Remains In Coyote Bog Read online

  REMAINS

  IN

  COYOTE

  BOG

  Eighth in the Winnebago County Mystery Series

  Christine Husom

  The wRight Press

  Copyright © 2019 by Christine Husom

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved, including the reproduction in whole or part in any format without permission, except in brief quotations used in news articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The wRight Press first edition published

  November 2019

  Cover photo by Thomas B Dingeman, Pixaby

  Cover design by Precision Prints, Buffalo, Minnesota.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-948068-08-6

  www.christinehusom.com

  [email protected]

  Dedication

  To all the people in the medical and healthcare fields, including many of my friends and family members, who are first-rate providers. You are the overwhelming majority and this story is not meant to cast a shadow on your dedicated, selfless service. Instead, it follows a caregiver who lost her way and headed down a path of evil destruction.

  Acknowledgments

  It’s takes a team to turn a story into a published book and get it into the hands of readers. My humble thanks to my faithful beta/proofreaders who gave me their time, careful reading, and sound advice: Arlene Asfeld, Judy Bergquist, Terri Bishoff, Cathlene Buchholz, Barbara DeVries, Rhonda Gilliland, Ken Hausladen, Elizabeth Husom, Chad Mead, Timya Owen, and Edie Peterson. And to DJ Schuette, at Critical Eye Editing for formatting the manuscript for publication.

  And to all the great authors who read the manuscript and wrote a review blurb. I greatly appreciate each one of you for sharing your talents and expertise.

  Last, but certainly not least, with deep gratitude to my husband and the rest of my family for their patience and understanding when I was stowed away for hours on end, researching and writing.

  Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

  1

  I’d been awake a while listening to birds sing their pre-dawn calls, alerting stirring creatures the sun was about to rise. Smoke was asleep on his back, his head sunk into the pillow. His lips were parted slightly, allowing deep, rhythmic breaths until one caught midstream. His body tensed and his sky-blue eyes shot open. My own breath stopped in kind until Smoke blinked away whatever had haunted him. He rolled onto his side toward me, reached for my hand, and smiled.

  I’d lost track of the times I cherished watching him snooze away, until he startled awake. I gave his hand a gentle pull. “When are you going to let me in, tell me what spooks you like that?”

  The pillow swallowed the side of his face, his grin charmingly lopsided. “My darling, Corinne, why would you want to know the bad and the ugly from my long ago, almost forgotten past? I’d rather concentrate on the incredibly good moment we’re sharing right here in the present.”

  As I considered a response, he leaned in closer, gave me a nibble of a kiss, then rolled out of bed. “Sorry, gotta go.” That signaled our dogs, Rex and Queenie, to get up and at ˊem. I stretched and pondered what bad and ugly secret Smoke kept hidden. And how I’d get the key to unlock it. He walked through the room with a big yawn. “I’ll get the coffee brewing.”

  “I shouldn’t have kept you up so late.”

  My heart skipped a beat at his devilish smirk that deepened his long dimples. “It was well worth any lost minutes of sleep.”

  “I—” His ringing phone cut me off. Calls before 6:00 in the morning rarely brought good news.

  “Detective Dawes. . . . What? Can you repeat that?” His face was set and solemn. My body tensed. I got out of bed and prayed it wasn’t about a loved one. “Tell them I’ll get out there a-sap. Sheriff notified?. . . And the M.E.’s office? . . . Thanks.” He shook his head and pushed the end button on his phone.

  I gave his arm an impatient shake. “What?”

  “You know how the highway guys were starting the project on County Road Thirty-five and County Seven, where it crosses Coyote Bog today?”

  I envisioned a horrible accident. “What happened?”

  “The crew got an early start, right at daybreak. Went in with an excavator to do some clean out off the side of the road, and lo and behold, came up with a body in the bucket on the second scoopful.”

  “What?”

  “I need to get a move on.”

  He slipped into the bathroom before I could ask another question. And I had a lot of them. Coyote Bog was in the service area I was assigned as a supervising sergeant. I jogged downstairs with the dogs in tow, made Smoke a cup of coffee in the single-cup brewer and poured it in a travel mug. I was spreading peanut butter on bread when Smoke joined me. He slid his gun holster on his belt. With his tall, lean body, he looked his professional best in a gray suit and mauve button shirt. He’d no doubt lose the jacket and roll up his sleeves at the scene.

  “I’ll drop Rex off at home.” His house was along the way.

  I handed him breakfast. “How about I put him in Queenie’s kennel with her for the day?”

  “Thanks. Sure, sounds like a plan. See you out there, Sergeant Corky.” He gave me a sweet parting kiss and was off.

  I took the steps by twos and got through my morning hygiene lickety split. I pulled my shoulder-length blonde hair into a bun on the top of my head and donned my gear. I took the usual practice draws of my service weapon and jogged down the stairs. The dogs were in the front entry looking out the window. They no doubt wondered why Smoke had broken the routine and left without Rex.

  “Okay, it’s kennel time. Yes, Rex, that means you, too.” He tipped his head to the side like he hadn’t heard right but followed Queenie and me into the garage. I opened the kennel door and they scooted in.

