Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1) (3 page)

5

In the morning, Dixon rolled over and put his arm around his wife. She was wearing a see-through nightie, and her breasts were plump with pink nipples. He placed his hand over one and kissed her neck. She smiled but kept her eyes closed. He pushed his hips against her backside and ground into her… and the baby started crying.

His head drooped against her shoulder, and he said, “Any way we can ignore that for, like, five minutes?”

“Not a chance,” she said, throwing off the covers.

He pulled away and rolled onto his back. “Didn’t think so.”

A painting of Christ on the cross hung on the wall over their bed. He didn’t remember where he’d got it, a garage sale or swap meet, something like that, but he remembered thinking that Christ’s face looked… it wasn’t pained, not really; it was more apathetic. As though he’d accepted that this was his fate.

Dixon swung his feet over the bed and rose to shower. Cold showers prevented him from lingering when he was in a hurry. When he was finished, he dressed in slacks and a sports coat and polished his wedding ring with a handkerchief before slipping it back on.

Breakfast was toast and coffee and a quick kiss for Hillary and Randy. He got all the way to the door before he turned back and picked up his boy. He held the infant against his chest and rocked him, laying kisses on his bald head. He handed him back to Hillary and then reluctantly left the house.

His house was his castle, his refuge from the world and the job. He’d seen a lot of cops eaten up by the job, and he guessed it was because they didn’t have a place like this where the outside world couldn’t penetrate. People needed a place to feel as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

The drive to the precinct was quick, and he only got to listen to a few songs. He parked in the officer parking in back and stepped out. A few uniforms lingered by the door, eating bagels and sipping coffee out of Styrofoam cups. He nodded hello and went inside.

Rhonda, the receptionist for the detective’s division, was eating a slice of pie and reading a trashy celebrity gossip website.

“When’s the next barbeque?” she asked without looking up.

“Any time you and the boys want to come over, just ask. Give Hillary a call and set it up. Oh, hey, did Jonathan Fillion call? He’s that DV case, said his wife beat him up.”

“Nope.”

“If he calls for me, just set up a time for him to come in. He refused to fill out a witness statement last time, and I want him recorded.”

“Will do.”

Dixon crossed the bullpen to his own desk. Baudin was already seated across from him, his face buried in a book. Dixon took off his sports coat and slung it on the back of his chair before sitting down. He hit the power button on his computer. It would take another five minutes to boot up.

The five minutes passed without a word between them. The only sound Baudin made was flipping pages, and Dixon tried not to look at him but couldn’t help it. He had this intense look of concentration on his face, and it didn’t seem that he’d even notice if Dixon spoke directly to him.

Dixon rose. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Baudin said softly.

The coffee maker was in the break room, and getting coffee gave Dixon a chance to be alone. He poured a cup, leaned against the fridge, and took a couple of sips before going back to his desk. Baudin still had his face buried in the book. Dixon glanced at the title:
The Poetry of Baudelaire
.

“Kyle, Ethan, get your asses in my office,” Jessop bellowed through his open door.

The men glanced at each other and stood.

Jessop’s bland and windowless office didn’t have any photos up anywhere, and the only decoration was a fake plant in the corner. Jessop sat behind the old gray desk, and a man in a gray suit with cowboy boots sat on the couch against the wall, a white Stetson on the cushion next to him. He seemed preoccupied with a toothpick that was darting in and out of his mouth.

“You two caught a case the sheriff’s handing off to us. I want you to get out there. We got forensics and the sheriff’s people on the scene. They haven’t removed the body yet.”

“What is it?” Dixon said, sitting down.

“Young female, about twenty or so. Cut up pretty bad. That’s all I know.”

Dixon looked at Baudin, who seemed focused on a large nick on Jessop’s desk.

“I want this handled delicately,” Jessop said. “Work it straight and clean. The chief himself offered to take this from the sheriff’s office. They don’t have the experience with homicides that we do. So don’t shit all over it.”

Dixon was quiet a moment. Jessop had never called him into the office to hand him a case. This was a show for the man on the couch. Dixon looked at him. The toothpick was now hanging from his lip as he stared at the two detectives.

Dixon rose. “Where’s the body?”

The long drive took them through vacant desert. Baudin drove, and Dixon relaxed in the leather seat. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a colorful snake, wood with red, white, green and black paint.

“What’s that?” Dixon asked.

“Spirit snake. The Navajo think we all have a snake in the spirit world, and if we connect to it, it’s good luck.”

“You believe that?”

“No. No such thing as luck.”

A long silence followed. Baudin didn’t turn on the stereo, and Dixon didn’t attempt to, either. He kept his eyes out the passenger window, on the mounds of dry dirt and tumbleweeds, the bushes and trees that looked as if they’d survived a fire.

“Who do you think that guy was in Jessop’s office?” Baudin said.

“I don’t know. Maybe someone from the sheriff’s office.”

“He ever done that before? Bring in a stranger and handed a sheriff’s case to you?”

