Bough Cutter

by Jeff Nania

  Two days later, Ed and Stella pulled up to our cabin in the early evening and dropped Amber off. They came in for a cup of coffee, and Ed took a shot of brandy in his.

  “I am kind of looking forward to seeing Gitchi-Gami again. I’ve known a lot of people who made their living on that lake. It’s a tough way to go. But that water is really something to see,” Ed said.

  After a tearful goodbye, they were on their way. Julie immediately distracted Amber by suggesting she help her with some school preparation for the following day. Even though the circumstances were sad, we enjoyed having Amber with us. •

  35

  The Watcher

  The man was frustrated. He sensed the opportunity was slipping away. Tyler Winslow was keeping a low profile. The man had only seen him twice, and both times were not the right moment. He suspected that Winslow was using the remote Crooked Lake Dam road as a meeting place to make his drug connections. The man wanted that to be the place of reckoning, but he may have to change his plan.

  Weeks slipped by, and just when he became most concerned that he may not be successful, he got a break. Driving down the forest road, he saw Winslow’s truck turn toward Crooked Lake Dam. He waited and turned down the road after Winslow was out of sight. He pulled over to the edge of the road. A car drove down by the dam and came back and left no more than ten minutes later. The man pulled his truck into the middle of the road and lifted the hood. Winslow drove out and had to stop because of the truck in the way. He got out of his truck and came over to the man sitting behind the wheel.

  Winslow was agitated and yelled as he walked up, “Hey, man, get your truck out of the way.”

  He looked into the cab of the truck and found a steady hand holding a worn Browning nine millimeter handgun pointed at his face.

  “You! It was you,” was all Winslow could say before the man shot him at point-blank range. Winslow was dead before he hit the ground. The man drove away. He had accomplished what he started. •

  36

  It was a week before Tyler Winslow was found. A couple of high school kids had driven down to Crooked Lake Dam for a little privacy. They turned down the road and saw a truck in the way. The boy got out and walked up to open the driver’s door. There was no one in the truck. When he looked around, he saw Winslow lying at the edge of the road on the ground. It was the dead of winter, and food was getting scarcer in the forest. The rule of nature had been applied to Tyler Winslow; creatures of all kinds saw him as a much-needed source of protein and had commenced a banquet. The boy screamed, jumped back in his car, and drove away from Tyler Winslow’s body and Crooked Lake Dam as fast as he could. They were a couple of miles down the road before his girlfriend convinced him to stop and call 911.

  I was at home when I got the call. It sent my heart right into my throat. Deputy Holmes was on the scene and got a tentative ID on the victim by running the truck plate. He wisely touched nothing and blocked the road.

  There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that our killer was back. Either out of anxiety or frustration, I flew out to the scene, lights flashing, siren wailing. On the way, I had the ME and the closest available crime lab team paged out, and I asked the dispatcher to send Deputy Delzell. I called Len Bork, and he was on the way. My final call was to Ricardo on his secret cell phone. He answered, and I told him what and who I thought I had. He would be on the way as soon as he could. I could leave nothing to chance and needed to make sure we did it by the book. If this scene had something to tell us, we needed desperately to know what it was.

  I pulled in, and Holmes had his squad parked across the road, waiting patiently.

  He had already photographed the scene from every possible angle. He had not touched or done anything else. The two high schoolers were parked as far down the drive to the dam as they could be waiting to be interviewed. Delzell arrived, and I asked her to interview the kids. They only knew what the boy saw. Both were pretty shaken. When Delzell had finished taking their statements, she advised both juveniles that they could call their parents, or she would. The kids showed little enthusiasm over their options. The calls were made, the able Delzell calmed the parents, and the kids were sent on their way.

  I didn’t know where it was, but we would wait for the crime scene team all night if necessary. Fortunately, it didn’t take that long. Ricardo knew the urgency of the situation—a serial killer was out there. He used every bit of his clout and most of Malone’s getting the priority one crime scene unit led by Liz Masters ordered to the scene.

