Bough Cutter

by Jeff Nania

  Len started. “Folks, thanks for coming in. I know it was inconvenient for many of you, but as you know, that is the nature of law enforcement. I would like to start with Officer Smith telling us about the traffic stop she made the other day. Kristin, if you don’t mind,” Len directed.

  “Sure, Chief,” Officer Smith replied and shared the details of the stop.

  “Folks, by all appearances, it seems that the drug network in the north country is wide open. The ongoing violence is a result of a turf war between drug gangs, and we have reason to believe that this will escalate. We have asked the community members to keep their eyes and ears open. Anytime you get a tip on something, follow up on it. It is critically important that we are all paying attention. You all have photos of some individuals who may be involved. These are people we know about, and there are most certainly others we don’t know. Our options are somewhat limited, but I think it only makes sense that we do what we can to shut this thing down before it gets any bigger. So, let’s get out there and keep our eyes and our ears open. Call in every stop, and ask for backup for anything that looks the least bit suspicious,” Len concluded.

  Everyone filed out of the room and resumed their normal duties. In a small town with a relatively small population and surrounded by a rural landscape, everybody knows everybody. During the height of the tourist season, thousands of people show up. Law enforcement gets pretty adept at picking out people from a crowd who may be trouble. With summer over, it would be much easier to pick out new faces.

  Law enforcement officers hated the trouble that drugs had brought to the north country as much as, or more than, anyone. They would be judicious in carrying out their duties. They may push a little too hard on those suspected of bringing trouble, but that was okay. Maybe a case or two would be tossed but making sure the bad guys know they were being watched would yield great benefits. •

  24

  For the next several days, things were quiet. Fall was quickly becoming winter. There were more pickup truck loads of firewood going through town than cars full of drugs. People were doing what people do in places that have cold winters and live close to the land. They were getting ready. Daylight did not break until almost seven, and darkness crept back in by five. The time available to do things had dwindled, so people hustled to get things done.

  Adjacent to the north Namekagon County line was a parcel of state-owned land where, for five dollars, people could get a permit to cut and remove dead or fallen trees in a designated area. The lots were available due to a tree-killing disease and straight-line winds that had blown through the area several years before. Usually, people cut the wood to firewood lengths and stacked it close to the two-track or fire lane access. On subsequent trips to the woodlot, they would split the wood into manageable pieces, load it up, and haul it home. Although the wood was left stacked and unattended, firewood theft was rare and akin to being a horse thief in the old west. Some despicable characters tried it, but they were served a healthy dose of Northwoods justice.

  A call came over the radio, sending one of my deputies to an off-road motor vehicle accident at one of the firewood cutting areas. The dispatcher said that the complainant was extremely agitated. I was a considerable distance away but started heading in that direction just in case the situation escalated. No more than five minutes from the original call, a second call came in requesting the fire department. Deputy Plums arrived at the scene shortly after and put out a 10-33 call for emergency assistance. I hit my lights and siren, arriving just as the first couple of firetrucks did. Deputy Plums waved them on to a place further down the two-track. It wasn’t difficult to see where they were headed. An intense column of smoke and flames was topping the trees. In my rear view I saw more fire trucks and got out of the way to let them pass.

  Deputy Plums was standing with two people. I got out of my squad and approached the group. “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “Sheriff, to be honest with you, I have only gotten bits and pieces so far and was getting ready to take these guys’ statements.”

  They provided us with ID that identified them as John and Ian Stevenson. Father and son. The father started, “Well, we heat mostly with wood, and with winter coming, we have been out here every spare minute getting everything loaded and split. We were set up here on the fire lane off to the side of the two-track road. Ian was loading, and I was running the splitter and pitching it into my truck bed. The splitter ran out of gas, and after we fueled it up, we sat down to take a little break. We were sitting here—I was having a cup of coffee and Ian his Mountain Dew—when out of nowhere comes some screwball in a hotrod pickup truck flying down the two-track, and I mean he was flying. If somebody had been coming up that road on an ATV, he would have killed them sure as I’m standing here. He swerved to miss our truck and ended up hitting our splitter hard enough that he bent the crap out of the ram. He just kept going, hit the pavement, and he was gone. He didn’t miss hitting one of us by more than a couple of feet. We were cussing him out when we heard the explosion. Ian and I jumped in the truck and drove toward the boom. We got down to where the fire trucks are now, and there was single-wide mobile home burning like all get out. The flames were a good twenty or twenty-five feet high. Then Ian pointed out some hundred-pound LP cylinders and said, ‘let’s get out of here.’ One was blowing out the top like a blow torch pointed right at the other ones. I spun the truck around and got out of there just before we heard another explosion. That one sent a big cloud into the air. We called the fire department.”

  “Can you give us a vehicle description?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Ian responded. “It was a newer black Dodge extended cab. It had a loud exhaust, body lift, and big tires. There was a heavy-duty brush guard on the front—that’s the part that hit our splitter. There was also a big scrape and dent about two feet long on the rear passenger side of the box.”

