Deer Season (17 page)

“I am,” said Sarah. “I’m on the first flight out of Traverse City at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, which means I should be at the airport close to 6:00. How would you like to have a house guest that you have to get up and push into the shower about 4:30?”

“I would love that,” Ray replied.

Sarah moved around the counter and poured two glasses of white wine from a tall, elegantly shaped bottle. She handed a glass to Ray and picked up the second glass, gently clinking it against Ray’s before she took a sip.

Ray swirled the wine, inhaled the bouquet, and carefully tasted it. “Very nice,” he said. “Very nice, indeed.”

“And if it weren’t?” she quizzed playfully. “Would you send me away?”

“Absolutely,” responded Ray. “Straight into the teeth of a furious winter gale.”

“I just needed to see you,” Sarah said. “And I know you’ve been incredibly busy. So I took a chance that I could see you tonight. Cheeky of me.”

She refilled their glasses and they settled on the couch.

“You look tired,” she said.

Ray nodded.

“Most of the time since we met, you’ve been totally absorbed with a murder case.”

Ray nodded, then took a sip of wine.

“The other Ray, the one that’s not completely focused on his work, what’s he like? Would I find him attractive, too?”

Ray thought about her question. “He’s a lot like the guy you know. When all his energy isn’t needed by his job, he’s passionate about other things. He spends time in his kayak, listens to music, reads, experiments with recipes. His mother used to tell him she thought he was sort of boring because he was always so busy doing things.”

“How is that boring?”

“She liked to do different things. Things that required lots of sitting, something I can’t do.”

“Like what?”

“Like going to movies; Mom didn’t miss many. Or going out for breakfast or lunch and chatting over coffee for hours.”

“And you can’t do that?”

“Maybe if you fill me with Ritalin….”

“So you probably spent a lot of time in the principal’s office when you were a kid.”

“Actually I didn’t. I was in a one-room school for the first six years—two teachers and about forty kids in six grades. I loved learning and was a good student. And those two women kept me busy with projects or teaching the younger kids. I think I was lucky to have been in the last one-room school in the county.”

“Where was it?” Sarah asked.

“The building is still there. As the crow flies, it’s about five miles from where you work. It’s on a back road in the National Park, one of the buildings they’re preserving. During the lumbering days a small village surrounded the school. Everything but the foundations of the homes were gone by the time I was a kid.”

“I’d like to see it,”

“I’ll take you there,” said Ray.

“Anyway,” said Sarah, “I like your kind of boring. I think I’m sort of boring in the same way: too job oriented and not able to kick back and party, at least that’s what my ex-husband used to say.

“When you were investigating Ashleigh’s death, well, I don’t know how to explain it. I was watching you and trying to figure out what was going on in your head. You seemed to be in your own world much of the time.”

Ray remained silent as he thought about Sarah’s observation.

“Maybe you don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said. “And I understand completely.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I’venever tried to explain the process I use in working through a complicated case. I’ve been doing it so long, it’s sort of automatic. There are some basic principles, the things you study in college and professional workshops, and then there are guidelines you have to follow to protect the rights of possible suspects. And those things are sort of automatic. For me, much of the investigation does take place in my head. I have to be the victim and try to see the world through their eyes. I also have to be the assailant. I have to try to understand their drives, motives, anger, and even their craziness. It’s a kind of theatre of the mind. I think about these characters when I’m driving or have a few free minutes in the office. At night I dream about them. And I’m totally absorbed with the case until it’s solved.” Ray stopped for a minute, then added, “While all this is going on, I’m probably not much of a companion.”

Sarah snuggled in close to Ray. “I like you,” she said. “My approach to getting things done is not too dissimilar from yours. But my world is less dramatic—well, usually less dramatic, like before I met you.”

Sarah pulled herself from under Ray’s arm, retrieving his wine glass as she rose to her feet. She rinsed the glasses and put them in the dishwasher. Ray corked the wine and slid it into the refrigerator.

