Dead Frenzy (17 page)

Osborne
paused in the doorway of Lew’s office and peered in. The room was sunny and airy, the windows wide open to the morning breezes. Lew was seated at her desk, head down as she concentrated on some paperwork. Sensing his presence, she glanced up and he was happy to see she looked rested. In fact, she looked terrific.

“What smells so good?” he said, walking in.

“Me, of course,” said Lew with a spritely tilt of her head. “Just kidding. The lilacs across the street are in full bloom.”

“What the hell did you say to Irv Pecore, Chief?” said a woman’s voice from behind Osborne. He stepped out of the way of a very amused Marlene. Reaching past him, she thrust two oversized manila envelopes and a larger package wrapped in butcher paper at Lew. “He stomped in here about two minutes ago and threw these on my desk. Hey, look at you, Doc! Whoa, turn a-r-o-und.”

He followed orders. The two women checked him over, eyes starting at the thick-soled motorcycle boots, traveling up his chap-clad legs and ending at the collar of the heavy leather jacket.

“What do you think, Marlene?” Lew’s eyes were teasing as she chewed lightly on the end of her pen. She obviously liked what she saw.

“He needs one of those
bad to the bone
T-shirts.” The switchboard operator chortled. “Doc, you look the part, you really do. Oops, I hear my switchboard, excuse me.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope I survive this enterprise,” said Osborne, feeling a little silly all of a sudden.

“You’ll do fine, Doc.” Lew got up from the desk and walked over to the little table in the corner holding the coffee maker. “And since you are doing me a big, big favor, let me at least pour you a cup of coffee.

“By the way,” she said as she handed him the cup, “I was looking over some of the documentation they gave me in the meeting the other day. This update on Patty Boy Plyer is pretty darn amazing.” Lew looked down to read from the paper she had been studying when he walked in.

“Turns out there is a federal grand jury inquiry into—get this list, now—credit card fraud, narcotics trafficking, loan sharking, and suspected murder of his former partner in an auto theft marketplace tied to the Chicago mob. Criminal record includes arrests on charges of robbery, assault, forgery, loan sharking, narcotics trafficking, and the aforementioned attempted murder. Never convicted of the latter. Has been known to use a number of aliases…. ”

“What is an auto theft
marketplace?”

“Chop shop, so he’s got the résumé for that biz, that’s for sure.” She sipped from her coffee. “Loon Lake boy makes good.”

She reached for one of the envelopes that Marlene had delivered. “I know we don’t have much time so let’s see what Pecore managed to dig up.” She chuckled, probably at the thought of Pecore cursing while frantically searching his property room.

Opening the flap, Lew peered inside, then carefully slid the contents on to her desk: a series of black-and-white photos, a number of small glassine envelopes similar to the ones Osborne had used for sending teeth home after a youngster’s extraction, and a two-page typed report. Lew picked up the report, scanned it briefly, then handed it over.

“Here, you read it. I can look at it later. Remember Hugh Eversman? He was a young police officer back then—looks like he was the investigating officer and completed this report.”

“Whatever happened to Hugh?”

“Married a girl from Milwaukee and went into the computer business. He was long gone when I joined the department. I’m sure he had aspirations beyond being the grunt in a two-man police department, which is all Loon Lake had twenty years ago. Not like four of us is much better, but at least the workload is spread around.”

The report was meticulously typed and single-spaced. The man had done his homework.

“The burlap bag in which the victim was found is our best piece of evidence,” wrote Eversman. “Even my unscientific eye can see blood and hair all over it—enough to convince me that the girl fought hard with whoever the assailant was. I think we should look real close at Mr. Bud Thornton, her employer, as a prime suspect. He had a laceration behind his left ear that resembles a bite mark (photo enclosed). Not being an anthropologist, I don’t know what forensics can do with fingernails, but if they have markings like you find in fingerprints or on bone, we might have a chance here as I found what looks like a good-sized piece of ripped fingernail stuck in the burlap. Because of that, I got nail clippings from the victim and from every individual who might have had contact with the victim in the twenty-four hours before her death. A long shot but worth checking out. The best likelihood of any matches with the evidence on the burlap will be the results of the blood tests from the same group of people.”

