A Death in Lionel's Woods

by Christine Husom

It was nearly ten o’clock, but I phoned Smoke as I headed down the basement steps with a mop. “Kinda late, little lady. What’s up?”

  “Sorry. Were you in bed?”

  “Nah, I’ll be up for a while.”

  “I had a little incident.”

  “Such as?” Smoke’s voice had a protective edge to it.

  “Someone turned on the outside water spigot at my house. It was running in the basement window, on the east side.”

  “The back of your house?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t hear anyone, and Queenie didn’t either, or she would have barked. Kind of freaky.”

  “It just happened?”

  “I discovered it a few minutes ago.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “You don’t have to do that. My doors are locked. I’ll be listening for water running the rest of the night I’m sure.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Smoke pulled into the driveway less than ten minutes later. When I opened the front door, he said, “I didn’t see any vehicles in the area, or anyone out on foot. You didn’t turn your water on to wash, or water, something outside, and then forgot about it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He pulled a flashlight from his back pocket and turned it on. “I’ll have a look around.”

  “Me too.” The temperature had dropped to around forty degrees, and I was soon chilled with only my pajamas bottoms, tank top, and hooded sweatshirt on, but I didn’t complain as I followed Smoke who was hot on the trail to find any evidence left behind by a vandal.

  “Your lawn goes right up to the house back here, so no footprints left behind. May have prints on the spigot, but you probably wiped them away when you turned off the water.”

  “The last thing I thought of was preserving fingerprints when my basement was filling with water.”

  “It’s possible there’s one or two left on there. Could be enough to find out who it is.”

  “If his prints are on record.”

  “If that.” Smoke flashed his light over the back yard that eventually led to a small lake, about a hundred yards away. “It’s almost totally dark out that way and it’d be hard to navigate up from the lake. Plus, if it’s kids, I wouldn’t think they’d be down there at this time of night on a school night.”

  “No. And there are no other houses on this side of the lake, besides my grandparents down the road, and they’re in Arizona.” I shivered.

  “Let’s get you inside. It’s nippy out here.” Smoke headed back around the house with me jogging to keep up. When we went back in the front door, Queenie was excited to see Smoke and jumped up, planting her paws on his leg.

  “Down girl,” I said, and bent over to lift her away.

  “She’s still a pup.”

  “A very energetic one. But we’re working on manners. Sit, Queenie.” To my surprise, she did. “Smoke, what would possess someone to come to my house on a cold November night, and turn on my water?”

  “Beats me. It could’ve been worse, if they’d done it when you were gone. You’d have come home to a basement with several feet of standing water.”

  “Somebody thought it’d be funny to turn on my water, and then sat out on the road, and watched me run out to turn it off?”

  “Could be. It was a stupid prank, but not necessarily one that was done to cause harm. They saw your lights were on, and as you said, they thought it’d be funny to make you go out and turn it off. You notice any cars on the road out there?”

  “No.”

  “Let Communications know in case they got other people around here with the same deal. Our deputies can keep a watch out for the hooligans.”

  4

  Wednesday morning, the day after Jane Doe’s body was found, and still no one had reported her missing. Smoke had court, so he asked me to phone Doctor Bridey Patrick to see how they were coming on the updated image of our victim.

  “We’re close, Sergeant. The forensics team scanned the photo we took of her face into the computer, and are using a software program to add some weight. They also compared it to the non-dated photo of the woman and two children, and are quite certain it’s the same woman, or a very close relative, if it’s not her. Determining age from a photo is a little tricky, but they believe the woman in the photo is between twenty and twenty-five. We’ve estimated the woman we have awaiting autopsy may be in her early thirties. We’ll have a more definitive age after autopsy.”

  A little older than I was. “Early thirties, really? I thought she’d be older.”

  “And it’s possible she was in her forties. Her condition made her appear older, certainly.”

  “Okay, Doctor. We’ll wait to hear from you.”

  “It shouldn’t be long.”

  I was in the small sergeants’ office reviewing the interviews I had conducted with the neighbors who lived in the vicinity of Lionel’s woods where Jane Doe was found, when my friend Sara called my work cell. She wondered if I had a minute to meet her somewhere. I told her where I was.

  Sara and I had been friends since I’d started with the sheriff‘s department eight years before. She’d been with Winnebago County Probation for four years by then. When Sara spoke my name behind me, I turned in the swivel chair away from the table where my notes were spread. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and her green eyes had deepened to a dark-emerald shade, the way they did when something was troubling her.

  “What is it?” I asked as she sat in the molded-plastic chair with metal legs, one of the pieces of furniture that had been around since the seventies.

  She leaned forward and spoke quietly. “Corky, something strange is going on at my neighbor’s house.”

  “Which neighbor?”

  “Through the back yard, the Huebers.”

  I thought for a second. “I guess I don’t know them. So what’s happening?”

  “Last week, when I got up to get a drink of water around midnight, I noticed a boy of maybe twelve standing at the kitchen sink. It looked like he was doing dishes.”

  “On a week night?”

  “Yeah, it was Thursday.”

