Dead Angler

by Victoria Houston

  At the sound of the ignition turning over, Osborne’s heart pounded at a slightly more reasonable rate. The drone of a distant outboard motor made it impossible for him to hear the sound of tires moving across gravel outside the boathouse so he stayed submerged until he could be absolutely sure Zolonsky was gone.

  Ray’s body leaned against the wall, cocooned in duct tape. It looked as if he could breathe through his nose but even his eyes were taped shut.

  After a long, long couple of minutes, Osborne started towards the boat slip. Just as he prepared to duck past the outer ledge and surface, he heard tires grinding towards the boathouse. He knew it: Zolonsky had realized the stupidity of his move. With one swift stroke of his arms, Osborne shot back towards the piling and safety.

  twenty-nine

  Osborne tensed, lifting his chin for yet another silent exhale and inhale. This time, his hands found a knot on the slimy piling that made it easier to hold on. This time, he would be sure Zolonsky was gone before leaving his anchor. Just the sound of a body moving through water would echo in the silent boathouse. One slug through the flooring, and he’d be fishing with Wayne.

  The interior above was darkening as the early evening sun moved away. Peering up, he could see nothing, hear only the scraping noise made by the boathouse door as it was pushed open. His eyes strained through the cracks in the flooring. The twilight sky behind the opening door offered a silhouette he could not identify.

  “Jeez!” cried the figure that hovered in the doorway for a millisecond before rushing forward.

  “Lew!” Osborne shouted, pressing his mouth against the sodden underside of the dock. Ducking his head under the water, he jackknifed forward and down, propelling himself into the slip. His head banged into the boat moored there as he surfaced. He grabbed for the ladder to the dock and yanked himself up, water pouring from his clothing, his wet stocking feet slipping as he ran.

  Lew was already kneeling beside Ray, ripping the duct tape from his eyes. Looking past her at Osborne, Ray’s eyes widened in relief, then clouded with a question. Osborne knew he was thinking of Wayne.

  “I couldn’t help him,” said Osborne, “I am so sorry, Ray. I tried …”

  “Doc,” said Lew as she worked on the tape, “what the hell happened here?”

  “Zolonsky,” said Osborne as he knelt to help with Ray. “He was smuggling cocaine in the boats. That’s why he was so late delivering—he was waiting for a connection down south. We found it when we went to fill the livewells—”

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me? You’re lucky I came by to see those acqua cams—I almost didn’t come, dammit.”

  “We found the drugs at the last minute, Lew. Couldn’t have been ten minutes after we found the stuff Zolonsky barges in here with a shotgun firing every which way. Poor Wayne never had a chance. I don’t think he even knew what hit him—”

  “How long ago was all this?”

  “Last half hour. Zolonsky pulled out of here maybe six, seven minutes ago. I thought you were him coming back to finish Ray off.”

  Lew pulled out a Swiss Army knife. She slipped it under the tape binding Ray’s mouth and ears.

  “Sorry, Ray,” she said, “you’re about to get a cheap shave.” She ripped.

  “I love it when you hurt me,” said Ray, shaking his head free of the strips of tape. Lew cuffed him on the shoulder then tackled the tape binding his wrists.

  “Hey,” Osborne grabbed Ray’s shoulder, “that shaky trigger finger had me worried.”

  “You, Doc? I thought for sure I dug my own grave this time.”

  “I still can’t believe you talked him out of here.” Osborne patted and rubbed Ray on the back, convincing himself his good friend really was alive and well. Lew continued slicing and yanking at the tape around his wrists and ankles.

  “He owes me, Doc. He’s got a 51-incher on his wall thanks to me. A guy like George doesn’t forget that, y’know.”

  “Can you stand okay, Ray? I think I got it all,” said Lew. She stepped back, her eyes anxious, “I am real sorry, boys. I have to leave you two here if I’m going to nail Zolonsky. Roger’s on the desk, I’ll radio in, ask him to get someone out here for you.

  “You are not going alone,” said Osborne. “Not after that madman.”

  “No sirree,” said Ray, “George is wild with that shotgun. You need back-up, Lew.

