Authors: Sarah Andrews
Dead Dry (31 page)
“May I make a suggestion?” Fritz asked.
“Sure.”
“You two keep looking at the killer as the aggressor. Perhaps you have it backwards.”
I frowned with concentration. “What do you mean?”
Fritz crouched down and started to realign the stones and sticks. “In
The Art of War,
Sun Tzu says, ‘Wild beasts, when held at bay, fight desperately.’ McWain was holding the others at bay.”
The Art of War,
Sun Tzu says, ‘Wild beasts, when held at bay, fight desperately.’ McWain was holding the others at bay.”
Michele blinked. “So you’re saying we’re dealing with wild beasts?”
Fritz nodded. “We can suppose that these people haven’t thought through their motivations, or they wouldn’t be so foolish as to take such a risk. But try thinking of them as warriors. They fight the way they train, and when they start to lose, their thinking can become quite primitive, a basic ‘us versus them’ mentality. When their established ways of doing things start breaking down, their reactions
become like the reflexes of a predator when it feels it is in danger.”
become like the reflexes of a predator when it feels it is in danger.”
“‘Established ways of doing things’?” Michele said.
I turned to her. “He means what people are used to. The systems we live by. This community is used to building a certain kind of house, and each person has tailored his or her livelihood around supplying that infrastructure or living within it. If you tell the wolf it can’t eat caribou anymore you’re going to have an argument on your hands.”
Michele said, “This is getting off the point. One murder has been committed, and perhaps two. My job is to bring a murderer to justice.”
I said, “You’re looking at it as a crime, but Fritz is right, the killer or killers may be looking at it as a war. Wars are almost always fought over resources. A shortage of resources brings the stresses that lead to war. You talk about greed, but Fritz is right, this community is looking at deprivation, something taken away rather than something to be gained. We’re talking about the human animal, whose sense of ‘not enough’ is tripped the moment things go level. We don’t consider an economy healthy unless it’s growing. Hell, we don’t know what to do with ourselves unless we’re growing something—food, wealth, a family. We don’t know how to go backward. We only know how to go forward. Afton should have figured out how to make sustainable living look and feel high-tech and modern.”
Michele stared down at the progress of the searchers along the creek bed. “You’re sure not gonna see me driving around a territory like this in a glorified golf cart any day soon. It didn’t work for Gilda.” She snorted and walked off toward her car.
I turned to Fritz and shrugged. “So McWain fired the first shot,” I said. “So how do we figure out who shot back?”
Fritz smiled cryptically. “A guy named Strozzi once said, ‘When the predator fights back, he doesn’t tell you where his weakness is.’”
BY NOON, THE SEARCH AND RESCUE PEOPLE WERE BEGINNING to wilt with the heat. They had searched a mile downstream and half a mile up, and someone had taken a dog through the whole creek bottom from the place in the narrows where the flood had washed away the bridge and road clear down past the Sedalia Grill. They figured they had looked under every branch and had poked every fresh sandbar that might conceivably conceal a body. They advised the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department that it was time to call off the search.
I flipped open my cell phone and called Tim Osner. “Hey, Tim, do you ever play with fluvial geomorphy on a crime scene?”
“You mean how rivers carve their channels?” he said. “Yeah, we get into that. If someone’s dumped a body off a bridge, for instance, we throw a pig carcass with a radio tracking collar in from the presumed spot of entry and see where it comes to rest.”
I suppressed the urge to ask if they had a luau afterward. I described the problem.
He said, “I can take off early today. I could be there inside of two hours, set up my software, do some figuring. You say they’ve already used dogs? We could go to plan B, figure it’s a murder cover-up, and start looking for the grave site.”
“You mean she was killed first and
then
the cart was thrown in?”
then
the cart was thrown in?”
“Why not?”
“Tim, you’re a genius! Bring air photographs of the area,” I said. “The most recent you can get your hands on. You clever, clever man.”
WITHIN THE HOUR, FRITZ AND I WERE IN THE AIR with a camera. Fritz had not designed his plane with air photo reconnaissance in mind. It has two propellers, but one’s fore and the other is aft, so you can’t shoot good pictures
through the windshield, and it’s low-wing, so it’s hard to shoot to the sides as well, but Fritz knew how to stand it on one wing and somehow manage to keep it from falling out of the sky. Michele had loaned me a digital camera, so the only problem was knowing that the exposure was going to lag half a second behind each time I tripped the shutter.
through the windshield, and it’s low-wing, so it’s hard to shoot to the sides as well, but Fritz knew how to stand it on one wing and somehow manage to keep it from falling out of the sky. Michele had loaned me a digital camera, so the only problem was knowing that the exposure was going to lag half a second behind each time I tripped the shutter.
