Black Frog, page 5
Dappled sunlight filtered down through the trees, a hermit thrush was holding forth from some distance away, and several red squirrels began scolding him from branches overhanging the path. All in all, things were going great, Jimmy Bob thought – his search for brides was progressing extremely well, and the next few days held the promise of another wedding and another begetting. He sat for a few minutes by the stream in his usual place on a fallen log, listening to the soothing sound of the water and visualizing his upcoming wedding. Returning to the barn, he began to pull together his wedding night essentials.
Over a number of years the Patriarch had drilled into him the habits of an ordered and reverent Christian existence. Now that he was beyond the reach of the Waldo, New Mexico, Christian Family of Heaven and Earth, he ignored most of their teachings, but some stuck with him. He always said a brief prayer before meals and before turning in each evening, for example, and every morning he still made his bed with tight hospital corners, a habit that had been reinforced during his time in military service.
The battered leather suitcase Jimmy Bob slid from under his neatly made bed was one of the few things he still had from his years living in the Waldo compound. He thought of it as a hope chest of sorts. Carefully organized and curated in an upper compartment were his memorabilia from each of his weddings – keepsakes that reminded him of his brides. There were the branding irons he had made himself to sanctify the ceremonies, pairs of panties, along with locks of hair, a tooth, a bedroom slipper, earrings, and a few pieces of ear cartilage. Prior to switching over to branding, Jimmy Bob had earmarked his brides in the manner that had been used for cattle during the era of open range.
Reaching into the case Jimmy Bob removed the bulky backpack that would hold what he would need for his upcoming wedding. Placing it on the floor he started filling it with other items from the case: a blindfold of thick black felt, a roll of duct tape, a package of large zip lock ties, several lengths of cord, a pair of latex gloves, a high intensity tactical LED flashlight, a package of ketamine tablets, a small branding iron with the numeral “10,” and a wedding ring, still in its red velvet box. Each of these items was fitted into the backpack in a specific order and occupied a particular place. Once the matrimonial ceremony was under way he would be able to access each without taking his eyes off his bride to be.
The final item to go into the backpack, right next to the flashlight, was his custom made Dundee Style Bowie Knife. Made by Cote Custom knives in Elliott Lake Ontario, it had a black Indian ebony handle and a front brass guard shaped like a crocodile tooth. Most importantly for his purposes was the knife’s broad, brightly polished 11-inch steel blade. Jimmy Bob preferred a standard Marine issue Ka Bar fighting knife for any serious engagements, but the large polished blade of the Bowie Knife was perfect for gaining and keeping the attention of his fiancés. When he held it in front of the flashlight where they could see it, they invariably quieted right down into respectful silence and followed his instructions.
Zipping up the backpack, Lentz slid it and the suitcase back under the bed, poured himself another glass of wine, and settled in on the couch for a few hours of television. He decided to watch the last two episodes of Mindhunter. The final episode, where the FBI profiler suddenly realized how close to death he was at the hands of a serial killer, was, Lentz thought, a good conclusion. It reaffirmed his belief that law enforcement officers, even the elite behavioral profilers of the FBI, were no match for superior intellects like himself.
Turning off the TV, Jimmy Bob realized he was ready to call it a day, but then remembered he had wanted to see if he could find any information on the woman he had noticed at the Town Hall meeting in Greenville the previous day. He often frequented community meetings, as they were a great way to survey the local population of potential brides. The woman had attracted his attention not because she appeared to fit his potential bride profile but because she clearly was someone that he would be well advised to avoid at all costs.
She was older than his usual brides, and he doubted very much that she was the religious type. She was also with local law enforcement, based on the badge and gun she displayed on her belt as she pulled her coat back. Jimmy Bob was drawn to her casual threat of bodily harm and the clear message the snick of her extended baton made to the man rising to his feet to attack her. She was no Gayle or Becky, or any of the other meek vessels he had married. It would be dangerous, reckless even. He would have to be very careful with her, but he knew, as he watched her leaning against the wall of the auditorium, that she would bear him a healthy baby boy.
He googled the Greenville Police Department first, but they didn’t have any female officers. He hit pay dirt with his next search – the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department. Anne Quinn, he learned, was an investigator, but the web site didn’t have much more information on her. A general Internet search on her name, however, generated a large number of local newspaper accounts of her central role in tracking down a serial killer a while back. Jimmy Bob became even more interested as he realized that she was even more dangerous than he had initially thought. Searching further, he found even older articles that documented her athletic success in college as a Big Ten basketball player, some of which provided background on her early years growing up in Michigan.
Closing out his Internet search, Jimmy Bob opened his folder on prospective brides and created a new file – Anne Quinn. Tomorrow he would drive down to Dover-Foxcroft, the county seat, and stake out the sheriff’s department to begin his research on Investigator Quinn. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out where she lived and to start documenting her patterns of movement. He was pretty much free for the next four days, until his wedding with Becky. He could follow his other two prospective brides on and off through the week and still make time to build his file on Quinn. Right now she was at the bottom of his list, since he had so little information, but she could easily move up the rankings. Maybe it was time for him to take on more of a challenge. He thought he was ready.
