Murder in Winnebago County

by Christine Husom

  Twardy’s color rose as he spoke. “Dawes, you’re the lead on this one. I’ll have a meeting with the other detectives and the rest of the brass, get ’em in the loop. Helluva time for Kenner to be on vacation.”

  Kenner, the chief deputy, was on a fishing trip somewhere in the Canadian wilderness.

  The sheriff looked at me, then at Smoke. “Dawes, we need answers, and we need them yesterday.”

  Smoke raised his eyebrows. “With your approval, Sheriff, one of the deputies here can drive the evidence down to the BCA for analysis.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “No, I want you to do it. Call in some favors from your buddy—what’s his name—at the bureau. I know DNA takes a while, but find out if there’re latent prints on anything taken from either death scene, and who the hell they belong to. Get a handwriting expert to examine the suicide notes, see if they were written by the same person. And that powder residue, depending on what it is, could be a link between the deaths.”

  “Will do, but it’s Friday, almost noon. It may be tough to—”

  The sheriff slammed his fist on the desk, and we all startled in reaction. “I don’t care if it’s Christmas Day! Get somebody down there to put a rush on this. We have to know what we’ve got here—sooner rather than later.” Yelling threw the sheriff into a coughing spasm.

  The six of us left the office so the sheriff could recover in peace. Mason and Carlson went home, Weber and Zubinski headed to the mobile crime lab, and Smoke and I went to the evidence room for the dryer hose, razor blade, and suicide notes. The BCA already had the soda cans with the unknown traces of white residue.

  Local jurisdictions collected evidence, and the BCA processed what the county and city agencies couldn’t. The Winnebago County Crime Lab contained the equipment to collect, but not process, most evidence. Unfortunately, as the primary investigation unit for the state, the BCA’s work was backlogged by weeks, sometimes months. We optimistically hoped the autopsy reports on Arthur Franz and Marshall Kelton had been completed and written.

  Smoke drove his squad car into the sheriff’s garage, and we loaded the evidence. “Wanna ride along?” Smoke asked me.

  Both Weber and Zubinski looked disappointed they had not been chosen. Going to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was not part of a routine workday. I had only been there twice for training. “Sure,” I said.

  “Teacher’s pet,” Mandy Zubinski mouthed at me, her hazel eyes holding mine. She was jealous of the friendship Smoke and I shared and had started a rumor the previous year that we were having an affair. I heard Mandy had a crush on Smoke, but didn’t know if that was true or not.

  Smoke had told me people believed what they wanted to believe, and if Mandy’s story bothered me, I needed thicker skin. He said he considered it a compliment anyone would think I would be interested in an old geezer like him. In any case, I hadn’t gone out of my way to befriend Mandy Zubinski since then.

  The rain had reduced to a sprinkle, making the fifty-mile drive easier. “So, who owes you a favor at the BCA, Smoke?” I asked.

  “Oh, one of my buddies, Darin Henning. I think I’ve mentioned him.” He glanced at me and I nodded. “He’s the Forensic Science Supervisor in the Criminalistics Laboratory. But I owe him a lot more favors than he owes me by now. We were deputies together in Cook County. Darin went on for further training and worked his way up at the BCA. Which reminds me, I better call to see if he’s even there today.”

  Smoke got Darin’s machine and left a message. His cell phone rang about twenty minutes later.

  “Hey, my friend. Busy down there?” Pause. “Figured as much. Say, we got a situation in Winnebago, and I need your help.” Another pause. “Well, we sent you some evidence last week, and then some more this week, on a couple of deaths. We’re on our way down there with a few more things, and I was wondering if you could meet us. I’ll tell you about it when we get there.” Pause. “Sergeant Corky Aleckson. . . . Yeah, you’ll get to meet her, but she’s too young for you. . . . Thanks, see you in about thirty.”

  Smoke clapped his phone shut. “Good. We don’t have to go with a Plan B, whatever that might have been. Darin says he’s so far behind another afternoon won’t make any difference. Welcome to our world, huh?”

