Dead catch, p.21
Dead Catch, page 21
The two men went back and forth for a while. But after considering all the possibilities, and remembering that the last known ping of a cell tower by Charlie Jiles’s phone was in Tower, near the casino, at the east end of the lake, the most likely place to check was Smugglers Creek.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We’re going to go check on your place. While we’re over there, we’ll check out that creek.”
CHAPTER 32
When Deputy Sandy Harju dropped off the samples at the county lab, they assured her they should have the results within the hour, and that they would forward them to the veterinarian, Dr. Phil Wirta. Protocol, they told her, since the vet had made the request. She sent a text to Phil to remind him to let her know, and then started out for Lake Vermilion.
Her first stop was the White Pines Marina, where she spoke face-to-face with Jim Aho about his part-time employee Holden Riggins. She also checked Riggins’s truck, still parked at the marina. Aho’s comments and Riggins’s truck had been interesting, but she wasn’t sure what to make of them. She needed to think about it.
At the Arrowhead Marina she found her boat, a speedy runabout, gassed and tied to the dock. As she started to untether the stern rope from the dock, her cell phone pinged. Deputy Joe Haman.
She had worked with Haman off and on since she’d been hired by the sheriff. For the most part she considered him a competent, experienced, and professional law enforcement officer. But she thought he had a practiced veneer. Occasionally, she’d sensed a different person beneath the skin, one with a nasty temper. But only a flash, before some part of him managed to rein it in.
Harju’s sense of Joe Haman made her curious enough to research his time overseas. She’d found a couple of public reports of Deputy Haman’s use of excessive force. She decided it wasn’t her place to say anything because she assumed the sheriff knew about the incidents. Besides, she wasn’t the kind of colleague to gossip about a fellow officer—to the sheriff or anyone else in the department.
Still, it made her wonder about Deputy Haman, and convinced her she should keep their interactions professional.
Like now, when it would be unprofessional to ignore her colleague’s call.
Besides, she wondered what he wanted.
“Deputy Harju,” she said, picking up.
“It’s Joe,” he said. “A veterinarian just stopped by looking for you. Something about it not being rabies?”
“Oh, okay. I’ll get back to him.”
“Rabies sounded important, so I checked the rosters and told him you were patrolling that stretch of highway between Eveleth and Defiance, rest of the week, including tonight, if he needed to speak with you in person.”
He’s fishing, Harju thought.
Harju told Deputy Haman about the dead rabbit and coyote behind the motel, and how the vet thought it could be rabies.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Haman said. “If it wasn’t rabies, what was it?”
“I’m guessing a lethal case of mange, given how bad the coyote looked. I’ll text the vet and see what he thinks.”
“Well, keep us posted,” Haman said. “In case we need to alert the public.”
“Will do,” Harju said, and hung up.
Harju wondered if there was more to this call than reporting the vet’s visit. Unlike some of her other male colleagues, she had never sensed a scintilla of physical interest from Deputy Joe Haman. If she had to guess, she would have said women weren’t his thing. Again, like her sense of Haman’s nasty temper, it was a suspicion she kept to herself.
After CO Jiles had been found along that empty stretch of Temple Island, Harju and Haman had been co-investigators of the scene. She had thought then he lacked the kind of intense interest he normally committed to crime scenes. When she remembered how he had been on Vermilion, and then later—awkward and aloof, she thought—and now, with the strange phone call . . . it made her wonder if something was up with Deputy Haman. Though she couldn’t imagine what.
Sandy Harju was born and raised in northern Minnesota. She knew boats. It took her only moments to have the 150 HP Merc full throttle, skimming across Vermilion’s waters, heading toward the casino docks. The trip normally took 15 minutes. But because the day was calm and Vermilion’s surface glass, she made it in less than 12.
Sam and Gray were waiting on the dock. They watched Deputy Harju’s approach. She decelerated at just the right moment, and then steered the boat into its mooring like a hand fitting into a glove.
