“We may bring in the expertise of a forensic anthropologist. We’ll know more when we autopsy and run tests,” Patrick said.
Helsing and Swanson rolled gurneys over. We helped them open the body bags and transfer the bodies onto the gurneys. We loaded one into the van, and the other into the transport vehicle.
“Tim, Todd, Brian, Vince, any of you guys need a break? Corky and I can take someone’s place, bring in more reinforcements, if need be,” Smoke said.
“Nah. And if we find any more, we kinda got a system goinˊ here,” Weber said.
The others said they were okay, too.
“You can change your minds. You’ve already proved that you’re heroes,” Smoke said.
“Rock stars,” I said.
After hours searching the acres of the wetland, we recovered three more bodies. All told, three females and four males were recovered. Seven branded bog bodies.
10
Mama and Rufus
“Mama, I think they got all of ˊem.” Rufus dropped his head and closed his eyes.
“Son, how could that have happened? You had a long slide to get them way out from the road. And the bog should have kept them right where they were.”
It was true, Rufus could out shot put the best of them. Not that he had ever competed, but he liked to watch track and field events on television, and he’d learned how to throw. He tossed heavy rocks as a fun sport.
Should he tell her? Mama had always told him he’d be in less trouble if he told the truth. “I slipped one time.”
“What?”
“I didn’t get one as far out as the other ones. She was light so I threw her in, so I didn’t have to use that slide. But I stepped on a rock and kind of tripped when I was doing it. So she didn’t get out as far as the other ones.”
“When did that happen, which one of our patients was it?”
“Number three.” He raised his fingers, one at a time. “So it was five years ago.”
Mama knew who he meant. “How far did she go?”
Rufus walked and stopped at about six feet.
“Oh, Rufus. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it was far enough, Mama. They shouldn’t have never found her with the sinker on, and all.”
11
I’d asked my brother, John Carl—who was also my new neighbor—to check on Queenie and Rex after I’d been at the Coyote Bog scene for eight hours. It was another four hours before I finally rolled into my driveway.
“We had a real cluster today. Sorry. Thank goodness for John Carl, huh?” I opened the door of the kennel in the backyard. Queenie rushed at me and I lifted my hands. “No kisses. I am way too gross. You guys go run off some energy.”
Queenie was the younger of the two and full of vigor, common in English Setters. Rex, a Golden Lab, managed to keep up with her for a while, nonetheless. I’d had so much standing around time at Coyote that if I hadn’t been in uniform with my non-breathable Kevlar vest and heavy-duty belt on, I might have joined them.
We hadn’t a clue how many more bodies might be in the bog, so the medical examiner’s decision to send their multiple-fatality vehicle saved them several trips.
“Time for a treat,” I called out. Both dogs beat me to the garage service door, and we trooped into the house. After pouring milk bones into their bowls and filling their water dishes, I escaped to the laundry room that adjoined a three-quarter bathroom off the kitchen. I hung my duty belt and vest on hooks and threw my uniform and underclothes in the washer with an extra measure of detergent. I’d do a heavy-duty, hot wash cycle after my shower.
I set the water at a lower temperature than usual to cool my overheated body, stepped into the stall, and stood under the water spray while I soaped, lathered, and rinsed. Then I turned up the temp and let the water pound down on my tense shoulder muscles. They relaxed a little.
After I’d patted myself dry, I wrapped up in the towel, started the washer, and headed up to my bedroom. My Peeping-Tom canine companions watched me put on a tee-shirt and shorts.
When I’d left the scene, Smoke was wrapping things up, but needed to check in at the office before calling it a day. After nearly fourteen hours at work, he deserved a decent meal. But what? I headed to the kitchen, downed a tall glass of water, opened the refrigerator door, and stared inside. I felt brain-dead and hoped a wave of inspiration would flow through me.
My cell phone rang so I ran to the laundry room where I’d left it with my things. Smoke. I pushed the talk button. “Yes, dear?” I said in a syrupy-sweet voice.
