Dead Madonna

by Victoria Houston

  “Possibly, but … well, I think it would be a good idea for you to do the official identification of the body.”

  “But Sharon knew Nora. Isn’t that enough?”

  Lew was quiet as she turned the corner off Loon Lake Drive to the highway. “You’ll see what I mean …”

  Osborne could not recall ever seeing so much blood. It had soaked through the cushions of an upholstered armchair near the body, splattered across the wall and a sofa, and pooled on the hardwood floor where Nora Loomis lay on her right side, left leg splayed back and shoeless. Bending over, he slipped one gloved palm under the left arm to feel the armpit.

  “She’s warm,” he said, turning his head so Lew, kneeling beside him, could hear. “Hard to say if that’s because of the summer heat or—it could be she’s been dead only a few hours.” He brushed back a bloodied hank of hair to expose lacerations and puncture wounds crisscrossing the woman’s face. Lew was right: it was difficult to tell who this had been.

  “Vicious, isn’t it, Doc?” said Lew in a low tone. “Someone wanted to make a point.”

  Osborne nodded, continuing to study the still form and the patterns left by the weapon. “Looks to me like the carotid artery was cut,” he said. “Could have been intentional.”

  “So she bled to death?”

  “Tough to say.” Scrutinizing the victim’s head and neck, Osborne was reluctant to move the body and alter any trace evidence. He pointed to where flesh had been ripped away, exposing the upper left jaw. “I see part of a fixed bridge I made for Nora shortly before I retired—I’ll confirm that from my records if Wausau needs the documentation. You can let me know after they do the autopsy.”

  “Any other observations? I’m having a hard time visualizing how all this happened,” said Lew.

  “Well … whatever the weapon was, it appears to have pierced the skull and very likely more than once. Blood is toxic to the brain, so that could also be the cause of death.”

  A wave of sadness washed through his heart, causing Osborne to drop his head in silent prayer, a blessing. Nora had been a kind woman, an easy patient who was always gracious and who paid her bill before leaving the office. He couldn’t imagine how she, of all people, could be the target of such hate.

  He extended his gloved fingers and, with a delicate touch, did his best to close her eyes—a gesture of respect to counter the horror. As if she knew what he was thinking, Lew patted his arm. Sitting back on his heels as he pulled off the gloves, Osborne shook his head. “Astonishing. The violence …”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve never seen anything like it. Any guess as to what type of weapon was used? Those look to me like puncture wounds …”

  Osborne straightened up. He had seen torn, ragged wounds like this once before in his life, a memory so ugly he hated that it came to mind.

  Twenty years earlier, during deer season, one of the men in Osborne’s hunting shack brought along a friend from out of town. Late on the second day of the season, the newcomer wounded a deer that took off across a swamp. Osborne offered to help track the animal, but the man insisted on retrieving something from his car first. Even though it wasn’t his deer, Osborne refused to wait. He waded into the swamp, anxious to put the animal out of its misery.

  But just as he found the deer, the newcomer showed up—with a weapon that he swung at the wounded animal. Osborne couldn’t believe what he was seeing and rushed forward to fire his rifle. He killed the deer but he should have killed the newcomer. With one swing the man had slashed across the deer just as someone had slashed at Nora.

  “What do you think they used?” said Lew, staring down at Nora’s body as she repeated the question.

  “I’m not sure,” said Osborne. “I have an idea but I hope to hell I’m wrong.” Lew raised worried eyes to his and waited. “I saw someone use one of those old muskie gaffs once,” said Osborne. “It tore through flesh just like this.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Moccasin Lake next,” said Lew, her face somber as they climbed back into the police cruiser. “Now you know why I’m having a bad morning.” Osborne nodded. The sight of Nora Loomis hadn’t made his day either.

  Moccasin Lake, located in the northwest corner of Loon Lake Township, was a good thirty-mile drive from the Loomis home. As they headed north, Osborne watched a cold front move in, the sky flattening to a dull gray as a west wind picked up.

  By the time they reached the public landing where Marlene had arranged for the game warden to meet them in his boat, Osborne estimated the wind was gusting thirty to forty miles an hour and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. The lake was whitecapped and the warden’s boat was bouncing off the side of the pier.

