Remains In Coyote Bog

by Christine Husom

  We finished with the load, took off our soiled gloves, and headed across the road to the highway crew. “We need another three or four bucket loads,” Smoke told Andy.

  “I’m on it. Bart, it’s straight out from here, right?” Andy said.

  Bart lifted his elbow and dropped his arm with his fingers pointed at the area. “Yep. I’d go about twelve feet.”

  The crew had switched to an excavator with a longer arm. It didn’t hold as much weight as one with a shorter arm. The shorter the arm the bigger the bucket and the heavier the lift.

  Andy climbed aboard and started the operation. The rest of us stayed a safe distance away when he went in for a scoop. When it lifted, water ran out and over the top. Sticks and plant life were stuck in the front claws. He swung the arm over and deposited the load in the dump truck. The next dig was two feet closer to the road.

  But the third load was a different story. Andy halted the arm mid-swing and yelled, “Damn.” He stopped the engine and jumped down. I saw a lower leg and foot hanging over the top of the bucket and moved against Smoke for support.

  “Geez, Louise,” Weber said. He was the only one who spoke. The rest of us stood like mute statues for a drawn-out moment. Finally Smoke climbed into the cab of the excavator. He pulled out his phone, snapped some photos, and dialed a number.

  “Sheriff, it’s Dawes. You’re gonna want to come back out here. . . . What? . . . The chief deputy? Okay.” He pushed the end button and returned to the ground. “Sheriff’s tied up with a juvenile case so he’s sending Chief Deputy Randolph.”

  The highway guys gathered around Andy. They all appeared shell-shocked. Their world was imploding.

  Smoke eyed them for a minute. “Wendell, I don’t know the scope of what we got here so you and your men can take off. Suffice it to say, the road construction project may be halted for longer than anticipated.”

  Peltz addressed his crew. “You go on ahead, guys. We’ll see you back at the ranch.” They dragged themselves away much like Sergeant Roth had earlier.

  “I can help if you need more excavating, or whatever you need,” Sutton said.

  “Appreciate that, Ron. Right now I’m at a bit of a loss; knowing what we need to do but not sure how that will work. It may take some time to get our ducks in a row,” Smoke said.

  I suspected Smoke was being deliberately vague. Wetland conservation laws were specific and strict, and he weighed his options. Ask for permission or take his chances with forgiveness? If it was the latter then the fewer people in the know, the better.

  Smoke continued, “In any case, it’ll take some time for the medical examiner to get back out here. No sense making you hang around. But before you go, I’ll take you up on your offer and ask you to bring the bucket down to ground level. And then dump the truck so we can go through the spoils.”

  “Sure.” Even though he had volunteered his services Sutton was slow to climb on board. Reluctance had set in. One major jolt to the system was bad enough; a second one a short time later was life-altering.

  The simple ditch clean-out project had turned into an exhumation of scary-looking bodies. Sutton had been tasked to finish jobs his men had abandoned. Twice. He slowly lowered the excavator’s arm until the bucket rested on the pavement, shut off the machine, and got down. He nodded as he got into the dump truck, drove it to where Smoke had indicated, and released the contents.

  “Ron, you might as well leave the truck where it is for now,” Smoke said.

  Back on the ground, Sutton took out a handkerchief and wiped it over his face and neck a bunch of times. “I guess it’s kind of hitting me all the sudden.”

  Smoke reached over and gave his damp back a pat. “You’re not alone feeling like that. You can’t prepare yourself for something like this. I told your guys that the sheriff will arrange a debriefing session. It’s vital after a critical incident.”

  Sutton shrugged and looked at the ground.

  “I’ve been through a number of them myself over the years,” Smoke assured him.

  “It sounds like a smart thing to me,” Peltz said.

  “Yep. Oh, and Wendell, I meant to ask, you got a permit to do the clean out, right?” Smoke said.

  Peltz frowned slightly. “Of course, permits for all the different aspects of the project.”

  “I didn’t doubt it but needed to confirm. Thanks.”