“Music to my ears, little darlinˊ.”
I snickered. “I’m glad. You rang?”
“I had a hankering for some Chinese so I put in an order I’ll pick up on my way home.” Home. That was music to my ears. He was bringing Chinese home.
“Yum, see you when you get here.”
The past ten months had been, hands down, the best of my life. Smoke and I had formed an immediate, special bond when I started as a rookie deputy with the Winnebago County Sheriff eleven years before. He was experienced and astute. He’d mentored me and taught me the ropes. The strange catch was he’d been friends with my parents. So as much as I trusted and admired him, I hadn’t admitted the attraction I felt—even to myself—for a long time. When I did, things changed between us. My grandma told me after Smoke saw the desire in my eyes, he’d found me hard to resist. But resist he did.
Smoke had fought his yearning for a few long years until love finally won out. He needed me as his life partner and asked me to marry him. We hadn’t quite worked out the details, but we would. I figured for a man committed to bachelorhood, a little extra time coming to grips with what marriage entailed was not a bad thing. As far as I was concerned, we were married in the eyes of God.
Add to that, the activities in the lives of my family members had swirled like mini tornadoes the past year. My paternal grandparents moved into a townhome in Oak Lea and gave their old farmhouse to my brother after he moved back from Colorado. I suspected one of the big motivators for John Carl’s return home was the prospect of a loving, stable relationship with Sara Speiss, my best girlfriend, and a darn good Winnebago County probation officer.
After my mother’s fiancé—our former sheriff—had broken off their engagement, a widowed friend she’d known since high school stepped in to fill the emotional gap. It wouldn’t surprise any of us if he whisked her off her feet and married her before Smoke and I tied the knot ourselves.
My maternal grandfather was in his upper eighties. He had a sharp mind, but his body was wearing out. Decades of farming had taken its toll and inactivity in more recent years compounded the problem. My mother’s care was the reason he still lived in his own home. John Carl and I helped, but Mother carried the bulk of the load without complaint. I’d been thinking we should hire a home health aide to give her some respite before she completely burned out.
With all that, the biggest life-changer for our family was when we learned that Dad had fathered another daughter, Taylor, he hadn’t known about. The young woman he was briefly involved with hadn’t told anyone, including her parents, that Carl Aleckson was the one responsible.
Learning about our father’s affair was especially hard on Mother. She’d loved him practically since birth. Her emotional struggle was the main reason my paternal grandparents, John Carl, and I hadn’t spent as much time with Taylor and her family as I would have liked. My sister, nieces, and nephew were pieces of my life I hadn’t known were missing.
I downed another glass of water to rehydrate. Smoke marveled how I could gulp water down so fast. My secret: I kept it on the tepid side. Ice cold water was too much of an assault to the esophagus and took my breath away if I drank it too fast.
I set plates, silverware, serving spoons, and napkins on the table in the dining room. Smoke would want to shower first, but I’d be ready when he was.
Sara Speiss sent me a text asking me to call her when I was clear. “Hey, Sara. You hea
rd?”
“Oh. My. Gosh, Cork. Yes. But we didn’t get a lot of details at the office. Old folks with religious marks on them, in Coyote Bog?”
Word always got around, no matter what. “Speaking confidentially, that’s about it, in a nutshell. I can barely describe what it was like. Shocking, seeing the first body, then the second, then the third, and up to the seventh. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of bog bodies. And you know the couple we recovered from the Whitetail Lake? They were unnaturally preserved, too. But in this case, the branding on the bodies gave the recovery much darker overtones.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Sara said.
“We’ve got seven unidentified victims, and we don’t know how long their bodies were in the Coyote Bog.”
“Where do you start?”
“We sent deputies out to canvass the neighbors, but the houses are few and far between on that stretch of road. Not all the residents were home, so we’ll hit them tomorrow,” I said.
“You’d think a person would report it if they saw someone dropping a body into the swamp.”
