by Steven James
Other theorists study victimology or location: Who was victimized? How can you keep these people from being in high-risk areas at high-risk times? Some researchers study how people perceive public and private spaces and the likelihood of crime in those locations. Others track the temporal fluctuations of crime. And, of course, some criminologists try to increase (or give the appearance of increased) law enforcement presence, such as leaving empty police cars on busy roads or installing fake video surveillance cameras in conspicuous places.
Five factors.
Stop one, stop the crime.
Yet even though it’s vital to deter crimes whenever possible, I’ve always been more in the business of solving them after they do occur.
Like today at 1:48 p.m.—if the recollection of Mrs. Frasier was correct.
Three initial questions rolled through my mind: Why then? Why there? Why Ardis and Lizzie?
As I walked toward the mailbox, I clicked through what we knew so far about the progression of events:
1:48 p.m. Shots fired—Still need to confirm the time.
2:41 p.m. Snowmobile tracks veering off the trail are discovered entering a stretch of open water on Tomahawk Lake. Deputy Ellory photographs the tracks, then calls the FBI, emails the photos to the Lab.
3:30 p.m. The Lab identifies the tracks, and local law enforcement narrows down the pool of possible victims to four people in the area who own that model snowmobile.
4:02 p.m. Officers follow up on the owners and find Ardis and Lizzie Pickron murdered; Donnie missing.
4:30 p.m. Admiral Winchester, the Chief of Naval Operations, is already pressuring FBI Director Wellington to have agents look into the case.
A thought: So why the FBI and not NCIS? But the answer was immediately obvious: the Naval Criminal Investigative Service only investigates crimes involving active duty military personnel, and Donnie was retired military rather than active duty.
That left the Bureau rather than NCIS, but still—why the high-level interest in a sawmill worker’s disappearance?
That was the big question. The hinge upon which all the other facts swung.
The Navy’s interest in the crime and the recently accessed websites on Ohio Class submarines didn’t support the theory that the snowmobile’s trip off the ice and Donnie’s disappearance were the result of a simple suicide or a haphazard accident during a flight from a crime scene.
It didn’t appear to be a robbery gone bad either.
When you move through a case, it’s best to ask the sensible, obvious questions first, just like a reporter might do: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
So, where had Donnie been earlier today? Did he show up at work? If this was a setup to make him look guilty, why would he be targeted? What had he done or what did he know that caused him to end up in someone’s crosshairs? And what might decades-old submarine deployment records have to do with anything? And why would Donnie—or anyone else—have been so careless as to look them up on his computer after the murders?
And of course, what about the three shots through the window? Either they were fired out of necessity or they were not. But what necessity?
Questions, questions.
Too little data.
I started back for the house. The moon had slipped behind a stray cloud, leaving the stars to rule the night. Seeing them reminded me of the times in college when I worked as a wilderness guide in North Carolina. After enough nights out on the trail you begin to know which stars will appear first, emerging slowly through the late twilight. There you are, Vega, and Castor and Arcturus, so good to see you. How’ve you been? How has the night on the other side of the world been treating you?
Everything was so simple in those days, life bared down to the basics of survival. Eat. Sleep. Climb. Paddle. You’re forced to put all the niceties and creature comforts of modern life behind you and get back to the essentials. Survival. Relationships. Encountering the real.
I looked at the house again.
Encountering the real.
Life.
Death.
Two bodies. A missing snowmobiler.
Pausing at the side of the house, I bent and took a picture of the two sets of boot prints with my phone. Committed the imprint patterns to memory.
Then, leaving the stars behind, I quietly ascended the porch steps.
After a body is moved, the crime scene is altered forever, so contrary to what you might see in the movies, forensics examiners and evidence response teams are not typically in a hurry to remove bodies from a scene. Unless there’s something present that would contaminate or destroy evidence (wind, water, etc.) they’ll leave the corpse, sometimes for several hours, as they photograph it, check the core temperature to establish time of death, look at bloodstain patterns, and study the degree of and locations of the pooling of blood inside the body before removing it for an autopsy.
I spent another hour or so studying the scene, evaluating what I did know and comparing that to what I did not, then when Natasha and Linnaman were preparing to remove the bodies I realized it was almost 9:30 p.m. and I still hadn’t called my brother.
I went into the study, eased the door shut. Hesitated for a moment.
Then pulled out my phone.
12
I imagined that even if Sean didn’t invite me to stay at his place, Amber would, so I decided it might be best to try his work number first.
No one answered at the bait shop, which surprised me, since, with his beer and liquor sales, I’d expected that he would be open until at least 10:00 or 11:00.
I confirmed the number and tried again. Nothing.
He didn’t own a cell, so that left his home number. I didn’t have him on speed dial, but I found the number and tapped it in, hoping Sean would answer instead of his wife.
Amber picked up after two rings. “Hello?” I heard the splashing clatter of pots in water, and I could picture her standing beside the sink doing the dishes. Her honey-colored hair tied back in a loose ponytail.
