Dead catch, p.18
Dead Catch, page 18
“To wonderful surprises in the middle of the week,” Carmel said.
Even before the excellent Chianti crossed Sam’s tongue, he had felt a kind of heady inebriation at the notion they’d be spending the night together. It was Carmel. She emanated some kind of irresistible force, and he was caught up in it. When he stared at her, he saw a pair of beautiful, opalescent eyes staring back with sincere and honest affection.
And then she finished sharing her knowledge about Lyme disease. Sam loved the fact she could get passionate about a parasite and bacterium.
Finally, Carmel asked about his day, and Sam shared its more bizarre moments. His early morning meeting with Holden. His interviews with the DNR folks. And beneath it all, or threading through it in a dense, impenetrable weave, his confusion. About what it all meant.
“And you still don’t have Holden’s blood work?”
“No. Probably tomorrow.”
Carmel thought about it. “You’re going to remain confused until you get more definitive information. Holden’s prints on the weapon and liquor bottles weren’t really definitive, since they could have been planted. It’s like Lyme disease. The symptoms can lead to a diagnosis, but until you do a blood test, it’s only conjecture.”
The food came and for a moment they were busy with their plates, sharing bites and exclaiming about its quality. Mary Fest had been spot-on. Carmel was going to see her tomorrow and would let her know. It was the kind of food that was both cooked to perfection and seasoned in a way that summoned Tuscany. Tuscany with butter. It was delicious and transporting.
By the end of it all they had finished the bottle of wine and both shared their plates and their days. And then their thoughts turned toward the next stage of the evening. The anticipation of it seemed to rise inside them like a huge Lake Superior wave. But it wasn’t cold and gray. Incongruously, it was golden and warm and suffused with dusk light.
When their waitress asked them if they would like dessert, Carmel said no thanks, in a way that belied her keen interest in moving on. Sam asked for the check, also hurried. Then Sam looked at Carmel, and he was pretty sure she was thinking what he was; their just dessert was at the hotel.
Paused on the threshold to the restaurant, they embraced and kissed, and Sam, feeling inebriated because of the wine or the food or this kiss or all of it, said, “Do you know how to get there?”
“Of course. I booked it. I’ll meet you there in a heartbeat.” And then she smiled and was gone.
Sam and Gray were in their car less than a minute when Sam got a call. He figured it was Carmel, wanting to talk steamy. But when he hit the answer button, a woman came on the line. Not Carmel.
“Agent Rivers?”
Startled, Sam said, “Yes.”
“Cindy Hill. I’m one of the DNR fish biologists you met today, with Ben Connors?”
“Sure,” Sam said.
“Sorry to bother you at night. Do you have a minute?”
When Sam had placed the location of their waterfront hotel in his map app it was a 12-minute drive. “Of course.”
There was a pause. “And I need this to be confidential.”
“Of course,” Sam said. Despite his previous effulgence, he was tracking now.
“I mean, I don’t want this to get back to my colleagues. Especially not Ben Connors. But frankly, no one at the DNR.”
She had his attention. “Okay,” Sam said. “I can go along with that. Unless what you tell me involves breaking the law.”
“Oh no. No. Nothing like that. I mean, as far as I know, no laws were broken. It’s more of an ethics thing. Or maybe one law was broken, but if so, I don’t have first-hand knowledge of it. I’m just passing along what a friend told me.”
There was another pause. “Okay.”
“It’s about Charlie Jiles.”
“Okay.”
“First, I don’t like talking bad about someone who just died,” she started. “But I need to tell you a couple of things about Charlie Jiles.” She said these last words quickly, as though she had rehearsed them and needed to get them out. “Charlie was one of those guys. He came onto a lot of women, I think. And he wasn’t great about picking up the cues that he should back off.”
“Did he come onto you?” Sam remembered Cindy Hill as young and cute. He could imagine she got her share of attention from her male DNR colleagues.
“This meeting we were in today is an annual event. One in which a lot of DNR people attend, including us fish biologists. But also COs. And others.”
Sam waited.