  We checked in at the front reception desk at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, each of us carrying a bag of what we hoped would help provide answers to the mysterious circumstances of Arthur’s and Marshall’s deaths. The young male attendant was seated in a bulletproof glass cage. Smoke gave him our names and told him Darin Henning was expecting us. The attendant phoned Henning, nodded, and handed us the sign-in sheet. He asked for our identification, looked through our bags, then pushed a button to unlock the door, allowing us access into the secure area where Henning was waiting.

  Smoke and Darin grasped hands in an enthusiastic shake. Darin slapped Smoke on the back then turned to me. I guessed him to be about forty, just under six feet, more cute than handsome. His light brown hair, thin on top, was trimmed short and neat, but he needed a shave. There was a sparkle in his blue eyes that made me wonder what he was thinking. He gripped my hand with almost as much vigor as he had shown Smoke.

  “I am too old for her,” Darin told Smoke, eyeing me up and down. “Elton says you’re a sergeant. In what, the cookie patrol? You look like a teenager.”

  For some reason, I liked him immediately.

  “Ponytail, no makeup—” I started.

  “Good genes,” Smoke finished. “And not the kind she’s wearing,” he added when Darin glanced at my legs.

  We followed Darin to his office, and he motioned us to set the bags on a small conference table. “All right, tell me what you got here and what you need.”

  Smoke stepped forward and emptied the individually packaged items on the table. My bag contained only the dryer hose, which I set on a chair. Smoke gave Darin a rundown of what we needed and why. Darin took notes and attached them to the outside of the evidence bags.

  “Okay, shouldn’t take too long to take care of this, except for the DNA, of course. When the legislature decided to include all felons in the DNA database, it added to our load exponentially. We processed about fifteen hundred cases last year alone. At least, because of the convicted offender samples, we got a grant to outsource some of the caseload.”

  Darin held up the evidence bag with the cigarette butts and stared at it for a minute. “Our average turnaround on DNA is two months. Course, it doesn’t much matter if a guy’s incarcerated and not going anywhere, but for cases like yours, we do our best to be more timely. I’ll speed it up as much as possible.”

  “We do appreciate this, Darin. I’ll never get out of being in debt to you,” Smoke said.

  “I quit running a tab on you long ago.” He waved his arm in the air. “Okay, we’ll take the dryer hose and the questioned documents to the Criminalistics Lab. Biology will do the DNA on the cigarette butts and these aluminum cans. Drug Chemistry has the first soda cans with the powder residue. Hennepin do the autopsies?” Darin asked, referring to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “Yes,” Smoke confirmed.

  “They’re quick, so we can possibly get the toxicology report on the first case faxed over here today, if we’re lucky.” He bopped his head from side to side, thinking. “The second one? Maybe sometime next week.”

  Darin phoned the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office. They located the file on Arthur Franz’s autopsy. It had been dictated, but not typed up. Darin requested they fax a copy to his office as soon as it was completed.

  “Okay, grab the bags and let’s get cracking.”

  The Minnesota BCA was state-of-the-art and mammoth in size and scope. The four laboratory divisions had twelve separate sections. I was familiar with the Breath Testing Section in the Toxicology Laboratory because I had taken the Intoxilyzer 5000 Course to run tests on intoxicated drivers. It was a small area compared with the other three sections we’d visited tha
t day.

  Drug Chemistry had literally thousands of pills in little clear drawers from floor to ceiling, lining the walls of the lab. I could not fathom how they had devised their system of organization for drug identification.

  “Drug Chem can usually get results out in less than a month. Hopefully they’ll have it done this afternoon on your cases,” Darin said.

  We headed to the Criminalistics Laboratory for the Latent Fingerprints and Questioned Documents sections. Darin signed the dryer hose and razor blade over to a woman about my age named Shelly, and the alleged suicide notes for comparison to an older gentleman named Harold.

  Darin looked at his watch. “I haven’t had lunch. Let’s head to the cafeteria and give the experts some time to process the evidence.”

