Murder in Jackson Hole

By Jon R Horton

Detective Tom Thompson of the Teton County Sheriff's Office in the beautiful little resort town of Jackson, Wyoming is in a delicate condition. He's a Viet vet and recovering alcoholic with a bitter ex-wife, a confused teen-aged son, and a house he can't afford being built. Tommy's fellow officers are calling him "Tummy" because he's gained so much weight since his divorce. He's depressed, anxious, full of self-pity—and arsonists, bombers, and contract killers are headed his way. It's time to get tough, or die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon R Horton
• Release date: Mar 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780964397828

Jon R Horton

Jon R Horton aka J Royal Horton was one of those kids who read by flashlight and dreamed of becoming a writer. He attended the U of Wyoming for a year before joining the US Air Force where he served as a Russian Linguist and Intelligence Analyst while stationed in Germany. After his discharge he attended California State University at Northridge and received a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature. After making a run at Hollywood he attended Idaho State University where he finished the coursework for an M.A. in English. However, the academic gender wars of the 70s inspired a shift to a long career in international oil exploration.

Book preview

Chapter 1

June 22

A car door slammed and Dex Dexter peered out the dormer window of a room thick with the aroma of burning marijuana. He hollered down the stairwell, She’s here, Bugs, get the door!

Bugs Miranda walked to the front door and looked through a beveled glass pane. A small blonde looked around nervously as she came up the walk from the gravel drive where her battered little Nissan pickup was parked.

Upstairs, Dex went to the bathroom, closed the door, took down the shower curtain, and tilted the hollow rod into the tub. The plastic curtain fell away and he removed the rubber end caps, retrieved a string from one end and tugged gently until a plastic baggie slid into his hand. The bag contained a quarter-ounce of cocaine liberally cut with mannitol, a mild baby laxative. The string was tied to a sequence of bags broken down in quarter ounces—QZs. He took a folding hunter’s knife from its holster and cut away the first of the bags, then tugged the others back into place with the other end of the string.

Downstairs, Bugs was talking to the blonde as she sat on the edge of the couch, nervously smoking a cigarette.

Hi, Wayne, she said when Dexter reached the bottom of the stairs, her mouth curled into what was meant to be a smile. She was afraid and Dex liked that. He dropped the bag of coke on the coffee table and grinned as her eyes were drawn to it. Forgotten cigarette smoke made its way out of her open mouth.

How much? she asked.

Dex frowned. Eight hundred, you know that. It’s always eight to you and your friends.

She looked up at him, the damaged smile returned. Wayne… she pleaded.

A bubble of disgust rose in Dex’s throat as he looked down at her. He knew what was coming because he heard it a thousand times before.

Wayne, can ya hold a personal check for two hundred of it? Please?

Bugs snorted. Wayne looked at the blonde for a long moment, his eyes gone cold. His voice came out as a disgusted whisper. You know better than that shit, Tammy. I only front my friends.

Fear moved into the blonde’s eyes as she looked up at Dex. The guy was scary. He was a dealer who used heavily, and Bugs, his human pitbull, was a notorious needle freak. She glanced at Bug’s arms, crusted and welted with tracks.

Wayne, it’s just that my rent’s overdue and the landlord caught me comin’ over here and I hadda give him two hundred bucks or he would’ve kicked me out right then. It was real bad timin’. I’d been ditchin’ him for almost a week, but he caught me and I had to pay him right there.

She glanced at Bugs, who was grinning because he knew exactly how this was going to turn out. It was humiliation time.

Look, I can turn all this over this weekend. I’ll get the two hundred to you by Sunday afternoon, latest, and I’ll be more than willin’ to pay some interest too. She paused.

Please?

She looked up into the man’s rain-colored eyes, and they chilled her. Please? she whined. A crack appeared in Dex’s face then slowly turned into a cold smile.

Why not? he said, suddenly amiable. The blonde smiled and reached to the floor for her purse. But you’re going to have to give us something for security.

She looked puzzled. But I ain’t got nothin’. You know that.

You’ve got something in those pants, don’t you?

Huh?

You have something in those pants that you could use for trade, use for security.

Whatcha mean, Wayne? Her eyes were drowning in fear.

Bugs leaned against the wall and laughed. He knew Dex had no use for sex with anyone but Bugs, and himself. He loved to watch because he was Mr. Masturbation himself. Except for the free toot and the petty violence during some collections, this was what Bugs lived for. He loved Dex Dexter because he was a cold motherfucker—un hombre de mas cojones.

