Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  He was going with his gut now, aided by information from the Samuels woman and Cate. “But you did set fire to the cabin, right? And then you ran.”

  Brenda’s eyes shifted, staring at nothing. “Did you see her?” she asked. “The woman in a white dress.” She blinked rapidly. Her voice was weaker now. “Across the river … long dark hair.”

  Glancing at his deputy, he saw her slap a palm to her forehead. When he looked back, Brenda was clawing at the IV line in the back of her hand.

  A buzzer went off on one of the contraptions beside the bed. As before, a nurse bustled in and he jumped up to make room for her.

  It wasn’t just the shock or the morphine, he thought. He’d seen eyes like that before. There was nothing behind them. She’d lost her will to live.

  At the smaller hospital forty miles away, Robin Bentley sat on the edge of her bed, alert and animated. Brad had closed the door and sat next to her. Tentatively, he reached for her upturned hand. She let her fingers twine through his and held tightly.

  “The girls are on their way, “ he said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Cass and Maya are stopping at the house to pick up some clothes and things for you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Avoiding the bandage covering her forehead, he stroked her hair. She kissed him, gently at first.

  There was a tap at the door. “You decent?” Cate called.

  Brad stood and poked his nose out the door. “Just give us a little while,” he said and shut the door again.

  “Who all is out there?” Robin asked.

  “The whole lot of them.” He grinned for a brief moment, then suddenly anxiety changed his features. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wish—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I wish I’d been there.” Again, he stopped, his voice cracking. “But … I’m glad they were.” Not meeting her eyes, he tossed his head in the direction of the door.

  “You’re here now.”

  “I don’t mean just yesterday. I mean this whole last year. God, Robin, I felt so damn useless. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake, and I just had to sit there and watch my own wife …” His lips quivered. He covered them with a shaking hand.

  “Brad, there was nothing you could’ve done.”

  “I should have felt the lump. I should have known.” He put a fist over his mouth.

  She grasped his arm. “No, honey, you couldn’t have changed the outcome. You know that, Brad.”

  At last, he extracted a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose before pulling her into his arms.

  “I’ll send them in.” He rose and went to the door.

  31

  Brenda died during the second night. Her deathbed confession, witnessed by two officers of the law, implicated no one but herself in the death of Melissa Dunn and the attempted murder of Robin Bentley.

  For the next week, Sheriff Harley obsessed over his investigation. He returned to the tree stump, looking for more clues, wandered down to the bridge, inspecting the area more closely. Positioning himself between the two posts, exactly where Catherine Running Wolf had stood to describe her eerie account, he examined the rail, and tweezed fibers from the roughened wood. He overnighted the evidence envelope to the lab. They didn’t match the dress Melissa Dunn wore on the night of her death. At home in the evenings, he pored over articles in two Wisconsin papers and both Twin Cities newspapers, and listened to news on several stations.

  “The bastard’s going to get off,” he fumed to his deputy at least once a day.

  Indeed, Martin Krause had not been formally charged. Enjoying a certain amount of public sympathy, the grieving widower had been emboldened to approach the board of regents at Bradford for reinstatement. The talk on campus weighed heavily on the side of overlooking his indiscretion. As one bare-midriffed coed, interviewed and photographed by a salacious magazine, said, “The wife was a nut job. Who wouldn’t cheat on her?”

  Ten days after the spectacle of Brenda Krause’s over-the-top funeral, Harley got a phone call that instantly lifted his spirits.

  The male caller spoke with a heavy Hispanic accent. “Hey, Mister Sheriff, I think I got somethin’ you want. That college guy, he’s a bery bad man. You listenin’?”

  He was listening. “What can you tell me?”

  A hissing sound distorted the next couple of words. “—there, right where I left it. It’s in the—whatchew call it—hayloft.” The static returned.

  “Hayloft? Where?”

  “In the old barn at Ross Johnson’s Wisconsin place. I think you’ll find all the evidence you need.”