  We made our selections and sat at a table in the middle of the room. It was almost two o’clock. There were only a few others in the room. Surprisingly, my cheeseburger was juicy and flavorful, and I devoured it a little too fast.

  “We’ve got the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, AFIS that conducts latent searches of the FBI database —very efficient system—can get us info we didn’t have easy access to before.” Darin said and bit into his chicken salad sandwich.

  “Smoke—” I started.

  “Where?”

  Darin craned his neck around at the same time Smoke said, “What?” and then looked at Darin. “She’s talking to me. Smoke is my Oak Lea nickname.”

  “I have known you for—what—sixteen years, and didn’t know you had an ‘Oak Lea nickname.’ How in the heck did you get the nickname ‘Smoke’?”

  “Long story, and there is a young lady present who doesn’t need to hear all the particulars. Suffice it to say, when I was a junior in high school, I was in a fish house with a girl, and we weren’t exactly fishing when I accidentally kicked over the lantern and started the place on fire.”

  Smoke looked at me for my reaction, but I managed to keep a straight face. I had figured as much. “She thought she was pretty clever. She went around telling everyone, ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire, and “Smoke’s” real name is Elton.’ The name stuck.” Smoke actually blushed recalling the memory. I didn’t try to hide my silly grin from him.

  Darin laughed for nearly a full minute. “You were an old dog even then, you son of a gun.”

  “Change of subject. Tell me what’s new in your world,” Smoke said, clearly uncomfortable with the attention the conversation had given him.

  “Not a whole heck of a lot. I work, eat, sleep, not much time for play.” Darin shrugged. “This crime solving business gets in your blood. Who needs a social life? I’d hate to ruin another woman’s life by marrying her.” He looked at me, then explained. “I was married for six years back when I was a deputy with Elton—Smoke.” He grinned at the last word. “And how about you, your social life still about as exciting as ever?”

  “I had dinner with an old friend this week and,” he looked at his watch, “if we get out of here early enough, we’re going to do it again tonight.”

  The vision of Smoke and my mother kissing replayed in my mind. It bothered me that it bothered me so much and I didn’t know why.

  Darin’s phone rang.

  “It’s Shelly,” he said as he answered. “You’re sure?” he said into the phone. “And the blade? . . . Okay, thanks.” Darin hung up. “Are you ready for this? There are two partial prints on the razor blade, but not a single print on the dryer hose.”

  Smoke swallowed, drew his eyebrows together and asked, “Not one?”

  “Nada,” Darin confirmed.

  “Damn. Well, Arthur wasn’t wearing gloves, and we didn’t find any at the scene, so I’d say that’s proof positive he didn’t rig the dryer hose.”

  “But not proof of who did. Good thing it’s not your only piece of evidence.”

  As if on cue, Darin’s phone rang again.

  “Andy? . . . On both cans? . . . Okay, send them over to Shelly to check for latents. . . . Good work.” Darin looked at Smoke, then me. “Ever hear of haloperidol?”

  Smoke nodded and I shook my head.

  “Psychotropic drug, used to level out people with severe personality disorders,” Smoke explained.

  Darin nodded. “There’s an expression to describe the way people on haloperidol walk called the ‘haloperidol shuffle.’ The drug zones people out.”

  “And it was found on both cans?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How common is it?” Smoke asked.

  Darin bopped his head back and forth again, a trait I had begun to recognize as his habit when he was considering, or estimating, something.

  “I’d say rare. It’s a Schedule Two drug, high potential for abuse, severe restrictions on its use. Used mainly in hospitals where it can be regulated and controlled.”

  “So, if we’re looking at people who are on the drug, they are probably hospitalized, or else we’re looking at someone who has access to the drug at work?” I asked.

  “Most likely,” Darin said.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s a prescription drug. I was worried it was something like GHB, the date rape drug. Much harder to track that back to the source,” Smoke observed.

  Darin nodded. “Want dessert, or another cup of coffee?”

  He seemed to have all the time in the world, though we all knew he was swamped with work. When Smoke and I declined, Darin said, “Then let’s see how Harold is doing with the notes.”