She slipped back into his arms briefly. “I think you should take this woman to bed. 4:30 is going to be here far too soon.”

“You look happy this morning,” Sue offered as she entered his office.

“I am,” said Ray. “It looks like you’ve benefited from a good night’s sleep, as well.”

“I did. I followed your advice and went home, took a hot bath, and went straight to bed. Didn’t even try to read; I just wanted to sleep. And I could have slept in this morning.”

Sue set her large, wide-based stainless steel coffee mug on the desk and looked over the assemblage of notes and data she had laid out the previous afternoon.

“What’s the news on Lynne?”

“No change during the night. She’s still in critical condition,” Ray answered. His answer was followed by several minutes of silence.

“You know what?” Sue asked.

“What?” responded Ray, looking up from the pile of requisitions he was signing.

“I know I mentioned this yesterday,” she started, “I mean, I think I did. Everything was such a whirl of activities and emotions. And this was bugging me all day long….”

“Your point, Sue,” Ray urged. “What’s your point?” “Dirk,” she began, “all the time I was with him, from the moment I first saw him until we got here, and then during our interview, not once did he voice any concern for Lynne. Not once. There wasn’t the slightest hint of compassion, or even the suggestion that he cared whether she lived or died. He was totally indifferent. Totally indifferent.”

“Well, you can’t accuse him of making an insincere show of….”

“True,” Sue responded. “But this woman gave birth to two of his children; she was his wife for four or five years. Ray, Dirk’s not a whole person. He didn’t show any emotion, no sadness or anger. He’s damaged in some profound way. The archetypal sociopath.”

“He may be,” agreed Ray, “but that doesn’t automatically make him the prime suspect.” He neatened up the pile of requisitions and returned them to the appropriate folder and placed it in the out tray on the left side of his desk. “That said, we need to check his alibis and look at the possibility that Dirk might have enticed someone else to do this shooting.”

“A pro?”

“I don’t think so. My guess would be that he’d lean on someone who owes him a favor. Maybe someone he let off the hook, but that he could still nail if he wanted to.”

“How about a girlfriend who wanted to make Dirk a free man?”

“Possible,” said Ray. “Listen to us, sitting here spinning our wheels because we have no clear direction to take the investigation. Let’s get to work,” he gestured toward Sue’s carefully arranged materials, “Show me what you have.”

“Okay, we’ll start here.” Sue went to her first stack. “Here are the diagrams of the crime scene. They’re not to scale yet; I’ll do that later. I’ve got most of the measurements. As you know, we found two possible locations for the shooter, here and here. Given the heavy snow and the mess made by the plow, we might have missed the real location. But here are the best possibilities.” She placed a diagram in the center of the table, and using a pencil as a pointer, indicated the two areas. “If the shooter were in this first location, they might have parked a vehicle somewhere along here off the main road. We found tire tracks where someone pulled off to the side here. Not good ones, but perhaps good enough if we could find the vehicle. I’ve got photographs and casts.”

“Is there a path between that location and where the shooter might have set up?” Ray traced a straight line with his finger as he asked the question.

“No, it’s a swamp, I don’t think the shooter could have waded through there. My theory is he pulled off the main road so his truck wouldn’t be visible, then he walked back along the road and found a position behind a downed tree that gave him a view of the front of Lynne’s house.”

“Could someone driving down the road have seen the shooter in position?”

“Not easily. There is a utility easement that parallels the road on the east side. A lot of small pines and cedars have gown up near the road, but there aren’t any trees or brush across from the victim’s home. The shooter could have set up here directly across the road,” Sue pointed to a location, “and had an unobstructed view of the end of the drive and the mailbox.”

“This area, what’s the distance?” Ray asked.

Sue looked down at her notes. “About fifty yards.”

“Other than a possible path in the snow and a place where a shooter might set up, did you find any physical evidence at this site?”

