Dead Water (6 page)

“You betcha.” In addition to guiding, harvesting leeches for walleye guys, digging graves, and shoveling snow, Ray also picked up a few bucks selling wildlife photos to local printers for their cheap calendars. He always kept a camera jammed under the driver’s seat, and while he often hit Osborne up for a tube of toothpaste or some dental floss, he never seemed to be out of film. Ten minutes later, they were looking down at the body from the trestle.

“Oh yeah,” said Ray quietly. “Doesn’t take a goombah to tell you what happened here.”

seven

“Fish die belly-up and rise to the surface, it is their way of falling.”

André Gide

A
small crowd had gathered around the second victim. An ambulance was parked in the grass nearby, but the EMTs were leaning against their vehicle.

“Good,” said Lew, “Lucy got to ‘em. Looks like they haven’t touched a thing.”

As Lew and Osborne got out of the cruiser, a man in his late forties, lanky in dusty denim jeans and a well-worn Levi’s shirt, walked toward them with his hands in his pockets. A tall, slender woman in equally dusty jeans, a washed-out pink polo shirt, cowboy boots, and long, straight honey-blond hair hurried behind him. Neither looked happy.

“Chief Ferris, I’m Bert James, and this is my wife, Helen.” The man extended his hand to Lew. “We found the body. These people”—Bert waved at the others standing in the road—“are guests of ours at Timber Lake Lodge. We run a bed-and-breakfast over there.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “So is she.” He nodded toward the body that lay on its side, slightly curled, about twenty feet away. His eyes shifted to look behind Lew.

“Dr.
Osborne?”
Bert raised his eyebrows as if to question why his former dentist had arrived on the scene.

“Doc’s a deputy,” said Lew. “He’ll do a forensic ID. I got the coroner out working up another case. Step over here a minute, you two. I don’t need all of Loon Lake to hear us.”

Lew pulled the husband and wife off to the side of the grassy lane that ran along a perimeter of meadow edged with forest. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Let me,” said Helen, stepping out from behind her husband. “I found her. I was out looking for blueberries—”

“When was this?” Lew had her notebook open.

“About ninety minutes ago. We’ve been waiting for you for quite a while.”

“Busy morning,” said Lew.

Helen continued, “So I had walked over in this direction. We have a trail here that leads to our deer feeder….” She pointed into the forest behind them.

Behind her was a wide meadow. Looking across, Osborne could see the roofline of a log home about a quarter mile away. The trail they were standing on was a grassy lane that snaked west, detouring off the main driveway, which was entered from the highway. He knew the James place by reputation only. The couple had moved to Loon Lake from New York City seven years earlier, built a drop-dead expensive log home, and was now trying to make ends meet by running a B & B. At least that’s what the locals said. Murder would not be good for business.

“Ashley went for a run late yesterday afternoon—”

“Ashley?” asked Lew.

“Her name is Ashley Olson. She’s from Kansas City,” said Helen.

“Good,” said Lew. “So we know who this is.”

“Yes,” said Helen. “I don’t know how she heard about us, but when she registered, she did give a name and number in case of an emergency. I’ve got a call in. It’s some woman in Kansas City. I assume that’s all right?”

“Fine. I’d like to be the one to talk to her, but right now just tell me exactly what has happened so far.”

Helen took a deep breath. “Last night … well, see, I
thought
she left the house to go out last night. No one saw her return from her run, but we didn’t worry. I just assumed she came back to change while I was in town shopping and then, maybe, went to dinner with friends. I mean, we don’t keep track of our guests’ activities….”

“Of course not,” said Lew. “You’re not running a scout camp.”

Helen heaved a sigh of relief. It was clear she was feeling very guilty that she had not noticed her guest’s absence.

“What friends would she have planned to see?”

“Now, that we don’t know,” said Bert. “We were talking about that before you got here. When she arrived Sunday, she spent some time looking in the telephone book, and I asked if I could help her find someone, but she said she had what she needed. She was gone for a while yesterday morning, but she didn’t say where she went or what she did. She was a very pleasant woman but quite private.”

