Psychic Detective 13 By Jake Preston
This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!
Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com
Chapter 13 Brokeback Detectives at Eagle Cap
Silent and still, three male figures half-crouched in drizzling rain under a Douglas fir canopy. A dark-haired elder faced north. Behind him, two younger men crouched side by side facing south. Locked in an unattainably centrifugal desire, they were the antithesis of Three Graces. Each one was fixed to a rough-hewn pole sunk in the ground at a thirty-degree angle. The poles passed through their rectums and bowels; their pointed ends penetrated their lungs. Their faces personified Terror, Horror, and Agony. They could be seen from the top of Mount Howard every day, but they hadn't yet been found.
That morning at Wallowa Lake Resort, Jack and Göran tried to buy tickets for the aerial cable gondola that would take them 3,700 feet up to the top of Mount Howard, a height overlooking Eagle Cap Wilderness. Because of the rain, the tram was closed, but it might be operating in the afternoon. They strolled to the office. Jack asked if there was a cabin available to rent. "We just had a cancellation," said the lady behind the counter. "Our cabins rent by the week. They're modern homes, fully furnished. Each one has a deck with a mountain view. But this one is smaller than the others. It's got only one bedroom, on first floor, with a queen size bed, but there's a pull-out sofa in the loft, or I could have a roll-away bed delivered." "Let's take it," Göran said. "We'll be here a week, maybe more."
Jack had learned to take Göran at his word when he made a prediction. He asked the lady if he could have the cabin for two weeks. She adjusted the rental schedule on her computer. Jack paid for the rental with his Lakota tribal credit card. To save her the awkwardness of having to ask, he showed her his sheriff's badge, mounted on an ID card in a specially designed leather wallet.
The lady was surprised, and curious. She introduced herself as Margaret Pollard. "Are you gentlemen here officially?" she asked. "We are," Jack said. Göran showed her his Detective Sergeant badge from Duluth. It didn't have a fancy leather wallet. "If Sheriff Andrews comes looking for us, please direct him to our cabin."
"Would you be wanting a roll-away bed?" Margaret asked.
"No, that won't be necessary," Jack said. "But we could use two of those fold-up portable picnic tables. We'll be setting up an incident room in the loft. Those tables would be just the right size for us. Can you put the rent for them on the card?"
"You can use those rent-free," Margaret said. She got on her cellphone and asked the grounds-keeper to take them. By the time Göran and Jack got to the cabin, the tables were in place in the loft. Svenson got a phone call from Sheriff Matthews. Reporters had published the news about parallel crime scenes at Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, panicky parents were calling local police and sheriffs, to report sons who had gone missing. Some of them admitted that they hadn't called earlier, because their sons were gay, presumed run-aways. Svenson assured Matthews that they were pursuing a new lead, in Oregon.
In the afternoon, Jack and Göran went back to the aerial cable cars. They had to wait their turn behind a wedding party. While the wedding was in progress, Jack and Göran walked four miles along the ridge-trails with binoculars, surveying the forested terrain below. "We've got something here," Göran pointed downward. "See if you can find it on the telephoto lens." Jack spotted the scene and took photos, while Göran took coordinates on his GPS. "It could be a corpse, maybe two," Jack said. "We might as well call Sheriff Andrews," Göran said. "We'd have a hard time getting to that spot on our own." The Sheriff was skeptical, but as a courtesy to fellow cops, he said he'd stop by Wallowa Lake Resort at the end of the day.
Back in the cabin, Jack arranged the loft as an 'incident room', organizing materials related to Eight Eagles on one table, and Buffalo Run on the other. Göran drove to the town of Joseph, five miles, to purchase supplies-a printer, computer paper, groceries. Margaret stopped by the cabin to ask if it was to their liking. As the bedroom door was open, she didn't have to be a snoop to notice their unmade bed, rumpled as if it had been the scene of a wrestling match, which wasn't entirely untrue. "If you'd like, I can arrange maid service-every morning except Sundays," Margaret said.
"That's probably a good idea," Jack said, glancing at the rumpled bed. "She must be given strict instructions not to clean the loft. But Margaret, there's something I'd like you to see in the loft." She followed him up the stairs. He turned on the computer and called up a picture of Killer Number Two-a blow-up from one of the Summer Solstice photos. Next to the computer, he placed Anna Ravitch's sketch and her portrait of Albino Perp. "Do either of these men look familiar?" he asked.