  Harold set his magnifying glass down and stood when he saw the three of us. He walked to the end of the table where he was working and picked up the notes, one in each hand. “Take a look.” He waved us over with his head. “These notes were printed on the same printer using different font styles and sizes, probably to make them look like they were written by different people.

  “There is a very slight wave three inches down, and if there were more printing, the pattern would show up every three inches, by my estimate. It was caused by slight damage to the roller, probably a paper jam, and the person ripped the papers out without releasing the hold.”

  Harold studied the documents for a second. “The signatures were also made by the same person, and probably traced from the original signatures. The pen was held straight down, not at an angle, which virtually everyone does when writing.” Harold demonstrated what he meant, and it looked like a very awkward way to hold a pen. “The deepest impressions are on the left and bottom of the letters.” He traced the areas in question. “Same person signed both letters. There is no question in my mind.”

  “You are the man,” Darin said as he picked up the bagged notes. “On to Latents.”

  Smoke and I followed our piper, thinking, not speaking.

  Shelly was gently brushing fine white powder from a soda can, revealing many fingerprints, most of them smudged. There were two distinct prints Shelly captured with a piece of sticky adhesive. She taped them to glass slides for identification. “From the size and shape, it looks like the prints belong to one person. The other soda can, found at the scene with this one, are from the same person.”

  “So, it was one person who drank from both cans?” Smoke asked.

  “Yes,” Shelly confirmed.

  She looked at the name on the glass slide. “On the can from the Arthur Franz case, I was able to get three clear prints, all from the same person. On the beer can . . .” she paused and looked at her notes “. . . the one from the Marshall Kelton case, I got a perfect set of left hand prints, like he picked the can up once, drank from it, then set it down. There were also a right thumb and index finger prints at the top of the can, from the same person who made the left hand prints. They also match the partials I lifted from the razor blade.”

  Darin, Smoke, and I looked at the slides for a few minutes. I collected latent prints from time to time and admired how effortless Shelly made it look. It wasn’t as easy for most of us to lift identifiable prints.

  “Okay, Shelly, bang-up job, as always. I think we
know the answer to the owners of the prints on the cans found with Arthur Franz and Marshall Kelton. Run ’em through the database. They should come back to the Winnebago attorneys. If you get a hit on the third set, the soda cans found in the field by Bebee Lake, call me right away,” Darin instructed.

  Darin, Smoke, and I walked back to Darin’s office.

  “Thanks for pulling strings, Darin. We’d hate to have waited two weeks, much less two months, for this,” Smoke said with sincere gratitude.

  Darin clapped his hands together. “Glad I could help. The eighty-seven counties in this state keep us hopping, that’s for sure, but certain cases have to take priority over others.”

  Smoke nodded. “Can I use your phone? I better call the sheriff from a land line.”

  “Help yourself.” Darin slid his phone across the desk to give Smoke better access.

  While Smoke told the sheriff what the afternoon and the BCA had revealed, Darin pulled me aside. “So, you got yourselves a murder investigation, or I should say two murder investigations?”

  I nodded, wondering what was next. It was the first time I had been part of one.

  “Well, you got a good guy in Elton. Calm, systematic, nobody’s fool,” Darin added.

  “He’s taught me a lot. He’s my best friend in the department,” I admitted.

  “The one he had dinner with this week?” Darin raised his eyebrows.

  I smiled. “No.”

  Darin frowned slightly, studying my face. “Not that it’s any of my business, but how old are you? Seriously.”

  “Almost twenty-nine.”

  He grinned and nodded. “Then I’m not too old for you. I’m thirty-nine. You live in Oak Lea?” I nodded.

  “No wedding ring?” he asked and I shook my head. “Seeing someone?”

  “Yes.”

  Darin snapped his fingers and made a clicking sound. “My usual luck.”

  Something about him made me smile.

  Darin’s questions about my dating status reminded me I hadn’t talked to Nick all day. “Excuse me for a minute.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, turned it on, and saw I had two missed calls, both from Nick. It was after five, so I tried him at home. “Hi, Nick.”