Dex never took his eyes from the girl’s face. Bugs, do you want to take a little security from Tammy?

Love to.

The girl’s eyes squinted. Her voice came out in a whimper. Wayne, I don’t wanna do that. Please. Don’t make me do that. It’s way wrong.

His voice was a cold whisper as he leaned down and hissed into her face. Then get out of the fucking house.

But Wayne, I gotta go back with the stuff. I gotta score this QZ. A lot of this money is other people’s money and they’re waitin’. Right now they’re waitin’.

Not my problem.

Her glance jerked back and forth between Bugs and Dex. "Wayne, none of this is my money, and neither was the two hundred I had to give my landlord. I gotta make this score to pay it back, and have somethin’ to eat on till I get paid from the bar. Please. I’m saying please." Her voice trailed off and tears welled in her faded blue eyes. They ran down the pale, once-pretty face.

Sounds like you screwed up, he said and smiled at her.

She looked down and her voice dropped to a whisper. Wayne, please don’t make me do this. This is humiliatin’.

When Dex shrugged and reached down to pick up the QZ, she placed her hand on his. With you, she whispered, not with him.

Nah. Bugs handles my marginal accounts. He laughed. And you’re definitely marginal.

She stood slowly, her purse in her hand, eyes down. She started toward the door then stopped, her back to the men. Where?

Bugs said, Anywhere! How about doggie-style on the lawn?

Tammy turned around and looked at Dex. She avoided Bugs’s green smile and now lively eyes. It’s got to be on a bed—a clean bed, she said in a small but emphatic voice. And nobody watches.

Use Dave’s bed—it’s clean, Dex said, and handed Tammy the QZ. Then she put it in her purse and she set on the coffee table. Bugs took her by the hand and hurried her down the hall.

Dex turned the purse upside down on the table, spilling the contents that included a small baggie of pink heart-shaped amphetamines and seventeen dollars, which put it in his shirt pocket.

Coke whores, he said with disdain, then started down the hall, fondling himself, and smiled when he heard Tammy protest, "No! I really, really, don’t want to do this… please don’t make me do this. Please!"

MJH

Chief Detective Tommy Thompson, of the Teton County Sheriff’s Office sat at his desk, looking down at the bulge of his belly. Freckles of coffee flecked his white shirt scalloped at the buttons—a testament to a trainload of double quarter pounders with cheese, dumpsters of donuts, and a slough of sugared coffee. A flake of frosting from a maple bar sat on the bulge.

He blew the flake away, turned his head to look out the window of his office and thought, I’m such a mess anymore.

Outside it was a beautiful, summer morning. Inside the building, another day at the sheriff’s office in an election year, and everything was the proverbial shits. A city policeman was running against the incumbent sheriff, and the opposing parties had to work side by side in the law enforcement center during the campaign. The chickenshit office politics were wearing everyone to a nub, especially the reluctant who didn’t have the nerve to declare themselves, in the hope of not jeopardizing their jobs.

Tommy was one of the chickens, and hated himself for it, but he was building a house and couldn’t afford to lose his job by committing to either candidate. Among the verities of law enforcement are the tensions between county and city agencies, especially in election years that pit sister agencies against one another. The politics always turn malignant, but in Jackson Hole this year it had metastasized and it was making everyone sick.

Turning back to his desk, he looked down at the file he chose from his pile of active cases—Eldon Weishaar: Sex with Minor Child. Before it was over, this one was going to get crap all over everybody who handles it, as these cases always do. A girl he’d known all through school, and had a crush on, was murdered when she wasn’t much older than Anny. So crimes against girls were the ones Tom took very personally, he just couldn’t help it.

Beside the usual sordid stuff that went with child sex cases, a couple other things just did not set right with him. The perp’s grandfather was a pillar of the community, while the Anny Lamson was only fourteen years old, considered trailer trash, and living with incompetent foster parents.

Weishaar’s rich grandfather had hired a new lawyer in town, a Stanford Law guy named Chaika, who had already built a reputation against the prosecuting attorney—eight for eleven, although he was only twenty-nine. He was a Juris Doctor and an activist in environmental and land-use issues, a real darling of the community. Chaika was smart, and unafraid to waltz over the gray lines that archaic Wyoming law afforded him, so he was a man with a real future in the wildly contentious local politics.