  For a moment he was confused. Either someone else had gotten on the line, or the man had switched to a British accent. “Who are you? Where are you calling from?” Harley demanded.

  He wasn’t surprised to hear the dial tone.

  Calling out to his deputy, Harley instructed her to come into his office. He was still furious with her for leaking to the local press about “the woman in white” that Brenda Krause had seen running just above the waterfall where Melissa Dunn’s body had been found. Thanks to Brill, local teenagers were again trespassing, camping out at night in the hopes of spotting the ghost for which Spirit Falls was named.

  Brill walked in, her hair bouncing like copper springs.

  Tersely, he told her, “You’re in charge. I need to check out a lead.” He hurried out the door and into his squad car. Throwing it into reverse, he checked his rear view mirror and saw a car pulling in behind his. Behind the wheel Robin Bentley grinned. From the passenger seat, Cate Running Wolf waved at him. The dog, he saw, occupied the entire back seat.

  Harley got out. “You’re looking great,” he said through Robin’s open window. “Cough cleared up?”

  “Not entirely. They’re keeping an eye on it.”

  He nodded. “What brings you here this time?”

  “We came to see you, of course.” Robin looked positively impish.

  He tried not to seem impatient. “Shoot! Can it wait? I need to run up to the Johnson place.”

  “Okay if we follow you?” Robin was pushed aside as Grover thrust his head halfway through her window.

  The sheriff made a quick decision. Addressing the dog, he said, “You wanna ride in the squad car again, don’t you buddy?”

  “Woof,” he answered in the affirmative.

  Cate laughed merrily as she transferred the dog, not to the back seat, but right up front next to the sheriff. Immediately Grover’s entire demeanor changed. He sat at attention, chest thrust forward with pride.

  On their way, they passed George, who wandered along the road with a plastic garbage bag in hand, picking up litter. Robin was surprised when Cate grinned at him and waved.

  “What?” Cate demanded, reading her silence. “He loves animals.”

  “Told you.”

  “Told you,” Cate answered in a mocking tone and they both laughed. “I talked to the sheriff about him.”

  “When was this?”

  “When you were in the hospital.” Cate crossed her arms and spoke out the window. “Seems I was picking up on something after all. He’s a peeping tom, a harmless one. I guess Harley’s known about it for years. Thing is, he never looks into bedrooms or bathrooms.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting! How do you know that?” Robin’s mind wheeled back to the many times George just seemed to appear. What had he been watching? More importantly, what had she been wearing? And doing?

  “That’s just what the sheriff told me, and it makes sense. I mean, he’s got to be lonely out here in the woods all by himself most of the time. Maybe he just watches people eat and read the way other people watch television.”

  Robin gripped the steering wheel harder and gave a theatrical shudder. So now Cate was his defender. Well, what could she say to that?

  The sheriff parked on the driveway leading to the outbuilding. He got out, opened the passenger door and Grover stepped out sedately, as if born to this position of trust.


  Robin parked next to the squad car.

  “You two stay here,” Harley said through their window. “Grover, sit.”

  Grover sat. But when the two women, having caught sleuth fever, scurried after Harley, the dog whined, and trotted along with them.

  “So what kind of lead are we following?” Cate asked.

  He stopped. “You won’t give me any peace until I tell you. I got an anonymous tip about some kind of clue hidden in the hayloft.”

  The side door opened with a groan.

  Robin propped her hands on her thighs and coughed, feeling again the smoke damage in her lungs.

  “You okay?” Cate put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Just gotta get rid of it. It’s bound to get better.” Lightheaded from the exertion, she stood slowly.

  “We’ll just wait out here,” Cate yelled to Harley

  “Damn straight!” Sheriff Harley looked up at the loft. What had they left unexamined? He and Brill had searched the barn from bottom to top, ending by climbing up to the loft. That’s when his deputy had begun sneezing so violently that he’d sent her outside. His eyes had itched like crazy, but he’d kept going.

