From a Dead Sleep (39 page)

It meant far more than that to Lumbergh, though. It meant that whatever his brother-in-law was mixed up in went way beyond a drunken conflict and a retaliatory act of murder. In all of his years as a crime investigator in Illinois, the chief had never experienced anything close to this. Three dead bodies, one of them a federal agent. A sadistic killer of two of them on the loose, and the man who most likely held all of the answers—his own brother-in-law—missing and probably on the run.

“Any idea how long he was in the water?” he asked before glancing down at his own matted shirt that he’d been wearing for over twelve hours.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” she answered, pulling back the hood of her white medical examiner’s jacket. She brushed a strand of her long, black hair from her eyes. “Two or three days probably, judging by how bloated he is.”

“How is that possible?”

“What do you mean?”

The stick of gum in Lumbergh’s mouth began churning again. “Let’s just say that I have reason to believe that this man went into the river, up by Winston, on Saturday morning.”

“And?” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders.

“My point is that . . . that’s only a few miles upstream. There was a big event out here that morning. That yearly fishing thing.”

“Yes, the contest. I was here with my son. They had a record turnout, I believe.”

“Exactly.”

He dropped the contents of the dead man’s wallet into a Ziploc bag before pointing his finger toward the large and tranquil reservoir that stretched broadly beyond the shoreline laying just a few yards short of where the two of them stood. The grand, inverted image of Beggar’s Basin reflected along the rippling water. “There were people everywhere, yet no one found this man until this morning.”

“There’s a simple answer for that,” said the doctor with a knowing twinkle in her eye. “His body got hung up somewhere. The way his limbs are mangled, and the way his clothes are all torn and stretched out . . . He probably got snagged on a downed tree or something and was tossed around like a hooked bobber that someone cut loose from their line. He probably broke free after a couple of days and ended up here last night or this morning.”

The chief nodded his head in deference to her expertise.

“I’m glad his trip was delayed,” she added. “I don’t think there would have been enough money in the county budget to cover the counseling expenses for a few hundred children if one of them had reeled him into shore.”

He let himself chuckle before his expression went eerily blank. She noticed the alteration of his disposition and wondered if she had just said something that had led him adrift or if the stress of the past twelve hours was taking its toll on the lawman.

It was the realization that the body, in all likelihood,
should
have been carried to Beggar’s Basin right around the time of the highly publicized event. The revelation invited a fresh perspective worth contemplating. Up until just then, it had made absolutely no sense to the chief why a man would commit suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head. However, an explanation was suddenly unwinding and emerging, just as the body itself had done that morning.
What
if he wanted to be found that morning, and wanted it to look like he had
been executed by someone else?
In Illinois, Lumbergh had investigated more than one murder in which the body had been disposed of somewhere away from the location where the actual killing had taken place. Never, in any of those cases, was there ever identification left on the body. A murderer didn’t typically want his victim to be easily identified. In this case, however, it was as if the discovery of the man’s I.D. was the desired result.

“I’m going to head on out, if you don’t mind, Chief,” Venegas said, robbing back his attention for a moment. “I’ve got a lot of work to do, as you know. How’s your wife doing?”

He nodded. The arch of his eyebrows suggested that he was being genuine when he told her that Diana was taking things better than one could expect.

“Any word on her brother?”

With a deep sigh, he answered, “Not yet.”

“He’ll turn up.”

He noticed her attention shift to something over his shoulder.

“Meagher’s back,” she announced.

Lumbergh thanked the doctor and helped her and her assistant wheel the body into the back of their van before turning his attention to the approaching pickup truck with turret lights attached to its roof. In the driver’s seat was Chief Pete Meagher, the one and only member of the Rinkshaw police department. The nearby town of Rinkshaw was dwarfed even by Winston in population, and Meagher’s title as police chief was a part-time position. He also ran a hardware store in town. Technically, he had jurisdiction over the Beggar’s Basin area.

Lumbergh liked Meagher, mainly because the man knew his weaknesses. They were close in age. Meagher was a bit older, but far less experienced. His duties were primarily confined to addressing the occasional domestic dispute or managing traffic in and out of the reservoir area for events.

