Dirt: A Crime Novel

By Scott James

“There’s a wickedness in some people, an evil that can’t be cured. And there’s no amount of redemption or forgiveness that can bring them back.”

Three twenty something cops are at the beginning of their careers in two small Oregon towns. They are learning to balance the demands of their chosen profession and the women they love. David is a rising star in his department. Colin is a rookie determined to uncover the truth behind the murders of two teenage girls. Doug is a Vietnam veteran who shoulders heavy guilt and motivation to avenge past wrongs.

When an unwanted visitor comes to town asking for forgiveness for his sins in Southeast Asia, Doug’s not so distant past comes racing back to haunt him and the dark secrets from Vietnam teeter on the brink of being exposed.

The events that follow challenge the three men’s beliefs about right and wrong as they realize police work is never as black and white as it seems and in the end no one will leave the job unscathed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott James
• Release date: Apr 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310839207

Scott James

​Scott James es uno de los ancianos en The Church en Brook Hills. Vive en Birmingham, Alabama donde ejerce como pediatra. En su iglesia sirve en el ministerio de niños y jóvenes y le apasiona ayudar a otras familias a crecer juntas en Cristo.  Él y su esposa Jamie, tienen cuatro hijos: Will, Kirstine, Benjamin y  Bethan quienes fueron la inspiración y la audiencia original para este devocional. Scott James serves as an Elder at The Church at Brook Hills. They live in Birmingham, Alabama where Scott works as a pediatric physician. Scott serves in the children’s and youth ministries at Brook Hills and is passionate about helping families grow together in Christ. He and his wife Jamie have four children—Will, Kirstine, Benjamin, & Bethan—who served as the inspiration and original audience for this Advent devotional.

Book preview

Dirt

A Crime Novel

Scott James

Exit288 Media

Eugene, Oregon

Dirt

A Crime Novel

Copyright © 2015 by Scott James

All rights reserved.

First Edition

Published: 2015

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

Cover by Katy Putnam

kapart.com

ISBN-13: 978-1511563802

ISBN-10:151156380X

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Exit288 Media

Eugene, Oregon

In memory of:

Chris Kilcullen

Eugene Police Department

End of Watch: April 22, 2011

For Mom,

My first editor and who believed it could be done

&

Dad,

My first hero.

Dirt

A Crime Novel

Scott James

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.

- Edmund Burke

-1-

Doug pissed at the edge of a farmer’s field.

Finished, he stuck a Lucky in his mouth and fired it with the Zippo. It was pitch black and freezing cold. Thick fog filtered out all noise and light. It was so quiet he could hear the tobacco crackle as he inhaled. He shivered and slid back into the driver’s seat of the patrol car and turned the ignition. The headlights illuminated the grayness enveloping the car. Partial skip transmissions came across the radio in static staccato. He shivered like he’d shivered under his poncho in the monsoon rains of Vietnam listening to the handset.

The fog was so thick he couldn’t see ten feet in front of the car, like thick smoke off burning huts.

He didn’t even have to close his eyes.

A young girl is running through the smoke.

Clutching a baby.

Crying.

Tears streaking dirty faces.

Screaming.

Certainly

He would be damned for what he’d done

for the rest of his life.

Trembling hands.

More static.

He could just make out pieces of words.

The fog turned into thick blowing dust churned by helicopter blades. Red dirt covered everything after the Medivacs left with the body bags. Dirt that was nearly impossible to wash off, even an ocean away.

His hand touched the revolver’s grip.

Thumbed the snap.

How easy it would be.

He took a long pull on the Lucky and shook quietly in his seat, tears at the edges of his eyes and wept silently.

Alone.

From the edge, he drove back into town and thought about the young girl holding the baby. He wondered where they were now, as well as that gorgeous girl on the street in front of that Saigon café.

Each a sin of a different kind.

The dim outline of houses materialized out of the fog.

A common misconception about winter in Oregon’s Willamette Valley was that it rained all the time. The truth was, the locals welcomed the rain more than they welcomed the fog that set in for weeks at a time. Twenty-eight degree stagnant air got trapped between the Coast Range and the Cascades causing fog so thick in the farmland you couldn’t see ten feet.

It was miserable.

