Terry Odell - Mapleton 02 - Deadly Bones (22 page)

Colfax made the introductions. “Everything under control?”

“Love a neat scene,” one of the techs said. “Last two I worked were gross-outs. One guy had been dead a week. Don’t know what was worse, the decomp or the fact that he was found in a Dumpster outside a sushi restaurant. Talk about stench. This is a vacation.”

“Seems straightforward. Keep a lookout for anything that might confirm a homicide,” Colfax said.

Gordon wandered to the other sites and chatted with the techs, who were digging, brushing, photographing, and making sketches.

“What would you surmise, based on what you’ve seen?” Gordon asked.

“Whoever buried these was organized, methodical. And a bit whacko,” the tech said.

“Explain.” Gordon wanted someone else’s opinion, to see if it matched his.

“Whacko because he—or she, but given the hatchet job, I’m saying he—dismembered the bodies. Organized, methodical because they’re almost like collections. Arms in one place, legs in another, torsos somewhere else.”

“You’re finding more than one person’s bones in each… collection? More than two people?”

“So far, looks like two victims. It’s hard to tell if they were put in the ground at the same time, or if he came back and added the second set of body parts. We’ll know more when we get them back to the lab and can tell who’s who.”

“That eliminates the theory that erosion, a mountain lion or coyote buried them, then?”

“Yeah. Can’t see any predator sorting his kill—or even if the parts were somewhere else and dragged over here, no coyote is going to put all the arms in one spot, and the legs in another.”

“Heads up!”

Gordon snapped to attention at the cry from one of the other sites. He jogged over. “What?”

The tech extended a rib. “Here.” He brushed off the dirt and pointed. “Tool marks. My guess is a knife.”

“As in someone stabbed her? That wouldn’t be the result of the… butchering, would it?”

“Not likely. My money’s on stabbing. Although we’re going to be looking for tool marks at the joints, especially since we’re not seeing bone fragments.”

“So no chain saw massacre,” another tech said.

Colfax furrowed his brows. “A thirty-year-old knife? Assuming whoever did this actually kept the thing, wouldn’t it be hard to match? You know, if he sharpened it—wouldn’t that change the pattern?”

“Definitely. It’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to match the weapon. But we have to look,” the tech continued. “Whoever did this clearly knew what he was doing, but I don’t think anyone’s good enough to dismember a body without nicking bone on at least one of the joints.”

Visions of Fred Easterbrook leaped to the forefront of Gordon’s brain. Fred was a hunter, knew how to dress his kills. Would it be that different butchering a deer or dismembering a human? Fred was methodical, sorting his garbage before burying it in his yard. A shudder rippled down Gordon’s spine. Could one of these bodies be Fred’s wife? And if so, who was the other one?

* * * * *

Gordon was relieved Colfax kept his mouth shut on the ride to the station. He needed to think, and listening to Colfax’s unending banter wasn’t going to cut it. Maybe the detective was grinding things in his head, too. Gordon tried to piece together everything they had so far, and it was more than he could wrap his brain around at the moment. Nothing fit together. Everything pointed to homicide, which meant this was an open case. Cold, perhaps—sub-zero, even—but it couldn’t be ignored.

Colfax pulled into the parking lot, still unusually quiet. Entering through the back door, Colfax crossed the room and settled into the visitor’s chair. Gordon followed, sitting behind his desk. The two sat for a long moment.

“White board?” Colfax broke the silence before it reached the uncomfortable stage.

Gordon nodded. With a visual representation, connections often jumped out. And right now, all he had was a collection of random facts. “I’ll get it.” He went to the multi-purpose room, standing there, trying to decide whether it made sense to set up in the larger space. But if he did, the case would become a focal point, and for the time being, he was still trying to keep things low key. He wheeled it down the hall to his office and set it in front of his filing cabinets.

“This is going to be one hell of a long timeline,” Gordon said.

“Let’s start at the beginning.” Colfax went to the board and picked up one of the markers. At the far left of the board, he drew a large X. “Somewhere around here, we have a dead body.”

“Only one? There were bones from two females.”

“Until we get confirmation that the bones have been in the ground the same length of time, let’s look at one as our primary.”

