Dead Creek

by Victoria Houston

  Initially, Ray appeared to be like any other bright middle-class kid with athletic talent. In high school he was a star basketball player, and Osborne, like the other parents, expected to see him hit the fast track: an athletic scholarship to Marquette University likely to be followed by a little pro or semipro ball and on to a career in insurance or banking, maybe stocks and bonds. But life yanked early at Ray. When a tournament game blew both his knees out, he lost the college scholarship. Though his father could certainly afford to send him anywhere he wanted to go, Ray decided against college.

  Choosing the water and the woods over books, he spent his first year out of high school bushwhacking his way through the swamps and forests, living off the land. Before he turned twenty, he had become one of the North-woods’ most sought-after fishing and hunting guides. When the brutal winters would force his wealthy clientele from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee to flee south or west, Ray would augment his income by shoveling snow and digging graves.

  To Osborne and his other buddies at McDonald’s, Ray might live from dollar to dollar, but he seemed a happy man. A fellow whose early-morning grin signaled the fish were biting. An optimist who took his coffee black and had a storehouse of bad jokes: “So what’s the epitaph for old man Spencer, that crazy Packer fan? G-o-o Deep!”

  But Mary Lee was uncompromising. Vistas, not fish, counted in her world. The day came when her unreasonable, unrelenting crabbing at Ray—even though she took care to avoid another shouting match—forced Osborne to betray her.

  One balmy summer night, while she was out with her bridge group, Osborne ambled down the rutted, leaf-strewn drive with a six-pack of Leinenkugel in hand. Joining Ray where he sat on the wooden bench that anchored the end of his new dock, the two men had gazed west, drinking the beers and talking weed beds and muskie lures while the sun set in glorious streaks of violet and bronze. The next morning, a string of fresh bluegills, cleaned and ready for the frying pan, appeared on Osborne’s back porch and, later that same day, the offending trailer was moved a critical twenty feet.

  Mary Lee still ranted, of course. Osborne knew better than to tell his wife to shut up. He did, however, give her a dim eye. She got the message and toned it down, but she never gave up, muttering a never-ending list of complaints against the bearded, classless interloper. These she was wise enough to voice in the confines of her own home.

  Several months later, as the first blizzard of the season raged through the Northwoods, Mary Lee’s lingering bronchitis turned deadly, her fever ratcheting up to 104, and her breath rasping in her chest. The windchill was 50 degrees below zero with blowing snow four to five feet deep in drifts across their driveway. Desperate to get his wife to the hospital, Osborne phoned his neighbor, the only man with a snowplow along Loon Lake Road. Within minutes, Ray had mounted the plow on the front of his pickup and was pushing through the bitter blackness for a woman who had done her best to make his life miserable.

  “If you go off the road, Doc, you’ll need help,” was all he said when he insisted on accompanying Osborne to the hospital. He stayed the long two hours that the trauma team worked on Mary Lee, and he was there when the young surgeon emerged to tell Osborne he lost her on the table. Ray waited as he signed a few papers, then drove Osborne in silence to his daughter’s home. On the way, Osborne tried to apologize for Mary Lee, but Ray stopped him short. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to hear it. Doesn’t matter, Doc; never did.”

  He also had the good sense to wait a few months before he gave Osborne his suggestion for Mary Lee’s headstone: “I told you I was sick.”

  And so it was that seduced by bluegills and Ray’s unfailing good nature, Osborne found himself looking forward to their daily chats. Soon they were fishing together: an odd couple.

  Ray was the opposite of the reserved, soft-spoken dentist who was old enough to be his father. A natural-born storyteller whose greatest pleasure was holding court among friends and strangers, Ray loved people. He loved commiserating in taverns, on boat landings, in bait shops, or in diners, sharing tales of the big buck that got away, the deceased farmer who was so large he had to be buried in a septic tank—“They just don’t make grave liners that big”—and other variations on the grim and hilarious lives lived deep in the backwoods. He amazed Osborne with his ability to turn any story into an epic filled with the humor of human error. But even as he was famous for telling a good story, he was equally famed for his inability to end it. Almost always his audience had to scream for the punchline. Still, they loved him.

