From my research last night, I knew that the lake’s open water was caused by a series of powerful underground springs. The ribbon of water, at least a hundred meters long and a dozen meters wide, looked like a giant eel twisting along the ice, rolling over whenever the sharp wind troubled its surface.
Though we weren’t far from Highway K, the snow-laden trees lining the shore softened the sound of cars and distant snowmobiles, leaving a deep silence that only a few birdsongs tapered into.
Jake avoided the ice for the moment and walked along the shoreline. I saw that he was on the phone.
I took some time to study the lake before heading onto the ice. Tomahawk Lake was vaguely oval-shaped, a mile or so across and nearly four miles long with a series of inlets on the western shore. To the south, the water beneath the ice dispersed into a flowage that eventually fed into the Chippewa River.
Mentally overlaying the trail system against the topography of the area, I decided that the most direct route from the Pickron house to Tomahawk Lake would have been the Birch Trail, which led along the hilly northern shore stretching away from me on either side.
On a snowmobile it would probably take fifteen minutes or so to get to the lake from his house.
Although the tracks to the open water had been noted by an ice fisherman, based on the absence of ice fishing shanties, I could see that there wasn’t much interest in this side of the lake from sportsmen, probably because of the unpredictable currents that carried the warm spring-fed water from this area westward, causing invisible and deadly fault lines of thin ice to finger across the surface.
However, snowmobilers apparently weren’t scared off the ice along the other shoreline because, in the morning sun, I could make out tracks stretching across it. I imagined that if you started at one end of the lake and let loose you could hit the sled’s top speed before reaching the far shore. I wasn’t certain how fast that would be, but with the advances in the last few years, some of the newer sleds had engines as powerful as compact cars and could probably reach speeds of 110–120 mph. I figured if you could top out at those speeds anywhere, you could do it here.
The only set of snowmobile tracks leading toward the open water were the Ski-Doo 800 XL tracks the FBI Lab had been able to identify.
Somewhat tentatively, I stepped onto the frozen lake.
As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, I’d had an almost pathological fear of falling through the ice. The idea of dropping into the terrifyingly cold water was disturbing enough, but the thought of coming up beneath the ice and not being able to find the place you’d fallen through was even worse-that frantic and desperate search while your air gives out horrified me back then and, honestly, still did.
After I’d taken a few steps onto the ice, the morning stillness broke open with the harsh grind of the blades at the sawmill across the lake as they powered through logs to get them ready to be shipped to the paper mills in Neenah and Menasha. At first the sound gave me a start as I thought it might have been the ice cracking underfoot, but then I realized it was just the sawmill Donnie worked at, the one I was planning to visit later in the day.
I’d been told there were no footprints near the break in the ice when Ellory first arrived at the scene yesterday, but now I counted eight different sets of boot imprints that led toward it. All of them stopped ten to fifteen meters from the water, now writhing in the escalating wind.
Some of the impressions were undoubtably left by the law enforcement officers and first responders, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if some came from curious civilians stopping by last night to have a peek at the site after all the officers left.
I studied them closely, photographed them with my phone. We would need to confirm it, but one set of boot prints appeared to match the ones found outside the laundry room door at the Pickron home.
The high-pitched whirr of a snowmobile on the other side of the lake caught my attention, but then it was overwhelmed by the sharp whine of a blade at the sawmill ripping through another log.
Jake joined me. “How could this have been an accident, Pat? Anyone going under here would’ve had to be aiming for that stretch of open water. I’m thinking suicide.”
It certainly appeared that he was right, but I said, “I think it’s a little premature to go there, Jake.”
“I don’t think this case is as complex as you seem to want to make it.” The friction in his voice was no doubt sharpened by our past and how infrequently we agreed about the best approach to solving the cases we worked. Two investigations in particular stuck in my mind. In each, his cocksure insistence on the accuracy of his profile had detoured the investigation, wasting precious time. Three people were dead now who might have been saved had local law enforcement broadened their investigative strategies and not given two serial killers more time to abduct those final victims.
To top things off, at the press conferences Jake had emphasized how his profile had helped crack the case wide open. Personally, I couldn’t care less about press coverage or credit for a case, but I did care about murders being averted.
And I did care about the arrogance of the people I worked with.
“Either Donnie came home,” Jake said, “and found his family dead, then snapped and took his own life, or for whatever reason, he shot his wife and daughter and then killed himself. Think about it, Pat, a man kills his family then himself-not that unusual.” Then he added, a tight thread running through every word, “As you’re so adept at pointing out, we may never know his motives, but his actions speak for themselves.”
“You’re assuming too much, Jake.”
He folded his arms. “Then give me another scenario that fits the evidence.”
Alternate scenarios were not the problem-sorting through them to find the truth of what happened was.
“First of all, we have no body so we don’t even know if Donnie or someone else was riding the snowmobile when it went under.”
“You’re thinking someone jammed the throttle or tied it off?”
“I’m not thinking that yet because I have no reason to. I’m just considering it as a possibility.”
He shook his head. “Pat, the water is a hundred yards from shore.”
He was right. And the tracks were straight, aimed directly and unfalteringly at the open water. It seemed hard to believe that the sled would go that straight and that far without a rider on it, even if someone had secured the throttle.
“Jake, how many suicides have you worked that involved someone purposely drowning himself?”
“It’s rare,” he admitted.
“What about through a hole in the ice?”
He was quiet.
“If Donnie intended to commit suicide,” I said, “why not just turn the gun on himself or shoot himself with one of the handguns he kept in his gun cabinet? I’m guessing that most people would consider drowning in ice-cold water in a frozen lake a lot more frightening way to go than a quick, fatal gunshot wound. The open water is clearly visible, so it’s unlikely the rider accidentally went in. Also, the killer made no attempt to cover the bodies, and-”
“I know,” he said impatiently. “Killers with close relationships to the victims normally position them in more reverent ways. I thought of that yesterday at the scene.”
I let his rough tone go unchallenged. “Also, why would Donnie remove the spent cartridges and the murder weapon? And what about the nuclear submarine records and the Navy’s interest? Why would they even get involved if they thought it was either an accidental death or a suicide?”
Jake didn’t reply.
Four patrol cars turned onto the road leading to the boat landing.
Jake turned his face from the wind to look at them. The black eel of water rippled uneasily behind him. “So what exactly are you saying?”