still in shock.”

  Jackson wanted
to comfort her, but his cop mode kicked in instead. “Why were they on Highway 58?” It was a dangerous road, even in daylight.

  “They were coming back from the Cougar Hot Spring.” Kera’s eyes flooded with tears.

  They’d probably been drinking. If Danette died and the driver was drunk . . . “Is Trey conscious?”

  “I don’t know. They said he was critical but would probably pull through.”

  “Are his parents here?”

  Kera shook her head. “He’s a UO football player. I didn’t want Danette to date him, but what could I say?” Danette wasn’t Kera’s daughter, but she was the mother of her grandson. Kera’s son, Tate, had been killed in Iraq and had never known he was a father. Danette and the baby lived with Kera, one of the reasons Jackson and his girlfriend hadn’t moved in together yet. A new worry wormed into his gut. If Danette died, Kera would become the baby’s full-time parent. They’d faced this before, and he was no more ready now. He squeezed Kera’s hand. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  Jackson felt a tug on his pant leg and picked up Micah. The boy hugged him, and little pangs of joy—or maybe pain—tingled in Jackson’s chest. He’d always wanted a boy, someone to share his love of muscle cars and rebuilding engines, the way he and his own father had. A few years earlier, his daughter had helped him build a three-wheeled motorcycle, but she’d only been humoring him.

  He turned to Kera. “Have you eaten? Should we head to the cafeteria?”

  “I need to stay here. A doctor said he would be back soon with an update.”

  The worry in her eyes made him feel helpless. Jackson sat, keeping the boy in his lap. “Then I guess we wait.”

  While they talked about the young people in their lives, his phone rang. He glanced and saw that the call was from his boss. Sergeant Lammers only called when she had a new assignment; otherwise she texted or e-mailed. He let the phone ring. Kera needed him. But how long could he sit in the hospital with her? What good would it do? He felt Kera staring to see if he would answer. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Take it if you need to,” she finally said, her voice resigned.

  Guilt stabbed at his gut. Little Micah reached for the phone, and as Jackson pulled it away, the call connected. Lammers’ voice boomed even with the cell at a distance. “Jackson? Are you there?”

  He stood. “Yes, hold on.” The waiting room had filled in the last hour, and there wasn’t anywhere private. Jackson looked back at Kera, mouthed I’m sorry, and headed outside. “What’s going on?”

  “Possible homicide. A young female in a house in the Bethel area. Probably dead since yesterday.”

  Damn. Why had he answered? Dead young women triggered emotions he’d rather not feel. “I’m at the hospital with Kera. Her daughter-in-law was in an accident. Can someone else take the lead? I’ll join the task force when I can.”

  An exasperated sigh. “I can’t spare you. Schak is in court, and Evans is still too green for this kind of case.”

  Jackson was silent. Budget cuts had shrunk their division, and his boss didn’t have many options.

  Lammers pressed. “If Katie was in the hospital, that would be different, and we’d find a work-around.”

  He couldn’t argue. He also hated hospitals and dreaded the possibility of being here for days. “Who called it in?”

  “We’re tracking the cell phone now. The caller refused to give his name.”

  A guy. The killer? “What’s the location?”

  She gave him the street address and he cringed. Pershing Street was in a pocket of low-rent houses near the railroad tracks, where transients came into town on boxcars, hopped off when they slowed in the train yard, then trotted down Roosevelt on their way to the Catholic social service center. The victim could have been killed by a drifter. But the area was also filled with drug houses and addicts, so her death could just as easily have been an overdose.

  “I’m on my way. I want Evans out there too. And Schak on the task force as soon as he’s out of court.”

  “I’ll make the calls.”

  Jackson went back inside to apologize to Kera, but she and Micah weren’t in the waiting room. Had they been taken to see Danette? That could be a good sign. He called, but Kera didn’t answer, so he left a message instead: “I’m sorry, but I was called out to a homicide. Please keep me posted. I love you.”

  Back outside, the late summer sun beat down, so he pulled off his jacket for the trip across town. He was ready for the cooler weather that was coming. His girlfriend and daughter both loved summer and would be sad to see it go. An unexpected loneliness made his ribs ache. He missed Katie and her silly sense of humor. Would his daughter ever come home? The longer she stayed out there on her own, the less likely it seemed. And now he’d hurt Kera’s feelings as well. No matter how hard he tried to be supportive, he kept disappointing the women in his life.