So far, the prosecutor had only the testimonies of the girl and a jailhouse snitch going for him, and that was set up by one of the jailers. The situation was shaky, but it was all the prosecution had: the girl’s word against Weishaar’s. And while Weishaar had influential friends, the girl had no one who really cared, except a lone jailer. Everybody knew a jailer stood on the lowest rung of the professional ladder of Wyoming law enforcement except, maybe, the dogcatcher.

Tom took a deep breath. In many ways, Wyoming had advanced little from its territorial heyday. If Tommy were completely honest, he would advise the sheriff of what happened and give him Tom’s impression of the shaky state of the evidence.

Jailers were supposed to be responsible solely for the care and custody of the prisoners, not lending their weight to the prosecutor’s office. What the jailer did was not legal, but what had happened to a twelve-year-old girl was certainly not fair. The way things were lining up, Weishaar was going to skate, sure as God made little green apples.

He looked at his watch. It was almost 10:30. I need a meeting, real bad, he said aloud and stood, glancing again at his stomach. The scallops had grown smaller but his belly had embossed the buttonholes of the starched material. He sighed and took his jacket from the back of his chair. An hour earlier, as he stood in the hall outside the squad room, he’d overheard two town cops refer to him as Tummy Thompson.

He’d heard it before. A couple of the more macho types, Police Department bodybuilders who hung out in the law enforcement center’s gym, even said it to his face. Their confidence in their candidate was making them aggressive.

Tommy reached for his hat and looked at it—a 20X silver-belly Stetson. Overspending and overeating were two things he was warned about time and again since he got out of a treatment program at a Veteran’s Administration hospital. He put on the expensive hat and hiked up his pants. Twenty-two pounds, he reminded himself. Since the divorce, he had gained that much. He was feeling bad about himself, and he needed more help than a maple bar.

He had an hour and a half before the noon meeting of AA, which was enough time to meet with his contractor and get an agreement worked out. He was building a house and the prospect both excited and scared him to death.

As he waved goodbye to the department secretary, she nodded her head and kept working at the word processor. Earphone wires dangling from her ears rested on her firm bosom—another athletic type. Hell, even the women in the department were in better shape than he was, anymore.

Tom stepped out into the sunshine and drew in a deep breath of mountain air. The morning breeze coming down from Snow King Mountain, half a mile away, carried a bouquet rich as English gin. As a junior member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still tended to think in terms of the drinker’s vocabulary.

He raised his face, inhaled deeply again and said, Still smells like gin to me, and smiled. The morning sun lit the smile, the slightly silvering mustache above it, and his pale blue eyes. There were also a few strands of silver in the longish dark hair that showed from under the back of his hat. Although a bit over six feet tall and normally two hundred pounds, he was always surprised when someone referred to him as a big man.

As he walked toward Jedediah’s, he saw a battered Saab run a new stop sign. The car had two new mountain bikes on its top, and that made Tom smile. In Jackson Hole the rich brats affected used clothes from the St. John’s Browse ‘n’ Buy and drove crummies to make a statement about their newfound lack of materialism. But the expensive toys they put on top of the old cars gave them away. They just couldn’t help themselves.

Changes. The town had grown steadily for twenty-five years, but the recent spurt accelerated the pace. There were new streets, new houses, and lots of new people, most of them with some sort of scam in mind— new developers, new realtors, new divorcers and divorcees, drifters, thieves, lawyers, and even wannabe sheriffs. Jackson Hole was a hustler’s heaven and always had been, beginning in the mid-1800s when horse thieves found it a great place to lay over with their stolen stock.

As a sheriff’s department detective and a native of the area, Tom knew what really went on in Jackson Hole society. The spectrum was broad and millionaires often walked the boardwalks with common working cowboys, each hailing the other by first name.

Rich Men, Poor Men, Begger Men and Thieves alike, chose to affect Wrangler jeans, Pendleton shirts, Carhartt jackets, and cowboy boots, making it unclear who was aping who. They also had self-indulgence in common. Some financed their habits with investment income, while others bought it with money earned through damn hard labor. If it weren’t for their attempted shortcuts to status, and the booze and illegal drugs that went along with it, Tom would probably be the only investigator in the Sheriff’s  Department, but he was one of two and the sheriff was interviewing for a third.

