“He looked better with clothes on,” said Sue.
“Don’t we all,” said Dyskin, glancing up. Then he pulled himself to his feet and crawled out of the sauna, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his fleece jacket. “Wow! Still hot enough to take a sauna in there, even with the door open. And the place smells like a brewery. What was he thinking?”
“Cause of death?” asked Ray.
“A fatal case of roasting,” said Dyskin. “The guy had way too much to drink, then he goes into a blazing sauna. Hyperthermia for sure with alcohol as a contributing factor, maybe drugs. He’s fat, out of shape. There are probably other health issues, too. We’ll know after the autopsy. Let’s say an accidental death with extenuating circumstances.”
“How long has he been dead?” asked Ray.
“A couple of hours at the most.”
“Any sign of….?”
“No fractures, lacerations, contusions, etc. Give me your light,” Dyskin said, pulling it from Sue’s hand. He moved the beam back and forth in the interior, along the two benches and the floor below. He reentered the building briefly, partially closing the door, then quickly exited.
“What are you looking for?” asked Sue as he handed the light back to her.
“Just curious. I wanted to see if he had a robe somewhere, perhaps behind the door. Nothing. No clothes or towel or shoes. And no water bottle, just an empty beer can.” He paused briefly. “Of course, living out here, I guess you could walk to the sauna naked without anyone seeing or caring. And he might have been so intoxicated in the first place that he didn’t think to bother with those kind of things.”
“We had a 911 call from here. Someone wanted us to find the body,” said Ray.
Dyskin held Ray in his gaze for a moment. “But the caller wasn’t here when….”
“No. And it was a phantom cell phone; we can’t identify the caller.”
“Curious, curious indeed, said Dyskin, clucking. “I think we should ship the body to Grand Rapids for a forensic autopsy.”
“Yes,” agreed Ray. “Sue, how do you plan to proceed?”
“I want to shoot the interior while the body is in place, and then we’ll get him bagged and out of here. Then I think we should secure the area and go get some breakfast. We can go back to the office and see what we can find out about Jim Moarse. Get the paperwork done for search warrants. We should probably put out an APB on Sally Rood. She’s a person of interest. Once the sun is up, I’ll come back and work the scene.”
“The phantom cell call?” asked Ray.
“That’s a puzzler, isn’t it? Let’s think about that one.”
Mackenzie washed off the last traces of the black greasepaint, then shampooed her hair and applied her favorite conditioner. She lingered in the warm shower, washing a second time with a sponge and a large block of olive oil and lavender soap. The grime of the evening’s escapade was washed off, but she felt less than clean. Should I have done more? Why didn’t I see what was happening? She was startled by the sound of her voice echoing off the tile. These were the questions she asked hours later when she described the events to Ken Lee.
“I don’t think you could’ve done anything differently,” Ken Lee responded. “By the time you figured out what was going down, the dude was already dead. Putting the phantom cell out there was as much you could do. It brought the cops running.”
“I know, but….”
“Don’t dwell on this, baby. You did as much as you could. The thing we need to start thinking about is why Sabotny wanted Moarse dead. Are the chickens coming home to roost? Maybe Sabotny decided that his own safety depends on getting rid of anyone who knows about your brother Terry’s death. So there were four guys, right?”
“Yes.”
“And one of them might be dead already, the one in Galveston?”
“But we don’t….”
“No, but if he was one of the four, he’s gone. He might’ve died on his own, but what if Sabotny knew where he was. Pretty easy to knock off a junkie with a big syringe, and without drawing any suspicion. And now Moarse is gone. So that just leaves?”
“Chris Brewler.”
“And he may or may not be in the area. You haven’t ID’d him yet. And there’s one more person.”
“Who’s that?”
“You. You are a threat, and you are out there. He just doesn’t know where.” Ken Lee let his statement hang. Then he said, “I’ll get back to you later. There’s stuff I want to look at.”
39
Ray propped the sauna door open with a board he pulled from a pile of old lumber haphazardly stacked at the side of the building. They peered into the gloomy interior at the chalk outline Sue had made around the body before the EMTs had bagged it and carried it away.
“So he was sprawled toward the door?” said Ray.
Sue switched on a large LED lantern and placed it inside the doorframe. “Yes,” she responded. “Maybe he realized that he was in trouble and had to get out of here?”
“I don’t think so. Drunk, hyperthermic. But who knows?” said Ray.
“So what if his lady love came back last night with the intent to do him in. She brings a gift of booze, gets him totally smashed, maybe puts something extra in his drinks, lures him to the sauna with, well, you know, an array of enticements, and bakes him for a couple of hours. It’s not quite the Hansel and Gretel scenario, but it would work.”
“What’s her motive? She had her stuff back. And she would have to know she’d be the first person we’d want to talk to.”
“How many times have you told me that most of our bad guys and gals don’t hang out at Mensa brunches?” quipped Sue. “Give me a few minutes to shoot the interior.”
Ray stood outside, watching Sue. Then the door caught his attention. He inspected the lower half first, searching the soft, rough sawn cedar for marks left by the nails of a desperate man. “Is it okay if I close this for a minute?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” came the response.
He pulled away the prop and swung the door shut. It was casually constructed of six wide vertical boards held together by two horizontals, one at the top and one at the bottom. Ray ran his hand below the uppermost board where he found an indentation on the surface of the door. Propping the door open again, he looked at the path of widely placed pieces of cracked stone that ran from the house to the sauna. About three feet from the door there was a deep indentation in the earth to the side of a large stone. He began to search the exterior of the sauna. Along the back wall was a jumble of scrap materials—metal and wood. Ray took particular interest in a rusty steel rod—three inches in diameter and six feet in length—on top of the pile.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said as Sue emerged from the interior. After showing her the mark in the door and the indentation in the ground, he walked her behind the sauna. “Can you pull any prints off that?”
Sue inspected the rod carefully. “Pitted, rusty surface like this, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, then help me. Let’s see if this fits.”
They carried the heavy rod to the front of the sauna, sliding the shaft under the crosspiece on the door and bracing it against the boulder in the ground. “Perfect fit. Now let’s see if it would have prevented Moarse from pushing his way out.” Ray pulled the brace away from the door. “Go in and see if you can move the door. I’ll tell you when to start pushing.”
“No way,” said Sue, a minute later, emerging from the building. “I couldn’t budge it.”
“This sort of changes things,” observed Ray. He kicked at the rod. “Do you think that little redhead could carry this?”
“What does it weigh?”
“Rough guess, 120, 130 pounds. Could you carry it? I suspect you’re much more fit than….”