“No. By the time we did the search and found this area— remember we were wading through deep snow—things were drifted over. I carefully worked down to the packed area, but didn’t find anything. Then we used a metal detector. One very rusty beer can, but no shell casings. And the path, it could have been an animal or just a figment of my imagination. Wanting to make something out of nothing.”

“How about the second site?” Ray asked.

“It’s right here,” again she indicated the place on the diagram using her pencil. “It’s at the top of this rather steep hill along a ridgeline that overlooks the whole area. It appears that the woods on this side was partially lumbered a few years back. From this location you can also see the front of Lynne’s house. The site also overlooks a little valley on the north that runs down to Mud Lake. There were tracks in the snow up from the two-track….”

“This is the same road you mentioned before?”

“Same road. You can see it on this Geological Survey Map,” Sue opened a well-used map of the area, “there are a series of little roads that run through this whole area, and there’s been snowmobile and ATV traffic on most of them.”

“And how far is this?” asked Ray, running his finger from the top of the hill to the road near Lynne’s home.

“I used an optical range finder. It’s slightly less than 300 yards.”

“Any brass?” Ray asked.

Sue placed a plastic bag in the center of the table. Ray pulled it close and peered at a collection of brass casings of different gauges, with one exception all tarnished and corroded.

“One recent 30-06 casing, the rest have been around awhile. Looks like you found a good place to hunt deer from.”

“That one might have come from the gun of our shooter or just been fired at a deer in the last few days. I’ll send it off to the State Police lab. Maybe there’s a fingerprint or something else we can use down the road.”

Sue traced her route on the map. “I walked around from this direction. Someone has been baiting in that valley. I found piles of apples and carrots.”

“But you found no clear evidence the shooter was up there.” “Other than the one piece of brass, no.”

“And given the weather…” said Ray.

Sue pulled a sheet of paper from another folder. “I called NOAA, and they provided these numbers. At the approximate time of the shooting the winds were 22 miles an hour, gusting to 35 miles with blowing and drifting snow. We were getting both system snow and lake effect snow.”

“How about visibility?”

“Not very good.”

“You’re talking about an almost impossible shot,” said Ray.

“Yes,” Sue agreed. “And we both know that Dirk is qualified as a sniper, and that he trains SWAT team members for other police agencies.”

“Yes, but he has a solid alibi.”

“I hate to rule him out,” Sue argued. “You know, he probably trained some very competent marksmen over the years.”

“Interesting thought. But I think we have to be careful not to allow our mutual dislike of the man distract us from other possibilities. And if it was a hit, we need to start looking for who else might want Lynne dead.” Ray paused for a moment. “Let’s finish our discussion of the scene. You seem to be assuming that the assailant came in a car or truck.”

“Yes, but….”

“But it’s just as possible they used a snowmobile or ATV to get to the area, stashed it in the woods and walked in.”

Sue nodded her agreement.

“And this time of year no one thinks twice about seeing someone walking down the road carrying a rifle with a big scope on it or even riding a snowmobile with a gun strapped around them.” Ray stood and slowly twisted from one side to the other, stretching his back. Leaning against his desk and looking across the table at Sue he asked, “How much time passed between the first 911 call and the time we closed off the roads to the crime scene?”

“I don’t have that, but I …”

“Just a rough guess?” asked Ray.

“Thirty, forty minutes, perhaps more,” Sue speculated.

“And in that time our hardworking colleagues from the road commission ran a plow through there in both directions at high speed to get the snow off the road and the shoulders. So we have no physical evidence other than one piece of brass. And that may not be connected to this crime in any way.”

“True.”

“This is a long shot, but take the people who were on the roads in that area. See if they saw anything unusual. You’ve got the postman, the plow driver, maybe a FedEx or UPS driver. And then there are the people who live in the neighborhood. Maybe you could assign Brett this task. It would give him an opportunity to learn more about the area.”