Pleasant Harbor

by Thomas Bloom

  Chapter Nine

  Dusty took advantage of the free breakfast at his motel and was in the office of the Michigan State Campus Police at 8:30. He told the desk sergeant why he was there and the man took him to the desk of a detective. She was a very young lady who did not look old enough to be an officer, let alone a detective.

  “What can I help you with Sheriff?”

  “I’m investigating a killing in my county. We have the body of a young woman found in Lake Michigan. She was beheaded. She was nude. No clues of any kind except a preliminary autopsy report shows she was drinking and may have had a date rape drug and an anesthetic in her system. We’ve managed to identify her by matching her prints with those in her car that was reported as abandoned. That led me to her family. Her father told me that she had been dating the man in this picture and that he is an instructor at MSU. He thinks it was in math or science. His first name is Mitch. Can you help me identify him?”

  “Did you say she was beheaded?”

  “I’m afraid so. Pretty grisly.”

  “Jeez. Let me see what I can find.” She turned to her computer and started clicking keys. After a minute or so she swung the monitor around so he could see it.

  “Here’s your man. Mitchell Watson, he’s a teaching assistant in the physics department. He’s working on his doctorate.”

  The screen contained a picture of Watson. It was a match.

  “I need to talk to him. How can I find him?”

  She did some more clicking. “He has a 10:00 AM class. It’s over at 11:00. You should be able to catch him there.” She gave him the address and directions to the building.

  He found the building and pulled into the parking lot. He had over an hour to kill. He started by calling Sergeant Johnson. This time he picked up on the first ring.

  “This is Sheriff Donovan. Do you have anything for me?”

  “Yes and no. I’ve got information but I don’t think it’s going to help you much. First, on her office. We found some personal files—bank statements, bills, receipts, apartment lease, tax returns, stuff like that. There was nothing on any other man. There was a duplicate of the picture you found at her apartment on her desk. You’re free to go through it but there’s nothing there. She also had a lot of business files. A separate folder on every house she had worked on or closed. I boxed up her personal stuff. If you give me an address we can send it to her family.

  “My guys did crack her computer. We went through all her emails. A lot of trivial stuff and spam. Some exchanges with a guy named mwatson. Based on the dates I think that’s the guy in the picture. She has a Facebook account but it’s pretty basic. Nothing on anyone she was seeing. There were a lot of pictures of houses but no personal photos. There was also a lot of business stuff—sales agreements, commission statements and so on. I’m wondering if our guy might be some potential buyer she was working with on the job. I think it would be worth it to track down any male she has worked with recently. That would probably be those business files that were on the floor in her bedroom.”

  “Thanks a lot Sergeant. I’ll go back to her apartment and pick up those files. I’m at MSU now. I’ve ID’d the guy in the picture. He’s an instructor here. I should be able to see him a little later this morning.”

  “Okay, stay in touch. Let me know if there’s anything more we can help you with.”

  “You’ve been a great help already, Sergeant. I owe you one. I’ll let you know if anything material develops.”

  At 10:50 Dusty was outside the classroom. He could see Mitchell Watson finishing a presentation on the whiteboard. Dusty saw a long string of equations that meant nothing to him. A few minutes before 11:00 the students filed out of the room. Watson was busy erasing the board. Dusty entered the room and opened his ID.

  “Mr. Watson, my name is Dusty Donovan. I’m the Sheriff of Potawatomie County. Three days ago we found a body in the county. It appears to be a murder and we’ve identified the deceased as Angel Patterson.”

  Dusty watched the man’s face closely. What he saw seemed to be genuine shock. Watson grabbed the back of his chair and slowly lowered himself into it.

  “What the hell happened? How was she killed?”

  “I’ll explain that a little later but first I need to know the last time you saw her and where you were three nights ago.”

  “Are you saying you think I had something to do with it? Christ, she was a friend of mine.”

  “Mr. Watson, the way these things work is that everyone is a suspect until we eliminate them. Once again, when did you see her last and where were you three nights ago?”

  “Let me think a second.” He glanced at a calendar he pulled from his briefcase. “I saw her that afternoon. We met at a Starbucks and talked awhile. That was about three in the afternoon. Then we split. I had an evening class that night, about thirty students. It ran from eight to nine.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Well, to be honest. I told her I was unhappy with our relationship and I wanted to call it off.”

  “What reason did you give her?”

  “This is kind of personal Sheriff.”

  “This is a murder investigation Mr. Watson. Anything could be a clue or be material to the case.”

  “I told her that we were adults in an adult relationship. I said I expected we would have a complete relationship including a physical one. She had resisted that. She said she would sleep with her husband, when she had one, but no one else. So I told her that I’d like to terminate our relationship. I said I liked her and maybe loved her but that I wasn’t ready to make a lifetime commitment yet. I said I would need more time but only if we had a complete relationship.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She started to cry and then she said ‘The hell with you. I will not be blackmailed into going to bed with you.’ She picked up her stuff and left. I’ve felt really shitty about the whole thing since then. I’ve been thinking about calling her and telling her I’d like to pick up where we left off with no conditions. And now you’re telling me she’s dead.”