Graveyard shift in Newberg, Oregon was even more miserable.

Newberg was a quiet small town south of Portland. Orchards covered the hills to the north and west. To the east open farmland stretched across the wide river valley. It was close enough to the Coast Range that log trucks shuttled their payloads to the pulp mill on the edge of town. At 4:08 in the morning, Doug Black had gone since 2 am without seeing a tail-light. He pulled up to the Plaid Pantry on River and 1st Streets, located next to President Herbert Hoover’s boyhood home. Marin Wilson made coffee every morning for the pulp mill workers starting their day and for the commuters headed to Portland.

Marin was four years his junior, working her way through school while she attended George Fox College. He talked with her every morning, save Tuesday and Wednesday, the days they both had off. She was pretty and petite with blonde hair. Doug loved talking to her, but had not worked up the nerve to ask her out.

He envied her optimistic outlook on her future.

He didn’t see Marin through the window. Normally she would be mopping or stocking shelves to keep busy. Doug checked out at the location with Station Eight-Two, took his notebook from the dash and got out of the patrol car.

The small bell jingled when Doug opened the door. He expected Marin to poke her head out of the back room when she heard the bell.

He listened for a few seconds, waiting to hear movement in the back. It was quiet.

He called out to her, Marin?

He slowly moved away from the front door toward the concealment of the racks of comic books and magazines so that if something was wrong, or someone else was there besides Marin, he wouldn’t be standing in the doorway like a giant silhouette target.

Hey, Marin? He called out a little louder. It’s Doug.

Nothing.

Marin?

He carefully stepped into the back of the store, hand on his .357. He kept his attention on the storeroom door which housed access to the beer coolers and the bathroom.

Marin? He checked down each aisle and tried to see through the glass cooler doors.

The storeroom door was ajar.

His thumb released the snap and he pulled the revolver from its holster. He held it at his side as he slowly pushed the door open. Its squeak deafening his ears. His heart pounded hard in his chest beneath his bulletproof vest.

He scanned what he could see through the open door and quietly stepped though. He could see both ends of the storeroom, and into the cooler.

The bathroom door was shut. He knocked on it quietly with his knuckles. Marin? He said loud enough for someone on the other side to hear.

He tried the knob. The door was unlocked.

He turned the doorknob and heard the mechanism click. He prepared himself for what he was about to find and opened the door. A flashbulb image of three naked, dead teen girls in a log-lined bunker popped into his vision. He blinked it away.

The bathroom was empty.

That familiar nervous sweat began as he moved tactically to the front of the store, his gun still out, and peered behind the counter.

No one.

The bell startled him. Marin smiled at him as she walked through the front door. I locked myself out back taking out the trash, she said to him.

Doug stood, embarrassed, with his body hiding his drawn handgun. She turned away to pour him a cup of coffee and he holstered without her noticing.

-2-

The night he finally developed the courage to tell her how he felt about her, it came out in an awkward way.

The Graveyard clock ticked slowly. The radio had been quiet for hours.

A bright moon cast long shadows and a cold arctic wind blew down the Columbia and into the Willamette Valley.

His nightly visit with Marin was an island of solace.

He went into the Plaid Pantry early and stood on the other side of the counter watching her.

My parents want me to come home for the Easter Break, she said.

Will you go?

I think so.

I’ll miss talking to you.

You’ll miss me?

I will.

And then it was there. That moment, that turning point when he would tell her and she would either accept him or shun him.

I did bad things, he told her quietly. A lot of bad things.

Why are you telling me?

Doug broke eye contact with her. He turned and looked out the store window. The traffic light was red. A man thirty years Doug’s senior sat behind the wheel of a white Buick. His tie loose at the neck. His wife asleep in their bed. Their children married and out of the house. It was just the two of them, more than half of their lives behind them. Because I want to be with you, he said.

She smiled and walked around the counter and touched his cheek softly with her hand. She leaned forward and kissed him gently.

You’re on the other side of it now. A different place, she said.

It’s something that’ll be with me forever. It won’t ever go away.

Do you believe in forgiveness? she asked him.

I don’t think anyone can be forgiven for the things I’ve done, he said.

Would you do those things now? she asked him. Given the chance. Here today?