  Osborne observed early in their friendship that he wasn’t the only one to appreciate Ray. The man seemed to know everyone in a fifty-mile radius of Loon Lake: male, female, young, old, well-heeled, or homeless. He knew them and vice versa: everyone waved back at Ray.

  Right now, he was the one man Osborne was happy to have on the chair next to him. He could pull answers from places where few thought to go.

  “You eyeing the Wild Turkey?” asked Ray after Osborne unloaded his tale. With the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he pulled at his beard absentmindedly, thinking over Osborne’s story. The two men stared at the rows of bottles that ran along the wall at the back of the darkening bar.

  “No,” said Osborne. “I’m checking out the Bushmills. Care to join me?”

  “Wouldn’t blame you if you did.” Ray’s voice stayed even. Osborne swung his stool slightly to glance at Ray. The two men had shared more than a few hours in the room at the top of the stairs behind the door with the AA coffeepot on its window. Ray had his own demons, and Mary Lee’s death had been a little unsettling for Osborne. However irritating she might have been, the woman had filled his life to the edges and left a huge hole when she died. But he was dry eighteen months now.

  Just as he decided to go for a ginger ale, the door to the bar swung open.

  “Well, folks,” he heard Ray say just a little too loudly, “he-e-re’s Johnnie!”

  “Dr. Osborne.” John Sloan nodded at Osborne with the special deference he granted to all professional men, important men like himself.

  Ray he acknowledged with a lesser tilt of his head as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his navy blue down parka.

  “Did Lucy tell you I’m standing in for Chief Ferris till she’s gets back Sunday night?”

  “She did,” said Osborne. “Sorry about this.”

  “You’re sorry? I’ve got a bigger problem. Pecore is sicker ‘n a dog.”

  “You gotta be kiddin',” said Ray, swinging around on his bar stool, “you got murder and the coroner’s got the flu? Doncha think he can drag himself outta bed for this one? From what Doc’s told me, we’re not lookin’ at dead crayfish here.”

  “Well, he can’t,” said Sloan, as he stood a little sheepishly in front of the two men. It was clear he’d already tried, threats and all.

  “He’s that sick,” said Osborne.

  “He’s hugging the throne.”

  “That may not be all bad, John,” said Ray dryly. “At least his dogs won’t be licking up your evidence.” Osborne took note of an authoritative tone in Ray’s voice. It surprised him. Sloan looked a little taken aback, too.

  On the other hand, Pecore was not exactly respected in town. A pathologist of questionable skill, he had irritated the townspeople when they discovered he let his two golden retreivers roam unrestricted in his lab. Truth was, the dogs probably minded their own business, but Loon Lake residents were appalled. Since county law dictated that every death in the community had to be run by Pecore, many families had taken to accompanying the bodies of loved ones through the entire process just to be sure the canines didn’t lick Grandma.

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Sloan. “I put a call in to Wausau, but none of the state men can get up here until tomorrow morning, if then. They’re all strung out over a designer drug bust outside of Stevens Point. They got paperwork up the wazoo to do for the feds yesterday.”

  “Gosh, John,” said Osborne, “how lo
ng can you put off any investigation?”

  “Well … not too long, y’know. But I do not want to touch or move anything wthout being able to photograph and ID the bodies at the site.”

  “John, my call went in on this damned party line,” said Osborne. “I hate to say it, but you’re gonna have every goombah with a boat that floats over there eyeballing that situation very shortly.”

  The chief just raised his hands and shook his head in complete frustration. “I know, I know. I’ve got two men and a boat with me….”

  “I’ve got my thirty-five-millimeter in my truck,” said Ray, who also made a few bucks on the side selling wildlife photos to local calendar printers. “You’re welcome to use it, or I’ll shoot some for you.”

  “That’s a thought,” said Osborne to Sloan.

