by C. E. Nelson
“It just doesn’t tie together Don. Unless we’ve missed something, these engineers are about the only ones to go missing. Why the engineers and why not others until now?”
“Maybe something has tripped this guy’s trigger. Getting rid of a few engineers wasn’t getting it done for him. Or maybe it’s something completely different. What if a couple of these anglers stumbled across something they shouldn’t?”
“For instance?”
“I don’t know. You figure it out. I’m getting tired of spending my whole life taking care of you.” Don paused. “I’m trying to free help for you but it may still be a day or two. I promise I will get there as soon as I can.”
Dave was quiet as he took in what his brother had said. “Thanks brother, I appreciate it.”
Dave hopped in his truck and headed for the station. If Don was right, then why did the engineers just disappear while the anglers had been brutally murdered as if the killer was trying to make a statement to the world? His thoughts drifted back to the victim who had been killed by the pictograph. There was something there that wanted to come to the surface.
Dave’s attention was on the first murder scene when he slammed on his brakes. In front of his truck a large black bear that Dave estimated at over 300 pounds stood five yards in front of him blocking his way. Bears have very poor vision and would usually take flight at the sound of a vehicle but this one did not run. It stared at the truck and snarled before walking directly toward it. As it reached the front of the truck it rose up and put its massive paws with claws extended on the hood, bellowing, drool coming from its mouth.
Trask was about to put the truck in reverse when behind the bear two cubs scampered up on the road from the right ditch and paused to look at their mother. The mother bear turned to them and growled, sending the cubs off the road and down into the ditch on the other side. Turning back to the truck, she seemed to look Dave in the eye before slapping her right paw down on the hood and then pushing off to follow her cubs into the woods.
Dave slowly opened his door and got out, listening to the sound of breaking branches as the bears moved away, walking to the front of the truck. There was a good-sized dent where the sow had slapped the hood and a few scratches. Although his Toyota was 12 years old, Dave was careful with it like everything else in his life. He kept it clean and in good condition, mechanically and cosmetically, washing it by hand except in the depth of the Minnesota winter. He had a friend in the Cities who had done some body work for him but he had no connections here. “This sucks!”
Trask got back in his truck, grabbing the steering wheel in both hands and pushing his body back into his seat, before closing his eyes and letting out a scream that probably sent the bears and any other animal within a mile running. He told himself that the truck was only a thing, and that it could be fixed, but on top of everything else he had reached his limit. He slapped the steering wheel with his right hand three times, each slap accompanied by a loud “shit!”, and then leaned back and closed his eyes trying to calm down. That didn’t last long however as a red Prius had pulled up behind him and decided to honk rather than drive around. Dave waved out his window, put the truck in gear, and took off.
Three news vans were waiting in the parking lot as Dave pulled in. Two reporters with cameramen in tow surrounded him as he exited his truck. Trask ignored them as best he could, pushing the microphones out of his face, and hurried up the stairs to Station 30.
He leaned back on the inside of the door. This was getting out of hand now. He had seen the reports on the news the prior night. Reports of anglers leaving or staying away from the area. One of the stations had managed to get their van to Half Moon and had filmed the murder cabin as well as interviewing several of the guests. Rosemary Thiel had her five minutes, essentially blaming him for the murders.
A large fan was humming on the floor near the sink of the stationhouse as Dave helped himself to a cup of coffee, staring into the black liquid wondering what it was going to do to his stomach before he took a sip. Kyle was on the phone and waved as Dave stopped and leaned on the edge of the half-wall that stood in front of Kyle’s desk.
“That was Ms. Thiel,” said the deputy as he hung up the phone. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk to her.”
“Good guess. Anything else?”
“I got a list of six relatives of Billie Whitehead from Raven. I’ve reached four so far but no one has seen him, at least that’s what they told me.”
“Hm,… the guides at Half Moon think he’s gone to Canada, but whoever is doing these killings isn’t done, and if that’s Billie then he’s here somewhere around here. Keep checking. How long have the newsies been here?”
“They got here yesterday afternoon and were here when I got in this morning. Told them all no comment like you said. Oh, and I left a few messages on your desk.”
“Thanks. I’d like a meeting in ten with everyone to see where we are.”
“OK. Tony is here but Danny is out,” replied Kyle.
“Where’s Danny?” asked Dave.
Just then the door opened and Meline came rushing in. “Sheriff, you need to come with me. We got another one!”
“Why didn’t you call?” Dave asked as he followed Danny out.
“I tried but your phone must be out of power or off. I went by your place but you weren’t there so I came back here.”
“Why did you go to my house?” asked Dave as he checked his phone.
“You’re not far from the landing. This one is on your lake.”
Chapter Twenty-one
They parked at the landing and hopped in the boat Danny had left tied there. As Danny drove he explained how he had been talking to cabin owners in the area to see if they had any information that might help. He had docked at a cabin on Basswood and had noticed the smell as he approached. One look inside through the screen door and he could see a body on the floor. With the head nearly severed like the others there was little reason to check for a pulse.
