Dearly Departed (30 page)

“We found a .38 on the seat next to him,” Loushine answered.

“Then it could have been.”

Loushine clearly didn’t think so, only he didn’t say it. Instead he told the sheriff, “The .38 still had a full load; it hadn’t been fired. But we have a bunch of these.” He held up a plastic bag filled with copper shells. “.41 AEs.”

The sheriff took the bag of shell casings and stepped away to collect himself. Loushine watched him intently. After a moment the sheriff said in a quiet voice, “He looks like he’s been dead for a long time.”

“Three days,” I told him. “I’m betting he was popped right after the shooting.”

Orman didn’t respond to me. Instead he told Loushine, “Dust the car inside and out; process the latents fast. Send copies to the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation. Also, see if you can get a quick grouping on the blood.…” We all glanced impulsively at the dark stains on the seat and floor around Thilgen’s body. “Some of it might not be his. And I want casts made of the three boot impressions outside the passenger door.”

Good eye
, I thought.

“Of course,” Loushine replied, obviously miffed. I guess he didn’t like Orman telling him how to do his job.

“Something else, if I may,” I said.

Orman nodded at me.

Looking directly at Loushine, I told him, “A murder victim has no assumption of privacy; you don’t need a warrant to search his house.” Loushine’s eyes grew brighter at my words, and a smile of unexpected happiness crept over his face. You’d have thought I was sending him on a blind date with Cindy Crawford.

“I recommend that you conduct a search immediately,” I added with a wink. “Pay particular attention to Thilgen’s financial records.”

“Good idea,” Orman said. “I want to know the name of everybody associated with Thilgen—his friends, his environmentalist buddies, whoever. I want a list of everyone he spoke to in the forty-eight hours preceding his death. I want his phone records. I want a time-coded list of associate events.…” He spoke like he was reading from a manual.

“I’m on it,” Loushine told him.

“Where the hell’s the medical examiner?” the sheriff asked impatiently.

“He’s coming,” Loushine assured him and then turned back to Thilgen. “It would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” he asked no one in particular.

“What would?” I replied.

“If Bettich was shot by Thilgen because he didn’t want her spoiling the environment, harming the animals. It would make everything so … tidy.”

W
ith Deputy Loushine occupied, I was stuck in the Wisconsin wilderness without a ride. Orman offered me one. We drove a long time toward Saginau. Not a word passed between us. The sheriff was whistling soft and low a tune that started out sounding like something from
Fiddler on the Roof
but ended up a meandering patchwork of disjointed notes.

I turned my attention to the trees that blurred past the window. I was not having a good time. I needed to hear a joke. I needed a stand-up comic to make me laugh at myself, take my mind off my troubles. I thought of Officer George Meade of the St. Paul Police Department, the man who had broken me in. Now, there was an entertaining guy. How long was it since we’d last worked together? Twelve years? Thirteen?

This one time we responded to a domestic, standing outside the door of a third-floor apartment listening to a husband and wife go at it over money. “You spend too much!” he’s saying. “You’re cheap!” she’s saying. Meade knocked on the door, announced that the police had arrived, and then opened the door. The man and woman were standing in the middle of the room, a kitchen table between them. In the center of the table was a kilo of cocaine and several automatic weapons. The four of us looked at the cocaine and guns. The four of us looked at each other. Then we all looked at the cocaine, again. Suddenly, we all reached for our guns and dove for cover. It was like an umpire had yelled, “Play ball!”

They started shooting first—I remember that distinctly. We returned fire. Over one hundred rounds were exchanged. The sulfur became so thick that my eyes teared up, yet miraculously no one was hit. Not by them, not by us, not by the SWAT team on the roof or the chopper in the air—we had so much backup, you’d think it was the annual meeting of the Minnesota Police Federation.

Finally Meade yelled, “Hey, buddy, nobody’s hurt yet! We can still make most of this go away!” And the husband yelled back that he doesn’t want to go to jail, but Meade told him he didn’t see how it could possibly be avoided. The husband thought about it for a few minutes and then said, okay, jail’s fine, just as long as he’s not in the same prison with his wife.

The wife heard that and started ragging the husband something fierce about being such a poor provider and how her mother had been right about him all along, and prison be damned, she didn’t even want to be in the same fucking
state
with him.

He told her that that suited him down to his toes, and it was just lucky they didn’t have any children that would grow up to look like her.

Eventually they tossed out their guns, and we cuffed ’em, Mirandized ’em, and moved them out to the street. Along the way the wife turned to the husband and whined, “You never loved me.”

And Meade started making like a marriage counselor.

“Now, now, you kids, let’s hear no more of that kind of talk,” he said. “Sure you have your problems. What married couple doesn’t? But you can work them out; you can make this marriage work. It just takes time and a little effort. Hey,” he said, nudging the husband, “when was the last time you told your wife you loved her?”

The way the husband looked at him, you just knew he wished he’d shot it out after all.

“Ahh, the good ol’ days,” I mused.

“Hmm?” the sheriff grunted.

“Just thinking out loud,” I said.

Orman grunted again.

After a few more minutes of silence I said, “I have a few hard questions to ask you.”

“I figured you might,” Orman replied.

“You know who Michael is,” I told him.

“We don’t have secrets between us.”

