They finally crested the hill on their own and passed the turn off to Lund’s house. She’d been to his cozy little cabin back when he’d been a suspect the first time Kelly died. Heavily wooded, the area was beautiful every day of the year, but the addition of ice made it stunning. Each twig of oak and birch or needle of pine appeared polished and etched like sculptures of fine, frosted glass.
She had to wonder what it would be like to wake up to a sunny morning in his little cabin, a cascade of beauty outside, a warm and intimate scene within. A nice dream that could never come true.
Thoughts of Kelly’s baby wound their way into her mind. She probably should have told him, but just because she was suspended didn’t mean she was free of responsibility to the job.
She would check in with Becca, see if she’d learned anything in her canvass of hospitals. And then she would find a moment to break the news to Lund. Right now she had to focus on the icy road and how she was going to get the truth out of Harlan.
Even with the Nova chugging along at the speed of a go cart, they soon reached Baraboo. Harlan’s ridiculous old hearse was parked in the lot, a coat of ice covering every inch. She parked the Nova next to it. They made a nice couple.
As always, Harlan was eating when they entered, though thankfully he was sitting at his computer and not hunkered over a corpse. He looked up. “Hey, sweet cheeks,” he said with a mouth full of either baked beans or bot fly larvae. “You got my message?”
“Message?”
“I got ahold of those medical records you wanted this morning. I left a message on your cell.”
“Phone died last night. Fell in some water.” Val watched his eyes for any flicker that might signal he knew about her late night swim.
“Ahh, I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“You and me.” He pointed his first two fingers to her eyes then his. “We’re on the same wavelength, probably soul mates. I need to show you something, and here you are.”
“Here I am.” Val coaxed a smile to her lips. Whatever Harlan had found, she needed to see it while he was still in the mood to share. Grilling him about Liz Unger’s death certificate could wait, at least a few minutes.
“It smells funny in here,” Grace said, stepping tentatively into the room. Lund followed.
“Who’s this pretty young thing with you?”
Val shook her head. Of course, Harlan didn’t even see Lund, but stood at attention the minute Grace walked in. “Grace is my niece.”
“I should have known. Pretty and blond must run in the family.”
“She’s sixteen,” she said pointedly. “And this is David Lund. He’s with the fire department.”
Lund rated only a curt nod.
“I don’t feel so well,” Grace mumbled.
“Want something to eat?” Harlan lifted a spoon full of beans.
As if that would help.
“Is there somewhere Grace could sit, Harlan?” Val asked. “Somewhere she can get away from the smell?”
“The smell?” His bushy brows pulled together, as if he was genuinely confused.
“Some of us have squeamish stomachs.”
“Oh, that smell.” Harlan smiled. “I have the best place. Follow me.”
He set down his beans and led them through a short hallway and into an office. The space was so small it could barely fit a desk and copy machine, but dominating an entire corner was a video game straight out of the eighties; Ms. Pac Man.
Harlan gestured to the game with a dramatic wave of one arm. “Wanna play?”
“Can I?”
“A pretty girl like you? You can do anything.”
Val suppressed her urge to glance at Lund and give an eye roll. Once Grace got started on the game, they returned to the autopsy suite. Instead of pulling out the grisly collection of bones Val had feared, Harlan went right to the light box. He switched it on and clipped two x-rays into place. The ghostly outlines of bones showed on the screen.
“Now, these are the ulna and the radius, which would be the forearm bones to you and me.”
Val recognized the images as x-rays of Jane Doe’s scorched bones. She’d spent hours staring at them as well as studying the actual remains.
“I want you to look right here, at the wrist end of the bones.” Harlan turned with a flourish and beamed, as if whatever it was he saw was plain as day to everyone else.
Lund asked the question first. “What is it that we’re seeing?”
Harlan tilted his head slightly, peering at Lund as if a third eye had suddenly popped out in the middle of his forehead like a pimple on a teenager. “The thickening.”
“From a broken wrist.” Val supplied. “Kelly had one. It was an additional reason we thought the bones in the burning barrel were hers.”
Lund stepped closer to the light box. “And what does this tell us?”
“Nothing,” Harlan said.
“Nothing?” Lund repeated.
“How can we get it to tell us something?” Val asked, throwing in a little smile.
Harlan was always motivated by feminine smiles, and this time was no different. “Come over here.”
He led them three steps to the side and pointed at the computer monitor he’d been studying when they’d entered.
Another x-ray glowed on the screen, this one with its hand still attached.
“It looks like the same injury,” Lund said.
Harlan jolted upright. “Very good. I might decide to like you after all.”
Val cut right to it. “Is this Elizabeth Unger that we’re comparing to the Jane Doe x-rays?”
He glanced at Lund, and then focused on Val. “It most certainly is. She was admitted to the hospital when she was in her early twenties. These are the pictures from that visit.”
Val and Lund exchanged glances.
“So what do you think?” Harlan asked.