  I went outside to my squad car, hopped in, and started the ignition. The sheriff’s radio came to life with three calls in quick succession. Nearly thirty minutes left on the overnight shift and it sounded like at least two deputies would not be off duty at 7:00. An erratic driver on County Road 6, and a suspect on the run after he committed a witnessed act of vandalism at a retail store.

  “Six-oh-eight, Winnebago County,” I squeezed in between calls.

  “Six-oh-eight?”

  “I’m Ten-eight with Unit Twenty-three.” On duty.

  “You’re Ten-eight at six thirty-six. And Sergeant, I’m sending a call report to your screen.”

  “Copy that. I’ll report directly to that scene, if there’s nothing else pending.”

  “No other calls.”

  “Ten-four.”

  I sat in the driveway a minute and read the information on the mobile data terminal screen, a fleshed-out version of what Smoke had relayed. The names of the three highway crew members were listed, with the excavator operator’s name in caps. The sheriff per office policy, and the medical examiner per Smoke’s instructions, were notified and would be en route to Coyote Bog. How long had a body been in the swamp? Centuries? Probably not. My guess: since it was close enough to the road to be scooped up by the excavator, it was buried there sometime after County Road 35 was built. Or it would have been discovered during the original construction.

  I imagined a possible scenario of someone riding a bicycle across that area, wiping out, and landing in the swamp. If he got caught in the peat bog under the top few feet of water, he’d have a heck of a time swimming out. If that, or something similar had happened, there would be a missing person’s report. Somewhere. Maybe many years before and
not necessarily in Winnebago County.

  The stretch of road that spanned the wetland was a challenge to maintain. It had a low dip in the middle, flooded over several times most years, and inconvenienced the estimated three thousand daily travelers who were forced to take an alternate route. Winnebago County road crews repaired it every few years, built it up and smoothed it out. It helped for a while, but the road would sink and shift over time, and the uneven surface was a safety hazard. Vehicles crossing the bog rocked back and forth and forced drivers to slow down with both hands gripped on the wheel to maintain control and stay on the road.

  After many years of trying different methods to improve the sinking road, mostly by adding more layers of heavy bituminous, an innovative method had been engineered to raise the road by buoying it up with foam blocks as the base. When the county board approved its implementation, the highway engineer gave it top priority, and slated it as the first project of the construction season. The masses who traveled County Road 35 every day—and had to take detours when a heavy rain or winter snow melt made it impassable—looked forward to the upgrade. I was curious how the project would turn out.

  The irony of it all: after all the preparation and planning, the operation had come to an abrupt halt on the first day of construction. The highway department had run into all kinds of snags maintaining and improving the hundreds of miles of county roads over the years. Without a doubt, scooping up a body from Coyote would be written in bold letters in their record book.

  County Road 7 was just over five miles from my house. I headed west on County Road 35 and was there in as many minutes. A blockade of metal and wood spanned across County 35, at County 7. Two signs, ROAD CLOSED and DETOUR, with arrows pointing both north and south on 7, were attached to the front of it. I parked behind Smoke’s vehicle on the road’s shoulder. Another squad car sat on the opposite shoulder.

  My mind captured a snapshot of the scene, noting a few key details. Smoke stood in the middle of the road with Sergeant Leo Roth, the overnight supervising road sergeant, along with several men from the highway department. Bart, Nick, and Andy were easily identifiable by their fluorescent green vests and yellow hard hats.

  The excavator loader, a giant tractor-like piece of equipment, sat near the edge of the road at a forty-five-degree angle from the bog. The excavator’s bucket was suspended in the air at what I estimated had been the eye level of the operator. It was too high up for me to get a good view of what it held. A dump truck sat some feet west of it. The intended destination for the spoils collected from the clean out, I surmised.

  The call had not gone out over the radio, the reason Roth was the lone deputy on the scene. I made my way around the roadblock and joined the group. Bart was in his late twenties and the youngest of the crew members. His face held a tortured look, one I’d seen on many others who had witnessed something awful, something they’d never be able to completely banish from their minds as long as they lived. Everyone’s eyes fell on me as I stepped into their loosely formed circle. We all knew each other.

  “Sergeant Aleckson,” Smoke said.

  I intrinsically knew from his sober expression something was abnormally disturbing about the recovered body from the bog. “Morning, Detective.”

  The rest of us exchanged short greetings then I zeroed in on Bart. “I understand you were the one operating the excavator?”

  He nodded and crossed his arms tightly against his chest. “And I wish I’d been in bed with a bad bug this morning instead.”

  “That’s a good way to describe how I’ve felt when I witnessed something really bad,” I said.

  Bart considered my words. “I guess you deputies can relate, for sure.”

  Smoke took a step toward the machine and lifted his hand for me to follow. “You might want to have a look for yourself.”

  My muscles tightened as I climbed up and into the excavator’s cab. Smoke was close behind me. I peered into the bucket. Dear Lord. Discovering a dead body was bad enough, but one in that condition was much worse. No wonder Bart wished he’d been sick.

  Smoke’s hand brushed mine. “About as disturbing as it gets.”

