Dead Tease

by Victoria Houston

  Osborne kept his own head down and out of the way. Years of practicing dentistry in the Northwoods where hockey pucks claimed more teeth than Easter candy had taught him to avoid airborne inanimate objects, particularly those with a projectile punch.

  He considered offering a word of caution, but he knew from experience that once the man in the faded blue sweatshirt stenciled “Romance, Excitement, and Live Bait: You Can Have It All at Ray’s Place” set his heart on a new money-making venture, there was no getting in his way. Not even when said venture might be life threatening.

  “I don’t understand why you need such a long bungee,” said Osborne, doing his best to keep the kayak from slipping sideways.

  “So I can carry my goddamn fishing rods on the side,” said Ray Pradt between clenched teeth. “Why the hell do you think?”

  “Well,” said Osborne, opting to risk a reasonable commentary even though he knew better, “I’m looking at a thirty-thousand-dollar bass boat moored ten feet from here. The dock where it’s tied up appears to be anchored to land that belongs to you. Given that bass boats were designed to carry all sorts of fishing gear, I’m perplexed. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t kayaks for Type A’s who don’t have the patience to fish?”

  Ray didn’t answer as he leaned forward, one arm extended to maintain tension in the bungee cord while he scrambled with the other to hook the cord somewhere inside the fiberglass craft.

  Watching Ray while holding the kayak steady, Osborne was reminded of an origami heron that one of his granddaughters had folded for a school art class. With elbows and knees pointing in all directions, his six feet five inches folded into multiple sections and his long arms capable of a giant wingspread, Ray Pradt lacked only the serenity of a Great Blue Heron.

  The cord caught and held. Both men gave a sigh of relief, and Ray, leaning back, wiped the sweat from his forehead. He brushed back the mass of dark brown curls that had fallen into his eyes—an effort that gave him the appearance of having had prolonged exposure to a light socket.

  “You okay if I let go now?” asked Osborne, feeling a cramp in his right hamstring.

  “Yep. This’ll work,” said Ray. “Check it out, Doc.” He got to his feet, pointed to the kayak with pride, and waved his right hand in a mock brushstroke saying, “All that’s left is for me to paint ‘Ride the Muskie’ on each side and she’s ready. Yep, this … is … sweet.”

  “Sweet? Sweet?” Osborne shook his head, befuddled. “That is one weird contraption. Nothing sweet about it.”

  “Doc, you need to get out more. Trust me,” said Ray, shaking an authoritative finger as he spoke, “kayak fishing is the new sport fisherman’s dream—huge on the East Coast where they compete to see who can catch the biggest blue fin tuna.”

  “Tuna,” said Osborne. “When was the last time you saw tuna in Loon Lake?”

  Ignoring the remark, Ray launched into a routine too familiar to Osborne, who surrendered to being held hostage as his neighbor sat back on his heels and—with words and pauses stretched out like chewing gum—rambled on happily: “Just you imagine, Doc … sitting … right? Just sitting … in this little humdinger here … with the water this close….”

  He measured two inches between his thumb and forefinger to demonstrate how deep a kayaker sits in the water, “When you get a strike … and Wham! You got a muskie on the line and … and

  … that fish is huge enough to pull you right along at … maybe,” the eyebrows raised high in anticipation, “… fifteen miles an hour.

  “Think of that, Doc.” Ray leaned toward Osborne, his eyes sparkling, “You might be fighting … nose to nose. Hell, now that I think of it—I might have to get this kayak a powerboat registration.” Ray grinned at his own joke.

  “And?” said Osborne, waiting.

  “And what?”

  “How do you get the fish home? You sure as heck can’t boat it.”

  “Yeah,” the grin faded, “I gotta think about that.”

  “And you expect people to pay for this? When they can sit in comfort on a bass boat with a six-pack at their feet?”

  “Like I said—kayak fishing is huge on the East Coast. Doc,” said Ray, sounding eager to change the subject, “I want you and Lew to try one of these fly fishing. Rig up some good-size streamers—see if you can catch a muskie on a dry fly. Lew will love it, I know she will.”

