by Thomas Bloom
Pleasant
Harbor
MURDER AND MAYHEM IN PARADISE
A Novel By
Thomas Bloom
© 2015 Thomas Bloom
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1519561857
ISBN 13: 9781519561855
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Chapter Fifty Seven
Chapter Fifty Eight
Chapter Fifty Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty One
Chapter Sixty Two
Chapter Sixty Three
Chapter Sixty Four
Chapter Sixty Five
Chapter Sixty Six
Chapter Sixty Seven
Chapter Sixty Eight
Chapter Sixty Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy One
Chapter Seventy One
Chapter Seventy Two
Chapter Seventy Three
Chapter Seventy Four
Chapter Seventy Five
Chapter Seventy Six
Chapter Seventy Seven
Chapter Seventy Eight
Chapter Seventy Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty One
Chapter Eighty Two
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
It was almost six in the afternoon and Dusty Donavan, Sheriff of Potawatomie County, Michigan, got in his cruiser and headed home. Since he had lost his wife in a car accident two years ago he had lived alone. His only child, a 19 year old daughter, was just starting her junior year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He mentally went through his inventory of frozen food. He did not like to cook, particularly just for himself. While he was debating between a frozen meat loaf dinner and a pot pie his phone rang.
His caller ID told him it was George Streyer, Chief Ranger at the nearby state park.
“What‘s up George?”
“We’ve got a floater on the south beach. It’s a murder. You need to get your people here as soon as possible.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a murder?”
“You’ll see when you get here.”
“I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything or let anyone near the scene.”
On the way he called Roger Whitney, the county coroner, and also called for a two man back up at the scene.
Chapter Two
Dusty walked down the sandy path from the south beach parking lot to the shore. A cool wind blew from the west and the sun was low in the sky. It was late summer and the air had a little bite to it. His two officers were already on the scene and were standing well back from the water. The coroner had not arrived yet. He walked directly up to Streyer who was talking to the officers.
“Okay, let me see it.”
Streyer silently shrugged his shoulders and started to walk down the beach. From twenty feet away Dusty could see the body. It was bobbing slowly in the light surf. It was distinguished by three things. It was a female face down and naked. Or rather it would have been face down except that the body had no head.
“Jesus H. Christ. What the hell is this?”
“No idea,” Streyer replied. “We’ll have to walk the beach but my gut feeling is the body was dumped someplace else and just drifted here. It could have been tossed from a boat or just put in the river. The river current and wave action would have brought it here in a few hours.”
“I can’t believe it was dumped in the river,” Dusty said. “There’s still a lot of boat activity. Someone would have seen it.”
“Not if it was dumped in the middle of the night,” Streyer replied. “By dawn it would have passed the piers and started drifting down shore. Unless a boat came directly on it no one would have noticed.”
“Who was the first to find the body?” Dusty asked.
“The Robinsons. They’re an older couple who live just south of here. They walk the beach each evening. I’ve known them for years. They didn’t have a cell phone with them so they walked up to the parking lot and used the call box to contact our office. As soon as I got here they wanted to leave and I told them to go. You can interview them later but I don’t think they know anything. They were pretty upset. I told them not to say anything until your office released a statement.”
“Good thinking. We’re running out of light. We need to get the body out of here and get the beach roped off. I need you to lock the park entrance and put up a sign that says it’s closed for the day due to emergency repairs.”
As if on cue the coroner appeared with two ambulance attendants.
“The body’s over here,” Dusty said. “And I have to warn you it’s not pretty.”
Whitney walked over to the shore line and squatted to examine the body.
“Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He took out a flashlight and swung the body around 180 degrees so he could examine the neck.
“It’s a clean cut, looks like it was guillotined. There would have been massive blood loss. I can’t tell you anything more until I can properly exam the body.”
“Understood,” said Dusty. He motioned to the two EMT’s.
“We need to get this body bagged and delivered to the coroner’s office.”
As the two technicians wrestled the corpse into a body bag Dusty turned to his two officers.
I need you to take all the yellow tape you have and mark off as much of the beach as possible. Then I need you both back here at first light. One of you is to walk a mile south and look for anything that might pertain to this. The other is to walk north to the pier and do the same thing.
“So, we’re looking for a head?” one of the officers asked.
“A head, a blood stain, a weapon, whatever,” Dusty said.