  “That is late on a school night. Maybe he couldn’t sleep, and was trying to make himself tired.”

  “That’s close to what I thought, but then last night I woke up to go to the bathroom, and noticed a light on in their kitchen. You know, now that the leaves are off the trees, I have a pretty good view of the back of their house. And it looked like that same kid was washing the walls in the kitchen.”

  “Washing the walls? That is strange. I can’t imagine my brother doing anything like that when we were growing up. Maybe the boy has a sleeping problem, and likes to work.”

  Sara shook her head. “I wouldn’t want someone working in my house when the rest of the family is trying to sleep. If he was my son and couldn’t sleep, I’d tell him to go read, do something calming.”

  “Good point.”

  “The other odd part is I’ve never seen that kid outside with the family, like when they’ve grilled, or when they’re working in their yard. I have seen a daughter, though,” she said.

  “Maybe you can casually ask them about their son.”

  “I don’t think so; they really keep to themselves. Besides, what am I supposed to say to even bring up the subject? I haven’t had a real conversation with them in the four years they’ve lived there. It’s more like I wave if we both happen to be in our back yards, or on our decks, at the same time. Which doesn’t happen often.”

  “Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen anyone outside over there.”

  “They aren’t out much. I just kind of figured either they’re gone a lot, or they’re not the outdoor types. Not that I’ve given much thought to it, one way or the other.”

  “You’ve got me curious about their son. Boys of that age should be out throwing balls, using up their energy shooting hoops, not cleaning the house late at night. And you’ve seen their daughter with th
em, but not him,” I said.

  “That’s right. And I’ve only seen her maybe a handful of times. Like I said, it is very odd.”

  “I guess. As far as the boy is concerned, let’s say his parents are punishing him for something. It seems harsh, but some people are strict without necessarily being abusive.”

  “I’ll keep my eye out for any other weird stuff over there.”

  “You said their name is Hueber. What are their first names?”

  “Gosh, I don’t think I ever knew. After they moved in that summer, I basically flagged them down when they were planting a bush in their back yard, and introduced myself. They were polite when I said, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood,’ and they said, ‘Thank you,’ and they were the Huebers. That’s about it. I always thought we’d talk again sometime, but we haven’t.”

  I nodded. “And the years marched on. My three grandparents talk about the good old days when everybody knew their neighbors. But I guess there have always been people who keep to themselves. My brother, John Carl, for instance.”

  “He’s cute, so what if he isn’t exactly social?” Sara chuckled. “I didn’t want to be a gossip, so I haven’t talked to my other neighbors about the Huebers. But maybe I’ll ask Patti and Wally next door, see if they’ve gotten to know them at all.”

  “That’d be a good place to start. Since you had never seen the kid before, maybe he moved in recently, and they’re taking care of him for a while. You know, a nephew, or foster child. And I’ll see what I can find out on this end.”

  “That’d be good. So how are things going with your unidentified woman?”

  I showed her the picture I carried of the woman we believed was the unidentified Jane Doe, and the two children, and told her what I knew. Sara shook her head. “Lots of sadness in the world, huh?”

  “That’s for sure. Oh, and Sara, I had the dumbest thing happen last night.”

  After I’d finished my water story, Sara shook her head again and said, “That is the dumbest thing. And just plain wrong. You’ve been off the road for months. It’s not like you were out there writing tickets, and doing other law enforcement things that piss people off.”

  “I know.”

  “You think it’s connected to that message you got about killing someone’s friend?”

  I shrugged. “The two things don’t seem like they’d be related, but who knows?”

  Smoke phoned my work cell phone at noon to report the person who had left the message about killing his friend had called from a disposable cell phone, an untraceable number. So we knew it was a person who had taken pains to cover his identity. I was sure he had reasons that made some kind of sense to him.

  Smoke brought me out of my musing. “Did you accidentally run over someone’s pet? Dog and cat owners can feel like their pets are part of the family. Or their best friends.”

  “No, I haven’t. I hit a squirrel a few years ago. I kill bugs and spiders that get in my house, but that’s about it.”

  “Not everyone in the world out there is dealing with a full deck. Paranoid people believe any number of things that aren’t factual, as you well know.”

  “I certainly do know that, yes. And the vast majority are basically harmless, except to themselves, maybe. Okay, talking that out makes me feel better. Besides, we have something much more pressing to solve,” I said.

  “That we do. Oh, and the second reason I called is the sheriff wants to be brought up to speed, and asked for a meeting in his office. Are you free now?”

  “I am. I’ll be there in a few.”

  “Meet you there.”

  Sheriff Dennis Twardy was a happy man. Happier than he had been in years. Despite dealing with the major stresses as the county’s chief law enforcement officer, his main stressor had been at home. His wife had suffered a chronic, long-term illness. After she’d died a few years before, he was not only lonely, but also seemed on the verge of a heart attack, or a stroke, at any given moment. No one in the department wanted either of those things to happen, and we’d kept him under watch as best we could.

