would probably take fifteen minutes or so to get to the lake from his house.
Although the tracks to the open water had been noted by an ice fisherman, based on the absence of ice fishing shanties, I could see that there wasnât much interest in this side of the lake from sportsmen, probably because of the unpredictable currents that carried the warm spring-fed water from this area westward, causing invisible and deadly fault lines of thin ice to finger across the surface.
However, snowmobilers apparently werenât scared off the ice along the other shoreline because, in the morning sun, I could make out tracks stretching across it. I imagined that if you started at one end of the lake and let loose you could hit the sledâs top speed before reaching the far shore. I wasnât certain how fast that would be, but with the advances in the last few years, some of the newer sleds had engines as powerful as compact cars and could probably reach speeds of 110â120 mph. I figured if you could top out at those speeds anywhere, you could do it here.
The only set of snowmobile tracks leading toward the open water were the Ski-Doo 800 XL tracks the FBI Lab had been able to identify.
Somewhat tentatively, I stepped onto the frozen lake.
As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, Iâd had an almost pathological fear of falling through the ice. The idea of dropping into the terrifyingly cold water was disturbing enough, but the thought of coming up beneath the ice and not being able to find the place youâd fallen through was even worseâthat frantic and desperate search while your air gives out horrified me back then and, honestly, still did.
After Iâd taken a few steps onto the ice, the morning stillness broke open with the harsh grind of the blades at the sawmill across the lake as they powered through logs to get them ready to be shipped to the paper mills in Neenah and Menasha. At first the sound gave me a start as I thought it might have been the ice cracking underfoot, but then I realized it was just the sawmill Donnie worked at, the one I was planning to visit later in the day.
Iâd been told there were no footprints near the break in the ice when Ellory first arrived at the scene yesterday, but now I counted eight different sets of boot imprints that led toward it. All of them stopped ten to fifteen meters from the water, now writhing in the escalating wind.
Some of the impressions were undoubtably left by the law enforcement officers and first responders, but I wouldnât have been surprised if some came from curious civilians stopping by last night to have a peek at the site after all the officers left.
I studied them closely, photographed them with my phone. We would need to confirm it, but one set of boot prints appeared to match the ones found outside the laundry room door at the Pickron home.
The high-pitched whirr of a snowmobile on the other side of the lake caught my attention, but then it was overwhelmed by the sharp whine of a blade at the sawmill ripping through another log.
Jake joined me. âHow could this have been an accident, Pat? Anyone going under here wouldâve had to be aiming for that stretch of open water. Iâm thinking suicide.â
It certainly appeared that he was right, but I said, âI think itâs a little premature to go there, Jake.â
âI donât think this case is as complex as you seem to want to make it.â The friction in his voice was no doubt sharpened by our past and how infrequently we agreed about the best approach to solving the cases we worked. Two investigations in particular stuck in my mind. In each, his cocksure insistence on the accuracy of his profile had detoured the investigation, wasting precious time. Three people were dead now who might have been saved had local law enforcement broadened their investigative strategies and not given two serial killers more time to abduct those final victims.
To top things
Although the tracks to the open water had been noted by an ice fisherman, based on the absence of ice fishing shanties, I could see that there wasnât much interest in this side of the lake from sportsmen, probably because of the unpredictable currents that carried the warm spring-fed water from this area westward, causing invisible and deadly fault lines of thin ice to finger across the surface.
However, snowmobilers apparently werenât scared off the ice along the other shoreline because, in the morning sun, I could make out tracks stretching across it. I imagined that if you started at one end of the lake and let loose you could hit the sledâs top speed before reaching the far shore. I wasnât certain how fast that would be, but with the advances in the last few years, some of the newer sleds had engines as powerful as compact cars and could probably reach speeds of 110â120 mph. I figured if you could top out at those speeds anywhere, you could do it here.
The only set of snowmobile tracks leading toward the open water were the Ski-Doo 800 XL tracks the FBI Lab had been able to identify.
Somewhat tentatively, I stepped onto the frozen lake.
As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, Iâd had an almost pathological fear of falling through the ice. The idea of dropping into the terrifyingly cold water was disturbing enough, but the thought of coming up beneath the ice and not being able to find the place youâd fallen through was even worseâthat frantic and desperate search while your air gives out horrified me back then and, honestly, still did.
After Iâd taken a few steps onto the ice, the morning stillness broke open with the harsh grind of the blades at the sawmill across the lake as they powered through logs to get them ready to be shipped to the paper mills in Neenah and Menasha. At first the sound gave me a start as I thought it might have been the ice cracking underfoot, but then I realized it was just the sawmill Donnie worked at, the one I was planning to visit later in the day.
Iâd been told there were no footprints near the break in the ice when Ellory first arrived at the scene yesterday, but now I counted eight different sets of boot imprints that led toward it. All of them stopped ten to fifteen meters from the water, now writhing in the escalating wind.
Some of the impressions were undoubtably left by the law enforcement officers and first responders, but I wouldnât have been surprised if some came from curious civilians stopping by last night to have a peek at the site after all the officers left.
I studied them closely, photographed them with my phone. We would need to confirm it, but one set of boot prints appeared to match the ones found outside the laundry room door at the Pickron home.
The high-pitched whirr of a snowmobile on the other side of the lake caught my attention, but then it was overwhelmed by the sharp whine of a blade at the sawmill ripping through another log.
Jake joined me. âHow could this have been an accident, Pat? Anyone going under here wouldâve had to be aiming for that stretch of open water. Iâm thinking suicide.â
It certainly appeared that he was right, but I said, âI think itâs a little premature to go there, Jake.â
âI donât think this case is as complex as you seem to want to make it.â The friction in his voice was no doubt sharpened by our past and how infrequently we agreed about the best approach to solving the cases we worked. Two investigations in particular stuck in my mind. In each, his cocksure insistence on the accuracy of his profile had detoured the investigation, wasting precious time. Three people were dead now who might have been saved had local law enforcement broadened their investigative strategies and not given two serial killers more time to abduct those final victims.
To top things
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