Dead Wrong: A Dakota Mystery

By M.K. Coker

The trucker who’d hit a Wrong Way sign lay hunched over the wheels of his semi—with his brains blown to bits, a revolver in his hand. Leo Jurczewsky had long talked of killing himself. So when Sheriff Karen Mehaffey and Detective Marek Okerlund are called to the Reunion, South Dakota, exit ramp to investigate his death, they’re ready to wrap up the case.

But it all goes wrong when the pathologist rules the gunshot wasn’t self-inflicted. So was it homicide—or a twisted form of assisted suicide?

Then someone starts leaving drawings of crosshairs—gun sights—for various leaders in town, including Karen. If that wasn’t enough, word comes of the suicide of someone close to her. Meanwhile, Marek takes in a heavily pregnant runaway—who looks far too much like his dead wife.

As Karen and Marek try to follow a killer’s wrong turn, they both get an inkling of why life can become too much to bear.

DEAD WRONG is a character-driven police procedural of a rural bent. Third in series. Word Count: 86,000. Occasional profanity. Minimal gore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.K. Coker
• Release date: Mar 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310562440

M.K. Coker

M.K. Coker grew up on a river bluff in southeastern South Dakota. Part of the Dakota diaspora, the author has lived in half a dozen states, but returns to the prairie at every opportunity. Winner of the Mountain Plains Library Association's Literary Contribution Award.

Book preview

A Dakota Mystery

M.K. Coker

Copyright © M.K. Coker. All Rights Reserved.

Cover Art by Glendon S. Haddix of Streetlight Graphics.

Smashwords Edition: March 2014

If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use or under an authorized lending program, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The Dakota Mystery Series:

Dead White

Dead Dreams

Dead Wrong

In memory of Laddie

Whose demons won the battle

And in memory of Ken

Who worked the suicide hotlines even when dying

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Table of Contents

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

About the Author

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

Maybe she'd taken a wrong turn.

Tricia Cantor checked the dash of her Honda Civic, where she'd carefully written out the directions for the Reunion exit off Interstate 29. No, she was still on track. Surely she should be seeing the lights of the town by now.

The corn in the fields stood dry and dead in the fading light of early October, harvested by congregations of huge machines. Combines? She wasn’t sure, as she’d lived in a city of millions for all of her fifty-two years. Somehow, despite having already driven through the endless fields of Illinois and Iowa, she felt the Dakota landscape had thinned and become less substantial, leaving her feeling unmoored.

The overcast skies, an unbroken gray from horizon to horizon, threatened to depress her spirits, but she refused to go down that road. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night. She laughed at herself. That gave going postal a different spin, though she knew the unofficial motto of postal workers had originally come from Herodotus.

A pickup honked behind her, and she realized she had strayed out of her lane, her hands wandering with her mind. She jerked the Honda back between the white lines. She would not go gently into the good night.

She glanced again at her notes. The exit should be coming up in another mile or two if her speedometer could be trusted. Used to town boundaries proclaimed by signposts in an unbroken urban landscape, not empty land filled with crops, she couldn’t quite grasp that a town could be out there waiting for her without a massive light display against the darkening skies.

A flutter of panic hit her as the exit sign loomed ahead. She reminded herself why she’d driven all the way from Chicago. It wasn’t about her. It was about them, the other lives. If she was lucky and passed the pastoral audition, she’d soon be meeting, greeting, baptizing and—God help her—burying them.

She turned and made the loop away from the interstate, past a high earthen embankment. On the horizon, taillights disappeared into the east. Was that the way to Reunion? She slowed for the stop sign—and gasped.

Her headlights shone on the cab of a lone semi-truck that had crashed against a sign on the far shoulder. The sign had swiveled and bent under the impact, so she could read it, though it slanted to the ground.

WRONG WAY.

Pulling over, she began to tremble. After all she’d been through, she shouldn’t have to confront an accident scene before she’d even hit the city—or town—limits.

Call 911, she told herself. But they’d want to know all kinds of details. If anyone was hurt, and if so, how badly. More importantly, she needed to try to help. No handy policeman on the corner beat, not out here. Not that it had helped those she’d loved.

She climbed out of her car and used the penlight from her keychain to illuminate her path in the oppressive darkness that had fallen suddenly, like a suffocating blanket of gray.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. The children’s song, learned at a summer camp when she’d been eight, surfaced from her faulty memory banks.

