Dead Hot Mama (24 page)

She paused before she pulled down the face shield on her helmet. “Won’t they be surprised to find the money missing.”

Osborne
stayed close behind Lew’s sled, hoping the high beam from her headlamp would help him anticipate the twists and turns in the trail. But the snow not only reflected the light, it blew straight into his face shield. While he could manage the straightaways, at every turn he was driving blind.

Lew stopped once at the junction of two trails to check the map, then pushed on. To Osborne’s relief, she didn’t drive much over forty-five, but then she had to have limited visibility, too. Finally they reached a long narrow stretch of trail. As he grew more confident on the sled, Osborne’s mind wandered. He couldn’t help but speculate on the two riders in the dark ahead.

Unaware their money was locked away in the Loon Lake Police Department evidence room, they must be planning to pick up their cash, then make their way north by sled. At Hurley, where the storm belt ended, they could grab a car—or more likely Theurian’s missing van—and make the Canadian border before midnight. After all, who would expect them to travel off-trail, much less to a well hidden spring pond.

Of course, they were about to discover that if Bud had checked his phone messages from his new employer …

Lew’s sled disappeared just as Osborne felt his pitching forward. Before he could brake, everything went black.

He woke to such acute pain from his shoulders down that that his first reaction was to recite the Act of Contrition. Two lines into the prayer he knew he wasn’t dying. He must have blacked out when he hit, landing so hard on the flat of his back he had the breath knocked out of him.

As the pain in his chest subsided and he could breathe, he felt to each side with both hands. He was on a cushion of snow, legs splayed. No sled. No gun.

He heard a low moan.

Lew was lying facedown in the snow at the bottom of the forty-foot embankment. Her sled was tipped sideways, pinning her lower legs. Her upper body was twisted away at an angle. Osborne realized he had been thrown clear of his sled, which lay on its side, a silent hulk in the shadows twenty feet away.

“Lew!” Yanking off his helmet, he threw himself on his knees beside her head.

“My arm … my neck.” Her words were muffled by her helmet, which was facedown in the snow. “Hard to breathe.”

“Hold on.” Adrenaline spiked with grim determination gave him the strength to heave the machine forward and off. He dropped to his knees again.

“I’m going to dig the snow out from under your face shield to give you some air—but without moving your head.” Mitts off, he dug with his fingers, never feeling the cold. He cleared a pathway near her breath reflector. “Is that better?”

“Yes.” Her voice was clearer. “I don’t know if it’s my neck or my shoulder—but I hurt.”

“How are your legs?”

“They feel okay—but I don’t want to move.”

“I don’t want you to move.” Osborne got to his feet and looked around. Through the falling snow, he could make out a forty-five degree angle to the hill—way too steep for a snowmobile. Lew must have missed a trail marker.

He crouched near her head. “Did you bring your cell phone?”

“In the travel pack on the right-hand side of the sled.”

Fortunately he had tipped the sled onto its left side. He found the phone—it was on. He punched in 911, hit “send” and waited. And waited.

“No service, Lew. We’re in a gully here, which doesn’t help. Now don’t you worry. Can’t be too long a walk for me to get help. But before I go, I want to see your head and neck better supported.”

Again, he dug. This time, he pulled off his parka, rolled it up and maneuvered it into place under the face shield of her helmet, taking care not to move her neck or head. She was lying on her left arm, the one that hurt.

“Lew … how’s your right arm and hand?” She could wave from the elbow down.

“If I move any more, the shoulder hurts. But, Doc, how can you go without your jacket? You’ll freeze.”

“I’m fine, this is a heavy sweater I have on. Now here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to walk out a short distance and see if I can’t figure out where we are. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Can you use one of the sleds?”

“The runners on both are pretty smashed up.”

“Do you have a compass?”

“No, think there’s one in the sleds?”

“Should be.” He checked the travel packs on both snowmobiles but there was no compass. Walking back to Lew, he spotted his cased shotgun in the snow where it had flown off as he fell. He stood it up against a clump of brush. “Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Doc …”

“Yes, sweetheart …”

“Are
you
hurt?”

“I’m fine, I just need to find us a way out of here.”

He hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet when he knew that was impossible. The scrim of falling snow, not to mention that the snow cover was hip high in spots—and all with no idea which direction was right. Retracing his footprints, he found his way back to Lew.

“Are you warm enough?” he said.

“I’m feeling a little chilled—but I’m okay for now. Any idea where we are? I don’t think we can be that far off the trail.” He gave her the frustrating news, then stretched out long beside her, his body shielding hers from the blowing snow. Neither of them said anything for long while.