He’d worked with Lumbergh on a couple of occasions and was always more than happy to cede the leadership role to him. When a body turned up in the water that morning, however, something he’d recently read in the Lakeland paper triggered the belief that he might actually be able to play a useful purpose in the investigation.

He’d left the reservoir for his house to retrieve the paper shortly after Lumbergh had arrived on the scene.

Lumbergh watched Meagher’s head twist back and forth between him and the medical examiner’s van that he’d noticed was on its way out.

“Hold up! Hold up!” he yelled out his open truck window after skidding to a stop. He waved his hand in the air. The van slowed down.

“Pete!” shouted Lumbergh. “It’s okay! I’ve got an I.D!”

Meagher nodded that he understood and let the van pass him by. After parking beside Lumbergh’s Jeep, he hustled on out of his truck and jogged over to his Winston counterpart. Meagher hadn’t a uniform, just a red flannel shirt with jeans, cowboy boots, and a badge. A Colorado Rockies baseball cap sat high on his head. He quickly unfolded the newspaper he’d shuffled between his hands when sliding his truck keys into his front pocket.

“Is it him?” asked Meagher.

He held up a page with a decent-sized black and white picture. It was a close-up, candid shot of a man with short, brown hair and wearing a white t-shirt. The headline above the picture read, Local Shop Owner Missing Since Friday.

“No, it sure isn’t, Pete,” answered Lumbergh. He held up the identification card of Kyle Kimble so Meagher could see it. Meagher squinted and gave it a close look. His eyes quickly widened.

“FBI?” he yelped before taking a step back. “He was a G-Man?”

“It looks like it. I haven’t called it in yet.”

“Should we have moved him? Shouldn’t we have talked to the Feds before letting Doc Laura take him away? They might have wanted to look over the crime scene first.”

Lumbergh shook his head. “He wasn’t killed here. I’m sure they’ll check him out at the examiner’s office. Mind if I see that?” He pointed to the newspaper.

Meagher handed it over.

“I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about this,” said Lumbergh with a wrinkle in his face that resembled a wince.

“The guy’s girlfriend didn’t report him missing until Sunday. Seems they were going through a rough patch. They hadn’t talked in a couple of days.”

Lumbergh skimmed the article.

“Chad Grimes. That’s an interesting name.” After reaching the bottom of the page, he looked up at Meagher. “It doesn’t say anything in here about him and the girlfriend being in a fight?”

Meagher clarified: “I gave them a call up there in Lakeland before I left the house, you know, to let him know we found someone. I guess I jumped the gun.”

“Don’t worry about it. Do they have any leads?”

Meagher snickered and shook his head. “What? You don’t think you’ve got enough on your plate right now?”

A gasp of air left Lumbergh’s lips, and he said, “I suppose you’ve got a point there, Pete. The sheriff ’s office is taking over on the two from yesterday, though. I’m too close to it. They said I should take some time to grieve with my family. I guess that will have to hold off until tomorrow. So,
do
they have any leads in Lakeland?”

“There’s a kid. A teenager who busses tables up at the Elk-Horn Grill. It’s just a couple doors down from Grimes’s shop.”

“Yeah, I’ve eaten there. Good salmon.”

“Oh yeah, the best. Anyway, he was hauling some trash out back Friday night. He saw a dark gray, maybe a black sedan speeding down the back alley and onto the main street. Lakeland’s finest believe it went down not long after Grimes was last seen closing down his store.”

“What kind of sedan?”

“The kid didn’t know,” Meagher answered. He removed his hat for a moment to scratch his forehead before continuing. “Kids don’t know their cars anymore, do they? They just ain’t interested in that stuff these days. All they care about are video games.”

“Probably no license plate then either, right?

“No number. The kid didn’t think it was all that suspicious at the time, but he did notice that it had out-of-state plates.”

“Where from?”

“Nevada. Blue mountains under an orange sky.”

Lumbergh’s heart skipped a beat. “Nevada? The dead agent, Kyle Kimble . . . He’s from Las Vegas.”

Meagher stood back and watched the gears in Lumbergh’s head grind for a few seconds, then asked, “Are you thinking they’re related somehow? Do you think the FBI is here in Summit, maybe helping to search for Grimes?”