She picked her way over to the front-mangled cab. Hello? Anybody there? Anybody hurt?

The distant whoosh-whoosh of cars on the interstate, hidden by the embankment, was the only reply. Why hadn’t anyone else turned off on the exit ramp yet? Was Reunion really that small? She’d read that it had a population of only a thousand, but she’d really had no concept of how few people that meant in such an empty landscape.

Her light wavered as she hesitated by the cab door. You can do this, she told herself. Just peek. A second, no more. She stepped onto the running board and glanced through the open window.

Only emptiness occupied the driver’s seat. Thank you. Whoever had been in the truck must have left the vehicle, and the police would be on their way soon enough. Probably. Maybe they’d already come and gone. Finding a tow truck to haul away the big semi cab might not be so easy in the middle of nowhere. Still, she thought there would have been tape or something to show that the cops had been there. She circled the old cab, a long-nosed thing she’d have laughed at with her son, who’d shared her love of whimsical vehicles, sparked by watching old Pink Panther movies.

The bittersweet memory vaporized as her beam fell on a kneeling man slumped against the rear tires, where she hadn’t been able to see him from the road. The man’s head was all wrong, almost oblong. Surely he couldn’t have walked with that kind of injury. Her light dipped and hit on the answer.

A revolver drooped in one blood-spattered hand.

That the death was wanted somehow lessened her horror, even though she couldn’t stop shaking, no matter how many deep breaths she took. She managed to turn away and pull out her phone. For a long moment, she just stared at the readout. No bars. Well, that decided that. She went back to her car. As she got in, she put the phone on the dash. The bars lit up.

No escape, then, from responsibility for caring for a man who was beyond needing her care.

Welcome to Reunion, South Dakota. A good place to die.

***

Detective Marek Okerlund didn’t hear the call until after he’d destroyed the wall.

Coughing on drywall dust, he pulled out his cell phone and silenced the Lone Ranger ring tone before it galloped into the sunset. The Caller ID read Sheriff Mehaffey. When he’d input the number into his phone nine months earlier, he hadn’t been on a first-name basis with her. What’s up, Karen?

A pause. Where are you?

At the old Lindstrom Drugstore, taking down a wall for the new recycling center. Why?

I need you at the Reunion exit ASAP.

Marek wafted away dust with his free hand. His last callout had been a suspected cattle rustling. Or cow rustling, as it was only one heifer, and it had magically reappeared in the man’s barn. Can it wait?

It’s a suspicious death.

That didn’t wait for anybody.

***

When Marek got out of his Silverado at the exit ramp, Deputy Travis Bjorkland, aka Bork, wandered over from where he was playing traffic cop, his close-cropped sandy hair almost invisible in the headlights. He looked from Marek’s dusty head to his toes. Mmm. Bumble the Snowman. You’re out of season. It’s only the beginning of October. If we’re lucky, we’ll get us an Indian summer.

Deputy Two Fingers, the only Indian on the county roster, pushed away from his squad car. In some Indian cultures, white war paint is for mourning.

Karen turned away from a silver Honda Civic parked on the shoulder across the ramp. She strode over to Marek, her lanky six-foot-one frame eating the distance. Despite her height, she still had to look up at him. Like the others, she did a double-take at Marek’s white-dusted clothes, but she just shook her head. Don’t flake on the scene.

Literally or figuratively, he almost asked, but he figured they were beyond the point where she still questioned his abilities. Homicide?

She shrugged. It looks like suicide.

But? he prompted.

No but. You’re the expert.

As a former dispatcher, she’d had little experience with criminal investigation, so she’d hired him to teach her. Well, she’d hired a part-time detective to teach her, preferably someone easing out of the job who’d not threaten her shaky position as acting sheriff. Instead, she’d gotten Marek, who was not only her half uncle but also four years younger than she was. He had lived away from the family for two decades. They’d collided over their first homicide the past winter, but fortunately, their working relationship had smoothed out since then. Though they were still finding their rhythm, partly because there weren’t many cases in Reunion that required a detective. Between investigations, he picked up carpentry work, but it figured that his first swing at a good-paying job since he’d arrived would be interrupted.

Looking at the crime-taped area around the crumpled tractor trailer, he asked, Did you call the state in?

Her lean face elongated further. DCI? Yes, I did. Hopefully they’ll send someone other than Mr. Sunshine.

