Finally the door opened again, and Sabotny appeared with Moarse. With difficulty, Sabotny guided the staggering figure toward the sauna. A small door opened and Sabotny hauled Moarse up the couple of steps. The door closed for just a moment, then Sabotny was back out. He switched on a flashlight and appeared to be looking through a heap of building materials at the side of the garage, eventually moving behind the building and out of view. She could hear things being tossed about. When he returned, he was dragging a large, heavy piece of metal, which he jammed it into the ground, wedging it against the outside of the door. He loaded the firebox again, then went back to the house.

Mackenzie watched him repeat this process of walking to the house, presumably to watch TV, and emerging to reload the stove with dread. After an hour, he lifted away the metal jam from the sauna. He lugged it back behind the garage where she heard it clang against other metal. When he opened the sauna door, he stood for a long moment, moving his flashlight beam around the interior. Then he kicked the door shut and went back in the house.

For another agonizing 10 minutes, she waited while he paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living area. Finally, the door opened and he backed out, dragging a large garbage bag. Leaving it on the stoop, he opened the hatch on the Range Rover, and then went back for the bag. He lifted it in both arms, threw it into the SUV, got in the driver’s seat, backed out onto the road, and drove slowly away.

Mackenzie held her position until the sound of his V8 stopped echoing across the countryside. She crept forward, moving along the perimeter of the yard, trying to stay hidden in the brush. She crawled near the rear of the sauna, then moved along the side, stopping and listening, every few steps. Finally, she reached the door and she pulled it open. A wave of searing heat exploded out, but she entered and pulled the door closed behind her. She switched on her light. Moarse was sprawled, naked, on the floor.

Pulling off a glove, she felt for a pulse in his neck, his skin hot and dry. Then she killed the light and fled the building, retreating across the yard, the road, back up the hill and into the woods, where she stood, heart pounding, inhaling the cold night air. Her first impulse was to keep going, run, but she straightened up, working to control her breathing and quiet her emotions.

She walked back, slowly but openly, and headed to the garage. A quick flash of her light revealed an old Jeep CJ parked in the center of several piles of debris. She slipped back outside, pulled the door shut, and reaching into an inner pocket, removed a phantom cell phone. She tore open its plastic bag as she returned to the sauna. With gloved hands she switched it on and activated the 911 calling program. Then she dropped the phone behind a stack of split logs at the side of the building. Thirty minutes later, she rolled past the scene, driving at a moderate speed, observing the emergency vehicles clustered in the drive.

38

Ray was revisiting a nightmare, a recurring dream he’d had since college. He was in a large lecture hall, the air close and heavy. A stack of blue books occupied the upper right-hand corner of his desk. A Xerox copy of the exam questions was directly in front of him. He slowly scanned the items, searching for one that he could answer. How did he get into this situation? He couldn’t remember signing up for the course. It was his roommate who’d dragged him off to the exam, and now he was struggling to find a topic that he could write on that would save him from certain failure.

He integrated the sound of his cell phone into the dream, wondering why anyone would bring a phone with them to an exam. Eventually, the metallic chirp pulled him toward consciousness. He fumbled with the device, finally pulling the screen into focus, the smiling face of Sue Lawrence looking at him. He moved his finger along the bar at the bottom of the screen to take the call.

“Ray, sorry to wake you, but you’ll want to know about this.”

“What’s happening?” he asked, struggling to come to consciousness.

“Jim Moarse, the man we saw this afternoon, the one having a dispute with the former girlfriend.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead…what happened? Did the redhead come back and blow him away?”

“Are you awake?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Your response, it seems a bit unusual.”

“So what happened?”

“A phantom 911 cell call, a GPS enabled phone. It came in after 1 a.m. Brett responded. No one answered the door. He checked the house and then went out into the yard. He noticed smoke coming from the sauna, looked into that building, found a body, and determined that the man was dead. Central called me. I’m now at the scene, and the deceased is Jim Moarse. The medical examiner is on his way, and I thought you’d want to be here as well. That said, there is no reason why you need to come. It could all wait till morning.”

“I’m on my way. Do you need anything? How about coffee?

“Coffee would be great. See you when you get here.”

Dr. Dyskin’s sagging Lincoln Town Car, one of the last survivors of Detroit’s nouveau-Jurassic period, blocked the end of the driveway. Ray pulled onto the shoulder and walked past Dyskin’s car and the three vehicles in front of it, an EMT unit and two patrol cars. He joined the group standing near the open door of the sauna, the area lit by the headlights of the police cars and several flashlights. He handed Sue an insulated coffee mug and looked in. Dr. Dyskin was on the floor examining the body. The figure sprawled on the floor, face down and naked. Brett and Sue were illuminating the scene for Dyskin with their flashlights.

“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.”