Sam greeted her and held the runabout’s gunwale.
“Okay, Gray,” he nodded.
Sandy Harju stepped over and made space for the hybrid to jump into the boat.
“Good boy,” she said.
Gray’s tail wagged.
“He loves boats,” Sam said. “But you’ve got to watch him. Otherwise, he’ll jump in the lake.”
As Sam pushed the boat away from the dock and jumped in, Harju’s cell phone went off.
“Hello,” Harju said.
“Sandy?”
“Yeah. Phil,” Sandy said.
“The lab phoned with the results. Not rabies.”
“I heard.”
“Oh, yeah. Your office was on the way back to mine. I mentioned it to one of your colleagues. Dudley Do-Right.”
Sandy smiled. “Deputy Joe Haman.”
“Yeah. That guy.”
“So, what was it?”
“That’s the interesting part. Strychnine. That rabbit was filled with it.”
“Strychnine!” Harju said.
Sam was sitting in the passenger side chair, near enough to overhear Harju’s phone conversation and wonder.
“It was in a rabbit,” she said to Sam. “Behind the motel.”
“Yes. The rabbit,” Phil said.
“Oh, I know,” said Harju. “I was just telling my colleague about it.”
Sam looked at Harju and said, “Ask him if that’s common, to still use strychnine in baits?”
Harju asked, and Phil explained that strychnine today was commonly used as a pesticide. He never saw baits doused with it, the way they used to kill some predators.
“Interesting,” Sam said, after Harju told him.
But it only took a moment for Sam to guess the poison was meant for Gray. The strychnine made him wonder about Monday’s flat tire. Definitely suspicious.
Dr. Phil Wirta had spent the morning dosing Art Calvin’s feeder calves. He had stopped by Deputy Sandy Harju’s office because he told himself the next time he spoke with her he wasn’t going to be stupid twice.
“What are you doing for dinner?” Phil said.
The offer suddenly shifted the conversation in a way Sandy Harju appreciated. Wanted. She was aware of Sam’s presence. Even though he seemed to be respectfully not paying attention, he was close enough to hear everything.
She turned her head away and said, “Tonight?”
“Yeah,” Phil said. “It’s Wednesday night. Half-priced bottle of wine night at Daisy’s out on the lake.”
“I’ve gotta work tonight,” she said.
Phil paused, and said, “Some other night, then?”
“Definitely,” she said.
Thinking of the time, Deputy Harju knew there was much to do before she headed out on patrol later this evening. “I’ll call you,” she said.
Again, it was abrupt, and she didn’t want it to sound that way. Frankly, she hadn’t dated anyone in a while, and the image of his warm brown eyes popped into her head. After seeing him at the motel and watching him look at her through the passenger side window, she’d had a few moments to think about it. She’d been right about his interest. And she’d recalled a conversation on a pontoon boat ride about five or six years ago. She remembered something intense, something she liked. She’d been there with one of his friends. And Phil had been involved, as she recalled. At least back then.
The preceding all happened so quickly she didn’t have a chance to think of something better to say.
“Okay,” Phil said. “I would really like to hear about your job sometime. Call me.” And then he hung up.
Now it was Sandy Harju’s turn to feel stupid.
Sam glanced in her direction and said, “Maybe we could get going.”
She was pretty sure he’d heard both sides of the conversation.
“Of course,” Harju said. She waited for Sam to get in the pilot’s chair.
But Sam remained seated in the passenger side chair and said, “You aren’t driving?”
“I figured you’d want to,” Harju said.
Sam loved to drive, especially boats on big lakes like Vermilion. But if Harju drove, he could keep an eye on Gray and make sure he didn’t try anything foolish like jumping out of the boat.
“I’ll keep an eye on Gray,” Sam said.
Sandy Harju smiled. “Well, I do like to drive.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I got the coordinates from the sheriff,” she said, turning on their GPS. The screen came on and displayed the path she’d taken from the marina to the casino docks.
