The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (4 page)

Of course, maybe now that both her mother and father were gone, it could have simply been a way for her to honor their memory.

Four members of the Bureau's Evidence Response Team entered the trailer, and I walked toward the driveway to get some privacy for the call. Last weekend I'd decided my investigation took precedence over chauffeuring Tessa around the Midwest, so I'd arranged for a rental car for her, and though someone her age wasn't officially supposed to drive one, the Bureau has an arrangement with rental car companies at every major airport. With my credentials I was able to swing it.

She didn't answer, so I left her a voicemail explaining what was going on. “If this storm hits early, I may need you to stay in the Cities for another day or two. Talk to you soon.”

Then I returned the body armor to the SWAT guys, and by the time I arrived at the car, Jake was waiting for me.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is another case we'll be working together.”

“Yes.”

Being over six feet tall I had to stoop to get into the rental car. I slid into the driver's seat, Jake climbed in the other side. “Director Wellington says you have a brother in the area.”

“Does she?” I started the engine.

“I didn't know you had a brother.”

“Yes.” I turned the car around and headed for the highway. “I have a brother.”

“What's his name?”

“Sean—but if you don't mind I'd rather stick to the case right now than talk about—”

“Right. Of course.” He overdramatized the words. “Didn't mean to pry.”

A moment passed. “It's all right. Did Margaret mention which ERT agent she was sending up to process the scene?”

“Natasha Farraday. She had a few things to wrap up here; should get to Woodborough around 8:30.”

What Natasha lacked in experience, she made up for in persistence. A good choice.

Jake positioned his iPad 2 on his lap. “Director Wellington had the deputy who sent in the photos of the snowmobile tracks to the Lab, guy named Bryan Ellory, send us the crime scene photos of the house.”

“So, preliminary police reports?”

He tapped the screen. “Looks it, yeah.”

“Read me what we have.”

Jake opened the files, I found the highway and headed north as the glow along the western horizon drained slowly into night.

Alexei collected his baggage from carousel 6 in the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport and headed to the Avis reservation desk. He was traveling under the name of Neil Kreger and had a midsized sedan waiting for him.

Neil Kreger.

He mentally reviewed this identity's family history, work experience, previous residential addresses, habits, interests. The sum of a life never lived.

It was just over a four-hour drive to Elk Ridge, Wisconsin. He'd hoped to arrive earlier, but as it turned out, the day's work schedule had not allowed for that.

It'd been a busy morning, first chatting with Rear Admiral Colberg and then setting everything up for his regrettable fatal car accident near Cedarville State Forest in Brandywine, Maryland, not far from his home.

Before boarding his plane to the Twin Cities, Alexei heard that, unfortunately, Dashiell Collet had not survived the night. Erin had, however—awakening just as Valkyrie predicted she would—only to learn of her father's death. Situations like that were one of the painful downsides of Alexei's line of work, and though he tried not to dwell on them, he could not help but feel sympathetic toward the girl's plight.

Ideally, arriving tonight would give Alexei enough time to look into the background of the three Eco-Tech members before his 1:00 meeting with them tomorrow afternoon at the Schoenberg Inn, famous as one of the northwoods locations gangsters used back in the early 1900s when they traveled up from Chicago to northern Wisconsin to elude the law.

With the hidden prohibition-era poker rooms and underground escape routes into the neighboring national forest, the Schoenberg had served John Dillinger and his men well. As far as Alexei knew, Valkyrie had arranged to use it for the meeting, no doubt paying the manager more than enough to obtain full access to the parts of the hotel no longer open to the public.

Alexei's GRU contact still had no leads on Valkyrie. Nikolai was well connected and even had ways of getting into the US government's federal agency databases, but so far had come up empty.

That surprised Alexei.

And intrigued him.

He arrived at the Avis desk. “Neil Kreger,” he said with a smile. He handed his license to the frizzy-haired, baggy-eyed woman behind the counter. “I'll be the only driver.”

As we passed the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest on the way to Woodborough, Jake gave me his thoughts about the information contained in the police reports.

“Looks like we have a single EAMD,” he said, referring to the four locations every murder includes—the site of the initial
encounter
between the killer and the victim, the
attack
(which might include abduction), the
murder
itself, and the
dump site
.

When all four occur in a single location, it makes it harder to develop a geoprofile since you have only one site to work with. On the other hand, when a body is found in a home like this, evidence is preserved, making the site an ideal crime scene from a forensic standpoint.

Jake spoke for a few more minutes about the reasons why husbands shoot their families. Textbook, fill-in-the-blanks profiling that might or might not be pertinent to this case. I did my best to give him my attention, keeping my points of contention to myself.

“From my experience,” he said, “with a crime like this he won't have spent too much time with the bodies.”

Jake had been in the Bureau eight years, a second career after working as a forensic psychologist in the Midwest: Rockford, Madison, a short stay in Cincinnati. With a master's in abnormal psychology from Cornell, experience consulting with law enforcement, counseling rape victims, and an impressive curriculum vitae, the Bureau was glad to have him. Now he was based out of Quantico, Virginia, at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. But he was a man who tended to jump to conclusions too soon based on gut instincts and “experience” rather than relying solely on the evidence, and I avoided working with him whenever I could—but he'd requested the Reiser case, Ralph had approved it, and here we were in Wisconsin together.

