Remains In Coyote Bog

by Christine Husom

“Well, I guess I need another shower,” I told my waiting pooch.

  15

  I was about to knock on Chief Deputy Randolph’s doorframe Wednesday morning when I heard him say, “I know the sheriff will make damn sure Jaxson honors the conditions of his release.”

  “Yes, he will,” Smoke said.

  I poked my head inside. “Good morning. You wanted to see me?”

  Randolph stood, waved me in, and sat down again. “Yes. Come in, Sergeant, and close the door.”

  I took the chair next to Smoke. His smile was relaxed, no sign of tension there after our curt discussion the night before. Maybe I’d read too much into what he said before left for home.

  “We got an update from Doctor Patrick. She spoke with Doctor Nancy Snyder, the one and only forensic anthropologist in Minnesota,” Smoke said.

  “The only one, seriously?” I said.

  Smoke lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t realize that, either. Besides handling requests from medical examiners around the state when remains are found under a variety of circumstances, Snyder has also been working with the state archeologist on a large project, trying to identify remains from the large collection of bones they have at the state.”

  “Isn’t that something?” Randolph said.

  “Snyder is happy to assist Doc Patrick in estimating the ages the victims were at the time of their deaths, but it’s unlikely she’ll be able to pinpoint exactly how long they’ve been in the bog. It’d be a wide range,” Smoke said.

  “Hey, they do that kind of thing all the time on the crime shows,” I said.

  Smoke raised his eyebrows. “That’s because the writers know people like to believe in magic. Back to Snyder, before we enlist her services, we’re forming our own plan of action.”

  My ears perked up. “As in?”

  “We’re reopening the unsolved missing persons’ cases from the last decade, starting with the most recent and working backward from there,” Smoke said.

  “Makes sense to me,” I said.

  Randolph nodded. “The best place to start.”

  “I reviewed the Oscar Wright file again since he was the most recent elderly person to go missing. I located his daughter and set up a meeting with her. Are you ready for a road trip?” Smoke said.

  “Where to?” I said.

  He chuckled. “Not far, Harold Lake.”

  “Isn’t that where Oscar lived?”

  “Yep. Daughter Claire works at the café in town and told me the morning rush is over. It gives her a thirty-minute window she can get away and talk to us. We’ll collect her DNA while we’re at it, submit it to the lab.”

  I stood up. “Ready when you are.” Smoke had been on another case when Mr. Wright disappeared and wasn’t the lead detective that worked it. Nevertheless, it was all hands on deck in the effort to locate him and everyone in the department was involved in some aspect of the search.

  Randolph nodded. “Catch you both later.”

  Smoke lifted his hand in an after-you gesture and we headed to his unmarked squad car. “I swung by Coyote Bog on my way in to work today,” he said.

  “So did I.”

  “It’s near impossible to stay away from crime scenes.”

  “They keep drawing me back, for sure. The dead tell their stories to medical examiners and I keep hoping something like that will happen for us. Like the bad guy will be there, and it’ll be the break we need,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.” We climbed into the car. “After the rocky start with construction two days ago, the road project’s back on track, moving right along. Our county guys should finish up the ditch clean out today and the company they contracted with will take over from there,” he said.

  “Ron Sutton was there when I pulled in. I asked how his guys were doing and he told me the debriefing you did helped them—all of them—a lot.”

  “That was the goal and I’m happy to get positive feedback. We need our people to stay healthy.”

  “For sure. To let you know, I did a check on Floyd Myren. Mostly to find out who’s watching his house, see if that person’s ever noticed anything going on around Coyote Bog,” I said.

  “What’d you find out about Myren?”

  “He doesn’t have a landline and I couldn’t find a cell number. I’d hoped to give him a call, get the name of the mystery woman his neighbor saw. Myren’s only listed address is the one here by Coyote.”

  “It’s possible he rents a condo, something like that, in Florida,” Smoke said.

  “That’s what I figured. Mail still goes to his place here. Has a local bank, automatic deposits of both social security and VA benefits. Plus, his utility payments and insurances are set up on automatic withdrawal. The bank only has his local address on file, and an email address. His phone number on file is the landline he dropped.”

  “You can email him, I guess.”

  “I will.”

  “Find out anything on his family?” Smoke said.

  “I located obituaries on his wife, his daughter, and a brother where he was listed as the survivor. He outlived all of them.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It’s curious, anyway,” I said.

  “That it is.”

  “Back to Oscar Wright’s case. I remember a lot, but maybe not all the details.”

  “I’ll give you an abbreviated version. It was a weird deal, really. He was at the assisted living facility in Harold Lake because of his dementia. But his daughter said in the report that it hadn’t gotten to the point where he needed to be in the memory care unit.

  “On that Wednesday in May, Oscar was in the day area for an afternoon program. According to others who were there, and noticed, he got up and left about halfway through it. They figured he either needed to use the bathroom or wanted to go lie down in his room, something like that.

  “A nurse saw him talking to an older woman in the hallway when she passed by, and going by the time frame, that nurse was the last one in the facility known to have seen him. They couldn’t find a single person that saw him leave. It seemed he had vanished.”