  With a shake of his head, Osborne walked onto the dock and out toward the bench on the end where he often sat with his friend to relish the final moments of the setting sun. Sitting down, he paused to look back and say, “How did you happen to get into all this? Don’t you have your hands full guiding clients?”

  “I made a deal with a marina up in Bayfield when I was fishing Lake Superior last week. They’ll cut me in for thirty percent on every fishing kayak I sell.”

  “I see,” said Osborne, deciding not to ask any more questions. If Ray followed his usual pattern, this crazy idea would fade fast. “Got time for a ginger ale?”

  “Yep, some in the cooler on the boat there, Doc. You sit tight, I’ll grab us a couple.”

  Osborne gazed across the lake toward the far shoreline where the sun ripped a scarlet tear in the sky above the spires of distant pines. “What a night,” he said, popping the tab off the can Ray handed him. “No wind, eighty degrees. A perfect August evening.”

  “Maybe in your world,” said Ray, sitting down beside him, “but I had two guiding jobs canceled thanks to this hot weather.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Osborne. He was feeling fine: satisfied, relaxed, looking forward to a late dinner, maybe even staying over at Lewellyn’s. Was it fair for him to be so happy?

  Just as he was mulling over his state of contentment, his cell phone rang. He reached into the chest pocket of his khaki shirt. “Oops, excuse me a minute—it’s Lew, I better take it.”

  “Hello?”

  “Doc, where are you?”

  “Ray’s. Helping him do some damage to a kayak. What’s up?”

  “Gotta cancel dinner and I need you. Stabbing victim out at the new condos back behind the clinic. Can’t use Pecore on this one—the victim is his niece.

  “Good thing you’re at Ray’s ’cause, Doc, if he’s got the time—I sure would appreciate it if he would shoot the crime scene tonight. With this hot weather and chance of a thunderstorm, I don’t dare wait for the Wausau boys to get here in the morning. Even if we move the victim tonight, I don’t have to tell you what can happen to my trace evidence—”

  “Pecore’s niece? You don’t mean Jen Williams?” Osborne caught Ray’s eye as he spoke.

  “Yes. Meet me there ASAP. Both of you, please. The victim is under the trees across the road from the mailboxes—right at the parking lot. You can’t miss it.”

  “What’s up with Jen?” said Ray after Osborne had clicked off his phone. “We dated a few years back. She’s a little scary.”

  “Not any more,” said Osborne.

  Chapter Four

  “A clean wound, Lew, with no bruising or abrasion that I can see,” said Osborne, keeping his voice low as he spoke to Lewellyn Ferris, the Loon Lake chief of police who was kneeling beside him, taking notes as he worked. A sterile tarp designed to keep debris or footprints from contaminating the area around the victim had been put in place before Osborne arrived.

  Hands encased in nitrile gloves, he had unbuttoned the young woman’s shirt—so dark with blood he couldn’t tell it was light blue until he tugged it up from where it was belted at her waist—then gently pushed aside the edge of the blood-soaked bra covering her left breast. After examining the wound, he dabbed at the blood surrounding the site where the knife had entered, waited, and dabbed again. “Lew, I want to be sure we have only one …” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  It was less than an hour since the 911 call had come in from the condo resident who had walked up to get his mail only to be confronted by the sight of Jennifer Williams’s body shoved under the low branches of the bals
am firs.

  Osborne’s fingers prodded the perimeters of both breasts, then across the rib cage, making sure. When he was certain, he straightened up and whispered so only the woman at his side could hear: “The cause of death appears to be a stab wound produced by a sharp object and resulting in a wound deeper than wide …,” he paused. “Enough for now?” It was his responsibility to complete the death certificate but he knew it could be amended after the autopsy.

  Lewellyn Ferris nodded. She saw what he saw, and they both knew without having to be told by the boys from the Wausau Crime Lab that the knife had penetrated the heart—death had been instantaneous.

  A murmur of excitement from a cluster of bystanders huddled across the road escalated as the van from Channel 12-TV pulled up less than ten feet from the row of mailboxes behind which lay the body. Scrambling to her feet and taking care not to disturb the sterile tarp beneath her, Lew strode toward the van with both hands up to silence the young female reporter thrusting a microphone at her: “No comment until we have notified the family. I want everyone back, way back—and stay there.”