  “Yeah, that’s possible. The boat’s got a nice wide deck and plenty of floods on board to make it easy to light the scene. Hell, Pecore just uses his twenty-year-old Polaroid. They sure can’t hold me responsible for doing the damn IDs underwater now, can they? I mean, if we get a quick-and-dirty check and shoot those bodies down to Wausau first thing in the morning. That should work, don’t ya think?”

  Sloan looked away from the two men for a moment, then he said, “Yeah, let’s do it. Just you make sure I get all the negatives. I don’t need official records being shown around to all your drinking buddies, Pradt.”

  “C’mon, I can make ten bucks apiece on those mothers,” Ray teased Sloan but quickly stopped when he saw the man start to glower. “Of course not. I’ll give you the camera and let you take the film out yourself.”

  “Oh shit,” said Sloan. “That’s a problem. How’m I gonna get the photos processed? The photo shop’s closed. I suppose I could take the film over to the newspaper, but then I’ll have the paper all over me to give them some photos, and that’s the last thing I need.”

  Right then, Osborne could see that John Sloan had never handled a case like this, and he was afraid he was going to screw it up. Retiring just about a year ago after thirty-five years on the force, Sloan had taken pride in the smooth running of his small department that serviced a town of less than three thousand people. Now he was considering a run for mayor. He didn’t need to look like an idiot when the high-tech cops from the big city came in to review his police work.

  “I’ll do that, too, if you want,” volunteered Ray. “I do my own processing. Why don’t you wait until we’re at the scene and decide? You may be fine waiting till tomorrow on ‘em. Otherwise, my place is just down the road right next door to the Doc’s. It’ll take less than an hour to get you some eight-by-ten black-and-white prints, even color. You tell me, I can do both.”

  “Color.” Sloan turned to Osborne, “Doc, can you do a dental ID?”

  “He sure can. Let’s go!” said Ray, jumping off his stool and heading for the door.

  Osborne turned to his buddy with a look of astonishment on his face.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “What’s your problem, Doc? You did a great job for Lew on that body in the river.”

  “That was one body,” said Osborne, “and I knew the victim. She was a patient. This is different.”

  “C’mon, Doc,” urged Ray. “Chief Sloan, the good dentist here told me he ID’d corpses during the Korean War.”

  “That’s right, I did—for about two days,” said Osborne, shooting Ray a dirty look. “I did bodies in bad shape, too. But today they use DNA….”

  “Pecore?” Ray snorted. “You kidding? He uses Braille with his gloves on.”

  “What do you say, Doctor?” Sloan’s eyes looked brighter. “If you could just log the basics, that gives me enough. Here’s all I got to do: Get enough of an ID so we can match each body later with what we see tonight. My men can pack them carefully for the morgue, then the state boys take over in the morning and do a complete forensic analysis. But we’ve got to get over there before I’ve got the whole town on the scene and before anybody fools around and moves a thing.”

  “C’mon, John, they aren’t going to touch those bodies.” Osborne found himself very leery to get close to the nightmare.

  “They’re sure as hell going to trample all over any evidence on the ground and they’re going to grind up any marks you might have on some of those submerged boulders,” said Pradt quietly. Both men looked at him. He was right.

  “Sure,” said Osborne suddenly, bluntly. “I’ll do the dental ID. John, I’ll do the best I can. In the war, I did a full-mouth exam on site and later, when I assisted on reconstructive surgery for some of the men who’d had their faces blown to hell, I did some bone work that might help here. If you want, I can sketch the muscle and bone profile for each jaw….”

  “He’ll knock the socks off the Wausau boys,” said Pradt.

  “I don’t know about that.” Osborne stood up from the bar stool. It’d been three years since his retirement, and he was finding it felt good to be an expert again. He’d handled dead bodies before and managed. With the cold water as a preservative this might not be as bad as some he’d worked on.

