Dead Deceiver

by Victoria Houston

  “Will do.”

  Lew and Osborne made it to the Schumacher’s in less than eight minutes. As they pulled up, Roger stepped out of the squad car and walked back to Lew’s cruiser. “I haven’t seen a thing. No movement, nothing. I scoured the front of the place with the floods but no luck so I turned them off. I can see better in the dark.”

  “Did you keep an eye on that boathouse?” said Lew, looking over Roger’s shoulder as she got out of the car.

  “Yep, didn’t see nothin.”

  “Okay.” Lew reached into the trunk for a large torchlight, which she switched on as she started towards the Schumacher’s driveway. “Doc, you wait here with Roger. Call the Schumachers on your cell and tell them to stay on the line. I will approach the house along one side of the driveway—right where you see those shadows. If they hear someone moving inside, see if they can tell where that person might be.”

  “Careful, Lewellyn,” said Osborne, “be very careful.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Torch off, she slipped into the darkness near the Schmacher’s garage. The black parka made it easy for her to disappear into the shadows. Osborne, watching over the hood of Roger’s squad car and with Charles on the line, held his breath. He noticed that Lew’s boots left footprints in the light snow that had fallen during the night. His eyes searched the front yard but he could see no sign of other footprints. Odd. Had the intruder entered through the back of the house?

  The midnight air was ice-cold and a mournful wind moved through the tops of the pines surrounding the two-story frame house. It had a wide veranda running across the front, which Lew had just begun to move across. Stooping low, she stopped to shine the torch through the first of four wide picture windows. When she was satisfied she could see nothing through that one, she moved on to the next.

  “Do you hear anything?” Osborne asked Charles, keeping his voice low and his mouth close to the phone.

  “Someone on the front porch.”

  “That’s Chief Ferris—any movement inside the house?”

  “Not right now, not that I can tell …”

  After looking long and hard through the fourth and final window, Lew turned off the torch and stood still, listening. She stepped off the end of the veranda into knee-deep snow that crunched as she moved. Osborne thought he heard a soft curse. Ray had been right—the surface was frozen hard enough to hurt.

  At the back of the house, she paused to run the beam of the torch across the backyard. Signaling that she saw nothing, she returned to the veranda, crossed to the other side of the house and checked the backyard from that angle along with the garage and the east side of the house. She tried a side door—it was locked. She tried a door on the side of the garage and it was locked, too.

  Back on the veranda, she knocked snow off her boots and walked to the front door where she knocked loudly, “Mr. Schumacher? This is Chief Ferris—please open the door.”

  A long pause before lights came on in the living room. Charles Schumacher appeared at the front door. He was wearing a dark-colored bathrobe over blue pajamas. At the sight of Lew, he opened the door wide and beckoned her inside. She turned and waved to Osborne, “Doc, Roger, come on in.”

  “No footprints around the house and the only tracks right now are mine in the driveway,” said Lew. “Roger said it has been snowing since ten so anyone entering would have left some trace. I also tried the locks on all your doors—nothing open.” The Schumachers were sitting side by side on a living room sofa facing Lew. Both in their bathrobes, Patience was still shaking. “Someone was on my computer, I swear,” she said, voice cracking as she pushed a wet Kleenex against her eyes.

  “Show me,” said Lew.

  “All right,” said Patience with a loud sniff. With that, everyone stood to follow her down a wide carpeted hallway to a woodsy den that held several upholstered chairs and a large desk on which sat a laptop computer connected to a wide-screen monitor. Behind the desk, against the wall, was a router and modem with all their lights flashing.

  “Do you always leave your computer on overnight?” asked Lew.

  “I like to turn it off,” said Patience. “The techs at the college tell me to leave it on but I hate to waste electricity. The router and the modem stay on but not the laptop. I realize that doesn’t make sense. When it comes to computers, I am technologically challenged.” She gave a weak grin and Osborne realized how frightened she was. “I depend on our techs for everything.”

