08-A Thousand Bones, page 11
“Is this your personal camera?” Theo asked, handing it to her.
“No,” Joe said. “It’s been in the cruiser for months.”
“Well, seems your partner has a little friend.”
Joe slipped the print of the girl behind the others. How was she going to handle this? She knew it wasn’t any of her business, but she also knew that eventually she wouldn’t be able to resist saying something to Mike.
“So how is Mack treating you?” Theo asked.
“Like an old dog he hopes will croak soon,” she said with a shrug.
“I did some research on him. Would you like to hear what I found out?”
When she hesitated, Theo pushed the manila envelope across the counter. “Here, you can read for yourself.”
She opened the envelope, pulling out the Xeroxed papers. They were copies of articles from the Petoskey News-Review. Her eyes went right to the headline on the first article: DEDICATED DETECTIVE REFUSES TO GIVE UP SEARCH.
The story gave the usual details about Annabelle Chapel’s disappearance but it focused more on Mack and his dogged pursuit of her case—despite the fact the local district attorney and the police chief had publicly criticized him for it. The story was written thirteen months after Annabelle had vanished.
“Interesting, n’est-ce pas?” Theo asked.
She didn’t answer as she moved on to the second article, dated a few months later and headlined: detective fired. The story quoted a chief named Linden, who said he had no choice but to let Mack go because he had “crossed the line too many times” and that his record with the Petoskey PD was “riddled with problems, both personal and professional.”
The last paragraph stated that Mack had also been fired from the East Lansing PD Traffic Division when he was twenty-five and had once been on a long medical leave of absence for unknown reasons.
“I called a friend down there,” Theo said. “The leave of absence was alcohol. Mack used to drink on the job.”
Joe set the articles on the counter. “Why did you show me these, Theo?”
“Augie told me Mack is not being good to you. I don’t know, I thought maybe this could help you somehow.”
Joe suppressed a sigh. “I appreciate the thought, Theo. But throw them away, okay?” she said.
Theo wadded up the copies and tossed them into a trash can. “Done,” he said.
Back at the station, the office was empty, except for Augie, who was watering his plants. Joe was tempted to talk to him about Theo but decided not to bring it up.
“Where’s Mike?” she asked.
Augie shrugged. “Lunch, I think.”
Joe tapped the manila envelope on her palm. At least she didn’t have to confront Mike with the photograph right now.
“Oh, by the way, our friend Mack left you a present,” Augie called out.
She spotted a large box on her desk and knew immediately what it was: more junk from the woods, gathered up last night and this morning. And it had been left for her to log.
She peered into the box. It held an array of muddy clothing, cigarette packs, shoes, cans, and gloves. It looked as if Mack had already culled out anything that could be remotely connected to a female or a possible homicide.
“Augie, is the sheriff in?” she asked.
“Back in his office.”
She pulled out the snapshot of the girl from the envelope and slipped it into her desk drawer. At Leach’s door, she tapped lightly and pushed it open.
Leach set down his coffee as his eyes came up. “What is it, Joe?”
“I have something I think you need to see, sir,” she said, coming forward and holding out the photos of the carvings.
Leach took the photos. “What am I looking at here?” he asked.
“I found these last night on the trees closest to where we found the bones.”
“What kind of carvings are these?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, maybe Indian,” she said.
He looked up at her. “Do you know anything about our Indians here?”
“No.”
He sighed, setting the photos on the desk. “Joe…”
“All right, maybe they aren’t Indian symbols,” she said. “But they might be important, maybe even something left by the killer. Maybe it’s how he marked the spots.”
“Why? And why on more than one tree?” Leach asked. “And why carve kid’s stuff like this? If our killer left anything, it would most likely be the girl’s name or a date or some message.”
Joe was quiet, staring at the top picture, trying to see something in it besides a man standing in a rowboat. But she couldn’t, and with every second of silence that passed, she felt more like a fool.
“Listen, Joe,” Leach said. “Hopefully, we’ll match the jawbone to Annabelle Chapel’s dental records soon, and we can close this damn case. Or at least our end of it. We’ll let the state police figure out what happened to the poor girl.”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said softly. She picked up the photographs.
Leach pushed himself up from his chair and came around to her.
“Joe, I brought you in here because I saw a special hunger in you, the kind of thing that makes a great investigator,” he said. “And I know one day you’ll be one. Hell, you’ll probably be a detective in a place bigger and better than this place before you’re thirty.”
“Sir, please—”
“But right now, you just don’t have the experience, and you need to play by the rules,” he said. “One of the rules is you don’t let emotion blind you to the case at hand. As a woman, you’re going to feel passionate about your victims, but you can’t get emotional when you’re working a case.”
“Mack’s not emotional?” she asked.
“Yes, but he’s also probably right.”
“So that excuses it?”
“When you’re in charge and you’re on the right track, lots of things are excused.”
Joe tried to hold his eyes, but she didn’t want him to see the disappointment in her own, so she looked out his window at the lake.
Leach gestured toward the photos. “Go ahead and file those along with all the other things you’ve logged. And I don’t want to see them in the newspaper,” he said.