  I had worked with Masters and her crew before. They were the best of the best. The good news was they were in a training session just three hours south of our location—maybe two hours if they flew—which is precisely what they did.

  Once they arrived, Masters and her team immediately went to work. One of her techs assisted Dr. Chali as he examined the body. The initial and correct finding proved to be the victim was shot through his right eye. There was no exit wound. The body had sustained significant damage from being fed on. Despite that, no doubt it was Tyler Winslow.

  His wallet contained a driver’s license. Tucked in his waistband at the small of his back was a cheap semi-auto pistol. The frozen diluted pool of blood was now a few feet from the body. Animals, probably coyotes or maybe even wolves, had dragged the body in the process of eating it. On the ground was a single brass shell casing. It appeared similar to the one found in Devin Martin’s vehicle. In Winslow’s truck, we recovered a significant quantity of drugs and cash and a large caliber handgun. Len stood by me while the crime scene was processed. Delzell and Holmes assisted the tech crew.

  When they were done with the scene, Winslow’s truck was loaded on a flatbed and taken to secure storage. Winslow’s body was loaded and transported to the morgue for an autopsy. The crime scene team had scoured the area, and nothing that had the tiniest bit of evidentiary potential was ignored.

  I called the county highway department to bring barricades out to the dam and close the road. “Road Closed by Order of the Sheriff” signs were posted.

  On my way back to town, I called Julie and filled her in on what was going on. She was clearly shaken by what I had told her—another murder.

  She gave me some not unexpected but still sad news. Ed Lockridge had taken a turn for the worse earlier in the day and was in intensive care at the Musky Falls hospital. His breathing had become labored, and his oxygen was hovering around the critical level. Amber would be staying with us until he came home—if he came home.

  Back in town, Winslow’s truck was sealed up. I booked rooms for the crime scene team at the Cedar Inn, and I set up a tab for them at the Fisherman. They would process the vehicle in the morning. Once they were done, they would first take everything back to their mobile lab and see what they could determine.

  Dr. Chali removed the bullet from Winslow’s brain. Without comparative magnification, it was only a guess, but to him, the slug looked almost identical to the one he had taken out of Devin Martin’s head a few months before. It was packaged and turned over to the crime scene team.

  Len and I agreed to put pictures of Winslow and his truck out to the media in hopes of a bite. Canvasing the homes around the dam was likely to be unproductive because other than a couple of closed-up summer cabins, there weren’t any.

  Everything else would have to wait for the morning. I had done all I could do at that point, so I went home. Julie and Amber were in flannel pajamas, eating popcorn, and watching a goofy teenage movie. I took off my gear, poured myself a glass of brandy, sat down, and watched with them. Most of the movie was lost on me, but it had them smiling.

  When the movie was over, both girls went to bed. I followed shortly after that.

  In the morning, I checked in with dispatch for messages. Ricardo had come in late. He was staying at the Cedar Inn two doors down from Liz Masters. Malone wanted to be briefed at my first opportunity.

  I got Julie alone for a minute while Amber was in the shower.

  “W
hat’s Ed’s status?” I asked.

  “It is hard to say, John, but they talked to Stella about taking him home and working with hospice to make sure he is as comfortable as possible. According to her, it could be a day, or it could be a month. We’ll find out more today.”

  “Honey, I am going to be tied up with this homicide, but if you need me, call me.”

  I pulled in at the motel. The crime scene team was sitting at the table with Ricardo, enjoying the free breakfast bar.

  We shook hands, and I got a cup of coffee and sat down.

  “Thanks for showing up so quickly. I am sorry to put this on to you, but I am at a loss. If any of you have any suggestions as to where I should go from here, I am all ears.”

  “Anthony here has been filling us in. It is a tough one. Protected witness gets hit, or a rival drug dealer takes him out. That’s the problem with guys like Winslow. There are a thousand reasons why someone would want them dead,” Masters began.