“It tracks you even when it’s off?” Sam said.
“I guess,” Harju said. “The GPS is new. Must be a feature.” She plugged in her coordinates and the map refreshed.
CHAPTER 33
Holden Riggins’s cabin was on the back side of Temple Island. It was a 20-minute boat ride from the casino docks.
Because of the cold, they hunkered down behind the boat’s windshield.
Sam held tight to Gray’s leash.
“Tell me about the coyote!” Sam said, over the engine noise.
“Some lady walking her dog found it.”
“It was in the dog walk area?”
Harju nodded.
It made Sam wonder.
Harju quickly shifted to getting the subpoena for CO Jiles’s cell phone records. The judge had agreed. Harju expected to have an electronic copy of his last two years’ calls emailed to her by end of day.
She had also visited Holden’s workplace, White Pines Marina, and this time spoken in person with Holden’s boss, Jim Aho. He had basically reiterated what he’d told her over the phone. Holden was a model employee. Holden also owned a vintage Ford pickup truck he kept at the marina. Jim Aho found the keys in Holden’s work area and Harju searched his truck. It was clean and well-kept. The only odd thing was a miniature plastic Buddha sitting on the dash. Harju had snapped a photo of the Buddha and showed it to Sam.
Sam shrugged. Holden didn’t seem like someone who valued religious icons. But maybe it was like a plastic Jesus. Or maybe Ruth Walker had given it to him, so he was attached to it.
Sam was more interested in seeing who Jiles had phoned, the last day or two he was alive.
Sam was getting a feeling for the young deputy. She was smart, efficient, and could manage in a morning what it would have taken most deputies an entire day. He would have to put in a good word with the sheriff, though he knew the sheriff already had a high opinion of her.
After nearly 20 minutes, they turned into Holden’s bay. They could see a narrow sand beach at the end of the bay, with a small cabin set just yards behind the beach, and a larger structure behind it. There was a dock to the right. Harju guided the boat toward the dock and, once they were near enough, Sam jumped out and tied the boat off, fore and aft.
Gray didn’t wait for an invitation. He could see the lake’s bottom rose gradually toward the sandy shore, an ideal place for a swim. In less than 10 seconds he was in the water, chest deep, oblivious of the cold, hunting for small fish.
Deputy Harju grinned.
The first thing Sam noticed about the property was the beach. Beaches were rare on Vermilion, especially beaches with clean, brown sand. Similarly, clean sandy bottoms that dropped gradually to deep water, more than 30 yards out, were also unusual.
The cabin was small and old, and from the outside appeared weathered but well-kept. Sam guessed it had a small room with a kitchen and two back bedrooms, probably divided by a thin plywood partition. Wide front windows opened onto the lake, facing the northwest. It had to be a cold view in winter. Cold, white, and icy.
As they approached the cabin, Sam imagined dented pots and pans hanging on the back wall, beside a propane gas range and small gas fridge. Working in wild places, he had visited many remote cabins. If Holden’s was like others, there’d be a couple of wooden chairs in front of a simple wooden table, bordering a spare space, with cheap furnishings and two narrow rear bedrooms with barely enough room to step around threadbare mattresses.
The cabin’s exterior was weathered log siding. Back behind the cabin they saw what Sam assumed was the work shed Holden had told him about earlier, where he had mended his whitefish net. The shed was sheathed in faded gray cedar siding and looked like a more recent construction. And it was bigger. Like a small barn.
Sam stepped up to the side door of the cabin and reached under the step to a ledge, where Holden had told him he would find the key. Then he stepped up to the door’s plain beige-curtained windows, inserted the key, turned the lock, and opened it.
Sam stood for a moment.
Behind him Sandy Harju said, “Wow.”
The place was nothing like Sam imagined. Its interior was carefully crafted, neat, clean, and, in an odd way, incredibly functional but also stylish. Not stylish, exactly. More like functional feng shui. The place had a feel.