“You think someone added the second bones later?”

“I’m still collecting facts.” Colfax wrote
Body #1
on the board. Above that, he wrote
Body #2
. “What else do we have?”

“
Questions
is what we have. Where were they killed?” Gordon said. “Were they killed in the same place? At the same time? What’s the connection between victims? I could go on forever.”

Without comment, Colfax simply wrote the questions on the board. “Who was the guy you wanted me to question?”

“Roger Ignatius. And the now-defunct corporation—Roger, Suben and Clark. They handled the sale of the property adjacent to the Kretzers’, and even though we don’t have a surveyor’s report, we’re looking at that part of the property as the bone site, so we can’t discount their involvement.”

“You’re saying if the bones are on the Kretzers’ property now, it wasn’t their property when they were buried?”

“It’s quite possible. The Kretzers annexed the additional acreage around 1980. I haven’t got the exact date—with Rose in the hospital, it seemed like it could wait.”

Colfax added
Roger
,
Suben
&
Clark
to the board, paused, and wrote
Kretzer
as well. Although Gordon’s stomach did a quick twirl at that, he knew they had to be included. He hoped they’d be eliminated as quickly as they went up.

Which reminded him of Megan’s picture. He picked up another marker and started writing names at the upper right of the board. Fred Easterbrook. Below his name, Gordon taped the newspaper picture and added a large question mark above it.

Gordon stood back and studied the board. “You know what’s missing?”

“Other than a viable suspect, the names of the victims, and a motive?”

“For starters.” Gordon’s cell rang. Megan. He held up a finger indicating he needed to take the call. His first thought was of Rose. “Megan. What’s up?”

“Can you come to the hospital? Or can I come talk to you?”

“Is it Rose? I can get away.”

“If it’s not too much trouble. I might be overreacting, but I think someone might have tried to kill Rose.”

Gordon’s heart stopped. “What? Is she all right?”

“Yes, the doctors are trying to find out why someone gave her the wrong medication. But I have a funny feeling it wasn’t an innocent mistake.” She huffed out a shaky breath. “Listen to me. I sound like Angie.”

“I’m on my way.” He clipped the phone to his belt.

“Problem?” Colfax asked.

“Megan Wyatt’s former guardian’s in the hospital. Megan thinks someone tried to kill her. I’m going to take her statement”—somehow, using official cop jargon justified the time—“and since
someone
is trying to get me to ignore the bones, I’m going to leave that case in your capable hands.”

Colfax gave a twisted grin. “You’ve got it.”

Gordon told Laurie what was going on. “You know how to reach me. See what you can do about moving that appointment, and there’s a deluxe box of Godiva truffles in it for you.”

“Bribing a civil servant?” Laurie’s hand hovered above the phone. “Better leave so I don’t have to lie when I tell him you’re off on an urgent call.”

After a quick stop at Dispatch to tell Connie to alert staff that Colfax was point man on any information relating to the bones, Gordon got in his official SUV and peeled out of the parking lot. He almost flipped on the lights, but he’d learned long ago that if people recognized a police car, they slowed down, and right now he didn’t need any overly cautious, temporarily law-abiding citizens impeding his progress.

Traffic slowed as a tow truck hauled away a sedan that had gone one-on-one with a guard rail. Red and blue lights flashed on two county vehicles, and deputies were clearly working the accident scene. By now, it was too late for his own light bar to do any good, and Gordon banked his impatience as two lanes of traffic merged into one in order to get around the obstruction.

Finally, he was at the hospital. Megan rushed to him as soon as he strode through the door. “Rose?” he asked.

“Stable.”

“What about you?”

She glanced around as if she was afraid she was being watched. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

He thought about his barely touched cup of coffee at the station. “How about the cafeteria?”

She sighed, which he took as acceptance. They strolled down the portrait-lined corridor, and she halted abruptly. She pointed at a picture. “Am I crazy, or is that one of the people in the picture I sent you? Wait.” She fished through her purse. “I had this in my hand when we got the call about Rose.”

Gordon took the folded sheet and opened it. Megan tapped one of the men. “I thought he looked familiar, but I didn’t know why. Maybe I had this picture in my head, because he sure doesn’t look like this now,” she said. “Or for as long as I’ve been seeing him.”

