Dead Tease (3 page)

“That blade had to be so sharp—see where it went through the cloth and a section of that bra without tearing?” Osborne gestured with his pen. “Not even a loose thread. How many people have knives that sharp? Hunters maybe.”

“Only in deer season, Doc.”

Osborne got to his feet, zipped shut the black bag and, picking it up, backed away with slow, careful steps. “For no good reason—except for how sharp the knife had to be—I don’t think this was a spontaneous act.”

Lew shrugged. “Hard to say, really. Could be a robbery gone bad? But I appreciate your intuition, Doc. Won’t hurt to put that in your notes.”

Looking up, she studied the sky overhead. “The good news is the switchboard called to tell me the weather forecast has changed: a slight chance of rain tonight with light winds. But good cover from these pines, which will make it easier to recover any trace evidence. I’ll have Todd cordon off this side of the driveway from the turn-off into the condo complex up to the first building and leave it for the Wausau Crime Lab to work up in the morning.”

“You talked to them? What did they say?” asked Osborne, wondering if he needed to wait at the morgue for one of the Wausau boys to arrive.

“Not yet, Doc. I’ll give ’em a call in a few minutes but I doubt I can get anyone up here tonight. Ridiculous to work an outdoor crime scene in the dark.” She gave a sigh of reluctance, reminding Osborne how much fun she had dealing with the bozo running the crime lab.

The director of the Wausau Crime Lab made it his mission to give the Loon Lake chief of police a hard time. If he wasn’t trying to share an off-color joke—with females as a punch line—he enjoyed ranting about women in law enforcement: “Ladies do not belong in military combat or on the police force—they are too soft.” Lew would listen until she got what she wanted.

As far as Osborne was concerned, that razzbonya got one thing real wrong:
soft
did not apply to Lewellyn Ferris.

“Try your buddy Bruce this time,” said Osborne. “Skip his boss and throw in fly fishing for muskies—from a kayak. Bet you anything he’ll jump at that.”

“
What
are you talking about? Are you teasing me?” Lew grinned, a friendly challenge in her eyes. Osborne smiled back. He found her so cute when she did that—but he knew better than to say so. Nevertheless, he allowed himself a moment to feel sixteen again.

“I’ll tell you later. Ray’s latest enterprise.”

“Oh no,” still smiling, Lew rolled her eyes. “But speak of the devil. If you’re finished, I’ll have Ray get the photos now.”

She waved a go-ahead to Ray who had been chatting with several of the men and women gathered across the road. In one hand he held a tripod and in the other a camera he used on more pleasant occasions: shooting outdoor vistas for the annual Lions Club calendar. He walked over to where Lew and Osborne were standing.

“Ready for me to take over, Chief?” asked Ray.

“Yep, you know the drill. But shoot the victim first, I don’t want her exposed like that any longer than necessary.”

“Of course. I’ll do that right away so the EMTs can move her—then the site. If it gets too dark, I have extra spotlights in the truck.”

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Lew asked. “Doc mentioned Jen Williams was a friend of yours—”

“Not really,” said Ray, his eyes serious and sad. “We dated a few times maybe five years ago. That’s all. She used me for sport.”

Lew gave him a questioning look. “We’ll discuss that later.”

A silver-gray Ford Taurus pulled up behind Lew’s police cruiser. The passenger’s side door was already open and a short, stout woman in gray Bermuda shorts and an oversized white T-shirt with bright orange squirrels across the front jumped from the car, leaving the door open behind her. Moving surprisingly fast for a woman built so low and wide, she dashed to where Ray was setting up near the body, slipping and nearly falling in a rivulet of blood that had escaped into a groove along the driveway.

As she closed in on the white tarp covering the site where the body lay, Lew stepped forward to block her way. “Stop, please, you can’t go there,” she said, grabbing the woman by her left arm.

“I’m her mother for God’s sake. I’m here to help—” The woman yanked her arm away but at the sight of her daughter sprawled on the ground she stopped. Her hands flew to her mouth as she cried, “Oh my God. Oh my God, but they just called me! She’s already—? No. No. No. Can’t be. Not my Jen. The person who called—” the woman whirled around as if she could find the guilty caller in the crowd across the road.

