Carefully, very carefully, Osborne slid under the steering wheel, past the gearshift, and into the passenger seat—where he reminded himself to be sure to take it slow getting out.
Scanning the dense growth of young aspen squeezing in on both sides of the narrow lane, Ray yanked the steering wheel back and forth, maneuvering the pickup over and around deep, muddy ruts. “Someone’s been driving in here recently,” he said, braking to a stop. “Hold on, Doc; before we go any further, I see something I want to check out.”
Brushing back clumps of grass obscuring the faint outlines of the logging lane, Ray knelt for a closer look at tire patterns that had been left in the mud. He peered through the driver’s side window of the truck. “We better park here, Doc,” he said. “Whoever drove in here did so before the rain stopped. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot, so we don’t mess up any tracks.”
“You mean a vehicle went in, but hasn’t come out?”
“Not unless there’s another way out, and I don’t believe there is. Let’s see that map again.”
Osborne handed over the plat book, and Ray studied it for a long minute. “Okay,” he said, looking up, “I’m going to bet we are within a thousand feet of that cell phone signal. Follow me and stay to the right, so we’ll know those are our tracks.”
“Got it,” said Osborne.
The green VW van was parked in a clearing five hundred feet ahead. Behind it was all that remained of the old dump: a rusted iron fence, a wooden shack with its roof caved in, and a large berm capped with NO TRESPASSING signs. The afternoon might be warm and sunny, but the view of the dump was desolate. Nor did the sight of the van do anything positive to Osborne’s gut.
Mike Kelly appeared to be dozing in the front seat of his van—head back, eyes half-open. Anticipating movement, Osborne and Ray approached slowly. But the man remained still. The window on the driver’s side was open, and Osborne could hear flies buzzing. Up close, it was obvious Mike Kelly was deep into the sleep of the dead.
“Ray,” said Osborne, pulling open his instrument bag, “let me give you a pair of nitrile gloves before you touch anything. Tell you right now—Bruce just got another couple days of work.”
“Wonder what Lew will owe him after this?” said Ray as he pulled on the gloves. The driver’s side door of the van was unlocked and opened easily. The seat around the van’s owner was blood-soaked, even though the front of the T-shirt was unmarked.
“Hmm, doesn’t look good,” said Ray. He gave the dead man’s shoulder a gentle shove. The body fell forward onto the steering wheel. White as the front of the T-shirt might be, the back was blood-black. Working his gloved fingers gingerly, Osborne was able to lift the shirt high enough to see the source of Mike Kelly’s deep slumber: a single knife wound under the left shoulder blade.
While Ray moved back from the van to uncap the lens on his camera, Osborne checked his phone for cell service. He had two bars, enough to alert Lew, who answered after two rings.
“Check for the fifty thousand in cash,” she said. “The girlfriend said he was carrying it in a money belt under his shirt.”
“No sign of a money belt,” said Osborne. “Just so you know, whoever did this must have left on foot. Ray can tell that only one vehicle drove in here. Right now the ground in this clearing is still soft enough that he is photographing any footprints that don’t belong to us. Hold on a moment, Lew …” Osborne held his phone away as he called to Ray, “Any sign of a vehicle driving out of here?”
“No. But I see at least two deer trails leading in the direction of the Ericsson property. Tell Lew that I’ll double-check the plat book, but I believe the Ericsson property line is located beyond the stream running behind this berm. Tell her that it makes sense to me to start my ground search here.”
“What about the guy’s phone?” was Lew’s next question. “If you can find that, we can check his messages and texts—”
“Hold on,” said Osborne. After scanning the bloody seat of the van he pushed aside an empty McDonald’s bag on the floor, but found nothing. He reached a gloved hand down into the opening between the passenger and driver’s seats. “No phone that I can see. Lew and I don’t want to disturb the contents of this van until Bruce can check it out. I assume you’ll have him work up this site, too?”
“Hell on the budget, but I’ll have to. Do you mind holding the line? I’m going to check with the phone company and see if that cell signal is still alive.”
