The Noding Field Mystery

by Christine Husom

  He looked at his watch. “It’s too early for bed. Even for an old guy like me.”

  Smoke had the ability to calm my worst fears. We talked mostly about the Leder case—about the next steps, and the avenues we needed to explore. When I finally crawled into bed at midnight, I fell into a deep sleep, knowing I was safe, and slept through the night uninterrupted.

  CHAPTER 23

  Monday morning the sheriff’s department was abuzz with the whys and hows of Langley Parker’s escape. The FBI had issued an international alert and a nationwide manhunt. According to news reports, the young corrections officer connected with his escape had aspired to a career in law enforcement. No longer a chance of that after aiding and abetting a felon. She and Parker had vanished, but authorities were confident they would find them somewhere in the world.

  Admittedly, I was ready to join in the search for them, but needed to concentrate on the job at hand. Sheriff Twardy had phoned me a little after nine and asked me to stop by his office. “Hey, Sheriff.”

  He stood and furrowed his eyebrows in a look of concern. “Sergeant. Come in, come in. Close the door.”

  I took a chair. “What’s up?”

  “Just checking to see how you’re doing with the whole escape ordeal.” He sat back down.

  “I wish I lived in a vacuum about now, but I’m okay. We have more than enough to occupy our minds working the Leder case.”

  Twardy nodded. “Dawes told me about the interviews with the two young grave visitors. That’s another helluva deal. He said you coaxed the truth out of them.”

  “It would have been better if they had come forward six years ago.” I lifted a shoulder. “But the past is past. We’ll get the evidence results back from the BCA tomorrow on the snowshoe fibers. And the rest of the phone records today, hopefully. Once we process them, we’ll see if anything interesting pops up. So I better track down Dawes and get to work.”

  “Right. Well, carry on. It’s the best thing any of us can do.”

  Smoke was at his desk. It looked like a tornado had dropped a bunch of papers on the surface. “You have a handle on all that?” I asked.

  “More like a vague idea. Hey, one thing that came in about two minutes ago—we located Gage Leder’s mail service, and you were right. He had a box at the UPS store here in Oak Lea, not at a post office. Edberg got an early start today in his search, and struck gold with his first stop. The store owner said Leder used the name Robert Gage and had been getting packages listed as ‘media mail’ there for several years. Owner figured by their size they were movies. Regular ones. When Bob phoned, he said the owner said there was one in the box, so we’ll need a warrant for that. I’ve never written so damn many warrants in my life.”

  “We should be able to track one of their porn sources from that.”

  “Yeah. Well, hopefully it’ll give the BCA and FBI an operation they don’t have on their radar yet. Oh, and speaking of the BCA, I talked to my good buddy Darin a while ago, and he’s going to put a rush on the fingerprints we found on that video case in Leanne Gosser’s apartment. And we should have her phone records today. I’m thinking it’s the best way to find out Leder’s last phone number, in case it appears on one of the other potential suspect’s list of calls.”

  “Progress.”

  My work cell rang as I was pulling my mail out of my box in the squad room. “Sergeant Aleckson.”

  “Sergeant Corky, how are you? It’s Darin at the BCA.”

  “Darin, hi. I’m well. How about you?”

  “Good, good. Say, Elton said he’d be in court this afternoon and told me to give you a holler when I got some results for you guys.”

  “Yes. What’d you find out?”

  “I’ll fax the official reports in a minute, but I can give you the info over the phone, in case you have any questions. Got a pen and paper?”

  I set my mail on the table, pulled the memo pad and pen from my pocket, and sat down. “Yup, go ahead.”

  “Okay. First, the results on the fingerprints. The one found on Gage Leder’s car was from a person who is not in our database. Looks like a man’s print.”

  “Darn.”

  “But we’ve identified the three sets of partials found on the video case taken from Leanne Gosser’s apartment. They belong to Gosser, Leder, and Larry Vaccaro.”

