Murder in the Dell

by Bert Entwistle

  Murder in the Dell

  by

  Bert Entwistle

  Other Books by Bert Entwistle:

  The Drift

  Uranium Drive-In

  The Taylor Legacy

  The Black Rose Banker

  New Mexico

  “We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid,

  control life itself.”

  ___ The Night Stalker

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, places and events are fictional and are products of the author’s imagination. No portion of this book may be reproduced without permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in the United States by Black Mule Press

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  www.blackmulepress.com

  Copyright © 2018 Bert Entwistle

  Murder in the Dell

  First Edition, April 2018

  Library of Congress Number: 2018938435

  ISBN: 978-0-9896761-7-5

  Price - $16.00

  For all those that followed their dream . . .

  Chapter 1

  Breathing heavily in the bitter night air, the bill of his cap was covered with tiny ice crystals and his thick eyebrows were nearly glazed over. The package, wrapped tightly in plastic sheeting, would be frozen solid in minutes. Pulling it out of the trunk, it hit the ground with a dull thud. Maneuvering through the darkness and between the thick pines, he dragged it to the edge of a shallow gully. Giving it a final shove with his boot, he watched as it slid down the small hill and out of sight.

  Climbing into the car, he pulled off his gloves and rubbed his hands together for some quick warmth. The snow was getting worse and he knew any tracks he’d left in the trees were already gone. “They might not find this one until spring,” he said to himself as he turned the heater on full blast. Pulling onto the pavement, he clicked on the radio. “There must be some decent music on here somewhere . . .”

  * * *

  “Damn, Bayfield County is colder than a dead Eskimo’s ass today,” said Deacon, stomping the snow off his boots in the doorway.

  Angie shook her head, “not very PC language there boss. You know what Supervisor Thomas would have to say about that.”

  “I ain’t worried. That wretched old woman would never leave her house on a day like this. I’m sure she’s got old Nate keeping the firewood well stocked so she doesn’t get too cold.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Just sayin’, maybe you should consider changing Eskimo to polar bear?” After nine years as combination secretary and dispatcher for the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Department, Angie Timmons knew all of his folksy sayings, and loved to give him a hard time about them. A native of Bayfield County, Wisconsin, she was raised on a family dairy operation southwest of town. After getting married, she moved to Washburn on the shores of Lake Superior and started working in the sheriff’s office.

  “Woman, you just stick to the phones. I’ll deal with the supervisor myself, thank you very much,” said Deacon. The door swung open and Deputy Austin Stone walked in, the wind slamming it shut behind him. “Sheriff, we got another one.”

  “Aw Jesus Christ — another young girl?”

  “Well, more like part of one . . .”

  Pulling his coat back on he headed for the door. “Part of one? Where’s it at?”

  “Couple miles up the shore, right near the concrete piers, where the old ore docks used to be.”

  “You said part of a body — what part?”

  “Not sure actually. I got the call on my cell phone while I was in the cruiser just as I came into town. The towing company guy was on a call, Sarah Crawford slid into a ditch and he pulled her out. Then he spotted something in the rip-rap and called me direct. He said it looked like part of an arm.”

  The tow truck was pulled off the road and the driver was keeping warm in the cab while he waited. A biting wind was blowing the snow off the lake, covering the road and the ditches. Knocking on the window, Austin held onto his hat and leaned in to talk to the driver. “Show us what you found before everything gets covered.”

  The driver nodded and climbed out. “Right here,” he said, pointing to a spot in the snow bank. “Well, it was right here twenty minutes ago.”

  “What exactly did you see?”

  “A hand and part of the forearm. It was down between the pieces of rip-rap.”

  “You think it was a female?”

  The driver turned his back to the wind and nodded. “It had purple painted nails with some kind of design on them.”

  “Thanks. Go on home and get warm. First thing in the morning we’ll need you to come to the office to give a statement.”

  “Sheriff, you want me to start digging?” asked Austin.

  The wind had reached gale force and the two men had to get back in the car. “No, I don’t think it will do much good right now. We just need to mark the spot with something until this storm moves out.”

  “There’s a couple of cement blocks and two traffic cones in the back of the cruiser,” said Stone, “I’ll use them.”

  “Sounds good. When the weather lets up, we’ll have Rusty bring the dogs out, they’ll find it. Till then, we can wait it out at the office.”

  Deacon Davis stared out the front window as he sipped his morning coffee. He was early as usual. The sun was starting to show through the clouds and what he saw was a foot of new snow everywhere. The county guys will have their hands full on the roads today, he thought, topping off his cup.

  Turning toward his desk, he saw Angie walk in, peel off her parka and boots, and sit down at her desk without acknowledging him.

  “You’re late . . .”

  “So fire me if you don’t like it — I’d rather be home by the fire anyway.”

  “Nah. That would only make you happy, and I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Then shut up and get me a coffee, one mocha creamer.”

