“We have them,” I say. “It turns out our killer loves to talk.” I look over at Hurley and give him a nod. “You start.”
“Well,” he begins, “it turns out Ulrich was innocent, after all. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that it was Detective Stetson who committed all the murders. He had an ideal situation going for him until he killed Lacy O’Connor. He tried to stifle his urge to kill, but couldn’t, so he traveled outside his jurisdiction, thinking that would keep people from making any connections to the Ulrich case. Had he not done the bit with the flower petals, he might have gotten away with it. But as it turns out, those flowers had a very strong significance for him.”
“And it had nothing to do with all the ritual stuff associated with the flowers,” I add. “As you guessed, as we all guessed, there was a woman behind the motivation to kill—two women, in a way—but it wasn’t poor Carolyn Helgeson. She was targeted by Stetson as the ultimate frame for Ulrich.”
Maggie nods, her eyes bright with interest.
“You nailed it when you told us that we needed to look at Caroline and how she didn’t fit,” Hurley says. “And you also pointed out that we needed to look at who had the wherewithal to frame Ulrich. Who better than the detective in charge of the case?”
“Indeed,” Maggie says with a smile, leaning forward eagerly.
“Stetson manipulated the evidence with ease after he committed his first killing and dumped the body down by the river,” Hurley goes on. “When the local cops found Ulrich’s fishing license, it gave Stetson the idea of setting the man up for any subsequent deaths. And that’s exactly what he did. He started stalking Ulrich. He stole Ulrich’s fishing knife and used it to commit the other killings. He took carpet fibers from Ulrich’s car and planted them on one of the bodies. He watched Ulrich night and day, learning his habits, discerning when he would be home alone and therefore without an alibi. He timed the killings for those periods. Then he almost got caught dumping the body of his third victim, and that scared him into trying to stop. But before he did, he targeted Caroline Helgeson as the final nail in Ulrich’s coffin. Fortunately, she fit the physical parameters of the type of women Stetson was looking for.”
“And what was it about the physical parameters that was so important to him?” Maggie asks. She is leaning forward, elbows on her knees, chin resting on her interlaced fingers.
“It’s pretty twisted,” I warn Maggie, but this only makes her look more interested. “Stetson’s father died right around the time he was entering puberty. His mother latched onto him to fill the void that was created, expecting him to fix things around the house, act as her protector, handle the so-called manly chores, even start earning some money, even though he was only thirteen. Eventually, as his body started changing, she had him fill other voids,” I say with a grimace.
Maggie’s eyes grow huge. “Sex?” she says.
I nod grimly. “And it went on for years, well into Stetson’s adulthood. They both knew the outside world wouldn’t approve. Apparently, the woman did a number on her son, because he was completely and utterly brainwashed. They continued their relationship through his college years, the police academy, and his job.”
Hurley takes over. “They lived together all that time, but everyone just thought that Stetson was a dutiful son who looked after his mom. No one suspected just how twisted their relationship was.”
“Until his mother got sick a few years ago,” I say. “She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and with the surgery, chemo, and radiation that followed, her relationship with her son changed. It took on more of a normal mother-son characteristic. Stetson met Susan at the hospital while visiting his mother there, and for the first time, he began to think that he could have a more normal relationship with another woman. They dated, Susan got pregnant, and then they got married, all of it while Mrs. Stetson was undergoing her treatments.”
Hurley picks up the story again while I take a sip of water. “Mrs. Stetson was too ill during the early stages of her son’s courtship of Susan to realize what was going on, but once she did, it didn’t go over well. But by then, Susan was pregnant and she and Stetson had had the modern-day version of a shotgun wedding. Apparently, Mrs. Stetson was furious and the hold she had on her son was stronger than he realized. As she recovered from her treatments, she lured him back to her bed. Susan found out and threatened to expose them both.”
“Oh, my,” Maggie says. I can tell from her expression that she’s eating this up.