  “The landlord. Hmm.”

  “If it’s not the butler, it’s the landlord. Okay, the fibers found in the field came from the two sets of snowshoes found by Tonya Leder’s garage—”

  “That’s good news. Now who put them there?”

  “The butler, maybe? Or was it the landlord? And the only fingerprints on them belonged to Tonya Leder and Chip Ashland.”

  “And we witnessed them holding them.”

  “Right. Okay. The twine used to tie up Gage Leder’s hands and feet matched one of the rolls taken from the D and A Construction building. We lined up the cut ends of the twine to the ends still on the roll.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “The soil on the stakes was consistent with the soil samples collected at the crime scene. There were some traces of older soil, more of a clay found on three of the stakes. And traces of other soils found on all four. But no fingerprints on them.”

  “They like to make our job difficult.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s what they do. The hairs found by Leder’s body were likely his. No follicles, so there was no way to get DNA.”

  “We weren’t very hopeful about those.”

  “And the last thing is the knots used to tie up the body. The ones on the stakes were what’s called a clove hitch—”

  “C-L-O-V-E?” I wrote it down.

  “Yes. Easy, sort of all purpose. I wouldn’t use it if a guy was fighting to get loose because it’s not completely secure, but it holds pretty firmly in most cases.”

  A deputy walked through and I lifted my hand in greeting. “But Leder wouldn’t be fighting if he was already dead.”

  “Correct. The knots that held Leder’s hands and feet were slip knots. Pretty common. It’s the one knitters use for casting on the first stitch.”

  I smiled. “How would you know that?”

  “I come from a long line of knitters. I may even have tried my hand at it myself when I was young. Or maybe it was my grandma who thought it was one way to keep my hands busy so I’d stay out of trouble.”

  I laughed. “I can imagine that. So who would use a clove knot?”

  “Just about anybody, I guess. But the same holds true for a slip knot. They’re both common.”

  “I’ll have to look up what a clove knot looks like. And the two types of knots were probably tied by two different people?”

  “Yes, I would say that’s a given. One person would tie the same knot on both ends, not use two different ones.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll look for your fax and relay all the results you gave me to the people on this end. We really appreciate this personal service, Darin. ”

  “Glad to be of help. And if it leads you to the bad guys, all the better. Take care.”

  “You, too.” We hung up and I headed to administration, picked up the fax from Darin, then went to the sheriff’s office, and gave him the updates.

  Smoke shook his head as he read the fax Darin sent. “Now we got a list of people we need to pay a second or third visit to.”

  I nodded. “I was hoping the fingerprint on Leder’s car was from one of the people we’re looking at, but no such luck.”

  “Coulda been a guy who was in the park and touched the car, or coulda been one they missed when they did their bang up cleaning job.”

  “Either Leanne Gosser or Larry Vaccaro would have done a bang up cleaning job.”

  “No doubt. And whichever of them cleaned the video cases missed one on there, too—”

  “I suppose you lose track when you’ve got about a hundred on your shelves. It makes me glad I’m not OCD about cleaning.”

  “We all have some cross to bear. We�
��ll see what Landlord Larry has to say about his prints being on the case.”

  “He seemed genuinely surprised when I asked if he knew about Gosser’s porn collection.”

  “Yet his fingerprints were on a case.”

  “But he could have been shocked we found out about them in the first place.”

  “Some people think we’re just dumb hicks.”

  “I know. Now that we know for sure where the twine came from, and most likely the stakes, we need another chat with Aaron and Dustin Leder.”

  Smoke folded the report and stuck it in the inside pocket of his sports coat. “Yeah, let’s head out to their shed. See if they’re there.”

  Dustin and Aaron Leder were unloading equipment from their Ford F-150 pickup truck. Their faces turned serious when we pulled in and parked near them. I turned off the ignition and Smoke and I piled out. “Nice day,” Smoke said.