“Right.” Helen nodded. “Some of our guests tell you their whole life story, but not this one. It was almost like she had something on her mind.”

“So she didn’t seem happy.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Helen, “more like she was preoccupied. No questions on where to rent a bike or a kayak, didn’t ask about fishing guides, not even restaurants. She just stayed in her room, used the phone in the living room a few times, and then went for that run. Now this!” Helen raised her hands in frustration.

Lew walked over to the body. The other guests still stood in a cluster at a polite distance, watching. The ambulance attendants hadn’t moved from where they had propped themselves against their vehicle, arms crossed. Osborne remained standing alongside Bert and Helen. He looked up.

Once again, the birds had gotten there first. A bald eagle circled, the massive head gleaming white in the sun. He thought of Ray’s description of the magnificent birds: “Vultures in king’s clothing.” Not that Ray was down on vultures. He frequently appalled clients by alleging that the birds of prey were proof of the Resurrection: “Hey, they recycle, doncha know … turn death into life.”

Lew crouched to look at the quiet form, touching the shoulder with her fingertips to roll the body back slightly. She glanced over at Helen.

“How do you know this is Ashley?”

“That’s what she was wearing when she left for the run.”

“I see. Doc, come here.”

Osborne walked over. The dead woman wore mottled purple and pink running shorts and a pink tank top. The straps of her white sports bra were exposed near the neck. The victim’s legs were tanned and rather thick for her small frame. Lew had pulled the body back far enough that he could see there was no need for his black bag: The woman’s face had been completely blown out from the side. If there were any teeth, he was more likely to find them in the bushes, in the tree trunks, or on the ground.

Osborne took a quick look at the ground around the body. Teeth, the hardest bones in the body, can survive the most severe physical trauma, including the blast of a bullet. He combed his fingers through the grass near the victim’s head. No sign of teeth. Not even much blood. Odd.

“Gunshot wound?” said Lew softly under her breath.

“Yep. High-powered rifle.”

“Doc, look at this….” The woman’s chest was a bloody mess. “Shotgun?”

“I doubt that,” said Osborne. “Looks like knife wounds to me. On the other hand, if the body was out here overnight, could be predators. I don’t know, we’ll need Wausau for that.”

Osborne crouched beside Lew. He spoke in a low, deliberate tone: “I can tell you this: See how the blood has pooled down along her left side? With very little blood and no teeth or tissue in the vicinity of the body, I have to believe this young woman was shot somewhere else, Lew.”

“And dumped here.”

“Yep.”

Osborne watched as Lew let the body fall back in place. As she took her fingers from the bare shoulder, Osborne caught her hand. “Wait … look.”

“Oh, brother,” said Lew.

The two bite marks were unmistakable. Osborne knew without looking that he would find two more on the other shoulder.

eight

“I know several hundred men. I prefer to angle with only four of them.”

Frederic F. Van de Water, author

“Here
comes another police car,” said Bert from behind Osborne. He pointed to the roof of a white sedan bouncing in and out of sight as it crossed the field toward them.

“Oh good, that’s Roger,” said Lew. “Is this the only access to the area?” she asked Bert.

“No. Our property line ends just the other side of our deer stand, a couple hundred feet past the feeder, due west. The neighbor’s road runs in just behind there. In fact, we have quite a problem with hunters trespassing onto our property, if that’s a help. We can’t see this area from the house—”

“So someone could have driven onto your neighbor’s property, walked a few yards this direction to drop the victim, and you would never see anything. Is that correct?” said Lew.

“I’m afraid so.” Bert thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. He looked very worried. “But the Bearskin Bike & Running Trail is less than a mile from here, too. I think that’s where she went to run. We keep a map of the trail at the front desk.”

“Could someone have entered Timber Lake Lodge unobserved and pulled Ashley Olson from her room?” asked Lew.

“That’s not impossible, but it’s not likely,” said Helen. “My desk faces our front door, which opens into the lodge living room. I’m there in the late afternoon and early evening because that’s when most of our guests arrive. You have to come and go down the center staircase to reach any of the bedrooms. That’s how I saw Ashley leave for her run in the first place.”