  “This one is more recognizable than the burn victim on our last big case, but the significance behind the way she died—however that might have been—is way more alarming. Her skin looks leathery. Reminds me of mummies I’ve seen in museums.”

  “That’s a fact. Bogs are low in oxygen and highly acidic, conditions that lend themselves to mummification if a person has the misfortune of falling into one. But the chances are slim to none that’s what happened here.”

  Her body had a similar, yet distinctively different, appearance as the bodies we’d recovered on another case. They had spent decades in a car on the bottom of a deep lake. In Minnesota, lake bottoms remained cold, even in the heat of summer. Those bodies had been preserved by adipocere, often referred to as grave wax. It formed under special conditions: cold, wet, anaerobic. Like in the bog, but without the acidic component.

  The victim had a small frame and laid on her back in the excavator’s five-foot-wide bucket that served, effectively and unnervingly, as an open coffin. Swamp water partially covered the lower areas of her body and surrounded her sides. A dumbbell weight plate with a hole in its middle, rested on her stomach. It was held in place with what looked like plastic-enclosed metal wires tied around her.

  The victim’s skin had an orange tinge and I wondered if a medical condition had caused it. Chunks of peat clung to her thin, gray hair and floated around her head. Hair strands lay across her face and neck. She wore a translucent gown, its original color likely not the dirty beige it was now. Her arms were crossed on her chest and not bound. A sign she was deceased before she was buried in the bog.

  I finally focused my attention on the figure of a black angel burned into her forehead. If not for that, the crosses on each wrist may have been mistaken for tattoos.

  “Someone branded her,” I said quietly.

  “That adds a particularly vicious element,” Smoke said.

  “What a depraved sicko.”

  “No doubt about that. When I got the call, Communications noted the angel branding on the forehead. I didn’t know what in the hell that meant, whether we were looking at a criminal matter, or if it was a case of accidentally disturbing an old burial ground. In which case, we would’ve had to call in the Minnesota State Archeologist.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It may not be a hundred years old, but it’s a burial ground, nonetheless. And the bastard that tied the weight around her meant to keep her down there,” he said.

  My stomach started to churn. I drew a long, slow breath through my nostrils to calm my insides as I studied the body. “She’s certainly well preserved, in an unnatural way. It’s hard to tell how old she was, aside from being elderly.”

  “Appears elderly, but does that mean seventy or a hundred?”

  “The docs at the M.E.’s office should be able to figure that out.” I found my phone and snapped a photo then whispered to the victim, “We’ll find out who you are, and will do everything possible to track down the monster who did this to you.”

  Smoke nudged me. “You got that right.”

  We were silent for a time then Smoke said, “If she’s been here for decades, that adds to the challenge.”

  “No question. On the drive out here, I was thinking it must have been since they straightened out the county road, spanned it across Coyote. Or they should have found her then. That was about fifty years ago, right? And they’ve done maintenance work on it many times since then. But the road keeps sinking.”

  “Is it any wonder, sitting on top of a bog?” Smoke shook his head. “Back to the time frame. Her gown and the weight secured around her may help narrow that down. We’ll find out when the weight was manufactured.”

  “That’s a start. Have you interviewed the highway guys yet?” I said.

  “Some general questions when I got here, but mostly I listened to them
vent, then took photos of the scene, the body.”

  “Did the M.E.’s office give you an ETA?”

  Smoke glanced at his watch. “Yep, it’ll be about half an hour, give or take.”

  I took a last look at the body, lifted from her burial ground by a piece of heavy equipment, and puzzled over how she had met such an ill fate. “Let’s go talk to Highway.”

  Smoke was the first one off the excavator then held out his hand and assisted me to the ground. Sergeant Roth walked over to us and patted the memo pad in his pocket. I seldom worked with him, unless one of his cases ran into overtime. He was around my age, early thirties, nice looking, not big on casual conversation. I appreciated his sharp mind and thoroughness.

  “I got statements from each of the witnesses for my report. You need me to stick around, keep the perimeter secure?” Roth said.

  “No, we’re covered.” Smoke narrowed his eyes. “Are you gonna be able to catch some sleep, Leo?”

  Roth shook his head. “Not unless I catch that bad bug Bart mentioned. Lord, that poor woman. Tough stuff to shut off.”

  Smoke put a hand on his back and nodded. “Rest as best you can.”

  Roth’s shoulder lifted in what looked like a doubt-filled shrug. “Catch you later.” He walked to his car like he had gained a hundred pounds, barely able to move the extra weight.

  2

  Vehicles approached on County Road 7 from both the north and south and from the east on County Road 35. Passengers and drivers strained their necks to find out what had happened. Smoke pulled his phone from its holder and called Communications. “Robin, I’m going to need two deputies out here to keep the crowds at bay. After the M.E. gets here, a lotta people won’t care if they’re late for work or not. . . . Okay, good to know. Thanks.”

  Smoke disconnected. “Weber’s in the area and Edberg’s about ten minutes out. Neither has any pending calls. Sheriff is reporting here directly from home, a little earlier start on his day than usual.” Sheriff Mike Kenner had been in his position less than a year, appointed after Dennis Twardy left midterm, due to health issues.