  CHAPTER 2

  The drive to the crime scene was short, as were most trips in Eugene, Oregon. The small city spread out around the Willamette River, lush with tree-lined streets and busy with bicycles. It was also the only home he’d ever had, and protecting it his only real job.

  Jackson parked behind one of the patrol cars already at the scene, climbed out of his city-issued sedan, and started up the walkway. The house was larger than most in the neighborhood, which had been built in the forties to house railroad workers. But the building still had the faded paint, dried-up landscaping, and dirty windows that marked it as a low-end rental. A green Ford Focus sat in the driveway. To the left, a uniformed officer interviewed a neighbor, and a second officer stood on the cement front step. Jackson didn’t know him.

  “We cleared the house,” the officer said, “but I needed to come out for a minute.”

  “Anything I need to know?” Jackson hated surprises—like loose dogs or unexpected objects in the corpse.

  The officer shifted, uncertain. “No suspects or obvious weapons, but I had to bust open one of the bedroom doors because it was locked. And it was empty.”

  Weird. Why would someone lock an empty room? “We’ll see what that means.”

  Jackson reached in his carryall for peppermint gum, in case the body had started to decompose. He pulled on latex gloves and slipped a camera out of his carryall. Photos would be his first order of business. The patrol officers had likely taken some, but he needed his own set.

  Bracing himself, he pulled on paper booties and stepped inside. A glance at the dirty gray carpet revealed no blood and little hope of a footprint. He crossed the living room, noting it was minimally furnished: only a couch, coffee table, TV, and crate of books. Had she just moved in? Across a short hallway, the bedroom door stood open and feet hung off the end of a thin mattress. Jackson’s stomach felt heavy, and a flash of pain tweaked his intestines, surprising him. His last CAT scan had showed the fibrosis shrinking. Was it growing again? He shoved the thought aside. It was more likely an ulcer from worrying about his daughter.

  From the foot of the bed, he snapped several photos of the body, noting the details through the buffer of the camera lens. A small, lean woman, younger than twenty-five, with reddish-blonde hair and a butterfly tattoo on her left hip. A tank top covered her upper body, but her shorts were on the floor. No obvious wounds or blood. A life cut far too short. The sight of her shaved pubic area made him turn away to take photos of the room. Also minimalist: a thin foam mattress, three crates of clothes stacked against the wall, and a shelf with a few personal items. She obviously hadn’t lived here long and had traveled light. Who was she? He pocketed her cell phone from the shelf, planning to search it soon.

  Before he could spend time locating her ID, he had to mentally process the scene and try to visualize what had happened here, before everyone else crowded into the space. That meant getting up close and searching for bruises and obvious trace evidence. The medical examiner and evidence technicians would soon ta
ke over the detailed extraction of hairs, fibers, and fluids, so this was his chance to view the scene as the killer had left it.

  He reminded himself that she could have overdosed, or died of a snakebite for all he knew, but instinct—and a half-naked body—told him this girl had been victimized. His brain filled with an image of his own teenage daughter dead in some seedy hotel. Another flare of pain in his gut. He shut down the thought and knelt on the sheet-covered foam. Jackson lifted her left hand. No wedding ring and no defense wounds he could see. But her arm was stiff, so full rigor mortis had set in, and she’d been dead for at least twelve hours, possibly longer. It took up to three days for the muscles to relax again after death. But by then, her corpse would have begun to smell, so she’d probably died the night before.

  Taking photos as he went along, Jackson searched her body, finding no obvious abrasions. Tiny broken blood vessels under her eyes signaled his first real clue. He reached for the hair draped across her neck and pushed it aside, expecting to find bruises or red marks. They weren’t there.

  Footsteps in the hall made him turn. Evans had arrived.

  “What have we got?” She pulled on gloves as she moved toward the mattress and knelt on the other side. Her dress pants and light-blue blazer looked out of place in the dingy room with stained curtains.

  “I’m not sure. There are no obvious signs of trauma, except broken blood vessels under her eyes.”

  “You can get those from a dental appointment.” Evans reached out and touched a faint line on the victim’s hip. “A stretch mark, probably from gaining weight. But the cast-aside shorts indicate—”

  “What the hell are you doing with the body?” Rich Gunderson yelled from the doorway. The medical examiner was fifty-something and had barely survived a recent round of budget cuts. Barely clinging to his job hadn’t motivated him to cut off his gray ponytail or wear anything but his usual black-on-black. It hadn’t improved his crime-scene attitude either.

  “Just doing our job.” Evans stood and looked at Jackson. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Find her ID. I need to check out the rest of the house. Something isn’t right here.”