  “This class you taught that night. How would I verify that?”

  Watson dug in his briefcase and pulled out a folder. He handed Dusty several pages stapled together. “Here’s the class roster. You can keep it. I can print another. You’re free to talk to any of them. Their contact numbers are on the list.”

  “Do you know of anyone else she was seeing or might have seen before she started dating you?”

  “No. I met her through a Christian date site. It was very slow. We had four or five coffee dates before she would even have dinner with me. I was never in her apartment and she was never in mine. She never said anything about any other guy.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your cooperation. Here’s my card. If you think of anything at all that might pertain to this please call me.”

  “You said you would tell me what happened to her.”

  Dusty hesitated a minute and then shrugged his shoulders. Everything would come out soon enough anyway. Some things you can’t keep quite. “She was beheaded and then her nude body was dumped either in the local river or in the lake where we found it.”

  “Beheaded? You’re kidding. What kind of sick person would do that?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m trying to find out sir. Please wait a day or so before you repeat this to anyone. As soon as we have a news conference it will be public information.”

  Dusty left the man sitting in the classroom with a very pained look on his face.

  When he was back in his car he started calling the students on the roster. He finally managed to reach five of them. They all confirmed that Watson had taught the class on the night in question. The class had run from eight to nine. Angel Patterson had left the bar with someone between eight and nine. That man could not have been Watson.

  He started the drive back to Angel’s apartment. He was not that far from Ann Arbor and debated trying to see his daughter. He gave it up. Sh
e was not expecting him and he did not know where to find her. Anyway, he had work to do.

  He retrieved the files from Angel Patterson’s apartment and went back to his hotel room. There were fifteen files. Angel had kept meticulous notes. The file recorded every home she had shown, the date of the showing and the prospect’s reaction. Eleven of the fifteen were couples. He laid them aside for the moment. One was a single woman. That left him with three single men. Two lived in the area and one was in New Jersey. Apparently he was being transferred to Lansing by his employer and had come in for a long weekend to look for a new home. He noted that none of the files had any record of a meeting scheduled on the night Angel was killed.

  It took him two hours to track down the two local prospects. They both had alibis. One was on his local city council and he had attended a regular weekly meeting that night which lasted from seven to eleven. A call to the City Clerk confirmed his attendance.

  The second was in a bowling league that had competed on the evening in question. He gave Dusty the names and numbers of his team mates. A few calls confirmed his attendance.

  He managed to get ahold of the New Jersey man’s employer when the man did not answer his home or cell phone. After a long time explaining who he was and what he wanted the company’s HR department confirmed that he had been gone a week at a convention in San Francisco. Other employees were with him and confirmed his presence. That left the eleven other files which he would have to work from his office. It was a pretty good bet that Angel had not planned any business meeting the night of her death. She did not seem the type to meet a client after hours in a bar.

  He planned on returning to Potawatomie County the next morning. He was at a dead end and very frustrated. He had nothing. He went down to the hotel restaurant and had a couple of drinks and dinner. He was in bed by nine.

  Chapter Ten

  On his way home the next morning he checked with Randall Croft. No news of any kind. He also called Roger Whitney to check on the status of the corpse. Roger told him it would be another day or so before he got all the results back from the state lab. Unless there was something new in the report he would be ready to release the body. Dusty told him of the promise he made Angel’s father to try to find a courtesy delivery of the body back to Adrian. Roger said he would work on it.

  Dusty then called Amanda Stevens.

  “Dusty, any luck in Lansing?”

  “Only dead ends. The guy she was seeing has an iron clad alibi. There was no evidence of any other guys in her life. I checked the prospects she was working with on her job. I still have some work to do but I don’t think there’s anything there. She was an only child and her parents took it pretty hard. In fact it put her mother in the hospital.

  “Look, I could use some help here. I don’t know where to go next. Are you free for lunch?”

  “Are you asking for my help? This will be a first.”

  “Maybe brainstorming it with someone else will help. I thought maybe you might have seen something like this while you were in the military.”

  “I’ll see you at Porky’s at noon.”

  Porky’s was the local barbeque eatery. It served simple food at reasonable prices and was one of the few restaurants that stayed open all year. Its owner, a crusty ex-marine drill sergeant, worked almost every day from lunch through dinner. As a consequence he knew virtually everyone in the County and, when pressed, could be the source of information. Dusty didn’t press him often but occasionally used him as a source. In return he ate most lunches and many dinners on site.

  When she walked through the door a few minutes after twelve he was already in a booth nursing a cup of coffee. “Thanks for coming.”

  They ordered and Amanda asked him to bring her up to date and to tell her about Angel Patterson. He told her about his activities in Lansing and Adrian.

