Magnum Schultz Series

Is the pedophile Police Sgt. Margaret Schultz is investigating related to the incident of the boy who brings the .44 magnum to the middle school? How does this tie in with the married couple who just can't stop fighting? Replete with car chases and foot chases on slippery winter ground, black eyes and straight shooting all play parts in the action, culminating in a surprise at the end.

Detective Sergeant Margaret "Magnum" Schultz has been a cop with the Porterville Police Department for ten years. The old adage "a woman has to work twice as hard as a man to get half the credit" may apply, not only because Schultz tops out at five-four but because not all the men she works with think she should be there. A hooker is found strangled behind a local tavern. Magnum goes after the killer. She chases a Dodge Ram out into a muddy field in her Ford Crown Vic. She gets surprised in her own garage by a serial killer, whose last victim was hacked to pieces and fed to pigs. The knock-down-drag out that ensues speaks well of the Model Mugging techniques she uses to survive. Her primary concerns are the safety of her 13 year old daughter and getting the job done well.

Amorak. That word pops into my brain and I don’t even know what it means until I consult a present-day shaman who takes me on a shamanic journey. Among other things, I learn that amorak is a First Nations word which means wolf. And that my animal spirit guide is telling me to watch out for an evil predator. Yeah, right. I’m a police detective and a mother of a 15 year old; what are the chances I’m going to put any faith in that kind of crap? Yet when I run a stolen car full of bank robbers off the road, and one of the felons is an Inuit man from the Yukon, strange things begin happening—bizarre dreams, visions of malevolent eyes, instances of psychokinesis. Retired anthropology professor, Richard Morris, has harbored a lifelong interest in First Nations people and begs for an opportunity to meet the Inuit bank robber. When he comes to Porterville’s jail he brings books about First Nation cultures and a box of Inuit artifacts he thinks the man will find interesting. Of course I look through the box to check for contraband before allowing it into the prisoner. Oops! An ancient flint-bladed knife is removed from the box and remains behind on my desk. The felon, Julius, inspects the artifacts with fascination but observes, “At my parents’ home in Whitehorse, I have a knife—much like the one left behind on Miss’s desk.” “Did...how...?” I splutter. “I see it, Miss,” says Julius. “I also see a black spirit which my mother sends from Whitehorse to help you fight the evil predator.” After the visit between Julius and Professor Morris, someone has removed the knife from my desk. It is nowhere to be found until it shows up days later in a cold, dark cellar and comes in handy for cutting the duct tape bonds which imprison a beautiful pole dancer and me. With all this, I begin to question whether or not our world isn’t more than just facts and evidence. A serial rapist is on the loose and strikes in Lincoln County, in Porterville, even on the ESU campus, leading me to work closely with Campus Police Officer Jaydeen Huff putting both of us in peril so that, finally, I find myself desperately calling her name in the dark subterranean tunnels beneath the university. Then I find her: Quentin’s murderous glare sears into me. “Why?” he asks softly, through gritted teeth. He raises Jaydeen by the hair and pulls her to her feet, an effective shield, against his chest. “Why can’t you bitches just learn your place?” The voice increases in volume and pitch. “I’ve tried to teach you all your place!” Now he is crescendo-ing. “But you just don’t get it! We all have our places in this world; yours is not above man! Now this one will have to die and so will you.” To complicate matters, my philandering husband wants a divorce. Since I’m feeling a little vulnerable, I get the hots for a good looking, double-dimpled deputy from Stevens County. George Rooney, a bounty hunter of whom I’ve never been fond, flips his Ford Bronco upside down in a torrential down-pour, causing my daughter to be late for her birthday party so that we can save his sorry ass. Then we learn that the bail jumper Rooney was transporting from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana has escaped. This guy enjoys setting people he doesn’t like on fire. And now he’s loose in my jurisdiction. Then as if things weren’t touchy enough, Rooney has the gall to suggest that I might just be his daughter.

The Grocery Sack Killer is a novel loosely based on the true story of Spokane’s Serial Killer, Robert Lee Yates. Porterville Police Detective Sergeant Magnum Schultz, back in uniform, prefers working graveyard shifts during summer months because she doesn’t have to contend with July’s stupefying daytime heat. She’s patrolling the dark streets in her cruiser when she locates a murdered girl. The teenage prostitute has been strangled, plastic grocery sacks placed over her head, and shot in the back of the skull with a small caliber handgun. In the meantime, Bounty Hunter George Rooney has been reunited with his adult daughter, Tanya, a junior partner at a local law firm, when he receives a threatening phone call warning him not to come looking for the caller. Tanya suggests that the caller may be her ex-husband who has jumped bond on an embezzlement charge. Since Tanya posted the $5,000 bond to get her ex bailed out of jail, Rooney is determined to get her money back for her and hopefully have a little left over for his own living expenses. In the course of hunting for his no-good ex-son-in-law, Rooney encounters blond, blue-eyed Marisa, the ex-husband’s most recent girlfriend, a prostitute who tries to convince Rooney that she’s a Reiki instructor and not a hooker. Much to his own surprise, Rooney takes a liking to Marisa’s two young sons and gets involved with her, himself. When more prostitutes begin to turn up dead, Magnum goes undercover in an attempt to identify the killer. She and Rooney have run-ins as her search for the killer and his search for his daughter’s ex-husband cross paths. Finally, there is a break in the case, but two suspects are taken into custody. Magnum’s work is cut out for her as she attempts to discover the real grocery sack killer.

“The crime scene photos are logged into evidence. All I have with me is a picture of a picture,” he said. “So it’s not a great shot.” The girl had dark, shoulder-length hair. Both eyes had been blackened, one swollen shut, the other a narrow slit into dead vacancy. An uncomfortable prickling began at the back of my neck. I felt flushed. Could it be?... Gingerly, I picked up Braddick’s cell phone and brought it closer to my eyes. I’d only met her once. And I didn’t want it to be her. “You know her?” he asked. “I...I think it might be Aysu,” I said, weakly. Detective Sergeant Margaret (Magnum) Schultz looked away from the strangled girl in the picture and wondered what sort of a religion gave a stamp of approval to murder. After nearly 16 years in law enforcement, Magnum had thought she’d seen it all: deranged serial killers, rapists, perverted child molesters, even a foray or two into the woo-woo side of the supernatural. But this had to be the most disturbing. A religion so committed to their own tribal convictions about what God expected of them that common sense morality was shoved aside, making way for a heartless cruelty beyond her understanding. How else to explain an otherwise loving father willing to murder his own daughter; a culture that controlled women not only through how they were allowed to dress, but through female genital mutilations? And it wasn’t just foreign religions who were so self-righteous these days. At what point had it become a Christian ideal to treat anyone with the disrespect she’d seen recently from so-called religious people in the good ol’ USA? She was beginning to feel that with the amount of hate in the world being expressed in the name of religions, atheism might be the sole remaining keeper of love for humanity. Magnum stood up, shook her head, and slid on the sunglasses. Time to get to work.