We flew Jarre Creek three times at three different altitudes: three thousand feet up, fifteen hundred feet up, and Fritz’s favorite, the low-level zoom. That last time he rocked it down through Jarre Canyon so low that we had the sheriff’s deputies scrambling for cover. Fritz had a grin on his face so wide that I whipped the lens his way and recorded that too. Who says cowboys only ride horses?
I was back on the ground with the memory card from the camera in my hand when a van pulled up. “Which one of you is Em Hansen?” he asked. A nice-looking man with big, dark eyes climbed out.
“That would be me,” I said, and handed him the card.
“Ah, you’ve gone digital, you lovely thing,” he said. “Let me just shoot this straight into my machine. I’ve already downloaded the latest air photos, which were taken about a year ago.” He led me straight to the back of the minivan he had arrived in and opened the door. Inside was a wealth of electronic equipment. When he saw my eyes widen, he laughed. “Hey, we come prepared. I’ve got complete equipment here—computer hooked up to microscope, scanner, fax, printer, geophysics, and the very latest in geostatistics software. You’re gonna love us, baby!” He arranged himself on a seat that swung out from under a shallow counter and flipped a few switches, activating a keyboard and a big flat-screen monitor, then leaned back and rubbed his hands together in glee.
Deputy Mayhew was just walking up to the van. “Tim, long time no see,” he said.
“Hey, Ernie, you in charge of this show? How’s the wife?”
Tim got right to work. Inside of five minutes, he had overlain my images with his digitized air photos and normalized the two scales to match. “This flood did damage, all right. This bank has caved,” he said, “and here we’ve got a fresh deposit of sand. Nice transverse bar, pretty as a picture. But wait! It
is
a picture!” He chuckled at his own joke. Then he set about analyzing the image for discrepancies, massaging the keyboard to develop probability maps. He pointed at the places where his maps indicated highest probability for transportation and deposition of an object the size and buoyancy of a human body. Then he overlaid the highway map and clicked a few more keys. The resolution of his map sharpened.
is
a picture!” He chuckled at his own joke. Then he set about analyzing the image for discrepancies, massaging the keyboard to develop probability maps. He pointed at the places where his maps indicated highest probability for transportation and deposition of an object the size and buoyancy of a human body. Then he overlaid the highway map and clicked a few more keys. The resolution of his map sharpened.
“What does that do?” asked Michele.
Tim chuckled. “Killers are just like water-well drillers. They like to make their hole at a place where it’s convenient to back in their rig. So my software here weights the search for good access points.” He put his finger on a bright red bull’s eye. “So the S and R people already probed these areas?”
“Yes.”
“How long a stick they use?”
I said, “Two meters. But I’ve been watching. If they hit a rock at three inches, that was it. They were looking for soft sand.”
Michele asked, “And you are looking for … ?”
I said, “A burial, of course.”
“You prefer an act of God or poor driving skills?” asked Tim.
I said, “Show me the bank that should not have failed in this storm, and I’ll show you where the body is buried.”
Tim giggled maniacally. “You sound very sure of yourself. Come on, you’re taking all the fun out of this. Hey, Jerry!” he called, leaning toward the tailgate to get the attention of one of his colleagues. “You took Fluvial Geo-morph from Stan Schumm up at CSU, right?”
“Yo.” A lanky guy with blond hair that stood up in random
tufts appeared at the tailgate. We explained the question to him. He climbed in next to Tim and went over several screens, turning his hands this way and that as he mentally reckoned the varying flow directions of the stream bed. “There,” he said, putting a long, crooked finger on the screen. “That’s an inside bank. The thalweg—the strongest part of the current—would have been on the opposite side of the creek at peak runoff—see, there’s a fresh cut on that side, and it looks right, while this doesn’t. It should have been depositing sand instead of eroding it. So unless you’ve got some kind of muskrat or beaver undermining that inside bank, that’s it.”
tufts appeared at the tailgate. We explained the question to him. He climbed in next to Tim and went over several screens, turning his hands this way and that as he mentally reckoned the varying flow directions of the stream bed. “There,” he said, putting a long, crooked finger on the screen. “That’s an inside bank. The thalweg—the strongest part of the current—would have been on the opposite side of the creek at peak runoff—see, there’s a fresh cut on that side, and it looks right, while this doesn’t. It should have been depositing sand instead of eroding it. So unless you’ve got some kind of muskrat or beaver undermining that inside bank, that’s it.”
