Close Up on Murder Read online

  Destroyed furniture was strewn around the room and a scrawl in black spray paint spread across one wall. “You Will All Die.” Did this devastation have something to do with Charley’s urgency to get me out of there when I dropped him off yesterday?

  Pretty sure whoever did this hadn’t hung around, I leaned forward and took as many photos as possible without fully stepping inside.

  The sheriff’s office was in Branson, thirty miles north of Spirit Lake. Wilcox made it to Charley’s house in twenty minutes. It takes me thirty even if I speed on the winding two-lane highway.

  In his fifties, wiry and smart, Wilcox started yelling at me even before he got out of his car. “Nothing happened in the three months you’ve been gone. Nothing! You’re back two weeks and we get this?”

  I pointed to the garden and explained how I happened to be bringing Knute home. Wilcox pushed his cowboy hat back from his forehead. “Get that poor dog away from here. I can’t think with that howling.”

  I took Knute by the collar. “C’mon boy, we have to go.” He kept turning back, but eventually let me lead him to the porch. I filled his water bowl, found a bin with his food and filled the other bowl, but he wouldn’t eat it. I got down on the ground and put my arm around him. “You’re an amazing dog and a great friend to Charley, Knute. You got us here.”

  With an almost human cry, he collapsed into a heap. Rock licked Knute’s muzzle and then took off into the woods.

  Wilcox walked up to the house barking orders into his phone. He finished the call and pulled on plastic booties. “You’d better not have been in there tampering with evidence, Johansson.”

  “I shot from the doorway. It was open.” He checked it out while I waited on the porch. The sheriff thought of the media as adversaries and was civil only when he wanted something from us. He and his wife moved to Branson from Colorado six years ago so she could be near family during their retirement years. Not quite ready to retire, he got himself elected sheriff.

  He came back to the porch. “Who hated him enough to do this?”

  I wondered the same thing. “Charley was the gentlest old man around. There are a few cranky old guys in Spirit Lake, who like to rant and rave about politics and sports and the juvenile delinquents ruining the town, but Charley wasn’t one of them.”

  Wilcox made a quick circuit around the house. I’d already checked for Charley’s body. The hard rain last night had washed away any prints the killer might have left.

  He returned. “How well did you know him?”

  “Not well. Little kept an eye on him when he and Lars moved back here. I think the church ladies checked on him too. He and my dad were friends years ago.”

  Rock’s bark echoed through the forest. He had as many descriptive barks as Wilcox had cowboy hat positions—over his forehead, watch out, pushed back, you can relax. Rock’s bark said he’d treed something, only worse.

  We started to follow Rock’s barking when Thor, aka Natalie Thorson, the young forensic tech, arrived at the same time as my former colleague Jason, the StarTrib reporter. I nodded hello.

  An old guy in a pea-green hatchback pulled up behind them. A camera hung from a strap on his neck. He pulled a tripod out of the trunk, already wheezing from the effort.

  Jason introduced the photographer as Glenn Hanson.

  “You took my place at the bureau?” I asked.

  “I’m one of the contract photographers Cynthia uses. Between the college interns and old geezers like me who don’t want the full-time grind, she manages to cover the county.”

  We walked toward the side yard. Wilcox frowned at Thor and tilted his chin toward Jason and Glenn. “What the hell are they doing here?” Thor’s face and scalp turned pink under her spiky blond hair.

  I stepped forward. “I called Cynthia.”

  Cynthia was editor of the StarTrib northern bureau and my former boss until three months ago when the Times hired me back.

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed at me. “Did it ever occur to you that we need to keep this quiet until we figure out what’s going on?”

  I raised my chin. “I work in news, not criminal justice, but I contacted you first, Sheriff.”

  Thor hustled over to Wilcox, her bag of forensic tools bumping against her legs. He pointed to the garden. Thor stopped short and gasped. Wilcox didn’t give her a chance to get queasy. “Britt’s dog has found something in the woods. Let’s check it out in case it’s the rest of him.” He nodded toward Charley’s head, his voice low. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Glenn grabbed his tripod and hurried back to his car. “I didn’t sign on for this. Hockey games are more my speed.” He stomped on the gas and peeled out, his face as green as his hatchback.