No, he said.

She stood close to him like they had been together for a long time and placed her hands on his vest above his heart.

I don’t believe the man who stands here before me would do anything immoral or do anything intentional to hurt someone. I believe he would protect those around him and the one closest to his heart. She patted his chest for emphasis.

I would.

He bent down.

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

Her lips were soft.

I’ll meet you after work, she told him when he walked out the door.

He smiled and nodded.

-3-

Stillness.

Even after Vietnam he was still amazed how one moment someone could be living and breathing and the next moment gone forever.

Marleen Rose was a single mother until 5:17 am when she called the emergency number in a panic and said her baby wasn’t breathing. Doug rushed up the stairs to the Main Street apartment.

Marleen was sobbing when she opened the door to 4A.

He’s cold, was all she said.

She showed Doug the crib in her bedroom.

You work the morning shift at Bowman’s don’t you?

I recognize you, sometimes you have beer with your breakfast.

Doug nodded and asked, What’s your baby’s name?

Thomas. He’s just twelve weeks.

Thomas was carefully wrapped in a blanket, a cap on his head to keep him warm against the winter night.

I fed him. Then put him down. About ten. I was so tired.

Doug started to take notes.

What made you check on him?

I don’t know. Something woke me. I think he made a noise.

You found him face down like that in the crib?

She nodded and started to cry again.

Crib death.

He’d read about it.

Babies slip away in the night, with no medical explanation.

He went over and pulled the blanket away.

Such little arms and legs. He was cold.

Stiff.

And the lividity was in the wrong place.

Body fluids should have settled to the front of the body, not the back.

He turned to her. She was watching him intently. Tears streaming down her face.

Sorry. It’s late. I’m a little rummy from being tired. You said you found him just like this?

She nodded her head and hid her face. She began sobbing again.

I need to call my sergeant, Marleen. Standard procedure with something like this. Can I use your phone?

-4-

By the grace of God, David Fletcher was unfit for duty.

Thick grass pollen the summer after high school graduation gave him severe asthma. He could barely take a full breath during his draft physical. He wheezed so badly the doctor rated him a 4F.

He enrolled at George Fox College. After two years he opted instead for a good paying job at the mill. Energized with an infusion of cash he asked his high school sweetheart Amy to marry him and she said yes.

In a year he saw the short sightedness of shoveling bark chips out of rail cars and began contemplating his future.

A chance encounter one evening with a balding police captain with the last name of Savage piqued his interest in police work. Knowing a full time opening was coming, he enrolled in Newberg’s Reserve Police Academy before he was 21.

The week after his birthday he placed his left hand on a Bible, raised his right and swore an oath to do God’s work in the Devil’s world.

Amy pinned his badge on the left side of his chest above his heart. She gently placed her hands on the sides of his face, stood on her toes and kissed him.

Fletcher was a natural. Like he was born for it. He memorized criminal and traffic codes, case law and procedures. He had a hard work ethic and a nose for finding trouble. In his second year he had the highest felony arrest record in the department. Police work was a perfect fit.

Unfit for duty and unfit for combat are not one and the same.

On a hot August afternoon, just three short years into his police career he killed the Buston brothers in a shootout following a bank robbery.

Wasn’t really much of a shootout.

Total of six rounds fired.

The shooting turned him into a short-term legend.

He was labeled a hero.

Gunfighter.

There was nothing heroic about it, just fear, reaction and dumb luck. That and skill with a firearm honed not on the police academy shooting range, but in the oak knolls and orchards of the Willamette Valley. Leading birds and squirrels by the nose and learning to squeeze with a smooth finger and steady hand.

Fletcher knew every road they may have taken out of town, it was a lucky, although educated guess, that the robbers had driven down a dead end road in Sunnycrest. That and the fact that Merwin LaJoie waved Fletcher down from the seat of his tractor and said, You know I think the fellas you’re looking for went that way.

Ronnie and Reggie were counting the money in the front seat when Fletcher’s patrol car rolled up behind them.

Fletcher could see Reggie’s eyes in the rearview and read his lips as he turned back to double check.

Fuck, man. It’s the cops!

Ronnie Buston gambled that Lady Luck was on his side when he stepped out of the passenger side with a pistol-grip sawed-off 12 gauge.

