by Joe Hart
“Those are burns from the soldering iron, aren’t they?” Liam asked, pointing toward the stripes.
Toshi nodded. “Appears so.”
“Pre- or postmortem?”
“Pre.”
“Wow,” Liam breathed. “That’s . . . really something.”
“I’ll say. I can’t imagine the level of pain inflicted by the burns. They’re easily third degree. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look at this.” Toshi slid one finger beneath the chest strap and pulled it down.
A large number four was crudely branded in charred lines on the skin.
“What the fuck?” Perring said.
“My sentiments exactly,” Toshi said, glancing at each of them. He let the strap go, partially covering up the blackened symbol. Liam ran his eyes up over the man’s ruined face and then back down to the number.
“What did they use to remove his lips and nose?” Liam asked. “It looks like they were torn off.”
Toshi let out a grim chuckle. “That’s probably the most grisly part of all this. The killer didn’t do that. The victim’s cat did.”
“What?” Perring said.
“That was one of the first things the housekeeper said when she called it in. Apparently the cat was sitting on his chest, munching away when she came up here. Tony had to chase it out of the room and put it in its cage.”
“You’re kidding,” Liam said.
“Wish I was.”
Liam stepped back and looked at Perring. Her expression hadn’t changed since she’d entered the bedroom. She looked like someone in their first minutes on land after being at sea for months. As he watched, she seemed to surface within herself and glanced around.
“Do we have a time of death?” she asked.
“Around one this morning.”
“Any prints yet?”
“No, but we got a rough shoe size from the crushed glass downstairs. Looks like our guy wears either a ten or ten and a half. Other than that he was very careful. We got some hair but I’m betting it’s either Dade’s or the cat’s.”
“It looks like Dade was injured downstairs and then came up here,” Liam said. “But not under his own power, right?”
Toshi’s eyebrows went up. “That’s correct. There’s a laceration on the bottom of his right foot that’s consistent with one of the shards downstairs. It appears he cut himself and then was dragged or carried to the bed and strapped down. Then whoever it was went to work on him.”
“The gun is an interesting point though. Do we know if it’s Dade’s or not?” Liam asked.
“Charlie checked and it’s registered to the deceased.”
The sound of footsteps came from the stairs and a moment later Tony appeared in the doorway.
“Have you guys been to the neighbors yet?” Perring asked, her voice steadier.
“Yep,” Tony said. “The people to the north said they heard fairly loud music start up around nine, but that was it. No vehicles in his driveway or on the street that they noticed.”
“Music,” Perring said, glancing at Liam.
“To cover up the screams,” Liam said. She nodded.
“Tony, I want you and Charlie to scope out the area around the house. See if you can find out where and how the intruder got inside.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Toshi, how fast can you get a toxicology report?”
“Maybe by noon if I put a rush on it.”
“Good. Get it to me as soon as it comes in. Liam, let’s go downstairs.”
They left Toshi to his work, passing his assistant in the hallway with her camera. The kitchen was empty now save for the violent mess on the floor. It was like an artist’s representation done in glass and blood. Perring walked around the glass and made her way to the garage door. Inside rested a new Mercedes, its sleek lines and dark gray color elegant against the barren concrete.
“Nice car,” Liam said.
“Lots of nice things here,” Perring said, turning back toward the kitchen.
“You thinking the same as me?”
“Why would someone come in and kill this guy but not take a thing?”
“Exactly. His wallet was on the bedside table and his car keys are in the kitchen.”
“This had nothing to do with money.”
“That’s for sure. Someone hated that man upstairs. They took their time with him.” Liam moved toward the gun on the floor. He looked at it, then studied the blood trail and the dark splotches in the center of the room. “So the gun’s his and he has it out, right? Why?”
“He knew someone was in the house.”
“That’s my guess. He’s upstairs and hears something. Grabs his gun and comes down to investigate. There’s a struggle, he loses the weapon and then is incapacitated somehow and brought upstairs.”
Perring nodded. “Yep.”
“Then whoever it is starts in on him and doesn’t quit for the next three or four hours.” Liam knelt and studied the bloody handprint on the counter side. Slowly his eyes traveled to the pet cage in the corner of the room and found a large tomcat staring back at him from behind the wire mesh. It licked its chops. “The countdown has begun,” he murmured.
“What?” Perring said.
“The countdown has begun,” Liam repeated, rising. “What the kidnapper said yesterday. Seemed to me like a strange choice of words.”
Perring shrugged. “He was being dramatic.”
“There’s a number four burned into Dade’s chest.” He let her absorb what he was saying.
“No. Liam, I hear what you’re saying, but no.”
“Why not? When’s the last time you had a homicide?”
“Two months ago.”
“What kind?”
“Domestic disturbance that got out of control. Wife shot her husband after he drank all the beer in the house.”
“She may get off for that.”
“Stop it! What are you getting at?”
“That there’s too many connections here. Two nights ago someone breaks in and takes Valerie. Now this man is brutally murdered and has a significant marking on him that relates to the kidnapping.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We don’t know any different,” Liam said. “This isn’t my show but I think it would be a huge mistake not to find out if there are any connections between Valerie and Dade.”