  Jason shook his head. “Britt, I don’t suppose you got some pictures we could use?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “And you’ll get photos of whatever is out there?” He waved a hand toward the woods. I nodded.

  Wilcox called over his shoulder. “Stay behind me.” We followed the sheriff and Thor into the woods. The rain had stopped, but wet drops fell from branches high above, stinging my skin on impact.

  Rock stopped barking when he saw me. I patted his head. “Good boy. Go on back to Knute.” He melted into the woods.

  We all stared down at Charley’s remains. The rain and wild creatures had already destroyed many of the identifying marks, but it was a man and he didn’t have a head. Jason tore away and threw up in the bushes. Poor kid, no one should have to see this.

  Jason came back and with shaking hands, reached in the pocket of his button-down shirt for a notebook and pen. “I’ve never seen anything this gross, except in the movies.”

  I shot the scene, knowing the photos were too gruesome for the newspaper, and stayed out of Thor’s way as she took her own photos and did her job. Charley’s body would be taken to Minneapolis for the detailed forensic work to be done, but Thor did the basics.

  Thor’s helper, a giant Swede named Erik with massive arms and lots of facial hair crashed through the woods with a stretcher.

  Panting, he said, “Sorry it took me so long. I was oot fishing.” People up here sounded a lot like Canadians.

  Thor said, “Sorry we had to make you come in off the lake.”

  “Nah, nothing was biting anyway.”

  Thor squatted next to the body. “We were just trying to figure out what the killer used to cut off his head. An axe?”

  Erik studied it. “Chain saw did that.” Erik had been a logger. He would know.

  Wilcox stuck a finger in Jason’s face. “Not a word about this to anyone until I talk to Cynthia.” White-faced and not in any shape to stand up to the formidable sheriff, Jason looked down at his notebook.

  Several more deputies rolled in and Wilcox sent them to look for evidence. He said I could go. “Come into the office tomorrow morning. We’ll need a statement.”

  He motioned to one of his guys. “Get the pound to pick up Mr. Patterson’s dog.”

  I stepped up. “I’ll look after him, Sheriff.” A sad, arthritic old dog would not be a good candidate for adoption.

  Wilcox looked at Rock, his expression softening. “Johansson’s bereavement center for canines?”

  “Something like that.” I’d had some experience with a grieving dog. I’d inherited Rock when my old friend Gert died a year and a half ago. She’d been murdered in the middle of the winter, three steps from her cabin. Rock had shredded the door and his paws trying to get to her from inside the house as she lay dying in the driveway. Sometimes when I looked at Rock, Gert’s eyes seemed to be gazing at me.

  Erik lifted Knute into my SUV as if the dog was a feather. I gathered up his bed, bowl and food. The sheriff had a parting shot. “Just so we’re clear, Johansson. You are no longer working for the StarTribune, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you have no business getting involved with this crime, correct?”

  “He was a nice old man and what happened to
him is horrible, but you’re right, I don’t work for the bureau anymore.”

  Wilcox didn’t look convinced but I meant it. In two months I’d be back working long, difficult hours in uncomfortable and dangerous conditions. And I had to be ready for it—rested, clear-headed and strong. I needed to get my body back in shape, eat well, sleep a lot and spend time with normal people doing normal things. And this was not normal.

  At home, I coaxed Knute inside, settled him on his bed and called Little. After his initial shock, he said, “I should have kept a better eye on Charley this summer but we’ve been so busy.”

  “Now we’ll never know what he wanted to discuss with us,” I said.

  He shook his head. “We always talked about flowers.”

  “He hinted that he and dad knew each other before he moved here.”

  “That’s news too. I can’t believe this happened. Who did Charley ever hurt?”