Margaret looked at the photos and sketches on the two tables, and the reports marked with police insignia from Duluth and Lakota. She looked closely at the images of the two men. "The one with white hair is a rather tall man in his forties," she said. "I didn't see much of him. He came into the store once. The shorter man took care of registration. They rented a cabin for a week, about three weeks ago. I can check my records for names and dates."
"The shorter man must have filled out a registration card," Jack said.
"Why, yes. I'm sure it's in my files. I could wear a pair of these gloves while I go through them." Margaret glanced at a stack of latex gloves in plastic wrappers.
"I'd better go through the cards, with your help," Jack said. "It's a legal matter. I have to be able to swear to an unbroken chain of custody for any evidence that we find."
"Is this a drug investigation?" Margaret asked. "It seems rather complicated."
"I wish it were," Jack replied. "We're looking for two serial killers who act as a pair. We've got two crime identical scenes, one in Minnesota and one in South Dakota. We followed a trail of clues that led us here.
Jack and Margaret walked back to the office, which doubled as a store. "You know what I think, Jack?" Margaret said. "I think you're an intelligent man, and a kind man, which is more important. If you don't mind me asking, was it this murder case that brought you together?"
"It was."
"Then it was the hand of God that brought you together," Margaret said.
"Thanks," Jack replied. Wearing latex gloves, Jack thumbed through registration cards while Margaret looked over his shoulder. Margaret remembered the cabin number, so it didn't take long to find the card. Jack stashed it in a plastic evidence envelope. "Did he sign it himself?" he asked. "Yes, he must have done," Margaret said. "Do you think it'll have fingerprints?" she asked.
"Probably," Jack said. "The men we're after are careful, but a registration card is the sort thing they might overlook. Whatever information they wrote on the card would be fake, of course, but prints on the card, or a handwriting sample, might be helpful. Margaret, we're expecting Sheriff Andrews later this afternoon. After he leaves, I'd like you to come to the cabin again. Maybe you'll remember something more about these men. Even the smallest detail would help. I can't explain, Margaret, but... Göran believes they did a murder that hasn't yet been found."
In the loft with Sheriff Jeffrey Andrews, Göran described the Eight Eagles crime scene. Jack described Buffalo Run. They showed him photos of the scene at the base of Mount Howard. He agreed to send three deputies and the coroner to accompany Göran and Jack to the site. "If this turns out to be a crime scene, we've got two choices," Jack said. "We could work together to maintain local jurisdiction, with Detective Svenson in charge of Eight Eagles, me in charge of Buffalo Run, and you in charge of Eagle Wilderness. Or we could call in the FBI. The decision to maintain local control must be unanimous. If anyone disagrees, we'll have no choice but to give it to the FBI. They have better resources, but their top-down approach would ignore the local knowledge needed to solve the case."
Sheriff Andrews didn't want the FBI taking over his turf, either. He agreed.
"In that case, Sheriff, I have more information to share," Jack said. "We have a witness who saw our two suspects, here at Wallowa Lake Resort. Our reconstructed portrait of Killer Number One, and our photo of Killer Number Two, match Margaret Pollard's recollection. We just might have fingerprints of Killer Number Two on this registration card." He handed the evidence envelope to Andrews. As a formality, Andrews signed a 'chain of custody' form below Sheriff Jackson's signature. "We do everything by the book, except for calling in the FBI," Jack laughed. "By the way, Sheriff, we're interviewing Margaret Pollard again this evening, just in case she remembers anything else. You're welcome to stay if you'd like."
"Three detectives is one too many," Andrews said. "She might be intimidated. Besides, I know Margaret quite well. I can talk to her anytime, if I need to."
Margaret was eager to help. She was an avid reader of murder mysteries. To get involved in the investigation of a multiple murder was as exciting as being Miss Marple. What is more, she could share the companionship of two sensational young cops who were unlikely lovers-a strapping Swede from Minnesota, and an Oglala sheriff from South Dakota. Miss Marple would have had sherry, but Margaret shared glasses of brandy in the living room with Jack and Göran. Miss Marple was an avuncular auntie, but Margaret conceived a maternal affection for Jack, and approved of his boyfriend. This was better than any character combo dreamed up by Agatha Christie. Jack and Göran filled her in on the gory details of the crime scenes. "I remembered something about the man you call Albino," she said, leaving out 'Perp'. "When he came into the store, he bought a regional map and two books." She fetched copies from her purse. The maps included details of Wallowa Reservation. One of the books was a biography of Chief Joseph. The other was about the Wallowa band of Nez Persé, referred to as 'Nez Perce' in this popularized history.