  Wendell Peltz nodded then he and Ron Sutton were on their way. Smoke, Weber, Mason, Carlson, and I walked over to body in the bucket. It hadn’t been scooped up as neatly as the first one. It was nearly face down, like it was stuck at half-turn. Either the bucket had prevented it from turning completely or it had landed that way in the bog. The head, neck, left shoulder and arm, and part of the chest were buried in the peat. The right arm and hand were exposed. My eyes were drawn to the telling mark on the wrist. A cross had been branded into it.

  “Dear Lord in Heaven,” I said.

  Weber made the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest, the first time I’d seen him do that in all our years working cases together. “We already got one on her way to the M.E.’s office. And now we got another one here. Whaddaya wanna bet the evil creep buried more of ˊem down there?” he said.

  “That’s why we need to drain the swamp,” Smoke said.

  “Literally,” I added. “Permission or forgiveness?”

  Smoke shot me a “you know me too well” look. “Let’s settle for a combination of the two. A normal request would mean completing the required paperwork, jumping through a series of hoops, and waiting for God knows how long for an answer. We got exigent circumstances here, so I’ll have our command staff advise the various agencies what we’re gonna need to do.”

  “Definitely exigent,” Carlson said.

  “Definitely,” Mason added.

  While we studied the body Smoke said, “Change of subject, but something you should know. You heard that call go out earlier, the fight in the school parking lot Edberg got called to?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “It was Kenner’s kid.”

  “Jaxson?” Carlson said.

  “Jaxson,” Smoke confirmed.

  “That explains why he was distracted after that phone call,” I said.

  “Yeah, I thought he was actinˊ a little weird. I mean we got this really big deal goinˊon and it kinda struck me when he left so sudden like,” Weber said.

  “That’s why,” Smoke said. The sheriff’s challenges with his middle child had escalated over the last few months and were taking their toll on his family.

  Chief Deputy Randolph pulled up to the barricade and parked. “Randolph’s day just got a whole lot more complicated,” Smoke said.

  7

  Chief Deputy Clayton Randolph’s eyebrows squeezed together. “Troops. Sheriff got tied up, so I’m here in his stead.”

  Smoke pointed. “Our second victim.”

  Randolph shook his head back and forth. “A frightful sight. Doesn’t look real, like it’s a leathered mummy, or a statue. Like with the kids in the lake a couple years back. Well, not exactly. But similar, in that they didn’t go through a normal decomposition process, either.”

  “Preserved in the bottom of a lake versus preserved in a bog. Medical experts can spell out the exact processes,” Smoke said.

  Randolph walked around the bucket, his eyes on the body. “With help from the medical examiner, it’ll be up to us to identify them and figure out who in the hell put them in there.”

  “And when they did it. We may want to get a hand from the state archeologist. The unknowns are piling up. As far as the sheriff’s office is concerned, this officially became a crime scene,” Smoke looked at his watch, “just over two hours ago when the first body was recovered.”

  Randolph nodded. “Before I left the office I checked in with Wendell Peltz, wondering how his men are doing. He and Sutton had just cleared from here.”

  “Yeah, we thought it’d be good for them to take off before we got any deeper in
this.” Smoke paused a second. “We’re thinking there could very well be more bodies down there. Our collective opinion here.”

  Randolph’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean like a family group?”

  Smoke’s jaw moved back and forth. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess about that one. The first body was female, elderly. This one appears to be male, but until the M.E. gets here and we get the body out of there . . . who knows? When all is said and done, will it turn out he’s related to the first victim? Time and tests will tell.”

  Weber nodded toward Smoke. “The detective here says we gotta ‘drain the swamp.’”

  Randolph took a deep breath. “You have a plan?”

  “We need to dig a deeper hole a little west of here, let the water in this area drain into it. We’ll let the agencies that have control over the water and wetland areas in on the plan. The Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources—along with the local office—Winnebago County Soil and Water. The Department of Natural Resources, maybe the Army Corps of Engineers,” Smoke said.

  “I’ll take care of the calls,” Randolph said.

  “Start with BWSR.”

