08-A Thousand Bones, page 21
Her eyes swung to the ground. It was covered with wet leaves. “Be careful in here,” she said. “No more people than absolutely needed.”
The others who had followed her to the tree started backing away. Mike grabbed a roll of yellow tape and strung it between two pine trees, blocking off the path back to the cabin. Rafsky emerged from the cluster of cops. He had traded his trench coat for a bulky blue state jacket. Joe’s red scarf was still around his neck.
He stepped carefully to her and looked up. After a moment, he sighed. “You hope for breaks like this,” he said, “but then you get one and you realize what it really means.”
Another victim, Joe thought.
Already the officers were starting a ground search, carefully raking away leaves and putting them into containers to be searched by others.
Joe stepped around the tree slowly, scanning the rough bark for any sign of a carving. It was easy to spot. About chest high to an adult man.
She turned to call out to Rafsky, but he was right behind her. “I see it,” he said.
He called for a camera, a chain saw, and a ladder, then pulled off his gloves and traced the carving with the tip of his finger. “This is an old one,” he said. “Weather-worn and smooth.”
“An early one?” Joe asked.
“Maybe. Definitely another February Hunger Moon.”
They both turned to watch the searchers. In minutes, they had reorganized. Flags marked the edge of a new perimeter. Wood posts and string set the individual search areas, laid out like lanes in a swimming pool. The photographer appeared. His flash popped in the gray like headlights on high beam. Then someone brought a ladder, and ten minutes later, there was a man with a chain saw going up into the tree.
“I got something,” one of the searchers called. “Come in behind me, not in front.”
Rafsky took Joe’s elbow, and they walked up behind the officer. He was on his knees in a circle cleared of leaves. At first, Joe didn’t see anything but clumped mud. Then a small spot of red came into focus. She stepped closer. It was the fingertip of a glove.
A second officer appeared. His black jacket had analyst stamped on the back. He carried a leather case, and he carefully began extricating the glove from the dirt. As he dug around it, Joe could see the rest of the glove was blackened and moldy, worn so thin that some tiny threads were floating into the air as the tech worked around it.
The analyst cursed and took another approach, gently scooping the whole dirt clot. The dirt started to crumble, and the glove came apart. A cluster of tiny white bones spilled onto the ground.
“Oh, God,” Joe whispered.
The analyst started picking the bones out of the dirt. He took the longer ones first, then the smaller ones. Joe counted them as he dropped them into a box. Twenty-seven.
“What’s that?” Rafsky asked over her shoulder.
The analyst turned over the glove, exposing a bracelet. It was gold once, now black with tarnish, but Joe recognized it immediately. It was an ID bracelet, a fad from the sixties, usually engraved with the owner’s name—or her boyfriend’s.
“Is there an engraving?” Joe asked.
“You want me to clean this bracelet here?”
“It might have a name on it, on the flat part,” Joe said.
The analyst swept off the mud with a small brush, then held the bracelet out to her. The engraved letters were still visible: susie-q.
“Number four,” Joe whispered, turning away.
Rafsky came up behind her. “We need to find out everything we can about who had access to this cabin.”
“It was in the Snider family for three generations before the Colliers,” Joe said, reminding him.
He nodded. “Okay, then we need to find out everything we can about the Sniders, starting with the father.”
“I’ll let Leach know.” She went back to the tree with the carving. Above her, she could hear the chain saw rumble to life. Somewhere behind her, a man was shouting out more search directives, but she suddenly didn’t want to hear any of it. She kept walking, dipping under the tape, heading toward the cabin.
She spotted Holt, standing by the cabin, a power tool in his hand, waiting for direction.
“I heard on the radio they found another carving out there,” he said. He pointed to the carving on the cabin. “So why are we keeping this one secret?”
“Because it’s on Snider’s childhood home,” Joe said. “It’s the best connection we’ve got to him. I don’t know much about the law, but I don’t want his lawyer to know we have this until he has to.”