  “Hey, Pete, thanks for rearranging your schedule to help me out here,” said Lew, bracing herself against the warden’s extended arm as she climbed down into the heaving boat. “I take it you’ve been up to the site of the drowning?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Pete, shouting over the wind.

  “Pete, Doc—you two know each other?”

  “Oh yeah,” Pete hollered. Osborne raised a hand in agreement.

  Few were the fishermen who did not know Pete Roubideaux—fewer yet were those happy to see him. Roubideaux had a long, narrow face permanently dusted with a five o’clock shadow and tanned as dark as the darkest of the waters he policed. And police he did with vigor.

  Osborne’s coffee buddies kept a tally of Pete’s scores on the bulletin board at McDonalds. Not a man among them had been able to avoid at least one uncomfortable encounter with Pete. The warden had an uncanny ability to lurk within (his) sight of your dock on that one morning you risked casting just once, maybe twice, before purchasing your annual fishing license; or to pull up to your boat that one day that you were having such good luck you were sure you could sneak home with one walleye over the limit.

  “Wolf Eyes” is what Ray Pradt took to calling Pete the day he got his third fine of the season (and it was only June!). The nickname mutated into “Wolfie” and stuck, though no one dared call him that to his face. Osborne, wobbling his way to a seat in the boat, made a mental note: do not slip up. The guy’s name is Pete. Not Wolfie. Pete. Pete, Pete, Pete.

  “Oh yeah,” Pete shouted as he waited for Lew and Osborne to get settled, “nervous bunch up there. They were going to pull that body out from under that big pontoon of theirs but I warned ‘em. Told ‘em they’d be in big trouble if they touched a thing before law enforcement arrived.”

  “You’re kidding,” Lew shouted back.

  “No, I’m not. Took a little convincing but I straightened ‘em out.”

  Pete gave a sly smile and Osborne sensed he had exchanged more than a few words with the Moriarty clan that morning. “So, Chief, I went ahead and sent the ambulance crew up Birch Road and down a logging lane that’ll get ‘em kinda close to the channel. Ain’t easy getting a vehicle in back there. Told ‘em I’d come and get ‘em when you’re ready to move the body.”

  “Do we know who the victim is?” said Lew.

  “Nope, but I know the family owns that boat. Moriarty. Outta Chicago—Lake Forest if I remember right. And you better believe those people got pull. I know from a buddy of mine works for the cops over in Minocqua that the old man’s got that kid off speeding tickets and DUI’s so many times …”

  Pete shook his head in disgust. “Y’know that channel where they’re stuck is right up from Party Cove. I’ll betcha I give thirty tickets a weekend to drunks and some of the other razzbonyas who park their boats along there. Tell you what I really don’t like? The ones that think the lake is their outhouse. I see ‘em do that just once and they get a ticket for indecent exposure.

  “Just so you know—that Moriarty pontoon has been up and down the cove almost every weekend lately. Real party animals those boys. Bad enough when you got an open deck, but those commodes got themselves a cabin they can hide in. I’ve been waitin’ for something like this to happen. J-u-u-u-st waitin’.”

  Pete sho
ok his head as he pulled the cord on his outboard. “One more thing,” he said, sitting down as the motor purred and the boat turned into the waves, “it’s too damn bad I can’t give tickets to young ladies whose swimsuits are barely there.”

  Lew and Osborne exchanged glances: Pete hadn’t missed a thing.

  From a distance, there was no doubt that the two men silhouetted on the channel bank across from the stranded pontoon were related: same height, same hunch to the shoulders. But as the warden’s boat drew closer, Osborne could see differences.

  Bert Moriarty carried at least fifty more pounds than his son—a substantial portion of which belonged to a belly that hung over his belt with an authority gained from years of red meat and single malt Scotch straight up. And while the older Moriarty was dressed for business in tan slacks, a green and white striped shirt open at the collar and a dark green sport coat—his son wore baggy black shorts, a purple T-shirt and a black baseball cap worn backwards over a frizzy ponytail.