“Doc … what are you thinking?”

“That this is bullshit.”

Lew’s body shook slightly. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”

Osborne raised himself up onto one elbow. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

Either the snow eased or his eyes had adjusted. “Hey, I can see better … the moon …” He looked up. Something was moving in the dark at the top of the hill.

The cloud cover broke. Light from the half moon glinted off topaz eyes. The wolf stood still, watching them. Then he was gone.

“Wait a minute—” Osborne scrambled to his feet. The moon threw enough light for him to see the trail, which wound down through trees along the side of the hill. The snow was not so deep there, an easy jog to the top of the hill. Once there he found the trail marker that Lew had missed. It was barely visible under a three-foot drift.

From the top, he could see over the trees below to a vast white expanse: lake. Had to be Horsehead Hollow. He looked off to this right—sure enough. He could see the tamarack, towering over the balsams. The tree that marked the famed “beer bowl” of Mallory’s teenage parties.

Osborne hurried back down the hill.

“Lew, I can see now. We’re not far from Horsehead Hollow. I’ll make it across and up to Clyde’s place. If we’re lucky, his phone hasn’t been shut off. But if it has, shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to the main road.”

“Take my cell phone,” said Lew. “You might get service once you’re over there.”

“Now here’s the only thing I worry about…”

He told her about the wolf, then uncased the shotgun and placed it on its canvas case near Lew’s good hand. “This is a side by side, remember? You’ve got two shells loaded and the safety is off. All you need is a warning shot, Lew, enough to scare him off.”

“Why don’t I use my pistol?”

“Because you’re lying on it, and I don’t want to move you.”

“Oh. Well, heck, don’t worry so much—wolves don’t attack humans.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” he patted her good arm gently. No need to remind her: They prey on the weak.

As he set out, he prayed the snow would continue to abate. He bargained with the clouds for glimmers of moonlight. When he reached the lake, he decided to head straight for the tamarack. Shallow troughs between high drifts made it easier to walk. He stepped nimbly around the deadheads poking through the ice.

Halfway across the lake, he saw a cluster of fishermen, sitting on their pails around a fishing hole. Odd, he thought. No bonfire, and why are they all fishing the same hole? As he got closer, one moved away—on all fours.

Osborne stopped. Three wolves were feeding. And the one that moved off to the side … that must be the male, the one with the topaz eyes.

He circled around, anxious not to disturb them. When he had gotten to the far side of the pack and could look back, he swore he saw neon blue. Whether it was cloth or fiberglass, he couldn’t tell—only flashes of color as clouds skidded over the half moon.

They never could tell who had been driving. Most likely it was Bud who decided to take a shortcut at high speed—doing eighty or more straight across the lake towards the streambed leading up to their cache.

A three-foot high boulder wrapped in a snowdrift was the fatal surprise. The sled flew into the air. Even after the wolves had taken their share, the pathologist was able to determine that they died instantly: blue helmet of a broken neck, the big guy of a massive subdural hematoma caused by landing forehead first on the ice.

The lock on Clyde’s door gave easily. And the phone, thanks to Ray’s reluctance to close down the old man’s place, still worked.

Two EMTs went in on sleds, Osborne riding on the back of one. The shotgun was unfired, the snow light, and Lew was alert. Two of her ribs and her left shoulder were broken. Her collarbone had a nasty bruise, and her left wrist was sprained.

“Other than that, I’m fine,” she said woozily as he kissed her on the forehead before leaving the hospital.

Osborne started home, heart bruised from worry, the back of his head aching from his fall. Driving by St. Mary’s Church, he pulled over on impulse, left the engine running, and tried the front doors. One was open.

No Act of Contrition this time. He knelt, collapsed forward to rest his forehead against the wooden pew, and gave thanks for Lew, for himself, and for topaz eyes.

Mallory
shook him awake. “Dad, Chief Ferris is on the phone.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Lew?” Osborne struggled up on one elbow, phone to his ear.

“Doc, Dave Theurian is dead.”

On the way to the hospital, he stopped to pick up a small bouquet of daisies. He selected a small vase in the shape of a frog. Lew wasn’t exactly the flower type but this might work.

“Don’t you look fully recovered,” he said, walking around the hospital bed. She was sitting up, a sling holding her left arm and shoulder.

“I would be out of here today,” said Lew, her voice strong, “but they want me to see the physical therapist. Were you able to reach Bruce?”

“Saw him on my way over here. He’ll stop by with a full report later this morning. Said to tell you he’s still negotiating with Kopitzke, but he thinks he can get two- thirds of his bill picked up by the county.”