Holt nodded and went to work. Joe watched him, but she was thinking about Susie-Q. Wondering who she was, how long she had been missing, and who was missing her. Trying not to think what had happened to her out there and how cold she must have been before she finally died.
They had never talked about how he killed them. Did he strangle them? Shoot them? Or simply hang them up and gut them, as the deer hoist suggested? And she wondered something else, too. If they were right about Snider killing for eleven years and Leelanau being his dumping grounds, why had they found so few bones?
Holt’s saw cut off, leaving the air vibrating with a sudden silence.
“I’m done,” he said.
She gave him a brown bag, and he slipped the slab of wood inside, dutifully filling out all the required blanks on the evidence tape.
“You want me to take it in myself?” he asked.
She nodded, her gaze drawn back toward where they had unearthed Susie-Q’s ID bracelet. She wondered how deep into the woods this search would go. They weren’t that far from the first search area. The entire peninsula was only about five miles wide. If they went far enough, the first search area would meet this one.
“You okay, Joe?” Holt asked.
She nodded again, thinking she needed to go inside and tell Mrs. Collier they had cut a gouge in her cabin. She followed Holt around the side of the cabin. Holt was rambling about how Ken Snider just sat in his cell, sometimes laid out on his bunk so still and silent that Holt was afraid he might be dead. But Snider always came forward to get his food, Holt said, like a beaten but hungry dog.
As they neared the front porch, Joe stopped suddenly. Parked about a quarter-mile down the road, she saw a black sedan with tinted windows. It wasn’t a police car, and both of the Collier vehicles were here in the drive.
“Holt,” she said, “do you know who that is?”
He looked toward the car and shook his head. “It wasn’t there when I drove back in here. I’ll run them off when I leave.”
“No,” Joe said. “Just drive by and run the plate. Radio the owner back to me.”
Holt hurried off, and she watched as he climbed into one of the cruisers. She heard Rafsky’s voice behind her and turned.
He had a thin film on his forehead. He was running a fever. “Listen,” he said, “I just got done telling the crews how important it is to keep these carvings quiet.”
“We’ve told them that all along,” she said.
“Yeah, but this is going to get out of control pretty quick. Leach and I made a decision. We’re going to release copies of the carvings to all neighboring law enforcement agencies with orders to look for any similar carvings. They will be told that under no circumstances are they to discuss their findings with anyone outside their departments.”
Holt’s voice bubbled from the radio on her belt. “Frye?”
She grabbed her radio. “Go ahead.”
“Subject vehicle belongs to a Roland Trader.”
“Thanks, Holt.”
Rafsky frowned, and Joe motioned discreetly toward the black sedan still parked down the road.
“What the hell is he doing out here?” Rafsky asked.
“Watching us,” she said.
30
It looked different. It was still a log cabin. But not their log cabin. He hadn’t noticed the difference in his first three times here just last week. He had been too worried about the dead girl in the trunk to notice anything. But now he realized the cabin no longer looked like the one he had known as a boy.
There were lots of cops, and as he watched them, he bit the ragged cuticles of his right hand. What would they find? And how would it affect what he needed to do now? He knew he should probably leave before they saw him, but he couldn’t stop looking at the cabin.
That couple who owned it had put flower boxes out front. They were empty now, but he wondered briefly what kind of flowers grew there in the summertime. He couldn’t remember much about the summers up here. Except for that one summer before that one winter. He was young then and the pictures in his head weren’t clear anymore, except for that one image of her up in the tree. That had never left him.
Roland Trader reached down into the bag on the passenger seat and took out a baby Tootsie Roll.
He unwrapped it, careful to get all the paper off the chocolate. Sometimes it stuck, and if he didn’t see it, he would taste it later in his mouth, and he hated picking things off his tongue. He popped the Tootsie Roll into his mouth, rolled the paper into a tiny ball, and put it in the ashtray.
His eyes moved back to the cabin.
They had electricity. It would be warm now inside his old bedroom in winter. Whoever slept in there now wouldn’t have to scrounge for more blankets or sleep in the same bed with someone else just to keep from freezing.
