Deadly Season

by Alison Bruce

  I checked my eCom. Though I wasn’t expecting anything from the lab this soon, I was happy to see a message from Mohr. I was going to owe him big time for this.

  Jake emerged from the bathroom.

  “You were saying.”

  “The Chief’s right. We can’t count on getting high profile cases. We’ll be called in for support, but we won’t get the kind of cases my father got—not at first. The thing is, the first thing my father taught me, that was the most important thing about solving a case, was solving it. If you can take the stand in court and present the facts clearly, so that no one can shake your testimony, then you’ve done your job—whether it was a high-profile homicide or a traffic accident.”

  Jake looked sceptical, but I knew my father had said something similar to him.

  “Okay,” was all he said before turning off the light and taking the opposite edge of the bed.

  Then he turned toward me.

  “You’ve solved the case.”

  “No, not that,” I said, grinning up at him in the dark. “But I now know where the bodies are buried.”

  21

  December 22

  “Kathleen Margaret Garrett!”

  “We better get up,” said Jake. “The Chief sounds like an angry thunder god.”

  We were back-to-back in bed. I was warm and comfortable and really wanted five more minutes like this. Maybe ten if my bladder held out.

  “Do you want to the bathroom first?”

  What a gentleman.

  “Go ahead. I can wait. Besides, I think the Chief wants to yell at me right now.”

  I was pretty sure the only reason my godfather hadn’t come downstairs to shout at me was because he was afraid that Jake and I would be doing something he didn’t want to see. Our night had been completely platonic, if you didn’t count my dreams. He didn’t need to know that. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t bother getting dressed. I decided to face the music with bedhead and jolly snowmen. Naturally that meant the Chief had company.

  “Good look for you, Garrett.”

  “Good morning to you too, Mohr.”

  “Sit! You too, Constable.”

  We sat at the kitchen table as ordered. It was round but the Chief managed to look as if he were at the head of it anyway.

  “I understand that Mohr has been helping you with your investigations. I wasn’t aware he had been seconded to Carmedy and Garrett Investigations.”

  “You did say I could have some police support.”

  The Chief growled but Mohr interrupted.

  “Your understanding is incorrect, sir. I was following up on my own case which overlaps Garrett’s.”

  “Are you turning lawyer on me, Constable?”

  Mohr gave the Chief the stare. Few officers would be so brave.

  “Chief, you are my superior in rank, but I’m not one of your detectives. I’m a community cop. One of my jobs is to prevent crime, or at least prevent it from escalating. So, when Mr. Crabbe sexually harassed and physically assaulted Garrett, it was my job to follow up. Garrett did ask me to keep one aspect of the situation confidential as long as possible. I think you’d agree we don’t want one of our own being slandered. Joe was one of our own at the time of the crime he was being accused of.”

  Jake walked in at this point. The Chief waved in the direction of the coffee carafe. First, Jake put a hooded jacket over my shoulders. It was one of his, so I was able to put my bandaged hand through the sleeve without discomfort.

  “Do you know about this, Jacob?”

  Jake brought the carafe and four mugs to the table.

  “I know about the accusation. Cream anyone?”

  “I don’t take cream,” said Mohr.

  “We don’t have cream,” said the Chief. “Only milk.”

  “Then I won’t take milk.” He pulled a black coffee towards him and pushed one to me. “Can I continue, Chief?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Crabbe is convinced that Joe was complicit in the murder of his friend, Blake Collins—the guy that shot Joe, in case you forgot.”

  The Chief growled.

  “I wouldn’t forget.”

  “His evidence is mostly circumstantial, with a side order of hearsay. The one thing he witnessed was Detective Marten leaving with Collins and his wife, in the car that witnesses saw Collins pack earlier. Since he was so sure Marten was in control, he didn’t think it worthwhile to figure out where they went.”

  Mohr smirked.

  “Last night I asked Crabbe if he knew where Collins would go. If he was the one in control.”