  “And they think that older woman somehow spirited him away?” I said.

  “Maybe lured is a better word. It’s a logical conclusion, but why, and where did they go? The nurse gave a decent description of her. Caucasian, small in stature, gray hair, high cheekbones, narrow chin. And she wore glasses with big frames.”

  “I remember our team came up with a composite sketch and posted that, along with Oscar’s photo, in the area newspapers. But no one came forward to identify her.”

  “Since none of the staff or residents knew her that begs the questions: who was she and what was she doing at the care facility?” Smoke said.

  “Obviously not working there or visiting a friend or relative who lived there. If that were the case, someone would have known her.”

  “Correct. Nor was she identified as one of the volunteers. That’s what led to the conclusion, as you noted, she spirited Oscar away. That belief was shared by everyone else who worked the case.” He turned and flashed me a smile that set my heart aflutter. An unguarded moment no one was there to witness.

  “Oscar may have known her from somewhere,” I said.

  “And they walked off into the sunset together?”

  I shrugged. “Given her size, she couldn’t have strong-armed him to go with her.”

  “That’s a fact. He was six foot one, weighed about one eighty,” he said.

  “The great unknown, all right.”

  Claire Bolton’s small bungalow was two blocks from her work. When she opened the door, I recognized her right away. Retirement age, tall, friendly, and chatty. Smoke and I showed our badges and she waved like it wasn’t necessary. We all knew each other. “Come in, come right in.” Claire touched each of our shoulders as we stepped across the threshold. I silently added “a toucher” to her description.

  She pointed the way to the kitchen, and we sat around the table. The room wa
s clutter-free, the walls a pleasing shade of yellow, in sync with the owner’s sunny disposition. Smoke slid a business card across the table, and I did the same. Claire glanced at them, then at us. “You said you might have some information about my father’s disappearance.”

  Smoke cleared his throat. “I don’t want to mislead you, or give you false hopes—”

  “You think Dad is one of the people they found in Coyote Bog.” She locked her eyes squarely on Smoke as she folded her hands and squeezed them together tightly.

  Smoke kept his voice low and soothing. “That’s the possibility we need to check out. To either verify that he is or he’s not one of the bodies.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, my dear Lord in Heaven. Does that mean someone killed him? Who would do that to an eighty-year-old man? Dad was a big, loveable teddy bear.” Tears sprang from their ducts and rolled down her cheeks. “Back when we couldn’t find him anywhere, I was afraid he’d wandered over to the lake and fell in. But the sheriffs couldn’t find him, so I kept thinking maybe he’s alive after all. Like he hitchhiked somewhere and couldn’t find his way back home. I’ve been caught up in a kind of hell.” People without answers grasp at all kinds of straws.

  “We don’t yet know the cause of death of the folks we found,” Smoke said.

  Claire shook her head back and forth.

  “I can only imagine what you’ve been through. I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “That goes for me, too,” Smoke said.

  “Claire, I’d like you to take a look at something.” I pulled out my phone, found the photo of the cross pendant found in Coyote Bog, and held it up for her to see. “Do you recognize this necklace?”

  She squinted for better focus and shook her head. “I don’t.”

  Smoke gave her a moment then drew the DNA kit from his breast pocket. “This test will tell us if you’re a blood relative of one of the male victims. If you are, we’ll be able to identify your father’s remains.”

  “I don’t know. I mean I want to know, but I don’t.” Red blotches formed on her cheeks.

  “It’s not easy, any way you look at it. But if it turns out we’ve found your father, you’ll be able to put to rest all your what ifs,” Smoke said.

  Claire nodded. “What do I need to do for the test?”

  “Open your mouth. I’ll swab the inside of your cheek and then we’re done.” The sample was collected and sealed in no time. “We’ll let you know as soon as the lab has the results. They’ll expedite it, but even so it can take a few days. Meantime, do you remember the names of your father’s dentist and doctor?” Smoke said.

  “Um, yes, I do.” She provided the information and I recorded it in my memo book. They were both in Harold Lake.

  Smoke put his hand on hers. “Is there anything we can do, contact anyone to help you?”

  “Like your pastor or a friend?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Thanks, maybe I’ll talk to my priest later. For now, I just want to get back to the café.”

  “You sure you’ll be okay going back to work?” Smoke asked.

  “Way, way better than sitting here driving myself crazy thinking about this.”

  “In my time with the sheriff’s office, we’ve had a few missing persons’ cases where the person was never found. I’ve said this before, but if someone I knew and loved disappeared, not knowing what happened would push me to the edge,” I said.

  “Yep, so make it a point to never disappear.”

  “We’ll make a pact.” We drove in silence until I was the one who broke it. “In Oscar Wright’s case, at this point, how can we piece together what happened, why he left the facility? We’re missing key evidence.”

  “That’s a sad fact, to be sure. I pulled files of two other elderly people who also went mysteriously missing in the last few years and were never located. One was four years ago, the other was three. We’ll review them, see if we can find another common thread, besides all of them having dementia. The department explored the possibility of a connection between the cases back then, but didn’t find one,” Smoke said.