Osborne looked down and away from the helplessness. He knew that pain. At least this time it wasn’t his. He waited, wishing as he had learned to do: if only someone could turn back the clock—just one hour—to give this poor woman the chance to maybe call her daughter and ask her to come by Mom’s house instead of going straight home to her apartment? If only …

“You’ve made a mistake! I know you did! Let me see,” the woman struggled to get past Lew. “That’s not Jennifer. She never wears red. Oh … oh …”

Osborne hurried over. “Bonnie,” he said to the woman who had been a patient of his for years before his retirement, “Chief Ferris and I—we know that the victim is your daughter … Jennifer. And I am so sorry but … well … we need you to officially identify the body.” It was an outrageous request, and he hated hearing himself make it.

The woman’s breath kept catching as she tried to talk. “Is she—is she? When did this happen?”

“Shortly after six we think,” said Lew. “One of my officers checked the clinic, so we know Jennifer left the building at six or a little after. The call came in right at six thirty.”

“Oh God,” the woman dropped her head. She slumped to one side, and Osborne caught her shoulders before she collapsed. Together he and Lew eased her back along the road and onto the passenger seat of Lew’s squad car where she sat motionless, staring at the floor of the car. Her breath was coming in short bursts but she was not crying, not saying anything. Osborne hoped to hell she wasn’t having a heart attack.

“Chief Ferris, I … want … to … see … my … child.”

“Okay,” said Lew, “Dr. Osborne and I will help you over there but I have to show you right where to walk so we don’t compromise any trace evidence that may have been left by the killer.”

“A killer? She was murdered?” Bonnie Williams looked up at them, amazement on her face. “I thought she was hit by a car. You’re telling me she was
murdered
?”

Chapter Five

As Bonnie approached, Ray moved his tripod to one side and stepped back to let her kneel on the tarp. Leaning forward, she reached out to stroke the inside of her daughter’s bare wrist where it rested on a cushion of pine needles. Then, bending over Jen’s face, she murmured soft words as she kissed the pale forehead. Placing the back of her right hand to each temple, she seemed to be checking to be sure there was no hint of warmth.

Osborne watched the woman’s hands moving over the still form. Love, not death, infused these final moments with her child. He glanced over at Lew whose eyes were focused on a distant place: a place known only to a parent who has also lost a child.

As the older woman pressed her hands against the ground to push herself up, Osborne took her by the elbow. “Bonnie,” he said as she got to her feet and grabbed his arm to steady herself, “Bonita, come here.” He opened his arms and the woman walked into them, burrowing her wet face into his shirt as deep sobs shook her frame. He held her close.

Looking over at Lew, he said, “Bonnie and her late husband were patients of mine, Chief Ferris. Jennifer, too, when she was still in high school.” Lew nodded.

Jen had been a genetic mirror of her father: she had his height and lean build, his light Scandinavian coloring with white-blond hair and angular cheekbones. Only locals familiar with the family would have guessed she was also the daughter of the short, full-bodied woman with black eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and wide, generous smile whose grandparents had emigrated from Poland during the Northwoods’ logging heyday of the 1880s.

Since his retirement three years ago, Osborne had known Jen by reputation only. More than once the McDonald’s crowd had relished tales of her spirited bad behavior—summer pontoon parties featuring too much booze and skinny-dipping being a frequent highlight. On the other hand, like many people in Loon Lake, he was more familiar with her mother’s upbeat nature and reliable good humor.

Though Bonnie had been widowed by a mill accident twenty years ago and, since then, put in long hours at the Customer Service desk in the Loon Lake Market, she always had a smile for customers. And a happy update on her “crazy” daughter—Jen’s graduate degree in graphic arts, her return to Loon Lake for a “terrific” job at the clinic, the new KitchenAid mixer she had given her mom for her birthday.

Osborne tucked his head down over Bonnie’s. Why? Why did this kind, hardworking woman have to lose that one wild and precious child of hers?

“If it helps,” he said in a soft tone when he felt the tears subside every so slightly, “Jennifer died instantly. No pain. I doubt she even knew what was happening.”

“I hope you’re right.” Bonnie tipped her head back to peer up at him. Lew handed her a bunch of Kleenex. As she wiped at her face she said, “But, Dr. Osborne, how would you know? You’re a dentist—” She turned to Lew, “Where’s my brother-in-law? Shouldn’t Herb be here?”