  “Okay.” Lew seemed relieved. Her eyes darkened, “You sure Wayne is …?”

  “No question,” said Osborne. “I tried to find him just after he took the slug but no luck. Jeez, y’know, I still can’t believe Zolonsky didn’t get me—all I did was hide under the dock.”

  Lew walked over to the edge and looked down, “This dock? Is there room to breathe under there?”

  “Barely. It’s not a performance I care to repeat.”

  Lew turned to Ray, “Do we have any idea where Zolonsky’s headed?”

  “My guess? Canada. He’s got the drugs in his truck, and he’s coming off three or four days on coke,” said Ray. “He left here thinking he’s got eight hours to make his move. I got the impression he might be stopping by his place first, then heading north to make his drop.”

  “Okay, let’s give him just enough time to think he’s pulling this off,” said Lew. “I would like to follow him up to the border with an alert to the Canadian authorities to take over from there. For Wayne’s sake, we should give them a chance to see if they can nab George and his contacts. What do you think?”

  “Wayne would appreciate that,” nodded Ray. He turned to look Osborne up and down, “Doc, before you go dancing, you need shoes. You want dry clothing?”

  “That’ll take too long, I’m fine.”

  As Lew climbed into her cruiser to radio in, Osborne and Ray ran up to the marina.

  “I know this place like the back of my hand, what size?” said Ray as he opened the door. Once inside, he rummaged through boxes. Within seconds he thrust a new pair of boots at Osborne. They hurried back outside where Lew had pulled up in her cruiser.

  “What are you doing?” said Ray. “Zolonsky’s place is up on the other side of the chain. We can get there faster if we take one of the boats up to Evan’s Landing. You have somebody waiting for us with a car, and we’re less than five minutes from George’s place. Save us fifteen, twenty minutes, Chief.”

  “Done,” said Lew.

  The walleye boat hummed across the glassy surface like a loon flying low. With the sun setting behind the shoreline, each balsam spire was etched sharp against the sky. Clouds scudding overhead captured rays of sunlight and threw them onto the water in pools of peach and silver blue. Beneath the flying boat, the lake was a plain of stillness.

  Leaning forward, elbows on his knees as he sat in a bucket seat at the rear of the boat, Osborne let a sadness flow through his bones. The elegant peace of the water masked the violence and tragedy lurking below. Violence in the rock-jawed musky, the “shark of the north” that lured men like George Zolonsky into the North Woods. Tragedy in the death of Wayne, his lifeless body down there somewhere, tangled in muck and reeds.

  Before leaving the boathouse, Lew had arranged for a crew from the volunteer fire department to drag for Wayne’s body even if it meant working through the night. Roger had located a state trooper operating radar from an unmarked car on Highway 17 who agreed to meet them at Evans Landing. All they needed now was to find George at home.

  No one had spoken since Ray pushed the outboard motor to its limit. At 150 horsepower, it was touted to do 50, maybe 60 mph, but Osborne guessed the absolute stillness of the lake made it possible for the boat to fly at a speed closer to 70 mph. Whatever the speed, the warm air blowing at him had rapidly dried his wet clothing.

  The chain of lakes, eight miles long, had two shallow channels where they were forced to cut the engine and raise the propellor in order to pass. Even so, less than twenty minutes later Ray had the watercraft drifting into Evan’s Landing. The unmarked car was waiting. Leaving the troop
er to return the boat, Lew took the wheel and spun gravel up the lane to the country road.

  As they started down the road, Osborne shook his head, “Ray, I was just thinking how George warned you off his poaching operation. Like he thinks he’s coming back to that? What on earth—? Does he really think he can shoot two men in cold blood, get caught with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cocaine and waltz back here to run a two-bit poaching operation?

  “That’s his game, Doc,” said Lew with a wry tone in her voice. “Just you watch. He’ll be back, whether we get him or not. He behaves like a crazy man, then he pleads insanity. The Wausau boys will make me check him into the hospital for a couple months. Then he’s out—”

  “And he’s on disability,” Ray shouted. “He’s a crook, he’s a looney and the Feds pay him for it.”

