“Okay, I’ll follow later. I’ve got some things to check first.”
“Some leads?” The girl looked hopeful. I’d never seen her before—she wasn’t from the county.
“No such thing as leads.” I walked back into the barn. “You either got the guy or you don’t.”
The forensic boys bottled and bagged everything that wasn’t nailed down and dragged every inch of the water in the barn. They turned up an empty wine bottle, a kerosene lantern, five empty cigarette packs, some generic matchbooks, and three used condoms.
I watched as they taped up the door and window.
Jake came up next to me. “No murder weapon.”
“Nope.” We waited for the team to finish up and clear out. They’d found a few hairs and were going to test the condoms, too, to see if there was any DNA left. Beyond that, they’d hold the rest until we either told them what we needed or closed the case.
After their vans disappeared over the horizon, there was only the sound of the wind drying out the fields and an occasional sparrow call from the lake. It was easier to think that way.
“She was in the far corner from the door.”
“So she either got backed up into the corner or someone found her there.” Jake was right with my line of thought. This was why I’d picked him as my chief deputy.
“No visible wounds or marks on her hands, so there wasn’t much of a struggle.” I walked toward the barn door and faced out, like I’d just left. Farmland stretched to the horizon in gentle hills in every direction, empty fields shedding the last of their snow. There wasn’t a single house or building in sight of the barn. “He kills her and heads out. Doesn’t leave the knife. He needs to get away and deal with the weapon and his clothes.”
Jake pointed at the trail that circled around the lake toward the beach and the boat launch. “That’s our best bet. He parked in one of the lots and went back the same way.”
“It’s either that or cross-country to the highway or past the Erickson house to Route 7. Both are about a mile.”
“Why would he park so far away? Doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. But most killers are stupid. And they usually don’t plan on killing anybody, so they don’t think about details like the best getaway route.”
Jake grunted to let me know he wasn’t on board with a cross-country escape.
“We’re going to need dogs to go over the fields. A mile in every direction. Call Mick in Rochester. And get the boat out on the lake with a metal detector. The killer might have tossed the knife in on his way back to the car.”
“I agree with that. I’ll have them go over every inch of the lake and shore.”
We left the scene and bumped the cruisers back over the fields to Winifred Erickson’s house. Jake kept on going toward town, but I tried her door first. No answer. Didn’t mean she wasn’t home. Most folks around here threw open the screen door at the first dust trail over the horizon, but Winifred took her notions. Sometimes she’d go weeks without showing her face in town, and I’d been sent more than once to see if she’d fallen over dead in her kitchen. She never answered the door until I was ready to bust it down and then it was with curlers tying up the leftover strands of gray on her scalp and Lars’s old pipe jutting out of her mouth, asking me if I knew how much doors cost and was I damn ready to buy her a new one. A few days later she’d appear on Main Street again, as friendly as you please. She’d been odd like that ever since she killed her husband.
I left her a note about the dog search and headed back to town.
The phones were ringing like fire alarms when I got into the office, but Nancy wasn’t at the desk. I found her in the break room getting a cup of coffee. Jake was scarfing down a sandwich while holding his phone.
“I’m on hold with Rochester,” he got out between bites. Glad to see the kid’s appetite wasn’t affected by a mutilated corpse.
“Grab me some coffee, too, Nance, will you?”
“They won’t stop, Del. They’ve been pouring in like water since about twenty minutes after you got called out there.”
“Who?” Jake asked.
“Everybody I’ve ever met, for starters, and I’m telling them to keep their noses in their own business. But the papers, too, and Shel called to see if you wanted him to come in.”
Shel was one of our four full-time deputies. With only twelve people in the whole office, we were gonna be pretty thin on the ground during a murder investigation.
“How the hell did he hear about it so quick?”
“He’s cousin to the Sanders. They called him as soon as the boy came home.”
“No, tell him we’re fine. Jake can take any emergencies from here.”
“But I’ve got to open the case,” Jake protested.
“I’m opening this case.”
“I lead the investigations unit, Del.”
“And I’m the sheriff of this county.”
I didn’t pull rank on him that often and he didn’t look any too pleased that I had now. Didn’t matter. This was my case. Nancy followed me into my office with the coffee.
“No calls for the next twenty minutes. And this case needs to be locked down. Not a word or a nod to anyone before I tell you. We can confirm one dead female by stabbing. That’s all.”
“You know me, Del. I’m a black hole.”