  When she was satisfied she had been obeyed, Lew returned to where Osborne was busy entering the results of his exam on the clipboard propped against his long, black medical examiner’s bag. He looked up as she approached, and both glanced back at the body. He’d left Jen’s shirt open for the crime scene photos.

  “That blade had to be so sharp—see where it went through the cloth and a section of that bra without tearing?” Osborne gestured with his pen. “Not even a loose thread. How many people have knives that sharp? Hunters maybe.”

  “Only in deer season, Doc.”

  Osborne got to his feet, zipped shut the black bag and, picking it up, backed away with slow, careful steps. “For no good reason—except for how sharp the knife had to be—I don’t think this was a spontaneous act.”

  Lew shrugged. “Hard to say, really. Could be a robbery gone bad? But I appreciate your intuition, Doc. Won’t hurt to put that in your notes.”

  Looking up, she studied the sky overhead. “The good news is the switchboard called to tell me the weather forecast has changed: a slight chance of rain tonight with light winds. But good cover from these pines, which will make it easier to recover any trace evidence. I’ll have Todd cordon off this side of the driveway from the turn-off into the condo complex up to the first building and leave it for the Wausau Crime Lab to work up in the morning.”

  “You talked to them? What did they say?” asked Osborne, wondering if he needed to wait at the morgue for one of the Wausau boys to arrive.

  “Not yet, Doc. I’ll give ’em a call in a few minutes but I doubt I can get anyone up here tonight. Ridiculous to work an outdoor crime scene in the dark.” She gave a sigh of reluctance, reminding Osborne how much fun she had dealing with the bozo running the crime lab.

  The director of the Wausau Crime Lab made it his mission to give the Loon Lake chief of police a hard time. If he wasn’t trying to share an off-color joke—with females as a punch line—he enjoyed ranting about women in law enforcement: “Ladies do not belong in military combat or on the police force—they are too soft.” Lew would listen until she got what she wanted.

  As far as Osborne was concerned, that razzbonya got one thing real wrong: soft did not apply to Lewellyn Ferris.

  “Try your buddy Bruce this time,” said Osborne. “Skip his boss and throw in fly fishing for muskies—from a kayak. Bet you anything he’ll jump at that.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you teasing me?” Lew grinned, a friendly challenge in her eyes. Osborne smiled back. He found her so cute when she did that—but he knew better than to say so. Nevertheless, he allowed himself a moment to feel sixteen again.

  “I’ll tell you later. Ray’s latest enterprise.”

  “Oh no,” still smiling, Lew rolled her eyes. “But speak of the devil. If you’re finished, I’ll have Ray get the photos now.”

  She waved a go-ahead to Ray who had been chatting with several of the men and women gathered across the road. In one hand he held a tripod and in the other a camera he used on more pleasant occasions: shooting outdoor vistas for the annual Lions Club calendar. He walked over to where Lew and Osborne were standing.

  “Ready for me to take over, Chief?” asked Ray.

  “Yep, you know the drill. But shoot the victim first, I don’t want her exposed like that any longer than necessary.”

  “Of course. I’ll do that right away so the EMTs can move her—then the site. If it gets too dark, I have extra spotlights in the truck.”

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” Lew asked. “Doc mentioned Jen Williams was a friend of yours—”

  “Not really,” said Ray, his eyes serious and sad. “We dated a few times maybe five years ago. That’s all. She used me for sport.”

  Lew gave him a questioning look. “We’ll discuss that later.”

  A silver-gray Ford Taurus pulled up behind Lew’s police cruiser. The passenger’s side door was already open and a short, stout woman in gray Bermuda shorts and an oversized white T-shirt with bright orange squirrels across the front jumped from the car, leaving the door open behind her. Moving surprisingly fast for a woman built so low and wide, she dashed to where Ray was setting up near the body, slipping and nearly falling in a rivulet of blood that had escaped into a groove along the driveway.

  As she closed in on the white tarp covering the site where the body lay, Lew stepped forward to block her way. “Stop, please, you can’t go there,” she said, grabbing the woman by her left arm.

