While Madeline was enjoying her book, Howie Traynor used the index and middle finger of his right hand to slightly part the vertical blinds of a window in the front room of his apartment. He peeked through the opening and watched the beautiful brunette sitting in the front seat of her black late model Audi sedan. He watched for almost a full minute then turned and walked into his bedroom.
At 5:15 that afternoon, Maddy’s phone went off. She checked the screen, pressed the talk button and said, “Hey, Dan, don’t tell me you can’t make it.”
“No, no, sweetheart. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Anything going on?” asked Dan Sorenson, a retired cop who was Maddy’s relief.
“Nope. He hasn’t moved all day. The street is pretty crowded. I’ll watch for you and pull out as you’re coming up the street so you can have my parking spot. And Dan,” she continued, “hurry up. I gotta pee. Bad.”
Sorenson laughed and said, “On the way.”
FOURTEEN
The two old friends cruised across Balm Lake in Northern Minnesota heading toward a favorite fishing spot. The sun was just about down and the men, longtime neighbors on the relatively small lake, were going to get in some night walleye fishing.
Sitting in the stern and steering the twenty-year-old Alumacraft was Robert Smith, a retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals. The judge’s fishing partner, probably the best friend he ever had, was seated in the bow silently acting as the guide to their spot. He too was retired from a medical practice in Bemidji, Minnesota. His name was Jay Patterson and the two men had been friends for almost twenty-five years, ever since Bob Smith and his wife Gloria had purchased forty acres adjacent to the doctor’s lake home. The Smiths had built a nice four-bedroom two-story a quarter mile from the Patterson’s. Over the years the two men and their wives had become the best of friends.
Three years ago, upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of seventy, Smith retired with the intention of living at the lake home full-time. Unknown to the Pattersons, this had been a source of contention between Bob and Gloria. Two days after his official retirement date, Gloria filed for divorce.
Once the initial shock wore off, the judge realized he didn’t really care. The divorce was amicable; the property and monetary settlement was reasonable and the couple parted but remained, if not friends, at least friendly.
“This is it,” Patterson said.
“No, not quite,” the judge disagreed. “A little farther.”
The little disagreement was a normal routine part of their friendship. If one said up the other would automatically say down. Despite this petty little quirk, the two men made the friendship work.
The judge throttled down the twenty horse Johnson outboard and the eighteen-foot aluminum fishing boat slowed and stopped.
“You went too far,” the doctor said as he dropped the anchor into twenty feet of water.
“I know,” the judge smiled to himself. “I just wanted to annoy you.”
That day had been sunny and warmer than usual for mid-September. The two friends had played eighteen holes at a course near Black Duck. Now, with the sun down and out in the open water on the lake, the air temperature was rapidly cooling. Because of the coolness of the evening, both men decided to use lures rather than leeches to catch the fish they were after. They each attached a Rattlin’ Rapala and began casting for walleyes. An hour into their fishing, the entire time having passed in silence between them, the wind began to pick up a bit.
“Getting a little cool,” Patterson said as he put down his rod and reel and pulled a pair of gloves from his coat pocket.
“Not bad yet,” the judge muttered. “It’s getting there, though.”
Another hour went by and the fishing had not been good. They each landed a couple of walleyes and several crappies, none worth keeping. Shortly after nine P.M. the two men decided to call it a night. They packed up their gear and ten minutes later the judge throttled down the motor and the boat gently bumped into the Patterson’s dock.
The doctor gathered up his fishing equipment and stepped onto the dock. He stood under the light on the dock’s end, looked at his old friend and said, “Good night, you old fart. See you in the morning.”
“We’re going to the Bemidji Country Club first thing in the morning, aren’t we?” the judge asked.
“You bet. So I can kick your ass in golf again.”
“That’ll be the day,” the judge grumbled. “Good night, Jay. Pick me up about seven,” he said as he fired up the boat’s motor to pull away from the dock.
