Black Frog, page 7
. . .
Doug’s partner Tom Richard called him later that afternoon with the results of the Potter autopsy.
“A few surprises, Doug. The victim was apparently first struck with a blunt object on the back of the head – compressed skull fracture – probably the back end of an axe head – about the right size and shape. The chop to the neck killed him, then the axe into the skull. Here’s a surprise though. Two different axes were used, based on the wounds. A felling or cutting axe, with a shallower wedge angle on the blade, was used on the nape of his neck, but the axe left in his head is a splitting axe, with a deeper wedge angle. So the killer switched weapons during the murder, and only left one at the scene.”
Doug responded.
“We’ll have to go back and do a wider search at the crime scene, particularly in the water. The killer may have thrown the second axe into the lake.”
Tom continued.
“It gets more interesting. The splitting axe – the one left at the scene, is not an axe you can pick up at Lowes or Home Depot – it’s an older axe – vintage. I just sent you some photos of it as email attachments. But it’s not going to be easy tracking it down. I talked briefly to someone at Brant and Cochran, the axe company down in Portland, and they said vintage axes have become very popular and there are a wide variety being bought and sold. Apparently more than 300 different axe manufacturers existed in Maine between 1800 and 1960. He suggested we talk to the curator up at the Lumbermen’s Museum in Patten.”
“I can do that,” Doug replied, and called the museum as soon as he and Tom ended their call.
Once Doug got the curator on the phone, she sounded skeptical about the likelihood of providing much information of any value to the investigation.
“There are tens of thousands of old axe heads around, many of which don’t have their original handles. They come in a wide variety of different styles or types, and from hundreds of different manufacturers over the past 150 years. Sometimes they have maker’s marks but often they don’t. If you can send me a picture I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t promise anything.”
Doug thanked her and forwarded on the pictures Tom had just sent him.
The curator called back within a few minutes, sounding quizzical, and a little irritated.
“OK. Here’s what I can tell you about the axe in the photos you sent me. It’s a splitting axe, with a deep wedge angle. The bit has a simple Maine pattern shape. This particular axe was manufactured in 1943 by the Emerson & Stevens Company in Oakland Maine, likely under the Lumberman’s Pride brand name. The handle is original, maple, made by Gammon Handle in Lovell, right over by the Vermont border. It is one of a few hundred ordered by the federal government for their lumbering camps. Will that help?”
Puzzled both by the detail the curator was able to provide, and the obvious edge to her description, Doug replied.
“Thanks very much. But I thought you said you probably wouldn’t be able to provide much information. How could you tell so much just from the photos?”
“You really don’t know, do you? Don’t you people ever talk to each other? That axe is one of two that were stolen from one of our exhibits last week. An investigator from the Piscataquis County Sheriff was just up here this morning taking the report. Maybe you should talk to her – Quinn was her name. Do you have the other axe by any chance – a very nice felling axe from the same time period – in good condition, with a hickory handle? When can we get them back?”
Doug replied that they would need to keep the splitting axe, as it was evidence in a criminal case, and promised to let the curator know if they recovered the felling axe. Thanking the curator again, he also said he would be in touch with Investigator Quinn.
7.
ANNE
Wednesday
Anne had spent most of Monday and Tuesday in bed nursing a cold, and still felt pretty sketchy as she drove north on I95 Wednesday morning to interview the director and curator of the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum about the burglary they had reported the previous week. The gray overcast sky matched Anne’s mood.
A few years back she had left the bustling college town of Ann Arbor Michigan and her promising job with the police department there to start a new life in central Maine. Now she wasn’t so sure she had made the right choice.
On the positive side of things, the camp Anne had bought and refurbished on the south shore of Sebec Lake felt like home now and she looked forward to her summer evening ritual of taking a glass of Sauvignon blanc out to the end of her dock and watching the sun go down. Her large white tomcat Charles would often follow her out and perch on the arm of her chair. There was always some sort of entertainment on offer – boats pulling tubes of children, shrieking with excitement, the slow progress of loon pairs calling to each other and disappearing below the surface of the lake for minutes at a time, the raucous cry and dipping flight of the resident kingfisher as he patrolled the shoreline, cat’s paws moving across the lake in the fading light.
Anne had also begun to feel more at home in the community. She had formed a close friendship with June Torben, who was married to the Chief Deputy in the sheriff’s office, and she had dinner at the Torben’s every week or so. People in Dover-Foxcroft, the town of 5,000 that was the county seat or “shire town” had also begun to consider her as a local rather than being “from away,” and she had gotten to know many of the parents of the Lady Ponies – the girls basketball team at the local high school - Foxcroft Academy. Anne had played college ball at the University of Michigan and had started a summer program of informal practices with the team on a seldom-used court behind a local church.
Most Saturday mornings she also met up with a half dozen or so other serious cyclists from the local area for a good thirty mile ride over the rolling hills along the Piscataquis River Valley. Until a month or so ago Anne had been the strongest rider in the group, but now she was challenged to keep up with a newcomer – Colin Watson. He was a businessman of some sort over in Bangor - single, about Anne’s age, and drove over on weekends to ride with the group. He was a few inches taller than Anne and had the well-toned muscles and low body fat index of a serious athlete. With an easy laugh, dark green eyes, a British accent, and red hair, he had quickly blended in with the other riders.