Perring began to chew on her lip and then fumbled for her pack of gum. “You remember whose show it is, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
The front door opened and Tony entered the kitchen, his face reddened from the chilly air.
“No signs of forced entry anywhere. I’m thinking the killer had a key or knew Dade and he let them in.”
“You checked the garage?” Perring asked.
“Yeah. Locked tight.”
“They could’ve snuck in behind his car as he pulled in last night,” Liam said, his eyes glazing over.
“Kinda unlikely,” Tony said.
“It’s been done before,” Liam said, coming back to the present.
“Who do we have for next of kin?” Perring asked.
“Mr. Erickson’s mother, Stella. His father passed away a few years back. She lives on Park Point but word is she’s in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. Might not even realize what you’re telling her.”
“We’ll worry about that. I want you and Charlie to go through the rest of the neighborhood. Someone must have seen something, heard something. This guy’s not a ghost. Don’t call me until you have somebody that will give us a lead. And have Blair do a background check on Mr. Erickson. Send over his record, if he has one, when you get it.”
“Yes ma’am.” The officer gave them each a nod and left the room.
Perring moved across the kitchen and stared down at the cat. “I don’t want you to mention the number on Erickson’s chest to anyone else. And do not say anything about a connection between the cases, especially to Owen.” She glance
d at him over her shoulder.
“I won’t.”
“Good. Now let’s go tell Mrs. Erickson that her son is dead.”
CHAPTER 10
They coasted down the winding hill from Erickson’s house into the gunmetal morning.
The sun was only a suggestion of light behind the thick cloud cover and the air was full of mist. It didn’t so much fall as spun and split around the vehicles, like a premature burial shroud, as they passed.
When Perring checked with Sanders, he told her there had been nothing new. Owen was still sleeping. Yes, he was fine taking care of things until they got back. As they drove, Liam studied the buildings that rose on either side of the car. Many of them were old, their brownstone sides weathered from countless winters. A large hospital loomed on their left, then receded into countless shops, restaurants, and bars, all of them sharing walls beside the cobbled street.
“Coldest October we’ve had in years,” Perring offered as she navigated through the city, ever downward toward the lake. “Snow’ll come early.”
“Think it will rain today?”
“Did you see the sunrise?”
“Red sky in morning.”
“Sailor’s warning.” She was silent for a time, the occasional shush of the windshield wipers the only sound. “I hate this.”
“Informing the family?”
“Yeah. How many times have you had to do it?”
“Too many.”
“Never gets easier does it?”
“No.”
“You remember your first?”
“We still talking about informing family?” He shot her a half smile and she chuckled. “Yeah. Can’t forget it. It was the worst one I’ve ever had to do.”
“I think everyone’s first is the worst one.”
“Mine was a nine-year-old boy who’d drowned in a river. I was twenty-two. It was my second day on the force.”
Perring glanced at him and then back at the road. “Damn.”
“Yeah. I’ve never forgotten the look on his mother’s face when she answered the door. He’d been missing for over a day and she knew, she knew as soon as she saw me coming up the walk. She kind of just fell against the wall inside the house and slid down like she’d been shot. I guess in a way she had been.”
They turned down a narrow street and crossed an intersection, splashing water from a puddle up onto the sidewalk.
“Mine was a middle-aged man. Fell down a flight of stairs in his house and no one found him for a week. Neighbor called in after the smell started to creep across into her yard. She thought it was his compost heap. She’d complained to the cops before about it. I had to call the guy’s daughter who lived in Wisconsin. I was shaking so bad and stuttering, I think she ended up consoling me more than I did her.”
Liam nodded. “I think that’s why a lot of cops are drinkers, or why a bunch of them eat a gun when they retire. You don’t slough those things off. They stay with you and compound over the years until you’re carrying around everyone else’s grief.” He glanced out the window. “Grief is heavy.”
“Yes it is.”
They hit the bottom of the street they were on and cruised up and over a small bridge that brought them to an intersection. Perring hung a left and they passed trinket shops and restaurants. To the right the harbor opened up revealing dozens of docked boats, their flagged tops bobbing and swaying. Ahead a looming skeletal structure grew up from the street. Its soaring interspersed steel girders were like dried bones of some prehistoric titan.
“I’ve seen this a few times from the highway but I’ve never been down to the lift bridge,” Liam said, leaning forward in his seat.
“It’s quite the tourist attraction,” Perring said. “It’s one of only a few left in operation.”
Liam kept looking up, trying to see the top of the structure as they passed onto it, but its peak was hidden in the folds of mist giving the bridge a ragged appearance as if it had been sheared off in the clouds. The steel grating hummed under the car, then they were on another narrow street, Superior’s waters expanding to either side.
“Park Point is pretty unique too,” Perring said. There was a hint of pride in her voice as she gestured to the homes they began to pass. “It’s basically built on a big sandbar but it’s almost like its own city. Residents are pretty insular, lots of old homes, old money.”
“Is this connected any other way than the lift bridge?”