“Good night, Bob,” the doctor said then turned around to walk to his house.
After docking his boat, the judge trudged the two hundred feet up from the lake to his house. He entered through the back door and stepped into the mud room. He flicked the light switch, removed his coat and boots, propped his fishing pole in the corner and set his tackle box on the floor. Feeling a little hungry, he decided a snack would be a good idea. He went up the half-flight of stairs, through the living room and turned into the kitchen. He flicked on the light and heard a man say, “Hello, Judge Smith. I’m delighted to finally meet you.”
“Who are…” the judge started to say but stopped when the fifty thousand volts hit him in the chest and he dropped straight to the floor.
The next morning, Jay Patterson was having a second cup of coffee while Sharon, his wife of over forty years finished clearing the table. The television was on and tuned to a cable news channel. Sharon returned to the table, poured herself more coffee, looked out through the large, plate glass kitchen and said, “What was that?”
It was barely past six and still fairly dark. For a brief moment, Sharon had seen something moving through the trees.
Her husband turned in his chair to look through the same window and said, “What was what?”
“I thought I saw an animal moving through the trees heading toward Bob’s place,” she said quietly while she sipped her coffee. “There!” she exclaimed pointing.
“A wolf,” Jay said having seen the predator himself. “Wait, no, there’s another one. No, two more…”
“Three more,” Sharon said.
“What the hell are they up to?” Jay rhetorically asked.
There were wolves throughout northern Minnesota. Seeing one occasionally was no longer as rare as it had been when the animals first began making a comeback. Seeing several of them in a pack this close to the house was extremely unusual.
“There’s another one…” they both said almost simultaneously as they stood in front of the window to watch.
“They’re headed toward Bob’s,” Sharon repeated. “You think they might have a deer there?”
“I don’t know,” her husband replied. “I don’t like it, though.”
He set his coffee cup on the table and went to the gun case. He opened the glass door and looked over the weapons deciding what to take.
“Jay, what are you thinking?” Sharon sternly asked as she walked up behind him. “You’re not going out there with five wolves…”
“Something’s wrong over at Bob’s,” he said as he removed the AR-15 from the case. He leaned over, opened a drawer on the case and removed two twenty shot magazines filled with 5.56mm cartridges. He also strapped a belt around his waist with a .44 caliber Ruger Blackhawk in the holster.
“Get your coat please, and the flashlight off the refrigerator. I want you to come with me.”
“Shouldn’t you take the Remington 700 for more power?” she asked. Being a northern Minnesota girl, Sharon knew as much about guns as most men. “That AR-15 is a toy compared to the 700.”
“True but I just want to scare them off not blow a hole through them. Besides, if I miss the bullets won’t travel far. With the 700 they could go across the lake and go through someone’s cabin.”
The two of them put on coats and boots then Sharon went back to the gun case. She took out the double barrel Citori, loaded it with double ought buckshot and the two of th
em went out.
They walked past their garage and the motion light on a pole alongside the gravel driveway lit up. Something in the back of the doctor’s mind told him there was a serious problem at his friend’s home. When he reached the road that serviced the houses and cabins on this side of the lake, his pace quickened until he was almost jogging. The doctor’s seventy-year-old wife was struggling to keep up while carrying the shotgun and flashlight and repeatedly whispered at him to slow down.
The couple reached the driveway of the judge’s property when there was a low, ominous, unmistakable growl coming from the woods to their right. Jay stopped to allow Sharon to catch up. It was a mostly cloudy morning and the sunrise was just beginning.
“Did you hear that?” the doctor whispered.
“Hear what?” Sharon said, standing so close to her husband their shoulders were touching. She was pointing the flashlight at their feet while they looked into the trees. Suddenly they heard it again.
“Shine the light at that spot,” he said, pointing the rifle at where the noise came from.