There was a table in front of the windows. It was fashioned out of smooth pine. The table looked new and of simple construction, but the stain gave it the appearance of a beautiful, aged patina, the same color as the knotty pine interior walls. There were three chairs around the table—same wood, same color. There was a woven beige mat in the room’s center, in front of the windows. The back wall, facing the work shed and woods beyond, had a stainless steel refrigerator, gas stove, sink, and granite countertop. The black granite had swirls and patterns with periodic flecks of gold, like some interstellar cloud with embedded planets and stars. There was a shelf below a pair of curtained windows. On it sat several different spices, including salt and pepper, but also red pepper flakes, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and an assortment of other spices. They were all carefully stacked, in three neat rows, arranged alphabetically.
The living space opened to a rear wall. The wall was paneled with those same golden knotty pine boards. Their surface was uneven, and its finish illuminated its knots and beautiful grains. The wall caught the sunlight spilling into the room through the front windows.
There were several shelves built into the wall, each of them filled with books.
“Not what I expected,” Sam said. “I don’t remember Holden being much of a reader. But then, neither was I, as a kid.”
“Maybe he has a girlfriend. Maybe these are hers?”
Maybe, Sam thought. He’d have to ask Holden. Now he had more questions. Better, he thought; he’d ask Ruth Walker.
On the far-right side of the wall of books was a door, made out of the same wood as the wall. Sam stepped over and opened it into one spacious bedroom.
Basically, the cabin contained two rooms: the larger living space with a kitchen against the back wall and a large bedroom. There were wooden end tables on either side of the bed, with what appeared to be cast-iron lamps. The lamps, like the rest of the cabin, were stylish, clean, and dusted. The bed frame was constructed of cedar, but instead of having a smooth, varnished surface, the wood had been hewn with an axe. Blade marks gleamed over its surface. It had the texture of a lake’s surface in a light breeze.
“Nice,” Harju said behind him.
They returned to the main living area and Sam walked over to the table, staring out into the bay and then across into the wider part of the lake that stretched all the way to Trout Lake Portage. He peered out the window. It was a beautiful view. The weather was cold, but the air was still and the lake glass. Not yet frozen. It wouldn’t be long, Sam knew, but for now, there was still time. He watched Gray knee-deep in beach water, staring beneath the surface with intensity. The small fish were entertaining him.
Out back they followed a flagstone walk to the work shed. Holden had told him the same key opened the cabin and the shed. He was going to use it, but as he approached, he could see the door jamb splintered.
“Uh-oh,” Sam said.
Harju saw the same thing and said, “Break-in?”
“Looks like it.”
The door was snug but opened with a slight push.
Sam and Harju walked into the room.
Atop two sawhorses in the center of the room rested a birchbark canoe, almost finished. Its bark seemed to gleam under the overhead light.
“Look at that,” Harju said.
“We need to try and figure out if anything’s missing,” Sam said.
“If I broke into the place, I’d steal that canoe.”
“Good thing it wasn’t you.”
They both took a moment to admire the canoe. A lot of work had gone into it.
The rest of the barn also surprised them. The place had a larger footprint than the cabin. Its clapboard exterior had the same weathered appearance. Its outside made you think its inside would be rough-hewn, oil stained, and messy.
There were large windows without curtains in each of the walls. Overhead, two huge skylights were cut into the roof, the sunlight spilling into the room. There was a chest-high workbench that skirted the length of two walls. Numerous tools were positioned over the bench. In the opposite corner, there was a large built-in wooden trunk.
Sam remembered Holden’s dad’s garage. Mr. Riggins had been a plane mechanic at the airbase in Eveleth. One side of his garage contained a workbench brimming with scattered screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, pliers, nuts, bolts, boxes of nails, elbow brackets, always two or three half-filled packs of cigarettes, and a minifridge filled with beer. And there was the locked cupboard on the back wall, above the bench, in which the boys had discovered the .45, liquor, and Playboys.