The city’s police department also had two detectives, and their workload was split about the same. More than sixty percent of their caseloads concerned alcohol, illicit drugs, and their spin-off crimes of larceny, burglary, bad checks, credit card and other types of fraud, and domestic violence. But, all-in-all, it wasn’t too bad. For Tom’s taste it was actually a pretty boring proposition about ninety-eight percent of the time. He often thought that he wouldn’t mind if things picked up a little—give him a real challenge once in a while.

Between the real ropers and gold plate dopers, the majority of folks mostly toed the line and never had any occasion to know who Tommy or his fellows were. He seldom needed to know who those good people were, but he observed them just the same. From petty vandals to thieves and murderers and on into the darkest places in man’s soul, he saw a fair share of it during his three years in the military, and now fifteen years with the sheriff’s office. Some of those dark places were hidden in the small frame houses that sent children off to school and that shaded fishing boats or snow machines. Those modest toys were symbols of one of the last clean and honest places in America, he thought.

Wyoming is what America was.

It was a favorite saying of the natives. If so, Tom wondered what the rest of the country came up with in the way of perversions over the last twenty years. He really didn’t want to know, when men who lived low as Eldon Weishaar strutted the streets.

Tommy stopped next to the re-model of the 19th century Crabtree Hotel that pegged down the corner of a new, upscale mini-mall and, on the other side of the town park, the huge Cowboy Bar sign caught his eye. It always did, now that he’d had to quit going to places like it.

The Cowboy was one place that he genuinely missed, because he first discovered the night world in places like it, when he was in his late teens. Back then, the rules about drinking in Wyoming were real elastic. Basically, if you had a job and didn’t cause any trouble, you could get served. But if you caused a problem anywhere in the county, you were 86’d everywhere. All you had to do was work like a man, keep your nose clean and you’d be treated like a man, complete with drinking privileges.

Of course, that system could only work when everybody knew everybody else, not like now when just about everybody was a stranger. Now it had to be the same stringent rules for everybody—no more taking your keys away and giving you a ride home. Nosirree, not now.

Tom missed those days, even though he now realized those customs were a bad idea that promoted problem drinking as well as driving accidents that killed a lot of otherwise decent people who might still be around today. As for himself, in the beginning drinking was fun and no problem, just part of his yeehaw youth. But when he came back from Viet Nam, things changed and he dropped to the bottom of the night world, then an eventual abyss.

But, before his suicidal spiral, it was fun and there was Sugarbritches. He found her there, too—Sugarbritches, and Sawmill Creek, the house band at The Cowboy. They damn sure could play their Wild Western Windblown Band, Sawmill Creek, and Tom’s favorite Wish I Could See It Like You Do, the one that should have been the theme song for the marriage he had wrecked with his drinking.

That was the summer he was nineteen years old, and he was happy as a pig in slop. Riding bucking horses at the Wilson Rodeo on Saturday night and cowboying for the Hansen ranch, and chasing tail was who he was. He had a hard-on a cat couldn’t scratch, and ambushing tourist girls at the rodeo beer tubs was his second-favorite sport. Then, just like in the local legends, a California blonde came to town for the summer and latched onto Tommy at the Stagecoach Bar one night. She cut in on a tourist girl he was dancing with and, damn but she could dance. Sometime in the early morning, after the dancing, after the loving, he gave her the nickname, and it made her laugh out loud.

Her real name was Polly, but she loved her new nickname. But then she loved everything. She loved life, so she would not let him possess her. She only gave him as much as he needed, not as much as he wanted. Where in the hell was she now when he really needed her?

Tommy had almost forgotten what that summer had felt like. When he happened to walk by the door when they were open, faint ripples from that dream time drifted out the saloon doors, now soured by the smell of spilled whiskey.

Inside the restaurant, he bought a roll of Tums, and as he accepted his change Marty Ollinger, one of the police department detectives, plucked Tommy’s sleeve.

Tom, you got a minute?

Marty was one of the good ones. Young and intense, he was a decorated cop before being moved up to investigator. Tom always had time for him, so he followed him outside. From across the restaurant, Tommy’s contractor Dave Weed watched the two go outside. Both had cop written all over them, which made him more nervous than just having one detective about to get into his life right now. What were they talking about?

Dave’s nervous system was on the blink now that Wayne Dexter and Bugs Miranda had barged back into his life. He knew Dexter to be a leftover drug dealer from the days when oil exploration money made drugs a big deal in the Jackson area, and the three of them had been partners in the drug trade. Now blowback from those old days were threatening to unravel his world, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about it.