  That’s what I messaged Mohr about last night. His reply was: “DTYGTSE.” Don’t Teach Your Grandmother To Suck Eggs. I had no idea how old Mohr was, but he had the soul of a man two generations older.

  “As soon as I left Crabbe, I called Ziggy.”

  “So he could call in Nelly,” said the Chief, only his usual gruff now.

  Jake nudged me.

  “Ziggy is a field geek,” I explained. “His Uncle Mort is a dog trainer and handler. Nelly is his cadaver dog.”

  “A Human Remains Detection dog,” said Jake. “I’ve worked with them in the past.”

  I shook my head.

  “Mort is old school and calls a cadaver a cadaver.”

  “Mort and Nelly will be arriving here…” Mohr checked his watch, “any time now.”

  I looked at the Chief. He nodded and I rushed downstairs to dress. Since rushing is relative when you’re a bit dopy from painkillers, I wasn’t out of earshot when Mohr announced to my godfather and partner, “She still looks cute first thing in the morning.”

  22

  Jake brought my coffee downstairs and found me struggling with my bra.

  I had been prepared enough to bring some day clothes with me in case I stayed over. The denim joggers were a bit casual for day wear, but I just had to pull them on. The tunic was loose and flowing and dressed the outfit up a bit, but I couldn’t put it on until I untangled my bra.

  “Can you help me out?”

  This was a two handed-operation and I was down a hand.

  He sighed and set down the coffee. I almost told him that he didn’t have to if I was too much trouble. Once again, the pain meds kept me from jumping to the wrong conclusion.

  “I’m just one of the guys to you, aren’t I?”

  “Huh?”

  He turned me so he could get at the back of my bra where it had rolled up into an uncomfortable twist. He undid the back, smoothed out the stretch fabric and hooked me up again. A hundred years of progress and bras still did up with a hook and eye fasteners.

  “What do you mean, ‘One of the guys.’?” I asked.

  He eased the sleeve of my tunic over my bandaged hand. Then I pushed my other arm through before Jake pulled the garment over my head.

  “I mean, you don’t see me as a man.”

  “Actually, sometimes you remind me of my mother.”

  With something between a laugh and huff, he sat heavily on the bed. I sat down beside him.

  “I’m trying to treat you like my partner, like I treat Valerio and Mohr—who only saw me first thing in the morning because I fell asleep on the bullpen couch. How would you like me to treat you?”

  “Like that, but…”

  I didn’t find out what the “but” was. The Chief bellowed down the stairs that Mort and Nelly had arrived.

  I called dibs on the Mort-mobile. Mort could only take one non-canine passenger in his customized HUV. That meant I could avoid lectures or questions for ten minutes. That was all the time it took reach the area where Stinktown bordered on the corridor of naturalized greenspace that divided it from one of the University’s fields. By any other name, it was a hedgerow. Industrial farming had eliminated most of them. Eco-farming brought them back.

  Stinktown was one of the sanctioned shanty towns that ringed the city. Its name came from the odor emitted by the City’s Recycling Centre’s methane plant. No one wanted to live there except t
he people who had nowhere else to live.

  Snow hadn’t accumulated in the city core, but out here there was a thin layer of white over everything. The odd assortment of temporary and semi-permanent buildings never looked better. The deeper snow near the hedgerow showed signs of rabbits and deer passing through. It made me wish I had taller boots with me.

  Mort let Nelly out of the back and introduced her to me. She was a slightly shaggier, canine version of her partner, who looked like a human golden retriever. She gave me her paw and let me make a fuss of her for a couple of minutes. Then it was time for her to work.

  “Crabbe says there are a couple of clearings in the hedgerow,” said Mohr. “Collins grew up in Stinktown and knew the area well. As teens, they’d party in there until the Stinktowners found them and kicked them out.”

