“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….”

Sue squatted, wrapped her hands around the metal, and lifted it a foot. “With difficulty,” she admitted. “It would have been hard for me to move it here and get it in place. Getting it back would have been even harder. We’re looking at a homicide rather than an accidental death, aren’t we? And that 911 call suggests….”

“I’m not ready to even speculate on that yet,” said Ray. He turned around and glanced around at the house, the garage, their own two vehicles. “So now this whole place is a crime scene. Do you want to start in the house or the garage?”

“The house,” answered Sue quickly. “I’ll be able to see what’s changed since the last time I was in there.”

An hour later they emerged, Sue holding the door as Ray gingerly carried a Macintosh computer in gloved hands. Sue, holding the keyboard and mouse in a clear plastic bag, opened the back of her Jeep and made room for the machine and its appliances between the cases containing her investigative equipment.

“That’s an unexpected find,” said Ray.

“He didn’t have the computer more than a few weeks, but it was already starting to disappear in the clutter. Any open space in that dump of a house would be like a vacuum. Looks like he made room on that table to look at the contents of the hard drive, then didn’t use it again. I shudder to think how long a thorough search of that place will take.”

“Let’s look in the garage. Then we’ll go back to the office and develop a plan for the next steps.”

Sue followed him along the gravel drive, weeds encroaching on the uneven surface. Struggling a bit with the heavy garage door on an overhead track, Ray pushed it open.

“Plates are three years out of date,” said Sue, slipping sideways through the debris.

“Why bother keeping up to date if you don’t have an operator’s permit?”

“There’s that. Too bad the people who write the laws are clueless about the folks that break them.” She bent and looked at the right rear tire. “I bet these bald Eagles match my plaster casts.” She paused for a moment. “One more thing to process. We’ve got the computer and the probable vehicle. Too bad we’re a day late and a perp short.”