Joe forced her eyes back to Leach. “Thank you for your time, sir.”
She left his office and went to her desk, shoving the photos into a drawer. She stared at the box for a moment, then snatched up the evidence log clipboard and threw it on top of the junk. Grabbing the box, she started to the evidence room. As she pushed through the door with her knee, the box caught the edge of a shelf. The box’s bottom split open, and the shelf gave way, sending everything clattering to the floor. The jagged edge of the rusted deer hoist smacked her wrist as it hit.
“Damn it!” she hissed.
A trickle of blood was already oozing from the cut on her wrist. She glanced down at the box, then kicked it. Gloves, hats, and empty cigarette packs skittered across the floor.
“Joe?” Augie hollered.
“What?”
“There’s someone out here you should speak to.”
She went back to the front office, her chest still heaving. The small round woman was standing in a slant of sunlight. Her blondish-gray hair and the matronly style of her blue coat placed her about forty-five. She looked tired, yet there was something oddly hopeful about her powdered face.
Joe came forward slowly. “May I help you?”
The woman laid a copy of the Echo Bay Banner on the counter. It was folded to the story Theo had written about the bones early last week.
“My name is Dorothy Newton,” she said. “I think the bones you found may belong to my daughter, Natalie. She disappeared seven years ago.”
15
The last thing Joe wanted to do was overstep her bounds again, so she took Mrs. Newton back to see Sheriff Leach. Joe could tell by Leach’s expression that he wasn’t pleased with the prospect of having to deal with the grieving mother of a missing girl. But he welcomed Mrs. Newton into his office and motioned for her to sit down. Joe took a position near the bookshelf before Leach could dismiss her.
Dorothy Newton’s eyes flicked nervously around the room. Leach brought her back to him with a gentle clearing of his throat.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Newton?” Leach asked.
Dorothy Newton glanced at Joe and repeated that her daughter had disappeared seven years ago, in 1968. Leach’s eyes went up to Joe and back to Dorothy Newton.
“Where did she disappear from?” Leach asked.
“We’re from Indianapolis, but Natalie was a student at Western Michigan,” Dorothy Newton said. “She had a trip planned to Florida for spring break, and I hadn’t talked to her for weeks before and didn’t really get concerned for a few weeks after.”
“Did you report it?”
“Yes,” Dorothy Newton said. “But not right away, because I didn’t know she was even missing. I called, and her roommates told me she never made the trip to Florida. And they just assumed she went home to visit me instead.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-one.”
Joe wondered how much of the case he would share with this woman, or if he should share anything at all. Then she tried to remember if she had seen Natalie Newton among the missing persons bulletins. She didn’t think she had.
“The newspaper said you found bones,” Dorothy Newton said. “I have a picture of Natalie here. Perhaps…”
Dorothy Newton pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse and laid it gently on Leach’s desk. Joe stepped forward to see it better. It looked like a homemade missing persons flyer, the top printed with have you seen her?
Joe looked at the face on the paper. Natalie Newton was a brunette, with long, straight hair and a round face with cupid-bow lips. She wore a puffy peasant blouse, wire-rimmed glasses, and hoop earrings that looked large enough to fit around Joe’s wrist. She wasn’t smiling in the picture, and Joe realized they could eliminate Natalie Newton with one simple question.
“Mrs. Newton,” Joe asked, “did Natalie wear braces?”
“No, Natalie had perfect teeth.”
When Joe said nothing, Dorothy Newton’s soft brown eyes glistened with tears, and she lowered her head, fingering the edge of the newspaper. “The girl you found,” she said. “She has braces, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s not Natalie.”
“No,” Joe said softly. “I’m sorry.”
Dorothy Newton gathered the newspaper to her chest. She shut her eyes and lost a tear down her cheek.
“Mrs. Newton,” Leach said, “may we get you a glass of water?”
She shook her head, and rose slowly. Joe picked up the flyer. “May we keep this?” she asked.
Dorothy Newton frowned. “Why?”
“So we can keep looking for her,” Joe said. “It would be very helpful.”
“I have plenty more,” she said. “There’s a phone number on there you can call. I’m almost always there, except when I travel, and I always leave the answering machine on and—”
“Those are all good things to do,” Joe said. “We’ll call you if we come across anything you should know.”
Dorothy Newton glanced around the office, as if she weren’t sure where the door was. Joe went to open it for her. She touched Dorothy Newton’s arm as she passed, but she didn’t think the woman felt it.
Joe closed the door and turned back to Leach.
“You handled that well,” he said. He let out a long breath. “You’d better prepare yourself. We’re likely to have more of them.”
“Mothers?” Joe asked.
“Yes,” Leach said. “That’s what publicity gets you.”
Joe didn’t reply as she folded the old flyer carefully and slipped it into her shirt pocket so she could put it with the bulletins. Then she looked around, postponing her return to the evidence room. There was still a sadness in the air, hanging like the drifting sunlight. Joe wished she could have given Dorothy Newton something, and she thought about how macabre that was—to wish you could tell someone you’ve found their daughter’s bones.