Unlikely. The dour Agent Dirk Larson—from the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation—had tried to boot Karen off her first homicide, though not entirely without reason. But bad first impressions tended to last well beyond their expiration dates.

I’m keeping everyone away until Tish gets here, she added. He’s got to get his hands out of someone’s innards first. Embalming is a delicate art, he tells me.

The county coroner wasn’t a doctor but a mortician. Marek liked the man, but having spent years in a homicide unit in Albuquerque, he still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of a nonprofessional on a crime scene. Anyone mess with the scene?

Not me. I learned my lesson last time. I had Bork string the tape and leave the scene untouched. The woman who found the body didn’t get closer than a few yards. She’s more than a little shaken.

Let’s talk to her, then, while we wait for DCI.

As they passed the crumpled cab lit up by the squad car headlights, the steady wind blew a nasty stew of gasoline and oil with a sharp, acrid underlay of human waste and iron—new blood.

The woman who sat in the little car had a limp mop of salt-and-pepper hair. Her plumpish hands gripped the steering wheel as if she were driving through a whiteout instead of sitting in a parked car. Marek noted the Illinois plates and wondered if she’d turned off the interstate to find a gas station.

He approached her open window. Ma’am, if you—

The woman winced. Tricia, please. Tricia Cantor.

He nodded. Tricia, will you please get out of the car, so we can talk to you?

If my legs can hold me. The woman pried her fingers off the steering wheel.

Karen pulled open the car door, and Marek held out a hand. He felt Tricia tremble as he half lifted her out of the car. He reminded himself that most people weren’t accustomed to violent death and that the shock was natural, but her reaction still seemed over the top.

When she looked up at him, he knew why. He saw death in her gaze. Ever since he’d lost his wife, he’d been able to recognize that unspoken connection between survivors. He’d seen death as a homicide detective, even conveyed news of it to families. But until he’d experienced it personally, it had been a job.

Can we get you something to drink? Karen asked the woman. I’ve got bottled water.

Thank you, Tricia said. I’d appreciate that.

Karen walked toward her official vehicle. Since its survival of a levee break in July, the old Suburban was simply called the Sub.

I must seem like a ditzy old woman to you, Detective.

The older he got, the younger old became, and Tricia Cantor wasn’t that old, though something in her life had apparently prematurely aged her. No.

A quirk of humor rounded her tense face. Succinct, if untruthful. Believe it or not, five years ago, I was a svelte brunette. I’ve gone to pot. But not, in case you’re wondering, smoking it.

Karen returned with the water, which the woman glugged down as if it were July instead of October.

When she lowered the bottle, he asked her, Do you need gas?

She looked taken aback. Excuse me?

Weren’t you looking for a gas station?

No, I filled up in Sioux Falls. No, wait. Maybe it’s the other one. I think.

It’s a common mix-up. Since she was on this ramp, he knew she’d come from the south, which meant Iowa. Sioux City, he told her. May I ask where you’re headed?

To the Congregational church. She stood a little taller. I’m interviewing for pastor there.

That derailed his train of thought. All the way from Illinois?

Search committees aren’t limited to local candidates. I’ve been talking to a man who came here from Connecticut. Compared to him, I’m just next door in the Midwest. It’s more the city versus country that’s throwing me. I’m sorry. I’m babbling, aren’t I?

Karen cleared her throat. We need you to tell us what happened, from when you arrived until my men met you out here.

Tricia’s face fell. I already told the deputies. Is it really necessary to go through it again?

For the record, Marek said, turning on his pocket recorder.

With a sigh, Tricia led him through her movements of the previous hour, the horror lingering in her soft face like fleeting impressions in dough. It wasn’t what I was expecting as a welcome to Reunion.

Marek smiled faintly. My first time back after two decades, I got arrested right here on this same ramp.

Flushing, Karen hooked her thumbs into her belt. He was driving in a whiteout after the road was closed.

I wish someone had arrested my husband. At their raised eyebrows, she added, He was killed along with my son and my son’s fiancée when they turned into a snowplow in the dark.

Marek shuttered his eyes. Last he remembered the statistics, something upwards of thirty thousand people died in traffic accidents every year, enough to populate Eda County many times over. Yet here Tricia Cantor was, driving, just as he was. Familiarity made the risk acceptable until it became a personal instead of societal tragedy, one without warning or goodbyes.

Karen shifted her feet. Do you need an escort into town, or do you think you’ll be okay? It’s just a straight shot down the road here, a couple of miles, no more. Where are you staying?

