Dead Spider

by Victoria Houston

  “Poor woman. This had to be hard for her, too,” said Osborne.

  “Even though she’s grieving, she has been very cooperative. Once Wendy Stevenson learned that Bertrand had planned to leave her and that he OD’ed, she’s been helpful, too. Turns out she and Bertrand had been an effective little team burglarizing the homes of elderly people for whom she had worked as a CNA. I’m hoping Wendy takes the counseling she’ll get while she’s in prison seriously. Hate to have her die like her friend.”

  “What did Bertrand OD on anyway?” asked Osborne. “Heroin?”

  “No,” said Lew, “he inhaled a powdered OxyContin that had been mixed with fentanyl, which is ten thousand times as potent as morphine.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Doc, that guy had no idea the drug he bought was laced with death. He made the mistake of trusting his supplier. The DEA has said that even the suppliers don’t know what’s in the drugs they’re pushing. It’s a huge problem in this region.

  “Enough of that,” said Lew, her expression lightening as she slammed her hands onto her desk. “Enough about drugs and death. How ’bout a little good news for a change?”

  “I’m ready for that and, Lew, thank you. You’ve helped me feel better about Beth.”

  “The good news,” said Lew, “is that we’ve located pretty much everything stolen from the nursing home out at Pete Bertrand’s grandmother’s place. He was living in her barn and we found all the stolen property there—”

  Before she could say more, the phone on Lew’s desk rang. The receptionist at the front entrance let her know that Bruce Peters was heading her way.

  “Chief—” One brief knock and Bruce walked through the doorway, his laptop tucked under one arm. “You will be so pleased.”

  “You got a DNA match to the spit on Pfeiffer’s head—”

  Bruce looked chagrined for an instant but he perked up. “No. But almost as good . . . ” He opened the laptop and leaned over to set it on the desk and facing Lew. Walking around the desk to lean over her shoulder, Bruce said, “See this?” He pointed to the photo of a small handgun.

  “I see that,” said Lew. Osborne stood up and walked over to look, too.

  “My good buddy in the ballistics lab got to work on the gun that was found in the car belonging to the dude who kidnapped Doc Osborne’s granddaughter. You’ll remember I asked the cops up north to courier that down ASAP? We wanted to see if it had been used in other drug thefts around the state. It arrived Saturday.

  “Didn’t turn up anything related to those burglaries,” said Bruce. “But my buddy was sitting there with the bullet the pathologist had removed from Chuck Pfeiffer and on a whim he decided to check the ballistics on that sucker and . . . ”

  Osborne half expected Bruce’s eyebrows to hit the ceiling he was so delighted. “Bulls-eye. You got your murder weapon.”

  “What? You’re telling me this is the gun used to kill Chuck Pfeiffer.”

  “The very one. Ballistics testing showed a perfect match. All we have to do now is find the owner.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Elizabeth Herre was waiting for them in her office at the Northern Lights Nursing Home. She had the list of everything that had been stolen from the residents’ rooms in front of her, including a description of the guns and their owners.

  Before looking over the list, Lew said, “We have nearly completed documenting all the items, including the prescription drugs, which we hope to return to their owners in the next day or so. Right now we are particularly interested in the guns as one of them has been identified as the weapon used to kill Chuck Pfeiffer.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Elizabeth.

  “I am so serious that I’ve asked Officers Martin and Adamczyk to guard your front and back entrances in case the person of interest attempts to escape.” After examining the descriptions of the stolen guns, Lew handed the list to Osborne. “Dr. Osborne, tell me if you recognize the gun and its owner . . . ”

  She waited while Osborne studied the list. The gun in question was an elegant Smith & Wesson Model 60 .357 Magnum firing .38 caliber bullets. Perfect for a woman’s purse. The bullet that had lodged in Chuck Pfeiffer’s skull was a .38 caliber. The owner of the gun was a former patient of his.

  He looked up in disbelief: “Harriet McClellan?”

  “Harriet McClellan?” echoed Bruce. “Did we see her in the video?”