  Now, once more, he clambered up the wooden ladder. When he reached the top rung, he shifted his hands to grasp the floorboard. On hands and knees on the loft’s floor, he crawled forward. Standing, as he had before, he looked at the assemblage of innocent-looking items—two hanks of rope, a spool of rotting twine, an old window frame, all hanging from the rafters. Hay bales, some still stacked three and four high, reached the back wall. Loose hay lay strewn about amidst the bales he’d flung about during his earlier search.

  Had the call been a prank, he wondered, or would this place actually hold the clue that would solve the case that had been plaguing his dreams? With a weary sigh, he nudged a bale and toppled it to one side. By the time he’d reached the third row in, space was getting very limited. He stood, breathing hard.

  Sitting on a previously moved bale, he pondered a way to proceed. “Damn it to hell!” he yelled and jammed his foot against the bale in front of him. He pulled his foot back and pushed again. Pulled back. Pushed.

  There was definitely something in there, something black protruding between two bales.

  “Hah!” he said, wedging his shoe between the bales to widen the space. It looked to be a roll of black plastic. He leapt to his feet and began pitching hay. The item, when he’d finally uncovered it, was a large garbage bag, rolled up. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his throat when he hefted the bag. It was so light.

  Coughing, he scrambled down the ladder, the plastic tucked in his armpit.

  He saw their faces in the sunlight, questioning him. Grinning, he gave them a thumbs-up.

  They crowded him as he laid the unopened bag gently on the hood of his vehicle, not really praying, but anticipating in a pleading sort of way that this was it—whatever it was. He was unaware he held his breath as he began to unroll the bag. There was something inside, he realized, wiping a sleeve across his eyes. Peeling off his latex gloves, he pulled a fresh pair from his shirt pocket and pulled them over sweaty hands before carefully opening the bag. A foul smell reached his nostrils and his hopes rose.

  Cate and Robin exchanged anxious glances as he reached his hand into the bag.

  Just then, all three jerked reflexively as a crow cawed raucously and a flurry of blackbirds lifted into flight overhead. Grover barked until they were out of sight.

  Harley’s hand wrapped around something cylindrical, and he resumed breathing when he saw what it was—a film case, full, from the feel of it.

  He held the bag open and peered inside. Cate and Robin craned their necks. He pulled out a cloth item, its coral color marred by dark smears, splotches and stains. Wordlessly, Harley slipped the windbreaker into a large evidence bag.

  “Whoa,” Cate said under her breath.

  Robin, afraid they’d be banished if they said anything, gave her a silencing look.

  Harley peered once more into the black plastic. There was one more item, small, dark and with… feet? A mouse? He poked at it. When it didn’t move, he eased it into the light. It took a moment to see that it was actually a shoe tassel, and it appeared to be stained as well.

  Grover whined and Cate stroked his ears.

  The sheriff looked at the women as if he’d forgotten their presence. “This next part I’ve got to do solo.” Turning to the dog, he said, “Sorry, boy, can’t take you with me.”

  Grover’s tail drooped dejectedly as he followed Cate to Robin’s car.

  Back at home, propped up by pillows and covered, or so it felt, in cats, Robin tried to nap, but between the coughing spasms, the dead weight of Sampson on her thighs and the constant attention of Delilah licking her on the wrist or nudging her cheek, she was unable to sleep. She stroked Delilah’s head, felt the indentations of cheekbone and jaw, ran her fingers to the tips of the ears and along the silky tufts extending from the ears.

  She coughed again, her legs convulsing. Sampson rode her legs like a roller coaster, then adjusted himself slightly before lowering his head and returning to sleep. She spat into a tissue and saw pink foam. “Nothing unexpected with smoke inhalation,” the hospital doctor had said. But also nothing to ignore for someone who’s had breast cancer, she knew. She had not consulted her oncologist, but Brad made her promise to have a chest x-ray if the cough wasn’t gone in another week.

  She tried her visualization techniques, picturing pink, healthy lung tissue surrounding the gray, damaged cells and squeezing them into the airway, where her lungs, like bellows, would eject the dying cells in a cough where they would be deposited in a Kleenex and thrown into the plastic-lined wicker basket.

