“If we had photos of the victims for a side by side comparison, maybe then.”
Smoke lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “Maybe. But a person’s appearance definitely changes when their body goes through the adipocere, or mummification preservation, processes.”
“For sure.”
We read through the pages for a time then Smoke said, “Agneta Keat’s disappearance generated even more controversy than Silas Petty’s. Some of the family members thought her son did away with her for the life insurance. Unresolved disputes in the family stemmed back a couple decades. Our investigation verified the whereabouts of their not-well-liked brother, proved he was hundreds of miles away during the time frame in question. Even with no evidence of foul play, no body to prove Agneta was dead, one sister in particular was still not convinced.”
“I remember how that piled on even more stress for the family. The insurance company couldn’t pay the claim without a body, so the brother had nothing to gain at that time,” I said.
“Correct. Minnesota law allows presumption of death four years after a person goes missing, if there’s been no contact. The family likely filed a petition with the court by now. Especially given Agneta’s age and health at the time of her disappearance.”
“It’s sad. Presumption of death still doesn’t give real closure.”
“It does not.”
“All three of these folks were getting care from providers, two in facilities. The detectives looked for a caregiver in common, but never found one.” I said.
“That’s right. After Oscar Wright disappeared and we were faced with three disappearances of elderly folks in four years, we left no stone unturned. Definitely suspicious, but evidence was sorely lacking. We went over employment records looking for a common denominator, came up dry.” He studied Agneta Keats’s photo and set it down. “Well, let’s figure out who we should contact in the families, let them know what we’re working on, that we’ll be collecting DNA samples.”
His cell phone rang as he was looking at Keats’s next of kin list. “Detective Dawes. . . . Really? I’ll be right out to get her.” He disconnected and raised his eyebrows when he said, “Talk about them and they will come.”
“What?”
“Agneta’s accusing daughter, Loretta Keats, is at the front reception desk asking to see me.”
“Get out.”
He nodded and smiled. “I am about to get out to meet her. See you in Interview Room A in a few.”
“I can’t wait to see her in person.” The files and papers sprawled across the table would be secure until we returned.
I leaned against the door of the interview room, holding it open for Smoke and Loretta Keats.
Loretta was in her mid-sixties and looked to me like she was on break from performing the duties of someone in a noble profession—or something equally important—to attend to personal business. Dressed in a business suit, she exuded confidence. Her eyes captured mine as she reached for my hand and gave it a firm, single shake. Her calming presence took me by surprise. After reading the statements she’d made after her mother’s disappearance, I’d expected someone more irate, edgy.
We stepped into the room. When Smoke waved his hand at a chair, Loretta sat down. We took seats on the opposite side of the table.
“How can we help you, Miss Keats . . . Loretta?” Smoke said.
She drew in a long stream of air through her nostrils. “I’ve been thinking about this for two days, since I read about the bodies you found in Coyote Bog . . .”
Smoke laid his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “You wonder if one of the victims could be your mother?”
“She was never found.”
“That’s a fact.” Smoke paused. “You had some suspicions back then, about your brother in fact.”
She gathered another breath and lifted her chin, jutted it out slightly. “Lawrence was an addict. From the time he was a little kid really. He let chemicals, and gambling, and bed hopping control him, take over his life. He was usually desperate for money. A bad seed, like our father. The apple did not fall far from that tree.”
She shook her head a few times before going on. “My father and brother are the main reasons I never married. My father was not a good person but he somehow managed to trick my mother into believing he was. And she was a smart woman. The truth came out eventually.
“Lawrence’s primary weakness was gambling. I didn’t want to take the chance I’d marry someone who turned out to be like either one of them.” She brushed at nothing visible on the table. “Sorry, I got off track. To answer your question, yes. I thought my brother killed my mother because she stopped gifting him money.”
“The report said you thought your brother did it for the insurance money,” Smoke said.
“That’s what I thought at first, until I found out that the insurance company wouldn’t pay the claim because her body hadn’t been found. Until so many years had passed. Then I started thinking he killed her because he was mad at her. She’d given me her checking and savings account books a month or so before she disappeared. I wouldn’t tell him where they were, as much as he tried to pry the information out of me.” Her calm demeanor was slipping away.
“That must have aggravated him to no end. Did he hurt you or your mother, trying to persuade you?”
“No, thank God. I would have pressed charges, had him thrown in jail. And then Mom disappeared.” A loud, anguished wail escaped her lips. The unexpected cry unnerved me, made my neck hairs stand on end.
Smoke cleared his throat, an involuntary response when he was caught off-guard. I’d witnessed it a handful of times over the years. He reached out and pushed a box of tissues closer to Loretta.
She pulled out two tissues in quick succession and patted her eyes and nose. “I’m sorry and embarrassed. If I’d known that was coming, I would have tried to stop it.”
“There’s no need to apologize. With all you’ve been through, you need to let it out.” Smoke rested his hand on Loretta’s wrist a moment. “Why don’t we get back to why you’re here.”