Bonnie Williams was the middle child of three siblings. A younger sister, Sylvia, was married to the mayor of Loon Lake and an older sister, Donna, was married to Herb Pecore, the Loon Lake coroner whose job was a political appointment and a headache for the Loon Lake chief of police.

Among Pecore’s qualifications for the position were bankrupting a beer bar (hard to do in the Northwoods) and training Black and Tan Coonhounds to tree bears. Other virtues included chronic alcoholism, peripatetic office habits, and gross incompetence when it came to the chain of custody on criminal evidence. Once he had even managed to misplace the physical evidence from a murder case.

Not that any of that made a difference. Nor did curses, eye-rolling, and written complaints from Chief Lewellyn Ferris. Pecore’s job was well protected thanks to his (and Bonnie’s) brother-in-law, the mayor. When Chief Ferris found herself pushed to the limit, she maintained her sanity by going fishing. Or moonlighting as a fly fishing instructor for the local sporting goods store. Either way, she could escape the distress of working with a fool.

And so it was that after giving a private lesson to the recently retired dentist, Dr. Paul Osborne, Officer Lewellyn Ferris (not yet promoted to “chief”) had been thrilled to find she had not only an interesting new student but a connection with someone skilled in forensic dentistry who could be deputized to help the Loon Lake Police identify victims and establish cause of death on those occasions when Pecore was “incapacitated.”

For Osborne his first evening in a trout stream was an equally auspicious encounter. Who knew that signing up for a lesson in fly fishing—for the sole purpose of helping him decide if he should or shouldn’t sell an expensive fly rod he had purchased years ago but never used—might change his life?

At first, he had been taken aback when the fly fishing instructor he was to meet at the parking lot—a “Lou” recommended and booked for the evening by Ralph’s Sporting Goods—turned out to be “Lew,” a woman he recognized from her younger days as a parent when she brought her children in for their annual school dental exams.

Things had changed since then. Her son and daughter had grown up, she’d left her job as a secretary at the mill and, after a divorce, earned a degree in law enforcement after which she joined the Loon Lake Police Department.

Osborne, meanwhile, had raised two daughters, lost a wife, and given up a profession he dearly loved due to the badgering of the late wife who had insisted they “travel, put more money into redecorating our house instead of all that ridiculous fishing equipment, and spend time entertaining—Paul, you know how I love dinner parties….”

And so it was that though they may have been aware of one another for years, it wasn’t until they were standing hip deep in the riffles of the Prairie River on a moonlit summer night that they discovered they just might
need
each other.

“Because your brother-in-law is so closely related to the victim, I’m afraid we can’t have him handle this part of the investigation, Bonnie,” said Lew. “But please don’t worry. For two years now, Doctor Osborne has worked for the department on an ‘as-needed’ basis. He is deputized to assist the Loon Lake Police as deputy coroner when Herb isn’t available. Be assured, the Wausau Crime Lab will handle the crime scene investigation.”

Bonnie may or may not have understood, but she nodded as if she did. From where she had been waiting near the Ford Taurus, another woman, less chunky than Bonnie but similar in coloring, approached them.

“Chief Ferris,” said Sylvia Tillman, the mayor’s wife, “I’m here for my sister. Can she come with me now or … ?”

“Hello, Sylvia,” said Lew. “A few more minutes, please. If Bonnie can manage, I have several questions critical to our investigation. Do you mind waiting?”

“No, of course not,” said Sylvia. She rubbed her sister’s shoulder then walked back to wait by her car.

“Bonnie,” said Lew, steering her by the elbow to the passenger side of the squad car, “why don’t you sit here….” She opened the car door and helped Bonnie slide onto the front seat. “I’ll close the door and run the air conditioning. It’ll be comfortable and give us some privacy. Dr. Osborne will join us. Based on what he found during his exam, he may have a few questions for you as well.”

Bonnie pointed at the ambulance crew who were waiting for a signal from Lew to move the body. “They’ll be careful with Jen, right?”

“Please don’t worry. They know what to do. I can arrange for you to visit her in the hospital morgue once she’s there.”

“Okay,” said Bonnie, tears glimmering at the sound of the word “morgue.”

Before walking around the front of the cruiser to the driver’s side, Lew motioned for Osborne to meet with her behind the squad car. In a low voice she said, “Don’t hesitate to jump in, Doc. I can see you know Bonnie better than I do.”