  “I need to give Nelly space,” said Mort. “You need to give me space. Kate, Nelly’s met you so you can stay with me. The rest of you hang back.”

  “Kate’s injured,” said Jake.

  “That’s okay. Nelly won’t mind.” Mort pulled a walking stick out of his HUV and handed it to me. “That’ll help you keep your balance.”

  On the whole, despite the cold, wet and rough terrain, staying with Mort was probably the softer option. The Chief was angry at me. Jake was confusing me. And less of Mohr would probably be a good thing right now.

  There was a clear area close enough to the road that I could see the black HUVs through the bare branches. Mort signalled me to stop while Nelly traversed the area, back and forth, sometimes stopping, but never lying down to indicate she found something. Periodically, Nelly would look back at Mort, Mort would look back at me and I’d look back at Jake following at a distance.

  After a while the dull ache in my hand grew sharper. My painkillers were wearing off. On the upside, the effects of the opiates on my brain were wearing off too.

  Crabbe said he witnessed Blake and Irene Collins get into a car with Therese Marten. Why? He didn’t live near the Collins’s at the time. What was he doing at the apartment complex?

  If, as I deduced, Marten was the one under duress, would Collins have been able to force her into the car on his own? Maybe. Would he be able to do it without Crabbe figuring out what was going on? Less likely. Would he have gotten help from Crabbe? More likely.

  Nelly looked back at Mort. Mort looked back at me. I nodded. I don’t know if he was looking for my permission to continue, but he had it.

  However he may have aided Collins, Crabbe didn’t go along for the drive. He didn’t know what had happened to his friend. Irene probably knew and was burdened with that knowledge.

  What did Koehne know? How did Koehne know Crabbe and Collins? Would they have gone to the same high school? How did the daughter of a prominent businessman marry a guy from Stinktown? Mr. Koehne Sr. was a good tenant and always treated me with courtesy, but he was a snob. Had Irene been a rebel before her spirit was broken?

  What was Koehne Jr. afraid of?

  I stubbed my toe on something under the snow and silently swore a blue streak. How the hell did Collins persuade Marten to walk this far?

  Nelly looked back at Mort. Mort looked back at me. I looked through bare branches to my right on a field, lightly sprinkled with snow, and a dirt road, wide enough for a tractor.

  Not long after, Nelly lay down. She’d found something. It was near a fallen tree that might have created an open space under its canopy when it was alive. Now it made a great bench.

  23

  I was cold, tired and in a world of pain, but I would have handcuffed myself to a tree rather than leave now.

  Nelly had done her job. She had found human remains. They could belong to someone unrelated to the case, but unless she was off her game, someone had been buried here. Mort placed a flag and Nelly sniffed around, finding nothing else. Mort took her aside and made a fuss of her, telling her what a good dog she was. I followed and made a fuss of her and discovered that if she hadn’t found anything, it would have been my job to hide so she could find me.

  “We can’t let her get frustrated,” said Mort. “Finding the body is her payoff in the game.”

  “But I’m not dead.”

  “That’s okay. She’s a search and rescue dog too.”

  Nelly and Mort stayed until the IDENT team showed up with a scanner. That’s what I was waiting for too. I’d seen them demonstrated, but never in the field. On uneven ground, it required two people in harnesses to manipulate the scanner while a certified technologist focussed and analysed the images. The tech also told the people holding the machine where to go and what to do when they got there.

  Mort’s nephew Ziggy came along to hoist the scanner even though he was a microbiologist and forensic pharmacologist. Mort offered to help, but their heights were too disparate. If Ziggy had been a dog, he would have been a Greyhound, extra-long.

  The Chief was the closest match in height, so he donned the harness. The technologist, a woman I would have to buy drinks for some day, briefed the Chief on what she expected and what she’d do to him if he didn’t pay attention. The Chief nodded and tried not to look like he was having fun with the one of the regional forensic centre’s most expensive toys.