Outside, Marty was saying, I’d like to get together this afternoon. I had a phone call from the DEA and they’re working on something big that connects here in Jackson. There’s some major drug action going down and there’s a chance that things may get nasty pretty soon. They emailed me some info that I forwarded to you and I’d like to have you take a peek at it.

Who’s the AIC? Anyone we know?

The Agent in Charge is a woman, Mary Ellen Trouville out of Riverside, California, and I never heard of her until yesterday. I checked on her and she has a heck of a reputation for her work against the New Orleans mafia.

Tom was flattered, but he knew there had to be a catch to his being asked to work with the P.D.. Marty’s wanting him to share info from the beginning of a major case meant he was willing to take a large political chance. The Police Chief was the prime mover behind the new sheriff’s candidate, and Marty was showing some real balls by working with a sheriff’s office investigator. Of course, there was always the possibility that a big case would need the much larger resources of the county, versus the limited budget of the city.

When’s the meeting?

"1300, tomorrow.

I’ll be there.

Look sharp, this is going to be the big time.

Shit! Tom muttered as he walked back inside, brushing nonexistent crumbs from the front of his shirt.

Inside the dining room, a guy in a red bill cap with a Sunrise Lumber logo raised his arm from a table to get his attention in the crowded rooms.

Hi, Dave, how you doing?

I’m fine. You had your breakfast?

Yeah, but that was hours ago. Maybe I’ll have a small biscuits and gravy, they’re real good here.

Tom cringed inside. Besides his breakfast, he’d had two maple bars, two cans of Slim Fast and a banana. This house-building anxiety, on top of everything else, was piling on the pounds.

Dave took out a pen and turned his legal pad to a clean page. On the top he wrote Thompson House and Mr. Thomson’s stomach jumped.

Well, let’s get some idea of what you have planned, Dave said.

Okay, here’s the story. About five years ago, my ex and I bought an old kit cabin up in the Indian Paintbrush subdivision. In the divorce, Beth got the house here in town, so I’ve been living in the cabin for the last year and a half. Now I want to tear it down and put something affordable on the old foundation.

What shape is the foundation in?

The foundation’s good but the cabin is a mess. It was a kit that the guy put together himself, and it’s a botch. I grew up in cardboard trailer houses, bunkhouses, shotgun shacks, and then a cramped modular home. Now I’m gong to have a real house—and I don’t care if it harelips every sheep in Lincoln County.

MJH

After his visit with Dave, Tom drove to the trailer court where he had found a place to live during construction of his place. Ted, the manager, saw him pull up and came out of the office with a small ring of keys in his hand.

Hi, Tom.

Hello, Ted. Those keys are mine, I presume?

You presume correctly. Yours is the blue and silver one over there by the creek. I just had it cleaned, you wanna take a look?

It’ll be fine. I’m only going to be in it till this fall when my house is supposed to be finished. You want your money now?

Nah, just drop the check off when you get a chance.

You gonna need a first and last, a deposit, and all that?

Nope. Let’s just take ‘er from month to month. If you tear the place up, I know where I can find ya. He grinned.

Okay, thanks.

No problem. Ted went back to his office.

Opening the trailer door, he stepped in and looked around. It was a trailer house, what more could a man say?

There was a bay window that took up that whole end so there was ample light. It had a nice view of Flat Creek meandering across the elk refuge pastures below the Sleeping Indian Mountain.

As he looked out the window, he saw Dave Weed’s pickup go by, then park in front of a converted school bus. He went to the doors of the bus and pushed hard, trying to force them open. Weed then walked around the bus a couple of times, shouting to someone he seemed to suspect was inside. Then he got back in his truck and, as he passed, looked grim as hell.

I wonder what that was all about? Tom wondered.

Chapter 2

June 23

The next morning, when Dave met another contractor on the way to the way to the Thompson place, he waved cordially. With the building boom there was more than enough work for everybody, so there was little rivalry among the smaller guys. Feelings were good because the money was good. Dave heard a lot of bitching about the gentrification of Jackson, but as a builder he was all for it. Money made his world go ‘round, and he was more than glad to see people in Cadillac SUVs shopping the real estate offices.

The meeting with the cop had gone well, and their agreement for rebuilding his cabin was signed. They