Full Tilt

47

Pine Mills, Minnesota

Something’s going to break.

Klassen County deputy Cal Meckler held on to that belief. He had to, because this case had been troubling him ever since he’d first responded to the scene in Lost River.

The images of the victim-her hands rising from the earth-haunted him. But he didn’t tell his girlfriend that when she’d returned.

“Is it true, Cal? Was she buried alive? Did you see her?”

Some of the TV stations in the Twin Cities had called it one of the most gruesome crimes in Northern Minnesota. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had taken the lead with support from the FBI. They’d also pulled in more resources and detectives from Rennerton, Tall Wolf River and Haldersly.

It was a big investigation and Meckler had taken pride in how the BCA and FBI agents had commended him for his “solid, by-the-book protection of the scene.” But after that he was assigned to canvass designated rural areas with the other deputies.

Meckler wanted to do more to help.

But that was all BCA had asked of the county.

For the past few days he’d visited the homes of people who lived on the southwestern edge of Lost River State Forest. One by one he tried to find out if anyone had seen anything that could help-any strange vehicles, anything that seemed out of place or out of the ordinary.

He knew these people. They were the kind of people who’d drive into a snowstorm looking to help stranded travelers; they were the kind of people who turned off their cell phones in church. If you visited them, they walked you to your car when they said goodbye and insisted you take something home with you, a slice of homemade pie or at least the recipe.

That something so hideous had happened so near shook them.

When Meckler told them, some of the moms and dads shouted for their kids in the yard to stay closer to the house. “A murder in the woods, there? No kidding? Hope you catch the guy.” Others tried hard to be helpful, scratching their heads. “No, I didn’t see or hear anything, Cal, but if I think of something, I’ll let you know.” Most would look to the forest pensively in a way that told him that if they said they didn’t see anything, it was the truth.

And always, before he left, they’d shift the subject, almost in a respectful, funereal fashion. “How do you think the Vikes are going to do, Cal?” or “How’s your car running, there, Cal?”

That’s how it had gone.

He’d pretty much visited everybody on the list attached to his clipboard. The addresses and Meckler’s responses for them would be collected into a digital map the BCA analysts had created as part of the investigation. For now, he decided to go to Bishop’s General Store and Gas, get a coffee and say hi. Meckler hadn’t been by since the murder. He’d expected that Bishop’s would be on his list of places to canvass but was told that Rennerton detectives would canvass all businesses in the area.

But what do those guys know about the folks out here around Pine Mills? They don’t know how to talk to Fergus Tibble.

Ferg hadn’t been quite the same since a car he was working under five years ago slipped off the jack and nearly crushed him.

Sure, he could still do his job, and eighty-year-old Agnes Bishop had been letting him run the store since her husband Wilson died. But sometimes Ferg was slow remembering stuff and you had to prompt him.

Maybe those Rennerton guys did that. They were detectives, after all, Meckler thought after parking his car at the side of the store.

Transom bells jingled when he entered, taking in the smells of motor oil, coffee, butter tarts and fresh bread. Agnes let the local churches sell baked goods at the store.

The place looked empty. He glanced down the small aisles stocked with cereals, canned beans, soups and condiments. The floorboards creaked as he walked by the chip racks and the coolers filled with milk and soft drinks.

“Ferg!”

A door in a back room closed and a man appeared wiping his hands on a towel. He wore a khaki work shirt with “Ferg” on his name patch and dirty jeans. He had a salt-and-pepper stubble, and Meckler figured he was in his early fifties. He knew Ferg had no kids and lived alone.

“Hey there, Cal, haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Been busy, got any coffee left?”

“You bet.” Ferg went behind the counter to the coffeemaker and started pouring some into a take-out cup. “So, are they getting anywhere with this murder, Cal? Are they gonna find who did it?”

“They’re working on it.”

Ferg set the coffee on the counter. Meckler blew softly on the surface before sipping it.

“Got any sugar?’

Ferg reached into a box by the coffeemaker, tossed a couple of small packets on the counter.

“Two Rennerton cops talked to me yesterday, asked me if I saw or remembered anything unusual, or ‘out of character for the community’ was how they put it.”

