A Winsome Murder (7 page)
Authors: James DeVita
“I'm sorry?”
“Ten pounds o' shit in a five-pound bag. My shop teacher told me that in seventh grade. Mr. Manfrey. Never forgot it.” Mangan sorted through his notes. “So, help me out here if you could, Mr. Lachlan. Oh, and one more thing,” he added in as pleasant a voice as he could muster, “don't bullshit me, okay? Because I might not catch it right now, you know? But I will, eventually. And then that's just not good for anybody. Because then I gotta get you back in here, and then I'm not so personable, and it's just, you know, it's just no fun all the way around. All right?”
“Excuse me, did I do something wrong here?”
“I don't know, did you?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“It's just a question. I'm a detective. I ask questions.”
“Look, I found a hand in my apartment. I called
you
.”
“I understand that, Mr. Lachlan, and I'm very sorry for the trauma, the obvious emotional trauma which I'm sensing this has caused you. I apologize. You're right. You're very right. I was assuming. I was
projecting
. Bad habit of mine. And I think maybe I was doing that because I was starting to sense a kind of, I don't know, a kind of hesitancy in your demeanor. And I'm probably completely wrong about that. So, I apologize. Please, let me start again.” Mangan took out a sheet of notes from one of the files on his desk. “And you understand, of course, that you don't have to answer anything, right? I just thought I'd try and get you in here early to talk, because there might be some things about this caseâand there I go
assuming
again, so please correct me if I'm wrongâ there might be some things that you'd prefer to maybe keep out of the newspapers.” Mangan waited for a response. Lachlan's silence told him all he needed to know. “I'm nothing if not discreet,” he said, skimming the preliminary reports. “So, this young woman, Mr. Lachlan. Who was she?”
“I'm sorry?”
“The woman who left your apartment at approximately six twenty-five that morning, jeans, T-shirt, midtwenties, long black hair, very attractive. You didn't mention her in your statement to the police.”
Mangan paused a moment. “I'm assuming she wasn't your wife. Or your daughter.”
Lachlan twisted the cap back onto his water bottle. “No.”
“What's her name?”
“⦠Fenyana.”
“What's that, like Cher, Prince, or something? Just Fenyana?”
“I don't know her last name.”
Mangan jotted the name down in a small notebook. “A professional, yes? The Slovak social club? Where's the
tochka
you picked her up at?”
“I didn't pick her up. She comesâI know her through a friend.”
“This friend got a name?”
Lachlan hesitated. “I think I'd like to call my lawyer now.”
Mangan stopped taking notes. He put his pen down.
“Mr. Lachlan,” he said, “did you read the sign over my door when you came in? It says Violent Crimes. That's me. That's what I wake up for. You really think I care about some little
baruxa-bun
you're banging up in your apartment? No, the answer to that is no. Now when I talk to the pressâwhich I'm going to have to do eventuallyâI really wouldn't want to slip and maybe mention something that I shouldn't, which unfortunately happens to me at times when lawyers get involved. They make me nervous. And here I go again
assuming
, but I'm thinking that maybe you might not want your wife andâlet's see, how many kids you got?” Mangan flipped to a page in his notepad. “You might not want your wife and
three
kids to know that you're dicking a girl about the age of your youngest daughter in a very nicely situated and, if I might add, very nicely furnished apartment, which I
assume
âthere I go againâis perhaps a business expense? Tax write-off ? We wouldn't want the IRS to get involved in this, now, would we? That would be just terrible. So, if you could just help me out a little, I'd feel a lot better because I really wouldn't want to say something that I shouldn't say. Accidentally.”
Lachlan slumped slightly in his chair.
“Tick, tock,” Mangan said, tapping his watch.
“Savva Baratov. The Bank Street Diner. It's on the corner ofâ”
“
Bank
Street, right? Wow, I'm good at this.” Mangan took a quick note.
“She, um, she works there, sometimes, and he, he arrangesâ”
“I'm way ahead of you, buddy. You been with her before?”
“Yes. About once a month. But not always her.”
“Alrighty, we're cooking with gas now.” Mangan ripped out a piece of paper from his notepad. “Coose!” Cusumano came back in and Mangan handed him the note. He took it and left again. Mangan watched Lachlan's eyes. “Did you read the note that was in the envelope?”
“Note? I ⦠I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You didn't see what else was in that envelope?”
“No, I didn't. When I felt the, when I saw what it was, I dropped the envelope and got out of there and called the police.”
Mangan pulled out the copy of the note. “Well, there was a note in it. This is a copy. I'd like you to read it.” Mangan placed it in front of Lachlan. “Normally we wouldn't do this, but, well, this isn't very normal. Tell me what you make of it.”
Mangan watched Lachlan read the note.