  “I don’t remember seeing her,” said Osborne, but even as he spoke the image of the small figure in black that had hurried over to greet Chuck came into focus in the back of his mind. “But we may have,” he said. “We may have.”

  Elizabeth, who had been listening in stunned silence, said, “You don’t have to worry about Harriet McClellan rushing out of the building. She isn’t here. She has an appointment with her physician in Green Bay today. We have three residents who see specialists there so we arrange for a limousine—well, a nice bus really—to take them there and back. Because the appointments can run late we also arrange for them to spend the night at our sister facility over there. They are due back tomorrow morning. Around ten.”

  “Ten tomorrow? We will be here, too,” said Lew. “In the meantime, Elizabeth, it is crucial that you keep our interest in Harriet McClellan and her gun confidential. Do not share what you have heard this morning with anyone on staff, a family member, no one. Have I made myself clear?”

  “You have, Chief Ferris. Please, you can trust me to keep this confidential. If this news gets out, it’ll be awful PR for my nursing home.”

  As Bruce and Osborne climbed into Lew’s cruiser to rush back to the police department, she hit the number for Dani on her cell phone. “Dani?” Lew asked. “We need to watch the video of the crowd going by the Pfeiffer booth again. We’ll need to zoom in on certain images, too. Can you handle that? Or do we need to ask Mike, the videographer, to help us?”

  “I can do it, Chief,” said Dani. “Mike showed me how to work it and all the equipment is still set up. I’ll have it ready for you.”

  “Great, we’re on our way.”

  Lew, Osborne, and Bruce raced down the hallway to Dani’s office. “Mike gave me the time stamp for the hour during which the shooting must have taken place. Is that what you need?” asked Dani.

  “Yes,” said Osborne, Lew, and Bruce simultaneously.

  They sat in silence watching the crowd go by the Pfeiffer booth with some people greeting Chuck Pfeiffer with handshakes, others waving from a distance. Then the minutes—no more than two or three—when the figure in black wearing the wide-brimmed hat moved through the crowd toward Pfeiffer.

  “Okay,” said Bruce, “I see someone but I never see their face.”

  “I know. Whoever it is appears to be looking in the direction of Pfeiffer but that hat hides their face,” said Lew. “I don’t see a gun either, do you?”

  “No, but arm movements . . . wait . . . there . . . ” said Osborne. “See that glimpse of chin?”

  “Yes. For a fraction of a second. What good does that do us?” asked Lew.

  “That canvas bag or purse or whatever that is they’re wearing could be holding a small handgun easily,” said Bruce.

  Half an hour later they gave up on the video. “Here’s the situation,” said Lew, crossing her arms and looking frustrated. “I do not have enough visual evidence from the crowd video to prove that Harriet McClellan murdered Chuck Pfeiffer.”

  Bruce and Osborne listened to her in silence. “It may be her gun that was used but if it was stolen once, it could be argued that it was stolen another time. Any fingerprints on the gun are likely to be those of Peter Bertrand and, maybe, Wendy Stevenson. It doesn’t help that someone like Wendy and the rest of the nursing staff had such easy access to the resident rooms at Northern Lights.

  “Add to that the fact that Peter Bertrand was dealing drugs. Chances are good he and Jim Nickel know some people in common given Nickel’s time in prison and the halfway house where he had to
come into contact with more than a few people connected to the drug trade. Who’s to say he didn’t hire someone to kill Chuck Pfeiffer using that gun.”

  “Could be he hired Pete Bertrand?” asked Osborne.

  “I’ll need to see a photo of this Pete Bertrand to see if he shows up in the video,” said Bruce.

  Lew sat thinking. “We just don’t get a clear image of the individual approaching Pfeiffer. We can say it’s her but we can’t prove it.”

  “We have the shot of the chin,” said Osborne. “I’m going to check my records for the work I did on Harriet years ago.”

  “And I’ll get Bruce a photo of Bertrand,” said Lew. “And we’ll watch that damn video again.” She sighed.