  “Tell me this—have you had any computer issues recently?”

  “Kind of,” said Patience, shooting a questioning look at Charles as if she wanted his approval to discuss something. “Um, someone has been emailing our students using my name and email and trying to sell them stuff—teeth whitener, smartphones, expensive textbooks. I can assure you that is not me doing that.”

  Charles’ face seemed to fall as he said to Lew, “That is one of the issues that has been weighing on my wife. Someone is hacking into her email but no one, not even the woman who runs the computer tech department, can figure it out—much less stop it.”

  “I see,” said Lew. She glanced down at her watch. “It’s very late, folks. We all need some sleep. Now what we know is that no one has entered your home this evening—I guarantee that from checking outside and in. Do you think you can relax and get some sleep?”

  “If we keep the bedroom door locked and chair up against it,” said Patience in a grim tone.

  “If it makes you feel better, do that. We’ll talk late in the morning. I’d like to discuss this with our tech and see if he has time to check your computer set-up.”

  As if it had heard itself discussed, the laptop computer wheezed, darkened and shut down only to make a pinging noise as it booted back up. The speakers beeped and the CD-Rom drive opened and shut and opened and shut. Everyone watched, speechless.

  CHAPTER 14

  Bleary-eyed and desperately in need of a full night’s sleep, Osborne shouldered his way through the door into McDonald’s. It was six-thirty and the coffee crowd was already deep into their second and third cups of coffee.

  “Hey, Doc,” said a chorus of voices. “How’s it going?”

  Osborne waved off the question, got his first mug of coffee and plopped himself into a chair. “I am … dead … tired,” he said, borrowing a speech pattern from Ray. “Beat. Too old for this.”

  That led to a series of raised eyebrows and half smirks. His buddies might know better than to crack tasteless jokes but the thought was in their eyes. And some of it was jealousy.

  Osborne had to cackle. “Nah, not what you think, fellas. Lew got an emergency call just before midnight and we didn’t get back until after three. By that time my adrenaline level made it impossible to get back to sleep.”

  Still those teasing eyes, so he changed the subject. “Say, who was it was saying about Patience Schumacher recently? Something about that guy she married?”

  “That would be me,” said Wayne French through a mouthful of sausage egg McMuffin. He wiped at his lips with a crumpled napkin before saying more. Osborne waited, but Wayne took another bite.

  Wayne French was a general contractor who would work only in Loon Lake and even then only jobs outside the town proper. He refused jobs in Rhinelander or Eagle River because of what he considered “ridiculous building codes”—or was it “ridiculous building inspectors?” Osborne was too tired to remember.

  “So … I don’t remember what I said exactly,” said Wayne once the sandwich was gone, mopping crumbs off the table with his napkin. “All I know is she married this fellow that I hired to paint the interior walls of her house.”

  “You sure that’s right?” asked Osborne. “I was told the man is an artist. He paints pictures. You know, like outdoor scenes or something.”

  “Oh ho,” snorted Wayne, “maybe he does now. But when my crew did the work in that house of hers—had to tear out the wainscoting on the master bedroom ceiling twice before that woman was happy—hundred tho
usand dollars of time and materials and I ain’t makin’ that up! I hired Chuck to paint the walls and stain the moldings. That’s how they met. Before the remodeling was done, they were engaged.”

  Osborne stared at him. “You’re kidding. How long ago was this?”

  “Less than a year ago. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” said Osborne. “Ran into the guy the other day and found him interesting.”

  “Interesting and bone broke,” said Wayne. “Man, that sucker lucked out. Wish I could meet a woman with a million times my bank account. Hell, I’d think twice even if she did look like Patience Schumacher.”

  “C’mon, Wayne,” said Osborne, shaking his head. “That’s not kind. I’m sure those two have more in common than that.”

  “I dunno,” said Wayne, going for a refill. “I been around enough I seen some weird pairings in my life and that one takes the cake.”

  “Where’s he from? Around here somewhere?”