  “Jeez,” said Osborne. They drove on in silence.

  “Here we are,” said Ray, pointing at the fire number and mailbox identifying George Zolonsky’s property. From the road, they could see down a short drive into the yard surrounding the small log home. No cars or trucks stood in the drive. The door to the one-vehicle attached garage was open, the garage empty. A fishing boat on a trailer, covered with a blue tarp, was parked along the outside of the garage.

  “We missed him,” said Lew. “Are we too early?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ray, “he should be here by now.”

  Lew turned into the narrow drive and pulled up to park in a clearing by the front door that passed for a driveway. Up close, the log house appeared well-kept.

  “Nice place,” she said as she and Osborne climbed out of the car. “I’m surprised.”

  From the back seat, Ray climbed out behind them. “When he isn’t drunk or high, George is a very careful man. Besides being the best tile layer in the county, he’s a good carpenter and an excellent finish man—when he shows up. The problem with George, see, isn’t doing a good job, it’s getting the job done.”

  Lew tried the front door knob. It was unlocked. Standing off to the side with Osborne and Ray behind her, she pushed the door open calling, “Hell-o-o.” No answer. They stepped into a small vestibule. To their left was a handsome wooden rack holding six fishing poles. A large tackle box was set beside the rack.

  To their right the modest living room held a large screen TV, an orange plaid sofa with a magnificent musky mounted over it, and a black vinyl lounge chair. Against one wall was a beat-up maple desk covered with bills and mail. They walked through the living room into a small kitchen. A chrome lunch box and thermos stood on the counter.

  “Tidy,” commented Lew.

  “You should see his tackle box,” said Ray. “Every lure has its place, always shined up, too. The guy’s obsessive—the tiniest detail matters to George.”

  “Too bad he never learned how to keep his nose clean, too,” said Lew. She turned around wih a sigh of exasperation. “I think we got a dead end. Now what?”

  “I’ll check the basement,” said Ray, opening a door to a stairway leading down. Osborne left Lew checking the bedrooms. He walked back through the living room, looking around. The rod stand caught his eye. It was as nice as any he’d ever seen, made from a lovely dark wood he didn’t recognize. The fishing rods were good quality. Osborne knelt to unlatch the tackle box. Ray was right, the man was obsessive all right. The box was pristine, each lure had its own slot in the trays, polished, not a trace of rust anywhere.

  Like Osborne, George favored surface lures. He had some nice ones, too. Osborne reached for an antique surface mud puppy. He didn’t see the drill lying beneath the clear plastic tray until he had lifted the lure. He stopped, lure and hand in mid-air, “Lew!”

  The drill was his old one. The one he had used when he made house calls on handicapped patients. Mary Lee, damn her, had sold it at a garage sale after his retirement. Never asked his permission. Just scooped up all his instruments and equipment and sold everything one day while he was deer hunting.

  “Doc! Ray! Get in here—fast!” Lew answered his call with one of her own. Osborne grabbed the drill, put the lure back and latched the box shut. He ran to the bedroom where Lew leaned over the bed, holding down two sides of a large square of paper. Rolled up tubes were scattered on the floor around her.

  “I was looking at this box of fishing maps,” she said, “and I found this. She held down the edges of a large architectural rendering. Grabbing one side, Osborne helped her flatten the diagram across the bed.

  “The Willows,” said Lew, “looks like a copy of the architect’s building plans.”

  “He must have been using this for the tile work he was doing up there,” said Osborne.

  “Not only that,” Lew pointed to a red circle drawn in marker on one end of the large rectangle. “he’s circled The Stone House. And he has X’d sections of the interior walls.”

  ‘Hey, you two,” Ray stepped into the room, “found something interesting downstairs.” Osborne and Lew looked back. Ray was brandishing a four-foot length of black spruce. “He’s got a woodworking shop downstairs and a nifty stack of this wood. Where do you think this came from?”

  “Ray,” said Lew over her shoulder, “what’s between here and the marina?”

  “The Willows.”