  “She seemed to be a good person. Very meticulous in her work. Her apartment was clean and neat. She had a good family. Whitney told me she was a virgin. Her boyfriend broke up with her because she would not have sex. I don’t think she caused this in any way. She was the victim of some random act. Did you ever see anything like this in the military?”

  “Not exactly. But we did deal with some very weird perps. We had one case somewhat like this where someone was running around the base wearing a ski mask and throwing acid in women’s faces. We had some pretty bad injuries and one woman lost her sight.”

  “Did you find the guy?”

  “Yes, but we had to call in a profiler.”

  “So, I’ve heard of them before but I’m not sure how they do what they do.”

  “They construct a profile of the killer including what their possible motivation is. This guy went through all the files, interviewed all the victims and visited every attack site. The theory he came up with was that our perp had developed a deep seated hatred of all women based on some kind of rejection by one of them. Every time he threw acid in someone’s face in his mind he was doing it to whoever had rejected him.”

  “So where did that take you?”

  “We had an advantage. Because everything happened on base we knew we were dealing with a member of the military. We went through a lot of records and came up with a list of men on base who had reported a divorce in the last year. That would not include guys who just broke up with their girlfriends but it was a place to start. We had another advantage because we knew when each of these guys had been on duty. So we checked their work records and tried to find anyone who was off duty during each of the attacks. That narrowed it down to only two men. They were both NCO’s and they both lived off base. We got a court order to search their homes. Guess what? In one of their garages we found several beakers of the same kind of acid that had been used in the attacks. We pulled the guy in and he cracked after an hour. It turned out his wife had asked for a divorce a couple of months earlier. He had refused so she just moved out. He started stalking her so she got a court order to keep him away. When he showed up in her front yard one day she freaked out and just left town. We don’t know where she ended up. That’s when he started the attacks.”

  “So where do I get one of these guys—a profiler?”

  “Most of them are independent contractors and they don’t come cheap. The guy we used retired a few years ago and I remember hearing he had moved to Indiana. Let me do some checking. Maybe he’d be willing to come out of retirement if we offered to pay his expenses and a few bucks extra.”

  “Thanks. Please get on it. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Just what I shared with you the first day. This guy’s a sicko and I don’t think he’s going to stop with just one. From what we know so far the victim was random. That means any woman anyplace in Michigan could be next. I just don’t understand his abducting a woman in Lansing and then bringing her all the way here to dump the body. There’s got to be a local connection but I can’t see it.”

  “Me neither. As an officer or a sheriff I’ve worked twenty murder cases and never had a problem with any of them. But this has me totally stymied. I don’t know where to go next. Let me know if you get ahold of this guy.”

  Dusty picked up both checks. “Thanks for coming.”

  Dusty returned to his office to tackle the pile of paperwork that had accumulated while he was out of town. He did work his way through the eleven other files Angel Patterson had in her apartment. All but one of them had alibis for the night in question. The remaining couple was well into their seventies and had been married for over fifty years. Dusty decided there was no fit.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Okay, mama. I did pretty good with that one, huh? Next I’m going to do grandma. I’m saving you for last. You told me too many times how worthless I am and how I can’t do anything right and I can’t get a girl. Well I was smart enough to wait for you and grandma to die so I got the place. And I’m doing just fine by the way. Good job. No debts. I’m looking forward to you. I’ll have to pick just the right one. Someone as mean and cruel as you.”


  The anesthesia and the date rape drug were easy. You can buy the anesthesia on line if you set up a false medical facility as a front. The date rape drug is also available on line from foreign suppliers. For that you don’t even need a front. Just pay for it and they ship it. They don’t care.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dusty knew he had delayed the press conference long enough. Unlike some of his colleagues, he got no thrill from talking to the press. It was normally a frustrating exercise in balancing the public’s right to know with not revealing any information that could compromise the case. In his present situation there was very little of the latter. He sat up the conference for 3:00 PM that afternoon.

  He checked the mirror behind the door in his office. He could use a haircut but not so badly that he was going to do it today. His real name was Richard Henry Donavan Junior but he had been blond since birth and to avoid confusion with his father he had quickly acquired the nickname. He was six feet one and well-built but going a little to pot in his late thirties. He had an exercise machine in the corner of his living room which saw too little use. Several years earlier he had gone through a long series of classes to acquire a black belt. He did it just to give himself an edge if he ever had to face a perp one on one with no weapon at hand. To date, he had never used those skills and he feared they were probably a little rusty if the occasion were to arise now. He had played college football at the small school he had attended—Hillsdale College—and also played on the golf team. After school he had bounced around in several different jobs until he had applied for and been hired as a Sheriff’s Deputy in Potawatomie County where he had been born and raised. As soon as he started he knew that this was his career. He loved the work. He had met his wife shortly thereafter and they were soon blessed with their daughter. Complications with the delivery meant that this would be their only child. Except for his time in college and the police academy he had spent virtually his entire life in Potawatomie County. He knew the county and most of its people.