  “Right. We have the equipment and manpower to do the job. Unless you think we should call in an independent company.”

  Smoke shook his head. “Our guys can do it. But the local soil and water should be here. They’re the wetland and drainage experts and hopefully will be amenable to the whole process.”

  “Getting the water guys on board is good, all the way around.” Randolph’s eyes fell on Coyote Bog and the body in the excavator’s bucket. “When do you expect the M.E.’s return?”

  “With minimal traffic it’s fifty minutes, so hopefully in the next thirty. To say it’s nerve-racking for us to have that body stuck in there is an understatement. We all want to get him out. But without a gurney, we’ll have to wait for them,” Smoke said.

  “I’ll have Dina round up the phone numbers of the water agencies, get that ball rolling.” Randolph pulled a memo pad from his back pocket and headed toward his vehicle.

  “Let’s get back to the raking project. Cross your fingers that something turns up,” Smoke said.

  And so it would.

  Randolph came back looking like he had returned from battle. “BWSR said they’d talk to the DNR and the Army Corps. Said we’d have to wait for them to get here.”

  “Did they say how long that would take?” Smoke said.

  “They hoped by this afternoon.”

  “What a load of crap. Did you tell them that?”

  “Not in so many words,” Randolph said.

  “Clayton, I know Thomas over at Winnebago County Soil and Water pretty well. He should be brought in on this,” Smoke said.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t the first call BSWR made after we hung up,” Randolph said.

  “Probably right. If need be, we’ll write a search warrant, get a judge to sign it. I’ll give Thomas a jingle when we’re done with this pile.”

  “That works.” Randolph watched as we sifted through the bog spoils. Mason and Carlson raked. Smoke, Weber, and I sorted the discovered objects. “You got quite the operation here. Could take some time,” he said.

  Smoke nodded. “Depending on how much area we cover and how dense the peat is. This batch of peat has what they refer to as medium density, I believe. Porous enough that some of the water content released when it was removed and more releases when we rake it, as you can see. That helps when we’re looking for objects. But doesn’t necessarily make it an easy operation.”

  “I guess I don’t know much about peat,” Randolph said.

  “The more the plant material decomposes, the denser it gets. My guess is that the deeper you get in this bog, the denser it’ll be because there’s nothing down there to disturb it,” Smoke said.

  “The detective here is a regular walking encyclopedia,” Weber said.

  “I’ve noticed that over the years,” Randolph said.

  “Hardly an encyclopedia, but I’ve been around a while and picked up some things along the way.”

  “And it sticks in your brain, and that’s what counts,” Weber said.

  Smoke did carry a wealth of information and coupled with his experience, was a valuable resource to the department. And to me. On any number of levels.

  We spent the next ten minutes raking and picking out trash. Then Mason pulled his rake back and I spotted something caught in the tine. “Todd, hold on. Lift up your rake.”

  Everyone stopped mid-task to watch as he raised it higher. A chain and pendant dangled from the tine. Smoke leaned over, slid it free with his gloved fingers then held it up. “What have we here? Vince, mind grabbing some water and a cloth from the van?”

  Weber left for the moment and returned with the items. “Corky, snap a before and after photo, will you?” Smoke held it in front of me. I pulled off my gloves, released my phone from its case, and took a picture.

  “Go ahead and pour some water on it,” Smoke said. When Weber did that, the debris clinging to it washed away and revealed the details of a crucifix cross on a silver chain. The chain was long, around twenty-four inches, and had thick links. The cross was an inch high and a half-inch wide, by my estimates, with the figure of Christ intricately fabricated on the front.

  “Looks like a man’s pendant,” I said.

  “A Catholic man’s,” Mason added.

  “But could’ve been worn by a woman,” Smoke said.

  “Huh. Well you think there’s a chance it belonged to one of ˊem?” Weber nodded toward the excavator and the swamp on the other side of it.

  “I’ll go with there’s a fair chance since it was recovered from the same area where the bodies were found,” Smoke said.

  “I can picture it wrapped around the fingers of one of the victims. You know how they do that sometimes when they’re in their coffins for memorial services?” Carlson said.

