In the conversational lull following Jake’s words, I called Deputy Ellory, the officer who’d contacted the FBI Lab to see if they could identify the snowmobile tracks. The whole situation struck me as incongruous. Multiple homicides in a rural area and a possible suicide, and a deputy rather than the sheriff was taking the lead on this? It didn’t make sense.
Ellory picked up. A quick greeting, then I asked, “What made you think to call the Bureau?”
“I figured they’d have the fastest ways to look up the model of the sled. You know, like when they have tire track databases or something.” He sounded young enough to still be in high school. “How they do all that stuff on CSI.”
Honestly, it was a good idea. Most agents I’ve worked with wouldn’t even have thought of it. “Okay. Tell me about the house.”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t there too long. Your director told us to leave. Lizzie, we found upstairs. Mrs. Pickron-Ardis-she was on the steps. She was shot in the back. Probably with a. 30–06.”
There was no mention in the police reports about the murder weapon being found. “Did you find cartridge casings?”
“No. That’s just what it looked like.”
“What it looked like?”
“The bullet hole, the entry wound. I hunt. You get to know gunshot wounds pretty good.”
He would have to know GSWs incredibly well to distinguish between calibers on an entry wound-I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Exit wounds yes, but Jake waved a couple fingers to get my attention. “Ask him about Donnie.”
I said to Ellory, “Have you found Donnie Pickron or recovered his body?”
“No.”
If the stretch of water was wide enough, we might have a chance at getting divers in to find him. “Any divers up there who can search the area?”
“Far as I know there’s just one guy around here who dives-Denny Jacobson. But he’s down in Florida this month. Visiting relatives, I think. Parents moved there last year, you know. But Donnie’s body is obviously down in that lake somewhere.”
We didn’t have nearly enough facts yet to know what was obvious and what was not, but I decided that pointing that out might not get us off on the right foot. “I was told there were no boot or shoe impressions, just the Ski-Doo tracks.”
“That’s right.”
“Has it snowed recently? Is there any chance footprints might have been covered or obscured?”
“No.”
“Are you a snowmobiler?”
“Everyone around here is.”
Growing up in Wisconsin I’d ridden my share of snowmobiles, but I hadn’t been on a sled in over fifteen years. Putting the question of the sled’s weight and the thickness of the ice aside for the moment, I said, “I understand this will depend on the speed, but how far do you think a Ski-Doo 800 XL would go without someone squeezing the throttle?”
“Let’s see… the trail along the lakeshore is pretty steep. I’d say he couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles per hour. Forty tops. That would mean…” He paused, obviously evaluating how that would relate to my question. “I guess it would cruise twenty, thirty yards maybe. But it went under a hundred yards from shore.”
Tonight when we arrived it would be too dark to get a good look at the lake, at least not with respect to its orientation to the surrounding terrain. We could check it out in the morning.
“We’ll be at the house in about twenty-five minutes. Does it work for you to meet us at the Pickrons’?”
“You betcha.”
End call.
The full moon, the first of the year, had risen, and from where it hung low in the sky it looked impossibly round and bright, like an unblinking orange eye staring at us from the heavens. Its light reflected boldly off the snow, lending a surreal feeling to the evening, a spectral glow whispering across the fields.
Jake broke the brief silence. “So, they haven’t found him yet?”
“Not yet. No.”
He typed a few notes into his iPad. I hopped off Highway 77 and began winding down the county roads that led to the Pickron residence just outside of Woodborough.
6
We’d missed supper, but Jake and I swung through a gas station and grabbed some snacks to tide us over. Now, I crumpled up my Snickers bar wrapper, set it between the seats, and turned onto the long winding driveway that led to the Pickron house.
A frozen marsh bordered the house on the north and west sides, and in the headlights I could see vast clumps of dead marsh grass cutting through the crust of snow. From the maps Jake had pulled up, I knew a forest lay south of the house.
The closest residence I’d seen on the way here was about half a mile down the road.
The house lay at the top of a rise that would have given the family a beautiful wide-open view to the north. We parked beside one of the cruisers out front, I grabbed my laptop bag, and as we walked up the snow-packed path toward the porch, I took a moment to note the snowmobile tracks on the side of the house closest to the woods. In the brisk moonlight I noticed that two pairs of boot prints led to them from the side door.
Deputy Ellory, a baby-faced twentysomething guy with sandy-colored hair and slightly vacant eyes, was waiting for us by the front door.
Two state troopers flanked him, and I asked them to wait outside. They nodded without saying a word, but the hard look on their faces told me how deeply the murders had affected them. How committed they would be to catching the killer.
Good.
Ellory, Jake, and I entered the home. No sign of forced entry. The temperature in the house was cool. Fiftyish. I set down my computer bag.
To avoid tracking dirt or snow into the house and contaminating the scene, the three of us took off our shoes, or in my case, boots, in the mudroom just inside the entrance. Ellory asked me, “So, you gonna process the scene then?”
“An agent will be here shortly to do that,” I answered. Eight pairs of shoes and boots were positioned neatly against the wall-some men’s, some women’s, two for a little girl.
Lizzie will never use those pink boots again, never again run out into the snow to play.
I looked away, asked Ellory, “Any other officers here? Any other troopers?”
“We tried to keep the scene clear, like they said.”
“What about the sheriff?”
“He’s down with the flu,” Ellory told me.
Down with the flu? With a case this big?
He must have been deathly ill or remarkably negligent.
“So,” Ellory went on, “if you’re not processing the scene, you’re here to…?”
I slid my boots toward the wall and donned a pair of latex gloves. “I’m here to take a look at the temporal and spatial aspects of the crime. See where that leads us.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“I’m a profiler,” Jake offered. “We track violent serial offenders: arsonists, rapists, mostly murderers.”
“So you two hunt serial killers?”
“Yes,” Jake said.
“So you’re like a team or something? Like on TV? Like on Criminal Minds?”
Jake straightened out his shirt. “We work together whenever we’re called upon to do so.” He sounded like he was at a press conference.
“And you think this crime is… that there’s a serial killer?”
“You never can tell on these things.”
“Actually,” I cut in, “at this point we have no reason to believe that the killer or killers are linked to any other crimes.”
Ellory looked at me, then at Jake. “Okay,” he said. “Good.” He indicated the doorway to the main part of the house. “It’s right through here.”
7
The three of us entered the living room.
White carpet. Nicely appointed. The room was color-coordinated in light green, apart from the recliner, which didn’t quite match the walls and couch. The vast, drapeless plateglass window facing the marsh had three spread-out bullet holes with an expansive network of cracks fingering away from each of them. The police reports Ellory had sent us had mentioned these bullet holes but had not included a photo.