Dead Creek (8 page)

Joe died in a boating accident during one of Brad’s vacations from Princeton. Osborne had helped Brad and Peggy with the funeral arrangements but then he hadn’t heard from him in years. Brad, Peggy had bragged to Mary Lee, had had a stellar career as a professor of art history at Yale University.

Then, nine months ago, he took early retirement and returned to Loon Lake. He moved into his mother’s house on the best street in town, talked of someday donating an art collection he told someone was worth over a million dollars to the town and, after much arm twisting, condescended to the wishes of the local arts council to teach a few classes at the local university branch.

Why he had to arrive at Thunder Bay Bar just as the dancer challenged Code 2116B was beyond Osborne’s ken. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

“Huh?” asked Lew in response to the strange grunt from Osborne. Her eyes had narrowed to watch Judith’s reflection in the mirror that ran the length of the bar, not unlike a cat cautiously considering a spider. Now she slowly swung her gaze from the kitchen door behind which Judith had just vanished to look at Osborne.

“Oh, jeez,” said Osborne, tapping his empty can with irritation on the bar and raising his eyebrows in grim anticipation. “Getta load of this….”

Miller had spotted him and stepped right up behind the two of them, a big grin on his squarish face. Even though it was a cool day and a little early in the season, he was wearing khaki bermuda shorts under a red plaid woolen jacket. Academic horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Osborne thought he looked like a hunter out of a
Far Side
cartoon.

“Why, Oz-z-zie, what are
you
doing here?” Only Joe had ever called Osborne Ozzie, and the dentist cringed at the sound of his nickname nasally abused by Miller. He turned around to face Miller, noticing with some surprise that the creep had lost a lot of weight since Osborne had last seen him.

Once quite portly, now he was remarkably thin through his legs and shoulders, though he still carried a doughy tire of a midriff. Only the too tightly cinched belt of his khaki shorts kept it from expanding farther. As he planted himself behind Osborne and Lew, he leaned back like a pregnant woman, a pose that emphasized he was all angles and no muscle. He looked very out of place in Thunder Bay Bar, which didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

“Oh, my goodness, I don’t believe we’ve met. What lovely breasts you have, my dear.” He extended a hand to Lew, who swung around on her chair and looked at him. She didn’t take the proffered hand.

“Wha—?” Osborne looked at Miller in amazement.

“Oh, don’t get nervous, Ozzie. I’m quite serious. The college is working with me on a marvelous exhibit.” He raised his right hand, fingers touching, as if to emphasize how classy this would be.

“We’re bringing in a very hot, very prestigious New York artist, Kiki Smith. If you haven’t heard of her, you will!” This time both hands were raised in an effeminate wave. “She does an absolutely
phenomenal
series of female nudes urinating glass beads, glass moths, that type of thing. Quite phenomenal.” And with that, he laughed the old Brad Miller “Ha, ha, ha, ha”—the signature dry cackle, totally humorless, that had always raised the hair on the back of Osborne’s neck. “I stopped out here to do a little research—”

“Brad—” Osborne tried to interrrupt.

But Miller refused to let him in. “Oh—this is so new for this region and we
have
to explain it—so I plan to hang a photography exhibit of more traditional female nudes alongside. I would love to shoot you, Mrs.—?” He paused for only a second, not really expecting Osborne or Lew to volunteer her name.

“I can see your figure is just so—so—
Boucher.”
He pursed his lips as he uttered the French word. And then again, “Ha, ha, ha. Oh, Ozzie, you are always too much.”

He winked at Osborne. It was quite clear he knew exactly how uncomfortable he was making his father’s old friend. And how much he was enjoying watching Osborne squirm.

“Brad. Stop.” Osborne was determined to shut him down. “Just stop—”

“Stop what?” Miller leaned back on his heels and raised his eyebrows. Osborne swore he was feigning surprise. But Miller still refused to let Osborne get a word in. “Don’t misunderstand, madam. C’mon, I know she’s not a hooker, Doc. That’s obvious. We’re wearing a uniform, aren’t we? But big, beautiful breasts
are
big, beautiful breasts. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Really, I must shoot you. Next week, perhaps?”

And then, suddenly throwing both hands up in mock horror, Miller tipped his head in mock disappointment.

“My dear,” he sniffed, “I’m doing my best to make you famous.”

Lew just continued to stare directly at him, quite calm and unperturbed.

“No, thank you, I’m not interested.”