Anne knew that there were other, better cycling clubs that Colin could be riding with in Bangor, and it was pretty obvious to Anne, and to the other riders in the group, that he had joined them because of her. The teasing had already started regarding how long it would be before he worked up the nerve to ask her out. Anne suspected that he slacked off on the flats, riding just fast enough to make her work hard to keep up with him, but then would slow on the climbs, allowing her to pass and lead him up the hills. He claimed he wasn’t a good climber but the women in the group thought he just enjoyed the view from behind as Anne stood on her pedals and powered up the inclines. Her best friend June Torben had of course learned about the potential new man in Anne’s life. June had googled Colin and learned he was a well-heeled media mogul, leading her to urge Anne with increasing frequency to give him some encouragement.
Cruising along at 75 mph Anne was making good time on the interstate. Sitting up straighter, she tried to find a comfortable position, but the springs in the driver’s seat of her mid-70s vintage Toyota Land Cruiser were shot and any trip over twenty miles was now uncomfortable. Her dad had left her the land cruiser in his will and she prided herself on keeping it well maintained. But it was closing in on two hundred thousand miles, and it seemed like she was replacing something on it every month. Anne knew that she would have to find another vehicle before winter arrived.
It represented one of the last physical links to her family and her youth in Manistee, Michigan, and she hated to relegate it to summer weekend duty. But she spent a lot of time driving the back roads of central Maine, where cellphone reception was iffy at best and a breakdown in mid-winter could have serious consequences. Her dad’s other prized possession, a restored early fifties Chris Craft U-22, a beautiful 22-foot wooden inboard, had been left to one of her older brothers. He had promised a while back to give it to her, but recently reneged, claiming that his kids wouldn’t let him part with it. The boathouse she had renovated in anticipation of housing a treasured memory of her youth now stood empty, a hollow reminder of what she had left behind.
A squall line was moving toward her and Anne slowed in anticipation, reminding herself again that she needed a new set of tires. As the rain hit, her thoughts turned to the weather and to the coming winter. Even though it was months away there were reminders everywhere that winter was coming – the steadily growing stacks of cut and split firewood she saw next to beat-up trailers sitting on blocks in small clearings in the forest, the plastic rods sticking up from fire hydrants that would mark their location under snow banks, the rusted snowplows offered for sale along the roadside. Anne had enjoyed the winters in Michigan but winters in central Maine seemed qualitatively different – longer, darker, more depressing, with signs of poverty and hard times everywhere. Just last week, as she opened the front door of the True-Value Hardware in downtown Dover-Foxcroft she had seen a small handwritten sign posted in the window – “Kidney wanted” and a phone number. Next to it was an announcement of a fundraiser dinner for a local woman with mounting hospital bills from a tree branch that had pierced her windshield and bored into her head.
Along with the brutal winters and the crushing poverty that Anne had seen too much of down the back roads of Piscataquis County, she was also getting worn down by the day to day grind of responding to domestic violence calls, petty thefts, drug busts and bar fights, along with drunken snowmobilers and ATV accidents – a seemingly endless stream of sadness and wasted lives. It hadn’t seemed so bad when she first started. Anne and George McCormick, the Piscataquis County Sherriff who hired her, had hit it off from the start and he had supported and encouraged her, even teaming her up with Doug Bateman on a high profile serial murder case soon after she first arrived. But when McCormick retired, Charles Hudson had won election, and he was making life miserable for Anne - ridiculing her in public, assigning her all the low-importance complaints, and throwing in a lot of sexual harassment along the way. She had kept her mouth shut so far, and endured the treatment, but her self-respect was being worn down and there didn’t appear to be an easy solution in sight.
And then there was the lingering puzzle of Doug Bateman. He and Anne had formed a close working relationship during the long hours they had spent together tracking a serial killer a few years back. Anne had hoped it would develop into something more and thought that Doug shared her feelings. He had been estranged from his wife Beth at the time, and there was talk of divorce around town. But Beth had moved back in with Doug, and from all accounts they were trying to work out the problems in their marriage. Beth was commuting down to Orono every day where she was managing a coffee shop and café close to the University of Maine campus. Anne hadn’t had much contact with Doug since the previous fall, but still thought about him far too frequently.
Taking the route 11 exit off the interstate, Anne called the Penobscot County Sheriff’s office to let them know that she was responding to their request for Piscataquis County to look into the burglary at the Patten Lumberman’s Museum and was surprised to learn that she had her facts backward. They hadn’t called Sheriff Hudson asking for help – he had somehow learned of the robbery and had called them and asked if one of his junior investigators could take over the case – that she needed the experience.
As Anne walked in the front door to the museum she was ready to take a quick report of the break-in – it should take fifteen minutes tops - and then she could head back to Dover-Foxcroft to have it out with Hudson. Maybe the best thing to do was just to tell him to shove the job, pull up stakes, and head back to the Midwest.