  “Says he grew up on a dairy farm outside Rhinelander. Lived on the West Coast with his first wife, he said—but never would say what he did in those days. I just assumed he’s made his way doing odd jobs. Gave me a P.O. box for his checks and never did give me a Social Security number. Said he’d take care of it.”

  “We’re talking about the same guy, right?” asked Osborne. “Charles Mason.”

  “Charles? Hell, no. Chuck’s how I know him.”

  The door to Lew’s office was closed when Osborne arrived at seven thirty. He gave a light knock before opening and poked his head around the door to be sure it was okay to enter. She was on the phone and waved him in.

  “Okay, thank you, tomorrow then. I’ll inform the family,” she said as she hung up. She looked up at Osborne saying, “The hearse will return Kathy Beltner’s body to the funeral home tomorrow morning,” she said. “They’ve finished the autopsy and just have the paperwork to complete.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Osborne. “I know Rob and his girls will appreciate the hearse, Lewellyn.” She gave him a sidelong glance intended to dismiss the comment. Osborne was one of few people who knew that when autopsies were required to be conducted at a distance from Loon Lake, she paid for the hearse transport out of her own pocket. The town had no budget for that service and soon after her promotion to Chief, Lew discovered that Pecore shuttled victims who had died of unnatural causes in the back of his pick-up truck.

  “I refuse to allow abuse like that on my watch,” Lew had said, and that was that.

  “Surprise, surprise, Doc,” said Lew, leaning on her elbows, fingers steepled. “No help from Wausau on this situation with Patience Schumacher and the computer issues. According to my best buddy down there,” she said in a tone heavy with sarcasm, “if Internet fraud is involved, then it’s for the Feds to work.”

  After mimicking the dismissive tone of the head of the Wausau Crime Lab, she fixed Osborne with a long look. The director of the crime lab made no secret of the fact that he believed women in law enforcement belonged behind a desk. No guns, no cruisers, no surveillance training “for girls.” Hence no love was lost between Chief Lewellyn Ferris and the professional she had to rely on when the crime lab and its technicians were needed.

  “Good. Gets that jerk off your back, Lew. I’d call the FBI right now,” said Osborne.

  “I did and that went nowhere. They think it’s just a couple of college kids hacking in and they don’t have time to bother with it. Plus they loaned their computer tech to Ironwood where some bank has had a rash of identity theft.”

  “But Ironwood is in Michigan!”

  “That’s what I said. All I could get out of the FBI agent this morning was that if we can find the student behind this, then they will step in. So we do the work, they handle the arrest and get the credit. Any way you look at it, I’m screwed.”

  “Maybe not you, but Patience Schumacher sure is. And her campus.”

  “Exactly.” Lew’s eyes widened. “Campus? Campus. There’s a thought, Doc. Gina Palmer! Why didn’t I think of her before? She was awarded a fellowship to teach computer-assisted investigative reporting this year at the School Of Journalism in Madison. I’ll bet she’s got a grad student who can help us out.”

  “Worth a try,” said Osborne.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Hey, bad girl!” A husky voice with a mobster edge crackled over the speakerphone on Lew’s desk. For Osborne, the staccato burst of harsh sound triggered an instant image—a pixie of a woman always in black. A cap of glossy straight black hair, glittering ebony eyes, a wicked sense of humor and that dark voice: Gina Palmer.

  She didn’t strike Osborne as an academic—someone adept at the sketchy politics of university life—though he knew she had talents unique in the world of journalism. Gina was one of few journalists mathematically inclined to design the software needed to support database-driven investigative reporting. From workman’s comp to illegal processing of human tissue, she could tackle innocuous-appearing data and distill patterns both informative and damning.

  “Yeah, well, I made one big mistake two months ago,” Gina’s voice came through the speakerphone, her signature staccato that made you feel like you were running to catch up instead of listening. “My appointment ran out end of December and for some crazy reason I accepted an offer to teach for another two years. I have a terrific team of grad students and our department just won a big grant from the federal government to continue developing investigative software for the FBI, CIA and NSA. Fun stuff. What are you folks up to?”