As Lew stepped away from the body, she studied the lush ferns blanketing the ground beneath the hardwood forest behind them. “Darn! I wish Ray were here to see if there’s any sign left in those woods.”

“I doubt he could find much the way everyone’s been walking around, Lew,” said Osborne.

“I’m afraid I tromped around in there myself,” said Helen. “I thought maybe someone had been in that deer stand of ours. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

Lew shrugged. “I’ll have Roger rope off a half-mile radius around this site. We’ll do a foot search through the brush. Doc, would you see if Ray can come out after he’s finished with that client of his?” She looked at Bert. “Don’t panic if you see a man with a fish on his head poking around out here. He’s one of my deputies. Ray Pradt. He’s good; he can track a crappie under ice.”

“Even if it rains?” Osborne looked up at the sky.

“Yes,” said Lew. She lowered her voice so Bert couldn’t hear. “I’ve got a lot more confidence in Ray than some Wausau jabone who wouldn’t know a fox from a feral cat.”

As she spoke, they watched Roger Adamcyzk climb slowly out of his car. Roger never looked real eager to join the party. Lew had inherited him as her senior deputy, and he was a lifer. Formerly a life insurance salesman, Roger had made a career switch in his late thirties, thinking that being a cop in Loon Lake would ensure a foot on the stool and a light snooze for most of the day. That was twenty years ago. He was right at the time, but Loon Lake changed. The tourist trade took off. Not only was Loon Lake redefined as a “destination location,” but the cost of living went up along with an increase in drug traffic, poaching, and domestic violence. Then Lew arrived. Poor guy rarely got a snooze in any longer. Worse yet, he was always assigned the body bagging. Today was no exception.

“Got that other victim on its way to Wausau for you, Chief. Pecore never answered his phone. Jeez Louise.” Roger had spotted the woman’s legs behind Lew. “Boy, oh boy, guess I shoulda had the van wait, huh?”

“I thought that’s what Lucy asked you to do.” Lew’s voice turned testy.

The look on Roger’s face said it all: “Oh, that’s what she meant. She told me that one of the techs from Wausau would be here in a couple hours so I just thought—”

“You thought he could use his Jeep?”

Osborne suppressed a smile. He remembered Lew’s description of her staffer: “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” She could say that again.

“Call Lucy, tell her to reach that van somehow. If she has to ask one of the state boys to pull ‘em over, that’s fine. Just get it back here, Roger.”

The older man slouched toward his car.

“And Roger,” Lew continued, “no one moves the victim until Wausau gets here. When they’re done, be sure the EMTs save every piece of clothing and shoes … just like I told you with the other victim. Every item, got that?”

Roger waved.

“Are we waiting for the coroner?” called Bert from where he stood watching, arms folded.

“No. Pecore’s at his granddaughter’s graduation this morning,” said Lew. “Doc here does a preliminary ID and then we send the victims to Wausau for a full workup. A lab tech is on his way from the Wausau Crime Lab to do the preliminary here at the site.

“Thanks, but we won’t need you folks.” She waved at the ambulance crew. “Crime lab should have a van on the way in about thirty minutes.” She turned to the Jameses. “Would you take your guests back to the lodge, please. I’ll be down to talk with everyone shortly.”

Bert shook his head, and Osborne knew exactly what he was thinking: First, Lew arrives late to the scene, now there’s no coroner. What the hell kind of operation is this? Not being a Loon Lake native, Bert would have no idea that the absence of the coroner was a blessing.

Pecore wasn’t well respected in the small town. It wasn’t just that people resented the fact that he let his two golden retrievers roam freely through his office and autopsy lab, leading to speculation that one of the pooches might lick a beloved. The man had a darker side to him. In addition to signing off on cause of death, he was also expected to photograph victims of assault and other crimes. Apparently, the confidential nature of his work didn’t register. Osborne knew of more than one instance when the guy had shown up at a local bar and proceeded to display official photos of his subjects, particularly if they were young females. It was no surprise to Osborne that when the daughter of one of his closest friends was raped and beaten, the family refused to report the crime rather than risk Pecore’s involvement. The problem was that the position was a political appointment; Pecore could not be fired, but he could be avoided.