“Some people kind of hook up at these meetings. So I’m told.”
Sam was familiar with the phenomena.
“In my book, all’s fair among mutually consenting adults. As long as they’re single,” Cindy added.
“I agree.”
“So, two years ago, Charlie Jiles kind of came onto me.”
Given the age difference, Sam was a little surprised. “Okay.”
“I guess he didn’t kind of come onto me. He definitely came onto me. And he was a little pushy. I finally got my point across, that I wasn’t interested. First, I told him he was old enough to be my dad. When he persisted, I told him one of my best friends was Ethan Meirovitz, one of the higher-ups in the DNR’s HR department. Then he backed off. Truthfully, I was completely grossed out.”
Sam was always surprised by the sexual predation of some men. “Did you report it?”
“Oh, God no. I don’t really know Ethan all that well. And Charlie Jiles was kind of a guy’s guy. I mean, among some of the older guys in the organization.”
“You mean, the DNR?”
“Yeah. There are a lot of women in the DNR. Just not many women COs or fish biologists. And a lot of those guys are older. They grew up together. I mean, with Charlie Jiles. They’ve known each other for years. And they stick together.”
“I understand,” Sam said.
“That’s part of the reason I wouldn’t want any of this to get back to my colleagues.”
“Of course.”
“Charlie Jiles not only knew a lot of people in the field. But I think he and Ben Connors are, were, pretty good buddies.”
“I kind of picked that up.”
Charlie Jiles clearly liked women, Sam thought, and acted on it. Sam wasn’t sure what it meant, other than the CO had balls, hoping to get lucky with a young woman like Cindy Hill.
“So, you just wanted me to know?”
“Oh. Yes. But that’s just part of it. I have a cousin Rita, who works at the Holiday Inn lounge up in Orr. We get together quite a bit. More like sisters than cousins. After this meeting two years ago, I was telling her about Charlie Jiles coming onto me. When I mentioned his name, she said, ‘oh my God.’ She knew him. He was sort of a regular at the lounge where she works. She said he’d come by once in a while, usually on a weekend. He’d come in, have dinner, and try and chat up any single ladies in the place. I guess sometimes he’d get lucky. I don’t know.
“But one time a woman complained that Charlie had drugged her. She was embarrassed because they’d slept together. Said she didn’t remember much about it, but remembered going back to her room. Remembered Charlie at her door, helping her into the room. Next thing she remembers is waking up alone in bed, in the morning, naked. Said it was obvious she’d had intercourse. Or someone had intercourse with her.”
“Did anyone confront Charlie Jiles about it?”
“Oh, yeah. The manager talked to him. But he denied it. Not the sex. He said it was consensual, that she just had too much to drink. But even if that was the case, who does that?”
Sam agreed. Maybe the woman did have too much to drink, Sam thought. But still, who has sex with a woman so drunk she can’t remember it?
“Then Rita told me, a couple of months later, she was working a shift on a Friday night. In walks Charlie. He checks out the bar, sees a single woman sitting alone, and goes over and sits right next to her. He ordered dinner and had a couple of drinks and ended up talking to this woman. Must have been some kind of traveling saleswoman kind of thing. Then, later in the evening, the woman gets up. I guess to go to the bathroom. My cousin’s across the room working her tables, but when she glances up, she notices the woman heading off to the bathroom. By now Rita is kind of curious, you know? Like, she wonders if they’re going to go off together. Maybe to the woman’s hotel room? While she’s glancing over at Charlie, wondering about it, she sees Charlie glance around, and then drop something into the woman’s drink.”
There was another pause. “Did she say anything?”
“Rita has dated her share of creeps. In fact, she sort of expects the worst until she sees something different. If she sees something like this, some old guy trying to drug a woman, she can’t help herself. It’s not only calling out a creep. It’s also saving a sister. She went right up to Charlie Jiles, got in his face, and called him on it. Told him what she’d seen.”
“He denied it,” Sam said.