  “Could you see the driver?”

  “Nope, the windows had heavy tint,” Ian replied.

  “Which way did he go when he got on the highway?”

  “Toward town.”

  “South?” I asked.

  “Yeah, south.”

  Before I finished talking to the Stevensons, the fire chief called me on the radio and asked me to come to the fire scene right away. I walked down the two-track, which eventually turned to mud from all the water, and found him.

  “What have you got, Chief?” I asked.

  “The fire was burning hot when we got here. But we got our equipment deployed and were hosing down the building in short order. Most of what was going to burn had burned, and we had the fire knocked out pretty quick. When it was safe to approach, one of my men and I walked up to the structure. That’s when we saw a body in the yard. We checked for a pulse or respirations, but there were no signs of life. The victim was on his stomach, and we saw something in the thoracic spine area that looked a lot like an exit wound. We turned the victim over and found what appeared to be a single entrance wound. It looks like this guy was shot, not killed by the fire. We backed off and paged out the ME, and he is on the way.”

  “Good work, Chief. If it’s okay with you, once the ME gets here, I am going to have my deputy photograph the entire scene.”

  “Fine with me, Sheriff.”

  In the meantime Deputy Plums worked with dispatch. A BOLO was issued with the vehicle description and last direction of travel. The driver was wanted as a person of interest in a death investigation. The description went out to the TV station, the radio, the newspaper, and the Internet. I wanted everyone in the county and surrounding area to be looking for that truck. Additionally, I had dispatch ask any deputies who could to come in on overtime to cover more ground. We needed to find that truck before it ended up at the bottom of a lake.

  It wasn’t long before Dr. Chali arrived. He went right to work and began examining the body, narrating and videoing at the same time. When he finished his initial examination, he approached the fire chief and me.r />
  “Here’s my initial finding. It looks like this guy was hit with a projectile that entered through the chest and exited through the back. Possibly a bullet, but it’s hard to say right now. He was probably on the ground already when the explosion occurred. The fire must have washed over him and scorched his clothes, but he was not caught in the major conflagration. I have taken some video and will take more before we load him up. Other than that, I have nothing else at this point,” Dr. Chali reported.

  “Thanks. Before you move him, I want my deputy to take some pictures. He will be quick.”

  “Okay with me. Have him send a copy over to my office.”

  “We’ll do it,” I said.

  Once Deputy Plums was taking the photos, I walked over to talk with the fire chief. “Got any ideas about this, Chief?” I asked.

  “It looks like another meth lab to me. The fire marshal is on the way. My first guess would have been that it was an accidental blowup, not high order like the other one. But with the dead guy who looks like he was shot, I have second thoughts.”

  With our help, Dr. Chali bagged the body and loaded it for transport. They were soon on the road back to town.

  The fire chief and I cordoned off the area with crime scene and fire scene tape. The fire crew was loaded and ready to get back to the station. A thousand gallons of water, boot prints, and tire tracks turned it into a mudhole. Not an uncommon situation at a fire scene. They had their job, and I had mine; we both did them to the best of our ability.

  I hoped the scene would give us some idea of what happened here. I decided to wait for the fire marshal. Investigator Wolfman pulled in with two crime scene techs two hours later.

  “As soon as I was requested in Namekagon County again, I advised Lieutenant Malone. He ordered me to bring extra techs,” he explained.

  “Thanks for bringing them,” I said.

  Wolfman and I walked over the scene, and he dictated his initial thoughts into a handheld recorder. The crime scene crew was ready to begin, and I left them to their work. I called Julie and, with a weary voice, told her what happened and that I would not be home until late. She said dinner would be in the fridge, and she’d leave the light on.

  I called Ricardo and Len and told them what we had. Ricardo put it out to his people.

  I gassed my truck and started patrolling the parking lots and backroads. I passed other law enforcement units every so often. We had to use the remaining daylight to our advantage. Five o’clock darkness would come too soon. No one had encountered the truck we were looking for.

  I went back to the office. I was too keyed up to go home. Using the big whiteboard in the conference room, I wrote out my ideas about the case, erased them, and wrote them again. I went over everything I knew or thought I knew, examining each detail. Malone had to be right—some hardball players were out there and ready to take over the drug trade. The Martin killing, blowing up two meth labs, and the chemists along with them, was all about taking out the competition. These people wanted to send a message: cross them or get in the way, and you would end up dead. No talk, no negotiation, just dead. They were organized, skilled, and ruthless. Now, with the arrival of Deacon Gunther and his people, it was almost certain the body count would rise. Finding the driver of the Dodge pickup was important. Our first potential person of interest was alive. •

  25

  It was long past midnight when I realized how exhausted I was. I stretched out for a minute’s rest in an open seg cell in the jail. The next thing I knew, it was two in the morning, and the jailer woke me and offered a cup of coffee.

  “Sheriff, dispatch needs you ASAP.”

  I went to the communication center.

  “Sheriff, I have got Conservation Warden C160 who wants to talk with you on a secure channel. He is out of cell phone range.”