  I heard a clamor in the background. Little said, “Sorry, but I have to go. It’s still really busy. Come by later.”

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor with Knute’s head on my knee, I reviewed my photos. Hate emanated from the destroyed flowers and trashed house. Charley’s head on display like something out of a medieval war scene spoke of intense anger. The scrawled threat on the living room wall—You Will All Die—chilled me. It meant the killer wasn’t finished yet.

  Chapter 3

  That evening, Knute paced from room to room in the two-bedroom log cabin I’d inherited from Gert, Ben’s aunt. During my adolescence, she’d helped me cope with a bullying alcoholic father. He’d focused his anger on Little most of the time because Little was gay, and obvious early on. I did my best to protect my brother from him, and when it wasn’t possible to do that anymore, I helped my father leave this earth, a dark spot on my soul.

  Knute stopped pacing, then waited by the door and groaned. I stooped to pat his head. With Rock, time helped his grief. I hoped the same would be true for Knute.

  I straightened one of my photographs that lined the walls. Framed in black, they illustrated a career full of war and natural disasters, and what I hoped was insight into the people affected—mostly women and children—the dignified way they’d handled their pain. The need to document and communicate is what kept me in the business. I hated bullies and wanted the world to see the faces of lives ruined by their greed and lust for power.

  The photos were an odd contrast to Gert’s hand-loomed rugs and knitted throws, but her things meant home to me. Right now, I needed that stability, before heading to South Sudan at the end of August. I’d asked to go—Civil War and genocide, famine, underfunded humanitarian agencies, the situation was beyond dire. I photographed and brought to light how war affected the most vulnerable of the world and it was happening there on massive levels.

  Today I’d witnessed brutality on a much smaller scale, more personal, and yet the desire to do something about it gathered strength, almost against my will. I left a message about Charley on Ben’s cell and went to bed, attempting to shove the images of the day to the back of my mind and concentrate on my joy that Ben and I had reconnected after our rocky beginning.

  He called when I was in the middle of a nightmare taken directly from the afternoon’s horror. “I’m sorry I’ve missed your calls, but we’ve been in the BW for days.”

  That explained it. No cell phone coverage in the Boundary Waters. “I figured. I wish you could come home. What’s happened here is like something ISIS would do. I mean, what the hell, this isn’t Syria.”

  “I’d like to be there. Wilcox wants me to come down too. He says the interior of the house looks like it’s a hate crime, but what they did to Charley is seriously twisted.”

  He and Wilcox often worked cases together. Ben was the expert on anything related to the national forests and plenty of dirty deeds happened in the vast wilderness along the U.S. and Canadian borders. That’s where he was now, working on exposing an elusive human trafficking ring.

  I sat up, my back against the headboard. “You must have known the old guy, right? What kind of hate crime are you thinking of?”

  Ben said, “He kept to himself. There were rumors he was gay and kids used to tease him when he came to town with his flowers.”

  “A man grows flowers so that means he’s gay?”

  “None of the town widows could get him interested. Taking bets on which of the old gals would land him was what passed for entertainment in Spirit Lake for years, until they all just gave up and said he must be homosexual. That’s the only reason those lovely ladies could come up with to explain their failure; after all, their pies were all top-notch.”

  I’d missed Ben’s dry humor, the twitch at the right side of his mouth.

  “And when Little and Lars moved back here, Charley started taking flowers to them at the restaurant. There was more talk.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Ben.”

  “Yes, it is.” His next question didn’t surprise me. “You aren’t going to get involved in this, right?”

  “You, too? I already promised the sheriff.”

  “It was a vicious crime, Britt.”

  I could picture his hazel eyes darkened with worry. “I’m going to Branson tomorrow to talk to Cynthia and then give my statement to Wilcox. After that, I promise I’m staying completely out of it.”

  We murmured about how much we missed each other and how we couldn’t wait for the week to pass so we could spend the weekend together. After we said goodbye, I felt more alone than when we were continents away from each other. This was supposed to be our time.