  “What about doing a combined evidence review?” she continued. “It is what we have been learning about in our training workshop. We start by going over the physical evidence—everything we have—and try to tie it together. We don’t consider anything but the evidence, such as blood, fibers, shell casings, and things like that. We try to develop a picture of both our victim and our perpetrator, building them out of physical evidence, so to speak.

  “Then we profile the victims, identifying what they had in common that might have made them targets. In this case, they are all involved in the illegal drug trade. According to Anthony, they were working for the same outfit, except maybe for this last one. It stands to reason that his role in court testifying against another drug gang may have made him a target. Anyway, you get where I am going. You start putting everything together and start getting yeses to your questions instead of nos. Look, we’re here. Why don’t we all have at it? A new set of eyes never hurts.”

  “She has got a point,” Ricardo added. “Have you ever looked at one of those hidden picture drawings where the harder you look at it, the less chance you’ll see the hidden picture? You walk away and come back ten minutes later, and there it is, large as life.”

  I called Len to join us, and we all convened in the conference room. We downloaded complete copies of each case file. The rule was anyone could start anywhere—with the first killing or the last or someplace in between. Everybody kept their own notes.

  The only thing added later was regarding the bullet removed from Winslow’s head and the shell casing found at the scene. Liz set up an enlarged split screen of the bullet and shell casing and did a rough comparison to the ones recovered from the first homicide. She projected the images for all of us to see. It was not a perfect comparison, but it looked like both the bullet and the shell casing came from the same gun. It was good enough for the exercise.

  Within an hour, each person had staked out space and was buried in work. I ordered in lunch, but no one stopped to eat. Midafternoon came and Liz called a break. The food brought in earlier was still edible, and Crossroads delivered a gallon of coffee. We made small talk, but people were anxious to get back at it. We worked until six o’clock. Len headed home, while Ricardo, Masters, and crew got cocktails at the hotel bar and then relaxed in the outdoor hot tub as light snow fell.

  On the drive home, I realized I was getting close. Something I had seen today, or another day, triggered something somewhere inside my head. Yet, I could not for the life of me get it to come out, but I knew it would.

  I walked in and saw Julie had left me a note. She and Amber were with Stella and someone from hospice setting up a hospital bed and other equipment at Lockridge’s. Ed was coming home tomorrow. She would check in later.

  I crawled into bed, but I couldn’t stay asleep. As soon as I dozed off, images of the investigation popped into my head. Julie got home just before midnight and crawled in next to me. It helped, but it didn’t stop me from getting up at four in the morning. Julie, bless her sweet heart, got up with me and brewed coffee.

  She shared an update. Ed, Stella, and Amber had been given end-of-life options. Ed could stay at home or go to an assisted care facility until the end. He could sign a Do Not Resuscitate order, meaning that if his heart stopped beating or he stopped breathing, he would be allowed to pass on. The family decided for home and do not resuscitate.

  Amber and Stella were doing much better with the situation. Now Ed’s pain was barely tolerable, even with medication. He would come home in the morning, and Stella would allow some visitors. •

  37

  I went into town and back to the conference room. I was not the first one to arrive. Anthony and Liz were already hard at it. They barely grunted hello.

  I started right in. Len showed up a half hour later, and by seven, we were fully staffed.

  At ten o’clock, Liz Masters called us all to attention.

  “Okay, everybody. Listen up. For the next hour, make a note of your conclusions so far.”

  Eleven came and Liz projected what looked like a lined piece of notebook paper on a whiteboard. Each of us took our turn. Many had arrived at the same conclusions.

  It was drug related and targeted at Gunther’s gang except for Marcus Johnson and Tyler Winslow.

  The killer was specifically after these upper-level members of the drug gang.

  It wasn’t competition; it was payback.

  The killer had training, probably former military.

  It was one or two people.

