It seemed like the more I tried to find something to help her sleep, or the more I asked her how she’d slept, the more upset she became, so last month I stopped bringing it up. As long as she wouldn’t take medication or see a therapist, I wasn’t sure what else I could do for her.
Now, I set down the phone, but I left the ringer on just in case she called back.
After cranking up my room’s heater, I sent Cybercrime the emails and web history I’d downloaded from Donnie Pickron’s computer, searched through our online files for other instances of three shots through a window at a crime scene to see if that was the signature of any known criminal, but came up blank. Then I took some time to familiarize myself with the online maps of the miles and miles of snowmobile trails that intersect Tomahawk Lake and weave through the surrounding forests.
I found out that nearly all of the national forest service staff are seasonal and the ranger’s office closes down most of the roads once winter hits. It didn’t take me long to realize that, based on the location of the sawmill in relation to the Pickron residence and the long, looping county roads that wound around the marsh, it would have saved Donnie time and money if he rode his snowmobile to work through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest rather than driving his car.
I committed the trails to memory.
Finally, emotionally drained from the events of the day, especially from seeing the four-year-old girl Lizzie’s body, I put my laptop away and headed to bed, unsure, with all of this on my mind, if I would be able to sleep any better than my stepdaughter.
16
Friday, January 9
6:05 a.m.
I awoke later than I’d expected, a black slit of night still hanging between the curtains.
The motel didn’t have an exercise room, but I threw myself into an old-school workout of push-ups and crunches and ended with pull-ups on the door frame to the bathroom-a way to keep my grip in shape for the climbing trip in Patagonia I was planning this summer. Ever since my days as a wilderness guide, I’ve slipped out to go rock climbing whenever I got the chance, and this summer was going to be my first trip to Patagonia in more than a decade. I needed to crank up my finger strength or I’d never be able to pull down the 5.12 routes I was eyeing.
After a shower, I saw that it was 7:08 a.m., less than an hour before my trip to Tomahawk Lake with Jake.
I flipped on the TV to catch the weather, and a life insurance commercial popped on.
Life insurance: an oxymoron. After all, life is the one thing that cannot be insured, a fact that’s all too obvious to someone in my business.
“Planning for the unthinkable, made simple and secure,” the announcer said.
I barely held back a head shake. A culture that calls the inevitable “unthinkable” is simply a culture in denial. However, when he assured me that I would “never have to face the future alone,” his words brought to mind something a little less disheartening: a conversation a few months ago with Tessa, the talk that had led to my decision to take things with Lien-hua to the next level.
My wife Christie died of breast cancer almost two years ago. At the time I didn’t know who Tessa’s biological father was, and neither did she, so, as her guardian, I began caring for her as if she were my own daughter. From the start, things had been rocky, but eventually we’d grown as close as a real father and his daughter might be, and I wouldn’t trade the time with her-even the rough spots-for anything.
Tessa liked Lien-hua a lot and wanted me to get together with her, but Lien-hua had been drifting from me, and when Tessa asked me how things were going I’d been honest and told her, “She seems a little aloof lately.”
“What are you doing about it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m wondering if she’s not that interested in me after all.”
“Patrick, women want to be pursued. They want to play hard to get, but the last thing they want is to succeed in getting away.”
I stared at her. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s ’cause you’re not a girl.”
“Why don’t they just-”
“How old are you again?” An arched eyebrow. I was having a conversation with Mr. Spock. “Thirty-seven? And you still have no clue about women?”
“Do you know a guy of any age who does?”
She considered that. “Good point. But when a girl distances herself from a guy it’s a test to see how serious the guy is.”
“So, let me get this straight. Women pretend they don’t want guys to pursue them so that they will, and they act like they’re not interested in them when they are.”
“Exactly.”
“And the more ambivalent they act about making things work, the more they want to get got?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“You’re a teenage girl. How do you know all this?”
“I’m a teenage girl.”
So, I’d pursued Lien-hua as Tessa suggested and found that her counterintuitive observations about women were correct. Consequently, things with Lien-hua had progressed, and this coming week I was planning to propose.
If I could only work up enough nerve to actually pop the question.
I surfed through the channels until I came to some cable news weather. The cohosts chatted for a minute about the balmy weather in San Diego while the scrolling news at the bottom of the screen announced that Secretary of State Nielson had arrived in Tehran for “groundbreaking bilateral talks about sanctions and Iran’s controversial nuclear research program.”
That’s what the media was reporting, but I’d heard through my friends higher up in the government that his trip was really precipitated by Israel’s recent statement, “Any nuclear aggression by Iran will be met with immediate and unequivocal force.” Israel has never officially acknowledged that they have nuclear weapons, but to everyone in the know, it’s a given. The story caught my attention only because Nielson is a friend of Margaret’s and his name comes up now and again. According to her, she helped him get started in politics years ago. I had the sense that she liked having friends in high places who owed her.
The ticker scrolled: the stock market was down forty-four points, the Celtics beat the Lakers, and then finally, the meteorologist addressed the national weather scene. He started by encouraging everyone in the upper Midwest to fill up on gas and groceries before the storm arrived. And to stay off the roads if at all possible.
I only needed to watch a few moments to realize that it’d be best if Tessa left by nine or not come up at all.
After clicking off the television I decided to call her during the drive to Tomahawk Lake to sort things out.
Whenever possible I like to visit the scene of a crime at the same time of day as when the crimes occurred in order to gain a temporal understanding of that location. If that isn’t practical, as in this case, I could at least orient myself spatially in reference to the snowmobile tracks, open water, and the sawmill Donnie worked at across the lake.
At the scene, I try to consider what the killer and the victim saw, smelled, or heard. What would I be responding to if I’d been there? If I’m the victim, am I resisting? How does the environment affect that-either facilitating or hampering my efforts to get away?
Timing and location.
And frankly, the crime scene at the Pickron house didn’t make sense, especially if Donnie were the shooter. After all, surely he would’ve known that he’d be a suspect, whether or not he bothered to remove the spent casings. Why take the cartridge casings if you’re simply going to commit suicide?
While it’s true that people often don’t think clearly during and immediately following their involvement in violent behavior, removing evidence is a form of staging, and you only do that if you’re trying to cover something up, derail an investigation, or shift suspicion onto someone else, which-if Donnie had been planning to kill himself-didn’t seem likely.