Tim tapped a few keys, putting the road overlay on the photographs using his GIS—geographic information system—database. “Like a spy in the sky,” he said merrily. “Mm-huh, about a quarter mile upstream from this crossroads.” He twisted in his chair and stared downriver. “Let’s lock and load and put her in gear.”
Deputy Mayhew said, “We didn’t search there. Don’t you think that’s too far downstream?”
“For a flood deposit, maybe, but not for a burial,” said Tim.
We drove in caravan to the site, Tim’s van, Deputy Ernie in his cruiser, Michele in her rental, and Fritz and me in his. When we arrived at the site, we noted that while the scarp at the top of the bank looked fresh on the air photographs, it was hard to see from the center of the channel, where Jarre Creek was now settling back within its inner banks. There was in fact a screen of willows separating it from the area disturbed by the flood. I started to walk toward it, but Tim put out a hand. “We take it from here,” he said and nodded to another man, who was just pulling up in a pickup with a very avid-looking dog riding in the passenger’s seat. “Daisy, honey!” he called to the dog.
The dog stuck her muzzle out the open window of the truck cab. She had tall, pointy ears and a long, black snout.
As her handler led her out on her lead, her narrow waist and long, sweeping tail danced with excitement. She already had an eye on the site.
As her handler led her out on her lead, her narrow waist and long, sweeping tail danced with excitement. She already had an eye on the site.
I said, “What is she, some kind of German shepherd cross?”
“She is pure Belgian Malinois,” said her handler proudly. “They were bred for sheep but kept alive during the Second World War because they were so smart about carrying messages for the Resistance.” He took her to the bank, knelt beside her, removed her leash, and said, “Find, Daisy!”
The dog leapt down the bank and zigzagged across the ground, her nose down on the dirt.
“Can she find Gilda without even knowing what she smells like?” Michele asked.
The handler asked, “How long has this lady been dead?”
I said, “Anywhere up to three days.”
He grinned. “A good cadaver dog can smell a corpse newer than that, and Daisy’s the best.”
On cue, Daisy yelped and scratched, looking up to her handler for the next command.
“Daisy, come!” he said.
The dog burst from her position, galloped up the bank with the long, liquid gait of a wolf, and came to a halt seated at his side.
“Good girl,” he said, petting her and slipping her a treat.
Daisy raised her nose toward her master and gave him an adoring look.
“She found something?” asked Michele.
The man said, “Yes, something. It could be a deer, though such animals usually have better sense than to tarry by a creek bank when it’s raining like that.”
“Now what do we do?” asked Michele.
“We wait for the geophysicists and archaeologists,” said Tim. “The geophysicists will use ground-penetrating radar
to map the variations in density where the soil’s been dug up. The archaeologists will do a careful excavation of the grave. They’ll get infinitely more data than a couple of deputies with shovels can ever hope to get.”
to map the variations in density where the soil’s been dug up. The archaeologists will do a careful excavation of the grave. They’ll get infinitely more data than a couple of deputies with shovels can ever hope to get.”
They arrived at six-thirty, having needed time to grab their gear after work. They went to work setting up cameras and grids and began mapping and digging.
Michele and I began a search through the weeds above the bank. It was there that Michele found the suggestions of footprints—about a men’s size nine, or a women’s eight—and I found what I was looking for: a twisted cylinder of plastic with a wire sticking out of it.
“What is it?” Fritz inquired.
“A blasting cap,” I said. “Michele, would you get the good deputy over here please? I want him to watch me bag this thing for evidence. But first, let’s get Tim’s surveyor to plot its position relative to the grave.”
AT 7 P.M. I CHECKED MY PHONE FOR MESSAGES AS MY stomach began to growl with hunger for dinner. No one had called, not Julia, and not Noel calling to report on her. Where was she?
Michele’s cell phone rang a moment later. I heard her say, “Yes, this is she. Yes. Thank you. Okay, I’m writing that down.” When she’d ended the call, she announced, without looking at anyone, “The FBI found the pilot who flew the Baron to Gallup. They have voice recordings to prove which pilot made the calls, and eyewitnesses on the ground report only one man getting out at Gallup, and … it wasn’t Attabury.”
Other books
The Adventures of Flash Jackson by William Kowalski
1/2986 by Annelie Wendeberg
Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files
Ghost of a Chance by Bill Crider
Royally Romanced by Donovan, Marie
A Perfect Husband by Fiona Brand
Chasing Shadows by S.H. Kolee
Then There Was You by Melanie Dawn
Updraft by Fran Wilde