5.
DOUGLAS
Monday
Doug Erving and his wife Nancy were up from Bangor for a three-day weekend of fishing on Moosehead Lake. They had trailered their 16-foot Lund outboard behind his pickup and launched from the boat ramp at Lily Bay State Park, where they had a prime walk-in tent site on Dunn Point. Their plan was to use the trolling motor to work their way slowly along the Moosehead shoreline, casting toward shore for smallmouth bass. On Saturday and early Sunday they had good luck in the many shallow water inlets of Lily Bay, east from the state park. But late in the day Sunday Nancy and Doug were forced off the lake by a strong afternoon thunderstorm.
The weather had cleared by Monday morning and they shifted their attention to Sugar Island, just north of the park. In the morning they worked their way along the east side of the island before breaking for lunch back at their campsite. In the afternoon they shifted to the south and southwest shorelines of the island and had good initial success around McCuller and Dollar Island.
Continuing clockwise along the shore, they passed several summer cabins, and were almost to Ship Island when they approached a larger compound that included a large main cabin that looked to date back to the 1920s at least, as well as a number of smaller outbuildings and a large dock. Doug steered their boat in closer to see if they could attract any bass lurking under the dock. Usually it was just bluegills that rose to their bait from under docks, but occasionally a big lunker would be lured out of the shadows.
Glancing toward the main cabin, Nancy was admiring the large screened porch when she noticed, just off to the left of the cabin, what looked like a small man with his arms wrapped around a pine tree. He was naked except for a pair of darkish boots, and it looked like he had something sticking out of the back of his head.
. . .
Doug Bateman was working through paperwork at the Major Crimes Unit North offices in the Bangor Barracks of the Maine State Police when his partner Tom Richard called to him from across the room.
“Hey Doug, we have a call on line two from the Greenville PD. Sounds like they have a body for you to look at.”
Doug saw the smirk on Tom’s face and frowned, realizing that since his partner was once again on desk duty due to a pending internal investigation of his apparent use of excessive force in making an arrest, Doug would have to handle yet another case by himself. He picked up the phone on his desk.
“Bateman, MCU. What’s up?”
“Doug, it’s Chief Marcus. We got a 911 call from a couple of fishermen up off Sugar Island just before noon, reporting an apparent body tied to a tree. We sent the launch up to check it out, and it’s definitely a homicide. We didn’t go ashore, so the crime scene is still intact. We can keep it undisturbed until you get up here with the Evidence Response Team.”
“OK, We’re on it. I should be up there by 4 at the latest. I’ll call when I pass through Shirley and the launch can come back to pick me up. I’m not sure how quickly the ERT can get up there, but we have another six hours of daylight so they should make it before sundown.”
Ending the call, Doug looked over to his partner Tom, shook his head, and thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to try, called Stan Shetler, the head of the Major Crimes Unit.
“Lieutenant Shetler, it’s Doug Bateman. There’s been a homicide up at Moosehead Lake, and it sounds like it’s going to be a complicated case. I really need Tom Richard to help on this. Can he be released from desk duty?”
There was a long pause before Doug received the officious response he expected.
“Absolutely not, Bateman. The accusations pending against your partner are serious. You know the regulations and procedures, and I cannot bend the rules just because we are short staffed. And there is no one else available, so don’t ask. The Fentanyl Task Force is still our top priority, so you are just going to have to handle it alone.”
Ending the call, Doug looked up the number for the Piscataquis County Sherriff’s Office. If Shetler couldn’t spare anyone to help on the Sugar Island case, maybe Sheriff Hudson could be talked into assigning Anne Quinn to team up with him. After all, Doug thought, he had teamed up with her on a high profile serial killer case a while back, and they had worked well together. As he waited to be connected to the Sheriff, Doug’s heart rate suddenly spiked, and he realized how much he wanted to team up with Anne again. And it wasn’t just because he had great respect for her investigative skills. He had mostly been successful putting her out of his mind, but now his intense feelings for her came flooding back.
Hudson listened to his pitch without saying anything, and then bluntly rejected it.
“Sorry Bateman. No can do. Not a chance. Quinn’s on thin ice as it is and needs to definitely up her game before I would consider assigning her to a homicide. Right now she has her hands full with a break-in at the Lumbering Museum up in Patton and a rape case down by Dexter. To be honest I’m not sure why she was hired in the first place, other than her nice ass. But I can understand why you want her working with you. I bet she would do anything for you to get assigned to your murder case. But it ain’t gonna happen unless you can somehow link her current cases to yours. Good luck with that.”
Hudson hung up before Doug could respond. He knew that any pushback he offered would only make things worse for Anne. Before heading up to Moosehead Doug asked his partner Tom Richard to contact Peter Martell, head of the State Police Evidence Response Team, to see how quickly the ERT could join him at the crime scene. Martell called Doug back within a few minutes to let him know that his team was just finishing up with an apparent suicide of a prominent politician over in Camden and could meet him in Greenville in about two hours.