“It’s a good piece of evidence, but it’s not enough for an ID.” After all, they’d used that same injury as proof the body was Kelly’s.
“I beg to differ.” Harlan puffed out his chest, as if he was highly offended, then shot Val a little wink.
She had to admit, the more time she spent with Harlan this morning, the less she could imagine him running her off the road last night, not that it hadn’t been a stretch in the first place. But now? It just wasn’t possible. “Okay Harlan, spit it out. What are you holding back?”
He nearly danced over to the light box—an odd experience to witness—and clipped up another x-ray, this of a lower leg missing its foot. “Jane Doe again. The site of a similar injury.”
Lund took a step closer. “She broke her leg, too?”
“Since it’s right at the point where the bone shattered in the fire, it’s hard to see unless you’re looking for it. This time, I was.”
He held up an index finger, pranced back to the computer, called up an x-ray of a leg, and pointed out a thickening in the same spot. “Elizabeth Unger and Jane Doe both have two bones with breaks in exactly the same place. I’d say that narrows things down quite a bit.”
“Yeah,” Val said. She felt sick, and still more than a little confused. “Whoever did her autopsy should have recognized those injuries as suspicious, right? He should have noted them.”
His bushy gray brows lowered. “I’m not following, sweetie pie. I’m noting them right now.”
“I found Elizabeth Unger’s death records. Or should I say, Elizabeth Unger Schneider?”
His expression didn’t change.
She continued. “She died here in a car wreck, ten years ago. She was supposed to be buried in Illinois, but her body was never interred there.”
“That seems strange.”
“It’s not the strangest part, Harlan. Do you want to know who signed off on those records and made them official?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Who?”
“You.”
His brows lowered further, and he shook his head.
“You signed them, Ha
rlan.”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“I saw them. I would have copies, but someone tried to kill me last night, and I ended up in the Wisconsin River.”
“What?”
“Where were you last night?” Lund asked.
Harlan shook his head, paced a few steps, and shook his head again. “I heard Liz Unger was dead. I remember because she was married to Jeff Schneider years ago. But I never performed her autopsy. I may be an old fart, but I still have my memory. I never signed off on her death. And trying to kill you, honey?”
“Where were you?” Val prodded.
“At the supper club. I talked to you. Then I went home. You can ask my neighbor. We were both out salting our driveways about ten. I can’t believe—”
The intercom buzzed.
“I have to see what this is,” Harlan said. “Be right back.”
The moment he left the room, Lund turned to Val. “What do you think?”
She let out a breath, a mix of relief and frustration. “That he’s telling the truth.”
“That’s what I think, too. So how did his signature get on the records you saw?”
“Forged. Or maybe he signed something without really looking at what it was.” She’d seen him hurry through paperwork more than once, scribbling his name without paying much attention to the forms he signed.
“So that leaves Schneider?”
“And my sergeant, Pete Olson. He was in charge of following up on Kelly’s family. I’m having a hard time believing he never thought it necessary to dig a little farther into the inconsistencies surrounding Liz Unger.”
“When it comes to situations like these, some people just don’t want to know,” Lund said.
She stared at the x-rays on the computer. “Do you think he abused her?”
“Schneider?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know. I remember at least one of Kelly’s aunts lived with them for a while. The abuse could have come from Kelly’s father. That family … there were a lot of skeletons in those closets.”
“Maybe. But it would have been tough for anyone to fake death records … except a police chief who knows how to distract the coroner.”
Harlan rounded the corner, his face as gray as his hair. At first Val thought he overheard. Then he opened his mouth. “It’s Monica Forbes. She’s dead.”
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Val wasn’t sure she’d be welcome at the scene, but as soon as she arrived at the casino hotel, an FBI agent escorted Grace, Lund and her into the attached casino’s security office and asked them to take a seat in front of one of the monitors.
The agent was clean cut in that button-down FBI agent sort of way. Hair almost black, he was a few inches shorter than Lund, but looked fit and efficient in his dark suit. He introduced himself as Special Agent Subera and got down to business. “We recovered this about five minutes ago.”
Val was still shaking from the bomb Harlan had dropped in the morgue. She couldn’t believe Monica was dead, couldn’t wrap her mind around it. And as much as she wanted to help the FBI, who shared jurisdiction with the tribe owning the casino, she didn’t know how she would handle seeing her friend’s body.
And she knew she didn’t want Grace witnessing it. “What’s on the video?”
Agent Subera glanced at Grace. “Security footage from inside the casino. I just need you to tell me if you recognize anyone.”
“Okay.”
He tapped a few keys and the monitor flicked to life.
The shot showed three rows of slot machines, a handful of people scattered among them, trying their luck. She scanned the grainy image of each face, squinting her right eye in an effort to adjust to the blurring that seemed to be growing worse.
The first three people, she didn’t know. Then she spotted Monica beaming as Derrick hit a button and the machine paid out. She looked so happy, her gestures exaggerated as if she was quite drunk. Derrick, too, seemed to be swaying a little on his feet.