In the conversational lull following Jake's words, I called Deputy Ellory, the officer who'd contacted the FBI Lab to see if they could identify the snowmobile tracks. The whole situation struck me as incongruous. Multiple homicides in a rural area and a possible suicide, and a deputy rather than the sheriff was taking the lead on this? It didn't make sense.

Ellory picked up. A quick greeting, then I asked, “What made you think to call the Bureau?”

“I figured they'd have the fastest ways to look up the model of the sled. You know, like when they have tire track databases or something.” He sounded young enough to still be in high school. “How they do all that stuff on
CSI
.”

Honestly, it was a good idea. Most agents I've worked with wouldn't even have thought of it. “Okay. Tell me about the house.”

“Well, actually, I wasn't there too long. Your director told us to leave. Lizzie, we found upstairs. Mrs. Pickron—Ardis—she was on the steps. She was shot in the back. Probably with a .30-06.”

There was no mention in the police reports about the murder weapon being found. “Did you find cartridge casings?”

“No. That's just what it looked like.”

“What it looked like?”

“The bullet hole, the entry wound. I hunt. You get to know gunshot wounds pretty good.”

He would have to know GSWs incredibly well to distinguish between calibers on an entry wound—I wasn't even sure it was possible. Exit wounds yes, but—

Jake waved a couple fingers to get my attention. “Ask him about Donnie.”

I said to Ellory, “Have you found Donnie Pickron or recovered his body?”

“No.”

If the stretch of water was wide enough, we might have a chance at getting divers in to find him. “Any divers up there who can search the area?”

“Far as I know there's just one guy around here who dives—Denny Jacobson. But he's down in Florida this month. Visiting relatives, I think. Parents moved there last year, you know. But Donnie's body is obviously down in that lake
somewhere
.”

We didn't have nearly enough facts yet to know what was obvious and what was not, but I decided that pointing that out might not get us off on the right foot. “I was told there were no boot or shoe impressions, just the Ski-Doo tracks.”

“That's right.”

“Has it snowed recently? Is there any chance footprints might have been covered or obscured?”

“No.”

“Are you a snowmobiler?”

“Everyone around here is.”

Growing up in Wisconsin I'd ridden my share of snowmobiles, but I hadn't been on a sled in over fifteen years. Putting the question of the sled's weight and the thickness of the ice aside for the moment, I said, “I understand this will depend on the speed, but how far do you think a Ski-Doo 800 XL would go without someone squeezing the throttle?”

“Let's see . . . the trail along the lakeshore is pretty steep. I'd say he couldn't have been going more than thirty miles per hour. Forty tops. That would mean . . .” He paused, obviously evaluating how that would relate to my question. “I guess it would cruise twenty, thirty yards maybe. But it went under a hundred yards from shore.”

Tonight when we arrived it would be too dark to get a good look at the lake, at least not with respect to its orientation to the surrounding terrain. We could check it out in the morning.

“We'll be at the house in about twenty-five minutes. Does it work for you to meet us at the Pickrons'?”

“You betcha.”

End call.

The full moon, the first of the year, had risen, and from where it hung low in the sky it looked impossibly round and bright, like an unblinking orange eye staring at us from the heavens. Its light reflected boldly off the snow, lending a surreal feeling to the evening, a spectral glow whispering across the fields.

Jake broke the brief silence. “So, they haven't found him yet?”

“Not yet. No.”

He typed a few notes into his iPad. I hopped off Highway 77 and began winding down the county roads that led to the Pickron residence just outside of Woodborough.

We'd missed supper, but Jake and I swung through a gas station and grabbed some snacks to tide us over. Now, I crumpled up my Snickers bar wrapper, set it between the seats, and turned onto the long winding driveway that led to the Pickron house.

A frozen marsh bordered the house on the north and west sides, and in the headlights I could see vast clumps of dead marsh grass cutting through the crust of snow. From the maps Jake had pulled up, I knew a forest lay south of the house.

The closest residence I'd seen on the way here was about half a mile down the road.

The house lay at the top of a rise that would have given the family a beautiful wide-open view to the north. We parked beside one of the cruisers out front, I grabbed my laptop bag, and as we walked up the snow-packed path toward the porch, I took a moment to note the snowmobile tracks on the side of the house closest to the woods. In the brisk moonlight I noticed that two pairs of boot prints led to them from the side door.

Deputy Ellory, a baby-faced twentysomething guy with sandy-colored hair and slightly vacant eyes, was waiting for us by the front door.

Two state troopers flanked him, and I asked them to wait outside. They nodded without saying a word, but the hard look on their faces told me how deeply the murders had affected them. How committed they would be to catching the killer.

Good.

Ellory, Jake, and I entered the home. No sign of forced entry. The temperature in the house was cool. Fiftyish. I set down my computer bag.

To avoid tracking dirt or snow into the house and contaminating the scene, the three of us took off our shoes, or in my case, boots, in the mudroom just inside the entrance. Ellory asked me, “So, you gonna process the scene then?”

“An agent will be here shortly to do that,” I answered. Eight pairs of shoes and boots were positioned neatly against the wall—some men's, some women's, two for a little girl.

Lizzie will never use those pink boots again, never again run out into the snow to play.

I looked away, asked Ellory, “Any other officers here? Any other troopers?”

“We tried to keep the scene clear, like they said.”

“What about the sheriff?”

“He's down with the flu,” Ellory told me.

Down with the flu? With a case this big?