Osborne looked down the list of people from whom Eversman got samples. They included Thornton and his wife and each of their three children, even the three-year-old. Also a teenaged friend of their oldest daughter who was staying with the family. Then there were samples from Jack Schultz and from Donald Bruckner, proprietor of the little grocery predating the Loon Lake Market. The baby-sitter had been seen in his store earlier in the day.

Eversman went on to recommend an analysis of all the enclosed samples to be compared with anything the coroner might find under the victim’s nails or in her mouth.

“Looks like he wasn’t able to establish the scene of the crime—only where the body was dumped or hidden. Did Pecore follow up on that?” asked Osborne.

“As far as I can tell, the only thing he followed up on was Happy Hour at Marty’s Bar,” said Lew. “Check these out.”

She slid the photos over to Osborne. The black-and-white enlargements were striking in their clarity. “Someone did a good job on these.”

He handed the two-page report back over to Lew. “I’ll pick up a copy later if that’s okay.”

Lew nodded. “I’ll meet you at UPS at six tonight and bring everything with me. I want copies of the photos, too. They are good, aren’t they. I’ll send the originals to Wausau but keep copies for us.”

She scanned the report that Osborne had handed back to her. “No wonder the photos are good; Hugh asked Dick Elke to take those.”

Dick Elke had been the resident Loon Lake photographer for many years, up until his death. Family reunions, high school graduation photos, and weddings were his specialty. This would have been a little out of his league, but he appeared to have done the best he could in order to shoot as much detail as possible.

The first image staring up at Osborne was like the one they had seen that terrible day, the one that would live forever in Erin’s nightmares. The others were shot from different angles. And there were photos of the site where the body was found in spite of signs of trampling from onlookers, who would have included Osborne and the two Brownie Scouts.

Then, two close-ups. Osborne leaned forward in the chair to study the first image. It was a chunk of maxillary bone with seven teeth visible against a background of pine needles, decaying leaves, and decomposing flesh. The teeth were startling in their whiteness on the page.

Stapled to the photo was a typewritten note. “Listen to this,” said Osborne. “Animals had gotten to the corpse and Eversman found this section of bone a short distance from the body. He tried to preserve as much as he could, scooping it up with the dirt around it, for testing.”

“That may be what we’ve got here.”

Lew opened the larger of the two manila envelopes. Inside was another packet, made of a heavier stock and taped shut. A note was scrawled across the outside. “According to this, Eversman assumes Pecore has requested permission from the family to keep this section of bone as evidence until the investigation was completed. He saved that and soil samples in here,” she said.

“Nothing in the file about that,” said Osborne. “Shouldn’t there be a legal notice of some kind?”

“Nothing, huh? Then he didn’t do it,” said Lew, shaking her head. “Why am I not surprised—Pecore is such a slob. He probably figured without an open casket who would know.

“And this”—she laid her hand on the bundle in butcher paper—”this is the burlap bag. I’m not going to open these, Doc. Why contaminate what little we may be able to salvage.”

Osborne looked at the second close-up. “Lew, this is an excellent shot of Thornton’s neck—and a hell of a bite wound. The detail is terrific. The forensic dental guy in Wausau will be very pleased with this.”

He looked up at Lew. “I think we’ve got something here. May I see that report again?” Osborne scanned Eversman’s remarks. “Right, here it is. Eversman says that the husband of the family employing the victim, and we know that’s Thornton, had a severe laceration of the neck, below his left ear. Thornton alleged that he was adding a new section onto his pier and lost his footing, causing a dock section to gash him in the neck. Also, Hugh notes the man had scratches and cuts on his hands, wrists, and forearms. Gash, hell, that’s a bite.”

“Based on what Eversman says here, I can’t believe Raske and Pecore dropped the case on the word of some young girl,” said Osborne. “It’ll be darn interesting to see what can be made of all this, Lew.”