She nodded. “I need to find out if my mother is . . . is . . . one of those people.”
“Of course, and we can help you with that. As it turns out, we’ve been reviewing missing persons’ files and your mother’s is one we’re looking at.”
“So you do think my mother was one of the bodies you found?”
“At this point we just don’t know, and we can’t speculate. Not until we run DNA tests to prove or disprove that. We’ll need a sample from you. The lab will run the tests, see if there’s a match to one of them.”
“Okay.”
“I have a collection kit in my cubicle. We’ll get it before you leave,” Smoke said.
“Oh, is that how it works? My sisters and I thought we’d have to go to the medical examiner’s office . . . you know, where they are.”
“Have any of you mentioned this to your brother?” I said.
“We can’t do that. He was killed in Las Vegas last year and they still haven’t figured out who shot him. My sisters and I think it must have been someone he owed a lot of money to.” She shrugged. “I don’t feel as badly as I should about his death. I feel much worse about the way he lived than the way he died.”
“Loretta, our sergeant has a photo of a pendant she’d like you to have a look at, see if you recognize it.” Smoke said.
I found the photo in my phone and handed it over. Loretta raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “No, it doesn’t look familiar at all.”
“Okay,” I said as she handed me the phone.
“Her family had some issues, huh?” I said after we’d gotten Loretta’s sample and she was on her way.
“Major ones, at that.” Smoke picked up Silas Petty’s file and pulled out a sheet. “Back to the third—and last—reported disappearance we’ve got on an elderly person in the last decade.”
“You think we should meet with Petty’s brothers first, collect
the DNA and then contact his sons and sister if there’s a match?”
“That’s what I said, but I wonder about the sons. Will they be angry if we keep them out of the loop a while?”
“Maybe so. You know, Smoke, I need to remind myself not to get overly optimistic for these families. We’ve had enough disappointments on cases when those hopes have come to naught.”
“Yes, we have.” Smoke picked up the office phone in the squad room and dialed Silas Petty’s brother’s number. He was talking to Warren in short order and gave him an overview of the events, from the discovery of the bodies to the ensuing investigation. After several minutes, he closed with, “Thank you,” and hung up.
I’d picked up a lot of their conversation. “I can’t believe he hasn’t heard about the bog bodies.”
“He and his wife have been at their daughter’s house in South Dakota. They’ll be back home tomorrow. He said his brother Richard is up north opening his cabin for the summer. And their sister is still in Iowa, although neither brother has a lot of contact with her.”
“So we’ll get Warren’s DNA when he’s home?” I said.
“Tomorrow afternoon is the plan. He’ll talk to Richard but wants us to get a hold of Silas’s sons, let them know what’s going on.”
“I heard that you verified their contact information.”
“And I don’t see a problem waiting until after we meet with Warren, collect his DNA, and then bring the boys in on this. We’ll have one more step in the process to report to them.” He glanced at his watch. “Meantime, as long as we’re in a holding pattern here, let’s make copies of the photos of the three victims, along with their doctors’ names and contact info. We’ll run Loretta Keats’s sample over to the lab then stop by the M.E.’s office, deliver what we got, check on their progress.”
17
After we’d submitted the DNA sample to the evidence technician at the Midwest Regional Laboratory, we headed to the medical examiner’s office. When I stepped into the reception area, my eyes were drawn first to the tasteful art on the walls and then fell on the smiling receptionist. Smoke had phoned ahead so she expected us.
“Hello, Detectives. Doctor Patrick is in her office. I’ll let her know you’re here.” She phoned the doctor then buzzed us into the inner area.
“Thanks,” Smoke said as he opened the door for me. I led the way down the hallway.
Dr. Bridey Patrick’s door was open. She had a pile of papers on the desk in front of her and waved us in with the pen she held. “Have a seat,” she said.
As we settled onto the visitor chairs, Patrick reached over, selected three documents, and laid them out, side by side. “We’ve completed autopsies on the first three bodies found in the bog and, as it turns out, they have two things in common.
“All had Alzheimer’s—at various stages. And we were not able to positively determine a manner of death in any of them.”
Smoke leaned forward. “Why’s that?”
“Aside from the brandings, the bodies showed no other signs of violence. No defensive wounds. The brandings were done post-mortem.”
“Thank God,” I said.
Patrick continued, “John Doe One showed signs of cirrhosis of the liver, however it was not marked. John Doe Two had small areas of calcified plaque in his aorta. Jane Doe One’s gallbladder had been removed.”
“The gallbladder removal is a good lead, could help narrow things down,” Smoke said.
Patrick nodded. “Yes, it is. Aside from the conditions I mentioned, all three were relatively healthy given their advanced ages. That being said, we can only estimate— within a fairly broad range—how old they were at their times of death.”
“You’re saying anywhere from seventy to one hundred?” Smoke said.
“No two people age exactly the same, of course. In older adults we see degenerative changes in the joints, spines, and bone tissue. The external aging differences we observe among individuals can be applied to what we see internally as well. I’ve been surprised to learn a healthy, spry older person is ninety when she looks not a day past seventy. And vice versa.”
