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  Jude Devine Mystery Series

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  By the Author

  ROMANCES as Jennifer Fulton

  From BSB:

  Dark Vista Series

  Dark Dreamer

  Dark Valentine

  Standalones

  More Than Paradise

  Other:

  Moon Island Series

  Passion Bay

  Saving Grace

  The Sacred Shore

  A Guarded Heart

  Standalones

  True Love

  Greener Than Grass

  CONTEMPORARY FICTION as Grace Lennox

  From BSB:

  Chance

  Not Single Enough

  MYSTERIES as Rose Beecham

  From BSB:

  Jude Devine Series

  Grave Silence

  Sleep of Reason

  Place of Exile

  Other:

  Amanda Valentine Series

  Introducing Amanda Valentine

  Second Guess

  Fair Play

  Jude Devine Mystery

  Series

  by

  Rose Beecham

  Grave Silence

  Sleep of Reason

  Place of Exile

  Grave Silence

  “Lying is done with words and also with silence” -Adrienne Rich

  Montezuma County Sheriff's detective, Jude Devine doesn't face too many challenges based in remote Paradox Valley, where most of the crime involves hiker assaults, campsite thefts, and cattle rustling. However, when the body of a local teenager shows up with a stake through her heart, Jude finds herself leading an investigation no one wants to touch.

  As Jude uncovers the truth about the murder and tries to save a young girl from being forced into a plural marriage, she must decide how much she is willing to risk to see justice done. Further complicating her choices is her torrid entanglement with the golden girl of Southwestern forensic pathology, Dr. Mercy Westmoreland.

  Book One in the Jude Devine Mystery Series

  Grave Silence

  by

  Rose Beecham

  2005

  Grave Silence

  © 2005 by Rose Beecham. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 10: 1-933110-25-2E

  ISBN 13: 978-1-933110-25-7E

  This electronic book is published by:

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  New York, USA

  First Printing: Bold Strokes Books 2005

  This is a work of fiction. names, characters, places, and Incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Acknowledgements

  I belong to that species of author for whom writing a novel is a lonely, antisocial affair. Family and friends are excluded, the phone is ignored, and the espresso machine works overtime. My dear ones, especially my partner, put up with all of this and still love me. Puzzling, but I cannot thank them enough.

  As I worked on this novel, Shelley, Connie, and JD kept my feet to the fire—thank you. Radclyffe made the publisher/author relationship a rewarding and happy one, and Stacia Seaman took her usual care editing the end results.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to several LDS friends—Carrie, John, and Rona, whose experiences and insights added much to my research for this novel. Writing this story would have been immeasurably more difficult without Jon Krakauer’s superb account of Mormon fundamentalism in America, Under the Banner of Heaven, and without the courage of the women who’ve escaped these communities and who refuse to remain silent about the abuses committed within them.

  Dedication

  For my mother, Wyn

  who defines family values for me

  Chapter One

  On a still afternoon in early August, a couple of gas station robbers fished an old-style Samsonite suiter out of the Dolores River near Slick Rock. Bobby Lee Parker and Frank Horton had been dragging the murky waters under the Highway 141 bridge for the proceeds of a stickup they’d pulled two weeks earlier.

  It was not their lucky day.

  So far, they’d lost the final round of the watermelon seed spitting competition at the Montezuma county fair. Then Bobby Lee’s mom showed up wanting to get high and helped herself to his last gram of weed. Now it seemed like the plastic garbage bag they’d stashed under some rocks had been washed away during the big storm that had startled locals earlier in the week.

  Normally, this time of year, the Dolores between Slick Rock and Bedrock was a muddy trickle. The whitewater crowd abandoned the place by June, taking their kayaks and Discover cards back to Boulder. Soon after, the canyons were overrun with hikers busting their asses to see wildflowers and shit. A couple of these idiots normally got themselves mauled by mountain lions every summer. Then came the annual funeral procession of VWs packed with posers winding down their tinted windows and asking directions to Telluride. Bobby Lee had seen the worst movies of his life trying to get laid at that film festival.

  He stared up at the bridge, where yet another dickhead had stopped his SUV so he could peer down at the river. The guy waved and yelled something about “boatable flow.”

  Ignoring him, Bobby Lee said, “Fucking perfect. They’ll be down here with their fucking kayaks before we get done.”

  Frank let go of the suiter and stood upright, panting and wheezing. His light brown mullet was limp with perspiration, the combed-back sides drooping flaccidly onto his cheeks. “Damn, it’s a heavy mother,” he whined.

  Reluctantly, Bobby Lee helped him hump the garment bag further up the bank onto the flat. He figured maybe they’d lucked onto some other guy’s heist. “Open it,” he said and watched Frank plaster his DNA all over the striped canvas like the amateur he was. The zipper wouldn’t budge.

  Eventually Einstein remembered he had a knife and used it to slit the thing apart. “Oh, man!” he choked, lurching back. “That stinks worse ’n a dead skunk. We gotta get out of here.”

