by Steven James
“Gonna be a cold one,” he said.
It already is.
“Yes,” I replied.
Though the sun was still low, the day had started shockingly bright, with the early morning sunlight splintering sharply off the snow. It didn’t look at all like a blizzard was on its way.
Looks can be deceiving.
I used the voice recognition on my phone’s GPS program to ask for directions to Tomahawk Lake, and we took off.
17
Snowmobile trails paralleled us on either side of the road, just beyond the snowbanks that had been shoved onto the shoulders by the plows.
If you’ve never seen a snow-covered field or forest in the North, you might imagine that the snow all looks the same, but it doesn’t. Because of the various angles of the flakes reflecting the sunlight, the woods look like they have thousands of tiny diamonds winking at you as you drive by.
Although we were a little north of Wisconsin’s prime farm country, I still saw a few cement silos resting beside barns nestled on rock or concrete foundations to help the boards weather the snow.
But most prominently, I was impressed by the sight of the forests all around us, rolling dense and thick over the hills. Birch and poplar filled in the gaps between the picturesque pines, most of which were burdened with a thick layer of postcard-worthy snow. And, from growing up in this state, I knew that beyond those trees, hidden deep in those woods, were impenetrable marshes and countless isolated lakes-Wisconsin has over fifteen thousand lakes, more than nine thousand of which still remain unnamed.
But the one we were going to was not.
We arrived at Tomahawk Lake and parked at the north shore boat landing.
No state troopers or sheriff’s deputies were there yet, and I was glad because it gave me the chance to look around uninterrupted.
Rather than police tape, yesterday’s responding officers had set up wooden blockades and orange highway cones enclosing the snowmobile tracks that led to the broken ice. Considering the locale and the likelihood that this was the scene of an accident rather than a homicide, it was about all they could do.
A twelve-foot extension ladder was chained to a sign beside the boat landing. I guessed the officers or state troopers had laid on it in order to get closer to the break in the ice when they were placing the cones.
From my research last night, I knew that the lake’s open water was caused by a series of powerful underground springs. The ribbon of water, at least a hundred meters long and a dozen meters wide, looked like a giant eel twisting along the ice, rolling over whenever the sharp wind troubled its surface.
Though we weren’t far from Highway K, the snow-laden trees lining the shore softened the sound of cars and distant snowmobiles, leaving a deep silence that only a few birdsongs tapered into.
Jake avoided the ice for the moment and walked along the shoreline. I saw that he was on the phone.
I took some time to study the lake before heading onto the ice. Tomahawk Lake was vaguely oval-shaped, a mile or so across and nearly four miles long with a series of inlets on the western shore. To the south, the water beneath the ice dispersed into a flowage that eventually fed into the Chippewa River.
Mentally overlaying the trail system against the topography of the area, I decided that the most direct route from the Pickron house to Tomahawk Lake would have been the Birch Trail, which led along the hilly northern shore stretching away from me on either side.
On a snowmobile it would probably take fifteen minutes or so to get to the lake from his house.
Although the tracks to the open water had been noted by an ice fisherman, based on the absence of ice fishing shanties, I could see that there wasn’t much interest in this side of the lake from sportsmen, probably because of the unpredictable currents that carried the warm spring-fed water from this area westward, causing invisible and deadly fault lines of thin ice to finger across the surface.
However, snowmobilers apparently weren’t scared off the ice along the other shoreline because, in the morning sun, I could make out tracks stretching across it. I imagined that if you started at one end of the lake and let loose you could hit the sled’s top speed before reaching the far shore. I wasn’t certain how fast that would be, but with the advances in the last few years, some of the newer sleds had engines as powerful as compact cars and could probably reach speeds of 110–120 mph. I figured if you could top out at those speeds anywhere, you could do it here.
The only set of snowmobile tracks leading toward the open water were the Ski-Doo 800 XL tracks the FBI Lab had been able to identify.
Somewhat tentatively, I stepped onto the frozen lake.
As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, I’d had an almost pathological fear of falling through the ice. The idea of dropping into the terrifyingly cold water was disturbing enough, but the thought of coming up beneath the ice and not being able to find the place you’d fallen through was even worse-that frantic and desperate search while your air gives out horrified me back then and, honestly, still did.
After I’d taken a few steps onto the ice, the morning stillness broke open with the harsh grind of the blades at the sawmill across the lake as they powered through logs to get them ready to be shipped to the paper mills in Neenah and Menasha. At first the sound gave me a start as I thought it might have been the ice cracking underfoot, but then I realized it was just the sawmill Donnie worked at, the one I was planning to visit later in the day.
I’d been told there were no footprints near the break in the ice when Ellory first arrived at the scene yesterday, but now I counted eight different sets of boot imprints that led toward it. All of them stopped ten to fifteen meters from the water, now writhing in the escalating wind.