“I taped off the area but I haven’t called anyone else,” continued the deputy as they approached the dock. Dave instructed Danny to call the Medical Examiner while he tied up the boat.
The cabin sat only about thirty feet off the water. It’s split-log siding was stained army green, the doors and trim had recently been painted white. Two-foot square red paving stones lead to the front door from the dock. Yellow crime scene tape went from tree to tree until it circled the cabin.
Dave ducked under the tape and walked up two steps to a small deck outside the door facing the lake. No question about the smell. If there weren’t wolves close by they soon would be. He put on gloves and pushed the door open so he could see inside.
The door opened directly into the kitchen. Sink, stove, and refrigerator, all white, were to the left. The countertops were black Formica, the cupboards a tan birch that showed plenty of scarring, the finish worn away around the drawer handles. Spices were in a wooden rack on the wall by the stove, oven mitts hanging from a hook next to them. Three matching stainless steel canisters were aligned on the counter with a butcher-block that held an assortment of unmatched knives next to them. A white coffee maker still had half a pot in its carafe with a cup sitting near by.
Tan vinyl tiles ran the width of the room as you entered, reaching roughly halfway across where they gave way to a tightly woven green carpet. The tile and the carpet were worn but well cared for, clean and neat, as the entire area appeared. At the center of the kitchen sat a wood stove on a tin sheet, the tin near the stove front black where ash and embers had hit the floor. On the far side of the room a door was fully open to a bedroom, with another door just visible to its right, and beyond that a hallway leading into another part of the cabin.
To the right of the front door was a square table with steel legs. The table was draped in a red and white vinyl checkered tablecloth that had probably been there for twenty years. There was a square stool with a red vinyl seat on each side of the table, all of the seat
s that Trask could see showing yellow foam through small cracks. A couch upholstered in light blue stood on the carpet against the wall just beyond the kitchen table, a dark-stained pine board that served as a bookshelf above it. Danny had said the owner lived alone, no doubt spending much of his time in this area of the cabin.
On the floor in front of the kitchen table laid the owner, Mike Eaves, on his back. His nearly severed head bent grotesquely toward his left shoulder. His grey t-shirt was dark with blood.
Dave stood in the doorway taking in the scene. A blue plastic coffee cup lay empty on its side on the floor near the door. There was a little coffee that remained in the cup, the rest had already dried on the floor next to it. A matching blue plate was on the floor below the table with the remains of what looked to be a half-eaten sliced ham sandwich nearby. An unopened bag of potato chips was at the center of the table.
“Sheriff?” said the deputy as he reached Dave’s side.
“What’s up?” Trask replied without turning.
“ME said it would probably be at least two hours. He’ll call when he gets close and I’ll go get him.”
“OK Danny,” he answered as he turned to his deputy. “That should give us some good alone time here. I want you to handle the outside. Look for and mark anything and everything. The killer had to come by boat, so start at the dock, and get that area taken care of before anyone else arrives.”
Danny stood staring in at carnage in the kitchen, not moving.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, sorry. This is all just getting to be a bit too much.”
“It is for all of us,” he replied. In more ways than one he thought to himself.
The deputy took one more look around and turned to go to the dock.
Danny was right, thought Dave, as he watched him go. Even a big city homicide cop would find this starting to get to him. He had to stop this soon. His staff was nowhere near ready to handle something like this. He also had no doubt he’d be hearing from Rosemary again and probably the camp owners and other local residents. He had dodged three calls from stations in the cities last night. All of them had reports of the latest killings on the late news featuring a sound bite from Rosemary Thiel. There’d likely be more news vans at the station by this afternoon. This was blowing up in a big hurry.
Dave yelled for Danny just as the deputy reached the dock. “How long had Eaves been in the area?”
“Long time sheriff. Long as I can remember.”
Trask turned back to the body. The killer had slaughtered four tourist anglers and now he kills a private cabin owner who’s been here for who knows how long? How did that fit? Did this guy know something the killer didn’t want to get out? If so, what was it? Or was this a killer now just looking to kill?
Something else bothered him. This was now the third lake where someone was killed. How was this guy getting around? Was he towing a boat from lake to lake? That just seemed like way too much work.
Trask stepped carefully past the body and peered down the hall. A door on the left opened to a small bath with a sink and shower. There was no toilet, which wasn’t uncommon with island cabins, an outhouse was likely somewhere close by outside. A single tan bath towel hung on the rack next to the shower. One toothbrush was in a jar by the sink and a box of tissues was on a small shelf above the towel rack. The bath rug had been hung over the shower curtain. The sink, countertop, and white ceramic tile floor were all spotless. This guy was more of a neat freak than he was thought Dave.
A door on the right was held open by a rope from the door handle to a hook on the hall wall. Dave released the rope from the hook and the door slowly began to close. He carefully pulled the door back and put the rope back on the hook. The room was apparently a spare bedroom with two single beds, neither of which appeared to have been used recently. A small dresser stood against the wall between the beds. No dust on the dresser top. Jeez this guy was neat.