  It was a long ten minutes to the road leading into The Willows. While they drove, Osborne explained the importance of the drill. Battery-powered, it would have made it easy for George to remove fillings from a corpse. So easy it was worth it.

  The sun was just dropping below the horizon as their car crested the last rise before the dip into the circle drive. The Stone House rose up in front of them. Literally. In slow motion, the square stone building launched into the air. A fiery base illuminated the base then spread up and up, radiating out the small square windows and erupting through the roof in a shower of flame and rock.

  “Now … why … did he do … that?” asked Ray from the back seat.

  thirty

  George died smoking his last cigarette. That’s what the city engineer from Rhinelander confirmed two days later. Osborne suspected as much as he approached the smoking rock and debris that remained of the old waterworks building.

  Gases rushing from the bowels of the old storm sewer system towards the open doorway where George had been standing initiated a series of explosions, building in intensity to a central blast that lifted and shattered the building. George himself was blown back into a pine grove thirty feet away by the first fireball, believed by the engineer to have ignited when George flicked a lighter towards his cigarette.

  “I’m not sure if the impact that killed him was the force of the explosion in his face or these trees that he hit traveling at pretty good clip,” said Osborne as he knelt beside the body, which lay face down. George was not in good shape, the state of his body parts reminding Osborne of auto accident victims he had had to identify using dental charts.

  But they didn’t need a face to know it was George. Both Osborne and Ray recognized what remained of the Levi’s. Lew was able to pull a wallet from an exposed back pocket. The driver’s license confirmed the victim was indeed George Zolonsky.

  “Do you need me to check further?” asked Osborne.

  “Do you mind?” Lew turned away, rifling through the wallet.

  “All the pockets if you can. I’d sure like to find some indication of where he was going with the drugs.” He wondered if she was hiding the fact the sight made her a little queasy.

  “I’ll help, Doc.” Ray stood behind him, “this isn’t too different from dressing a deer.”

  Together, gently, they rolled the body over. Ray checked the blood-soaked Levi’s pockets while Osborne patted the sodden shirt. Ray found change, Osborne a small plastic box similar to a trout fly holder. At first glance, he thought the one-inch square held shot pellets for weighting a fishing line.

  “Oh, oh,” he said on opening it for a closer look, “We just found Meredith Marshall’s gold fillings.

  “What are you thinking?
” Osborne asked Lew as she studied the contents of the box.

  “I’m thinking George may have been working as a courier for some time, skimming a bag or two each delivery and stashing them here. Meredith caught him, confronted him and he killed her.”

  “But why hold on to these fillings?” asked Osborne. “Why go to all the effort when he’s got access to big bucks from the drugs?”

  “If you want my two cents,” said Ray, raising his hands, fingers extended, as if ready to tell one of his stories, “and I’m not sure that you do.”

  “Go ahead,” said Lew, “I’m listening.”

  “George is a detail man and a pennypincher. Fishing for crappies, I never saw him waste a minnow. I think he saw those fillings as real gold that would have pretty high value. Doc said himself, the drill made it an easy operation. Easy to a guy like George anyhow.”

  “Maybe,” said Lew. “Maybe he was here to pick up what he had hidden earlier, then swing by his place, then head north to hide out for a long time. If he was just a courier, he didn’t get that much money. Maybe he thought he could use those fillings to blackmail someone.

  “I don’t like this,” she kicked at a rock, “this is too easy. If you ask me, George was set up. He’s a chain smoker. If he was using The Stone House as a hiding place, wouldn’t he have lit up in here before? Why didn’t the place explode then?

  “You got the plans in the car, Lew,” said Osborne. “Let’s take another look.” They walked quietly back up the driveway to the cruiser. Lew had radioed to Rhinelander for assistance right after the explosion, now they could hear sirens in the distance.

  “Sure enough,” said Osborne, running a finger across the architectural rendering. “See along the main corridor here? These manholes were built so any plumber working in the building would know to open them in order to vent the gases before entering. This is exactly what Cynthia Lewis described to us the other day.”

  “Now if someone closed those manholes before George got here, if someone knew that he was likely to be smoking while he was in or around the building …”