Some of the impressions were undoubtably left by the law enforcement officers and first responders, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if some came from curious civilians stopping by last night to have a peek at the site after all the officers left.
I studied them closely, photographed them with my phone. We would need to confirm it, but one set of boot prints appeared to match the ones found outside the laundry room door at the Pickron home.
The high-pitched whirr of a snowmobile on the other side of the lake caught my attention, but then it was overwhelmed by the sharp whine of a blade at the sawmill ripping through another log.
Jake joined me. “How could this have been an accident, Pat? Anyone going under here would’ve had to be aiming for that stretch of open water. I’m thinking suicide.”
It certainly appeared that he was right, but I said, “I think it’s a little premature to go there, Jake.”
“I don’t think this case is as complex as you seem to want to make it.” The friction in his voice was no doubt sharpened by our past and how infrequently we agreed about the best approach to solving the cases we worked. Two investigations in particular stuck in my mind. In each, his cocksure insistence on the accuracy of his profile had detoured the investigation, wasting precious time. Three people were dead now who might have been saved had local law enforcement broadened their investigative strategies and not given two serial killers more time to abduct those final victims.
To top things off, at the press conferences Jake had emphasized how his profile had helped crack the case wide open. Personally, I couldn’t care less about press coverage or credit for a case, but I did care about murders being averted.
And I did care about the arrogance of the people I worked with.
“Either Donnie came home,” Jake said, “and found his family dead, then snapped and took his own life, or for whatever reason, he shot his wife and daughter and then killed himself. Think about it, Pat, a man kills his family then himself-not that unusual.” Then he added, a tight thread running through every word, “As you’re so adept at pointing out, we may never know his motives, but his actions speak for themselves.”
“You’re assuming too much, Jake.”
He folded his arms. “Then give me another scenar
io that fits the evidence.”
Alternate scenarios were not the problem-sorting through them to find the truth of what happened was.
“First of all, we have no body so we don’t even know if Donnie or someone else was riding the snowmobile when it went under.”
“You’re thinking someone jammed the throttle or tied it off?”
“I’m not thinking that yet because I have no reason to. I’m just considering it as a possibility.”
He shook his head. “Pat, the water is a hundred yards from shore.”
He was right. And the tracks were straight, aimed directly and unfalteringly at the open water. It seemed hard to believe that the sled would go that straight and that far without a rider on it, even if someone had secured the throttle.
“Jake, how many suicides have you worked that involved someone purposely drowning himself?”
“It’s rare,” he admitted.
“What about through a hole in the ice?”
He was quiet.
“If Donnie intended to commit suicide,” I said, “why not just turn the gun on himself or shoot himself with one of the handguns he kept in his gun cabinet? I’m guessing that most people would consider drowning in ice-cold water in a frozen lake a lot more frightening way to go than a quick, fatal gunshot wound. The open water is clearly visible, so it’s unlikely the rider accidentally went in. Also, the killer made no attempt to cover the bodies, and-”
“I know,” he said impatiently. “Killers with close relationships to the victims normally position them in more reverent ways. I thought of that yesterday at the scene.”
I let his rough tone go unchallenged. “Also, why would Donnie remove the spent cartridges and the murder weapon? And what about the nuclear submarine records and the Navy’s interest? Why would they even get involved if they thought it was either an accidental death or a suicide?”
Jake didn’t reply.
Four patrol cars turned onto the road leading to the boat landing.
Jake turned his face from the wind to look at them. The black eel of water rippled uneasily behind him. “So what exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying that at this point we don’t know who, if anyone, went down with the snowmobile. We don’t know if Donnie is alive or dead. We don’t know who called Ardis’s cell phone at 1:54 or why the Navy is interested in this case. We don’t know how many people were present at the house when Ardis and Lizzie were killed, and we don’t have any idea who they might have been.”
“So you don’t think it was Donnie?”
“If you set aside assumptions about domestic homicides and look at this case objectively, everything except Donnie’s relationship with the victims and his disappearance points to someone else as the shooter.”
Ellory and the two officers who’d stood sentry at the house last night crossed the ice toward us. Four more officers followed them.
Often when the Bureau gets involved in joint investigations, local jurisdictions feel as if we’re stepping on their toes. It can become a point of contention that only serves to hinder the investigation, but so far I’d seen no indication that we were going to run into trouble with that here, and I was thankful.
Far behind the officers, a bank of low, gray clouds was crawling into the western horizon.
As Ellory approached, he followed my gaze. “Here comes the storm.”
It made me think of Tessa again.
A slight tickle of concern.
“Listen, we need to get some divers down here as soon as possible.”
“I told you yesterday, there’s no one around here who dives.”
“What about Ashland? That’s less than an hour and a half away. With all the shipwrecks in Lake Superior there’ll be plenty of cold-water divers up there.”
A question rolled through my mind: If the Navy is so interested in this, why haven’t they sent a SEAL team over to the area for body recovery?
