The Noding Field Mystery

by Christine Husom

  She was on the pretty side of average looking. Her straight brown hair hung to her shoulders and provided a becoming frame for her face. But her other facial features took a backseat to her striking, almond shaped, violet-blue eyes.

  “Hi, I’m Sergeant Aleckson. Detective Dawes is expecting you. Follow me.”

  Sheila was obviously tense. She didn’t answer when I asked if she’d ever been to the sheriff’s office before. In fact, she didn’t appear to hear my question at all. She maintained her silence until we reached the interview room. I knocked on the door to alert Smoke. He opened it and smiled at Sheila. It relaxed her enough that her lips curved upward. Smoke had that effect on people. Women, mostly.

  “Detective Elton Dawes. Come on in.” He offered his hand, which she shook.

  What Sheila thought we were going to do to her is anyone’s guess. She looked into the small room and appeared ready to jump out of her skin. “All right,” she said and stepped inside. She sat down in a chair at the table, almost collapsing in the process. “I’m sorry. I think everything just caught up with me when I got here.”

  Smoke leveled his eyes on her. “Very understandable.”

  “You know, when my son gave me the news last night I thought that was going to be the worst part, you know feeling so badly that the boys have to face this, but . . .”

  Smoke nodded. “Why don’t you tell us about you and Gage. Start wherever you’d like.”

  Sheila folded her trembling hands. “We started hanging around together in high school. Gage was very popular. Cute, funny, got away with just about anything, but never did anything really bad. Almost all of the teachers loved him. And I was the envy of all the girls when we started going steady. Until I got pregnant junior year, that is. Gage was a senior and was able to graduate. I didn’t go back for my senior year because I was pregnant again.”

  Sheila made a sheepish face. “I didn’t learn from the first time around.” She paused a second. “I suspected Gage was involved with other girls almost as soon as he put the ring on my finger. He really distanced himself after Dustin was born. Then after Aaron came, our marriage was pretty much over.”

  “That must have been very difficult.”

  “It was. We didn’t have beans for money. His parents and my parents basically supported me, helped with the kids, put me through college. I got three wonderful gifts from Gage: Dustin, Aaron, and a divorce. It took me a while to trust again, to find a good man, but I did.” She smiled. “A really good one.”

  “What kind of a father was Gage?”

  Her head moved from one shoulder to the next as she thought. “Ooh. Mmm. There when he wanted to be. We didn’t divorce for several years after we separated, so there wasn’t a custody or visitation issue during that time. When the boys were babies, I encouraged Gage to visit fairly often. I was there when he did and he didn’t take them overnight. But when he suddenly wanted a divorce to marry Nora, he was granted the standard every other weekend as the non-custodial parent.”

  Sheila looked directly at me, then at Smoke. “I didn’t trust Gage, but I did trust Nora, ironically. I did a little research on her. She was actually an old friend of Gage’s sister, Donna. Why Donna would dump Gage on a friend, I’ll never know. Anyway, the boys were old enough by then to tell me if anything happened that wasn’t right. And they got a baby sister a few months later. Whom they adore, by the way.”

  “How did your boys get along with their father?”

  Sheila shrugged. “Fine. He was more like an uncle, or like I said earlier, a friend. They look to my husband as their real father. And we did everything we could to raise the boys to be honest, respectful, and hard-working young men.”

  “So no animosity toward Gage that you noticed?”

  She tipped her head to one side, then the other for the second time. Her thought-processing action, I surmised. “I know by the time they got to be teenagers they were disgusted with Gage’s behavior.” She stopped a moment. “You’re not asking me if I thought they had anything to do with his death, are you?” Sheila was clearly taken aback.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s my job to ask all the questions—even the tough ones—that could give us the answers that will solve this case.”

  She studied Smoke. “I know. I just wish this would go away. Gage hurt a lot of people, but enough to get himself killed?” She shrugged.

  “Did he gamble, hang around with druggies, do drugs himself?”