  Bobby Lee took a moment to digest the grisly sight of a decomposing corpse. He weighed his options. His midnight blue Chevy Silverado was parked at the Chuck Wagon Café a few yards from the bridge. The truck was well known in these parts on account of its Super Swampers and the custom-painted flames that licked across the rocker panels. A bunch of cars had gone by while he and Frank were searching the river, mostly tourists headed for the canyons. But tourists were nosey and took photos of every fucking blade of grass. Who knew how many of them had shot video that could later become Exhibit A in the kind of bogus trial Bobby Lee knew all about?

  He stared around the riverbanks. They could haul the suiter under the bridge and bury it real quick while the earth was still moist, only he didn’t have a shovel, so they’d be doing it with their bare hands and Bobby Lee had never cared much for manual labor. Or they could do what Frank wanted and shove it back in the river.

  The bad news was dead bodies had a habit of showing up. In a few days’ time, the Dolores would be a mud slick again and some dude would spot the lumpy Samsonite shroud. Murders were a big deal in the Four Corners, so the discovery would be plastered all over the
front page of the Durango Herald. Someone would remember seeing Bobby Lee’s wheels. Next thing, the cops would come knocking at his door. Who else around here owned a tricked-out show truck like the Midnight Rambler?

  Placing his hand over his nose and mouth, he said, “We’re gonna do the Christian thing. Whoever this dead chick is, there’s a family needs closure.”

  Frank turned away and sucked in a breath. “You’re gonna call the cops?” He removed his Terminator shades and shook them free of sweat. His pudgy face was incredulous. “They’ll wanna know what we was doing down here. That cross your mind?”

  Bobby Lee took a few paces along the bank to escape the stench. Frank was the kind who never saw the bigger picture. He had not graduated from high school. Bobby Lee, on the other hand, had finished two years of college before he had to suspend his education to serve time for an assault that was really self-defense. Unfortunately, the so-called victim was not just any retard who’d gotten antsy when his girlfriend flashed some leg at Bobby Lee, but the son of a Ute Tribal Council member. And seeing as the Ute owned the casino and employed half of Montezuma county, guess whose version of events the jury bought?

  Patiently, Bobby Lee explained the psychology of law enforcement officers. “They’ll be real surprised that we’re reporting this, on account of our past histories. So they’ll know we’re not the guys who did it, otherwise we’d have been hightailing it out of here as per your proposal. Now they’d see that as suspicious behavior. Guilty conduct. Know what I’m saying?”

  Frank mopped his face and flattened his hair back into place. “So when they ask us what we was doing down here in the first place, we tell them some bullshit about fishing?”

  Bobby Lee shook his head. “Call of nature. We were relieving ourselves and that’s when we saw it. You got curious because it looked to contain something large, so you cut it open with your knife.”

  Frank chewed this over for several seconds then asked, “Do I bury the knife?”

  Bobby Lee did not call his buddy a dumbass, even when he acted like one. It was not Frank’s fault his father was a no-good SOB who beat on his family. Bobby Lee was aware of several head injuries that had sent Frank to the hospital when they were kids, so he made allowances.

  “No, Frank,” he said like he took the question seriously. “Burying the knife is felon-thinking. If they ask for it, just give it to them. We got nothing to hide. Okay?”

  “Aw, shit.”

  Interpreting this as approval, Bobby Lee flipped open his cell phone and dialed 911.

  *

  Deputy Virgil Tulley hoped he would never get used to real depravity. There was only so long a decent man could stare into the chasm of horror before he got dizzy. On such occasions it was his habit to pick up his cell phone and call his ma in Ohio. Today was no exception.

  Ma Tulley had important information to impart. “Your brother Billy lost his right testicle last week while they was dehorning.”

  “No kidding.” Tulley crossed his legs.

  “They sewed it back on, but Marybeth says that’s just for cosmetic appearance’ sake. He won’t be a Daddy again.”

  “They don’t need any more kids, Ma.”

  “If I’d took that attitude you’d have never been born.”

  Tulley squinted up at the ceiling fan. One of the blades was lose. With each drunken gyration, it clicked like a cricket in the mating season. His skin prickled. Sweaty nausea had dried in a thin film all over his body. Lucky he kept a change of shirt at work.

  “I got that Chinese sow,” his ma said. “There’s money in pet pigs nowadays. They walk ’em on a leash in L.A., you know. Get bored and it’s always a good meal, I guess.”

  “Ma, people don’t eat their pets.” He glanced at the case file in front of him. “Most people, anyways.”

  “They got that Union County grand champion boar servicing gilts over Harper’s place. We’re next. Weighs seven hundred eighty pound.”

  “That’s a shitload of bacon.”

  “Owner reckons he can do four sows in an hour.”

  “Who? The hog?”

  A long-suffering sigh. “If you think you’re gonna get a rise out of me with your trash talk, you’re mistaken, boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Tulley snickered. He was a grown man. He didn’t have to fear the pig paddle anymore.