Hurley continues: “Faced with the shame and embarrassment of the situation, Susan came up with an alternate plan, one that would solve the problem, save face, and keep the awful family secret under wraps. When Mrs. Stetson had a setback and ended up back in the hospital, Susan confronted her and told her she was going to expose them. According to Susan, the two women had quite a row, and Mrs. Stetson accused Susan of sleeping around and even went so far as to say the twins weren’t her son’s. Susan expected Stetson to side with her, of course, but he didn’t. When she saw how strong a hold his mother had over him, she realized he would never come around—as long as Mrs. Stetson was alive.
“According to Stetson, Susan was working at the hospital when his mother was readmitted and had to have emergency surgery. He claims Susan found a way to kill the woman and make it look like a natural death. She supposedly admitted to Stetson that she did this, though the woman is adamantly denying it now.” Hurley pauses and shrugs. “Whether or not she did kill the woman, Stetson believed she did, and he went nuts.”
“I take it that Mrs. Stetson, the mother, that is, was blond-haired and blue-eyed?” Maggie says.
“Nope,” I say. “She was short, dark-haired, and had brown eyes.”
Maggie looks confused.
“Hold on, it will make sense in a minute,” I say with a smile. “The loss of his mother hit Stetson hard and he blamed Susan. He wanted to kill her for it, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill the mother of his daughters. Still, the whole thing destroyed their marriage, and it also destroyed any sanity Stetson had left after what his mother had done to him all those years. He couldn’t kill Susan, so he killed women who represented her—women who looked like her, women with no morals, and, out of self-preservation, women he thought no one would miss. Caroline Helgeson was the only exception, a necessary one if Stetson was going to get away with it and lay the blame on Ulrich.”
“But I saw a news clip that showed Stetson’s wife recently,” Maggie says. “She had red hair.”
“She does now,” I say, “but she’s a blonde naturally. She didn’t start dying it red until very recently. I should have realized that when I saw the twins. They’re both towheads.”
“Where did Stetson kill the women?” Maggie asks. “And how?”
“He killed all of them out at his family home,” Hurley says. “He inherited an old farm from his mother. It was easy to lure the women to his vehicle and drive them out there with the promise of more drugs, which he apparently provided. The cops found blood evidence all over the floor of a barn that sits on Stetson’s property, and they also found an old truck that had blood evidence in the bed. It’s what he used to transport the bodies, that and an old rowboat he towed out to the one site where he left Darla Marks’s body. He grabbed a sample of the river grass in that area, working off a mistaken belief that that area was the only spot along the river where it grew. He then planted the grass on Ulrich’s boat, thinking it would be one more piece of evidence against the poor man.”
Hurley pauses and chuckles before continuing. “The irony of the river grass story is that the DA on the Ulrich case, a man named Pete Hamilton, used that river grass in another earlier case to prove someone else’s guilt. Some expert had testified that it could only be found in one spot along the river, but it turned out he was wrong. The defense team in that case never challenged it, as there was so much other evidence against their client that it didn’t matter. Stetson had heard the original testimony about the grass, but never knew it ha
d been disproven, so he believed it to be true.”
“As for how Stetson killed,” I say, “he had a definite pattern. Based on the heroin levels in the blood of all the victims, they were unconscious when he finally got around to the stabbing part. I suppose that’s some small consolation. His victims likely felt little to no pain because of all the heroin in their systems.
“The one exception to it all, as you so wisely pointed out, was Caroline Helgeson,” I continue. “She had a huge amount of heroin in her system, too, and only one needle mark on her arm. She wasn’t a regular user, and at first, the cops couldn’t figure out why she would have let anyone do that to her. There was no evidence of any restraints being used, and no defensive wounds of any sort. And unlike the other women, she wasn’t already under the influence of illicit drugs, at least not any she self-administered. It turns out they found GHB in her vitreous fluid.”
“He slipped her a dose of the date rape drug?” Maggie says, looking surprised.