  “I’m her mother for God’s sake. I’m here to help—” The woman yanked her arm away but at the sight of her daughter sprawled on the ground she stopped. Her hands flew to her mouth as she cried, “Oh my God. Oh my God, but they just called me! She’s already—? No. No. No. Can’t be. Not my Jen. The person who called—” the woman whirled around as if she could find the guilty caller in the crowd across the road.

  Osborne looked down and away from the helplessness. He knew that pain. At least this time it wasn’t his. He waited, wishing as he had learned to do: if only someone could turn back the clock—just one hour—to give this poor woman the chance to maybe call her daughter and ask her to come by Mom’s house instead of going straight home to her apartment? If only …

  “You’ve made a mistake! I know you did! Let me see,” the woman struggled to get past Lew. “That’s not Jennifer. She never wears red. Oh … oh …”

  Osborne hurried over. “Bonnie,” he said to the woman who had been a patient of his for years before his retirement, “Chief Ferris and I—we know that the victim is your daughter … Jennifer. And I am so sorry but … well … we need you to officially identify the body.” It was an outrageous request, and he hated hearing himself make it.

  The woman’s breath kept catching as she tried to talk. “Is she—is she? When did this happen?”

  “Shortly after six we think,” said Lew. “One of my officers checked the clinic, so we know Jennifer left the building at six or a little after. The call came in right at six thirty.”

  “Oh God,” the woman dropped her head. She slumped to one side, and Osborne caught her shoulders before she collapsed. Together he and Lew eased her back along the road and onto the passenger seat of Lew’s squad car where she sat motionless, staring at the floor of the car. Her breath was coming in short bursts but she was not crying, not saying anything. Osborne hoped to hell she wasn’t having a heart attack.

  “Chief Ferris, I … want … to … see … my … child.”

  “Okay,” said Lew, “Dr. Osborne and I will help you over there but I have to show you right where to walk so we don’t compromise any trace evidence that may have been left by the killer.”

  “A killer? She was murdered?” Bonnie Williams looked up at them, amazement on her face. “I thought she was hit by a car. You’re telling me she was murdered?”

  Chapter Five

  As Bonnie approached, Ray moved his tr
ipod to one side and stepped back to let her kneel on the tarp. Leaning forward, she reached out to stroke the inside of her daughter’s bare wrist where it rested on a cushion of pine needles. Then, bending over Jen’s face, she murmured soft words as she kissed the pale forehead. Placing the back of her right hand to each temple, she seemed to be checking to be sure there was no hint of warmth.

  Osborne watched the woman’s hands moving over the still form. Love, not death, infused these final moments with her child. He glanced over at Lew whose eyes were focused on a distant place: a place known only to a parent who has also lost a child.

  As the older woman pressed her hands against the ground to push herself up, Osborne took her by the elbow. “Bonnie,” he said as she got to her feet and grabbed his arm to steady herself, “Bonita, come here.” He opened his arms and the woman walked into them, burrowing her wet face into his shirt as deep sobs shook her frame. He held her close.

  Looking over at Lew, he said, “Bonnie and her late husband were patients of mine, Chief Ferris. Jennifer, too, when she was still in high school.” Lew nodded.

  Jen had been a genetic mirror of her father: she had his height and lean build, his light Scandinavian coloring with white-blond hair and angular cheekbones. Only locals familiar with the family would have guessed she was also the daughter of the short, full-bodied woman with black eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and wide, generous smile whose grandparents had emigrated from Poland during the Northwoods’ logging heyday of the 1880s.

  Since his retirement three years ago, Osborne had known Jen by reputation only. More than once the McDonald’s crowd had relished tales of her spirited bad behavior—summer pontoon parties featuring too much booze and skinny-dipping being a frequent highlight. On the other hand, like many people in Loon Lake, he was more familiar with her mother’s upbeat nature and reliable good humor.

  Though Bonnie had been widowed by a mill accident twenty years ago and, since then, put in long hours at the Customer Service desk in the Loon Lake Market, she always had a smile for customers. And a happy update on her “crazy” daughter—Jen’s graduate degree in graphic arts, her return to Loon Lake for a “terrific” job at the clinic, the new KitchenAid mixer she had given her mom for her birthday.