  Delilah nuzzled into her neck, purring, and they both drifted off to sleep.

  Cate was doing her own visualizing. While Grover lapped loudly and with abandon from a bowl at her feet, Cate stared at the newspaper spread out on her kitchen counter, specifically at the photo of a smiling Martin Krause, again seated at his desk, the caption proclaiming him still president of Bradford College. The attractive young woman standing over his shoulder was Melissa Dunn’s replacement. Cate pictured taking him by the lapels and demanding to know how he could live with himself after destroying so many lives.

  Hovering over the crime lab technician, Harley watched her dust first the outer film canister and then the inner one for prints. Blood samples from the shoe tassel and windbreaker were already undergoing analysis in the adjoining room.

  The tech was short and boyishly thin, with cropped hair showing under a gauze hairnet. “They’ve been wiped.” She shook her head and sighed. “Sorry.” Then a smile played across her lips. “But I’ll bet you a donut there’s a full thumb and index on the film tab.”

  Harley, realizing he hadn’t eaten all day, suggested, “How about donuts either way? My treat.”

  “Deal.” She exposed an inch and a half of film, raised one eyebrow at him, and applied the powder to expose two prints, only slightly smeared, one on either side of the film tab.

  They were both grinning when she snipped off the useable portion and handed off the remainder to a waiting tech who would take it to the on-site photo lab.

  He had nothing to do but wait. And listen to the growling of his stomach. It was only a few minutes’ drive to a hamburger joint, where he downed a double burger with cheese, bacon, and onions, then proceeded to the donut shop known to anyone who carried a badge in Wisconsin. Not knowing the lab tech’s preference, he bought a dozen, mixed, from which he extracted a sugared jelly donut.

  Back at the lab, he presented the box of donuts to the crew. The tech with short hair smiled and gestured to his face. Sheepishly, Harley brushed sugar from the corners of his mouth.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man in a lab coat coming toward him, holding up a slim handful of photos. “Done!” the man announced. “Only six of ’em. After that, the film was never exposed.”

  Harley’s heart beat
with anticipation as his fingers gripped their edges. The first photo, overexposed in the lower corner, perplexed him. Todd Hill, one of the early suspects by virtue of being Melissa’s boyfriend, sat in a coffee shop, mugging into the camera. He guessed that someone had gotten hold of Melissa’s camera and then hidden the film in the loft.

  Harley slipped that to the back and saw a shot, taken from above, of Spirit Falls with the Bentley cabin visible on the far side of the creek. The next, probably taken from the same vantage point, showed the creek directly below the falls, just upstream from where Melissa’s body had been found.

  Creepy, he thought. Did she have a premonition about her own death?

  Two more photos showed a smiling couple. One had a horizontal orientation, the other vertical. Martin and Melissa posed with their arms around each other in the first. In the second, Melissa held two fingers behind Martin’s head in a V, while he positioned a strand of her hair, mustache-like under his nose. Behind them was Ross Johnson’s cabin.

  In the last photo, leaning against a sunlit rail of the cabin’s deck and holding highball glasses, were Martin Krause in a coral nylon windbreaker and Ross Johnson in slacks and a pair of loafers. With tassels. These last three prints were date-stamped for the last Friday anyone had seen Melissa Dunn alive. After that, nothing. These were the last pictures Melissa Dunn would ever take.

  Harley’s lips curled in a grin. “Gotcha!”

  32

  Sara Brill smacked her flashlight on her desk with a sharp metallic clap. Her freckles stood out against her pale face, pinched in exasperation as she turned to him. “Stop with the damn pen already.”

  Harley was taken aback by her strident tone. He clicked his ballpoint pen two more times before slipping it into his pocket. He wasn’t about to be ordered around by her, of all people.

  She slid a white tube from her purse and inserted it into her left nostril, and blocking her right with a forefinger, she snorted. “Allergies,” she explained before turning to him in a confrontational manner. “Why don’t you try using that restless energy for good instead of evil.”