  Back in bed, I wrestled with my pillow, wondering why the attack on Charley had happened now. He’d been living in Spirit Lake for forty years. If it was a gay hate crime, why not attack Little and Lars? They were more visible. I clenched my pillow, willing my mind not to go there.

  They’d had the restaurant for four years and it hadn’t been easy. At first the locals shunned it, but Ben’s persistence got the townspeople inside and once they tasted the food, Little’s sexual persuasion was the last thing on their minds—bring on the cinnamon rolls.

  Sleep didn’t come easily. I eventually dropped off but a sound awakened me and I bolted up. Peeking out the window, I saw Knute in the middle of the yard, his white muzzle pointed at the sky. His mournful howl sent shivers through my body. I called to him from the deck, but he didn’t want to come in.

  I sat on the step and let him howl until he was hoarse, and then we went back inside.

  ***

  My morning at the sheriff’s office in Branson left me feeling down. Wilcox didn’t have any idea who had killed Charley. As I’d expected, heavy overnight rain washed away any footprints. No locks were broken, but most people didn’t lock their houses. Charley’s television and a cache of $6,000 stuffed in a flour canister hadn’t been taken. The sheriff wasn’t willing to label the writing on the wall a hate crime yet, gay or otherwise. He had his deputies working on it and maybe even the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) would be involved.

  I stopped in at the StarTrib’s tiny bureau office, a few blocks from the sheriff’s. Cynthia didn’t look much better than she had before I left for L.A. Her husband died two months ago, and now the bureau might close. She and Jason were both working part-time. Things were tough in the newspaper business.

  “How are you doing, Cynthia?” She ignored my question and, running a hand through her graying hair, said, “Thanks for the photos, but we can’t use them. Too graphic. They’ll run a short piece in the regional section because of the horrific nature of the murder.”

  That wasn’t surprising. The paper might do a story once they found the killer.

  ***

  Back home in Spirit Lake, I pulled on my faded black Speedo one-piece and dived off the dock. The cold shocked my system. A lake 200-feet-deep in places never really warms up, even in July.

  Dark sky meant another storm was coming, but I could beat it. My usual route to the city dock and back
was a two-mile trek by water. The wind whipped up half way, and I welcomed the challenge of powering through the waves, allowing the steady rhythm of my strokes to calm my mind.

  I pulled myself up onto the dock to rest a moment before heading home. Cold sluiced down my back from my wet ponytail and I drew my knees to my chest to conserve body heat.

  As I rested for a few minutes, I noticed a few children on the swing sets at the playground across from the lake, and two others splashing in shallow water. I suspected their pale bodies were covered with goose bumps. Too bad the sun had taken the day off.

  Next to the playground, the one-room log cabin Chamber of Commerce hadn’t changed since I worked there as a teenager handing out maps to tourists. Vending machines were lined up outside the building with sodas, candies and chips to stave off starvation until the families could get across the street to Little’s or one of the fast food stands on the highway.

  A boat putt-putted up to the dock and a fisherman got out and secured it. The fisherman almost looked like a local with his well-worn multi-pocketed khaki vest and facial stubble. I’d seen him a few times in Little’s and at the dock. He probably rented a cabin or stayed at one of the resorts. Many people from the cottages and resorts dotted along the lakeshore used the lake as a water highway, and the city dock was a major hub.

  A few raindrops hit my head and shoulders. Time to head back. I started to dive in when the fisherman spoke behind me. “You look like a mermaid with that long hair.”

  Not sure how to respond to that comment, I nodded toward his boat. “Catch anything?” I’d report to Lars. A former city boy, he’d become a fishing fanatic, the framed photos on the restaurant walls a testament to his prowess.

  The fisherman said, “Nope, too choppy out there today. I’m headed to Olafson’s for a beer. He leered. “Want to join me?”

  The leer made me want to toss him in the lake but I dove into the water for my homeward swim as he clomped down the dock and made his way across the street. The bar parking lot was already full on this weekday afternoon.