By the time they left the beach it was dark. Dusty got on his car phone and called his Chief Deputy, a man named Randall Croft. After
explaining the situation Dusty told Croft to have a man on each pier at first light. They were to walk the length looking for anything that might be of interest. Finally, Croft was to meet Dusty at the marina where they kept their department outboard. Dusty wanted to examine as much of the shore of the river as possible.
Chapter Three
Potawatomie County sat well up the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. It was largely rural with only one city of any size. The Kenesaw River flowed from east to west through the center of the county and then emptied into Lake Michigan. At the river’s mouth sat the town of Pleasant Harbor. The area existed in two very different environments. During late spring to early fall it was a major tourist center. Visitors were drawn by the beaches, a number of marina’s that filled the town just before the river widened into a small lake and then flowed into Lake Michigan, many hiking trails and, most of all, by the Michigan Dunes State Park which lay south of the town. The dunes were unique because of their size, up to several hundred feet in height, and the unspoiled forest that lay between the dunes and the eastern border of the park. The area was full of camping sites, large and small hotels and motels and a number of restaurants, most of which were only open for six months or so of the year.
During the winter the population was reduced to a small number of permanent residents—about 12,000. The only tourist traffic was limited to some deer hunters during the season in late fall, some late season fisherman and a few snowmobilers during the rest of the winter. The lake usually froze over for much of the winter and there was no boat traffic.
The other attraction in the area was salmon fishing. In the mid-twentieth century a canal that opened in Canada to allow shipping between the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, bypassing Niagara Falls, also allowed ocean fish access to the lakes for the first time. One of the species that made the transition was the lamprey eel. The eel had a circular sucker on its head and a series of sharp teeth within the sucker. The eel would find a prey fish, attach itself to the body of the fish with its sucker and gnaw a hole in the side of the fish with its teeth. It would then literally suck the prey dry of all blood and bodily fluids. When the fish died the eel would move on to the next prey. The result was twofold. First, the dominant prey fish was the lake trout. Within a few years the lake trout were totally wiped out. Second, a small fish known as the alewife had previously been the primary food for the lake trout. When its natural predator was eliminated the alewife multiplied by the millions and then, due to insufficient food, they would die off and litter the beaches with their bodies. The stench of the rotting fish was so bad that it almost killed the tourist industry.
The solution to the problem, offered by the State of Michigan Fisheries Department, was to restock the lake with salmon, primarily the Coho and the Chinook. Despite much doubt that ocean going fish could survive and thrive in a fresh water lake the salmon prospered and soon brought the alewife problem under control.
The other result was the growth of a robust sport fishing industry in the lake fueled by the abundant availability of salmon growing to thirty or more pounds. The charter boats fishing for salmon kept the tourist industry going a full two months beyond its normal span as fisherman plied the lake until it started its winter freeze. Commercial fishing was not allowed because of the high mercury content in the salmon, the result of years of commercial disposal into the lake.
The effect on Dusty was that he had a group of hard drinking fisherman to contend with weeks beyond the time that most other tourists had disappeared for the season. But, for the moment, his time and attention were totally taken up with the body they had just recovered from the lake.
Chapter Four
The next morning Dusty and Croft met at the marina at seven and were on the river by first light. Dusty started down the shoreline at a slow crawl. He was looking for anything that might conceivably be connected to the crime. They went down one shore of the river as far as the pier and then crossed over and went upstream for two miles past the marina and then back downriver again to their starting point. They had seen huge amounts of miscellaneous trash and litter but nothing that looked in any way suspicious. As usual Dusty tried to start a conversation with Croft and as usual he failed. The man was competent and did his job but outside of his duties he did not like to talk. Dusty knew next to nothing of his personal life other than he lived alone in a farmhouse he had inherited from his mother someplace on the eastern side of the county. He had made Chief Deputy based on seniority, consistently high exam scores and the fact that he did his job with competence. Dusty had no problem with him but wished he was a little more personable.
After putting up their boat Dusty headed into his office to find a message to call the coroner’s office as soon as he arrived.
“I’ve got some preliminaries for you,” Whitney said. “First, like I said last night the cut to the neck was clean. Imagine a big man with a very sharp machete taking one huge swing. The body is totally drained of blood which I expected. I’ve done some preliminary toxicology tests. All this has to be confirmed by the state drug lab but I’m reasonably sure she had alcohol in her system and I also found traces of what looks like Zolpidem. There’s also something that looks like an anesthetic but I can’t be sure.”