Nothing more groovy than a double-barreled sawed-off.

At least that’s what Ronnie thought when he took a hacksaw to his uncle’s side-by-side. Problem being, he wasn’t smart enough to realize he couldn’t hit shit unless the target was about five feet away. That, and he was too ignorant to know the difference between .00 and Number 8.

He fired it one handed like a pistol.

Both barrels.

Birdshot bounced off the patrol car windshield every which way.

Blinding orange muzzle flash as the magnum rounds passed through Ronnie and continued into the red clay road cut behind him. The two revolver rounds hit him in the upper chest and carotid.

Reggie panicked behind the wheel and floored it in reverse.

Spinning wheels on gravel broke Fletcher’s tunnel vision, and stopped him from getting run over.

Fletcher was lucky the two other rounds hit where they did.

The car rolled harmlessly into the front bumper of the patrol car. Reggie slumped against the steering wheel, a furrow through the middle of his head.

Brain, blood and hair coated the inside of the window.

Hendrix played on the radio.

The gagging, gargling, unintelligible sound made him shift his focus again.

Fletcher made eye contact with Ronnie, sprawled face up on the ground. His carotid artery sprayed like a leaking water pipe. Ronnie’s legs twitched. His boots left scuff marks in the gravel while his mouth worked like a dying fish. His pupils slowly fixed in a death stare. Blank and empty.

The patrol car engine idled.

The songbirds whistled in the trees.

Far off he could hear sirens.

Ronnie and Reggie Buston.

Twin brothers from California.

First and last bank robbery.

Ever.

David threw up in the grass before backup units arrived.

The ER doctor had to dig two pellets out of his hand and arm. He kept them in a glass container in his desk drawer. A third and fourth in his leg were too deep to remove.

An article in the Graphic, a pat on the back, and a slow case of lead poisoning were his reward for ten seconds of being lucky.

Five months later he was given a detective assignment.

He was three weeks into his new assignment when the phone woke him from a dead sleep.

Okay, I’ll be right down.

What is it? Amy’s pregnant belly was like a mountain beneath the blankets.

Fletcher kissed her on the lips. Put his hand on her baby bump.

He kicked.

How do you know it’s a he?

I’ll be back later.

You didn’t answer me.

You don’t want to know.

Be careful.

It’ll be okay. It’s not like that.

She listened to the tires pop on the gravel as he drove away, then shut her eyes and went back to sleep.

-5-

Doug watched Detective Fletcher sit down next to Marleen in the living room almost touching her knee with his. The wood paneled walls and tan couch with old worn wood floors gave it a dingy look. A green shag throw rug was underfoot. A bead curtain separated the living room from the bedroom. A poster of the Fab Four hung next to a crucifix on the wall behind the couch.

I’m so sorry Marleen. My wife is pregnant. I have a child on the way. I can’t even imagine how hard this must be. David opened his notebook and clicked the ballpoint pen in his hand.

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

I have to ask you some questions. How old is Thomas?

Twelve weeks. I named him after my dad. All he and mom had were girls. He was so proud the day Thomas was born.

No known medical problems?

She shook her head.

Tell me about tonight. What happened?

I already told Officer Black.

Tell me again, please.

She started to cry. Sobbing uncontrollably.

Fletcher put his hand on her shoulder.

I know it’s upsetting. But I need to know what happened.

I woke up and he was gone.

What woke you up?

I fell asleep. Her voice was a whisper. He made a noise.

You said you put him down in the crib.

She shook her head, then stopped and said, I mean yes.

Are you still breast feeding?

Yes. She nodded and mouthed the word. Then she spoke a little louder, but in fits. I’ve been working so much, trying to make ends meet. He’s been colicky. I can’t get anyone to help me. My mom and dad live out of state. My sisters are too far away. I am so tired all the time. It’s frustrating.

She started to cry again.

I can you tell you love him.

Between sobs, Very much.

Marleen wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

I can understand being tired. Frustrated. Marleen, did you shake him or hit him?

Her eyes opened wide and she shook her head, Oh, no! I’d never do that!

She reached for a tissue.

I fell asleep, she said again in a whisper. "When I woke up,