“What are you going to do?” Sandy asked Floyd.
“I’ve got to sleep. I slept three hours last night. Every noise woke me up.”
“Sleep easy,” Sandy said. “I’ll drive by every chance I get. I’ll tell the dispatcher to remind the guys on night shift too.”
The dispatcher paged Floyd and he picked up the line on the nearest desk. After a short conversation he hung up. “That was Kathy Tucker’s neighbor. She saw Pam’s cruiser car at Kathy’s house this morning and she was wondering if there was some problem.”
“Don’t you love life in a small town?” Pam said with a laugh.
“She was genuinely concerned. She assumed there was a problem because of the guy who hangs around Kathy’s house a lot and the neighbor thinks that he’s some sort of felon or sex offender on work release.”
“Her friend, Walt, and Kathy are in AA together. He is a little grizzled,” Pam said. “I could see that someone might think that he was a criminal. He got really nervous when I showed up and left immediately.”
“See if you can get his full name, Pam, and run a background check. I doubt that he was around that many years ago, but who knows what slime you find when you start turning rocks?”
CHAPTER 21
Mary was asleep on the couch when Floyd got home. The sound of the dog scurrying around Floyd’s feet stirred her to look up. “You look tired,” she said as he hung his key ring on a peg.
“And so do you, Mrs. Jungers. I hope you got more sleep than I did last night.”
“Are you kidding? You tell me to lock myself in my car and call the dispatcher. Then you send deputies with sirens blaring to see if there’s a burglar in the house. You ask if I got any sleep?”
“Do you have any plans for supper?” Floyd asked.
“I thought a big spender like you would take his girl out for supper after she slaved away all day at the flower shop.” Mary slipped her shoes on and stretched. “I’m not terribly hungry, but I could eat a bowl of soup and a burger.”
Floyd took a deep breath. “I’d be happy with a sandwich at home and a hot shower.”
“Luckily, you can get the sandwich at Gamper’s and a shower at home after I’ve been fed.” Mary plucked the keys from the peg and threw them to Floyd. “This way you can tell me about all the crimes you solved today, making the county safe for all the good citizens.”
“I can tell you about all the crimes I solved on the walk to the car,” Floyd said as he locked the door behind them. “There’s no need to drive all the way to Moose Lake.”
“Humor me. The computers were down all day and everyone was on edge. The air conditioning quit mid-afternoon and the flowers started to wilt. It hasn’t been one of my better days.”
“Let me try a question out on you,” Floyd said as he turned onto the county road. “Why would a parent want to kill one of their adult children’s friends?”
“Is this a hypothetical question, or are we solving a crime?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well,” Mary paused and thought, “if the friend had done something really bad to my child, I would be really mad and I could see some parents taking that too far. I read about a father who killed a boy who sexually assaulted his daughter. There have been revenge killings like people who’ve killed their dead child’s drug dealer after an overdose. I suppose people find all kinds of reasons.”
“Rape, murder, drug overdose,” Floyd said. “Those are all really high-level felonies. Those are the kinds of things that would take a parent to the boiling point. Throw in someone who’s a little unstable or intoxicated and I could see someone boiling over. The problem with that is, those are crimes of passion and we routinely see terribly violent outbursts with a dead body that’s pretty messed up and a crime scene painted in blood.
“In Aaron Roberts’ case, we have a crime scene in a picture where the damage is controlled and almost ritualistic. Barb Dupre said the body appeared to have been tortured. I agree with her. Aaron was stripped to his underwear, tied to a tree, and then someone made shallow cuts on his chest.”
“That’s more information than I needed, dear.”
“Sorry. I was talking to myself.”
“But I was listening. Let’s stick with philosophy until after I eat.”
“So,” Floyd said, “if this wasn’t a revenge killing by one of the parents, who would want to hurt Aaron like that? And, why would someone take a picture of him after they’d done it? It had to be Ken Solstad, because the picture was in his camera.”
“If it was a stranger, they might’ve wanted something Aaron had. I hear about people getting tortured and killed over drugs. Was he into drugs?”
“It doesn’t sound like it,” Floyd said. A flicker of Laurie Lone Eagle’s comments teased his conscious mind, but wouldn’t come forward. “The whole group was more into alcohol than drugs and they’d spent the entire evening drinking. The one person who’s still alive and who was with him all that evening was so drunk she can’t remember what happened.”
“I guess my mind doesn’t run in those kind of tracks. I can’t come up with a motive.”
“Let me try a different question on you.”
“You know,” Mary interrupted, “if I’d realized this was the price I was going to pay for getting supper, I might’ve been able to find a pot pie in my freezer.”
“Too late, I’ve got you trapped for another ten miles unless you want to walk home. Anyway, you’ve just killed Aaron Roberts and it’s the middle of December. I’m a tidy killer, and I decide that I can’t just leave his body lying around. I drive his car to the rest area by Sandstone and leave it there. What do I do with the body?”
“I’d bury it or dump it in a swamp.”
“The ground is frozen, so I can’t bury it. I can leave it in a swamp and hope it sinks in when spring comes, but there’s a risk that some snowmobile rider will come across it before then.”
“Well,” Mary thought for a second and said, “I guess I’d start a big fire and throw the body in so there’s nothing left but ashes.”
“That’s interesting. But an open fire doesn’t totally destroy a corpse. Someone would find bone fragments or teeth and call the cops.”
“Smear honey all over the body and feed it to the bears.”
“The bears are hibernating in December.”
“Here’s Gamper’s. Don’t miss the turn.”
“I take it that you’re out of ideas?”
“I’m hungry. I’m cranky because my blood sugar is crashing, and you’re shooting down all my ideas. It’s time to eat.”
“I enjoy bouncing ideas off you,” Floyd said as he opened Gamper’s front door.
“Well, I’m glad one of us is having a good time.”
Floyd waved to two highway patrol officers who were sitting in a booth near the windows. Greg, the owner, met them with menus.
“Greg, how’s your golf game?” Floyd asked.
“It sucks,” Greg, a barrel-chested man with a quick smile and hearty handshake replied. “I lost ten bucks to Father Mike yesterday. It got too hot and I petered out on the last five holes. Did you guys want to sit with the troopers?”
Mary pointed at the back dining room. “If I have to talk shop on the drive, I refuse to eat with two more cops. God only knows what grisly stories they might have.”
A young couple in a corner booth craned their heads around the edge and quickly pulled their heads back after identifying Floyd. Mary noticed the move and when they got seated in the dining room she asked, “I suppose you noticed the couple in the corner. Have you arrested them at some point?”
Floyd picked up the menu and spoke without looking up. “Yup, I busted them a couple weeks ago for possession of marijuana.”