“Terrific. Doc, help yourself to some coffee there. Now tell me everything he said.”

“I hate to steal his thunder …”

“Forget it, I can’t wait.”

“Well, the best news is that even though they haven’t completed a full inventory of the lockers in the Theurians’ wild game room, the forensic team has enough evidence to say with confidence that all four victims died at the hands of Michalski and Hikennen.

“They ran a postmortem urine screen on the victim from Tomahawk, and the initial results show traces of either valium or flunitrazepam—just like the first two victims. Bruce is willing to put money on the latter. That they’ll confirm by Friday.”

“So that’s why Arne requested that autopsy report—he didn’t want it, Bud did. He wanted to know if we had an inkling of what really happened to the first two. I’ll bet Bruce is feeling a little foolish, huh,” said Lew, shifting carefully in the bed. “So much for
his
early take on why those gentlemen lost their legs.”

“Yeah, but once he realized he was wrong, he kept an open mind—”

“Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for how that lab has treated me in the past,” said Lew. “Good for Bruce. Does he agree with our theory?”

“You betcha. Bud lured the men into the woods with the promise of meeting up with him for a ride to a wild and crazy party with lots of girls. On the drive north, he would give them drinks spiked with roofie. By the time they reached Theurian’s ice house, they were out cold. With Karin’s help, Bud would strip the bodies and suspend them in water through the hole cut in the floor for fishing until they were dead—”

“Which wouldn’t take much more than half an hour in this weather.”

“Bruce figures Bud did the harvesting. He’s looking to confirm that by comparing the cutting patterns with the knives found in the basement. He figures they stored the harvested parts until Dave Theurian was away on an overnight business trip. That’s when Bud would run the processing equipment—remember the lab tech saying he knew someone had been fooling with the microprocessor controls?”

“How far did they get with all this, can Bruce tell?”

“As of this morning, he’s ninety-nine percent sure they never made their first delivery.”

“So Dave really wasn’t a part of this, was he?”

“Apparently not. Gina got into Karin’s computer late yesterday. She found a database of middlemen brokering to the hospitals—probably stolen from that funeral home in Rice Lake. She and Bud were moonlighting. They were convinced they could hand off a few femurs here and there, pick up a nice fee and no questions asked. What with being the coroner and the connection to his uncle’s funeral home, Bud had all the right credentials. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two weren’t planning to steal processed tissue from Theurian Resources as well.”

“I’ll bet ol’ Bud had plans to ‘flush it out’ to where he could make his full $272,00 on someone someday,” said Lew.

“Yep,” said Osborne. “My guess is the only reason they didn’t do it this time is they knew they could get a quick turnaround and payment by working Theurian’s client list.”

“Too bad Bud grew up in Milwaukee, Doc. If he’d been a local boy, he would have dropped those bodies elsewhere. Had they surfaced in the spring—no one would have been the wiser.”

“He was lazy. He found some open water, shoved them under and figured they would sink.”

“Take one that’s lazy and not all that bright—and add sheer arrogance,” said Lew. “Sure as hell runs in Karin’s family. That grandmother of hers was as nasty as they come. I was looking through the department records a few months ago. Back in the forties and fifites, when the old lady was alive, there were more drunks rolled and left to die out in the cold. Coincidentally in a neighborhood not far from the Cat House or one of her other joints. For Karin—this was family tradition.”

“Don’t you wonder what possessed her to choose Bud Michalski of all people?” asked Osborne. “Wouldn’t you think she could find a smarter operator?”

“Women like Karin know who they can con. She recognized Bud as a pup who would take orders—not to mention abuse. And she knew how to keep him happy: a little sex and commissions off the take from the skimmers. That was easy money until Eileen started to hear complaints.”

“And confronted Karin?”

“Or Bud. She probably thought it was Bud and went to Karin to blow the whistle. Poor kid.”

“Poor Dave—he should have known better.”

“Maybe,” said Lew. “On the other hand, we’ll never know the extent of the collusion between him and Karin when it comes to his wife’s death.” Lew took a sip of her coffee. “Maybe he deserved to go the way he did.”

Sheriff Kopitzke had arrived at the Theurian home shortly before Bruce. When no one answered the front door, he went around to the back. Still no answer. He tried the warehouse and found that door open. Dave Theurian was at his desk, asleep. Or so Kopitzke thought until he got closer.

Like Eileen, Dave Theurian had been surprised by death. A Phillips screwdriver shoved in from behind had pierced his heart. “Bruce doubts he even knew what happened.”

“Bud?”