Smoke nodded. “You got a point, Doc.”
“Doctor Patrick, we looked at the missing persons’ files going back ten years and Winnebago County has records on three elderly folks who were never found: a male, one year ago, another male three years ago, and a female four years ago.” I pulled copies of the files from my briefcase and handed them to her.
She studied each face in the photos. “These will be helpful, if it turns out they’re three of our decedents. I can’t say they are the ones we’ve autopsied. We need to enlarge the photos, take measurements. The contact information for their doctors and dentists are good resources, too.”
“We’ve spoken with family members of all three and collected DNA samples from two so far, and we’ll get the third one tomorrow,” Smoke said.
“Very good. We’ll see if their DNA matches any of the victims. If not, you may need to go back another decade or more in your files,” Patrick said.
“There’s also the possibility the victims were not from Winnebago County,” I said.
“That is a distinct possibility. In that case, we’ll enlist the services of the forensic anthropologist to help determine their ages to broaden the search. And you’d check with other counties in Minnesota, of course.”
“We would.” Smoke rubbed the back of his neck. “Doc, back to the cause and manner of their deaths. What is your unofficial opinion?”
“It’s not conclusive, but it’s possible they were suffocated. Suffocation leaves no marks. All three had degrees of bloodshot eyes, a telltale sign of suffocation and asphyxia. However, as part of the aging process, bloodshot eyes are not uncommon among the elderly. Even if we were able to determine that they died of asphyxia, it’s possible it was accidental.”
“You don’t believe that, Doc,” Smoke said.
“What I know is that we could not rule, with conviction, the deaths weren’t natural, or accidental, or homicides, or suicides. That leaves us with undetermined.”
“Natural, suicides? What are you saying? Someone branded them and threw them in a damn swamp!” Smoke said.
“Branded after death. Each one had Alzheimer’s. Perhaps they’d decided they didn’t want to put their families through all that their disease might entail and heard of someone who would help them commit suicide. Not knowing what would happen to their bodies.”
“That’s a big stretch, Doc.”
“I agree.”
“What would be your accidental scenario?” Smoke said.
She shrugged. “They were staying in a house where the furnace failed, filled the air with carbon monoxide, and they were asphyxiated.”
“More of a stretch. How about the natural ruling?”
“Perhaps someone was caring for them, and after they passed, he branded them. And then improperly, and illegally, disposed of their bodies.”
Smoke shook his head. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“We’ve had cases with similar circumstances to the first examples I gave. Not ending with seven elderly people found close to others in a bog, of course. Keep in mind we don’t know who these people are, nor do we know how long they were in the bog. As I said at the scene, it could be as long ago as sixty years,” Patrick said.
“True,” Smoke said.
“You’re free to take the weight plate and cord that was attached to Jane Doe One so your office can investigate. Also, our preliminary reports of all three. We’ll send the sleepwear to the regional crime lab for testing, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to collect any useful evidence from them, in my opinion,” Dr. Patrick said.
“I agree. Sergeant Doug Matsen in our crime lab can track down when and where the cord and the weight were manufactured, where they were sold,” Smoke said.
“We have the names of the doctors—and the dentists—of two of our missing persons, Oscar Wright and Agneta Keats. Shall we contact
them and run the medical conditions by them, ask if either had what you found? We’ll get DNA from Silas Petty’s brother tomorrow, ask for the names of his doctor and dentist then,” I said.
“That’d be fine. When we’ve completed all seven autopsies and have the DNA reports from the lab comparing the victims with the known family members, that will give us positive identification. Or not. Dental and medical records would verify the findings.”
We followed Patrick to a room where the items were packaged and marked. Smoke put them in a box and carried it to his car.
I opened the trunk for him. “I’ll get this stuff checked into evidence when we get back. Hopefully Doug can come up with some answers,” I said.
“Good deal. Man, this is only day three, and it seems like we’ve been on this case for weeks.”
“I think it’s all the worry over Jaxson Kenner. And his father.”
“You’re probably right about that,” he said.
We drove without chatting for miles. My thoughts jumped from Jaxson and his family, to Sawyer and his family, to Bob Edberg and his mother, to getting positive identifications on those found in the bog. And then to Smoke, and what our future together looked like.
Smoke shifted in his seat. “I viewed the tapes from the Oak Lea High School parking lot fight.”
“Did it match the report?”
“It did. Jaxson wasn’t solely at fault, but he made a bad choice when he struck Sawyer like that. He packed a punch and Sawyer went down hard.”
“Given the circumstances, with the eyewitness accounts and the tape to back it up, they’ll likely reduce the charges to second degree manslaughter,” I said.
“Likely to, yes.”
“I wonder when the sheriff will return to work.”
“All the personal agony the family is going through aside, Kenner’s in a tough predicament. He’s the chief law enforcement officer in the county and his son faces felony charges,” Smoke said.
“I suppose there’ll be some citizens who’ll ask him to resign.”
Remains In Coyote Bog Page 10