“Yep, Stetson admitted to it,” I say. “Of course, originally the cops thought it was Ulrich who gave it to her, even though they couldn’t prove how he got the stuff, or that he ever had it.”
“We’re not sure how Stetson got the drugs, either,” Hurley says. “But there have been enough drug raids and confiscated materials by the Eau Claire PD that it wouldn’t have been all that hard for him to have stashed some aside for his own use.”
“Our Sorenson victim had a high level of heroin in her blood, like the other victims, but in her case, we think it came from her own stash,” I add. “Stetson admitted he had some heroin on him that he brought along with the intention of using it on Lacy, but he took advantage of the score she and Dutch had made earlier and saved what he had for another day.”
“So the Sorenson victim was stalked?” Maggie asks. “She wasn’t a victim of circumstance?”
“A little of both, but he definitely stalked her,” Hurley says. “He traveled around looking for potential victims, feeling the need to kill again, but smart enough not to do it in his own area. Lacy O’Connor and Dutch Simmons happened to walk into a convenience store where Stetson had stopped to gas up his car and he saw Dutch score some drugs outside the store a few minutes later. Since Lacy fit the physical parameters Stetson wanted, he followed her and that idiot boyfriend of hers. He saw that they had a cabin at Troll Nook and he went home to Eau Claire and came back the next day. It took three nights of stalking the two of them before he got his chance. Their car broke down and Lacy took the drugs she and Dutch had scored that day and started walking to Troll Nook. Dutch was passed out in the car and later ended up in the ER. Lacy wasn’t so lucky. Stetson offered her a ride and she accepted. He took her back to her cabin, shot her up with more heroin, laid out the plastic sheet he brought with him on the bed, and killed her.”
“And then he dumped her on the side of a road?” Maggie says, wincing.
“Right,” Hurley says. “I guess he figured taking her to his home in Eau Claire and killing her in the barn like all the others was too risky and impractical. That would have been a long drive with a comatose drug addict in the car. The likely reason he took Lacy’s body and dumped it alongside the road was to try to keep the actual murder scene from being discovered, fearful that he might have inadvertently left evidence behind, like DNA, that would point to him. We theorized that it was while dumping her body that the gold fiber got caught in Lacy’s teeth. They were quite jagged, and her face was against his chest when he carried her. Her tooth probably snagged on the police department emblem on his jacket and pulled loose a gold thread.”
Maggie leans back in her seat with a satisfied smile. “Quite the intriguing and sordid story,” she says. “How is poor Mr. Ulrich doing?”
“As good as can be expected,” I say. “He’s talking about moving away, heading back east to Vermont, I think he said. It’s where one of his sisters lives.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Maggie says. “He’ll never have a normal life in this area if he stays.” She looks troubled for a moment. “Is he going to be here for Stetson’s trial?”
Hurley shakes his head. “For now, there isn’t going to be one. The shrinks—” Realizing what he’s said, he grimaces and mutters, “Sorry.”
Maggie smiles and waves him off. “I’m not that sensitive.”
“The doctors,” Hurley says instead, “all agree that Stetson is insane. He hid it well, but once they started digging into that man’s brain, they discovered how truly messed up he is.”
“And his wife?” Maggie asks.
“Ah, there’s the rub,” I say. “No one knows for sure if Stetson can be believed when he says Susan claimed to have killed his mother. Susan denies it, of course, and Mrs. Stetson was cremated a long time ago, so there’s no way to check. And the medical records for Mrs. Stetson right before she died showed multiple medical conditions that could have caused her death and would have in short order, regardless.”
“So she just gets away with it, if she did do it?” Maggie says, looking appalled.
Hurley and I both nod.
“To be honest,” I say, “I’d rather see someone like her get away with murder than see someone like Mason Ulrich falsely accused. And from the sound of things, Mrs. Stetson’s death was no big loss to anyone other than her son. I know it doesn’t justify murder, but that woman was seriously twisted and disturbed.”