“Oh, no, he’s hoping to prove that was Karin’s work. Gina’s checking phone records later this morning. We won’t be surprised to find Dave calling his ‘Mitten’ after Lauren’s little bombshell—that encounter she witnessed in the ice house.

“Who knows what was said. Dave Theurian put it all on the line for Karin Hikennen: his family, his business, everything. He may have threatened divorce, he may have threatened to expose the credit card scam, maybe he was in a position to finger her as his wife’s killer. Whatever—a call from him after we were there would have triggered Karin’s response.”

There was a knock at the door of Lew’s room, and a nurse appeared with a food tray. “Mid-morning snack,” she chirped, as she placed the tray in front of Lew. Osborne reached into his pocket for a small box, which he set on the tray beside the cup of yogurt.

“Belated Merry Christmas, Lewellyn Ferris. Do you know how long I’ve been carrying this around?”

“I know, I’m sorry,” said Lew, surprised and pleased.

“Do you need help unwrapping it?”

“I can manage.” She worked the ribbon off carefully, then the paper and opened the tiny box. “O-o-h, gosh … a Megan Boyd trout fly.” She raised her eyes to his. “Doc, these are so expensive.”

“And hard to find. Ralph scouted eBay for weeks. But we got a good one—”

“Boy, you don’t have to tell me. This is the Atlantic Salmon pattern that’s named after her—the Megan Boyd. Oh, Doc, it’s lovely.” Lew held the delicate blue and black wet fly carefully between two fingers. She brought it closer to the light. “A size 18 treble?”

“Um—hmm, and that’s blue cock hackle over blue seal fur. Did you know she never charged more than a buck fifty for one of her trout flies?”

“You paid a lot more than that, I’m sure. She tied flies for the Prince of Wales. I never thought I’d
see
one of these, much less own one …” She set the trout fly back in its box, then looked at Osborne, a worried expression on her face.

“I got you the wrong present, didn’t I. When Ralph told me you were asking all kinds of questions about famous trout fly patterns, we both thought you wanted to learn how to tie some.”

“I was trying to figure out which Megan Boyd I wanted to get you.”

“So you weren’t planning to tie flies?”

“Not to worry, Lew, you gave me a wonderful gift.”

“It was a choice between that vise and a pair of breathable waders. Would you rather have the waders?”

“Tell you the truth …”

“I wish you would.”

And so he did. A new pair of waders beat a thousand Pink Squirrels any day.

Late that afternoon, Osborne sat down at his kitchen table with his magnifying glass and three Ziploc bags containing wads of chewed gum.

One he had retrieved from the snowbank the night they found Eileen, and Bruce had since returned it to the evidence room. Osborne hated to admit it, but the guy was as efficient as he was pushy. Another was pulled from the trash and dropped off at the police station by Laura, the Thunder Bay bartender. And the third one he had fished out of the wastebasket in the Theurians’ wild game room on Christmas Eve.

Bruce might have the advantage when it came to hightech forensic science but some things never change: the uniqueness of bite marks. Osborne hitched his chair forward, eyes and hands eager. He just knew he was about to reel in a big one.

Satisfaction reigned: The tooth marks were identical. He reached for the phone. “Craig, do you have a minute?”

Craig Kobernot was alone. “The boys are down on the rink, and Patrice is in town finalizing the arrangements for her sister,” he said after opening the door to let Osborne in. “Someone had to do it. Patrice is the last of the Hikennens.

“This way to the kitchen, Doc. Can I offer you a beer?”

Osborne declined the beer but accepted the proffered chair.

“Does Patrice know about your relationship with Karin?” asked Osborne.

Craig looked whiter than snow. “That was over last year. How did you find out about that?”

“I meant the arrangement she made to provide allograft tissue to the hospital through your medical group.”

“Oh,” said Craig.

“Sugar-coated sin, that woman,” was Lew’s comment when he shared the details of Craig’s long-running affair with his sister-in-law. “He’s lucky we caught up with her before they had any business transactions—or his career would be over.”

“It may be,” said Osborne. “I hate to admit it but Bruce was right about Eileen’s severed tongue.”

Their conversation had ended with Craig insisting he wanted to call a lawyer. That was fine with Osborne. What happened next had to be handled by the chief of the Loon Lake Police Department anyway.

Craig was sure to deny any knowledge of his lover’s various business activities—until it could be proven otherwise. And the unpleasant message left in his snowbank that night implied he knew more than he should.

He would, in fact, need two lawyers—another for the divorce. Patrice had long been willing to overlook his philandering for the amenities of being a doctor’s wife. But she drew the line at her own sister.