“Amber, it’s Pat.”
“Pat.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good.” Her tone was impossible to read. “This is a surprise.”
“I’m sorry to call so late, but I found myself in the area and I wanted to see if you and Sean were going to be around tomorrow. So we can get together.”
“You found yourself in the area?” No more dish sounds now. “Where are you?”
“Woodborough.”
“Woodborough,” she repeated slowly. Then, “Do you need a place to stay?”
“No, I’ll get a motel room.”
A pause. “You’re welcome to stay here, you know.”
Even though I figured it wouldn’t matter to Jake or Natasha if I stayed with my family, I declined. “Thanks, but I’m actually here on business and should stay close to town. I need to go to Tomahawk Lake first thing in the morning.”
“Oh.” Now, sadness in her voice. “The Pickrons.” Of course she would have heard about them. By now, word of the homicides would’ve been all over the news.
“I’m assisting the sheriff’s department,” I said.
“Pat, it’s so terrible what happened. I can hardly believe it. Things like that just don’t happen here.” I thought she might add, “Just in the big cities,” or something along those lines, but she left it at that.
Since Amber was the only pharmacist in Elk Ridge, the next closest town over, I wouldn’t have been surprised if, in these small, close-knit communities, she’d known the Pickrons or at least been peripherally familiar with the family’s name.
At last I said, “Is Sean there? I tried the bait shop.”
“No one picked up?”
“No.”
“Figures. He’s out ice fishing. He doesn’t always get someone to cover the store. You know how he can be.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Yes.”
“Really, Pat.” I sensed a subtle shift in her tone. A softer quality. “You
know you’re welcome here.”
“I know.” Based on my history with Amber it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to head over there, especially if Sean was late in getting home. Additionally, because of my relationship with Lien-hua I didn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. “I’ll be tied up all morning, but I should be able to get away for lunch. Do you think that would work? For the two of you?”
“I’ll talk to Sean.” I heard the clink of glasses in the background. She’d gone back to doing the dishes. For the moment at least, she’d given up on convincing me to come to the house tonight. “It’s business,” she said, “so Tessa didn’t come along?”
“I was hoping she could come over tomorrow, but with this storm, we’ll see. She’s in the Twin Cities this week.”
“I hope she can make it.” More dishes. “We’ve never met, you know. Your stepdaughter and I.”
Now that I thought about it, I realized she was right. Amber hadn’t made it to my wedding with Tessa’s mother and had been in the hospital with food poisoning the weekend of Christie’s funeral nearly two years ago. “I’ll try to make that happen. I’ll call you in the morning. We’ll set up a time to get together.” I was stumbling for a way to gently ease out of this conversation. “After you talk to Sean.”
“It’ll be good to see you. It’s been too long.”
I wondered if it’d been long enough.
“Good night, Amber.”
“Good night.”
We ended the call, and I slowly lowered the phone.
Hearing her say good night to me again brought back a rush of memories and emotions that I really didn’t need surrounding me at the moment.
A few months back, when Lien-hua and I had started to get serious, she’d told me that she wanted us to look forward and not backward. In lieu of this, she’d proposed that we not talk about past loves, past mistakes, past regrets, and as it happens, Amber fell into all three categories. So, although I would’ve been glad to discuss things with Lien-hua, I’d never spoken to her about Amber. Never even brought her up.
But now, I thought again of what had happened five years ago between me and Amber when she and Sean were engaged. Even though Lien-hua was the one who’d suggested not dredging up the past, in light of our potential future together, I felt a vague wash of guilt just thinking about Amber, and our relationship seemed like something Lien-hua should know about.
This week Lien-hua was on-site in Cincinnati profiling a case of three missing women.
I was about to tap at the phone to speed-dial her but then had second thoughts. It would probably be best to think through how to delicately broach the subject of Amber first, before getting on the line with Lien-hua.
I held the phone for a moment, staring at it, thinking about why the shooter might have returned up the stairs a second time after the murders.
The phone. Hmm.
Yes, check on that first, then call Lien-hua.
Using my laptop I logged into the Federal Digital Database, found that Donnie and Ardis Pickron had only one cell phone between them, registered in her name. I entered my federal ID number again and pulled up Ardis Pickron’s mobile phone records.
13
Elk Ridge, Wisconsin
From his vantage point in the log cabin nine hundred meters from the Schoenberg Inn, Alexei Chekov monitored the entrance using the US military issue night vision binoculars he’d purchased last month on the black market in Afghanistan.
He didn’t like surprises, and he wanted to have at least a cursory idea of how many people he would be dealing with at the meeting at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. He’d been told three, but he anticipated a lot more had to be involved, at least at some level.
Through his sources, he knew that the team would be arriving tonight.