Val’s throat closed and tears welled in her eyes. She took a couple of breaths through her mouth, did her best to blink her vision clear, and pointed at the screen. “There. That’s Monica and that’s her fiancé Derrick.”
Subera nodded as if she’d just told him what he already knew.
So it was true then. Monica was dead. Derrick was dead. And Val had a feeling she knew who did it.
As if conjured by her thoughts, Dixon Hess walked down the aisle toward the couple, watching the row of machines as if trying to pick the best one to play.
Val held her breath, waiting to see what he’d do.
He bumped into Monica, grabbed her a little to keep her from tipping both herself and Derrick onto the floor, and then he resumed his walk, moving off the bottom edge of the monitor.
“That was him. Dixon Hess. He bumped into them.”
S.A. Subera moved the video back a few seconds and played it again, asking her to point Hess out on the screen. Then he let the footage roll.
There wasn’t much left. Monica and Derrick hugged and horsed around for a few seconds, then left the frame in the direction Hess had.
“He picked her pocket,” Lund said simply.
Val had to agree. “She didn’t have a purse with her, so she must have had her wallet there.
“Wallet was in the room.”
“Of course,” she said. “It was her key.”
Again Subera nodded, as if he’d already figured it out.
Val continued. “He saw they were drunk, so he grabbed the key and waited for them.”
“Not drunk,” said the agent. “Another camera shows him hanging out at the bar area.”
“He put something in their drinks.”
“We’ll have to see what the tox screen finds.”
Again a wave of emotion washed over her, and she struggled to hold it together. In normal circumstances, she’d ask to see the crime scene, even though she had no cause for the FBI to grant her that wish. Today, she was certain she couldn’t handle seeing Monica’s face without dissolving into a sobbing heap.
But there was one thing she had to know.
“Did he do anything to the bodies?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like sew their mouths shut? Something unusual?” She could feel Lund watching her, no doubt remembering what Hess had done to Tamara Wade.
“As a matter of fact, he did.”
She scooped in a deep breath, as if she was about to plunge under water. “What?”
Subera glanced at Grace. “That information is restricted to law enforcement personnel.”
Val nodded. “Grace, will you step right outside the door?”
Eyes looking a little shell shocked, she nodded and scampered out, more eager to escape the horror than curious for maybe the first time in her life.
Lund scooched back his chair. “You want me to leave, too?”
“Please.”
Once Val and the special agent were alone, she turned to face him and braced herself. “What did he do?”
“He cut off the male’s penis.”
Val frowned. She didn’t understand. Derrick wasn’t part of the trial. He had nothing to do with Hess’s conviction. In fact, Monica and he hadn’t started dating until after Hess was behind bars.
So why would he mutilate Derrick in that way?
“Did he mutilate both of them?”
“She has some cuts. They looked largely superficial, though. Meant to cause pain.”
“How did she die?”
“He put duct tape on both their mouths. The male has his throat cut. From what we can tell without an autopsy, it looks like the female might have choked to death.”
“He choked her?”
“No. He taped something in her mouth. She aspirated her own vomit.”
She almost asked what Hess had taped inside Monica’s mouth, but then she knew.
Hess hadn’t mutilated Derrick for anything Derrick had done. He’d
done it so he could take from Monica what she loved best.
And a part of what she loved best was what killed her.
Someone was camping on an icy night like this?
Kasdorf picked up his pace, moving through evergreen and birch, pine needles cushioning his steps. He’d been out doing his usual rounds, walking the perimeter, checking to see if the trees were suffering damage from the ice storm, keeping an eye out like he always did.
The sun was going down, not that you could see it through the thick clouds. But soon it would be dark. He wanted to make sure his land was secure before night set in.
Then he smelled the smoke.
He could just imagine what was going on. Not campers, not on a night like this. So who was it? Cops? Soldiers after his arsenal? Criminals waiting until they thought he couldn’t defend himself?
He had some news for them. Dale Kasdorf could always defend himself.
All he had to do was reach his bunker.
A hundred meters from his house, he picked up the tread of work boots in the snow.
Whoever it was hadn’t gone to any lengths to hide his tracks, just as he hadn’t seemed to give a thought to concealing the smoke.
He could hear the fire crackle, and judging from the glow on the other side of a stand of pine, he was drawing near. His hands trembled with the surge of adrenaline, but he was ready. He was capable of killing a man to defend himself and his property. Hell, he’d take on police, the IRS, even the CIA if he had to. A man’s home was his castle. A man’s guns were his life.
He fought through the last thicket of brush and trees. For a moment, he froze in his tracks.
His house. The flames, the smoke, they were coming from his house.
And looking up at the bonfire, smiling, was Dixon Hess himself.
Kasdorf raised his Bulldog to fire, but by the time he brought the weapon up, the bastard was gone, ducking behind trees.
Kasdorf had a choice. He could give chase or he could protect his arsenal.
Pushed Too Far Page 15