Roland shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the small ripple of cold air on his neck.
He and Kenny used to do that, sit in the darkness waiting for the gin to take hold of Dad so they could sneak into the same bed. Dad was funny about things like that. Hugging. Whispering. Sleeping together just to stay warm. Dad said it would make queers out of them.
It hadn’t.
But it had brought him and Kenny closer together. Long nights, shivering together in the darkness, wrapped in old wool blankets, sharing fears and dreams and stories, Kenny trying to help him keep alive memories of a woman whose face he couldn’t see anymore. Sometimes, if it had been a bad day or if Roland was hurting too much, Kenny would go get the old ladder from the shed and they would climb up on the roof, where Dad never looked for them. It was their special place. They would lie up there looking at the stars, and Kenny would tell him that everything would be all right, that he would take care of him. And each time, before the season was over, Kenny would always promise that this would be the last year he would let Dad bring them up here.
But it wasn’t. The seasons kept coming. Nineteen fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.
And then 1961, when Dad said Roland was damn well big enough to sleep alone in the bedroom. Big enough to shoot a shotgun and not have it knock him over. Big enough to gut a deer. Big enough to take his whippings like a man.
More seasons. More gray mornings with the smell of burning firewood and gunpowder and death in the air. Then, finally, in 1964, Kenny kept his promise.
The Tootsie Roll was losing its flavor, drying up the way they sometimes did when you chewed on them too long. Roland swallowed it, turning his gaze back to the cabin.
Kenny was in big trouble now. He had hoped, maybe foolishly, that bringing Kenny back here and handing him over to the mom-and-pop Echo Bay department would be the right move. Now he wasn’t sure.
He watched the cops moving around the front of the cabin. That tall cop was here, the one with the tan trench coat and ice-blue eyes. He was a strange man, but the kind of man it was a pleasure to study. There was a stillness about him, even when his body was in motion. But when Roland looked into the man’s eyes, as he had back in Inkster, he could almost see the constant movement of his mind. The man was always thinking. He would have to watch him carefully.
He would have to watch Kenny carefully, too.
Roland picked out another Tootsie Roll. He could still see Kenny as he had looked in Inkster, slumped over the tape recorder, head bowed. At that moment, he seemed very small and weak. It was odd for Roland to see him that way, and he had the sensation, for the first time in his life, that they had somehow traded places. Maybe even traded souls, as if what Kenny once was Roland had become.
Strong.
It was his turn to help Kenny. His turn to protect his brother. Kenny had kept his promise all those years ago. Now it was his turn to keep his.
31
Joe scanned the copy of Ken Snider’s driver’s license that she had just peeled off the Telecopier. Full name: Kenneth David Snider. Date of birth: April 3, 1946. That meant Snider was now twenty-nine, which made his first killing—if his first was Ronnie Langford—at age eighteen.
Her gaze cut to Rafsky, sitting at Mike’s desk. Since their arrival back at the station, he had been working the phones trying to find out more about Ken Snider, Sr., or anyone else who might have had access to the cabin.
Rafsky’s radio sputtered to life, and she cocked an ear. A report in from the searchers. Nothing but an old boot.
Her eyes moved to the closed-circuit monitor on Mack’s desk. Until three days ago, it had sat in Leach’s office, unused because they never had a prisoner worth watching. But Leach had brought the monitor out and ordered Snider watched around the clock, afraid Snider would attempt suicide. Leach had also extended the shifts of all the deputies to make sure the office and the jail were never left unattended. All days off and vacations had been canceled.
Joe adjusted her chair so she could see the monitor better. Snider was hunched on his bunk, a blanket over his shoulders, his food tray nearby. The basement cell wasn’t bad by modern standards, and there was an alarm button just outside the cell that Snider could activate in an emergency. Anyone could hear if he yelled, since the back offices were right at the top of the stairs.
