Three Dog Day (8 page)

Rob got out of the car, slamming the door and looking over at Ben. “I'll get going on it, boss.”

The sheriff was pleasantly surprised to see Dory at her desk. He grinned at her, saying, “Why, Miss Clarkson, nice to see you at work, for a change.” Dory didn't give him the satisfaction of rising to the bait, but merely gazed skyward.

“
Dr. Estes thinks the man whose body Mae found near the river probably died recently. He must have been thrown in the river near or on Jerrod Clifton's property, and there was no sign of Clifton. Once we run him down, this one's going to be a piece of cake. Nice work on finding the rag and the knife by the way. Did you get that BOLO out on Clifton's vehicle?”

“
Did I get the BOLO out?
Did I get the BOLO out?
You know better, Sheriff,” Dory frowned.

“
Okay, Miss Touchy, I was just checking. Thanks, Dory.”

Dr. Estes' report showed up in Ben's email inbox about an hour later. It was disappointing. He stated that he'd found no definitive way to ID the victim from the manner of his death or his physical condition. Nor could he give Ben a tighter time frame on the date of death. The date range was listed as between January first and January sixth. The measurements Emma sent him of the knife appeared to match the wounds on their John Doe, but he couldn't give a definitive answer as to whether it was the murder weapon. Ben clenched his teeth. In most cases, the ME was able to give them a time of death within a few hours. That big time window was going to make this a lot harder. As a start, he'd have Deputy George look up hunting knives and compare them to the photo of the knife Dory found. He went in search of George.

Surprisingly, George was at his desk. The deputy quickly hit a key on his computer but not before Ben caught a glimpse of the game of solitaire he'd been playing.

“
Damn it, George, I've told you before, I won't have you playing computer games when you're on the clock. And we have a murder to investigate. Why the hell aren't you looking for our John Doe?”

“
Sorry, boss,” George said, in a lugubrious tone. “Cam said she'd focus on identifying the victim and I could take care of what I was working on before.”

“
That's not work, so just cut it out. If it happens again I'm writing you up, understand?” George nodded, a blush staining his freckled cheeks. “I have a job for you,” Ben went on. “See if you can identify the exact model of the knife Dory found. My guess is that it's a hunting knife. Dr. Estes says the blade that made the wounds on our John Doe was between five and seven inches long and may have been ceramic. That should narrow it down. Once we have the model number, I want you to get information about sales of those knives in the past year. If need be, go to the stores for the information, and if they aren't cooperative, tell 'em you're working a murder case.”

“
I'll get started right now.” George looked down and began assiduously typing on his desktop computer. After making sure George was truly looking up nearby sporting goods stores, Ben went down the hall to see what Cam had found. So far, she told him, she had drawn a blank.

George knocked on his door about an hour later.

“
The knife Dory found is a Boker six inch. I found two stores that carry that type of hunting knife in the area. They're required by law to keep information on gun sales, but not on knives. They have a list of names of gun owners in the Rosedale area with addresses. I thought I'd start with a hunting supply store called Meeker's—it's out in the township near the Clifton property. I'll see what they have on Mr. Jerrod Clifton and anybody else who's a gun owner in that general locale. The store owner said that people who buy hunting rifles often buy knives like this for field-dressing deer.”

“
Good work, George. You and Deputy Gomez can head out there. Grab lunch on the way. Mr. Meeker will be much more accommodating to an attractive female deputy.”

“
I bet,” George smiled but then his mouth drooped and he bit his lip. “My wife won't be too happy about me having lunch with Deputy Gomez, though.”

Ben put his hand over his mouth to hide his amusement. Mrs. Phelps would be giving George a lot of credit if she thought he could ever get close to, let alone seduce, the lovely Cameron Gomez.

“
Tell the Missus I ordered you to go to lunch with Deputy Gomez. In fact, I might make Cam your new partner,” Ben said, lips twitching. “If your wife has an issue, she can take it up with me.”

“
Okay, boss.”

“
And when you and Cam are done with that, swing by the Clifton property and see if Jerrod's back yet. Put a citation on his door ordering him to appear at the office. It's mostly farms in that area, but talk to the nearest neighbors on both sides to see if they saw any unusual activity around Clifton's place since the first of the year.”

Detective Fuller appeared in Ben's doorway a few minutes later. “I tracked down Jacko Jones. His girlfriend answered the phone at his apartment.” Rob had a piece of paper in his hand. He glanced down at it, then back at his boss. “Delightful woman. She said, and I quote, ‘That sorry piece of shit hasn't been home in three days. Check the worst bar in town and he'll be under it.' I guess that means Bar-None.” Rob apparently knew the local bars well. Bar-None was a watering hole for the serious imbiber.

“
You can take this one by yourself, Rob. But if you go in uniform, that place will empty right out. Just go home first and put on some old clothes before you head over there.”

“
Yeah, probably need something I can burn afterward. I'll let you know what I find.” He gave Ben a quick salute, turned on his heel and was gone.

Rob called back several hours later. He had tracked down Jacko and persuaded him to drink some coffee. Once he had sobered up, Jacko admitted to being aware of a copper theft ring operating in the vicinity of Rosedale.

“
He offered to give me details about some people he thinks are involved, but he wanted money and for us not to look too closely into whatever role he ‘might' have had in the operation. What do you think, boss?”

“
Okay,” Ben said, “money's probably the only way to get the information out of him. But try to limit the damages, will you? And tell him I'll let him go this time. He's probably not smart enough to run an operation like large-scale copper theft. But maybe he can help us nail some of the lower echelon and they can point us to the ringleaders.”

“
All right. I'll see how much of a discount I can get on the price of Jacko's information.”