Sharon held the light in her left hand pointed into the trees and the beam of light hit two pairs of eyes glowing menacingly back at them. She slowly moved her hand back and forth looking for more of them. As she did this, the doctor took one step forward as he raised the AR-15 to his shoulder.
Aiming at the ground directly in front of the sinister looking eyes, he quickly pulled the trigger five times. The five shots sounded like a cannon going off in the stillness of the morning. The bullets hit in front of the wolf pack leader who yelped, turned and ran off.
“Something’s wrong,” Jay said to his wife. “Wolves aren’t normally that brave to get so close to humans.”
Alarmed now at the brazenness of the wolves, the two of them turned and ran up the driveway. As they passed the equipment shed on their right, the motion light above the shed came on illuminating the yard and driveway.
Her husband continued to hurry toward the house but something out of the ordinary caught the corner of Sharon’s eye. She turned to her right, shined the light alongside the shed and audibly gasped and yelled, “Jay!” when she saw him. Twenty feet away, the judge was sitting on the ground between two birch trees, each hand nailed to a tree, his head slumped forward and his shirt covered in blood.
The doctor turned to the sound of his wife’s voice and immediately saw the light shining on his friend. “Oh my God,” he muttered as he hurried back to his wife.
“Give me the light,” he said as he took the flashlight from her. “Go in the house and call 911,” he continued while still holding the light on the body. “Call 911 and tell them there’s been a homicide.”
Sharon had been staring, her eyes unblinking as he said this. Realizing what her husband had said, she snapped to and as she turned to go to the house, she simply said, “Yes,” and ran toward the building.
Jay’s instinct as a physician was to examine the body to be sure his friend was dead. During the years of his practice, the doctor also acted as a county coroner. The position rotated among himself and six other physicians, each doing the job for two years then passing it along. Because of this, Jay Patterson had been at a few murder scenes; enough to know the protocol and to be careful not to contaminate it. He could clearly see Smith was dead so he stayed back where he was. He also kept one eye open for the wolves realizing the scent of his friend’s blood had been the source of their interest.
Balm Lake is located twenty-eight miles northwest of Bemidji, the Beltrami county seat. In less than half an hour of receiving Sharon’s 911 call, the judge’s property was literally crawling with Bemidji police and Beltrami County Sheriff’s deputies.
Sheriff Ed Newton, who was called at home, arrived forty-five minutes after the 911 call. A long time veteran of law enforcement, the sheriff immediately took charge. It was now past sunrise and the sheriff already had teams of officers carefully combing through the woods looking for evidence. On the way to the crime scene, the sheriff had called the local office of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to request their assistance.
“What’s that on his head?” Newton rhetorically asked the medical examiner as he bent to look at the body. “Jesus Christ,” Newton said when he realized what it was. The killer or killers had placed a double-strand of barbed wire that had been twisted together and made into a crown, on the judge’s head.
“Is this some kind of sick, religious thing?” Newton asked.
“Don’t know,” the ME answered. “I’ll know more when I get him back to town but he was tortured too. Look,” he continued as he pointed his pen at the dead man’s hands. “All of his fingers and toes have been crushed by something. Probably a pair of pliers.”
“Jesus Christ,” the sheriff softly said again. “Look, Doc, keep the details, especially the broken fingers and toes to yourself. Keep that out of the media and the public for now.”
“You got it, Sheriff.”
By the next morning, the news had reached the Twin Cities. A murdered Minnesota Appeals Court judge, even a retired one, merited at least some attention. The killer saw the Channel 8 report which took up about five minutes of air time just before a commercial break. The report was short on details and since it took place two hundred miles from the metro area, didn’t create much of a stir. Within forty-eight hours, it was completely forgotten by the population, including the cops of the Cities.
FIFTEEN
Aaron Forsberg parked the Ford mini-van he had borrowed from his uncle in the garage of his uncle’s home in Golden Valley, a suburb west of Minneapolis. He shut off the engine and exited the vehicle. It had been a long night and Aaron was dead tired and in no mood to discuss his whereabouts, even with the only person he knew who had stood by him and still did.