That was it. She didn’t appear to be insulted or upset by the remarks. Nor did she say another word. She simply swung around on her bar stool to face the bar, her back to Miller.

That stopped him. His face fell ever so slightly. But he recovered quickly to look over at Osborne. “Of course, if you two are so involved—”

“Bradford!” A sharp voice sounded a warning, and Judith Benjamin slammed a mug of beer down on the bar a good three to four stools away from them. Osborne hadn’t even seen her approach, but now he noted with great relief that Miller seemed to take her word as an order. She said nothing else, but walked back into the kitchen. Miller moved in the direction of the beer and left his sentence hanging.

“We’re out of here,” said Lew softly, standing up. Osborne followed her lead. Neither of them spoke as they headed toward the door. And when they had stepped out into the dusk and the crisp, cool air and closed the door behind them, Osborne began to apologize, but Lew stopped him with a harsh, “Huh? That wasn’t about me, Doc. The professor hates your guts. That was all about you, my friend.”

The
day had changed. They stepped into a brisk breeze that had lowered the temperature a good twenty degrees, and the sun had the late-afternoon fade to it that made it seem later than it was. That plus the smell of hamburgers.

Lew and Osborne hadn’t moved ten feet toward Lew’s cruiser when they heard a sharp barking noise from the rear of the wooden building, the side toward the lake. It sounded vaguely human to Osborne, who turned his face into the wind and squinted, trying to see through the shadows thrown by the huge Norway pines that protected the bar from the road.

“Wait! Mrs. Ferris, Mrs. Ferris!” the dancer from the bar came running and waving at them. She had thrown a short leather jacket over her shoulders. Her long legs teetering on spike heels looked painfully bare in the dimming light and the icy air. But she didn’t look cold, she looked upset. She stopped at the corner of the building and beckoned to Lew to come toward her. She leaned forward anxiously. It was clear that for some reason, she couldn’t go farther.

Lew started toward her, but Osborne stayed right where he was, midway in the parking lot, until Lew motioned to him to follow. Together they walked over to the woman.

“Step over here, okay? I don’t want them to see me. If anyone comes out, talk about Suzanne, okay?” Up close, Osborne could see she was shaking.

“Laura, calm down. What’s wrong?” Lew put a motherly arm around the young woman’s shoulders. Her compact fireplug frame was a good two inches taller than the slender dancer’s. She looked at Osborne over the woman’s head, her eyes dark and concerned.

“I dunno—but I’m like really, really worried.” Laura’s words rushed out. “I can only talk for a minute—I said I needed a cigarette, y’know. But really I wanted to get to you—I heard about those bodies and how no one knows who they are and stuff and I—”

“Slow down, Laura, take it easy,” said Lew.

“Well—I’m just real worried one is my roommate Annie.”

“Annie?”

“Yeah, Annie Potter. From England. She came over to work as a baby-sitter—y’know, a nanny they call it—for a doctor over in Rhinelander. When they didn’t need her anymore, she got a job working here, and about six weeks ago, she disappeared.”

The girl dropped her head into her hands, clearly fighting back tears, then looked up again.

She took a deep breath, then she spoke. “I didn’t tell anyone because I thought maybe she had somethin goin’ with a guy or something. But I got all her mail, her car, all her clothes at my place. Something isn’t right. She woulda told me what to do with her stuff, y’know?”

“When was the last time you saw her?” asked Lew.

Laura looked at her with frightened eyes. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, okay? She did a party gig. Judith lined up a bouncer for her, and he was s’posed to get her to the Burdeens for a party. The bouncer didn’t stay very long though. He told me Annie said she didn’t want him at the party.”

“The Burdeens had a party?” Lew’s tone was incredulous. And rightly so, in Osborne’s opinion.

Everyone in Loon Lake knows that lowlifes don’t come lower than the Burdeens. They’re shanty trash. They might have a drunken brawl but not an organized party. But even a brawl isn’t likely because that implies group interaction. The Burdeens are loners, rarely seen. And they are mean, silent men: three brothers you don’t want to meet and they don’t want to meet you. They don’t even like each other.

Osborne shuddered at the thought of a young woman even getting near one of them. When his girls were growing up, he’d warned them about necking out in the woods with boys. “You never know what’s back there,” he’d said, very satisfied to see their eyes widen in surprise and fear. And when he’d said it, he’d been thinking quite specifically of creeps like the Burdeens.