“And?”

Ferg shook his head.

“I didn’t see anything. You know how it is. Same old, same old here, the same old regular customers, a few travelers and the bird-watchers come through.”

“So nothing at all?”

Meckler shook the sugar packets as Ferg shook his head.

“Not even a little thing that you might remember? Think hard, Ferg.”

Ferg scratched his whiskers.

“How little are we talking, Cal?”

“Small enough to make a memory. Don’t think it has to be some foaming-at-the-mouth crazy with a sign that says I’m a Killer, Ferg, but any little thing that you might remember that stands out. It could help.”

Ferg folded his arms, lowered his head and thought.

“Well come to think of it there was this one guy, out-of-state plate. He had a van, nice-looking van and he was a big tipper.”

“Okay, is that all?”

“Well, when I was filling him I heard a noise in the back.”

Meckler stared hard at Ferg.

“You heard a noise in the back? What kind of noise?”

“Kinda like a faint muffled moan. I asked the driver if he had a dog in the back and I tried to look inside through his side window.”

“What you see?”

“Nothing, the reflection blocked me.”

“What did the guy say?”

“The driver said his wife was in the back trying to sleep, so that was it. I was real quiet after that and he gave me a fifteen-buck tip. That’s why I remember.”

“Did he have any other passengers?”

“None that I could tell.”

“Did you tell the Rennerton cops about this?”

“Never thought of it until just now.”

Meckler pulled out his notebook, checked his watch.

“What do you remember about the driver-can you describe him?”

“He was a white guy, I’d say about forties, bald, had sunglasses on.”

“Wait. Did Rennerton review your security cameras?”

“They tried to, but they’re broken. I’ve been meaning to ask Mrs. Bishop if we can get a new system.”

Meckler rolled his eyes.

“Your system’s not broken, Ferg. I showed you the problem about two weeks ago. Let me get back there.”

Ferg stepped clear as Meckler came around the counter and looked at the lower shelf, exhaling in frustration at the monitor, which was a black screen.

“Ferg, I showed you how to fix this.”

Meckler squatted to the lower shelf before the DVR, which looked like a DVD player. He pulled the system out, and studied the web of wires and cables running between the DVR and the monitor, which recorded everything seen by the camera in the store and the camera at the pumps. He tightened a cable for the monitor’s input. The monitor came to life, sectioned, splitting the screen into two, one with live images of the store, the other with images of the pump.

“See?” Meckler said. “The monitor cable came loose.”

“Oh.”

“Darn it, Ferg.”

The image inside was fuzzy and the image outside was too dark.

“Ferg, you have to clean the inside camera lens. It’s way too dusty. You need to get up there-” Meckler nodded to the camera in the corner near the ceiling “-and clean it with a soft cloth.” Then Meckler pointed to the controls for the outside camera. “Look, I told you the light changes outside and you have to set the camera to the auto brightness setting, here, so it adjusts to the changing light conditions. You got it?”

“Yup. Auto bright for outside. Clean the lens inside and check the cable.”

“Good, now it still recorded, so let’s see if there’s anything here. Is that okay with you?”

“Oh, yes, anything to help.”

“Now we need to know what day that was, the day that you got your big tip from our van.”

“Well, I remember Molly dropped some bread just before he came so that had to be Monday, around noon or so.”

“I’ll enter the date and the approximate time, so the recording takes us to there.”

“Sounds good.”

Images of activity at the pumps appeared. Vehicles came and went with Ferg pumping gas, checking oil or cleaning windshields. But this time they were so bright they were difficult to distinguish, like staring into the sun at silhouettes.

“Wait, go back,” Ferg said. “There! That’s him! I recognize the shape.”

A van rolled up to the pumps, but it was all in shadow.

“I don’t think we’re going to get a plate out of that,” Meckler said.

“Let it play a bit, I think something happened after the van.”

Soon after, the distinct silhouette of a police car rolled up to the pumps in the opposite direction as the van was leaving.

“That’s you, Cal.”

“I’ll be darned.”

“And you got a dash-mounted camera, right?”

Meckler nodded.

“If you had it on,” Ferg said. “You would’ve got a better shot of the guy.”