  “Hmm, it might turn out that there is, after all. And the connection might be something more sinister than the three of them just wandered off on their own.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Are you going to run Claire’s DNA swab to the lab first thing?” I said.

  “No, I’ll have one of the deputies take care of that.”

  The Midwest Regional Crime Lab was about an hour away in Anoka County and about ten miles from the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office.

  16

  Smoke and I carried selected files to the squad room so we had a table to spread out the reports. A sense of both reverence and sadness touched me whenever I studied the faces of victims—no matter the circumstances—but especially if it involved a criminal act.

  I read the file on Silas Petty, the man who’d gone missing three years before, and passed the sheets to Smoke.

  He scanned through them to refresh his memory. “Mister Petty supposedly drove away from his house one week before his seventy-ninth birthday, on May fourteenth. Didn’t bother to lock up his house—”

  “And that led to two trains of thought. One, he planned to return a short time later, but got confused and something caused him to keep going. To where, no one had a clue. Or two, he knew he wasn’t coming back, and left the house open for easier access. Again, no one had a clue where he would have gone,” I said.

  “And he didn’t leave a note.”

  “No note, and his vehicle was never found.”

  “His disappearance tripped some dissension in the family, and finger pointing by the two sons who lived out of state. They called out their uncles, said they were close and should have made sure he wasn’t left alone, even for a short time. But according to his doctor, Silas hadn’t progressed much in the disease at that point; wasn’t considered a danger to himself, didn’t wander.

  “The brothers who lived here didn’t think he’d reached the point of needing around-the-clock care. They hired caregivers to be with him part of the time and took turns spending the night with him, so he wouldn’t be alone. Since one of the brothers saw him every day, they could keep an eye on him, watch for any changes,” Smoke said.

  “I read that and thought what a great help they were to their brother. Poor Silas didn’t want to leave his house and go to a nursing home.”

  “It made us detectives and his doctor wonder if something had shifted in his brain that affected his reasoning, made him drive off into parts unknown. Or maybe he’d run away on purpose. For reasons that he considered were good ones.”

  “That’s what his brothers suggested must have happened. That he ran away to save his family from whatever lay ahead as his condition got worse,” I said.

  “The brothers had known him longest, but Petty’s sons thought they knew their dad better than their uncles did. Both of Silas’s brothers reported that he’d never given any indication he’d been thinking about losing himself. Then again, how many times have we heard similar things over the years? Truth be told, those who know the person best usually are right. But there’s always the exception when the indicators aren’t there, or they don’t get picked up on,” Smoke said.

  “True. Like the guy last month who got a terminal diagnosis from his doctor, drove home, and took his life without even telling his family the news. They had to piece it all together.”

  “A shocker for them.”

  “Back to Silas Petty’s sons, I see one is in Chicago and the other is in Boston. At least that’s where they were three years ago,” I said.

  “That makes collecting DNA an issue. We’ll see if Petty’s brothers are still in Winnebago County and take it from there. I see no reason to contact the sons or the sister who’s in Iowa at this stage of the game. Get them all riled up and then have it come to naught.”

  I picked up a sheet of paper and waved it back and forth. “Besides the fact
that he was never found, his bank account wasn’t tapped into.”

  “Nope. Another common thread in the three cases.”

  I thought for a minute about some statistics I’d read. Half of all people with dementia wander off at some point, either because they get disoriented or have some sort of mental disconnect where they believe they need to go somewhere specific, like to a job they haven’t had in years, as one example. A long list of reasons was cited.

  I laid Silas Petty’s file on the table.

  Smoke picked up the other file and scanned it. “Agneta Keats, age eighty-one, missing for just over five years now, disappeared on May ninth.”

  “Wait a minute. All three of them—Oscar, Silas, and Agneta—went missing in May?”

  Smoke nodded. “They did, and in fact the detectives discussed that coincidence after Oscar disappeared last year, but couldn’t come up with any particular reason. Aside from, in Silas’s case, it was his birth month. That was it. And what could be the tie to the other two?”

  “So you think it was an odd coincidence?”

  “You know how I feel about that. But with no dots for us to draw lines to at the time, what would the significance have been, what did we miss?”

  “None of the three knew the others, correct?” I said.

  “Correct. And they had been receiving different levels of care. Had they been in the same facility, the Minnesota Department of Health would have been all over it. As would we, of course. Missus Keats was in an assisted living apartment. She was there the first time they made rounds, gone on the next.”

  Smoke studied Agneta’s photo and passed it to me.

  It had been a recent church picture. She was dolled up with a professional hair comb, blush on her cheeks, and color on her lips. I smiled at her sweet face. “Is it possible she’s one of the female victims? I couldn’t match her face up with any of them with any level of confidence.” I set the photo on the table next to Silas Petty’s and would make copies of them later.

  “No. Same deal regarding the photos of our male victims, trying to match them to one of the bodies we recovered.”