“You’d think. One challenge is this might stem back decades. We’ll get a better idea of the time frame when the M.E.’s office finishes up. Doctor Patrick said they may enlist the services of a forensic anthropologist.”
“The work they do amazes me.”
“No kidding. While we waited for folks at the scene, we talked about finds in other countries. Smoke said one of the most famous was found in Denmark in the nineteen fifties. They estimated he was over two thousand years old and perfectly mummified. Amazing. They dubbed him Tollund Man,” I said.
“I’ll have to look him up.”
“Me, too. Scientific methods are improving about as fast as other technologies, and they can test new things on bodies found a hundred years ago.”
“Let’s just say I admire scientific minds because I don’t have one.”
“You have great people skills, and that’s not true of all the science-brain people I know.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You’ve had an unbelievable day, so I’ll let you go. Hopefully you can unwind.”
“Hopefully. Smoke will be here any minute. He has a way of making things better.”
“Take care, my friend.”
“You, too.”
I wandered around the house until I heard the garage door lift and headed to the kitchen. Smoke came in looking and smelling like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He set the bag of food on the counter and drew me into his arms. We held on tight for a long moment.
I moved my face, buried it in his neck, until my lips found his for a promising kiss. “You could have showered here.”
“I cleaned up in the locker room at the office so we could do this as soon as I got here.” His lips brushed mine then moved in for another deep kiss. Until the dogs, impatient for his attention, whined and broke the spell.
“All right, you two. So, Rex and Queenie, how did your long day together in the kennel go?” He scratched the tops of their heads and under their necks, and they lavished in it until he stood up. “Now that I’ve properly greeted my favorites, I’m looking forward to a cold beer.”
“Coming right up.” I fetched two bottles of Grain Belt, a local light beer, from the fridge and handed him one. We twisted off the tops, clinked the necks of our bottles together, and took a swig.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
I picked up the bag of food, carried it to the table, and pulled out the containers. Smoke lifted the lids off and stuck spoons in them. Beef and broccoli, chicken almond ding, shrimp fried rice, vegetable egg rolls.
“You got enough for another meal, too. Leftovers, yay.”
“I felt starved and actually stopped myself from ordering even more, believe it or not. Everything on the menu sounded good.”
“Like grocery shopping when you’re hungry.”
“That’s what I did all right.”
We dished up, said grace, and dug in like you’d imagine after fifteen—closer to sixteen—hours since our last real meal. Randolph had pizza, sandwiches, and snacks delivered to the crime scene, but all I could manage was a granola bar. Death scenes kept my appetite at bay.
I swallowed a mouthful. “So will the highway guys pick up where they left off on their project tomorrow?”
“No. I talked to Wendell Peltz, and he thought they’d give it a day of rest and resume on Wednesday. The rain is supposed to hold off all week. He told me he hoped we’d be able to work in a time to debrief his men tomorrow, before they get back at it.”
“That’d be good. But Kenner can’t do the debrief, not with his son in the middle of all that trouble.”
“You’re right on. Speaking of Jaxson, they’ve got him in a holding cell until his first court appearance. So the other inmates don’t know who he is. I tried calling Mike, but when he didn’t pick up, I sent him a text to let him know we were keeping his family in our prayers.”
Smoke wasn’t a church-going man and kept his faith mostly to himself. His words touched me. “I’m glad you reached out to him. They’ve been in my prayers all day.”
Smoke shook his head. “It doesn’t look good for the other kid. It can take a long time to heal from a brain injury.”
“Scary.” I drew in a calming breath. “Smoke, you’ve been through the training, maybe you should step up to the plate, do the debriefing.”
“Ah.” He put his fork down and leaned back in his chair. “We’ve had discussions about my continually full other kind of plate. And that was before one of the largest cases I can remember was heaped onto it.”
“Yes, but there are some freaked-out guys who need to get back to work. And they’re about as touchy-feely as the deputies are so that puts them more at risk for more long-term effects of untreated stress.”