When Lachlan reached the end of it he mumbled, “Winsome.” A puzzled look drifted across his face, then a shock of recognition. “Jesus, that's the name of the town. Winsome.” He shoved the note back to Mangan. “Winsome Bay. We're running a series on it right now. That's where she was killed, the girl, that's where they found her. She wasâ”
“Slow down, Mr. Lachlan, slow down. What are you talking about? Who was killed?”
“The girl from Wisconsin. Deborah Ellison.”
S
orry,” Jillian said as she fumbled with her digital recorder. “I think it's the battery. I have another one here.” She was new at interviewing people, more nervous than she thought she'd be. “Just a second.”
Wesley Faber waited while Jillian dug through her purse. He had agreed to meet after his shift, at 8:00 p.m. Inconvenient for Jillian, yes, but she hadn't had much choice. When she called to confirm, Faber had tried to cancel the interview altogether, but Jillian gently reminded him that as well as being the chief of police in Winsome Bay, he was also the town's public information officer. They met at the police station, only blocks away from where Deborah Ellison's body had been found. Faber had been police chief for the last seventeen years. This was his first murder case.
“Almost got it,” Jillian said, smiling at him.
He didn't smile back.
Balding, graying, and stiffly polite, Faber sat very erect and very still at his desk. Behind him, mounted high on a dark paneled wall, were two large, antlered deer heads. Next to them were some fanned-out turkey-tail mountings, and on a low shelf beneath were at least a dozen shooting trophies and a number of engraved gold plaques for police marksmanship.
“Okay,” Jillian said, testing the recorder. “It works now.” She placed it on the corner of Faber's desk. “Sorry.” She read through her list of prepared questions. “Um ⦠okay.”
“You want anything?” Faber asked. “Something to drink?”
“No. No. Thank you. I'm ready now.”
“Okay.”
“So. Do you have much crime out here?”
“Not much. But some.”
“Any violent crimes?”
“Bar fights mostly. A suicide now and then. Domestic abuse.”
“Any drugs?”
“Well, drugs are everywhere, aren't they? We're no exception.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Marijuana and OxyContin mostly. In the high school.”
“Heroin?” Jillian knew the answer to this. She wanted to see if Faber would answer honestly.
“Well, yes,” he said, “we're starting to get the heroin out this way too.”
Drugs, Jillian knew, were one of the dirty little secrets of small-town America. Well, not so much a secret as a profound misconception that things like that don't happen in small towns, as if all the rah-rah ball games, corn dogs, and flag-draped porches somehow granted rural America immunity from the horrors going on around the rest of the country. There weren't any fewer drugs, just less media coverage. Jillian had done her research before coming to Winsome for the interview. In 2007 Wisconsin had about thirty heroin deaths. In 2013, two hundred and twenty-seven. The drug is just too cheap. Oxy might cost forty or fifty dollars, while a hit of heroin might go for twenty. And with cheap drugs come the addicts, and with the addicts, crime. There's just no honest way to afford a three-hundred-dollar-a-day habit.
“What about crystal meth?” Jillian asked.
“Less of that now,” Faber said. “It was a big problem for a long time. They can't cook the stuff in the city, the smell is too strong. So they all started coming out this way. Hard to know where they are, though. They move around a lot, setting up out in the woods and the old farms, campsites, hauling in gallons of hydrochloric acid, acetone, methanol, kerosene, propane.”
An explosion waiting to happen.
“We generally don't catch them till they blow themselves up.”
Jillian pressed the question now that she really wanted to ask. “Do you know if Deborah Ellison was involved with any drugs?”
Faber hesitated the slightest bit. “I can't comment on that, ma'am.”
“The papers said her body had been mutilated somehow. Could you be more specific?”
“Nope.”
“Can you tell me how long the body had been there?”
“Nope.”
“Can you describe for me what the victim was wearing?”
“Nope.”
“Did you know Deborah Ellison?”
“I believe I've already answered that, ma'am.”
“I mean, personally. Did you know her well?”
“I've got a son her age. They went to school together. So, I knew her pretty well.” He gestured to a photo on his desk of a young man kneeling, dressed in full camouflage, holding a rifle in one hand and a dead turkey in the other. “That's him there, Kyle.” He pointed to another framed photograph. A family picture. “That's my wife there, and my other two boys, Carson and Matt, and my daughter, Jennifer. And that little peanut there in her arms is our first grandchild, Kayla.”
“That's a big family.”
“Not for around here. You get families of eight, ten, eleven, out on the farms.”
Jillian tried to steer the conversation back to the murder. “Deborah Ellison was last known to be living in Chicago. Is that right?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“What do you think she was doing back here in Winsome?”
“Don't know.”
“Visiting family? Or friends?”
