Steven James - The Queen

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?”

“I’m saying that at this point we don’t know who, if anyone, went down with the snowmobile. We don’t know if Donnie is alive or dead. We don’t know who called Ardis’s cell phone at 1:54 or why the Navy is interested in this case. We don’t know how many people were present at the house when Ardis and Lizzie were killed, and we don’t have any idea who they might have been.”

“So you don’t think it was Donnie?”

“If you set aside assumptions about domestic homicides and look at this case objectively, everything except Donnie’s relationship with the victims and his disappearance points to someone else as the shooter.”

Ellory and the two officers who’d stood sentry at the house last night crossed the ice toward us. Four more officers followed them.

Often when the Bureau gets involved in joint investigations, local jurisdictions feel as if we’re stepping on their toes. It can become a point of contention that only serves to hinder the investigation, but so far I’d seen no indication that we were going to run into trouble with that here, and I was thankful.

Far behind the officers, a bank of low, gray clouds was crawling into the western horizon.

As Ellory approached, he followed my gaze. “Here comes the storm.”

It made me think of Tessa again.

A slight tickle of concern.

“Listen, we need to get some divers down here as soon as possible.”

“I told you yesterday, there’s no one around here who dives.”

“What about Ashland? That’s less than an hour and a half away. With all the shipwrecks in Lake Superior there’ll be plenty of cold-water divers up there.”

A question rolled through my mind: If the Navy is so interested in this, why haven’t they sent a SEAL team over to the area for body recovery?

I had no answers.

He was quiet.

I waited. “Right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s get a couple of them down here before the storm hits, see if we can recover the snowmobile or the body of the driver.”

My phone wobbled in my pocket and I checked the screen. A text from Amber-she and Sean would be able to meet at the Northwoods Supper Club just down the road from Tomahawk Lake. “11?” she’d typed.

While Ellory assigned one of the officers beside him to radio the sheriff’s department in Ashland, I texted Amber that later-noon or 1:00-would be better.

Jake and the remaining officers went to shore to look over the Ski-Doo’s tracks before they reached the ice. I walked beside the ones leading toward the open water, Ellory beside me.

I made sure neither of us disturbed the boot sole impressions paralleling the snowmobile tracks.

“Sheriff still down with the flu?” I asked him.

“Yup.”

The uniformity of the snow clods kicked up by the snowmobile’s treads told me that whoever drove the snowmobile had done so at a steady speed. No accelerating or decelerating. No swerving.

If this were an accident, he would’ve swerved to avoid it.

But if it were suicide, wouldn’t he have accelerated toward the water?

When someone commits suicide by cutting her wrists she’ll often slice her skin several times, trying to get up enough nerve to drive the blade deep enough to kill herself. Law enforcement and medical personnel refer to those wounds as hesitation marks.

Conversely, when the decision has been made, she’ll draw the blade quickly, deeply, often in an uncontrolled manner.

Despite the low number of nerve endings in the flexor surface of the wrist, almost no one draws the blade steadily and slowly across the skin. If it appears she has, it’s a good indication that it wasn’t a suicide.

When people see pain or death coming, they either swerve to avoid it or despairingly accelerate into it. In a sense, almost no one drives uniformly toward the open water.

It was yet another indication that this wasn’t a suicide.

Or a haphazard accid “You’re famous,” Ellory said, jarring me from my thoughts.

“What?”

“I looked you up. Consulted all over the world. Two books. Articles in more than a dozen professional journals.”

He looked me up?

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Thank you,” I said awkwardly.

“I’m impressed.” But he sounded faintly sarcastic rather than dazzled. “I didn’t know who you were.”

I ignored his comment. “The only thing we need to do right now is make some headway on this case before that storm hits.”

We’d made it only a few more steps when he said, “So, geospatial. What is that exactly?”

Though I wasn’t really excited about giving a briefing at the moment, I guessed that this was as good a time as any to talk him through it. “Basically, I study the temporal and spatial patterns of serial offenses and then work backward to find the most likely location of the offender’s home base.”