  And then something beyond amazing happened; he fell in love with my mother, and in short order appeared to have dropped ten years from his age, and did, in fact, drop thirty points in his blood pressure readings. No one was more surprised than my brother, John Carl, or me, that our mother was a relaxing presence in anyone’s life. But as her children, we were apparently not objective judges of that. She had eased up her vigilant watch on us slightly, but continued to hover over us on a regular basis.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” I said.

  Smoke stepped into the office behind me. “Sheriff.”

  “Sergeant, Detective, have a seat.” He leaned back in his chair. “So Jane Doe’s autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow, and we have no identity. As soon as the ME sends the woman’s image, we’ll get it to the newspapers, both local and the Twin Cities metro. And Dawes, you’ve got the girls gathering fax numbers for the departments in Georgia?”

  “There are so many of them, they told me it wasn’t practical. We’re doing emails instead. I’m so used to faxing everything the way we used to, I didn’t even think of the more logical way to do it. I checked with Rita, and we’re good to go with the addresses. She said it went pretty quick and slick. She contacted the State of Georgia, and they were happy to provide all the help we needed.”

  “Good, good. Well, Dawes, you and I will get into the twenty-first century one of these days.”

  “Keep that optimism going, Denny.”

  Twardy grinned. “I’m wondering about that photo you found buried under our victim. Should we get that to the press, also?”

  Smoke scrunched his face while he thought about it. “I’d wait on that. Some people are funny about putting pictures of kids out there. I say we put the image we got coming from Doc Patrick’s office out first, and see what happens.”

  Twardy tapped his pen on his desk, digesting Smoke’s words, and then nodded. “I’ll go with your recommendation. You’re right about the picture of the kids. If they belong to someone besides our victim, it could cause a ruckus. And we still got the possibility of the connection to Georgia.”

  “Correct. We got that thread of hope someone will come forward who recognizes her. If not here, then in Georgia. I gotta wonder why no one has reported her missing. She’s been deceased for an estimated three days now, maybe missing for a day before that. I’m convinced someone around here knows her. Since that neighbor saw her last summer, we know she was in the same area her body was found, at least one other time before she turned up in the woods,” Smoke said.

  “If she lived alone, it sometimes takes a few days before a person is missed, unfortunately,” Twardy said.

  The three of us thought about that for a minute, and the cases we’d had over the years where someone had died in their home, or apartment, and no one knew until the odor gave it away.

  The sheriff broke the silence. “You two witnessing the autopsy then?”

  A flash of panic shot through me. I dug my fingernails into my palm in an attempt to distract myself, and dispel the anxiety. I didn’t know how to answer.

  Smoke studied my face for a second, and seemed to have read my thoughts once again. He reached over and gave my elbow a squeeze. I figured the crease by my eyebrow had given me away. “Think you’re up to it, Sergeant?”

  “Um, yeah. I want to be there.” I thought about the supply of anti-anxiety pills my doctor had prescribed. I’d take one, if I had to. That’s what they were for. But I wouldn’t drive a squad car if I did.

  The sheriff drew his eyebrows together as he leveled his eyes on me. “If you change your mind, Dawes can go alone.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t argue, in case I changed my mind, after all.

  Smoke clapped his hands. “Well, if there’s nothing else, Denny, I’ll get back to work. I was in court half the morning on that meth case, and I got about ten messages I gotta return.” Smoke gave a quick salute in the air with his pointe
r finger and left.

  You killed my friend. Yesterday’s message from an unknown caller ran through my mind. There had been no request to return that call.

  The sheriff narrowed his eyes on me. “Speaking of messages, I understand you got a strange one, Corky.” Apparently he could read my thoughts now, as well.

  I nodded. “If I knew what it meant, I’d know what to do about it. For now, I’ll just add it to the growing list of unhappy-camper-bordering-on-harassing phone calls I’ve gotten over the years.”

  “Like all of us in this business. Some people are slow to grow up, some never do. When I was young, kids thought it was funny to call drug stores and ask, ‘Do you have Prince Albert in a can?’ and when the proprietor said they did, the prankster would say, ‘Then you better let him out.’” Twardy shook his head and smiled. “I may have done that once, or twice, myself. You could get away with that sort of thing back in the old days. Unless the store owner called the telephone company operator, and asked where the last call had come from, that is.”

  I suppressed my grin. “Oh yes, I heard that back in the Stone Age you actually just picked up the phone, and an operator would come on and say. ‘Number please,’ and then connected you. I kind of like that idea.”

  “You’re right. We had three or four digit phone numbers out here in Winnebago County. Our number was two eight three.”

  “I definitely like that idea.” I paused a moment. “Oh, and besides the phone call, someone played a not-so-funny prank at my house last night.”

  “What was that?”

  When I told him about the water, the sheriff was not happy. “Oh, for godsakes. And you called it in?”

  “I did, so we can watch for similar pranks.”

  Twardy cleared his throat. “A strange phone call at the office, and mischievous activity at your home on the same day. Too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “I really don’t know. I turned the main water valve off in my house before I left this morning. I’ll check when I get home to see if the outside spigot got turned on again, but I think it’s just one of those random, stupid things kids do sometimes. If they pick a house in the country, they’re much less likely to be seen than in town with neighbors on all sides.”