  Lew waited before answering, not sure if Gina really was ready to listen—but it was a legitimate opening

  “Hey,” said Lew. “If I can squeeze a few bucks out of the budget, I sure could use help from you or your students on a case I have. The FBI should have taken it—computer fraud—but they’ve blown me off saying it’s small potatoes and they’re too busy. The situation is that we have a new tech college at the mercy of a hacker or team of hackers rampaging through their system.”

  “Tell me more,” said Gina.

  “Thank you,” said Lew with a sigh of relief. “I would very much appreciate your feedback.” She described the disturbances Patience Schumacher was experiencing with the computers in her home and at the college. “Sound like anything your team might help us with?”

  “Help you? Tell you what,” said Gina, sounding excited, “I’ve been looking for a case study like this to complete my dissertation. “Let me talk to my students—we’re meeting later today—and see what I can round up. Meantime, why don’t you see the computer tech on site at the college, someone we can coordinate with.”

  “Can you let me know the approximate cost when we talk next?” asked Lew.

  “Maybe nothing,” said Gina. “This could be considered research under the grants we just got. But I’ll see. Hey, I got a small favor to ask. I got the utility bill for my cabin and it is way up. Could you ask Ray to check and see if the furnace is going crazy—or maybe the pump for my well has run amok? Something is out of whack—it’s two hundred bucks over last month’s.”

  “I’ll ask Ray to check it out,” said Osborne, leaning into the speakerphone.

  “Thanks, Doc. Talk to you folks later.”

  Setting the phone down, Lewellyn Ferris beamed up at Osborne as she said, “Case study for a dissertation? I want to see a case study that shows the goddamn Wausau boys and the Feds a thing or two. This may be the last time they blow me off.”

  “As far as paying for Gina and her team,” said Osborne. “I’ll bet Patience Schumacher would be more than happy to subsidize their work.”

  Lew’s eyes widened with happy speculation, “Doc, you are so right. I’ll touch base with Patience this morning before I try squeezing another penny here. If she’ll come through, the mayor will love me.”

  Ray’s voice on Osborne’s cell phone sounded far away if not slightly slurred. “Ray, you there and okay?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “I’m in Lew’s office an
d we just got off the phone with Gina Palmer. The last utility bill on her cabin was very high. She was hoping you could check her place out and see if something has been left on—the furnace, the water pump, something is not working right out there. Think you have time to check on that later today?”

  The sound of bed covers rustling. “Doc, did you say Gina Palmer?”

  “Right. Lew’s got her helping out with a computer glitch out at the tech college—we’ll be talking to her later. The sooner the better if you can manage it. Ray.”

  “Lemme get over to her cottage and shee what I can do.” Again the worrisome slur.

  “Thanks, hold on a second.” Osborne covered the phone with his hand as he whispered to Lew, “Think of something. I’m worried he’s drinking again. I could be wrong but—”

  “Dinner. Invite him to my place for dinner tonight. Suzanne arrives this afternoon. No kids. She’s feeling pretty low. Might help both of them to know they aren’t the only one suffering. Sometimes sharing someone’s else’s pain helps you gain some perspective on your own life—know what I mean, Doc?

  “And you know how Ray loves helping people out—let’s put Suzanne on his radar and see if that might change his focus a little.” Lew grinned. “It’ll certainly change hers. Those two were just a few years apart in high school and I remember at least one of Suzanne’s girlfriends had a crush on Ray. At the very least we’ll have good food and a chance for pleasant conversation that may get both their minds off their respective problems for a short time.”

  “Good idea,” said Osborne, taking his hand off the phone. “Ray, Chief Ferris would like for you to come to dinner at her farm this evening. Her daughter, Suzanne, is driving up from Milwaukee and she thought it would be nice to have a few friends over. Are you free?”

  “Sure.” Ray sounded surprised. “Want me to bring some walleyes?”