She looked back at Leach, something else churning in her brain. They had four bones, but only one, the jawbone, could ever be definitively linked to a victim. And everything they had done so far was based on the jawbone and the braces, including the assumption that they had only one victim.
But what if the other three bones were not from the same skeleton as the jawbone? What if there was a second victim?
Joe came forward slowly. “Sir, may I offer something?”
“Certainly.”
“Do you think there’s a chance we may have two victims?”
Leach looked at her. “Why would you suggest that?”
“We have braces and the charm bracelet, and we haven’t been able to link those two items to any single victim. It’s like each one belonged to someone else.”
“It’s possible we have not yet identified the girl who had both.”
“But there were two different carvings on two different trees.”
“Carvings that may mean nothing.”
“Why do you discount them?” she asked.
“I’m not discounting them,” Leach said. “I’m simply being cautious. When a cop is not objective, it becomes easy to fall into the trap of seeing only the evidence that supports his theory of the crime.”
“Can’t more than one theory be followed at the same time?”
He finally gave her a smile. “Yes,” he said, “but theories have to be logical. The odds are astronomical we’d have two victims killed by the same man. It would mean a multiple killer was working in our midst, and that just doesn’t happen in places like this.”
“A multiple killer?” she asked.
“Yes,” Leach said. “You know, someone like John Norman Collins, the coed killer.”
She remembered the name vaguely, someone at the academy mentioning a series of murders down in the Ann Arbor area. But if she remembered right, Collins was now serving a life sentence in prison.
“When did Collins do his crimes?” she asked.
Leach took a long pause, and his answer came slowly, as if something had just occurred to him. “Sixty-seven to sixty-nine,” he said.
Joe was quiet, suddenly realizing what Leach was thinking. Natalie Newton disappeared in sixty-eight, from a college only a few hours’ drive from Ann Arbor.
Leach pushed from the chair and walked to the bookshelf, pulling down a black binder. He held it out to Joe. “Take a look at this.”
She set it on the desk and opened it. Taped to the first page was a photograph of a good-looking, dark-haired young man wearing a jacket, shirt, and tie. The next page was a newspaper clipping from the August 8, 1967, edition of the Ann Arbor News.
“A body found yesterday afternoon on a Superior Township farm was tentatively identified as that of a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University coed who disappeared without a trace July 10.”
Joe flipped through the pages. They were mostly newspaper articles, a few police reports Leach had managed to get his hands on, some handwritten notes and magazine articles on Collins’s life.
“Were you part of that case?” she asked.
“No,” Leach said. “I was a sergeant in Marquette County and teaching at Northern at the time. We all heard about the student murders down in Ann Arbor and Ypsi. But when I saw how the fear stretched to a campus hundreds of miles away, I started paying more attention to the case.”
Joe continued to look through the scrapbook, scanning the headlines. A year between the first and second bodies. Then a third and a fourth and a fifth. Seven victims total, with speculation of more. All raped, slashed, mutilated. Two years into the spree, a psychic was called in, a man named Peter Hurkos. Then, finally, the arrest. Collins had been turned in by his uncle, a state trooper. Collins had murdered one of the coeds in the uncle’s basement while the uncle was on vacation.
She closed the book. “Was there ever any indication Collins spent time up here?”
Leach gave her a slow nod. “There’s a town north of Petoskey. They found an entire family murdered in their home there in 1968. Collins was a friend of one of the teenage sons, but no one was ever able to link Collins to that crime. It remains unsolved.”
Leach picked up the phone and asked Augie to get him an investigator with the Ann Arbor police. As he waited, he looked at Joe.
“I still believe our case is a solitary homicide,” he said. “But it’s protocol to alert the investigators of even a possible connection.”
“I understand, sir.”
Joe looked back at Leach’s scrapbook, still seeing the graphic crime scenes in her head. She felt a soft flip of her stomach.
Something else was hitting her. The fact that their girl—or girls—were so young left one other obvious conclusion. Like Collins’s victims, they had probably been raped.
“You can keep that awhile,” Leach said, covering the receiver with his hand and nodding toward the scrapbook. “Study up on the way they conducted their investigation. Get a little insight into a man like Collins. It’ll help you later, if this is what you are suggesting it is.”
It took a moment for what Leach had said to register. He was keeping his mind open that she might be right about the bones.
Leach finally started talking to someone. As Joe left the office, she heard him begin the conversation with the words “This is probably nothing, but…”
She grabbed the missing persons binder off the shelf. She pulled Natalie Newton’s flyer from her pocket and carefully smoothed it with her palm. She paused to take one last look at Natalie’s face.
She was dressed in the style popular in the late sixties, right down to the wire-rimmed glasses hippies wore and the center-parted straight hair of the English fashion models.
Joe focused on the glasses. She was thinking about the glasses they had found in the woods during the first search. They had dismissed them then, thinking they belonged to an old man.
Joe hurried back to the evidence room. She was scanning the shelves for the glasses she had tagged days ago when she remembered she had put them in a shoe box with some other small articles. She found the box on the floor, the contents toppled. The glasses were right on top.