  “Yes ma’am. If that’s what it takes to keep your little ray of morning sunshine lit, I’ll bring it right away — even though everyone knows that’s woman’s work.”

  “Davis, you are on very thin ice right now.”

  This was a regular part of the morning ritual at the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Office. It had been going on since Davis was elected sheriff nearly eight years ago. Angie Timmons was a tall blonde, nearly six feet in her bare feet. A very attractive middle-aged woman, she was divorced from her long-haul trucker husband. Extremely smart, she was also exceptionally quick to understand and react to whatever situation came up. She was made dispatcher shortly after being hired, and hired and handled the business of the sheriff’s office easily.

  Covering more than 2,000 square miles of land with barely 15,000 people, Bayfield County, Wisconsin, is squeezed in between Douglas and Ashland counties, both half the size with many times the population. Washburn, the county seat, accounts for only about 2,000 residents. Nearly 700 lakes and 400 miles of streams provide recreation for locals as well as summer tourists. Covered in trees and small farms, the Bayfield Peninsula juts well out into Lake Superior. Just offshore is the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, several of the islands falling within Bayfield County’s jurisdiction.

  By seven am, both deputies were in the office, and the tow truck driver walked in a few minutes after them. “Pete Peterson,” said the driver, offering his hand to Angie, “with Shoreline Towing and Storage.” A tall, thin, gangly young man, he was bare headed, wearing only a thin windbreaker.

  “Pete, good to meet you,” said Deacon. “Thanks for coming in so early, have a seat. Aren’t you freezing out there?”

  “Naw, if it gets
really cold, I have a pair of earmuffs in the truck.”

  “If it gets really cold? You are a lot tougher than me, that’s for sure. You want a coffee?”

  “Yessir, that’d be great, black would be fine.”

  “Angie, would you get Mister Peterson a cup of coffee please?”

  “You got it.”

  “Tell me about the call you were on when you spotted the hand.”

  “Well, I got a dispatch call about three o’clock to help someone who’d slid into a ditch, you know how bad the road was out there. It was a nice little gray-haired lady named Sarah Crawford. It was an easy job, had her out in five minutes. I even got a twenty-dollar tip. When she left, I was winding up my tow cable and I saw something that didn’t look right. It kinda looked like the hand of a department store mannequin, with purple nails that had some kind of design on them.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I thought that if it was a mannequin, it might be worth somethin’. So I tried brushin’ a little snow away, but by then the wind was picking up and covering it up as fast as I could work. But I dug enough away to realize it warn’t no mannequin for sure — it was a real hand, just froze solid.”

  “Thanks Pete, I much appreciate you coming in this morning. Do you have the tag number and the time?”

  “Yessir, but it’s back at the office. I can bring it by if you want.”

  He nodded and shook his hand again. “I would appreciate that, just call it in or drop it by if you would.”

  “Sheriff, I ain’t never seen anything like that before — have you?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately I have . . .”

  The plow had been down the road more than once since the storm started, and the cement blocks and orange traffic cones were buried somewhere under the piles of slushy, gray snow along the shoulder. “Rusty, I think it’s right around here somewhere,” said Davis, pointing to a high spot. “See if your dog can pick up the scent. The tow truck guy said it was frozen, will that stop her from smelling it?”

  “Nope. If it’s there she’ll find it.”

  His dogs had found cadavers for them before, as well as drugs. Maggie, a Brittany, was a star cadaver dog in Wisconsin and had worked dozens of crime scenes and suspected burials all over the state.

  Plowing headfirst through the snow like a machine, her face and ears were quickly covered. She made paths back and forth for twenty minutes. Moving down the road a few more yards, she started the same routine and then stopped abruptly. Barking twice, she shook off the snow and sat down. “Sheriff, I think she has something.”

  “Let’s see what she’s got.”

  Stone took a shovel and broom from the truck and started to dig, finding the cones immediately. In minutes he saw the frozen purple fingernails poking eerily through the snow. “Found it Sheriff, but it might be a chore getting it out of the rocks, it’s frozen pretty solid.”

  “We’ll just have to be careful and work the rocks lose the best we can. When you get it out, take it to Doc Baker. I’ll call the state boys and get their crime scene techs out to look over the rest of the area,” said Deacon. “Rusty, that’s one hell of a dog you got there.”

  He nodded and rubbed her ears, giving her a treat at the same time. “Maggie has helped on more than forty cases in the last seven years. I wish they were all as good as her.”

  For 35 years, Doctor Robert Lee Baker had been the only coroner in the county. At 71 years-old he ran the county morgue out of his mortuary, the R. L. Baker Funeral Home. Six-foot-tall, painfully skinny and stoop shouldered, he had a blunt, often abrasive personality. He was also considered by many to be a brilliant pathologist. A quirky, home-grown character, he had graduated from Ashfield High School and received his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Over the years he’d traveled around the state testifying as an expert witness in many murder trials. Deacon had worked with him a lot over the last two years on the local killings. Like everyone else, he accepted that he was good at his job but sometimes was hard to take in large doses.