But it was still a basement, a place that held the cold even in the summertime. The screen’s image was blurry, but Joe could see that Snider was shivering. She wondered now if this was even the best place for him, wondered if their small department would be able to handle the media pressure and keep Snider secure. Maybe it would be better to move Snider to the larger county jail down in Traverse City.
She heard Rafsky hang up the phone and looked over. He had discarded the bulky blue state police parka, but Joe’s red scarf still hung over his wrinkled white dress shirt.
“Telecopier still on?” he asked.
She went to the machine. Augie scooted his chair over to allow her room, and Joe connected the phone receiver on the modem.
“What’s coming?” she asked.
“Ken Snider Senior’s death certificate,” he said.
Joe glanced at Augie. He was talking to Mrs. Elsinore, something about her grandson Jeff stealing her binoculars. Joe had the passing thought that since the first bone had been found, she had spent no time patrolling the town.
The Telecopier came to life with a soft, steady clacking. The transmission would take at least five minutes, so she went to the coffee station, poured out two mugs, and set one in front of Rafsky. He gave her a tired smile of thanks.
The Telecopier finally stopped. Joe took out the cylinder, peeled the document off the imaging paper, and turned slowly, her eyes already moving down the page.
“Kenneth Snider Senior died November 20, 1964,” she said.
“Three months before Ronnie Langford disappeared,” Rafsky said. “Where did he die?”
“Up here in Leelanau County,” Joe said. “At the family cabin, it looks like.” She skimmed the death certificate and looked up. “Gunshot wound. Local doctor wrote in ‘hunting accident.’”
“Who shot him?” Rafsky asked.
Joe shrugged. “It doesn’t say, but the reporting party was Kenneth Snider Junior.”
“I want to know more about this accident,” Rafsky said.
“Responding department was the Leelanau SO,” Joe read off.
Augie jumped to his feet. “I’ll go get it.” He disappeared down the hall to the records room.
Joe began making copies of the death certificate for the file. She knew hunting accidents were common given that for two or three weeks a year, the woods were full of drunks with guns. So the Snider accident probably had no bearing on the current cases. But the fact that Ken Snider’s father died just months before Ronnie Langford disappeared was too big a coincidence to ignore.
She moved back to her desk, slipping the copies of the death certificate into the thickening accordion file Leach had started weeks ago. She considered looking back through the file but then changed her mind and sank into her chair.
Holt was preparing reports for Lansing. Rafsky had his head down on his arms. It was an oddly quiet moment given the activities going on a few miles away at the Collier cabin and the quickening pace of the investigation.
The quiet ended with the ringing of Augie’s phone. She picked it up. Their order of sandwiches was ready at The Bluebird. She told the waitress she’d be right there.
“I’ll go,” Holt offered.
She shook her head. “No, I’ll go. I need the fresh air.”
Outside the station, she saw a group of women standing in front of the Riverside Inn. The mothers. There were a couple more of them now, Holt had told her earlier. He had gently questioned them all about Susie-Q. None of the mothers claimed her. Joe had done a check through the missing persons files, but there was no one with the nickname or any variation of it.
She hurried to The Bluebird. The place was packed with reporters and cops, and it took a while to get the order. At the last minute, she remembered Rafsky hadn’t ordered anything, and she added a BLT.
Rafsky was snoring softly at Mike’s desk when she got back. She left his food on his desk and went to eat her own sandwich but stopped when she saw that Augie had left Ken Snider, Sr.’s accident report on her desk.
It was a two-page deputy’s report, done by a man named Miller, whom she had never heard of.
November 20, 1964. Four-fifteen P.M.
When I entered the yard, I saw a white male juvenile standing approximately thirty feet south of the rear door to the cabin. He identified himself as Kenneth Snider, age 18, son of the man who owned the cabin, one Ken Snider Sr. He stated he had accidentally shot his father and led me to the scene, located approximately fifteen more feet south into the woods. I observed one white male, approximate age forty-five, lying on his back with an obvious shotgun wound to the face. He was deceased. A second shotgun was near his right hand. At that time I noted blood on the grass and the bark of a nearby tree. (See photographs 1–9).