“Valid point. I’ll run it by the chief deputy early tomorrow, see if we can’t pull something together.” A yawn that looked like it started at his toes and ran the length of his body grabbed hold of him. He used both his hands to cover his mouth. “Ahhh, man. I am completely done in.” Another deep yawn.
I got up, moved around behind him, and slid my hands to the front of his chest. “Go to bed. I’ll put the leftovers away.”
“That’d make it two nights in a row I slept here.”
“I hope it’s not too long until we’re together every night.”
“We must be close to having that talk.” He stood and pulled my body against his in a tight embrace, then dipped his head lower for a tender kiss that melted the whole of my insides. He lifted his face and rested his chin on the top of my head. “We’ll clean up the kitchen together.”
“No way. You took care of dinner. I’ll have it done in a jiff.”
After I’d finished my chores and the dogs were ready to settle in for the night, I felt drawn to do a little research on bogs. I slipped into the den office with a cup of chamomile tea and honey, sat down at my computer, logged on to the Internet, and did a search on bogs in my state. According to the Department of Natural Resources website, Minnesota had over six million acres of peatlands that covered about ten percent of the state. More than any other state, except Alaska. Bogs in Minnesota were called boreal peatlands. Raised bogs, water tracks, and spring fens were the most common in northern Minnesota. Peatlands existed on every continent, including the tropics. I learned the deeper, more dense peat bogs had lower hydraulic conductivity than clay. Hmm.
I expanded my search to other countries where noted bog bodies were among the more than 1,000 uncovered over the centuries, mostly by peat diggers. The first recorded find was in Holstein, Germany, in 1640. And the others were mainly from England, Ireland, Netherlands, and Denmark. The most well-preserved bodies were found in raised peat bogs.
I looked at photos of bodies with reconstructed faces: Lindow Man, Yde Girl, Grauballe Man, and others. But it was Tollund Man, the one Smoke had mentioned at the scene, that drew me back. He lived and died in Denmark around 300
B.C. and his body was found by peat diggers in a bog just over six feet deep, in 1950. Because he was so well preserved, the initial thought was he hadn’t been in the bog long at all. He had beard stubble and eyelashes and wore a hat made of sheepskin and wool. Tollund Man had a rope around his neck and it was debated whether he had been strangled or hanged.
Most agreed he was likely hanged as a sacrifice to the gods because his eyes and mouth were closed, and he was arranged in a fetal position before being placed in the bog. Bogs were regarded as spiritual, holy places for thousands of years, including during the Iron Age when Tollund Man was killed.
Did the bad guy responsible for the seven bodies in Coyote Bog do the same thing to his victims? Kill them as a sacrifice? Christian symbols were branded on their bodies, but that would go against Christian belief.
I studied Tollund Man’s face and the creases around and between his eyes. What had caused the deep frown forever frozen on his face? Was he reacting to the air supply that was cut off? Or perhaps he’d been praying in earnest for a miracle rescue, or a quick and painless death. I surely would be, with a miracle as the number one request.
I minimized the page that held his image and checked out others buried in bogs instead of the ground, and the suppositions why. Many were presumed to be accidental falls, perhaps after imbibing too many drinks. Some were thought to be those not allowed to be interred in consecrated grounds, for one reason or another. Others were supposed murders when evidence of a heavy blow to the head or other trauma was present. Many had been weighted down.
Had our bad guy studied the same things I was reading about, and fantasized about doing something similar? He’d weighted some of his victims down. The thought chilled me to the core. I shut down the computer and did a check of the doors and first floor windows, ensuring they were locked. Then I climbed the stairs and left the hall light on to find my sleepwear. Smoke’s breathing was slow and steady. The dogs were asleep on their rugs and barely stirred. I quietly pulled pajama bottoms and a tee-shirt from the dresser drawer, changed, turned off the light, and climbed into bed. When Smoke didn’t move, I thought he must be caught up in the throes of REM sleep. I said my prayers and drifted off to sleep with a smile of contentment.
Remains In Coyote Bog Page 6