  “Not that I know of. I honestly did not care what he did or did not do as long as it didn’t negatively impact my sons, in any way. It took me a long time to get to that point, to cross that hurdle, but once I did, I didn’t look back.”

  “You were in South Dakota visiting your mother-in-law, I understand?”

  Sheila watched her hands as she folded them. “She had a stroke. Poor woman.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “A care facility in Milbank. Saint Williams.”

  “Last thing: Dustin and Aaron own a construction company locally?”

  “Yes. D and A Construction. I have their card.” Sheila fumbled around in her purse and found a business card for Smoke. “They’re good boys.”

  I escorted Sheila Walker out, then made my way to the detectives’ cubicles and found Smoke at his desk. “Think she was involved?”

  He looked up at me over the top of his glasses. “What I thought was, she was going to jump out of her skin. Is she hiding something?”

  “I wonder. And I noticed, she did not answer the question of being out of town, out of state, the last few days.”

  “Right. She told us that over the phone, but not to our faces.”

  My phone beeped to alert me I had a text. It was from my brother, and I shifted my train of thought. “Oh good. John Carl giving me his travel plans. Man, I can’t wait to see Mother’s face when he surprises her.”

  Smoke leaned back in his chair. “So the sheriff figured out a good excuse to get Kristen to my house. Told her we were going to do a little fishing from my dock.”

  “I heard. Denny said Mother argued with him at first about going. She said maybe it should be a boy’s bonding night. He had to convince her it would be more fun if she came. Actually, he almost blew it when he asked who would fry the fish if she wasn’t there.”

  Smoke chuckled. “He didn’t.”

  “He did, but he laughed when he said it.”

  “Sheriff Twardy is a changed man.”

  Smoke’s cell phone rang. “Detective Dawes. . . . Yes, Marcella, thanks for calling me back. . . . I’m well, thank you. Say, I have a question about a guy we found, victim of an apparent homicide. . . . Yeah, same case. Anyway, he was out in the middle of a field, so the people who put him there meant for him to be found. He was naked, on his back, each hand and foot was tied to a metal stake that was driven into the ground. . . . Yeah. So what’s your take on this, from a psychologist’s point of view?”

  Smoke was talking to Dr. Marcella Fischer, an area psychologist we had met during a previous investigation. Her practice centered on working with victims of ritual abuse, but she had offered to help us whenever she could. On a personal note, she didn’t hide the fact that she found Smoke attractive. She had invited him over for dinner at least once, but he’d made an excuse not to go. Marcella was bright, gorgeous, and classy. I thought Smoke would welcome a date with her and was surprised when he didn’t accept.

  “. . . I was thinking along those same lines. Appreciate it. . . . Friday night? Ah, well I’ve got a surprise fiftieth birthday for a friend.” Smoke tapped my arm and mouthed, “Should I ask her?”

  It was an unexpected request, but why not? I nodded.

  “You’re welcome to join us, Marcella. It’s at my house, for Corky’s mom, Kristen. . . . No, Corky’s right here and said you should come. . . . Great.” Smoke gave her directions and instructions about where the guests were meeting and told her not to bring a thing.

  “You are a man of surprises every now and the
n.”

  “This is the third time she’s asked me to do something in as many weeks. It was only polite to ask her, but I guess I didn’t expect her to say yes.”

  “She likes you, Smoke. And she must feel isolated living in the country and having her practice in her home. I’d get lonely if I were her. Not that we really know much of anything about her personal life.”

  Smoke frowned slightly. “I know she was married and divorced years ago. No kids. Sounds like she has a good social network with other shrinks. No family close by.”

  “Does she know what she’s getting herself into, hanging around with cops? All we ever talk about is our cases.”

  Smoke narrowed his eyebrows. “As long as she doesn’t start analyzing me.”

  I considered that and smiled. “That would be scary. So. Getting back to business. What’d she say about our bad guys?”