I had no answers.
He was quiet.
I waited. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s get a couple of them down here before the storm hits, see if we can recover the snowmobile or the body of the driver.”
My phone wobbled in my pocket and I checked the screen. A text from Amber-she and Sean would be able to meet at the Northwoods Supper Club just down the road from Tomahawk Lake. “11?” she’d typed.
While Ellory assigned one of the officers beside him to radio the sheriff’s department in Ashland, I texted Amber that later-noon or 1:00-would be better.
Jake and the remaining officers went to shore to look over the Ski-Doo’s tracks before they reached the ice. I walked beside the ones leading toward the open water, Ellory beside me.
I made sure neither of us disturbed the boot sole impressions paralleling the snowmobile tracks.
“Sheriff still down with the flu?” I asked him.
“Yup.”
The uniformity of the snow clods kicked up by the snowmobile’s treads told me that whoever drove the snowmobile had done so at a steady speed. No accelerating or decelerating. No swerving.
If this were an accident, he would’ve swerved to avoid it.
But if it were suicide, wouldn’t he have accelerated toward the water?
When someone commits suicide by cutting her wrists she’ll often slice her skin several times, trying to get up enough nerve to drive the blade deep enough to kill herself. Law enforcement and medical personnel refer to those wounds as hesitation marks.
Conversely, when the decision has been made, she’ll draw the blade quickly, deeply, often in an uncontrolled manner.
Despite the low number of nerve endings in the flexor surface of the wrist, almost no one draws the blade steadily and slowly across the skin. If it appears she has, it’s a good indication that it wasn’t a suicide.
When people see pain or death coming, they either swerve to avoid it or despairingly accelerate into it. In a sense, almost no one drives uniformly toward the open water.
It was yet another indication that this wasn’t a suicide.
Or a haphazard accid “You’re famous,” Ellory said, jarring me from my thoughts.
“What?”
“I looked you up. Consulted all over the world. Two books. Articles in more than a dozen professional journals.”
He looked me up?
I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Thank you,” I said awkwardly.
“I’m impressed.” But he sounded faintly sarcastic rather than dazzled. “I didn’t know who you were.”
I ignored his comment. “The only thing we need to do right now is make some headway on this case before that storm hits.”
We’d made it only a few more steps when he said, “So, geospatial. What is that exactly?”
Though I wasn’t really excited about giving a briefing at the moment, I guessed that this was as good a time as any to talk him through it. “Basically, I study the temporal and spatial patterns of serial offenses and then work backward to find the most likely location of the offender’s home base.”
He stared at me blankly. “Okay.”
I paused and he stopped beside me. We were twenty meters from the water.
“We take everything we know about a crime-time of the offense, location of the bodies, likely offender characteristics and patterns of behavior, add in geographic factors such as urban zoning, population distribution, roadways, topographic features, and traffic patterns as well as weather conditions at the time of the crime, and then compare that data to the way human beings spatially understand their surroundings and form mental maps of their area of familiarity. Then, by applying what we call journey-to-crime models, I’m able to narrow down the region from which the offender most likely left when he initiated the crimes.”
“So you need a bunch of crimes, then; I mean, to make this work.”
Very astute. “That’s true,” I said. “The more locations I have to work with, the more accurate I can be.”
We
started for the water again.
“But here you only have the house and the lake. Two locations.” I sensed more than a slight challenge in his words.
“Two locations, yes. That we know of,” I agreed, but I was no longer concerned about his understanding of geospatial investigation because I saw a glimmer of something round wavering in the water. Then it disappeared. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
It reappeared in the waves again. A black, shining circle about the size of a basketball. I jogged toward the break in the ice. Five meters from the water I realized that getting any closer could be a bad idea and Yes.
I stopped. It was a snowmobile helmet bobbing in the waves.
“Ellory, get that ladder out here. Now.”
“But-”
“Go.”
He finally saw the helmet, hesitated for a moment, then hurried toward shore.
I tried to reassure myself that laying the ladder on the ice would distribute my weight over a larger surface area, just as it does in mountaineering when you’re crossing crevasses. The weight distribution would reduce the chances of the ice cracking.
But it still might.
I shook the thought.
It seemed odd that the helmet should resurface today.
Of course, it might have been planted there earlier this morning, but regardless of when the helmet entered the water, the waves might still overwhelm it and take it under.
I watched it for a moment, weighing the implications, then Ellory, the officers, and Jake arrived with the ladder.
“Lay it down,” I said. “I’m going for the helmet.”
18
“Pat,” Jake said, “I think we should wait for a diver.”
“We need to see whose helmet that is, and you know as well as I do that it could-”
“Go under. Yes, I get that.”
“It wasn’t there yesterday?” I asked Ellory.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I think so.”
“But,” Jake interjected, “divers from Ashland can be down here in a couple hours.”