  Len noted that all the murders were in places kind of off the map in the backwoods. He thought it was likely that the perpetrator did some scouting and surveillance.

  Two of the senior technicians had gone through the physical evidence collected at each scene, focusing primarily on things that were somewhat unique and things that may be seemingly insignificant.

  The ammunition used was unique. The two brass casings, one from the Devin Martin scene and the other from Tyler Winslow, appeared to have been extracted and ejected from the same gun. The casings were from two different manufacturers, yet they were loaded with the same type of lead bullet. Some quick research revealed that a high-power nine millimeter almost always exited. This ammunition may be of lower power. This led the techs to the idea that the killer possibly manufactured, or more likely reloaded, their own ammunition. Low-velocity stuff for a special purpose. Again, indicating the killer had some weapons skills or training.

  Ricardo walked around and filled everyone’s coffee cup while the technicians projected the list of hair and fiber recovered from Devin Martin’s vehicle. I followed along when they were going through the list and explaining the value and location of recovered evidence. I got to the bottom of the second page, and it struck me. I jumped up like I had been poked with a sharp stick. My coffee spilled all over the table. I grabbed paper towels and tried to wipe it up. I quickly gave up and asked Len to clean up my mess. Everyone in the room looked at me like I had lost my mind. My mind had never been more focused or clearer.

  “What’s wrong, Sheriff?” Ricardo asked.

  Len Bork, whose keen ability to read people had kept him alive over a thirty-year career, looked me in the eye. “You know who the killer is, don’t you, John?”

  I looked around the room, every face waiting for my answer.

  “I am not sure, Len, but I have an idea and a question that needs to be answered,” I replied and headed for the door.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ricardo offered.

  “No, I need to go alone. I might be wrong, but I need to follow this to its natural end.”

  I left the building and got in my squad.

  It all fit—motive, pattern, opportunity. I drove fast but without warning lights. Tyler Winslow was not the first Winslow killed; his brother Travis was. When the body was found at the dam, evidence suggested that he was poaching walleyes and slipped while trying to make his way across the dam, hit his head on the concrete, and drowned. Each killing was tied to drugs, but there was anoth
er equally important connection.

  I turned off the highway onto a dead-end road I had driven many times in the past several weeks. I parked by a lean-to full of cut, dried, and split firewood. Wood from the same pile was heating the cabin, evidenced by the wisp of wood smoke coming out of the chimney. I knocked on the door, and Stella Lockridge answered.

  “Hi, Stella. I just stopped on my way home to check in on you. How are you holding up?”

  “Oh, Sheriff, we have our good days and bad. If you’re looking for Amber and Julie, they are still at school. Amber is helping her with some work. You know, I will never be able to thank you and Julie for all your kindness. It has meant so much to us,” she said.

  “Stella, I was wondering if I could talk to Ed.”

  “Oh, he would be happy to have someone to talk to. It would be a change from me pestering him. He was looking through some old pictures. Let me see if he’s awake.”

  Stella came back a moment later.

  “He would be glad to talk to you. Says he’s been expecting you. I think the pain drugs make him a little goofy.”

  I walked into the backroom. Ed was lying in his hospital bed, the back raised enough that he was sitting up. He had an old photo album on his lap.

  “Hi, Sheriff, nice of you to stop by.”

  “How you doing, Ed?”

  “Pretty good today. But I know I’m getting to the end. It’s okay. I am ready for it. Some days I am too tired to go on.”

  “Ed, I’ve got to ask you about something. Do you mind?”

  “No, go right ahead, Sheriff,” he said.

  “I was going over the evidence in our homicide cases with some other law enforcement officers. I noticed something that hadn’t stood out for me before. A guy named Devin Martin was found dead in his SUV. It looked like a suicide but turned out to be a homicide. It was pretty likely that someone sitting in the passenger seat of Martin’s car forced him to drive to a remote area and shot him in the head. When the evidence techs went over the passenger seat, they found a couple of interesting things.”