"Did they ever go hiking or boating or anything like that?" Göran asked.
"I'm sure they took the tram to the top of Mount Howard," she replied.
Jack showed her pictures of the suspects. "We'll be tromping the woods tomorrow, but you might could ask your staff if they know anything about these guys," he said. "If they do, we'd like to talk to them."
After Margaret retired, Göran dragged Jack into the shower stall. "I've got an itch up my ass that only you know how to scratch," he said. They had fucked every night since Laramie. Why did it seem to Jack that Göran was different each time? His fucking gave Göran's portal a small but perceptible gape, "a sign that the light's still on and the door's always open," Göran laughed.
"There's something else about you that I should have noticed," Jack said. "You've got a seam that starts at your perineum and travels all the way up the middle of your scrotum. I didn't know we're supposed to have a seam. How come I didn't get one?"
"When God passed out seams, you thought he said screams, so you passed, because you wanted to be a stoic," Göran laughed.
"Darn!" Jack exclaimed. He ran his finger along Göran's scrotal mid-seam.
"If you won't be jealous of my seam, I won't be jealous of your foreskin," Göran said.
As their romance flowered, their discourse alternated seamlessly between sex, crime, and quotidian details of everyday life. "Jack, earlier when you were speaking to Margaret, you said 'might could', a double modal."
"I did?"
"Yeah, you said 'you might could ask your staff if they know anything'-a double modal auxiliary. I've read about double modals in dialect books, but I've never heard it in real life. It was like sighting a rare bird, like an evening grosbeak or a Bohemian waxwing on Lake Ashawa. It's supposed to be a Scottish influence in the South."
"I must have picked it up at Emory," Jack said. "I had a roommate from North Carolina."
Next morning, Sheriff Andrews showed up with three deputies and the county coroner in a caravan of four rugged terrain vehicles- XUV Gators. He had planned to delegate this mission to deputies. He changed his mind for two reasons. First, a multiple murder site in Eagle Cap would be a feather in his cap story, assuming it was true. He could either jump in and get credit, or sit in his office and look silly. Second, he needed to explain to the County Commissioners why he had spent a fortune on four XUVs.
Andrews had faults, but he had virtues, too. One of them was his benign indifference to the sexuality of Jackson and Svenson. He knew their cabin, and concluded that they were bedmates. When he overheard two of his patrolmen- Ron Chisik and Paul Gorman- wisecracking about the 'Brokeback Detectives' from 'Back East', he told them to knock it off while the third patrolman- Peter Durham- looked askance in silence. Andrews didn't think of himself as 'gay-friendly'. He was a live-and-let-live guy whose idea of professionalism did not include criticizing the sexual orientation of colleagues. Besides, he had reviewed the crime scene reports prepared by the Brokeback Detectives. They were top-drawer meticulous, the best work he'd ever seen. As Ronald Regan once said about Reverend Jesse Jackson, "You can't argue with success." Any day of the week, he'd trade Chisik and Gorman for the Brokebacks.
Andrews's second virtue was that he knew Eagle Cap Wilderness. He knew that a seven- mile XUV-trek over obscure grassy roads would take them close to the site that the Brokeback Detectives had seen from the top of Mount Howard. They humped the boonies for two miles, but if weren't for Andrews's knowledge of unmapped wilderness roads, the trek would have taken all day.
The crime scene was sobering: three men impaled on crude wooden poles. Their executions maxed out the limits of humiliation and pain. "Death by impalement is the likely cause of death in all three cases," the Coroner said, leaving unsaid the sorrowful implication that they were alive when their bodies were pinioned to stakes.
"You see, boys, what gay-bashing leads to," Andrews said to his patrolmen, "the ultimate crime of homophobes. That's why we have to stop its more benign forms."
"Let's take a half-hour break," Jack said to Andrews. "Before we get started with our analysis, I'd like to give Detective Svenson time to contemplate the scene, you know, to take in the vibes." Andrews was puzzled. What vibes?
"It's just that... Svenson sometimes gets intuitive insights about crime scenes like this," Jack said. Andrews agreed, if only because his crew needed a break. He didn't trust intuition. Svenson sat with legs crossed, facing the fire-pit that lay at the center of the crime scene.
"Our killers have evolved," Svenson said, when Jack asked him for his thoughts. "Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run were overlays of two separate crime scenes, one compact and one diffuse. Here we've got a unified scene with a fire-pit at the center. It's choreographic torture, a ghoulish dance around a fire. Albino Perp is ascendant. He's bent his sociopathic partner to his will. The unified crime scene signifies a unified killing-game."