Laura thrust a photograph at Lew, who took it and studied it briefly before tucking it into a pocket on her shirt. “I’ll look into it right away.” She patted Laura on the shoulder and tucked her jacket around her. “Now, you go back to work and don’t worry. I’ll get in touch with you when I know something. Why don’t you stop by in town if you think of anything else I should know. Give me a call and let me know you’re coming.”

“But you won’t tell anyone I said anything, okay?”

“Of course not. Laura—who’s the bouncer?”

“Ted Bronk.”

In the police cruiser, Osborne turned toward Lew. “Why didn’t you tell her that her friend isn’t one of the bodies we found? We didn’t find a woman—”

“I don’t want to say anything to anyone until we know what we’ve got, and I don’t think we’ll have that ID out of Wausau for another couple days,” said Lew. “Those boys don’t like to work weekends.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Doc, you never know who’s doing what in this town. You can’t really assume things are as they appear, you know? Now someday, if I get to know you better, I’ll tell you a thing or two about Miss Judith Benjamin back there.” She cut her eyes to look at Osborne. “But it isn’t very pretty stuff. I’m not sure yet you want that kind of thing in your head.”

Osborne nodded and looked away. He wasn’t sure either. On the other hand, the more he knew, the more he was likely to have an opportunity to work with Lew. That seemed quite benign and a hell of a lot more interesting than anything else he’d been up to lately. This afternoon had just beat the dickens out of looking for antique muskie lures at garage sales—his usual Saturday occupation, if he wasn’t fishing.

Ray’s sometime girlfriend, Donna Larson, sold mobile homes. Her office was in a mobile home that sat in a lot crammed full of mobile homes. Cloth banners slung with Christmas lights and trumpeting sale prices were crisscrossed over the dirt driveway.

“Tornado alley,” commented Lew as they pulled into the lot. “I see Donna in the window.”

“I haven’t seen Ray since Monday,” said Donna, a tall, slender woman with a head that looked disembodied within a halo of long, overpermed bright red hair. She was stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing large green ceramic ashtray that Osborne noted was identical to one he’d had in his office in the early sixties. “Pisses me off, too. He’s s’posed to be here by now to take me to dinner. It’s my birthday today.”

“See?” Osborne whirled in excitement, but Lew ignored him.

“How many other birthdays has he missed?” asked Lew.

Donna grinned, “Every one. Every one of six, counting this one,” she said, lighting up another cigarette. “I should know better. Coffee?” She walked over to a microwave, mixed herself a cup of instant, and shoved it in the oven as she hit the buttons. She had an easy way about her. Then she chuckled, looking at Lew. “Don’t tell me—he poached Whitehead’s trout pond again?”

Osborne had cleaned and filled eleven teeth in Donna’s mouth when she was on ADC and struggling to raise two children she’d had by a man who went to prison for shooting a state trooper after robbing a liquor store. She’d been in the process of divorcing the creep and finishing her high school education by correspondence. That was over ten years ago.

In the years since, she had remained a patient of his, and he had seen her life improve slowly but steadily. If he found her short on class, she made up for it with common sense. Donna might be hard-bitten, but she was going somewhere. In two short years, she moved up from sales rep to sales manager for the region, and Osborne often wondered why Ray didn’t just bite the bullet and marry her.

But, of course, he knew why: Elise Martin. The old high school flame. A beautiful girl who fled Loon Lake and became a New York model married to a wealthy stockbroker. Like a bad dream, in Osborne’s opinion, she came back every summer to see her aging mother and just enough of Ray to keep him enthralled. Love with Elise was going nowhere, Osborne had tried to tell him one lazy summer afternoon while casting for muskie; love with Donna was home-cooked food on the table and a good friend when it counts. Ray had just listened, his eyes soft and confused.

“I know, Doc, you’re right,” he’d said, “but she always wears the wrong thing when I try to take her out.” Osborne wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. After all, Ray’s entertainment scene was more likely to be local fish frys, not dinner parties with bank presidents. Osborne figured right then that the man would never grow up; he was a hopeless romantic with no concept of compromise.

“Have you any idea where he might be?” asked Lew. “Dr. Osborne thinks he’s—”

“I think something’s happened,” Osborne jumped in. “He hasn’t fed the dogs, and he missed a job at the cemetery.”

“Yeah,” said Donna, “they called here for him. I dunno. You could be right. He usually lets me know if he’s gonna leave town for a while. I always feed the dogs for him. You want me to stop by later?”

“I did it,” said Osborne. “But I’m real worried.”

“Well …” Now Donna looked worried, “I guess I talked to him on the phone last night. He said he was going out to see his old friend Herman the German up in McNaughton. You know that old hermit up there?”