“What’s Zolpidem?” Dusty asked.
“It’s a date rape drug. Mixed with alcohol it’s virtually guaranteed to make someone comatose.”
“Well there’s a story there, isn’t there? First a drink, then a date rape drug and then an anesthetic. Had she been sexually attacked?”
“She had never had sex.”
“How can you know that?”
“Her hymen was intact. She was a virgin. I ran a rape test just to be sure but it was negative. This was not a sex crime.”
“Wow. A virgin--pretty rare in this day and age. Did you get fingerprints?”
“Of course, they’re on the way to the State Police center now.”
“Anything else?”
“Well she’d had a hamburger and fries a few hours before her death. Also, I found no cuts or bruises. Nothing indicating a struggle. Also, no tattoos or scars. The body is totally clean. I’d guess her age in the early twenties.”
“Thanks Roger. Let me know if anything else turns up.”
Dusty went to work on a press release. He did not want to give a live conference now. There was too much unknown. At the very least he wanted to wait and see if they had an ID from the fingerprints. His office had received no missing person reports. He checked with the State Police and they confirmed no recent missing person reports in the state to their knowledge. He decided to leave the mutilation out of the release for the moment. Some family was missing a daughter and maybe a girlfriend or sister. He wanted them to hear about the beheading from him, not to read it in the press or hear it on the evening news.
Yesterday evening a female body was discovered floating near the shore of the Michigan Dunes National Park. The deceased appeared to be in her early twenties. No identification was found on the body. No other evidence was found at the scene and the Potawatomie Sheriff’s Department is awaiting the results of a fingerprint identification request from the State.
Anyone having any information that might assist authorities in this matter should contact the Potawatomie County Sheriff’s office.
He added the office’s phone number and web site and emailed the release to his list of press contacts. He expected the phones to start ringing momentarily.
The town of Pleasant Harbor had the only city police force in the County. It was a small department of about thirty officers headed by a female chief of police with whom Dusty did not get along. Amanda Stevens was an ex-military criminal investigator and thought she knew a lot more about police work than Dusty. Every time their jurisdictions overlapped she tried to take over the investigation. On those occasions when she was not successful she pestered Dusty relentlessly with questions, suggestions and criticisms. The situation was not helped any by the fact that several ye
ars earlier Dusty had arrested her husband for DUI and negligent homicide. He had run a stop sign, struck another car and killed the driver. He tested way over the limit for intoxication. He had been charged, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. To make matters worse he was killed in a knife fight while in prison leaving Amanda with eight and ten year old sons to raise on her own. Amanda was about five feet eleven, a little shorter than Dusty, and good looking in a girl next door sort of way. She had dark hair, green eyes and an engaging smile. They had never discussed her husband but Dusty suspected that there had to be some resentment there. She could not blame him for the DUI conviction. That was his job as it was hers. But the fact remained that if it had not happened her two boys would have a father.
Reluctantly, Dusty picked up his phone and speed dialed Amanda. She had him on caller ID and answered immediately.
“Good morning Dusty.”
“I’m just giving you a heads up. Late yesterday we recovered a body off the south beach of the park. It was a young female, nude and—hold on here, this is tough—her head was completely severed and missing. There were no scars or tattoos and no evidence of a struggle. The coroner’s preliminary report is that she had alcohol and a date rape drug in her system and possibly an anesthetic. We’re waiting on a print report from the state. I personally checked the river banks this morning and I’ve got a team checking the shore in both directions and another checking the piers. So far nothing. Anything you see or hear please call me.”
There was a long pause and then Amanda said “I want to be sure I heard you right. Her head was completely severed?”
“Yeah, Roger says it was a totally clean cut, like with a guillotine.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
Roger was struck by the fact that this had been exactly his reaction.
“Of course I’ll share anything with you Dusty. But please keep me in the loop as you go forward. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. We’ve got a sicko on our hands and sickos don’t stop with just one.”
“I’m afraid you may be right. I’ll let you know when I hear anything.”
Within the hour Dusty heard back from his two teams. They had found nothing on the beach and nothing on the piers. He was already getting a string of calls from the press. He instructed the duty officer to tell them that there was no more information and that he would hold a press conference in a few days when they had more information.