  “In her opinion, Gage Leder was posed out in the field for either a personal reason, or as a warning. Or both.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “Well, it backs up what we thought. Someone thought he really done them wrong. We know about every crime boils down to money or power or sex. In Leder’s case, the field of suspects is still wide open. It’s evident he had some sort of Casanova Complex. And we know he lived off women, at least to some degree. His spending forced his parents to mortgage their farm. For what? Gambling, drugs, women, toys?”

  “If we could follow him around we might get some answers, but it’s too late for that.”

  “That would make our lives as cops a lot easier—if we only knew who to watch before the fact.”

  I was on my way home when Smoke phoned. “Just heard from Weber. The autopsy’s done. Leder died from arrhythmia, like his sister said his dad did. He had a condition called supra ventricular tachycardia, or SVT. Surgery would have taken care of it for him.”

  “Afraid to go under the knife?” I said.

  “Good question. Liver, other organs were healthy. No signs of alcoholism. They’re running toxicology and blood tests to see if there was anything else going on.

  “He’d been restrained prior to his death. Which we knew. Probably tied—duct taped—to a chair, where he likely died. No food contents in his stomach. Some in the large intestine. I understand food stays in the stomach for about five hours, but can be in the colon for several days.”

  “So he may not have eaten for a couple of days?”

  “It’s possible. We don’t know. All it tells us is that he didn’t eat for at least five hours before he died. Okay, what else? His body was clear of identifiable fibers, except for the twine he was tied with. He wasn’t beaten. Hadn’t been in a fight. No foreign skin cells were found under his fingernails or toenails,” Smoke said.

  “In other words, his captors were very careful. I have to wonder, since there were no signs of a struggle, was he taken at gunpoint, or did he know his captors and go willingly, trust them? It doesn’t make sense that they’d be holding him hostage for ransom. Or does it? I guess we don’t know how much money his widow has. Maybe he was bragging about it in the wrong place to the wrong people. So these captors have him tied to a chair, then he suddenly dies on them, they panic and rather than dump his body, they put him in the field—one that happens to belong to his sister and brother-in-law—to throw us off?” I said.

  “Welcome to my world, Sergeant.”

  CHAPTER 8

  On Wednesday morning, Sheriff Twardy called Smoke and me into a meeting in his office. He leaned into his desk and focused on Smoke. “I’ve taken at least fifty calls from the public and press so far. They’re all wondering if it’s true we found a man tied and staked out in a farmer’s soybean crop, what leads we have, and how close we are to solving the case. Rumors have been flying around for two days.”

  Smoke took a seat across from the sheriff. “I think we should run Gage Leder’s picture in the area newspapers, include a blurb asking if anyone knew him, had any contact with him in the last year or so. Or saw him in the two days before his death. Detective Conley has been talking to former co-workers, but Leder hasn’t worked for months, not since he scored by marrying a woman who basically supports him. If he was making extra money on the side, that would be useful information.”

  I sat down in a chair next to Smoke.

  “Putting a ‘requesting any information’ in the papers is a good idea, Dawes. I’ll have my assistant take care of that. What about all his wives, girlfriends, friends?”

  “Of the first four wives, two were out of state, one is maybe a hundred pounds dripping wet and didn’t look strong enough to carry a fourth of Leder’s dead weight, much less half. Wife one is the mother of his sons and wife two is the mother of his daughter. After all these years, something would have had to happen to give them a motive, and none of them indicated that anything had.”

  Twardy cleared his throat. “Well, it happened to Alvie Eisner. She’s a prime example of letting hatred fester for a long time. She didn’t start her revenge killing until ten years after her son’s death.” Alvie Eisner’s case had touched everyone in the sheriff’s department the previous year. She had killed three of our criminal justice professionals before we learned her identity and stopped her.

  Smoke tapped his thigh. “That’s true enough. And we haven’t officially ruled anyone out yet. At least two people know exactly what happened and why. We’ll keep pushing to find out who they are.”