  As soon as everything was set up, Jake and Mohr sat on either side of me on the fallen tree. For a moment I thought they might start a tug of war, but then I realized they were trying to warm me up. It was a bit claustrophobic, but I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  “Quiet everyone. The scanner is calibrated and can be accessed with passkey 2BY49. That’s Two. Bravo. Yankee. Four. Niner.”

  Those of us who could, pulled out our eCom’s and logged on. Jake didn’t have a police issue eCom, so he watched mine. Mort looked over my shoulder until Nelly got restless.

  It was like watching an ultrasound with less movement. Even when we saw something, we couldn’t be sure what it was. I wished I’d brought my tablet but I’m not sure it would have helped.

  Then there was a black shape.

  “Hold,” said the technologist. The shape resolved. It looked like the negative of a spine. “If you want a better idea of what you’re looking at, switch to enhanced mode. It’s at the top of the screen.”

  Mohr and I switched views. Real time, the scanner only showed the section it was focussed on. In enhanced mode, the program built a picture based on the collection of images.

  “What are you seeing?” asked the Chief.

  “It’s a human skeleton,” I said. “Judging by the pelvis, it looks male.”

  “That’s my conclusion too,” said the technologist. “You’ll need a forensic anthropologist to view this for confirmation, but as long as you don’t quote me, these remains are consistent with the subject you were looking for.”

  The Chief started barking orders. Mohr was designated the scene’s gatekeeper. It was up to him to record who was on the scene, for how long and what reason. His first task was to release Mort and Nelly so they could go home. Then he had to call in support to secure the scene. The soil sampler was given the job of getting a full IDENT team on site.

  “Are you done, Chief?” asked the technologist. “Because I’m not. There’s more down there—at least two more sets of remains and what looks like a police badge.”

  24

  “This is a police case now.”

  Jake and I were sitting at the Thorsen kitchen table again and the Chief had just stated the obvious. I tried counting to keep myself from saying something I’d regret later. Then I couldn’t help myself.

  “Seriously? A woman with multiple broken bones, a cat with a broken neck and a man whose skull looks like it was split with an axe lie in a single grave. Of course it’s a police case, but it’s also our case.”

  “That is an assumption based on circumstantial evidence only, Kathleen. Until the remains are unearthed and positively identified, we don’t know if they are related or not. For now, I think Jacob should take you home.”

  I hated being called Kathleen and
Jacob wasn’t Jake’s name. I know. I ran a background check on him when he started working for my father. My head hurt. My hand ached. And my godfather was getting on my nerves.

  “I agree,” said Jake.

  For a moment I thought he was agreeing with my thoughts, they were so loud in my head. No such luck.

  “There is no point jumping to conclusions when forensic evidence can give us answers.”

  The Chief nodded.

  “Besides, we have a more urgent matter.”

  Curiosity got the better of my anger. What urgent matter?

  “What urgent matter?” the Chief asked.

  “I need your help with an intervention. Kate has been insisting on doing all the packing in Joe’s apartment herself, even though she has to have it clear by the New Year so the ceiling can be replaced. Joe never got around to taking care of the water damage from last spring. I wasn’t going to interfere, but she can’t do it by herself, especially with a bad hand.”

  I had been clenching eyes shut hoping this wasn’t really happening. A huge paw I identified as my godfather’s hand covered mine. I opened my eyes.

  “I had no idea, Katie girl. I should have known.”

  Now I was going to cry. Why did Jake have to do this to me?

  “I know you want to kill me right now,” Jake said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “But I’m not trying to undermine your duty to your father. I’m just suggesting that you don’t have to do it all at once. If we pack everything up and put it in storage, the work can be done and you can go through everything later, one box at a time.”

  “He’s making good sense,” said the Chief. “We can put a posse together between the holidays.”

  “You won’t be too busy?” I asked.

  “I’m never too busy for family.” He looked as sheepish as a man who looks like a Norse god can. “At least, I try not to be.”