Lonesome Lake

by Lesley Appleton-Jones

“I’d estimate time of death to be between two and five this morning. I’ll need to confirm the cause of death with the autopsy, but she’s suffered sharp force trauma with stabbings and incised wounds to the chest. There are multiple shallow wounds to the back. This could be how he forced her to walk up here. Although I can’t estimate the length of the blade, it appears to be a single-edged weapon. The bruising pattern suggests the weapon has a guard.”

  Holly asked, “Could it be a hunting knife?”

  “That’s a possibility. But I’ll know more after the examination,” Margaret said as she squatted down to point out more observations. “The victim’s injuries to her knees, shoulders, chest and face indicate she fell multiple times but could not break the fall because her hands were bound behind her back. From the marks around her wrists, the suspect used chains. The victim’s mouth was taped. We have not found any restraint material. There is smoke around her nostrils and a strong odor of it in her hair.”

  Holly shivered and noted, “So, not only was she forced to walk up a mountain barefoot with her hands bound behind her back, but she was also in the house when it was on fire.” Turning away from Mimi, she spotted a folded pile of clothing a few feet away from the body. “Are those pajamas?”

  Margaret nodded.

  Although blood soaked the material, Holly could see that the fabric was pale-blue with fluffy, white sheep printed on it. Holly found the pile of clothes disturbing. The image of Mimi being forced to hike up the side of a mountain barefoot, wearing only her cute pajamas made the horror of what someone had done to her even more dreadful. With every barefooted step, Mimi had to have known it was not going to end well. Holly looked more closely at the pajamas. “That’s odd. Why would someone fold the pajamas so neatly?”

  Margaret squinted at the pile of clothes. “It’s not uncommon for suicides by drowning to remove their coat, carefully fold it, and leave it on a river bank or in their car, but I haven’t seen folded clothing in a homicide.”

  Holly turned her attention back to Mimi. “Was she raped?”

  “I’ll have to confirm that at the autopsy, but it doesn’t look like it.”

  Holly said, “Why remove her clothing if he wasn’t going to rape her?”

  Nobody responded, but their furrowed brows indicated they were mulling it over.

  Raines asked, “Is anything missing?”

  “You mean part of the body or jewelry removed for a souvenir?”

  He nodded.

  “Her body appears intact, and she still has her wedding ring on, but we haven’t touched the pajamas. Perhaps we’ll find a piece of material missing when we unfold them. Obviously, her shoes are missing.” She waited for more questions. When none came, she said, “I’m heading down to Concord with the body. I’ll get the autopsy report to you as soon as possible. First, we need to get her down from here.” Sadness and disgust were evident on her face as she turned to walk over to one of the crime scene techs.

  After she’d left, Raines was the first to voice what Holly was thinking. “This sure as hell doesn’t appear to be a domestic.”

  Hendricks clasped a rough hand to the back of his shaved neck and started to pile on the reasons why he wasn’t about to turn this into his worst nightmare. “Most people have watched enough crime shows to know how to stage a scene. I’ve seen some brutal crimes that initially appeared as if we were dealing with a serial killer, but it turned out to be a staged domestic.”

  An image of Sherry Raines flashed into Holly’s mind. That scene had felt staged. In a fit of jealous rage, Nathan Raines had stabbed his wife to death in the kitchen. Then he attempted to stage the scene by pulling the contents out of a few drawers in the living room to make it look like a burglary gone wrong. He’d also sliced off Sherry’s jeans and underwear, faking a sexual assault, but Sherry hadn’t been raped.

  Hendricks continued, “Also, whenever the victim is wearing nightclothes, I always take a good run at the spouse.”

  “She’s not wearing the pajamas,” Raines observed dryly.