"How do you know that Albino Perp is the leader?" Andrews asked.
"Because the torture has a literary source, like the ones at Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run," Svenson said.
"Something in Dante's Inferno?" Jack guessed.
"No. Something in Procopius's sixth-century History of the Wars of Justinian," Svenson said. "Procopius describes a barbarian tribe in the Balkans that would round up prisoners-of-war and execute them by impalement, in the same we that we see here. They used impalement as a terror tactic. Then other tribes heard of it, warriors were afraid to fight them. The passage is fairly early in Procopius's histories, either in the story of the Vandal War, or early in the story of the Gothic War."
"Anything else?" Andrews asked.
"We should look for two more bodies, due east and due west," Svenson said. "There might not be more, since their modus operandi has evolved. But we should check. Also, we must look for another crime scene. This was not the first time that Albino Perp used Eagle Cap for a killing ground. The earlier crime scene will be diffuse, and it will have five bodies, like Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run."
Sheriff Andrews took the news in stride. "Time to call in Marge and Lucy," he said, referring to Wallowa County's canine patrol- two yellow labs trained to sniff drugs and human remains. Marge lived with Ron Chisik; Lucy with Paul Gorman. The patrolmen spent the rest of the day wandering in the woods with their dogs. Immaturity and mild homophobia notwithstanding, Chisik and Gorman had virtues: they were good with their dogs. By the end of the day, Sheriff Andrews' world was turned upside down: he had two crime scenes, and no less than ten murder victims, in Eagle Cap Wilderness.
The 'impalement' scene disclosed two clues: scraps of cloth in the fire-pit, where the victims' clothing had been burnt, and a delicate necklace with a turquoise stone in the ground below Victim One (the one facing north). A dig in the earth around the other two victims disclosed matching necklaces. Sheriff Andrews sent the human remains and the scraps of clothing to the University of Oregon for analysis in the Anthropology department. He assigned the necklaces to himself: "I know the jeweler in Joseph who made these. They were bought at his shop in town."
That evening, everyone met in Jack's and Göran's cabin: Sheriff Andrews and his three patrolmen, the Coroner, and Margaret, who was invited by Jack. She alone had interacted with the culprits, and Jack valued her viewpoints.
"The first step in developing a theory of the crime is to establish a chronology," Göran said. "We can't do that until we've got dates for the human remains, so the chronology that I'm proposing is subject to change. Our killers operate in summer. They stage their killings as human sacrifice, but they torture their victims because they like to. They enjoy the sensation of power. That's why they kill five victims at once. The last two victims are there to be spectators to the torture; after that, they are summarily killed. Their earliest known killing is Eagle Cap Scene Number Two. The anthropologists will probably date it to the summer of 2009. In 2010 and 2011, they attended the Summer Solstice Powwow at the Ojibwe Monument in Rice River. They took a special interest in Red Hawk's lectures, and purchased at least one of his books. They didn't kill during those summers, probably because they didn't know the area well enough to make an attempt. They must have stayed at a resort on Lake Ashawa. That's the only place they could have learned about No Name Island, which now is called Five Spirits Island by locals, and Eight Eagles Island by the Ojibwe. In 2013, they kidnapped the Wallowa Shaman and brought him to Lakota, where they sacrificed him, along with four others, on the cliff above Buffalo Run. They kidnapped the Lakota Shaman and brought him to Lake Ashawa, where they sacrificed him, and our others, on Eight Eagles. This year they made a second sacrifice at Eagle Cap. We must allow for the possibility that there are other sacrifice scenes. No doubt they've done random killings to satisfy Albino's psychotic rages and his companion's need for lust-murder."
"Albino Perp is a psychopath," Svenson continued. "Unlike classic psychopaths, he's not disorganized. He's what psychiatrists call a 'successful psychopath', or what others call 'almost psychopathic', which means he probably holds down a job. He fancies himself a shaman or an Angel of Death, whose mission is to bring human sacrifice to Indian nations. It's a grandiose idea, but grandiosity is an attribute of psychopaths. He reads books. Maybe he got inspiration for his mission from the Maya Popol Vuh, where human sacrifice is introduced to the Maya as a gift from the gods."
Jack looked startled. He hadn't heard this before. "Sorry, Jack, I hadn't mentioned this. It just occurred to me- the connection between Popol Vuh and what we discussed at Buffalo Run." They exchanged glances, unable to conceal their status as bed-partners.