Dixon shook his head. “Not really. The sheriff sends us the more complex cases ’cause we got better resources, but I ain’t never seen that guy before.” He looked at Baudin, who had the same gaze of concentration he’d had in Jessop’s office. “I ask you somethin’? Why here? Why’d you move from LA to Cheyenne?”

“I thought you needed your space and didn’t want to get to know me.”

Dixon was silent. “Yeah, well, who says I do? I’m just curious.”

Baudin grinned. “Maybe I just like how nice and welcoming everybody is.”

They didn’t speak again until they got to a fence. Dixon got out and pushed the call button for the intercom on the gate. A surly male voice said, “Who is it?”

“This is Detective Kyle Dixon with the Cheyenne PD.”

The man sighed. “There ain’t enough of you up here already? You gotta bring more?”

“The quicker we get in, the quicker we get out, sir.”

The man paused. “Fine.”

The gate clicked open with a groan of metal. Dixon pushed it open all the way, allowing Baudin to pull the car through. The property was at least an hour’s drive from the nearest gas station and forty minutes from any other houses. This wasn’t a place people moved to when they wanted strangers wandering on their land.

Dixon got back in the car, and they took a paved road up a winding hill. At the top of the hill stood a ranch house and a barn, and several fences penned in dogs and livestock. A man in a black Navy cap stood with a bloodhound by his legs. His clothes were dirty, as was the beard that came down past his neck.

“You Brett McCabe?” Dixon asked.

“Your friends are down that trail about fifteen minutes. Then you take the first dirt road you see to the end. You’ll have to walk up a ways. Ain’t no roads past that.”

“We’ll be fine. Thank you for your help.”

The man grunted and turned around, the dog following.

The dirt trail looped around the property. Massive trees and fields of golden weeds dotted the landscape. A green shed, probably a watershed, stood out from the fields like paint on canvas. Just past that was another dirt road.

“Always wanted me a place like this,” Dixon said. “Place to raise a family and have the rest of the world leave you the hell alone.”

“It’ll always find you, even in the boonies. That’s why we’re here.”

The road ended after a quarter of a mile, and on a far hill they saw two sheriff’s cruisers and a van with a logo Dixon couldn’t make out on the side. He glanced at Baudin, who tapped the snake on the rearview as he got out of the car.

6

The house was spotless. Hillary Dixon took a lot of things out on housecleaning. Whenever she felt stressed and anxious, cleaning was what she turned to.

Randy had slept most of the morning, only waking up once to feed and then lying quietly in his crib, staring at his mobile. He wasn’t a fussy child and didn’t require the effort Hillary had seen other children need.

After a shower, she leaned against the counter in the kitchen and sipped chamomile tea, staring blankly at the clean linoleum floors. The only thing on the agenda for the day was to pick up formula and batteries for the remote. Though they lived on only one income, in a place like Cheyenne, a steady paycheck and government health insurance was enough, and they didn’t worry about making ends meet. Every other year they got to take a real vacation, and once a week they got to eat out at a decent restaurant. It was more than Hillary had had growing up.

The teacup was at her lips when she heard a knock at the door. She put the cup down on the counter and crossed the kitchen to the front room. Looking out the peephole, her heart dropped. She didn’t move for a moment and then pulled away and put her back against the door, losing her breath to the panic that grabbed her.

“I know you’re home,” a male voice said through the door. “I saw your car in the garage.”

She closed her eyes, trying to steady her heartbeat. In a flash of resolute anger, she turned and opened the door.

The man was lean and handsome, with sandy hair. He smiled.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.

“I told you never to come here. And you can’t call and hang up anymore,” Hillary said, the door held in front of her like a shield.

“You don’t answer your cell when I call. You don’t have to see me if you don’t want to. It’s a free country. But he’s my son. I have rights.”

“We agreed that—”

“We didn’t agree on anything,” he interrupted. “You told me how it was gonna be, and I said yes to make you happy.” He gently pushed open the door and stepped inside far enough to lean against the doorframe. “Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit. You look me in the eyes and tell me you love him. You look at me right now and tell me that, and I’ll leave and never come back.”

“I love him,” she blurted out but couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I call bullshit again.”

She sighed and looked down, noticing for the first time that her hands were trembling. “What do you want from me, Chris?”

“I want to spend time with you. With him. I don’t want him growing up not knowing who his real father is.” A car passed by on the street, and he looked back at it. “I know I probably can’t be with you. But I can be close to you.”

Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

“I rented an apartment in the duplex across the street.”

She shook her head. “You couldn’t be that stupid.”

“Why am I stupid? Because I want to see my only child and the love of my life?”

“He’ll kill us both.”

“Fuck him. You told me yourself he doesn’t talk to you anymore, that it feels like you guys are roommates. Just leave him.”

“Get out.”

“Hillary, please. I just want—”

“I said get out,” she hissed.

He hesitated, running his tongue along his lower lip, and then stepped out. She shut the door, leaned against it, and slid to the floor, the warmth of tears flowing down her cheeks as she wept.

7

Dixon opened the sunglasses case he carried in his breast pocket and slipped on his crimson-tinted glasses. Baudin squinted from the morning sun, his hands on his hips as he watched the scene in front of the two sheriff’s office’s cars.