  A vein throbbed on the right side of Hendricks’ forehead. He didn’t try to keep the condescension out of his voice. “I’ve seen domestics staged as sex crimes. Even removed clothes to give the appearance of rape and ransacked the house,” he muttered, echoing Holly’s thoughts. “That’s why I believe this is staged. It’s all way too elaborate. Over the top. If we were dealing with a sexual predator, the body would have been either burned in the house or dumped somewhere easier to reach. Getting her up here was way too much work. My gut says it’s the husband trying to fool us.”

  It didn’t look staged to Holly, especially after working Sherry’s homicide, but she’d learned the hard way to keep quiet about her gut reactions. Lieutenant Gustafson and a few of his Neanderthal cronies referred to her ideas as “tampon telepathy.” The last thing she needed right now was to discover that Hendricks was a caveman, too. This case was going to be tough enough with all of its jurisdictional issues and media-grabbing violence. She didn’t want to enter into a debate on the first day of the investigation about whose gut reaction was right.

  “Lieutenant?” a voice called out to them. They all turned toward a ruddy-faced State Trooper. Hendricks walked over to him and almost immediately started to shake his head back and forth with displeasure.

  While Holly waited for Hendricks to finish his conversation, she scanned the crime scene, committing to memory not just the awful image of the brutalized body but also the sounds, smell and feel of the place. Before this, she’d loved everything about hiking up to Lonesome Lake. The area had been a place of peace—a natural sanctuary with the power to replenish a weary hiker’s soul.

  When visitors headed north to New Hampshire’s forested mountains, with streams so clear you could see trout swimming between the rocks, they left their cities behind and many of their worries, too. Up here in these mountains, Holly felt a holy presence. This magnificent wilderness had been her church. The dense trees had been no scarier to her than a row of pews, but now evil seemed to coil and wind itself around all that was sacred. And the loss of that purity ached deep inside her.

  Raines stood tall and silent beside her, his arm almost touching hers. Surprised, she found his presence comforting. “What are you thinking about?” she asked, needing to hear his voice. It took him a moment to respond.

  “G minor.” He said it so softly that only she could hear.

  She glanced at him, “G who?”

  “Mozart believed G minor was the best key to convey tragedy.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Today I find myself agreeing with him.”

  Holly shook her head. There was out-of-the-box thinking, and then there was Raines’ way of thinking that was so stratospheric she wondered if he’d ever had a thought inside the box. His words, though, refocused her and energized her to action. She knocked his elbow with hers, “Let’s get the hell out of here and go catch this bastard.”

  As they turned to leave, Hendricks signaled for them to join him.

  “What’s going on?” Holly asked.

  “Chief Finch has been trying to reach you. Charles Milbourne arrived at the station and refused to talk to anyone but you.”

  “He’s been told about his wife, right?”

  “Yes. But Finch wants you to return ASAP to talk to him,” he grumbled, obviously unhappy about having to swallow that one. It was only natural that he wanted to conduct the interview, but those were the breaks, she thought. He might be more experienced, but that wasn’t her problem. For whatever reason, she’d landed the interview of her career. She just couldn’t blow it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Holly rode the lights, siren and accelerator hard all the way back to Caxton. It was five o’clock. The car was running on empty, and so were they. All she’d had to eat were the Munchkins. She craved a prime rib dinner with a mound of buttery mashed potatoes, but she didn’t have time for even the drive-through. They’d shared the rest of the donuts and a granola bar she’d
found under her seat. Although it had expired over a year ago, it tasted delicious.

  As they pulled into the police station, Jamie Bell was hiding behind a truck, lying in wait for unsuspecting prey. Sensing a juicy photo op for the paper, he lurched forward with his camera raised, forcing Holly to swerve hard to the left to miss him.

  Bell grinned and snapped several photos of them as they sped past.

  “He’s such a jerk,” she muttered. “I should have hit him.”

  “No disagreement here,” Raines said. “I’d like to take a run at his alibi.”

  To prevent Jamie from following them, she pulled into the secure sally port where suspects were unloaded. She turned off the ignition, but she made no move to exit the car. She began to tap the steering wheel.

  Raines glanced at her. “Are you thinking about going back there to run over that scumbag?”