Gordon gazed between the blurry photograph of the man in hunting camouflage and the portrait on the wall. There was a definite resemblance, although he wouldn’t swear to it in court. “Could be. Although I’d never have pegged Doc Evans as a hunter.”

Megan took the paper and ambled back and forth along the portrait gallery, clearly looking for anyone else who might have been in the photograph. The array of faces was arranged in chronological order, so Gordon limited his perusal to the earlier end of things. He stopped at the first photograph, a stern-looking man with rimless glasses and a handlebar moustache. Megan returned, holding up her paper.

“You think he’s one of them?” she asked.

Gordon took another peek at the printout. “No. Something creepy about the eyes stopped me. Like he’s watching, passing judgment.”

Megan stepped closer to the portrait, reading the small plaque beneath it. “Dr. Abraham Pinkerton. One of the original founders. I can see where nobody would want to mess with him.”

“Let’s get that coffee,” Gordon said. “And you can tell me why you called.”

Sitting at the same table they’d used before, Megan explained what had happened to Rose. “If Sam’s right, and I think he is, then Rose shouldn’t have been given the wrong medication. Not after she’d already had a reaction to it.”

Gordon mulled that one over. “I know nurses are stretched thin, and overworked. There’s always a possibility it was an innocent mistake.”

“Can you look into it? Because if it was intentional, then it’s attempted murder, right? And you’re a cop. That’s what you do.”

“What did Doc Evans say?”

Megan frowned. “He was supposed to be on his way. I assume he went straight to ICU, and they don’t allow cell phones up there, so nobody’s called.” Her frown deepened, and she scooted her chair from the table. “I should get up there.” Her phone chirped and she fished it out of her purse. Apparently it was a text, because she fingered the keyboard, then dropped the phone back into her bag. “Justin,” she said. “I told him where we were.”

Within a minute, Justin rushed to their table, eyes wide, face flushed. “It’s Dr. Evans.”

Chapter 25

“Sit down.” Gordon hooked a foot around a chair leg and pulled it away from the table, gesturing to Justin. Judging from the expression on his face, this was more than an announcement of Doc’s arrival. “What about Doc Evans?”

Justin reached for Megan’s hand. “The accident. It was him. He’s in critical condition.”

Megan’s eyes went round. “You mean the one we passed on the way here? My God, what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Justin pushed his hands through his hair. “I was coming out of the men’s room and I heard the nurses talking about it. All they would tell me was that they were trying to get him stabilized in the ER, and they’d be bringing him to surgery.”

“Are they sure it was an accident?” Megan’s fingertips drummed a nervous tattoo on the tabletop.

“What do you mean?” Justin said.

“The picture we found on Google last night,” Megan said. “One of the men was Dr. Evans.”

“What does that have to do with the accident? Or Oma?” Justin said.

Megan rubbed her temples. “I don’t know. It seems like too much of a coincidence. Dr. Evans and Crazy Freddy. Rose being attacked—I have a feeling there’s a connection.” She gave a quiet snort. “Listen to me.
Feeling
? I definitely spent too much time with Angie.”

She turned imploring eyes to Gordon. “Can you check? Into both?”

Although logic put Gordon on Justin’s side, the cop in him said Megan had a point. If nothing else, the accident coming on the heels of the medication mix-up with Rose had his cop radar beeping. He unclipped his cell phone and called Colfax.

“Need a favor.” He explained the accident. “I need that car gone over six ways from Sunday. If it wasn’t an accident, I want to know about it.”

Colfax didn’t ask for more. “I’ll make sure the scene is given a detailed forensics exam as well. Do you think this has something to do with why you raced out of here?”

“If they turn out to be accidents, then I’ll concede coincidence. But I want to be damn sure before I rule them out.”

“May I presume you’re considering a connection to the bones, given they were found on the Kretzers’ property?”

“You may. Might as well write the doctor’s name on our board. See how he’s connected to Fred Easterbrook, or why he’s in the background of that shot. I’m going to see what I can do about tracing what happened to Rose Kretzer, and if it looks hinky, can you spare someone to watch her room?”