  “You might be right. The clasp is intact, so it wasn’t around anyone’s neck.” Smoke turned the necklace over and held it up for me to read. “What does it say?”

  I turned my head for a better view. “Sterling silver.”

  “That’s it? Not where it was made?” Mason said.

  “Nope, so it wasn’t China,” I said.

  “Good point. It looks to me like a unique design, but we’ll do a search, see what we can find out.” Smoke smiled. “We may have located something that belonged to one of the victims.”

  My heart sped up as it did when a thread of hope presented itself on a case.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance we’d find a partial print on that?” Carlson said.

  “No, they don’t last long in regular water and it’d be an even shorter time in a bog.” Smoke handed the necklace to Weber who opened the cloth to receive it. “You can bag it up.”

  While Weber was in the mobile crime unit, the rest of us continued our search. But we found nothing else of import in the load.

  Winnebago County Soil and Water District Manager Thomas Bauer arrived on the scene seconds after Smoke pulled out his phone to call him. Randolph, Smoke, and I met him halfway. The other three cleaned the tools. Bauer held his hands up. “Hey, I come in peace.”

  “Yeah?” Smoke said.

  “The regional manager at BWSR said you had a situation out here, that you want to divert some water,” Bauer said.

  “We’ve got a damn crime scene. Two bodies. So far. There might be more. The Winnebago County Highway Engineer got the permits they needed to fix this road and I’d argue that our need to temporarily divert the water that’s sitting on top of the bog would be covered by those permits,” Smoke said.

  Bauer reached his hand around his shoulder and used it to stretch the back of his neck. “I don’t have the final say about that.”

  The medical examiner’s van made its timely appearance. “Speaking of final, Thomas, they’re here to pick up the remains of the poor soul whose body was very crudely recovered from Coyote Bog. Same as wit
h the first body they found. If there is another one in the bog, I’d like the removal to be done more respectfully, if possible,” Smoke said.

  Bauer looked at the chief deputy. “They didn’t say that a body was still here.”

  Randolph shrugged. “No reason to share that fact.”

  “Oh, okay. I suppose.”

  Smoke waved the M.E.’s van around the barricade to get closer to the body. And hidden from public view.

  “If you have any doubts that our request is valid, one look at the victim in the bucket of that excavator should sway you,” Smoke told Bauer. Its leg was visible from where we stood.

  Bauer had a quick look, nodded, and dipped his head to the side like he was convinced. But he needed to persuade the powers that be.

  Smoke walked to a spot eight feet from the excavator and held up his hand. The M.E.’s van parked there. Roy Swanson was accompanied by Dr. Calvin Helsing on this run. Swanson got out of the driver’s seat, set his eyes on the most recently recovered body, and cleared his lungs of a noisy cough.

  We’d met Dr. Helsing for the first time a few years back when Winnebago County switched from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner to the Midwest Medical Examiner. Helsing was with Dr. Patrick on that first call. He was an attractive American Indian, and nearly as tall as Swanson. In our first few encounters, he’d sent me vibes he wanted to ask me out, but never had. Perhaps he sensed the way I felt about Smoke.

  We exchanged minimal greetings. “Doctor Patrick had already started a scheduled autopsy when we got the call,” Helsing explained.

  “There’s no way I’ll ever forget my first day on the job,” Swanson said, mostly to himself, as he retrieved the black case from the van.

  Thomas Bauer stayed with us as we’d migrated to the excavator and no one paid much attention. When Weber, Mason, and Carlson joined us, we grouped together like a small mob.

  That’s when Smoke noticed Bauer was still among us. “Thomas, you’ll need you to move to the other side of the barricade. Sorry.”

  He seemed disappointed Smoke expelled him, but at least he hadn’t been banned from watching altogether. Helsing was ready with his camera and moved in with the ease of one practiced in receiving and examining bodies, no matter the condition. We maintained silence until he’d finished then Smoke said, “Mason and Carlson are already outfitted in impervious suits, ready to assist with lifting the body out of there. We got more suits in our mobile unit if you need more help.”