  They stopped working, nodded, and waited. “We got some lab results back from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension today,” I said.

  “Good news, bad news. The snowshoes from your shed were not the ones used in the crime we’re investigating. However some twine taken from one of the rolls in your shed was,” Smoke said.

  Both sets of eyebrows lifted. “Now what?” Aaron asked.

  “Someone was in your building—someone who knows you, and knows what you store in there—and helped themselves to your supplies.”

  “You don’t know who?” Dustin said.

  “Not yet, but we’ll figure it out.”

  “And we do need—with your permission—some of those stakes you use at sites. To compare soil samples with those found at our crime scene,” I said.

  Dustin shrugged. “Okay.” He turned and headed into the pole shed, and the rest of us followed.

  Aaron pointed to the pile of stakes. “We just pulled the ones in front from a job site yesterday.”

  “And they were all accounted for?” Smoke asked.

  “Yes. Sixteen of them,” Dustin said.

  “Okay. You use any of the other ones in the last two weeks?”

  “No.”

  “Well let’s move those sixteen out of the way, and take the first four behind them.”

  “Sure.”

  We worked for some minutes, moving stakes, then laying the four in their own pile. “Hey, maybe you can help us tie these together for easier moving,” I suggested.

  “Sure.” Aaron retrieved a roll of twine and Dustin pulled a multi-tool from his tool belt and opened the jackknife. As Aaron turned the roll to let the twine unroll, Dustin grabbed the end and cut a length, about three feet long. They worked together until they had four pieces of cut twine then laid them on the ground a little less than a foot apart. They grabbed the stakes and set them on top of the twine pieces, then tied the ends together. Smoke and I watched as they formed the knots. Each had a different style.

  “That’s just fine. Appreciate your help,” Smoke said.

  “No problem. I’ll carry these out to your squad car,” Aaron offered.

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and by the way, you guys have a toboggan?” I asked.

  “I guess we did as kids, but I don’t know whatever happened to it,” Dustin said.

  Aaron shook his head. “I don’t either.”

  I drove away from the D and A Construction building and pulled into a small county park a few miles away. Smoke turned on his digital camera and scanned through some photos. “Neither one of their knots looked like the ones used to stake out Leder.”

  I reached over and Smoke handed me the camera. “No, they don’t. I’m not sure what Darin would call them, but Aaron’s looked like a variation of a slip knot and Dustin’s double loop thing is totally different. Similar to the loops John Carl makes to tie his shoes.”

  Smoke looked at me over his readers. “It was worth a try. Good thinkin’, coming up with that one, little lady.”

  I smiled. “They were the easy ones. It’s such a puzzle. Why would someone borrow—use, whatever—their supplies, instead of going to the hardware store and buying them?”

  “Probably more convenient to help themselves to what they needed at the boys’ shed.”

  “Even at the risk of getting caught.”

  “Maybe it was in the middle of the night, when the hardware stores are closed.”

  “That’s a thought. So on to the next stop. Mr. Larry Vaccaro.”

  Vaccaro was hosing down the siding on the west side of the apartment building. He turned off the water when he spotted us. “Hey, Larry. Got a minute?” Smoke asked.

  “Sure. How can I help you?”

  “We got results back on some evidence we sent in and something came back that made us a little curious,” I said.

  Larry’s face tightened. “Like what?”

  “Your fingerprints were found on a video case from Leanne Gosser’s apartment. You know what I’m talking about.”

  He nodded slightly. “It made sense after I found out.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “When you asked me if I knew about the pornography? Honest, I didn’t. But I did wonder what was up with all the videos. I was at Leanne’s one day and pulled one off the shelf and asked her why she had all her movies in cases. She got this serious look on her face and told me to put it back. She didn’t answer my question, and I didn’t press the issue.

  “I figured it was none of my business. She paid her rent on time. Was quiet. Neat. It seemed like whatever arrangement she had with Robert, er, Gage Leder was a little odd, but again, none of my business.”