“Don't know.”
“Do you think she was killed here? Or was her body justâwas she killed somewhere else and then left here?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you have a guess?”
“I don't guess, ma'am.”
Jillian checked some of the notes she'd gathered from news reports. “The papers said that the victim's father, officer Tom Ellison, was first on the scene.”
Faber nodded, barely.
“But he didn't identify the body.” Jillian looked at the wall to her left. “That officer did.” She pointed to one of the framed photographs hanging there. “Officer Schaefer.”
“Yes.”
“Tom Ellison didn't recognize his own daughter but Officer Schaefer did?”
Faber shifted in his seat and adjusted his bulletproof vest, the outline of which was clearly visible beneath his uniform. “From the condition of her body,” he said, “it was obvious that death had occurred. So Tom, well, he stepped away as soon as he seen it and called for backup. He didn't get a good look at first.”
“One of the papers said that she'd been beaten beyond recognition. How did Officer Schaefer know it was Deborah?”
“I can't say anything to that.”
“Did anyone else on the scene know it was her?”
“No. After Schaefer told me who it was, I got Tom out of there fast as I could and sent for Father Ryan. He was the one who told Tom.”
“Father Ryan?”
“Tom's priest over at Saint Francis. He helped out some with Debbie when she was younger.”
“Helped with what?”
“Kid stuff, teen stuff.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Nope,” Faber said, taking out his cell phone. It was buzzing. He looked at the number. “Excuse me,” he said. He spoke to the caller. “Hello? Yes, sir, you're talking to him. Yes, sir. Yes, I will. Just a minute,
please.” Faber looked to Jillian and nodded toward the door. “I'm sorry, ma'am, I have to take this.”
“Just a few more questions. Please?”
“No, ma'am, I think we'll be done here.”
“Butâ”
“Careful driving. Lot of deer out this time of night.”
Â
J. McClay/Killing/American Forum
I drove to the north edge of the town after meeting with the Winsome Bay chief of police, Wesley Faber. He'd been less than forthcoming during the interview. I slowed the car as I approached the area where Deborah Ellison's body had been found. The sun, not quite down, cast a Creamsicle-colored tint across the still blue sky as I pulled into the unfinished development that would someday be the Deer Park Apartments, as a sign at the entrance promised. The site had the look of a vandalized Grant Wood painting: acres of still green hays and soybean fields, slashed and marred by asphalt roads and freshly poured sidewalks.
Just inside the entrance, two new houses had started to go up, framed out in bone-white two-by-fours, like a barn raising suddenly halted midrise. Piled high to the sides of the houses were stacks of plywood and roofing shingles. Behind the homes were acres of half-harvested farmland. Wide swaths of hays had been cut and raked together into long narrow windrows. They lay there, snakily, field curing. Some of the hay had already been baled into massive cubes and scattered about the earth like the droppings of some giant straw beast. Much of it, though, hadn't been cut at all. Waist high and willowy, the grassy fields rippled lazily beneath the breeze.
In the distance, a cloud of dust tumbled behind a slow-moving tractor.
I drove farther in, to the exact spot where the newspaper said Deborah Ellison's body had been found. I opened my window and turned off the car. There was a wooden stake stuck into the field there, just off the curb, with a white number 46 painted on it. A string of rosary beads and a blue-ribboned medal hung from it. Someone had propped up a ceramic cross at its base. Stacked on the ground around it
were piles of weathered bouquets, their cellophane wrappings gently crinkling in the light breeze. A large square of yellow crime scene tape sectioned off the makeshift memorial from the rest of the field. I stared at the spot, wondering if the future owners of lot 46 would be told of what had happened on their property, or if they'd discover it years later, perhaps whispered to one of their children on a playground during recess.
Sitting there, I expected, I wanted, to feel differently.
I didn't.
A vague sense of sadness filled me, or perhaps it was disappointment. I expected something momentous to occur as I gazed at the actual spot where the body had been discovered, but I felt nothing. Everything looked so normal. Something unspeakable had happened in this place; there should have been some residue, some echo in the air of that awful night. God should not have allowed the sky to blue or the hay to green in such a place. Deborah Ellison's body had been dumped here like so much garbage. She may still have been alive. She may have breathed her last breaths not five feet from where I was parked. The grasses might have tickled her face in the warm wind that night, and she, unable to brush away the blades, may have lain there, staring up at some dark star, thinking her last thoughts. A human being had died horribly in this spot, something should be different.
But nothing, it seemed to me, was different. Except for my presence.
He may have been here too, parked where I was parked. He may have sat in his car, just like me, with his window rolled down, looking at what he'd done. If Deborah Ellison had still been alive, he may have been able to hear whatever dying sounds she'd still been able to make.