Aaron had been convicted of murdering his wife a little more than eleven years ago. At the time, it had been a sensational trial with infidelity, jealousy and of course, money all thrown into the mix. Aaron had been a very successful investment banker earning seven figures in salary and bonuses. The problem was he had to work ninety to a hundred hours per week to do it. This, of course, made for a very lonely home life for his wife and three children. Not surprisingly his wife Sarah, a still attractive woman in her mid-thirties, struck up an affair.
Late one Friday night while all three children were at friend’s homes or their grandma’s, Aaron came home late to find Sarah lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. Her skull had been cracked like an egg with a claw hammer the cops found in the garage. The hammer had traces of Sarah’s blood and hair and Aaron’s fingerprints. Aaron’s DNA was discovered on the body in the form of saliva found on Sarah’s face. Aaron claimed it was from him leaning over the body, sobbing and probably drooling a little because he was so distraught. Once his wife’s affair and the one Aaron was carrying on with a co-worker came to light, no one bought his story.
A year later, Aaron was sentenced to two thirty-year prison terms to run consecutively. One of the factors Judge Ross Peterson used to depart from the sentencing guidelines and make the terms consecutive was Aaron’s refusal to accept responsibility. Aaron insisted he was innocent and steadfastly maintained that position and still did for the murder. Aaron believed it must have been his wife’s lover but the man had an airtight alibi.
While in prison, Aaron lost everything. His children hated him, his friends and relatives abandoned him and all of his money was gone. The money went to legal fees or into a court ordered trust fund for his children. The only one who believed him and stood by him was the uncle with whom he now resided, John Forsberg, his deceased father’s younger brother.
For his own protection, Aaron had been sent to a prison in Michigan to do his time. As angry and bitter as he was after the trial, prison life also took its toll on his personality. Never one who could be described as warm and cuddly, prison had instilled a sharp, edgy hardness in him.
Aaron entered the house from the attached garage through the kitche
n door. He passed through it and found his uncle seated at the small, round, wooden dining room table directly in front of him facing the garage door. The morning paper was scattered about the table top and the TV was on in the living room.
“Where were you all night?” John politely asked him.
“Out,” Aaron tersely replied lightly placing his hands on the back of a table chair while looking down at his uncle.
“It would be nice if you would let me know if you’re going to do that. You’ve been gone since yesterday afternoon.”
“Sorry,” he replied without inflection.
“Your lawyer called.”
“What did she want?”
“Didn’t say. She asked me to tell you to call her.”
“On Sunday morning? That‘s a little odd,” Aaron said. “I’m tired. I’ll call her later.”
John hesitated for a moment and looked directly at Aaron’s face before saying, “One of the judges who turned down your appeal was murdered last night.” Uncle John couldn’t swear to it but he thought he saw a flicker of something from Aaron’s eyes and face.
“No shit, huh. Well, the bastard had it coming.”
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” John asked still looking for a reaction from his nephew.
Aaron hesitated a brief moment then said, “Why would you think that?” Aaron released his grip on the chair, stepped back and indignantly said, “I’m going to bed.” Without another word, he walked through the living room toward the guest bedroom.
He looked at the TV just as the young woman announcer told the viewers about the murder of a retired state appeals court judge. She gave his name and said the body was found at his cabin near Bemidji. No further details were available. Unseen by his uncle, Aaron slyly smiled and went into his bedroom.
While he watched his nephew walk away, John couldn’t help wondering about Aaron’s reaction. He had not asked a single question about the murder of the judge. Who was it? Where did it happen? How did John find out? Nothing. Not a single inquiry. And John couldn’t help noticing that, although Aaron admitted nothing, he didn’t deny anything either.
Marc Kadella Legal Mysteries Vol 1-6 (Marc Kadella Series) Page 147