  She smiled. “No, but now that you mention it.” She was actually thinking about the problem Raines posed to her career. He was good at his job. He’d had a meth bust last month that had been the biggest in New England, but he’d only been in his position for a year. It didn’t take a genius to realize the brutal nature of the crime committed in the relative safety of the White Mountains would attract a massive amount of attention. Her actions, as well as the other officers involved in the investigation, would come under intense scrutiny. Whatever steps they took, they needed to be the right ones.

  This interview would be her first with Raines. As far as Holly was concerned, a well-conducted interrogation was like a carefully choreographed dance. Thanks to Milbourne’s request that he speak to her, the lead was settled, but this was not the time to discover Raines had two left feet when it came to questioning techniques. It took a lot of skill to read a suspect and lead them to a confession. Interviewing was all about rhythm, and she didn’t want Raines throwing her off balance. He was good at that.

  “Milbourne asked to speak to me, so I’ll question him. You can observe,” Holly told him.

  “Okay.”

  His response was far too lackadaisical for her liking. “That means I want you to watch him for any signs of deception.”

  “That’s what I usually do when I observe,” he replied.

  “I’m just making sure because I don’t want us to stumble all over each other in there.”

  He smiled. “I don’t remember it turning out so bad last time you stumbled into me.”

  She stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Want the instant replay?”

  She shoved open the car door. “No. I do not want to hear your version of the events that night.”

  “My version?” he taunted.

  She slammed the door before he could say another word, but the play-by-play ran through her mind with a sickening freshness, considering how long ago it had been. She didn’t know why she couldn’t let that moment slip beneath the running waters of her other screw-ups and mortifications, but she couldn’t.

  The only good thing about the night she’d kissed Cal Raines was that it had taken place at the back of the darkened school gymnasium where no one had witnessed her shame. He hadn’t made a scene. He just carried her out of the gym. The walk to his truck went much more smoothly than actually getting her into it. The enormous amount of alcohol she’d consumed hadn’t been enough to erase her memory, but it was enough to turn her backbone into rubber, making it impossible for her to get up onto the pickup’s seat.

  Raines had to wrap his arms around her, placing his hands on her butt as he tried to heft her flailing body up into his truck.

  She recalled flopping backward across the bench seat and whacking him in the privates with the rock-hard, plaster cast on her leg. At the time, she found this hysterical and had laughed until tears ran down her face.

  When Raines recovered enough to walk around to the driver’s side, he had to lift her head up off his seat so he could get in. Somehow he managed to push her upright and click her seatbelt in place.

  She squirmed now, remembering how he’d witnessed her pathetic crying jag that started about a minute out of the parking lot and lasted most of the way home. She sobbed about being dropped from the Olympic ski team, about her brother, and even how badly her leg itched under the cast. He listened without passing judgment.

  When they reached her home, instead of dumping her as fast as he could, he sat with her in his rusty, old pickup waiting until the lights went out. Raines knew her parents well. She hadn’t needed to tell him how disappointed they were in her for failing to accomplish what they were sure her brother would have achieved if he hadn’t died—an Olympic gold medal. Raines also knew her parents blamed her for her brother’s death.

  After her parents went to bed, he’d used a clean cloth he kept in the glove compartment to polish his guitar and gently wiped the tears from her face, which was red, puffy and a little snotty from her sobbing. Then he’d helped her sneak into the house.

  She shook her head in shame. What made her unfriendly behavior toward him since he’d returned home so inexcusable was that back then, he’d never rubbed it in. She’d been dreading another humiliation. She’d already let down her parents, the town and her school when the skiing accident ended her bid for Olympic gold. She remembered how her classmates had rejoiced at her failure. She didn’t blame them. It must have been obnoxious listening to her teachers talk about, “Olympic Hopeful” this and “Olympic Hopeful” that.