  “John, can you give me a ride down to my house so I can get my dog squared away and pick up my instruments?” Since helping Lew six months ago, he had kept his black bag just inside the linen closet, hoping he might have the chance to use it again. Too bad she was out of town. That made the job grim and only grim.

  As he started to walk out behind Sloan, Osborne glanced into the mirror behind the bar. He saw himself looking quite normal, which surprised him, given how tense he felt. As usual, he was in his fishing khakis with his favorite dark green fishing hat clamped down tight to protect his bald pate. His deeply tanned face looked the same, too. The high cheekbones inherited from his mother’s family stretched his skin so he still looked younger, he always thought, than his sixty-three years.

  He glanced back at Ray, slouching along behind him. Ray’s eyes caught and held his in the mirror. As he plopped his trout hat back on his head, the younger man raised his eyebrows in speculation. Osborne figured they were both thinking the exact same thing: Just where was this little ride going to take them?

  four

  Only dead fish swim with the stream.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Loon Lake was black under the big police boat. An icy froth sprayed their faces as the boat turned sharply from Keane’s to fly on a diagonal across the lake. A north wind blasted Osborne full in the face. Though it was still light, the sun had dipped below the tree line on the shore they were approaching, casting lengthy shadows out across the water.

  “Slow down,” he shouted after five minutes had passed and the boat neared the shoreline. He could feel his face turning wooden in the cold as he hollered over the roar of the engine. “There’s a rock just under the surface along here that I use as a marker. You hit it and that’s the end of your propeller.”

  Sloan cut the engines and guided the boat in sudden silence along the shore. Osborne rose from his seat, legs wide apart to steady himself in the flat-bottomed cruiser and raked the beam of a large floodlight through the water beneath them until he spotted the huge rock. “Hold up, we got it. Okay, sharp right.” He moved from the left side of the boat to the center. He did not want to be the first to touch base this time.

  “No lights,” said Sloan. “I don’t want anyone following us in here until I’m ready.” They had spotted a few fishing boats at a distance, but none seemed concerned about them. The entry to the creek was well disguised by a peninsula of tamarack that jutted out and curved to hide the inlet.

  Ray stood in the back of the boat, his camera hanging from a strap around his neck. He, too, spread his legs for balance as he scanned the woods while the boat nosed its way up the creek.

  The boat drifted forward. The only sound now was everyone in the boat breathing. Sloan stood beside Osborne with two deputies leaning, one on each side, against the sides of the boat, their eyes raking the water. Osborne didn’t know the younger one well
. Lew had hired him the week before she left for the East Coast. But Roger, a mild-tempered man who’d failed in the real estate business, was a former patient. A bland soul in Osborne’s book, Roger struck him as quite out of place in law enforcement, but then, thought Osborne, maybe his agreeable nature made it work. After all, his job tonight was to do the dirty physical work so Sloan could stand by with his hands in his pockets and look important.

  Ray kept vigil in the back of the boat. A cloud cover was hastening nightfall. Matte blackness moved in from behind. Dense brush closed in on all sides as the boat, which suddenly seemed smaller, drifted forward.

  “Maybe we missed it?” Sloan’s voice cracked hoarsely. A barred owl hooted from a few feet into the brush, and everyone jerked around.

  Suddenly, a soft grinding sound came from right beneath their feet.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said Osborne and pointed to his right. “There’s a knoll over there where you can pull up. Be careful, this is all swamp back in here, you can slip and go up to your shoulders.”

  The boat swung to the side and away from the hazard in the shallow creek. Dusk had definitely settled, and the surface was opaque.

  “How deep?” Sloan grunted.

  “Four maybe five feet,” said Ray. “I had some leech traps back in here a couple years ago. Looks a little deeper now with the ice melt. I think the beavers moved things around, too.” As Ray talked, Sloan took the floodlight from its perch and turned it onto the water.

  “Holy shit!” he jumped back. He quickly recovered and moved back, training the light so everyone else could see. Osborne stepped aside. Examining what someone else had touched and moved would be one thing; seeing this vision again was quite another.