Osborne waited until Lew came back on. “Doc, it’s around there somewhere. I’m going to e-mail you a GPS setting from the phone tech. I’ll bet it got tossed in the woods back there.”
Ray, standing nearby, walked over and pulled his own phone from his back pocket. “I have an idea, Doc. Ask Chief Ferris what kind of phone the guy had. And if it’s an iPhone, see if the girlfriend has his Apple ID—it’s what he would use to order off iTunes.”
“Lew, did you hear that?” asked Osborne.
“I did. Hold the line and I’ll see if I can reach her … okay, here it is.”
“Hold on, now,” said Ray, as he punched Mike Kelly’s ID into his own phone, “I have an app called Find My Phone that just might help us … yep, there it is.” He held up his phone, and Osborne could see a small gray phone icon that the phone was quite close to the van. “Tell Chief Ferris, it’s so close that I’ll find it within a few minutes, I’m sure.”
“Call me ASAP when you do,” said Lew. “I know it’s getting late, Doc, but will you and Ray please stay there until I can get Todd or Roger out to close off the entrance?”
“Of course, but don’t worry too much. It’s tough to see from the road. I don’t think this place gets a lot of visitors.”
Osborne waited while Ray crossed the clearing in the direction of the stream, which they could hear gurgling just beyond the berm. Pulling a pair of polarized sunglasses from his shirt pocket, he waded into the stream, his eyes moving back and forth between the icon on his phone and his feet.
“Score,” he said, leaning over to stare down into the shallow streambed. “Doc, better hand me another pair of gloves—we got a soggy cell phone here.”
An hour later, standing in Jane Ericsson’s driveway with Lew, Osborne, and Ray, Bruce pursed his lips and wrinkled his brows as he studied the wet cell phone. Its battery had run down so there was no longer even a signal. “Too bad,” said Bruce, “who knows what we might have found on this besides the fact that someone wiped all the prints off it. I’ll send it down to the lab but it may be a lost cause. I dropped my iPhone in the toilet last month and our tech couldn’t get that to work.”
“All … is not lost,” said Ray, raising the index finger of his right hand. “I have rice at my place. Want me to give it a try?”
“You talking some kind of witchcraft?” asked Bruce with a sneer. He pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked at Ray.
“Not … at all. Believe it or not,” said Ray with one of his pauses that indicated he was about to deliver information that would change the lives of everyone nearby, “rice works. Tried it myself a couple months ago when I dropped my Android off the dock. Uncooked rice is a powerful absorbent. All I had to do was submerge my phone and the battery in a bowl of dry rice for twenty-four hours and it worked fine … well, kinda fine. I lost my birdcall ringtone, but otherwise the phone works great.”
“Did you have voicemails on it, and were you able to get those?” asked Lew.
“Yep. I was expecting a call from a client from Chicago, and it came through clear as a bell. Otherwise I would’ve lost a good guiding gig. Let me take care of it, okay?”
Lew looked hesitant. “Chief,” said Ray, “it’ll cost you two bucks … for the rice.”
She glanced over at Bruce, who shrugged and said, “Worth a try. I know my tech can’t do it.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was six o’clock when they all gathered in Lew’s office at the police station. Ray laid Mike Kelly’s cell phone on the round table in the c
orner that Lew used for meetings. He had slipped it into a Ziploc bag, which was slightly fogged from the water that kept dripping from the phone.
“I’m not sure I’m with you on this rice thing,” said Bruce, who had been pushing the bag around. “Not sure at all.”
“You got something better, you take it,” said Ray. “All I can say is that rice worked on my phone.” He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and handed it to Bruce. “See what you think.”
Bruce shook his head as he said, “Okay, let me see if I can get any prints off this first. Then you give it a try. If that doesn’t work, we’ll send it to the phone company and see what they can do.”
Lew, leaning back against her desk with her arms folded, said, “I’m okay with this. If I have a working phone with the victim’s recent messages by late tomorrow, it’s worth a try. We know the phone company said it will take them days to resurrect it, and even then they can’t promise it’ll work.”