“Where did she get the quarter million dollars to buy and remodel The Harbor?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Who told her about the Ojibwa’s plan to turn the civic center into a casino?”

“I don’t know.”

“I heard it was Charlie Otterness.”

“I don’t know,” the sheriff repeated yet again.

“I guess you do have secrets.”

The sheriff remained silent.

“Jesus Christ, how can you not know these things?”

“It never occurred to me to ask.”

Either that or he didn’t want to learn the answers.

I turned and stared at him. “Well, don’t you think it’s time we found out?”

twenty-four

I
was astonished by the sheer size of the Otterness Bait and Tackle shop. A good six thousand square feet and well lit, it had thousands of old-time lures decorating the walls and rafters. And to enter, you had to walk through a small foyer embellished with autographed photos of fishing heavyweights: Bill Dance, Jimmy Houston, Roland Martin, Orlando Wilson, Al and Ron Lindner. I guess I was expecting something like the mom-and-pop bait store near my parents’ place in northern Minnesota.

Just inside the shop was a huge floor-to-ceiling mural of a typical northern lake painted with a breathtaking devotion to detail—I was afraid to brush against it for fear of getting my clothes wet. An angler, proudly flaunting a brute of a walleye, stood before the mural. He was having a Polaroid taken of himself by a young photographer with the name Otterness stitched to his knit shirt. While the angler and the photographer were waiting for the Polaroid to develop, Sheriff Orman asked if Charlie Otterness was available. The photographer gestured with his head and said, “In the back.” I appraised the mural one last time before heading in the direction he pointed. That’s when I noticed the name R. Orman painted way down in the corner.

Sheriff Orman and I found a door next to a plastic tank swimming with shiners and stepped through it into a large storage room filled with boxes of tackle, rods and reels, electronic fish detectors, and sundry other gear stacked on rows of metal shelves.

“Don’t do it!” a voice cried with some urgency from several rows over.

A second voice replied, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“Charlie, get used to the idea,” said the first voice. “You’re dead politically.”

Again came a muffled reply.

The first voice insisted, “If you try to run … embarrassed … to be humiliated?”

The volume of the second voice increased. “What do you think … now? That woman … power screwdriver.”

“… sixteen years. Let it go at that.”

The voices came from an office at the far end of the room. Orman was all set to break in on the conversation, but I nudged him behind the last row of metal shelves and touched my index finger to my lips.

“… proud man, Charlie.… Don’t … this way. I appreciate … Nothing you can do.… The bitch killed you.… People around here … Selling the civic center to the Ojibwa, you sold your office.”

“But I didn’t tell her.”

A muffled reply.

“Goddammit, Harry, you’re not listening. I … didn’t … do … it.”

Harry’s answer was too soft and low, and the sheriff and I began edging closer. I caught part of a sentence: “… people figure you let them down.”

The voice that I assumed belonged to Charlie Otterness exploded. “How many times do I have to say it? I didn’t tell her anything!”

We moved closer.

“Goddammit, Harry!” Otterness shouted. “You’re like all the rest. You don’t listen. Lookit! If I had told Michael about the Ojibwa, she wouldn’t have bought the fucking resort. On Thursday you’ll understand.”

“What does that mean?”

The question came from Sheriff Orman. He had circled past me and was now blocking the office doorway with his frame. I came up behind him.

Charlie Otterness was taller than I was, but, then, so was just about everyone else I’ve seen in Deer Lake, including the children. Something in the water, no doubt. His hair was gray and combed to cover a bald spot, his eyes were watery and pale, and the flesh of his face was pasty and hung in loose folds. He looked like a man accustomed to drinking alone in the dark. He was also at least thirty years my senior, which made him forty years older than Alison.

The other man in his office was just as old and half Charlie’s size—but still taller than me.

When Otterness saw the sheriff, he froze like a small animal caught in the headlights of a speeding car.

“Sheriff,” he said.

Charlie Otterness reluctantly rose from behind his gray metal desk, like he was giving up cover. I didn’t blame him. The way the sheriff looked with bloodshot eyes and unshaven face, he scared me, too. Judging from Charlie’s voice and body language, I figured Orman was the last person he wanted to see. But it wasn’t out of fear; there was something else working.

“Sheriff,” Harry echoed with deference.

Orman ignored him. He only had eyes for Charlie. “Answer the question,” he insisted.

“How’s Michael?” Charlie asked instead.

“She’s in a coma,” the sheriff answered.

“Coma,” Charlie repeated as if it were a death sentence—and maybe it was.

“Talk to me, Charlie,” the sheriff demanded. “What happens on Thursday?”

I’ve been told that some primitive tribes sniff out the guilty party among a group of suspects by smelling for body odor. Others demand that suspects chew and swallow a handful of rice; if their mouths are too dry to manage it, they’re in trouble. As an investigator, I’m trained to look for several physiological symptoms of lying and guilt: sweaty palms, an unusual pallor, a dry mouth, a rapid pulse, erratic breathing. Charlie Otterness? He had them all. I didn’t know if he was feeling guilty or going into cardiac arrest.

“Tell him, Charlie,” Harry urged.

When Charlie refused to speak, I said, “On Thursday the Ojibwa tribe is going before the county commissioners to make a formal, public offer to buy the civic center.”