  “We’re getting them snout coolers,” his ma continued. “Had a farrowing decline last summer. Heat stress. That’s what the vet says. What you got to do to prevent that is keep their noses cold.”

  “Like dogs,” Tulley noted.

  “What you call for, anyways? I got better things to do than listen to you bragging on that hound of yours again.”

  *

  A few feet away, Detective Jude Devine cracked open a can of ginger ale and rocked her chair back, legs crossed, feet on the corner of her desk. She surmised Tulley had been reading the Pohlman case file. Made it as far as the dog-burger bit, then called his ma. Nothing like a debriefing on hog husbandry to hustle a sensitive soul back to mundane reality.

  Tulley was the youngest of eleven and had something to prove. The impressive trappings of a career in law enforcement were made to order for him. No one polished his badge like this kid. Not so long ago he’d applied to the sheriff’s office for permission to have an exact replica cast in solid fourteen karat gold. Concerned about setting a precedent, they’d turned him down. Jude had to talk him out of taking the matter up in writing with Governor Owen. Gold scratches like hell anyway, she’d pointed out. Why not spend the two thousand bucks on something more practical?

  Tulley had taken her advice. Within days he’d plunked his money down on a bloodhound described in the Lawman’s Best Friend as “a true gallant descended from a line of champion cadaver hounds and felon trackers.” The dog was surplus to requirements at Georgia State Penitentiary, where fancy new security was putting fine animals like him out of a job.

  Jude had rustled up some not-exactly-kosher cigarette company sponsorship and persuaded her superiors to approve six weeks of handler training for Tulley at the Advanced Canine Academy. When he graduated, a posse of Marlboro executives hit town to stage-manage the occasion. They lured the Channel 9 people out of Denver to cover the story, and the front page of every local rag from Grand Junction to Cortez ran a picture of the suits benevolently awarding Smoke’m a monogrammed collar and five years worth of Purina lamb and rice. In exchange for this largesse and the price of a K-9 vehicle, a Marlboro Man billboard—minus the brand logo—now dominated the vacant lot next to the Montrose & Montezuma County Sheriffs’ outpost in Paradox Valley. The executives called this a “subtle artistic tribute” to their one-time icon, now banned across the land of the free.

  Every time Jude looked at the twenty-foot cowboy’s chiseled jaw, she reminded herself that this homage was a small price to pay for the full service status deeply coveted by remote offices. No longer would she and Tulley wait in vain for the deputies of Cortez to mark their dance card. No longer would they be passed over in big-ticket cases because someone supposedly had to be on hand in the canyon area to investigate petty campsite thefts, hiker disputes, and cattle rustling. Jude was a sheriff’s detective, even if she was only a woman, and her substation now operated one of just four K-9 units in the region. As far as the dispatchers were concerned, that meant Paradox could pursue and detain upon their own initiative.

  So, when the 911 call came in about a suspicious discovery in a garment bag, Jude tapped Tulley on the shoulder and said, “Tell your ma good-bye and get that hound on a leash. We’re not wallflowers anymore.”

  *

  By the time they reached the Slick Rock Bridge, an impressive lineup of silver and blue Ford Crowns were parked at the scene, lights flashing. Several state patrol troopers were directing the scant traffic and preventing guys with kayaks from heading down the riverbank. Another was taking statements from two males in their twenties. The shorter of this pair looked like the adult version of the fat kid
everyone teased in school. Hands crammed into the pockets of his too-tight jeans, he stared at the ground as his cool-dude companion did the talking.

  Jude parked her Dodge Dakota alongside Tulley’s K-9 Durango, located her camera, and bailed out. Gesturing at the flashy Silverado parked in front of the local café, she asked her sidekick, “Recognize that truck?”

  “Bobby Lee Parker.” Tulley opened the back of the Durango so Smoke’m could dangle his dewlaps in the fresh air. “DUI. Served eighteen months for assault with a deadly weapon. Suspect in a couple of gas station robberies. Fond of the ladies, ’specially those in uniform.”

  Jude looked harder at the cowboy in question and it all came back. Parker had spent last New Year’s Eve in jail after a brawl over someone’s girlfriend. His mom, a local artist and president of the Concerned Citizens for Cannabis Law Reform, had bailed him out. A few days later he showed up at the sheriff’s office in Cortez with a bunch of flowers and a poem for a female deputy. The young woman had actually dated him for a time, sparking a firestorm of gossip that even found its way to Paradox. He was, the deputy told her colleagues, “real suave for ’round here.”

  As she and Tulley approached, Parker snapped to and smoothed his frosted blond cowlick, presumably at the sight of a female, even one with shorter hair and more muscles than him. He was barking up the wrong tree, but Jude had no plans to advertise the fact. This was not Boulder, with its liberals and GLBT picnics. This was southwestern Colorado, a few miles from the Utah border, less than a day’s drive from Matthew Shepard’s Laramie.