“Shit,” Dixon said. “You seein’ what I’m seein’?”

“I am,” Baudin said.

“Shit.”

The grass was soft underfoot, but the heat was pronounced. Dixon knew that if he was out in the sun for more than ten minutes, he’d be sweating, and he hated sweating in a suit. He took off the coat and tossed it onto the passenger seat before loosening his tie. His Cheyenne PD detective’s badge was clipped to his belt, and he noticed that Baudin wore his on a thin chain around his neck—not a lanyard but an actual chain.

Dixon was five or six paces ahead when he noticed Baudin hadn’t moved.

“You comin’?”

Baudin exhaled and set off through the grass. Dixon was just ahead of him, his eyes on the scene up the hill.

The climb was grueling in the heat, and within a minute Dixon felt a trickle of sweat on his head. The drop that rolled down his scalp and over his neck gave him a dull, sick feeling.

When they reached the top of the hill, they saw that the squad cars had taken a dirt trail on the other side of the hill that wasn’t visible from where they were. Dixon swore silently at himself. He should have insisted they drive around first and find how the sheriffs had driven up the hill.

Two sheriff’s deputies and a forensic tech stood in the shadow of the thing they were analyzing. Between and a little behind them was a light tan wooden cross. Eight feet high and probably six feet across, a young woman hung from it with massive nails sticking out of her hands and feet.

“Ho-leey shit,” Dixon mumbled.

The woman was nude, her flesh already a putrefied off-green. Her eyes had sunk back into her head, which leaned to the side as if the neck were nothing more than melted rubber.

Her stomach had been cut open, and part of her intestines hung down, swaying lightly in the breeze. The rest was flopped on the ground in front of her. Dixon could see the vacant stare of her green eyes from where he stood, as if she weren’t dead but hadn’t noticed the men around her.

She’d been wounded several times—vicious attacks that took flesh with them. Her breasts were completely gone, leaving ragged, gaping wounds in their place. Several fingers and toes were missing, as were her ears. Hanging out of the wound in her belly was a blackened organ he didn’t recognize. Dixon wondered whether that was how organs really looked, or if rotting exposed to the air made organs look like that.

A sheriff’s deputy walked up, tipping his hat back with his thumb. “Detective.”

“What is this, Caleb?”

He looked up at the body. “Hell if I know. But she been out here a while. You see ’em things in her wounds? In the breasts and such? Them’s mushrooms. She been out here so long mushrooms is growin’ all inside her body.”

Baudin went to stand within a foot of the body and stood gazing at it.

“Who called it in?” Dixon said.

“Anonymous. Some hitchhiker who said he didn’t want no part of testifyin’ or any of that. Just said there was a body up here and to come have a look-see.”

Dixon and the deputy slowly walked up to the cross. Dixon had a vision of his Savior just then, hanging dead on a cross in Golgotha. He pushed the thought away, instead focusing on Baudin, who stood at the body’s feet, staring up at her privates.

“The genitals are missing,” Baudin said.

The forensic tech, a man in a blue jumpsuit and plastic gloves, crouching down over the organs, said, “Might be in this here,” pointing with his chin to the mound of organ and tissue oozing at the foot of the cross.

“What else is missing?” Baudin asked.

“Won’t know that until the autopsy.” The tech rose and mopped the sweat off his brow with the back of his arm. “Body out in the elements for even a day compromises the evidence. This thing been out here for weeks. Don’t think I can pull much from it.”

“It’s not a
thing
,” Baudin said softly.

The tech didn’t reply. He turned to the deputy and said, “That’s it for me. Ben was already out here and took all the measurements and photos. We’ll have everything processed and ready in a day or so, Deputy.”

“Don’t tell me. This is Cheyenne PD now.”

Dixon said, “What you know about that, Caleb? Why they bring us in? You got murder people, same as us.”

“Beyond my pay grade, Detective.” He looked up once more at the body. “But I sure as shit am glad they did.” He turned. “Coroner’s people will be out shortly.”

Dixon stood a long time. The body no longer looked human, as if it had never been human. His uncle had told him something once about skinning and cleaning a deer, and the line kept running through his head:
Turn her inside out
.

Baudin snapped some photos of his own on an iPhone. Then he walked back about ten paces, taking in the entire scene.

“He’s an amateur,” Baudin said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Look at the hands. The body’s weight is making the nails rip through the palms, and the hands are almost loose. You don’t crucify people by nailing their hands. You have to nail into the wrists. If he’d done it more than once, he’d know that. Some of the paintings of Jesus show him crucified through the hands. If he was a real person who was crucified, they would’ve showed wounds in the wrists.”

“Christ was a real person.”

“You there to see him?”

The two men glared at each other a moment before Baudin looked back at the body. “But he’s learning. The next one’ll be much cleaner.”

Dixon ran his eyes over the mutilated body. Now that it’d been pointed out to him, he could clearly see the gaping red hole where her genitals should have been.

“You ever seen anything like this?” Dixon said.

Baudin was quiet before saying, “No.”