Doug was met by the Greenville Police launch at the Black Frog restaurant dock, and the ERT arrived a few minutes later. The lake was calm, with a light breeze out of the west, and the temperature was in the low 70s. They reached the camp on Sugar Island in good time, and the body of Richard Potter was clearly visible from the dock. As they approached it a swarm of blowflies rose from the body with an excited thrum.
Richard Potter’s body was pressed up against the tree in a standing position with his arms wrapped around it. His wrists were tied together with a length of red nylon line and appeared to be the only thing holding him upright. What had been thought to be a pair of boots when viewed from a distance was a dark reddish-blue discoloration of his legs below the knees where blood had pooled after death. There was a large gaping wound angled diagonally across the nape of his neck which had severed his spinal cord. The back of Potter’s skull was split open and the head of an axe was still deeply embedded in the wound. The axe handle angled down toward the ground at about a 45-degree angle.
Martell stepped up to the body, turned on a compact video camera, and began recording his examination of the corpse.
“Pronounced lividity in lower extremities does not disappear when pressed, suggesting that death occurred more than eight hours ago. Minimal bleeding from neck and head wounds, along with livor mortis, indicates that the victim was killed in the position we found him, and that death was instantaneous. Rigor mortis appears to be disappearing from face and neck, but is still present in larger muscle groups, suggesting death occurred twenty four to thirty six hours ago.”
Taking a scalpel from his crime scene kit, Martell made a small incision in the upper right abdomen of the body and inserted a thermometer into the corpse’s liver.
“Liver temperature is 73 degrees, comparable to the ambient temperature of the crime scene, which suggests that death occurred more than twenty to twenty four hours ago. There are also larva 1 stage blowfly maggots in both wounds.”
Turning off the camera, Martell gave Bateman and the team a quick summary.
“The chief medical examiner will of course provide a formal assessment after the autopsy regarding the cause and time of death, but it looks pretty clear that the victim was first tied to the tree and then killed, and that the initial stroke of the axe, diagonally across his neck, killed him instantly. And if the axe in his head also caused the neck wound, then obviously the blow to the head was post-mortem. Judging from lividity, rigor mortis, liver temperature, and blowfly larval stage evidence, I would estimate that death occurred more than twenty four hours ago, but less than thirty six – so he was killed sometime from early morning to mid-afternoon on Sunday. Also, the soil under his feet, and the tree where he is pressed up against it are bone dry, which suggests he was killed before the storm hit on Sunday.”
Martell turned to Doug and asked.
“Do we know who the victim is?”
Doug nodded.
“It’s Richard Potter. He gave a long boring speech at the town hall meeting on Saturday – arguing against any development at Lily Bay and in support of more sensitive lumbering practices. I guess you could call him a tree hugger, although he mostly talked about himself. Given the fact that he was literally hugging a tree when he was murdered and that an axe was the murder weapon of choice, the killer could be sending a blatant anti-environmental message. There’s no lack of frustrated, out of work folks around here whose livelihood is tied to the lumbering industry and who might be looking for an outlet for their anger.”
Martell turned to the Greenville police officer that had piloted them out to the island.
“You had a thunderstorm up here Sunday didn’t you?”
“Yes sir, we certainly did - quite a storm. Several people killed, some trees and power lines down, and a heavy rain for over an hour.”
Martell walked toward the main cabin, looking around at the ground.
“We’ll do a full search of the area but there’s no chance of any footprints surviving the storm, and not much chance of prints or DNA either. We can bag up the body and his clothes, along with the axe and cord for transport down to Augusta for the post-mortem. Maybe we’ll have better luck in the cabin.”
The door to the cabin was unlocked, but nothing seemed disturbed inside. A thin layer of dust covered the massive dining table and kitchen counters, suggesting that the camp was little used. But the sink contained two unwashed plates and wine glasses, along with two place settings. The refrigerator was empty except for an almost empty bottle of sauvignon blanc and several takeout containers from the Kraken Seafood Restaurant in Greenville.
Closing the refrigerator door, Doug speculated out loud to Peter Martell.
“Looks like Potter might have opened camp for a very secluded Sunday lunch of chilled lobster and white wine. My guess is that a special lady friend was invited. But it seems that postprandial, things didn’t go as planned.”
Peter walked over to the sink.
“Could be. I’d bet the autopsy shows a belly full of lobster and wine – that will help to pin down when he was killed. And we’ll be closer to knowing who his lunch companion was once we check the plates and wine glasses for latent prints. I’ll have them boxed up for the cyanoacrylate-fuming chamber down in Augusta. The dust layer in here will make it easy for us to know where else to look for prints. It should take us another hour or so to wrap things up. You can send the launch back for us if you’re finished here.”
Doug nodded and stepped outside. Jay Marcus, the Greenville Police Chief answered on the first ring, and agreed to wait for Doug at the Black Frog restaurant so they could discuss the case. Doug didn’t see Marcus at the Black Frog’s dock and headed for the restaurant’s front door. Once inside there was a long corridor leading back to the restaurant. Its walls were covered with vintage photographs that showed various groups of lumbermen and timber harvesting scenes spanning the past hundred years, and Doug always paused to look at them and search the list of names in the captions for the ancestors of people he knew.