The door to the office opened and Mallory entered, followed by Kenton. “Mind if Kenton sits in on our conference?” she asked. “He has some new info on one of the senior people on Jane Ericsson’s campaign staff.”
“Really,” said Lew. “Kenton, I don’t recall asking you to join the investigation. If you’ve been going around questioning people—”
“Gosh, no,” said Kenton. “I just—overheard something, that’s all.”
Lew hesitated before saying, “Well … okay, but everyone here has been working since early, early this morning. I’m only interested in facts right now, Kenton. Not hearsay. But you go ahead, sit over there by Dani. Just keep what you hear in confidence. Understand?” Kenton nodded in agreement.
Osborne turned away so no one would see him grin. He suspected she had agreed to let him stay to accommodate Mallory.
“If there is anything I don’t need it’s someone like you jeopardizing the integrity of this investigation. The only people who should be in here right now are Doc, Ray, Bruce, Dani, and Mallory. Mallory because she’s helping me handle the press, and my tech, Dani, because she’s taking notes and handling our online research.”
Dani, a chubby brunette who was sitting back in one corner, waved a hand at the crew. Lew had brought her on board a year ago after the cosmetology major at the local tech college had turned out to be a wizard at using computer databases for investigative searches.
“I understand,” said Kenton. He opened his mouth to say more when Lew said, “Whatever you’ve got to say—later. I need to hear from the crime lab first. Bruce, you start.”
“Thanks, Chief. I’ve examined what we have of the victim, Jane Ericsson.” Bruce looked down at his notes. “What we have is the head, the right leg, the left forearm, one foot and two sections of the torso—six body parts total. Bert Gilligan’s crews have crawled through the storm sewer where it is wide enough, and found nothing. They have also been diligent in watching the surface water where it flows into the culvert on Woodland Avenue, as well as the culvert that empties into the Tomorrow River. So far, nothing there, either.
“However, the severing of the body parts was so skillful, the knives used so sharp, that I am convinced we’re looking for someone who is a butcher—or was a butcher. This person is more skilled than a surgeon. One thing we still have to test for, even though it seems obvious, is to confirm the DNA of all the body parts—that they are all from the same individual.
“My youngest sister is a research doc in pediatrics, working down in Kansas City, and she is at a hospital with a pediatric genome lab that has perfected a speedy sequencing of DNA for treating babies. Our goal is simpler: we are just trying to match the DNA samples from each body part. I sent the samples down to my sister late today, and she thinks she may be able to confirm a match some time tomorrow, or early Tuesday at the latest.”
“I have one problem with your theory that we’re looking for a butcher,” said Ray. “Lots of people around here butcher their deer. Lots. I mean, everyone hunts, and no one likes paying to have their meat butchered.”
“I know that,” said Bruce. “But this person is better than an amateur who cuts up a deer once a year. We’re looking for an experienced butcher. And it was someone who had access to Jane Ericsson’s house.” Bruce let his statement hang in the air.
Osborne dropped his head so no one could see the worry in his eyes. Should he mention that Kaye Lund was one of the best butchers of deer in the region? The fact that she and Jane had recently fallen out? That Kaye lived so close? That grim thought was countered by his memory of Kaye’s difficulty moving—it was hard for her to get out of her rocking chair, even. He decided not to say anything … yet.
“What makes you think so?” asked Lew.
“On a hunch early this afternoon, I pulled the drains in the kitchen at the Ericsson place—the sink against the wall on your right when you enter from the stairs leading up from the driveway, and the sink in that kitchen island. I found what I am sure is human blood in both.” Before anyone could open their mouths, Bruce grinned. “Yep, it’s been sent off with the tissue samples to my sister for DNA analysis.
“Once I found that, I closed off the kitchen from the living room so I had low light, and sprayed the entire kitchen with luminol. I found trace amounts of blood on the cutting board surfaces on the island, as well as where it had dripped down the cabinet fronts and onto the floor. Also traces on the counters beside the sink. Someone did a very nice job of cleaning up, but not nice enough. And it sure as hell isn’t deer season.”