“Yeah. But the manager likes Rita. And given they’d already had a complaint about Charlie, he asked Charlie to leave. At first, he refused. Then Rita suggested they have the drink tested. Then she said Charlie Jiles got really pissed. He started yelling at Rita and the manager. Then he backhanded the drink and it flew across the bar and shattered. Then he took out his wallet, threw down some bills, and left.”
“That was convenient.”
“Wasn’t it?” Cindy agreed. “After Charlie stormed out, the woman returned. When she asked what was going on, Rita told her. She acted surprised, said she kind of liked the guy. Can you believe it? I guess to some women he must have been charming. But I never saw it.”
“Did you mention any of this to anyone at the DNR?”
“I didn’t. Like I said, Charlie Jiles has . . . had a lot of friends. He was well liked by many. So, I decided to let it go. Besides, it happened to Rita, not me. So it would have been secondhand. But when you started asking questions about him, about what he was like, I thought you should know.”
CHAPTER 27
Smugglers Creek was hidden behind an island, across the channel. The creek flowed out of the northern wilderness before being turned 90 degrees by a spit of land near Vermilion’s shoreline. The land and bend of water made the creek’s mouth indistinguishable from the mainland. The only obvious sign there was flowage was the current that came into the lake, cutting along thick bush at the lake’s edge. Here, Cray Halverson knew, it was deep water. Here there were always fish, feeding on what the creek brought down from the Boundary Waters. Here he had always been lucky.
But not last Thursday.
It was growing dark. Cray used his Crestliner’s GPS to navigate around the island, pulling the boat up near the creek’s mouth. He was thankful the sky was covered by a thick bank of clouds, ideal cover for setting their net. More importantly, Rowena would only see outlines in the vague dusk light, nothing to trigger what happened here. He brought the boat near enough to catch the creek’s current, but far enough from the shore to be in 25 feet of water. Then he dropped anchor and turned to ready the net.
Rowena still ached, but over the last four days the intensity of the pain had subsided. Her maelstrom had passed. Now there was just . . . the recollection of actions she wanted to forget, knowing she would never be able to.
She was familiar with male abuse. Years earlier, the lumberjack behind the Sportsmen’s Lounge had taken liberties, forced himself on her. But she had known him before. They had sexual history. If she was honest, she had returned his initial advances and let his hands wander before telling him to stop. But he didn’t.
None of her initial indiscretions legitimized the lumberjack’s actions, which is why they ended up brawling.
But what happened to her in the mouth of Smugglers Creek was on a different level altogether.
As she helped Cray with the net, her swollen wrists felt tight. Her right ankle, where it had twisted, was thick in her boot. The bruise on her left hip had grown uglier. Part of the healing process, she knew. Like time. Lots of time would need to pass before she would begin to feel herself again.
For now, she was thankful she felt good enough to bend, hoist, and thread the floats through the net’s top. She fastened extra weights near the net’s bottom, to keep it submerged. She tried to focus on her immediate tasks. She had helped Cray before and knew what had to be done. Prepare the net. Make sure it was untangled. Feed it over the side as Cray kept the boat steady, floating with the current. Play out the heavy bottom weights. Make sure the top floats remained near the top. Let the narrow twines unfold and open wide so when walleye moved through them, their gills would be caught in the thin cord.
She was thankful for the near darkness. She was thankful to move through this black night, without anything to remind her of calamity, of storm, or pain. As Cray kept the boat steady in the current, Rowena kept feeding out the net.
Then, as the twine unraveled into the black water, the smell of swamp water and leaf rot drifted up out of the cold. A trace. And a trigger.
The scent returned her to that moment. She felt a piercing jolt beneath her sternum. She remembered blacking out. She recalled the moment her eyes fluttered open to find his bulk behind her, struggling. The odor of decay filled her senses like a mist off the River Styx, as awful as his sour breath.
Cray, keeping the boat steady, noticed Rowena had stopped playing out the net, threatening to drag and snag it behind them.
“Rowena!” Cray said, loud enough to startle her.
The yell returned her to the present. Her memory faded. A bad dream. A nightmare. All commingling with their red headlights cutting through the dark.
“You gotta play it out,” Cray said. “Don’t stop. The net!”