“So much time has passed, Doc. Think the DNA will be viable?”

“I know it survives in teeth—they’re able to use mitochondria. That’s as much as I know. How soon does this go down to the crime lab?”

“One of the boys from Wausau is sitting in on a hearing over in Rhinelander this morning. He said he would swing by on his way back—have it down there by noon. He also said they’ve got a new guy who
loves
working with old evidence. The older the better, he says.”

Twenty minutes later, from his chair in the third row, Osborne looked around the college classroom. The motorcycle safety class was more of a mix of ages and sexes than he had expected. Cheryl, who had arrived before him, was seated in the very last row and wearing the same outfit as the night before, with the exception of her T-shirt, which was red. It matched the red in the tattoos on her arms.

The sullen expression was fixed in place. She barely acknowledged Osborne, which he could certainly understand: how uncool to know the old fogey of the class.

At least that’s what he thought until a couple in their mid-sixties strolled in. Seated around Osborne were five young men, all in their twenties or thirties. When the instructor asked the students to introduce themselves and say why they were there, the five turned out to be experienced riders who had had traffic citations and were required to take the course before getting their licenses back.

Two young women, both quite a bit taller than Cheryl, looked as nervous as Osborne and said that they had never ridden a motorcycle either. And finally, there were three men in their early fifties, friends, who had decided to take the class together. All three had Harleys on order and were hoping to ride to Sturgis for the national rally in August—they were beginners, too.

Osborne relaxed slightly. He wasn’t alone—trepidation was obvious on half the faces in the room. The first hour flew by, and all too soon it was time to get on a motorcycle for the first time. The instructor took them out to the parking lot, where each was assigned a bike.

Osborne’s confidence level was rising. Yes, the motorcycle would require using both hands and both feet—but that’s exactly what he did fly-fishing. He cast with his right, stripped with his left, and used both feet to balance on slippery rocks. Maybe he
was
cut out for this.

“Dr. Osborne, ready? Got it in neutral?” The instructor, a heavyset man in his early thirties with dark hair and glasses, stood next to Osborne. He waited as Osborne mounted the bike, then cautioned, “You’re tall and you have long arms. Be careful to keep your right wrist up or you’ll roll the throttle at the same time as you pull the hand brake. You don’t want to do that.”

“Got it.” Osborne pulled in the clutch, pushed the ignition button, pressed down with his left foot to put the bike in first gear, then eased out the clutch as he rolled the throttle ever so slightly and … he was moving! Around the parking lot he went, then again and again. He shifted into second gear, then slowed. Finally the instructor waved him in. Osborne kept his wrist high as he braked with his right hand and foot, bringing the bike to a smooth stop.

“Excellent,” said the instructor. Osborne swung his leg off to let the next student try. He realized he was pouring sweat under the leather jacket. Removing the jacket and the helmet, he stepped back to watch his classmates. Cheryl was having problems.

For one thing, she was so short that she had to stretch to get her feet forward on the pedals. Then, for some reason, she kept killing the engine, which caused the bike to lurch forward, then quit. Osborne winced.

“Give it more gas,” shouted the instructor. “You need momentum or the bike will fall over.” But momentum was what she didn’t want: For all her tough facade, Cheryl was frightened. The instructor finally got her going, but she resisted shifting into second gear. As she put-putted around the track, Osborne’s heart lifted. At least he was doing better than that.

After another hour of instruction in the classroom, the teacher took them out to the bikes again.

“Okay, folks, this time we practice our turns. I want you to get the bike into second gear, ride towards me, slowing as you look through your turn, then up and around again. Remember, slow as you shift into first and look through your turn.”

That sounded easy enough. Osborne got going into second gear. Coming up on the instructor, he slowed, shifting into first gear. Off to his left he heard a frightening, grinding noise. Before he could figure out the source of the roar, his bike leapt forward, missing the instructor by a fraction of an inch. Up the driveway it lurched, moving as if under someone else’s control. He saw the chain link fence coming at his neck. Dropping his head, he took the chain with his helmet. A stand of birch trees was coming up fast. Too fast.