Jack picked up where Svenson left off: "Killer Number Two is a sociopath. He's presentable and smooth-talking. He's the one who sets the trap for the victims. It's possible that they pick up hitchhikers, but their most reliable hunting grounds are places where gay men congregate in search of sexual partners. Albino Perp was cited by two men outside a gay bar in Superior, and he is known to have visited a gay whorehouse not far from the harbor.
"As Detective Svenson said earlier, the killers have evolved. This is typical of serial killers. The scenes at Eight Eagles and Buffalo Run were disorganized. That's the case with the 2009 crime scene at Eagle Cap, too. It was Göran who made sense of it. The scene only seemed disorganized, because it was actually the work of two killers with different motives. Each scene was really an overlay of two crime scenes. Once we realized that, we were in a position to build profiles of the two killers, and in the meantime, physical evidence came to light, too, when Göran worked the gay scene in Superior under cover, and when we studied Red Hawk's collection of photos from the Sumer Solstice Powwows. The 2014 crime scene at Eagle Cap is unified. We think that it means that Albino Perp has asserted dominance over his sociopathic companion. Albino wants a fantasy of human sacrifice. His companion wants lust-murder. Albino controls the murders by combining the two. The killers manifest folie à deux, a shared psychosis, perhaps in the form called folie simultanée. This condition is rare, but documented."
"I'm confused about one thing," Ron Chisik said. "Are the killers gay lovers? Or are they homophobic partners?"
"That's a good question, Ron," Svenson replied. "Albino probably isn't gay, but he isn't straight, either. He's probably never been able to sustain a romantic relationship with a woman. That would be typical of psychopaths. If the killers win the trust of their victims by pretending to be gay, that's not the work of Albino. The men who I spoke to thought he was creepy. But his sociopathic partner has no trouble winning the trust of gay men. Maybe he has sex with them. If he does, that might be part of his disguise, or it might be part of a lust-murder scenario. But make no mistake. Our sociopath isn't looking for gay romance. He's a predator who derives sexual gratification by killing young men. He chooses gay men because they're easier to catch."
A general conversation followed. Sheriff Andrews wondered why the killers left patent clues, like necklaces traceable to a gift shop in Joseph. "That's a pattern for serial killers, too," Svenson said. "As Albino gets more meticulous in staging the scene, he gets careless about small details. The necklaces were part of the drama- an outlandish gift to the victims who were marked for impalement. Because there were three of them, he didn't realize that they were unique to one craftsman, and could be traced."
In their discourse, the men danced around an obvious question: where would they find a place for gay rendezvous? Would a small town like Joseph have such a place? Margaret surprised her seven male companions by cutting through the fog of speculation: "Joseph is an art colony. Painters and sculptors have moved here from all parts of the country. We have the largest bronze foundry in the world- metal sculpture is our biggest business. The art colony might be invisible to tourists who come here for rodeos and country music, but it's the soul of the town. I would say more, on your assurances of confidentiality and discretion, gentlemen."
She got assurances from Sheriff Andrews, his patrolmen, and the Coroner. She wasn't concerned about Jackson or Svenson. She continued: "Sometimes our gentleman-guests ask the caretaker where they can go to meet artists. He tells them about the Silver Stallion Saloon. There's a pool-room in the back, and an unmarked door that opens to stairs that lead to a parlor with two pool-tables. There's a bar, but no bartender. The patrons pay for their drinks on the honor system. And there's no need to mention that behind the Gallery downtown, the neighbor with the ranch-style home has turned his backyard into a gated park, decorated with the most interesting bronze sculptures in Joseph. It's private property, but it's open to visitors."
"We might get lucky," Andrews said. He blushed at his double entendre. "My men would be recognized by the locals, but Jackson and Svenson could go under cover and look for witnesses, like Svenson said he did in Superior." A sly glance said what couldn't be spoken- who better to disguise as gay men than the Brokebacks!
Jack looked at Göran, who nodded in agreement. As a sheriff, Jack was Andrews's peer, but he looked to the Sergeant for guidance. "We'll do it on one condition," he said. "It's possible that we might discover illegal activities- hustling, marijuana, maybe even drug dealing- not to mention the reputations of closeted gays. Our investigation must be focused on the serial killings. No one is to be outed, or arrested, or investigated as a result of our findings."
"I'll put that in writing when I deputize you for the mission," Andrews promised.
"What fun!" Jack exclaimed later, when he and Göran were alone. "I can be Sheriff and a deputy sheriff at the same time.
"And I got promoted to Deputy Sheriff," Göran replied.