A
fter successfully closing the Tom Ferris murder case at the end of the previous summer, Wayne Nichols, chief detective in the Rosedale Sheriff's Office, had asked Sheriff Ben Bradley for a leave of absence. Ben said he needed time to consider Wayne's request. In most cases, a leave was granted only for illness or injury in the line of duty. Wayne had been grazed by a bullet during the Ferris case, but since then had made a complete recovery.

When Ben asked why he wanted the leave, Wayne told the sheriff—and John Granger, the police chief from Mont Blanc—that he needed the leave to pursue a “fugitive from justice.” It was a partial truth; his foster mother, Jocelyn, had killed her husband Aarne, and to Wayne's knowledge she had never turned herself in for the crime. He intended to bring her to justice, he told them. In fact, there was a lot more to the story, for he had never dealt with his remorse over leaving Jocelyn behind when he fled.

It wasn't going to be easy—what he knew he had to do. After decades of keeping his past deeply buried, he had finally told his girlfriend, Lucy Ingram, an ER physician, about his early life in foster care with an abusive family. He admitted to running away from the place at seventeen, afraid he might one day attack, or even kill, the foster father who violently abused his foster mother. His little brother, Kurt, had begged him not to go. Wayne had promised him that he would return one day.

“
I went back there three years after I first left,” he told Lucy, seeing in his mind's eye the dingy ranch house on the gravel road, the only childhood home he could remember. He and Lucy were in bed at her house. Lucy wore a soft T-shirt and was sitting up, her arms around her knees, her long brown hair reaching her shoulders. Wayne lay beside her, naked except for a St. Anthony's medal on a chain around his neck. He touched the medal from time to time as he told her the story. Since recovering from the gunshot wound he received at the end of the summer, he had been working out, eating right and trying to improve his health. His hair was more salt than pepper and his body had many scars, but his belly was flat now and he felt better than he had in years.

“
It was getting dark by the time I found the place. Jocelyn's husband Aarne's truck was parked in the yard. I opened the screen door and called my foster mother's name. She screamed. She didn't recognize me in the dark.”

Emotions wracked him—the guilt he felt about leaving his foster mother with no protection from her abusive husband and the sorrow that swamped him when Jocelyn told him his little brother Kurt was dead.

“
Where do you think Jocelyn could be now, Wayne?” Lucy asked him, a frown creasing her forehead.

“
I don't know,” he said. “I never heard from her again.”

“
How old would she be?” Lucy asked, her voice low and gentle.

“
I think she would be in her mid-seventies, if she's even still alive,” Wayne said. His tone was bleak.

“
Didn't you ever try to find her?”

“
No. For a long time, I just pushed the whole thing down deep inside. Years would pass without me ever thinking about it, but the Tom Ferris case made me realize something.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I have unfinished business with Jocelyn Outinen. Both Aarne and my little brother, Kurt, are dead. I hate to think of Kurt in an unmarked grave.”

“
That's why you asked for the leave of absence, I assume,” Lucy said.

“
Yes, but the sheriff and Captain John Granger both have to approve the leave. Granger lost a detective in Mont Blanc to retirement in the fall, so I was filling in there. I raised the issue again with Sheriff Bradley recently. He said he would look into it. Whenever I wasn't busy on an active case, Ben said I could use the office and resources available to the police to try to find my foster mother. I haven't had much progress so far. I'm meeting tomorrow with Mark Schneider, Captain Paula's computer whiz kid. I'm hoping together we can locate her.”

“
If anyone can, it's you,” Lucy said. She lay down and put her arm across Wayne's chest. He was stirred by her scent and closeness, wanting to share every second of the searing night he unearthed his brother's body, buried in sand toward the back of their property, but there were still things he couldn't talk about.

He flashed back, standing in the dark, putting an arm around his foster mother, feeling her violent quivering.

“
I stabbed him like the pig he was,” Jocelyn said. Her breathing was noisy; she was baring her teeth like an enraged animal.

Wayne and Jocelyn walked out to the driveway and opened the door to Aarne's pickup. His body fell out on the gravel. Wayne tried to get Jocelyn to go to the authorities, saying her sentence would be short since she'd killed Aarne in self-defense, but he couldn't convince her.

Now, almost forty years later, he was unable to escape the past any longer. He had to locate Jocelyn, ask for her forgiveness, give his brother a final resting place, and pay for his own crime. Against every rule of police procedure, the gun used to kill his little brother was hidden in Wayne's apartment. He had never turned in the evidence or reported the murders
, afraid that the gun would lead the police to charge Jocelyn with his foster brother's killing
.

While waiting for his leave to be approved, Wayne had continued to perform his regular duties at the office. However, whenever he was caught up, he used personal contacts, letters and databases both civilian and criminal in what so far had proved a fruitless search for Jocelyn Outinen.

Because Jocelyn was his foster mother, he began by investigating whether she received a subsidy from the Department of Children's Services for support of her foster children. Their records showed that the payments had stopped decades ago. There was only a single note in the file. It read “Family moved. No forwarding address.”

He had searched extensively for Jocelyn's social security number. She was Native American, had probably been born at home and many Indians did not have social security numbers. Confusion existed over names, ages, and family relationships because of the intricate sociological structure of Native American tribes. Proof-of-age problems were so intractable that special tolerance was provided for most Indian claims. Despite his efforts, he found nothing.

Wayne moved on to the National Missing and Unidentified Person's System. Called NamUS, it was a huge database maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice. To his surprise, someone had reported Jocelyn missing a few months after Aarne's murder. After contacting the Justice system, he learned two reports had come in with an address in Hannahville, a Potawatomi reservation town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Wayne knew Jocelyn Outinen was a member of the Potawatomi tribe. He could still recall some words from that lovely language.