Lew heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Bruce. Good progress on that front. Doc, what do you know about the victim in the van?”
Osborne sat up in his chair. “I talked to Mike Kelly’s girlfriend two hours ago. She is driving up from Madison to the Wausau Crime Lab where she will ID the body in the morning. Bruce is still working with the van and the victim, right?”
Osborne looked over at Bruce who said, “Yes, I’m having the body driven down to Wausau shortly. I want to be sure we have all trace evidence cataloged before letting it go. But, Doc, you had interesting observations—tell Chief Ferris what you found.”
“Not being a pathologist, I do the best I can,” said Osborne. “Once Bruce got to the van to help me so we could be sure not to damage the wound track, I slipped my palms under the victim’s arms. I would have felt some warmth if he hadn’t been dead long, but the body was cold and clammy, which makes me think he died eighteen to twenty-four hours ago. Rigor mortis speeds up in heat like this, so that was no help. Since the victim had lost a lot of blood through his wound, we didn’t see significant lividity, either. Some putrefaction was setting in—”
“I’ll say,” said Ray. “You did not want to get too close to that poor sucker.”
“And no money?”
“No money.”
“Well,” said Lew, sitting back in her chair, “a lot accomplished, but no lead on our killer.” She looked across the room to where Mallory sat listening. “What do we say to the press now?”
“Nothing, unless we have the local TV crew out there. Shortly after noon today, a major sex scandal broke in Washington, D.C. They’re gone.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, you can relax. For the local media, I suggest you wait until tomorrow morning and we’ll give them something then, around ten A.M. or so. If you’d like, Chief Ferris, I’ll work on a press release tonight and show it to you tomorrow for any changes you want. Then Dani and I will hand some out, and e-mail the rest. The media horde may be gone,” she said with a chuckle, “but Dani and I have about fifty business cards.”
“Okay, folks, if that’s it,” said Lew, getting to her feet.
“Wait! What about me?” asked Kenton. “My information could be a turning point in this case.”
Lew sat back down. “The floor is yours, Kenton.”
“So this morning after Ray left Mallory and me with his friend, Christina, we were standing out in the driveway by the Ericsson place—you know, when
you stepped outside and Lauren Crowell came out with you?”
“I remember,” said Lew.
“Well, Christina recognized her.” Kenton stepped into the middle of the room and made eye contact with everyone as he spoke. “She said that one of the assistants in the art gallery up in Manitowish Waters had caught Lauren stealing hair extensions worth hundreds of dollars.”
The room was silent. Lew’s voice was gentle as she said, “Kenton, there is an old saying in law enforcement: The worst witness is an eyewitness.”
“You don’t believe me?” Kenton looked flustered.
“I believe you. I don’t believe Christina what’s-her-name’s assistant, or even Christina herself. Do they have this on a surveillance tape?”
“I asked about that, but they recycle their videotape every forty-eight hours, so no.”
“Thank you for trying, Kenton.”
Osborne watched as a deep red flooded into the young man’s face. “One more thing, Chief Ferris—”
“Can you keep it short?” asked Lew. “We’re all ready to leave.”
“I asked one of the campaign staffers where Lauren Crowell lives—you know, where her home is, where she used to work—stuff everyone knows about me, or about Mallory. And no one knows anything.”
“Kenton, it’s obvious you have it out for the woman. I think you’d better tone it down.”
Kenton closed his eyes as he said, “Chief Ferris, trust me, I just know something is not right about her. Is there any reason not to run a background check on her? A criminal background check—not just a Google search.” He glanced over at Dani. “I can help Dani. I’ll bet we could do it in fifteen minutes.”
Lew mulled over his request. “On one condition, Kenton. Get the names of all the staff working in the local office. I would be more comfortable if we can say we’re running background checks on the whole crew. Plus, I have to admit it makes sense.
“Now, it is after six, people. Go home and get some rest. Bruce, can you finish up pretty soon? You and Doc have been up as long as I have.”
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