  She’d expected to hear a slew of snickers and snide comments about her drunken pass at Cal Raines, but he never mentioned the embarrassing incident to anyone. When he tried to talk to her the following day, she ignored him and went out of her way to avoid him. A week later, he’d left town to form his band, Acid Raines.

  Unaware of her tribulations, Raines opened the station door for her. “This case is going to sink to places you’ve never dreamed it would, especially if it takes time to catch the bastard, Holly. And you’re the one on the firing range. If anything goes wrong with Milbourne’s interview, you’ll bear the brunt of it.”

  It was a warning based on first-hand experience. The media coverage of his brother’s trial had been ferocious mainly because of who Cal Raines was. Holly remembered the pressure that attention had placed on their small police department. This case would be no better because of the sensational nature of the crime.

  They walked through the booking area and past the holding cells. “I’ll handle Milbourne with kid gloves, Raines.”

  He gave her a half smile. “So, why don’t you take the lead, and I’ll observe.”

  “Wiseass,” she muttered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Holly and Raines neared the Chief’s office, they heard the Mayor’s raised voice. Without even seeing him, the timbre of Milton Calvin Randolph III’s tone announced that he was a big man in both size and stature. He’d been the Mayor of Caxton on and off, but mostly on for the last thirty years.

  The Mayor spotted them and boomed, “Calvin, young man. Join us in here.”

  From the look on Fred Finch’s face, his meeting with the Mayor wasn’t going too well.

  “Milbourne just made a positive photo ID,” Fred Finch told them as they entered.

  The Mayor cut him off. Dressed in a navy suit and red tie, he was ready for the reporters. The collar of his shirt bit into his fat neck, and the buttons of his jacket strained against the bulk of his stomach. He said, “And it won’t be long before the damn press makes the connection. Gabby Swinford is already snooping around, and Bell is hunkered down in the parking lot as though he’s on assignment in a war zone. The town is teeming with tourists ready to spend their money up here. Can you imagine what’s going to happen when we start talking about abductions, torture and murder in the woods?” He didn’t wait for them to answer. “No? Well, I’ll tell you. It’ll bring Route 16 to a screaming standstill as everyone slams on the breaks to do a 180 and head for the Cape. The timing couldn’t be worse. This is o
ur busy season, and it’s going to hurt business.” He stabbed a finger in Holly’s direction. “We’re letting you interview Milbourne, but I want this wrapped up fast. I just got off the phone with Hendricks, and his first impression is this could be a staged domestic. That’s good news for us.”

  Even though Hendricks leaned toward that theory—and who wouldn’t given the alternative—she doubted he would have committed himself to it, especially to a politician. She weighed the risk of saying so. Contradicting Milton Randolph was never a good idea. He could pressure the Chief to turn the case over to the State Police. The safer play was to let him blow off steam, but she’d never let that stop her before.

  As she opened her mouth to tell him, Raines beat her to it. “It’s way too early in the investigation to hone in on a single theory. This is not a typical domestic, Milt, and we sure as hell are not going to be pressured into making a bad decision.”

  Holly’s eyes slid in his direction. Good. Let Raines take the hit and maybe she’d be free of him.

  The Mayor jutted his jaw forward, readying for battle. “I don’t want to hear from the press that there’s a psycho running around up here. Got it? You know the odds are in favor of this being a domestic. This is the White Mountains for Chrissakes. We don’t have psychos up here, just your run-of-the-mill husbands who want out of a marriage.”

  Holly couldn’t believe what he’d said. Randolph was an insensitive bastard. Holly knew he hadn’t forgotten about Nate. She glanced at Raines to see his reaction, but he appeared unperturbed. Must be all that martial arts crap she’d heard he was into, she thought.

  Raines continued, “This isn’t your run-of-the-mill anything.”

  The Mayor lowered his head and shook it like a bull getting ready to charge. “You can’t know that at this juncture. Hendricks says it looked staged.”

  Raines didn’t hesitate. “Are you willing to commit political suicide by backing that theory so early in the investigation?”