  A speedboat—its hull a pristine white, banded with two stripes of nautical blue—was beached near the men, which explained how one of them had gotten there. Anyone trying to access the channel other than by water would have to use the logging lanes to the west and be willing to take a short hike across a swamp. The senior Moriarty looked too dry to have taken that route and too formal to have been lounging on the pontoon.

  As the warden’s boat rounded a final bend, Osborne got an unobstructed view of the stranded pontoon. Unfortunately, it was close to the eastern bank, which was bordered with a bog sure to hide deep pockets of muck too dangerous to wade. “How on earth are we going to move that thing,” he said. “And the wind—it’s pounding that boat.”

  Pete cut the motor to let his boat drift close to shore. “Man, oh man,” he said, “that sucker hasn’t moved a foot since I was here half an hour ago. I was hoping the wind would shake that thing loose. Hey, Doc, you better pull us in so I don’t wreck this prop.”

  Osborne waited for a pause between gusts before jumping out to drag the boat up onto the sand.

  “Took you long enough,” said a voice from behind him. Bert Moriarty strode across the grassy bank towards Osborne, hands in his pants pockets and an expression on his short, square, ruddy face that made it clear he had more important business elsewhere. Reaching to shake Osborne’s hand, he said, “Chief Ferris, I’m Bert Moriarty and this is my son, Robert.” The man spoke in blunt, clipped phrases.

  “I’m not Chief Ferris,” said Osborne, returning the handshake and trying not to stare at the man’s expensive comb-over, which was standing straight up in the wind. “Dr. Paul Osborne, deputy coroner.” Something about the guy’s manner so irritated Osborne that he couldn’t resist responding with the low, authoritative tone he reserved for people who doubted his diagnosis of gum disease—the ones who refused to believe that, untreated, all their teeth would fall out.

  Bert glanced over at Pete, whom he appeared to recognize, then let his eyes settle on Lew. He walked to the boat where, hands on his hips, he did not offer a helping hand but stood watching her climb out before saying, “Mrs. Ferris, I am trusting you to deal with this situation in a speedy manner.” Again, the flat staccato of a man used to giving orders.

  “Chief Ferris,” said Lew, her voice as brisk as his. “Mr. Moriarty, this situation—as you call it—involves a fatality. That means I will take all the time that’s required to assess what happened here. And before we proceed, I want to make it clear that I do not appreciate the manner in which you spoke to my staff on the phone this morning. Profanity was not necessary. Now you two fellows get ready to help us move that big boat of yours.”

  “Oh, now … Chief Ferris,” said Bert, “for heaven’s sake. You can understand the emotional pressure this has put on my family. But you’re right,” he raised his hands in a gesture of concession as he spoke, “I do apologize for anything I may have said under duress. Now I’m afraid,” he checked his watch, “my plane leaves in forty-five minutes. I’ll give you the particulars and Robbie, here, can handle the rest in terms of the accident report and anything else you may need. My lawyer—”

  “Well, Bert,” said Lew, “I’ll give you a choice. You can stand here and patronize me or, given that we have a victim caught under that boat, help move the boat so Dr. Osborne can get started on the coroner’s report. Because no one goes anywhere until that happens.”

  Bert’s mouth opened but before he could speak, Lew said, “State law.”

  They all turned to stare at the boat, which was only twenty feet away but across twenty feet of rough water. The customized pontoon was outfitted with a small cabin designed to look like an old-fashioned tugboat. Osborne didn’t like the idea that the wave action might mean the underside of the boat was pounding away on a human body. The whitecaps made it impossible to see past the surface.

  Bert must have guessed what he was thinking because he said, “Before the wind came up, Robbie was able to tell that the boat is hung up on a submerged log. He couldn’t make out exactly where the body is but I’m sure it’s under those logs, not under the boat. That boat’s not … not … hurting anything.”

  “Mr. Moriarty,” said Lew, her tone easy but firm, “much as your lawyer would like to hear that, you can’t be sure. It’s impossible to see what is or is not under the boat.”

  “But Robbie checked—”

  “Dad, I didn’t really—”

  “Robbie, let me handle this.” Bert’s voice rose.