A knotty pine-sided family room with a series of large windows lay at the end of the hall. There were couches along the wall to the right and the far wall with an antique oak rocker and propane stove between. A stack of hardcover books was on the table. Trask picked up the one on top, an older copy of Moby Dick, with an old matchbook that the owner apparently used as a bookmark between the pages. He noticed the remaining books in the stack were also classics, as were those on a shelf below. Dave hoped Mr. Eaves had a chance to finish them all.
The sliding windows told Dave this room was an addition to the cabin, and the tan Berber carpeting looked almost new. An exterior door from the room took you to a small cedar deck in back of the cabin with firewood stacked on one side. Dave could see the outhouse at the edge of the woods. There was no evidence that what had happened in the kitchen had touched the hall or this portion of the cabin or that anyone had even been in this section of the cabin today except for the open windows, and those could have been that way overnight.
Dave walked back to the kitchen. A quick peak in the owner’s bedroom off the kitchen found the bed made and a pair of worn leather boat shoes placed neatly inside the door. Dave guessed the wood stove in the kitchen kept this bedroom pretty warm when it was going. While the bed was a queen there was no indication of anyone else having shared the bed with the owner. In fact, there were no pictures of anyone anywhere in the cabin. Nothing on the dresser in the master bedroom or on the walls. Odd, thought Dave. He walked back down the hall looking carefully at the walls and found two small nails where something had hung at one time. Odd.
He returned to the master bedroom. The walls were a dark pine paneling making it hard to see any small nails. Dave ran his hand at eye level and found one to the right of the dresser. How long had that been empty? A search of the closet and dresser drawers found only clothes neatly arranged. A wallet that sat on the pine nightstand next to a paperback held a fishing license, a driver’s license that said the owner was fifty-nine last November, one credit card and twenty-nine dollars in cash. Why was that still here when the killer had taken it from the other men he had killed? Mr. Eaves was a lonely man with a lot of time on his hands to make sure things were neat and in order. Dave hoped that wasn’t where he was headed.
As he knelt by the victim something else bothered him. The victim’s throat had been cut like the others and there were multiple stab wounds like the victim by the cliff. What was the point of stabbing some and not the others? He looked more closely at the shirt. There were at least six stab wounds that he could count. Was the killer’s anger now boiling over into rage? Had he been scared off before he could grab the wallet?
Something else that wasn’t right. The killer had used stealth or, in the case of the killings at the camp, had likely used familiarity with the victims to approach. Here, it would have been very difficult to approach unseen or unheard. The victim was likely sitting down to dinner when he was killed. There was no radio or anything else in the cabin to mask the sound of a killer walking up the squeaky deck or trying to enter from the back. Yesterday had been calm and sunny.
Dave got as close as he could to where the victim had been at the table before he was killed. He could clearly hear Danny by the dock. He pushed open the screen door as slowly as he could but the noise from the hinges was still loud. Even if Eaves had been deaf it would have been nearly impossible for someone to reach him without being seen. This was someone he knew.
Chapter Twenty-two
“I’ve taken a look around,” said Meline as he joined the sheriff on the porch. “Really didn’t see anything. Checked the shed out back and there doesn’t seem to be anything out of place. Lawnmower, and old motor, some oars, yard stuff and a couple of gas cans. Doesn’t look like anybody touched his fishing gear or the electronics in his boat either.”
“Did you see any signs of a boat being pulled up on shore?”
“Nothing. There’s a sand beach down past the dock where a boat could land but nothing but animal prints down there.”
“What do you know about Eaves? Ha
s he been here long?”
“Long as I can remember,” Danny replied. “He must have been about sixty. You see him in town once in a while at the Channel Inn with Doug Speer and Pete Jacobsen but he pretty much kept to himself.”
“How did he survive?”
“People don’t tend to talk much about their past up here but rumor has it he came from Chicago with enough money to live on but I know he trapped and hunted and fished like the rest of them old guys.”
“Any problems with his sight or hearing?”
“I can check but when I saw him at the Channel Inn this spring he had no troubles hearing or talking.”
Both men turned at the sound of a boat and watched as a twenty-foot aluminum boat with ‘Lake County’ on the bow approached the dock. It was coming in at too high a speed and on a path to run directly into the dock. Both men made a move toward the dock when the driver cut the motor and turned sharply to the right. The boat gently kissed the dock with the bumpers that were hanging on its side as the driver jumped out and tied it off. Doctor James could handle a boat.
There was a hot sun overhead and the doctor had dressed for it in a grey t-shirt with the Lake County logo stretched over her front and tan khaki cargo shorts. Both men stared as she approached with her case in hand.
“You gentlemen are sure keeping us busy. What have you got?”
Dave forced himself to look up into the doctor’s brown eyes. “He’s just inside the door. It’s not nice.” He stepped aside to allow the doctor to enter.
“Looks like he’s been here for a while looking at the blood and skin. Based on the food on the floor, that would probably be close to supper time last night.” The doctor bent down to look at the body more closely and then stood. “Looking at the spray pattern and the amount of blood coming from the neck I’d say he had his throat cut first and then was stabbed multiple times, probably as he lay on the floor. Someone did not like the deceased.”