  Once again Osborne was pleased that he had disobeyed Mary Lee when she insisted he destroy all his patient records. She had insisted that the two tall oak file cabinets, which held the dental histories of the patients he had seen over a thirty-year dental practice, were “worthless now and taking up space I need for storage in our garage. Paul, get rid of them.”

  He did—in a sense. One weekend when Mary Lee was on a shopping trip to Minneapolis with women friends, he and Ray had constructed a wall of sheetrock at the rear of the garage and behind the room where he cleaned fish, a room Mary Lee detested and never entered.

  There he had installed the oak filing cabinets, their drawers packed with manila files: evidence of the career he had loved. Every once in a while, feeling nostalgic for those days, he would pull a file and see not just charts and clinical notes but a person, a human being whose face and voice he could recall in an instant.

  He was confident that one of those oak cabinets held the file of a much younger Harriet McClellan. If he was lucky, the file might even have a photo showing her facial profile in a way that it might be matched to the image of the chin on the video screen.

  “Years ago I made a partial plate for Harriet,” said Osborne, still thinking about the glimpse of chin on the figure in black. “Quite often I would take photos of the patient’s jaw from several angles so I could be sure of the bite I needed to match.”

  “You made Harriet McClellan a partial plate?” asked Bruce, sounding as if that news was too good to be true.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Jeez, Doc. If you could manage to check her partial plate while she is wearing it, we could get a sample of her saliva, which is an excellent source of DNA. Then we could check her DNA against the DNA in the spittle that was found in Pfeiffer’s hair.” Bruce turned to Lew, “Chief, we’ve assumed that the figure in black leaned over to cuff Pfeiffer on the head in a friendly way but maybe that’s not what happened. Maybe it wasn’t a ‘good buddy’ shove at all.”

  “Interesting. But that’s assuming she still wears the same partial plate,” said Lew. “Doc, how many years ago would you have made that for her?”

  “Oh, it’s been a while,” said Osborne, struggling to come up with the year, “but up until I retired three years ago, I saw Harriet twice a year when she came for a cleaning and a checkup. She was wearing it the last time I saw her so I think it’s safe to assume she still has it. Most of the dentures I’ve made for patients have held up well over the years.”

  “But, Bruce,” said Osborne, “you’re giving me an idea. Recently, there have been news stories regarding various medical devices that have not held up over time—”

  “Yes!” Bruce’s eyebrows jumped with excitement. “Might be time to see how that partial plate is holding up?”

  “Yes indeed,” said Osborne with a wide grin. The forensic tech’s enthusiasm was infectious. “What if the plastic used in the partial plate is deteriorating?” asked Osborne. “Harriet needs to know that. I could arrange for her to get a new one from the young dentist who took over my practice.”

  “Okay,” said Lew, “but how can we do this in such a way that Harriet doesn’t suspect our interest in her?”

  After pausing to think that over, Osborne said, “Assuming we don’t want to alarm Harriet until we know if we have a DNA match, I suggest we arrange for me to visit Northern Lights to check the dentures that I’ve made for other former patients who may be residents at Northern Lights. I have recognized several former patients who are living there and this will be a volunteer effort on my part—”

  “You got it, Doc,” said Lew, interrupting. “I’m calling Elizabeth Herre this minute. I’ll ask her to e-mail me a list of all the residents. I’ll forward that to you and you can identify the people who have been your patients. We’ll set up an informal session for you to stop by and check their dentures for wear. Tomorrow morning.”

  “At ten thirty,” said Bruce, getting to his feet. “I’m calling my lab right now to let them know we’ll be needing a rush on a DNA test.”

  Elizabeth Herre e-mailed over the list of Northern Lights residents and Osborne was pleased to see there were seven people on the list who had been patients of his. Four of them would be wearing dentures that he had made for them. On seeing that, Lew called Elizabeth again and explained their plan for Osborne to voluntarily assess the quality of the dentures he had made over the years.

  “Would he mind checking other people who may not have been his patients?” Elizabeth had asked. “I know several who will be anxious to get his opinion.”