Osborne and Lew, with Donna in the backseat, bumped along a gravel road that took them deep into the wilderness off old Highway 47. Very few patches of woods like this remained in northern Wisconsin, isolated areas of wilderness that the lumber barons didn’t lay bare in the late 1800s. So dense were the drooping branches of the ancient pines that the road seemed to snake into pitch-black infinity.

“Okay,” said Donna, “slow down, the turn is just past this stand of birch, you’ll barely see it … right, take it slow so you don’t knock hell out of the bottom of your car.” Osborne felt the minutes stretch one by one as they lumbered deeper into the woods, the headlights picking out trees, trees, and more trees. Suddenly, they came upon a small barn in a clearing that held the skeleton of an old pickup, a rotting rowboat turned upside down, and a large stack of fìrewood. A light shone in the one window set beside two double doors.

“Well, if this isn’t the middle of nowhere,” said Lew softly. “I’ve never been back in here.”

“I used to hunt this area,” said Osborne. “This is one region of the backwoods where you don’t ever want to get lost. The genetic throwbacks that live out here aren’t very nice people.”

“You make it sound like they eat their young,” said Lew.

“The old man is okay,” said Donna as she opened the car door. “But you’re right, Doc. You can stumble on some scary characters in these parts—and Ray knows ‘em all. He picks blackberries with Herman every fall.” She rapped sharply on one of the double doors.

A dark old man peered up at Donna, his figure in the doorway illuminated by a spill from the lights on the police car. Lew stayed in the cruiser, her window rolled down. Osborne followed Donna to the door and stood behind her. Old Herman Ebeling stood just under five feet tall. He was wearing a scruffy brown tweed jacket over overalls and everything seemed crusted under the same layer of brown something. His beard was scrubby and his eyes kind of rheumy-looking. Osborne didn’t peg him for drinking, but he didn’t see any signs of positive health habits either.

“Herman, how ya doin'?” Donna’s bright, friendly voice sounded startlingly out of place. “We’re looking for Ray. You seen ‘im?”

“Mmrhumm.” The old man rolled his jaws and opened his mouth slightly. Osborne could see there were no teeth inside. Herman, though one of his patients many years ago, had never been comfortable with the bridges Osborne had argued him into. Some of his best work, too. Osborne sighed.

“Oh yeah?” said Donna, who apparently understood what the old man was saying. “Where’d he go?” The old man responded again in what Osborne determined was a cross between gumming and a patois he could barely discern. Donna, however, appeared quite tuned in to the old man’s language. They jabbered for a moment, and then Donna thanked him. The old man plucked her sleeve as she turned back to the car, and she reached into her purse for a package of cigarettes. “I’ll have Ray bring you a carton next week,” she said. “You take care of yourself now.”

Back in the car, Lew and Osborne turned toward Donna.

“Herman said Ray was here early today. He wanted Herman to tell him about them little orphan babies that Herman found years and years ago. He said Ray was real interested in exactly where the babies had been born, so Herman told him how to get there.”

“Get where?” asked Lew and Osborne simultaneously.

“Up behind Dead Creek,” said Donna. “I know where that is. My ex-husband’s family was from up around there. We’re about thirty miles away. It’s up behind Shepard Lake. I think we better get up there right now. I’ll go if you don’t have time….”

Osborne could see Donna’s attitude had changed about Ray’s disappearance. No longer just worried, Osborne thought she seemed frightened. He exchanged glances with Lew and knew he was right.

As they passed a tavern, once they were back on the main road, Osborne volunteered that they might be wise to pick up another man to go along, but Lew just pressed her foot harder on the gas, and Osborne knew he’d said the wrong thing. Would he ever learn? They covered thirty miles in about twenty minutes, the police light swirling silently as they sped down the highway. Donna gave terse directions, then pointed, and Lew swung the car hard down a dirt road. Osborne rolled down the window on his side and inhaled the cold night air. “I think we’re close to water,” he said.

“Fork left,” said Donna when they came to a split in the road about five minutes down the dark lane. Once again, the police car bumped along in the dark, this time the pines and birches and random maples were shorter, more densely packed. The high beams picked up something pale in the road ahead.

“Oh, boy,” said Lew under her breath.

“That’s him,” said Donna. “I know that’s Ray.” Lew stopped the car, leaving the engine running and the lights focused on the figure sprawled across the dirt tracks. All three burst from the cruiser and ran toward the body.