Karen’s practical tone appeared to ease the woman. The parsonage. It’s next to the church, they said.

It’ll be on your left near the far end of town, past the courthouse. Can’t miss it.

Marek saw a hint of a smile on the woman’s face, as if she was thinking, I certainly can. But she nodded and sank back into her car. She didn’t start the engine immediately, probably composing herself.

Ah, finally, here comes our coroner.

Tisher had all the stop-and-start instincts of a drag racer, screeching to a halt just inches from the rear bumper of a squad car. The tall, thin man unbundled himself from the pickup then retrieved his equipment from the crepe-windowed shell that doubled as a hearse.

When Karen led Tish to the scene, Marek felt a curious reluctance to follow. Unlike in Albuquerque, here he was likely to know—or at least know of—the victim. Do we have an ID yet, or at least a lead, from the license registration? he asked the deputies.

No plates. Two Fingers kicked a bald tire on the semi cab. I’m surprised it even runs. It’s a piece of crap.

Bork nodded sadly. Yeah, it is, but if it was in good shape, it would be worth something. It’s a Peterbilt 281. My grandfather had one of these. Only his had a special paint job, all fiery red with flames. Sissy color, this. Baby blue. He reached out and caressed the curve of the long nose until his hand hit the grill. Mmm. Weird. This damage is old. It’s all rusted.

Two Fingers raised his flashlight. Looks like it ran into a neon-green midget.

An alien, most like, Bork said with a solemn nod. Find it. Book it.

CHAPTER 2

Tricia drove slowly through the night-shrouded town of Reunion, a place of shadow and silence, eerie to a city girl. In Chicago, she’d known abandoned buildings as places of menace, of graffiti and violence, somewhere you never went after dark. But there wasn’t enough here for menace, just hulls of absence, without even the taint of evil to give human character. No bustling streets or 24/7 stores or security cameras tracking every move.

As the sheriff had promised, she found the Congregational Church without any trouble and was heartened to see the entire place lit up. For a bewildered minute, she wondered how they’d known she was coming when she’d said she wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.

Then she recalled it was Wednesday, the traditional night when everything from board meetings to choir practice took place. She got out and craned her neck, surprised at how big the place was, not the simple whitewashed clapboard of her imagination, formed from reading Little House on the Prairie, but a solid stone edifice that looked almost purple in the night.

As she approached the doors, music dribbled out of an open window. Bells. Not the heavy, sonorous church bells that had played at her family’s funeral, clashing and clanging, but the softer, brighter cheer of handbells. Though the tune couldn’t be called cheerful.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

And with fear and trembling, stand.

She hesitated at the door, some part of her wanting to flee back into the night. She thought about what the conference minister, an old friend of one of her teachers at Chicago Theological Seminary, had emailed her about the position.

You wanted something different, something unrelated to the city, somewhere people need you. I tell you that you’ll need these people as well. But give it time. It may not be a good fit. That’s why you’ve both got an out. The place is dying, or maybe it’s on life support, just barely hanging on. For all the talk of every last soul being worthy, we just don’t have the money to keep all these small-town churches open. It kills me to shutter a church because it’s a body, not just a building. A community. But a widow’s mite isn’t going to keep the doors open anymore. We’re hoping to keep the Reunion church open. Otherwise, we’ll be losing the entire county.

Hesitating at the church door, she reminded herself, This isn’t about you. It’s about them.

The haunting tones of the ancient hymn, stark and solemn, fell into silence. Steadying herself, she reached out to grasp the old iron ring that served as a door handle. She pulled hard then walked into the house of God that might—just might—become her home.

***

Karen Mehaffey waited for her detective to round the tractor trailer. He’d gotten most of the drywall dust off his clothes, but she didn’t intend to let him onto the scene until the DCI team from Sioux Falls okayed it.

Something of interest up front? she asked when he stopped beside her.

Only that Bork thinks he’s a comedian. He nodded toward Tisher, who clicked away with his old-fashioned film camera in the light of the Sub’s headlights. We have an ID yet?

Karen shook her head, avoiding looking at what was left of the victim’s. There’s no way to identify him just by looking.

Not with that kind of head trauma, no. Anyone missing?

No report, though I wouldn’t expect one yet. I’m guessing this happened not long before the Reverend drove up. It’s not something you can miss once you’re on the ramp. She shifted on her feet, wanting to pace but forcing herself to stay put. He’s my first suicide. I don’t understand it.