“We disagree on that point,” Hurley says, giving me a wan smile. “It was the death of Mrs. Stetson that led to all the murders. If Susan Stetson killed the woman, she’s as guilty of those deaths as her husband is.”
“Not if you can’t prove it,” I say.
Hurley sighs, but with a smile. We’ve discussed this case six ways from Sunday over the past month and realized that we’re never going to agree on all the issues. Given the current tension in our relationship, one might expect such disagreements would be a potential hazard. But the truth is, Hurley and I love debating the issues, arguing our respective points, and philosophizing on things in general. We’re both passionate and animated during these discussions, but also respectful of one another. Often as not, the debates lead to sex. At least that part of our relationship is still functioning well.
“What about the carnations? And the stabbing pattern? Were you able to get any explanations out of Stetson for those?” Maggie asks.
“We did,” I say. “The stabbing pattern was basically Stetson venting his rage at all things female. He said he wanted to destroy the essence of their femininity, or some crazy crap like that, and that meant one stab in the uterus, one in each ovary—though his knowledge of anatomy was off by several inches in that case—and one in each breast.”
“Makes sense,” Maggie says. “If that kind of thing can ever be considered sensible. And the carnations?”
“Yellow carnations were his mother’s favorite flowers,” I say. “Simple as that. It had nothing to do with all that symbolism, though it ended up being quite apt. Stetson had access to the hospital, so it was easy enough for him to get the flowers for his own use without ordering them. Sometimes he took them from arrangements that patients had, sometimes he got them from the garbage. He visited the hospital often under the guise of going to the morgue or visiting Dr. Larson, and the hospital trash was located outside a basement door not far from the morgue.”
A buzzer sounds, and Maggie smiles and says, “That’s my next patient, so we’ll have to call it a day. Thanks for filling me in. See you in two weeks and don’t forget your homework.”
Hurley and I thank Maggie and leave, walking out of the building hand in hand, silent until we reach his pickup.
“We’re okay, Squatch, aren’t we?” he says, not releasing my hand. “Because you . . . us . . . our family . . . they’re the most important things in my life. I hope you know that.”
I look deep into his eyes, into his heart. God, I love this man. “I do know that,” I say honestly. “There will always be challenges, but I’m conf
ident that we can meet them together. I’ll do better at being more open and honest with you.”
“Me too.” He tears his gaze away and looks out over the parking area. “I do trust you, Squatch. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry I got so jealous. It was a stupid thing to do.”
I smile and run a hand over his chest. “It’s probably very un-PC of me to say that I kind of like that you did.”
He looks at me again, his expression serious, his eyes locked on mine. “Are you sure, absolutely sure, about the baby thing?”
I nod. “I am. Losing this pregnancy made me realize how much I want another kid with you, Hurley.”
He arches one eyebrow and cocks a half-smile at me. “Want to go home and practice?”
I feel a funny little quiver in my nether regions. “Absolutely.”
With that, we go speeding homeward into a hopeful but unknown future.
Don’t miss the last MATTIE WINSTON MYSTERY DEAD OF WINTER
By
Annelise Ryan Available at your favorite booksellers and e-retailers!
Turn the page for a quick peek at this exciting mystery featuring your favorite characters from the Mattie Winston Mysteries!
CHAPTER 1
I awaken and peer out of one eye at the clock on my bedside stand, hoping for another hour or two of sleep. Sadly, it is not to be. The clock reads 7:28—two minutes before the alarm is going to sound. I want desperately to close my eyes and go back to sleep, to snuggle down in the warmth of the covers and hide from the morning cold, to cuddle up next to my sleeping husband, bathing in the feelings of love and sanctuary he instills in me. Instead, I reach over and turn off the alarm before it starts clamoring. Bleary-eyed, I ease out from under the covers and sit on the edge of the bed, giving my senses a minute or so to more fully wake up. I listen to the sounds of the house and the gentle snores of Hurley behind me, feeling the coolness in the air, and letting my eyes adjust better to the dark.
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