  “Davis, did you find the rest of the girl?”

  “Not yet Doc, but we’re still searching. We may turn something up when the snow melts a little more.”

  The arm, now thawed, lay on the morgue table, on a folded white towel. Looking at his notes, Baker started right in. “White female, in her twenties. It appears she was reasonably healthy, limb severed post-mortem in the middle of the forearm, cleanly done. Fingernails clean. Several sets of bite marks from a medium to large animal. Blood shows traces of birth control drugs. The tips of her fingers and her nails were badly scratched up,” said Baker, handing him an evidence bag. “Here’s a sample of the polish and a photo of her nails. That’s all there is. I sent a DNA sample to the state lab for testing and it should be back in a couple of days.”

  “Thanks. You say it was severed post-mortem?”

  “That’s what I said — you’re doubting my work?”

  “No, not at all Doc. I’m just wondering what it must take for someone to do this to another human being?”

  “A sharp knife and a saw — anything else?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Sitting at his office desk, Deacon looked at the 8x10 photo on the wall. He was 18 years-old, posing with his girlfriend, his father and an NHL scout. They were all holding onto a hockey jersey with his name on it and he was grinning from ear to ear. Growing up in Washburn, not far up the shore from Ashland, he was an only child and grew up without a mother. His father, Clay, a small quiet man, operated a boating business in the summer. In season, he set his gill nets for herring, a small silvery fish about a foot long called ciscos by the locals. He took sport fishermen on day trips around the Apostle Islands for the rest of the summer. In the winter he did carpentry and different odd jobs. Deacon worked with him every minute he could when he wasn’t in school or sports. He enjoyed working with his father and loved every minute they spent on the water.

  In high school Deacon Davis had been the classic big man on campus. A star in three sports, he was tall and handsome and dated the head cheerleader. A gifted athlete, he was courted by scouts from both hockey and football, but he had decided early on to make hockey his future. Signed by the Blackhawks near the end of his senior year, his life was perfect. He would marry Carol, the cheerleader, play pro hockey, have a few kids and live happily after.

  Two days after graduation he asked Carol to marry him and she said yes. That night after a party thrown by his family and friends to celebrate his future, they left the restaurant for her house. Five minutes later she was dead, and he was on life support. The driver who hit him ran a red light at high speed and plowed squarely into the passenger door. Five months in the hospital left him with a crushed pelvis and two permanently damaged vertebrae. Twenty years later the pain still got to him, and a back brace was never far away.

  The four men pulled up their chairs in what Angie called the war room. It was a tiny, windowless room that once held the office supplies. Somehow, she had fixed it up to hold six people. She found chairs, a six-foot folding table and two large whiteboards for them to work with. File folders were on the table, each containing the details and photographs of five dead women found in Bayfield County, and now another one for the severed arm. Whenever they had a meeting, she had everything updated and ready.

  Sheriff Davis, Deputy Stone and Felix Barnhart, Special Agent for the FBI, had been working together on the case of the murdered women since the third body turned up. The FBI took over the investigation on the serial murders but kept the county informed when necessary. Not because they cared about help from the local sheriff, but because Deacon and his deputies were intimately familiar with every inch of the area where the bodies had been found. Today’s meeting was to update everyone about the severed arm.

  “Felix, did your forensic guys get a chance to look at the arm?” asked Deacon.

  “Yeah, they did, but I can’t say much for your medical examiner’s hospitality
though. You’d of thought we were trying to steal something from him.”

  “That’s Doc Baker, he’ll never win a popularity contest for sure. However, you know his reputation as a perfectionist. He’s supposed to be one of the best in the business.”

  “That’s the only reason I didn’t shoot him.” After a good laugh at the thought of shooting the cranky old man, everyone settled down and opened their folders. “Truth is, he was right on top of it, and our guys came up with the same findings.”

  “Anything from the DNA?” asked Deacon.

  “We got a good profile, but as of now, there’s no one to compare it with. Did you find any more body parts yet?”

  “No, and I don’t think it’ll happen any time soon — at least until it stops snowing.”

  The team spent another hour going over the serial murder case, looking for connections between the victims and the arm and discussing possible leads. “I’m baffled by the lack of cell phone leads,” said Deacon. “Every one of these victims, except maybe number three, was known to live on their phones. You never found a single connection between them, or to some common person. Did you get anything of value from their cell records?”

  Felix shook his head. “Absolutely nothing. The records show that they all talked a lot, but not about anything suspicious. It looks like all the cell phones were disabled soon after each girl disappeared.”

  Deacon flipped through the file, now getting uncomfortably thick. “All the bodies were wrapped in the same black plastic sheeting. What about the plastic itself? Anything there?”

  “It’s the most common construction plastic in the country, hell, maybe even the whole world,” said Felix. “At least 140 retailers in Wisconsin alone sell the stuff and the company that makes it said they haven’t changed it in the last four years. Same with the cord used to tie it with—sold in the very same places.”