It’s an odd place for it, certainly.

She’d meant she didn’t understand suicide, even though she’d handled more than her share of suicidal callers when she’d been a dispatcher. They were the worst calls because until a cop could get on scene, she held their lives in her hands. Sometimes, they’d died there. Anyone who thought dispatching was an easy job hadn’t heard a gunshot reverberate in her ears after trying to keep a heartbroken teenager alive long enough for the police to get there.

In her year as sheriff, she’d had a couple of homicides and several accident victims, but the scene on the ramp had a different feeling to it. Both killer and victim in one. Revulsion and sympathy. It was like trying to put magnets together at the wrong ends. Well, he ensured he’d be found. I wonder if he was drunk, coming down the wrong way on the ramp. Did he try to kill himself that way first then decide to take the foolproof route? Or did he get in the crash then shoot himself on impulse?

We may never know.

Tisher hunched down to sift through the man’s bloody jeans with gloved hands. He pulled out a wallet.

She took a deep breath and heard Marek do the same, which surprised her. Who is it, Tish?

I’m trying to read it, Tish responded, staring at the driver’s license he’d extracted. It’s all consonants, it looks like.

Slavic? She risked a sidelong glance at Marek. Could be from Valeska.

Most small towns in South Dakota had a predominant ethnic group. People tended to settle with their own kind. Marek’s maternal family had come from Valeska, so he’d likely know the victim, or at least know of him.

Tish dropped the wallet and its contents into a bag then walked over to them. When Marek made no move to take the bag, she did.

She prayed the dead man wasn’t one of Marek’s relatives, though it wouldn’t be the first suicide in his family. She turned the driver’s license to the light. Leopold. That’s an old-fashioned name.

Marek shifted out of the light, into the shadows. Just don’t tell me the last name is Marek or Kubicek.

"You’re in luck. That’s a no. Yer-shoe-ski." She gave her best shot at the name on the license: Jurczewsky.

Marek asked, What’s the address?

She tilted the license into the light again. He’s from Aleford. The town on the north end of her county was known primarily for its truck stop on the interstate. Age forty-seven.

Bork came over, trailed by a familiar pair—a gray-eyed man in his forties and his Girl Friday, a young woman with a scar that ran along her right cheekbone. State boys are here.

Karen groaned inwardly. Larson, I didn’t think a suspected suicide would rate having you on the scene.

The bullet-eyed agent shrugged. Haven’t had a homicide scene for weeks. And I’m still training Jessica. He gestured at Jessica Baake, whom Karen had met on the previous homicide.

Jessica gave a smile that pulled at the old scar—from an assault when she’d been a teen—then went to set up the big lamp she carried. When she switched it on, the scene took on the appearance of a movie set that looked entirely out of place out here—you couldn’t get much farther from Hollywood. Karen went over to the Sub and shut off the headlights.

Tish signaled Larson to begin the crime scene investigation. Then the coroner turned to Karen. I’ve arranged for the ambulance to take the body up to Sioux Falls for autopsy after you’re done. Can’t stick around. I have to prepare for a funeral tomorrow morning.

Fine. Bring us the photos for the record. Karen knew his dark room was in the basement of the funeral home where the bodies were worked on, though she’d never actually been down there—nor did she have any desire to be.

He took off in a huff of smoke that dissipated into the cooling night air.

She pulled on her jacket then went to stand beside Marek. Larson say anything?

Nothing.

I’m not deaf. The agent motioned for his assistant to take hand swabs for powder burns. Ask me.

Karen wasn’t stupid enough to ask Larson if it was a suicide. He wouldn’t jump ahead of the facts or the autopsy. Does it have any of the hallmarks of suicide?

He nodded. Good question. He went on in his usual bullet-list style. Several hallmarks. Side of head. Close contact. Gun on the scene. Not sure about angle. Autopsy to determine. Should be straight or slightly upward. No signs of a struggle.

Jessica rose to her feet after bagging the hand swabs—and the hands. Did he have personal problems?

Marek responded, We don’t know yet.

Karen’s phone burbled. The readout had her cursing, but she turned away and answered, Yes, Nails?

Nails Nelson was Reunion’s only source for local news, broadcasting on his low-power FM radio station. People tell me you’ve got something going on out there at the interstate exit.

We do, but we don’t know what yet.

Accident? Nails picked up on her slight