  I sat down at the console. “C160, this is Sheriff Cabrelli. Go ahead.”

  “Sheriff, this is Clark Asmundsen. I think I have your truck.”

  “Where are you, Clark?”

  “I am on foot in an area called Big Flats, about twenty miles out of town. I am on a hill overlooking a field, working shiners. About an hour ago, I heard a truck driving down the two-track. I looked at it through my field glasses, and I could see that it was a black late model Dodge pickup. A shack and shed are at the bottom of the hill I’m on. The driver pulled the truck into the shed. I didn’t see him get out, but a light came on in the shack, and I could see someone moving around behind the curtains. The lights went off in the cabin. I waited a while, and then I snuck down to look. It matches the description. On the rear passenger’s side there is a scrape in the paint about two feet long. It has expired Wisconsin plates. I went back up the hill, and I have the place covered as best I can. What do you advise?”

  “Have you got someone working with you?”

  “I’ve got a new recruit on the other side of this hill,” he answered.

  “Does he know what’s going on?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How do you suggest we approach the cabin and shed?”

  “You’re going to have to walk in. There is a roughly paved town road that connects with the two-track. At that intersection, you can start climbing the hill. When you get up top, we can take up positions. This is rough country—definitely not optimum for a tactical operation.”

  “Clark, advise your partner to switch down to tact three. Keep an eye on the cabin. This is a person of interest in a murder and arson. When we get there, your partner can guide us to the top of the hill.”

  “Copy that, Sheriff. What do you want us to do if he tries to take off?”

  “Stop him, Clark, but try to keep him alive.”

  I roused four deputies and Len Bork. They came to the office ready, and we flew out of Musky Falls, lights flashing. Deputy Holmes had hunted Big Flats with his family all of his life. He knew exactly where we were going. At the meeting point, we doused our lights. The young warden recruit was waiting for us. We hiked up the hill, and we encountered Warden Asmundsen when we reached the crest. He was sitting with his back to a tree in heavy cover with his binoculars trained on the shack.

  “Hey, Sheriff. Hey, Len. You got here pretty darn quick. Must have flown low,” the warden said.

  “That we did,” I replied with a smile.

  Clark gave us the lowdown on what he had observed. The truck in question was in a shed next to the house. The shed probably had a door attached to the house. He had not seen movement since the lights went out.

  Asmundsen had already scoped out positions. We agreed to get in place and wait until first light. It would be a long cold wait in rough country, but the heavy cover made visibility in the dark difficult. Daylight would work to our advantage. I would approach the shack. Two deputies with rifles would flank me using available cover. As I approached, one of our cars would pull up to the back of the truck, blocking it in and providing me with cover.

  We were in position with a little more than an hour before daylight. Everybody’s eyes were trained on the shack.

  Suddenly, the truck in the shed fired up and backed out at high speed, taking part of the door frame with it. It spun around in the driveway, jumped onto the lane, and accelerated rapidly. The truck was flying toward the county road. He would not make it. The warden recruit blocked the road with his pickup. If he swerved off, it would be into an undrivable boulder-strewn field.

  Clark had his rifle aimed at the grill of the Dodge. It didn’t come to that. The deputies had deployed road spikes on the two-track in case of such a circumstance. The Dodge hit them, taking out his tires and causing the truck to swerve on the rough road into the field, where it hung up on a boulder and stopped dead. Two deputies came down the hill and approached the vehicle. The dome light came on, and the deputies could see that the individual was preparing to jump out of the truck. Then they saw a gun in his hand. He turned to face them and stopped when he saw two little red dots centered on his chest. The warden approached and took the gu
n. A deputy handcuffed him.

  We contacted the DA. He advised us to do a thorough search of the shack and attached shed. He further instructed us to take a gunshot residue swab of both the suspect’s hands before transport. The suspect’s vehicle needed to be taken to secure storage, and a deputy needed to be with it at all times until a complete search could be done.

  Deputy Holmes took over the search, and the wardens volunteered to help.

  I transported the suspect to the Namekagon County jail. He was identified as Tyler Winslow.

  District Attorney Hablitch was waiting when we arrived. Winslow was taken into an interview room. The DA and I sat across from him. I read him his rights, and he interrupted me three times.

  “You don’t have to read me my rights. I haven’t done anything,” Winslow insisted.

  I persisted and finally got it done.

  “I didn’t know you guys were cops. I thought you were those other guys. How was I supposed to know who you were? It was dark,” Winslow said.

  “What other guys?” I asked.

  “The guys who killed Marcus and set the trailer on fire.”

  “Tyler, we’ve got you fleeing the scene of a homicide and arson. Then you run from law enforcement. We took a gun off you, and you’re a convicted felon. Any one of these things does not look good for you. Put them all together and, well, you can see why I might be a little curious. If you’ve got something you need to say, the DA here and I are ready to listen. It’s up to you.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with killing Marcus or firing his house. That is for sure,” Tyler proclaimed.