  “Corky, you said the fifth wife is not very bright,” the sheriff said.

  “She had a brain injury. It’s more like she’s about thirteen years old.”

  Smoke explained, “Her cousin, Chip Ashland, says she’s easily used. He’s very protective of her, and frankly, I have my eyes on him as a definite person of interest. Any of Leder’s ex-wives could have a motive, but if I was Ashland, I would not take kindly to a man marrying and mooching off my disabled cousin.”

  I reached over and gave Smoke a pat on the back. “You and your strong sense of justice.”

  Sheriff Twardy cleared his throat again. “We have a major crime to solve. A man was held captive, probably drugged and died in the process. Then his body was put on display, for crying out loud. Why?”

  “Let’s hope someone will come forward with useful information when we post that request in the papers. Could be a lot of people to hunt down otherwise,” Smoke said.

  “You haven’t talked to his kids yet?” Twardy asked.

  “No, and that’s our primary order of business for today. Dustin, Aaron, Morgan. The boys are in the area, the girl’s in Saint Paul.”

  I was Smoke’s partner for the day. Another day out of uniform. The only thing I missed about my protective vest was the protection. Kevlar did not breathe, for obvious reasons, and the hot, humid days of summer, with that extra layer on my upper body, was not my favorite vest wearing season.

  We located Dustin and Aaron’s business in rural Emerald Lake. They operated out of a large pole barn off County Road 8. Next to the large overhead garage door in the front of the building was a man door with a sign reading D & A CONSTRUCTION across the top. I turned the knob and found it wasn’t locked, so I pushed open the door and Smoke followed me inside. The shed was filled with an array of tools and equipment, including a bobcat. To the immediate left was a small office. Smoke knocked on the door frame.

  Two young men sat behind desks, positioned so they faced each other. One was typing on a computer keyboard and the other was writing out a check. They recognized us as law enforcement and both stood in deference. “Oh, sorry, come in,” one said.

  “We were expecting one of our subcontractors,” the other added.

  “I’m Detective Dawes.”

  “Sergeant Aleckson.” I extended my arm. They shook our hands and introduced themselves. Dustin had dark brown hair and eyes and favored his father in height and looks. He came across as business minded and intense. Aaron looked a lot like his aunt Donna, but had dark blonde hair and blue eyes like his mother.
He was a couple of inches shorter than his brother and had an easy grin.

  “Our condolences to you both.”

  They nodded, but neither appeared overly upset.

  “We didn’t know what else to do, except keep working, like we always do,” Dustin said, and grabbed two folding chairs that leaned against the back wall behind his desk. He opened first one, then the other, set them on our side of the desks, and motioned for us to sit down.

  “It’s a pretty big shock, though,” Aaron said as we all took a seat. “I mean, the way he was found and everything.”

  “Of course it is.” Smoke pulled out his readers, a pad, and pen. “We’re looking into exactly what happened to your father and why. We want to solve this, give you closure.”

  “Any suspects?” Dustin asked.

  “Not at this point. We’re talking to all the people who were close to him, at one time or another.” Smoke put his arm across his waist, rested his opposite elbow on it, and lowered his chin onto his hand. “Is there anyone you know of who your father was having trouble with, had a dispute with?”

  Dustin and Aaron looked at each other. Finally, Aaron answered. “It’s really bad to say, but it could be with a lot of people.”

  Dustin took over. “But it was more like other people might have had a dispute with him. After we grew up, we didn’t see him all that much. We finally figured out a few years ago that he only came around when he needed something. Money, a place to sleep once in a while.

  “Two years ago we told him not to come around begging anymore. We hardly ever saw him after that. We try to concentrate on the good times we had with him as kids. Mom and Dad—our stepdad—encouraged us to do that.”

  Aaron’s ready smile was gone. “So if we’d happen to see him out with a woman when we knew he was married to someone else, we’d turn around and walk away. We didn’t want anything to do with that.”