“No. They wouldn’t be part of a missing person’s case this early unless they suspected a kidnapping. I’m sure the boys in Lakeland would have mentioned that to you if that was the case. Besides, Kimble was killed before Grimes was reported missing.”

“You’re sure of that?” Meagher asked.

In answering yes, Lumbergh recognized that he’d taken full ownership of being wrong in his dismissal of the claims made to him Saturday morning by his brother-in-law. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Sean’s whereabouts were still unknown, but at least Lumbergh had a lead now in the form of the dead agent, and he was sure the FBI in Las Vegas would be able to shed a bright light over everything that was going on in his town.

Chapter 42

U
ntil Monday night, Ron Oldhorse hadn’t been privy to Sean Coleman’s story of the mysterious man who’d shot himself on Meyers Bridge. He didn’t make it into town all that often and never read the newspaper, for he had no interest in the local gossip. But after a double murder occurred in the mountains that he considered his backyard and he was asked to help find a lost child who was chased into the woods by a maniac, he grew concerned by the evil that had come to Winston.

He’d planned to spend the morning bow hunting along the eastern ridge of Aimes Pass, but felt compelled to begin the crisp, bright day at Meyers Bridge. He went there unsure of what he was looking for or hoped to find.

Oldhorse never had much use for Sean Coleman and didn’t believe him to be an honorable man. Still, the security guard’s account that he’d overheard from the chief and his officer during the night’s search triggered his curiosity. Like Jefferson, Oldhorse wondered if it had some relevance to the arrival of the murderer— that is, if there was any truth to what Coleman had said.

There was a personal stake in his interest as well. He’d liked Zed Hansen. Oldhorse didn’t really consider Zed a friend. The tribesman had no friends. However, he respected the kind gentleman who’d always kept his word in their dealings. While most of Winston was uneasy with Oldhorse’s solitary, naturalistic lifestyle and was skeptical of his past, Zed was different. He showed reverence to Oldhorse and treated the man as an equal rather than as an eccentric novelty.

If Sean was telling the truth, three days and one heavy rainstorm had passed through since the mystery man’s dead body had fallen to the river. If there was any trail of where the man had come from, it was far from fresh. Oldhorse, however, relished the challenge.

There wasn’t much to find by the bridge itself other than some prints from a small person who Oldhorse deemed the same as those left the night before by Toby Parker. North of the bridge, however, there were plentiful signs of human activity. On the east side of the river, the moist earth was littered with the footprints created by a large man. Their depth suggested that they were left during or shortly after the rainstorm on Saturday night, which was after Sean had already brought his claim to the police station. This led Oldhorse to deduct that they were left by Coleman himself, who was most likely pillaging the area in hopes of finding the same type of trace evidence that Oldhorse was now in search of. By Oldhorse’s assessment, Coleman had indeed found something.

An object had been exhumed from under the moist earth. A crater in the soil and a few rocks were the focus of a lot of attention.

The tip of a large, compound hunting bow jetted out from the unzipped flap of a customized camouflage backpack that Oldhorse wore across his shoulders. The top of the bow lurked high above his mane of scraggly hair that was loosely tied back in a ponytail. He scrutinized the crater and noticed something small and shiny resting at its center. He dropped to a knee to investigate.

He dug his fingers inside and pulled out a couple of metal paperclips, the standard kind used for bundling papers. His hawkish eyes inspected them closely before he stood back up and shoved them in the front pocket of his jeans.

When widening out his search, he found a trail of trampled and broken grass that led to the southeast. A few trace footprints were small enough for Oldhorse to determine that they belonged to someone other than Sean, but larger than Toby. This got his juices flowing, but they appeared to lead back in the direction of the road. This implied that the origin of whoever left them lay to the north, upriver.

Chapter 43

S
ean found it nearly impossible to take his eyes off the widow’s expressionless gaze while she sat quietly in his car across the parking lot, sheltered by a shade tree. Lisa hadn’t uttered a word since finishing the letter. In his hand, Sean held the well-used receiver from a pay phone outside of a convenience store, having just confirmed a collect call to the Winston Police Department.