Last Thursday, midnight had been her friend. The cold front had protected them. Her. But the cold could not protect her from the stench of rotting water.
Everything about that day had been different. She had expected none of it. The afternoon had been clear. Sunny. Warm. She had been hellbent on teaching him a lesson. This time there would be no proffered drink to poison her mind and make her forget. This time she was going to pummel him with righteous fists.
But he had surprised her.
Then, darkness.
“Rowena!” Cray said, throttling the boat back to keep it steady in the current.
Finally, she returned to her task. Fumbling, at first, with the playout of the net. But coming back to it quickly, like a fighter against the ropes, startled back to consciousness.
In another 10 minutes the net was set, carefully. This time the weights had been heavy enough to submerge the faux branch floats—at least enough so they would not be obvious on the surface. If anyone came to the mouth of Smugglers Creek, they would need to be directly overhead to spy the floats. And then they would be easily mistaken for waterlogged branches, stirred from the bottom of the creek by its current, suspended in the lake water while they soaked enough to sink.
Satisfied with the setting, Cray revved the Crestliner’s engine and turned around the near island. They switched off their red lights. Cray used his GPS to navigate through the dark into the main channel, out into Big Bay and then home.
Rowena sat back in one of the Crestliner’s front seats, feeling the icy wind waft over the boat’s windshield, blowing any remnant of scent behind her. Still, bent over in the boat’s bow, Rowena trembled. Not from the cold. Her back was sweaty with the memory of pain, and she ached.
CHAPTER 28
An Adidas shoebox lay on the passenger side floor of Joe Haman’s cruiser, out of sight. He steered through the dark toward the back side of the Vermilion Falls Motel. Inside the shoebox lay a bloodied, dead cottontail.
Earlier, Joe had returned to Charlie’s Eveleth home, an hour before sunset. Deputy Smith Barnes was busy, pinch-hitting for the sheriff during his absence as he tended to the new kid. Doubtless catering to the wife and new mother too. Joe knew there were no evening patrols in Charlie Jiles’s neighborhood. So, there was no one to stop him from having another look-see at Charlie’s home. He still hoped to find Charlie’s money, or anything damning Charlie might have left behind.
After using the key to enter the house, he’d expanded his previous search. He’d checked under the bathroom vanity drawers, flashed a light down a basement sump pump drain, opened the water softener lid, and looked in every other nook and corner he could find. Nothing.
When Joe glanced out of Charlie’s bedroom window he noticed a cottontail, munching on overgrown weeds in front of a basement window well.
Goddamn vermin taking advantage of a dead man, Joe thought. And then he thought of a way he might be able to take care of Sam Rivers once and for all.
Charlie’s gun rack held a 12-gauge shotgun, a 30.06 deer rifle, and a .22 caliber pea shooter. Joe had earlier considered lifting the 12-guage. He wanted to take several items from Charlie’s house. But if someone had pictures of the place, or some kind of inventory, or a previous visitor remembered items, or if Joe was seen hauling something out, there could be questions. So, he’d left everything in its place.
Joe guessed Charlie had used the .22 to keep rabbits and squirrels out of his yard and woodpeckers off his siding.
There was a drawer in the bottom of the gun rack, filled with ammunition, including shotgun shells, 30.06 cartridges, and a box of .22 shorts. Joe pulled it out and shone his flashlight into the empty space where the drawer had fit. He lifted the drawer above his head, to examine its bottom, but there was nothing.
Joe took the .22 rifle off the rack. He opened up the box of .22 shorts and loaded one slug into the chamber, all he would need. Then he approached the bedroom window, careful to stay down out of sight. He took his time unlatching the catch and opening the window and screen to a six-inch gap. The bunny paused, glancing left, then right, but not up, which was when Joe Haman put a bullet through its head.
He wasn’t sure if he should feel frustrated or relieved by his search of Charlie’s house. He had found neither extra cash nor any evidence that he and Charlie had been partners in anything, or that he even had a relationship with the man. But he wasn’t sure he had turned over every stone.