To monitor them, he’d taken the liberty of accessing this cabin. It’d been empty when he arrived, and he was hoping the owners wouldn’t return or he’d be forced to make sure they would not be a problem. That might get messy, and that was a situation he would prefer to avoid.
So far he’d seen nine people arrive at the Schoenberg Inn, a sprawling, stylish hotel that looked out of place here in the northwoods.
All of the people he’d seen had parked in locations that allowed the lights from the front of the Schoenberg to illuminate their faces from more than one direction as they entered—an indicator that told Alexei they were either innocent civilians or, if they were operatives, they were inexperienced.
Using an infrared camera, he’d photographed all nine and was currently running their photos through the Federal Digital Database’s facial recognition to confirm their identities. So far he’d identified four people from Eco-Tech—three men and one woman.
Because of their carelessness while entering the hotel, Alexei was surprised someone as meticulous and careful as Valkyrie was working with them.
Already, $2,000,000 had been wired to their account: Valkyrie had informed him of this. Alexei was here to deliver $1,000,000 more as well as the access codes he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg that morning. The final payment of $1,000,000 would be delivered upon completion, after the message had been sent to and received by the US government at 9:00 p.m. Saturday night. That was all he’d been told—a message sent to the government.
He would pick up that money from a drop point tomorrow prior to the deadline.
When his phone rang and he saw who it was, he quickly answered.
Nikolai Demidenko, his contact at the GRU.
“In reference to Valkyrie, all I have found, my brother,” Nikolai said, “are some suspect ties to an Islamic charity based in Pakistan. But that is all.”
“Pakistan?”
“Yes.”
“Send me the details and keep looking. I will forward the usual amount to your account.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
Islamic charities?
Informative.
Alexei had been on a few cases in Pakistan himself over the years. Perhaps he and Valkyrie had associations with some of the same people. Something to keep in mind. Wait and see what else Nikolai could dig up.
Alexei had grown used to getting very little sleep but decided he would watch the Inn for two more hours and then go to bed.
Until then he would observe the premises, doing the job he had been hired to do.
Simply.
Professionally.
To the best of his ability.
The phone records confirmed my theory.
At 1:54 p.m. an incoming call had reached Ardis Pickron’s cell phone.
The conversation hadn’t ended until 1:58 p.m.
Before the state troopers left, one of them had driven to Mrs. Frasier’s house and found out that the oven clock she’d looked at when she heard the last shot was six minutes slow, so the murders would actually have occurred at 1:54 rather than 1:48.
Someone had called Ardis’s cell almost immediately after the murders.
And yet, now, the phone was charging in the master bedroom.
So the killer went back upstairs to answer the phone?
Possible.
The call had come from an unknown, unregistered number from someone in Egypt, one that had never called, or been called from, this phone before.
Although the country of origin appeared on the phone company’s records, no actual number did, which meant someone knew what he was doing when he covered his tracks.
I took a moment to go tell Natasha to dust for prints on Ardis’s phone, then I returned to the study for some privacy.
If the killer didn’t talk for four minutes on the phone, who did?
Was more than one offender present? After all, there were two sets of boot impressions in the snow outside the laundry room door.
Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident. Be always open to the unlikely.
Considering both the location of the phone in the master bedroom and the timing of this call, it seemed at least possible that it had rung s
hortly after the murders, and that the shooter had gone upstairs to answer it.
If so, he or she would’ve had to have been expecting the call. Why else answer the phone at the home of a person you just killed? Why else have a four-minute conversation?
Unless it was Donnie after all.
When you’re working a case, you arrange the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle, and I had the feeling I was looking at a straight-edged piece that might help frame in part of the perimeter. But how it related to the other facts of the case was still a mystery.
It’s getting late, Pat. Call Lien-hua, tell her about Amber.
I hadn’t really taken the time to collect my thoughts like I’d hoped, and I still wasn’t sure exactly how to tackle this, but I knew I’d better call her now, tonight, get it off my mind.
I speed-dialed her number.
14
When Lien-hua picked up, she promptly told me she was busy going over case files with one of the local detectives. At first I thought it seemed a little late in the day for a business meeting like that, but then remembered I was the one calling her from a crime scene.
With the ambient noise in the background it sounded like she might be at a restaurant.
“I’m sorry to cut this short,” she said, “but I really have to go, Pat. Ashton’s got some notes we need to go over.”
“Ashton.”
“Ashton Rivera. The detective I’m consulting with.”
“Of course.”
I was quiet, searching for what to say, for a way to gracefully bring up Amber. “I had to drive up here to Woodborough. Margaret handed me another case.”
“I heard.”
I gave Lien-hua the rundown, and when she spoke again her tone had softened. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sending a surprise up there for you. It should arrive tomorrow.”
Lien-hua’s surprises were always intimate and always memorable. “Hmm. I suppose it won’t do any good to ask what it is?”
“If I told you what it was, it wouldn’t be—”
“Sure, I know—a surprise—but I won’t hold full disclosure against you this time. I promise.”