“Nope. We call it getting ‘bridged’ if you get stuck on one side or the other. If it’s up, you can only get here by water or air.”
“Air?”
“There’s a little airport on the end.”
“You’re kidding.”
Perring shook her head. “Not too much traffic there, though. Local pilots, a few private flights, but that’s all.”
The road curved and Liam admired the stands of trees decorated with dripping leaves the color of fire between and around the homes. Perring slowed the vehicle and turned onto a small side street before angling into a driveway that ran parallel with the shore. They passed through a row of bushes several feet higher than the car and pulled to a stop in a cramped roundabout before a sprawling Tudor house. A white marble fountain in the shape of a cherub spit water in a silver stream in the center of the circular drive. Liam saw a curtain twitch in an upper floor window as they climbed from the car.
Perring rang the mother of pearl doorbell and they listened to a series of musical chimes sound deep inside the house, followed by footsteps. A middle-aged woman with a shock of dark hair plagued by gray roots opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Hello ma’am, I’m detective Denise Perring with the Duluth Police Department and this is Mr. Dempsey.” Perring unfolded her wallet to reveal her ID. “We’re here to speak with Mrs. Erickson. Is she home?”
“She is but may I ask what this is about?”
“I’m sorry but that’s a confidential matter we can only talk about with Mrs. Erickson.”
The woman put a hand to her throat in a self-calming gesture before stepping aside to let them enter.
They walked into a cathedral-like foyer lined with plush chairs and wide-leafed plants seated in brass pots. Before them a grand staircase swept upward and divided at a picture window that looked out onto the harbor side of the lake. Everything was burnished copper or stained mahogany. Liam wiped his shoes several times on the mat, eyeing the flawless shine of the floor.
“Mrs. Erickson is upstairs but I’m not sure that it’s such a good time to speak with her,” the woman said, stopping at the base of the stairway.
“Why’s that?” Perring asked.
“She suffers from fibromyalgia and severe arthritis as well as Alzheimer’s, and I’m afraid she’s not having a good day.”
“I’m sorry but we can’t wait to speak with her.”
The woman eyed them with resignation again. “Very well,” she said, and led them up the stairs. Liam gazed out the picture window as they passed it. The dreary haze took very little away from the grandeur of the view. Gentle waves lapped at a sand beach and a tall sailboat shifted on its mooring fifty yards away from a wide dock. The woman turned right at the split in the stairway and stopped before a door painted a flawless white. She knocked softly and a voice drifted from behind the door.
“Henry?”
“No Stella, it’s Avery. May I come in?”
“Oh. Of course, dear.”
Avery opened the door onto a massive bedroom with walls the color of coffee with cream. The floor was carpeted in white shag and a four-poster bed rested before a window that gave another expansive view of the lake. A woman sat in a wheelchair across the room, watching them from beneath feathery tufts of white hair. Her body was as twisted as an ancient oak branch, head tipped to the side and forward so that her eyes rolled up almost to the whites to follow them as they entered the room. Liam caught sight of two gnarled things that might have once been hands poking from the cuffs of her nightgown.
>
“Stella, there’s two visitors here to see you, okay?”
“Oh, that’s nice dear. You could bring us some tea if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Mrs. Erickson that’s okay,” Perring said. She turned to Avery. “It’s fine really, don’t bother.”
Avery nodded and headed toward the door. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
Perring waited until the sound of Avery’s footsteps faded. “Mrs. Erickson, my name is Denise Perring. I’m a detective with the police department.”
“Police department? Oh dear.”
“Yes. I am sorry to say I have some very bad news about your son, Dade.”
“Oh no. I think Henry should be here for this, don’t you think?”
“May I ask, who is Henry, ma’am?” Liam said.
“He’s my husband.” She bobbed a little in her chair, the awkward angle she sat at increasing.
“I see. Well, we’ve actually already informed him,” Perring said slowly.
“You have?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Was he down by his boat? He loves his boat. He’s always cleaning it and changing the rigging. I think we’ll go out later this afternoon if the weather lightens.”
“Yes. That sounds very nice. Now Mrs. Erickson, about what I have to tell you, it will be very shocking.”
“Oh dear. What is this about?”
“Your son, Dade.”
“Dade. He hasn’t gotten into trouble again has he? He and his two friends? Their names escape me now, the golden years haven’t been as kind to me as to Henry. His memory is like a steel trap but mine seems to get worse each day.” She tried to straighten herself but only slid sideways a bit, her clawed fingers groping at the chair’s armrests.
“Yes, like I was saying, ma’am, please brace yourself. I’m very sorry to say that your son was the victim of a home invasion last night. He passed away sometime this morning.”
Liam watched the old woman sway forward again and blink, her eyelids so thin and veined that he imagined she could see through them. Her lower lip began to tremble and it appeared as if she were going to try to stand. He stepped forward and bent one knee, coming closer to her level to put a hand on her forearm. Her liver-spotted skin had a dried papery feel and it was chilled, like she had already left her body behind and it was cooling. There was a smell about her. Something that reminded him of the weather outside. It was the odor of softly decaying leaves.