  “Whatever it takes,” said Osborne. “I’m happy to help out.” And he was for another reason. Lew might be the expert in the trout stream but he was tickled to be the expert in a field that could make her work as chief of the Loon Lake Police easier.

  Before leaving Lew’s office, Osborne asked, “Lewellyn, any chance we might spend tonight at my place?” Remembering the fly-tying table awaiting assembly, he half hoped she would say no.

  “Oh, Doc, I would love to but my daughter and grandchildren are coming this weekend to celebrate my birthday and I really need to get my place ready. I’ve barely been home this last week. Can I take a rain check?”

  “Your birthday!” said Osborne, hoping he sounded surprised. “I forgot all about that. Of course, I understand. Rain check accepted.”

  Rushing home, he fed the dog and hurried out to the garage and his dental files. Finding Harriet’s, he went back into the house and tipped the contents onto the kitchen table. There were four photos but all were from angles that didn’t show her chin as defined as the chin visible in the video. Certainly not good enough to be a match.

  He had one other thought and walked into his living room where he had set the framed photo of Mary Lee’s bridge foursome. Yes, there was Harriet with her haughty features sharper in those days. The woman’s chin was thrust forward in what seemed to be a forced smile. Worth a try to match her chin with that of the figure in the video but it would be a long shot.

  Disappointed, Osborne set to work assembling the fly-tying table and the rest of the equipment he had ordered. When he was finished, he stepped back, pleased. He went to bed happy that the room for Lew was looking quite good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Pay attention, everyone,” said Elizabeth Herre, clapping her hands as she stood among the card players and television watchers crowding the Leisure Center of the Northern Lights Nursing Home.

  “We have a treat for you today. Dr. Paul Osborne is here for one of our bimonthly sessions when local doctors and dentists volunteer to give us updates on recent advances in health care. Today, Dr. Osborne, who is retired from his dental practice, has made a surprise visit and he will be happy to give you advice on dental devices such as partials and bridges that you may have had for five years or longer.

  “Specifically, he is interested in the plastics and other materials used in the devices as some have been known to deteriorate over time. Should your dental device need to be updated, he will provide a written recommendation for you to share with the dentist of your choice.”

  Osborne had set up a station for the exams in a meeting room nearby. Lew had stayed away, concerned that her presence might alert Harriet to their real reason for the sessi
on, but Bruce, wearing scrubs, stood by to assist Osborne.

  So many of the residents were enthusiastic about the free check-ups that Osborne was taken aback. “I think I’ll be here for at least two hours,” he said in a low voice to Bruce as he watched people gather. The “limousine” from Green Bay had arrived shortly after ten but Osborne didn’t see Harriet McClellan in the group gathering outside the meeting room.

  He was about to ask Elizabeth Herre to check on the woman when Bruce jabbed him with an elbow. “She’s here. Four more exams and we’ll have her.”

  Osborne nodded then looked over the partial plate that he had just removed from one individual’s mouth. “Looks fine. Not to worry,” he said. He checked four more devices over the next fifteen minutes and then Harriet entered the room.

  “Good morning, Paul,” she said. “How nice of you to volunteer these exams. I’m sure my partial is just fine but never turn down a free checkup, right? Even if I won’t be needing this much longer.”

  Osborne helped her into the armchair he was using for the exams. She was wearing a long-sleeved black linen jacket over a white blouse and dark slacks. The arm he grasped to help her into the chair was bone thin. “Harriet, I’m glad you made it back in time for this. I understand you were out of town.”

  While he was speaking she had opened her mouth and removed the partial plate. Osborne took it with one gloved hand and set it down on a tray where he and Bruce had set up the supplies that Bruce would need to protect the swabs once they held the saliva samples.

  When Osborne had finished with Harriet’s partial plate, he handed the tray to Bruce who left the room, anxious to complete the protocols that would ensure the swabs could not be compromised in any way before he could deliver them to the lab.

  Jumping into his SUV, which he had parked at the rear entrance to the nursing home, Bruce was met by a Loon Lake Police squad car that followed him for six blocks before turning on its siren to escort him to the Rhinelander airport where the crime lab’s helicopter was waiting.