  “Gentlemen,” said Lew with a sweep of her arm that took in all four of the men, “we need to move that pontoon. How deep is this channel, Pete? Can we walk it?”

  “Isn’t that what we have tow trucks for?” said Bert.

  “A tow truck,” said Pete from where he sat in his boat, a smirk on his face. “How do you plan to get a tow truck in here—by barge?”

  “Well.” Bert looked around and the reality of the landscape dawned on him. “Don’t you have like … big fireboats to do this?”

  “A boat the size of yours should not even be in this channel,” said Pete.

  “It drifted during the night,” said Robbie, arms crossed over his chest and shoulders drooping. “I didn’t mean to come up here. But, umm, just so you know there’s kind of a deep drop-off in the middle, but you can cross up there where it’s only like three feet deep.” He pointed to a spot north of the pontoon.

  “Okay,” said Lew, “we’ll cross there and work each end of the boat until we have it dislodged from whatever it’s hung up on. Doc, you and I will take the end closest to the victim. It won’t be easy with this wind but once it’s loose—if the five of us can get to one side and push—it should float. Then, if you gentlemen will help Pete hold onto the pontoon, Doc and I will move the victim.”

  “Okay, Robbie,” said Bert, stepping back, “you get in there and help out.”

  “Sorry, Bert, but with this wind—I need both of you helping out,” said Lew. She turned and pointed to the pontoon—”I want Pete and your son at that end, Doc and I here and you in the middle.”

  Osborne and Pete moved to empty pockets, take off shoes and roll up pant legs. Lew, after removing the belt that held her holstered gun and the case for her cell phone, did the same. Robbie kicked off his flip-flops and walked down to the water’s edge.

  Bert hung back, watching, then said, “No, you can manage without me. I have a flight to catch and a meeting the minute my plane lands.” Looking down at his wingtips, he said, “That’s why I’m dressed like this.”

  “Bert,” said Lew, standing at the water’s edge with her hands on her hips and the wind whipping her hair across her face, “you strike me as a man who owns more than one pair of pants. Now, if you don’t want to spend your entire day here, take your shoes off, roll up those cuffs and give us a hand.”

  Osborne had to turn away. Pete didn’t—he had a big grin on his face.

  The waves pummeled their backs and the channel’s sandy bottom gave way too easily. But the wa
ter was warmer than the air, so it felt good—though Osborne hadn’t expected to be wet up to his collarbone. As they took their places around the bucking pontoon, Robbie slipped and went under. He came up coughing.

  “Goddammit,” said his father, giving the boy’s T-shirt a yank so hard the neck seam tore away.

  “Jeez, Dad,” said Robbie, “this is my favorite shirt. Take it easy, will ya?”

  It took all five shoving hard against the wind, the waves and the boat before the pontoon slid forward with a muffled groan. The move released the victim.

  The slender body of a female in tight spandex flowered shorts and a lime green halter top bobbed in the waves face down. One on each side, Lew and Osborne guided the victim across the channel. The woman’s skin was white and cold to the touch, colder than the water.

  “That doesn’t look like damage from the boat to me,” said Lew as they struggled to slide the body up onto a grassy knoll. She pointed to where the hair plastered to the skull had been swept aside by the waves to expose gouges peppering the back of the head. “Those are not blunt force injuries.”

  In the meantime, Pete and the Moriartys had dragged the pontoon up against the west bank and out of the wind. Sliding and pushing, they managed to get the boat up onto the bank where Bert and Robbie helped Pete tie it to two pine trees. They finished just as Osborne was pulling his instrument bag from the warden’s boat.

  Walking over to where the victim lay on one side, her face turned away, he set down the instrument bag and reached in for two pair of Nitrile gloves. He offered one to Lew. Then, with hands gloved and gentle, they rolled the girl onto her back.

  “Oh, God,” cried Robbie, from where he stood watching over Osborne’s shoulder, “Dad, it’s DeeDee!” The boy dropped to his knees, staring at the girl. Then he stood and, hands over his face, staggered into the brush, vomiting. Bert slumped back against the beached pontoon, his jaw slack, his ruddy features turned gray as the sky.

  “Bert? Robbie?” said Lew, looking around at the two men, “I take it you know who this is?”