  “And you’re sure he was her only known visitor?”

  “That I saw, anyway. He’d come around at least a few times a week. I didn’t always see him, but I recognized his car in the parking lot. Sometimes it’d be there overnight, but not usually.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. “We can be pretty confident crossing Larry Vaccaro off our potential suspect list.”

  “Yeah. Figured as much, but a lead is a lead, and we need to follow each one to its natural conclusion.” Smoke was paging through his memo pad.

  My cell phone rang as we cruised down Highway 55, on our way back to Oak Lea. “Sergeant Aleckson.”

  “Sergeant, it’s Jane Peters, Leanne Gosser’s cousin.”

  “Sure. How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay, sort of. I got a letter from Leanne. It was postmarked on the day she died.”

  “What did it say?” I hit the speaker button so Smoke could hear.

  “I’ll read it to you. ‘Dear Jane, you’ve heard by now that I’ve died and I wanted to tell you why. When I was twelve years old, I fell in love with Gage Leder. I never got over him. I did what it took to hang onto him, and that involved some bad things. Maybe the police told you about that.

  “You see, Gage liked young girls, if you know what I mean. He liked that my body was about the same as it was when I was twelve. You could say he was addicted to me. And I was addicted to him. I loved him, but he didn’t love me. I don’t think he could love anyone. You wonder how I could love him anyway, and I wondered the same thing when he wasn’t with me. But when he was with me, I’d feel alive and well and special.

  “I think I’m the only one he could be honest with. I know he was with other women, for different reasons. Maybe that made people mad, but I still can’t figure out why someone would kill him. When I heard Gage was dead, I thought maybe I could finally get over my addiction to him and move on, but I can’t. It’s time for me to join him, wherever he is. Forgive me for any trouble this causes you. Love, Leanne.’” There was a slight pause. “What do think she meant about getting involved with bad things, about what the police would tell me?”

  “She had pornography in her apartment. Adult and child.”

  “Child pornography? Oh my god. I mean, adult porn is bad enough, but I don’t understand that at all.”

  “Fortunately, most people don’t. It’s pretty shocking for you, getting her lette
r like that.”

  “It’s very shocking. And now to find out about that.”

  “It’ll take a while for it to sink in, I’m sure. I’m wondering, could you send us a copy for our records? Leanne didn’t leave a note at the scene, and the fact that she mailed you a letter prior to her death pretty much rules out coercion.”

  “Yes, I can do that. I’m calling from work. We have a fax machine so I’ll fax you a copy.”

  “That’d be great. Put it to my attention.” I gave her the number. “Jane, it sounds like Leanne felt bad about where her relationship Gage Leder took her, for what it’s worth.”

  “I guess. I’ll let you go, and get that fax sent.”

  “Thank you, Jane. And if you have any questions or concerns, call anytime.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  We hung up and Smoke exhaled loudly. “We’re having a productive hour. We’ve managed to cross four suspects off the list.”

  “Poor Jane. I’d hate to get a letter like that from my cousin, if I had a cousin. You think Leanne knew about Leder having crim sex with Morgan and Lea?”

  “Good question. Leanne said in her letter he liked young girls, but she may have believed his desires were taken care of with the porn, and whatever she did for him. It seems to me raping your own daughter and stepdaughter is something you’d keep to yourself.”

  “Yeah, that crosses the line for almost everyone. I’d think even for Leanne, who accepted just about all of Gage Leder’s garbage.” I typed the plate number of the truck I was following into the laptop.

  “You’d think, but we’ll never know.”

  “We’d best give Tonya the latest. She’s easily upset, but she should know the snowshoes left by her garage were used in the crime.”

  “No use telling her the other sordid details. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  “I am a little surprised the private eye Chip Ashland hired didn’t catch Gage Leder going to Gosser’s apartment.” The information on the vehicle and its owner appeared on the computer, and I quickly read it. Clean and clear.