Two hours later, Anne headed south out of Patten. Rather than getting a quick report on the theft she had ended up taking a guided tour of the museum’s various buildings and exhibits. Anne was aware that lumbering had played an important role in the economy of Maine for more than a century and a half, but she really hadn’t appreciated what was involved in the harvesting and transport of timber down Maine’s rivers to the mills. The museum brought the harsh lives of Maine’s early lumbermen to life for her: the demanding and dangerous work deep in the forests; the long lean-to like structures they crowded into during the sub-zero winter nights, twenty men sleeping side by side, kept warm by cook fires and the body heat of the draft animals that shared the space; the challenge of moving the logs downstream with the spring thaw, dancing across rafts of thousands of logs moving in swift currents, where with a single miss-step a lumberman could vanish into the cold dark depths.
As Anne placed the photographs and descriptions of the two axes that had been removed from one of the museum’s exhibits on the passenger seat of her Toyota, along with several books she had bought, she smiled as she realized that she should probably thank Sheriff Hudson for assigning her to the burglary. She had needed reminding of what a remarkable life she was living in this beautiful place, and the lumberman’s museum had pulled her out of her dark mood. In addition, Hudson would be irritated if she thanked him for an assignment he had hoped would push her toward quitting. The storm had passed, the sun was out, and the trees along the interstate formed a glistening mosaic of greens.
Anne took the Route 155 exit off the Interstate and headed southwest toward Lagrange, where she would pick up Route 6 up to Milo and then west over to Dover-Foxcroft. Her phone rang just as she reached the intersection of Routes 155 and 6 at Lagrange, and she pulled off the road into the shade of a large maple tree. It was Doug Bateman.
“Hi Doug,” Anne answered. “What can I do for you?”
“Anne, it’s good to hear your voice. Got some good news for you. We found one of your stolen axes.”
“What? Where? How did you know it was my case?
“We sent some photos up to the Patten Lumberman’s Museum. I just got off the phone with the curator up there. She confirmed it was one of the axes taken from their exhibits, and that you were investigating the case.”
“Where did you find it?”
“It was embedded in the head of a murder victim discovered up on Sugar Island on Sunday.”
“The Richard Potter killing?”
“Right. If McCormick was still sheriff I am sure that he would agree that the cases were connected, and have you join the murder investigation. But this new guy Hudson has already refused my request to have you assigned to the Potter case. He sounds like a real piece of work.”
Anne paused, surprised, before responding
“You asked for me?”
“I did. I made the request before we knew about the axe, but I doubt he will change his mind now. My guess is that smart, competent people threaten him and that he wants to keep you busy working on minor stuff, even if it involves sending you outside the county. I was thinking that maybe we could compare notes informally? We could really use your input on the Potter case.”
Smiling broadly now and thrusting her fist in the air, while trying to sound calm and collected, Anne responded.
“I think I might be able to manage that Doug. I’m working on a rape case right now but could carve out some time. Hudson’s head would explode if he found out though, so we would have to be careful.”
“That’s great Anne. How about breakfast at Spencer’s on Friday – eight o’clock?
Anne paused again before replying and decided that she wasn’t going to worry about what Sheriff Hudson might think if he heard about the breakfast with Doug.
“That should work.”
“Excellent,” Doug responded.
As Anne ended the call, she noticed a late model gray SUV, maybe a Chevy Suburban, pull into the parking lot of the Lagrange store on the southwest corner of the intersection. It had dark tinted windows and Massachusetts plates and sat idling as if waiting for someone. Her curiosity piqued, Anne figured she could give it ten minutes or so and see what happened. Just as she was about to give up and pull out onto the highway, a red Toyota FJ Cruiser pulled up alongside the SUV, and the drivers of both vehicles began a conversation through their open driver-side windows. Anne slid down in her seat, reached over for her binoculars, and wrote down the license number of the SUV. She still could not see the driver of the Suburban, but had no difficulty identifying the red FJ and its driver – it was the Piscataquis County Sheriff, Charlie Hudson. After about five minutes Hudson turned around and headed back toward Milo. As Hudson disappeared down Route 6 the driver of the SUV got out and walked toward the Lagrange store, emerging a few minutes later with a coke and bag of Fox potato chips. Short, burley, in his mid-forties, with dark hair cut short, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, he was not someone Anne recognized. Feeling a little silly, she snapped a few photos of the mystery man with her phone.
When Anne was back in her office she first called the Patten Lumberman’s Museum to let them know she had been in contact with Detective Bateman regarding the recovery of the museum’s axe, and that she would be in touch when she knew when they would get it back. Then turning to her other case, she logged into the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCap) web site and entered information about the Gayle Robertson rape. Even though Anne was aware that only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies across the country participated in the system and less than one percent of the violent crimes committed each year were entered into ViCap, she still thought it was worth the effort, given the unusual nature of the rape. She wasn’t surprised when her subsequent search of the ViCap database for cases similar to the Robertson rape turned up nothing. FBI analysts would be reviewing her submitted report, she knew, and would be conducting a more in-depth search for other similar cases. If she got lucky maybe they would turn up something and contact her.
