Preying in Two Harbors Read online

  “Is he breathing?”

  “I think so, but he’s in a bad way. Can you hurry?”

  The operator asked him to stay with the injured man. “An ambulance should arrive in minutes.” She continued to talk, keeping him on the line.

  “I hear it coming.” The caller sounded relieved. “I can see its flashing lights.” He ended the call.

  *****

  Officer Dan Zemple of the Two Harbors Police Department made a note of the time. 9:46 p.m. He had started his Saturday shift at eight and was looking forward to getting off at eight Sunday morning. That meant he would have four days before having to start another stint of four twelves in a row. He liked the arrangement. It meant he could spend several days fishing the many rivers that flowed into Lake Superior. Right now, he had something else on his mind. A Ford F-150 pickup was parked near the breakwater of the harbor. Its motor was running but all its lights were turned off. He shined his flashlight through its side window.

  A large, bearded man lay slumped over the steering wheel, and he didn’t move when Officer Zemple rapped on the door. He opened it slowly, not wanting the person to fall out, and immediately picked up on the smell of alcohol. Dan reached across the man’s lap and turned off the ignition, and then, with a great deal of effort, rocked him back in the seat. An empty vodka bottle rattled to the floor. Still, the man didn’t rouse. Dan needed backup for this one and called for an ambulance. It arrived in minutes, and soon they had the intoxicated driver on his way to the hospital.

  Officer Zemple was in the process of filling out his report at the hospital while he waited for the results of a blood alcohol test being run on the man. A nurse handed him a copy of the printout, and he wasn’t surprised at the .270 reading. As he suspected, the rough-looking character was terribly inebriated and would be placed in detox. He watched as an orderly untied and removed a pair of heavy boots from the man’s feet and then wheeled him away to his assigned room.

  Dan was in possession of the man’s wallet, and he searched through it for an ID, finding the driver’s license. He copied the information onto the arrest form: James Peter O’Brian, height six-foot-six, weight 280 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. Dan was glad he hadn’t had to wrestle the man down. As he was finishing his paperwork and preparing to leave, the relative quiet was interrupted by a burst of activity. He sensed something serious was happening.

  *****

  The medical staff in the ER were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Before it came to a complete stop, Joannie, the nurse, and an orderly were at its back door, pushing a gurney. With an efficiency honed by practice, the unconscious patient was transferred from the ambulance and wheeled through the sliding doors into the confines of the hospital. Joannie automatically looked at the clock above the nurses station and saw it was 10:35 p.m. She was the head ER nurse working the Saturday night shift, and would have to record the time in the patient’s chart.

  Three people rushed by Officer Zemple, pushing a gurney with a seriously injured person lying on it. As they rushed by, he heard the nurse giving orders to the other attendants. “Cut his shirt and pants off,” she told the orderly in measured words. They disappeared behind the curtain of one of the ER rooms.

  “Jill, take his blood pressure. Mark, hook up the EKG electrodes,” Joannie said when the gurney was in room five. She pried the patient’s eyelids open so she could test his pupils. “Dilated and unresponsive to light,” she announced as the ER doctor pushed aside the curtain.

  Joannie stepped back from the bed and surveyed the bloody scene. The comatose young man was a mess. Not a square inch of his face was unmarked. Both eyes were swollen shut, his nose was bent off to one side, and his lips were cut and bleeding. His left ear hung by a thread of tissue, and teeth showed through a gash on his left cheek. She could hardly bear to look at him.

  “I think his trachea has suffered severe trauma, and I’m going to do a tracheotomy. I’m pretty sure we’ll have to hook him up to a respirator.” The doctor’s calm tone seemed out of place considering the obvious emergency. “Call an X-ray tech. I want a full set of pictures, and a CT scan. Start a Ringer’s Solution drip as soon as you have that IV in.” Joannie was in the process of inserting the needle in a vein in his arm.

  The doctor abruptly left when his pager beeped, and Joannie continued to administer care. He returned before she finished, looked at the monitors, and decided the patient had to be moved to X-ray. They wheeled him and all of the equipment attached to him to the elevator and took the two-floor trip downstairs, where they were met by the tech who was putting on her work smock.

  It took the three of them—the tech, the doctor, and Joannie—to get the pictures he wanted. Then they moved him to an adjoining room where the CT scanner was located. Another technician took over, and the scan was started. From her vantage point behind a glass window that was treated to block radiation, Joannie watched the monitor screen as section after section of the man’s body was displayed.

  She heard a thump each time his body moved a few inches so another image could be taken and watched as it progressively scanned toward his head. Though she was not a trained radiologist, the compound fracture of his right tibia, or shin bone, was easy to spot. As the scan moved upward, more gross damage became visible. His right hip was dislocated, and a piece of his ischium, the lower part of his pelvis, was broken off.

  Joannie couldn’t interpret damage to the soft tissue—that would take a trained eye—but when the patient’s ribs were scanned, she instantly recognized that three of them on his left side were not only broken but caved into his chest cavity. No doubt they damaged his lung, she thought. She almost turned away, but the machine had reached his head, and she stood mesmerized.

  What had been facial bones looked like a bowl of cornflakes. His nasal bones were mashed to one side of his face, and his zygomatic processes, cheek bones, were pushed so deeply into his eye sockets that she couldn’t make them out. His maxilla was caved into his mouth cavity, its attached teeth flattened against the roof of his mouth. She could see at least five fractures of his lower jaw, and above his ear, his temporal bone appeared to have been struck by a heavy object, maybe even a kick from a heavy boot. She could easily discern the point of the blow, because fine cracks radiated outward from its epicenter. Joannie shook her head.

  “He’s in big trouble, isn’t he?” The ER doc didn’t answer but nodded. Together, Joannie, the orderly, and the radiological tech maneuvered the patient’s bed back to his room in ER.

  “We’ve got to try to make an ID on him and contact his next of kin,” the doctor said. “Call the trauma center in Duluth and have them send a Life Flight copter to pick him up. He’s too fragile to survive the trip by ambulance. The way it is, it’ll take more time than we may have for them to get here.”

  Chapter Three

  Just as the medical staff in ER rushed past him with the critical patient, Officer Zemple’s pager went off, and he took the call.

  “Dan, we need you over here right away. We have a probable crime scene just off Paul Antonich Drive, near the soccer field. You’ll see our lights when you get here.” The officer ran to his squad car, started it, and turned on his flashing lights. In four minutes he was at the soccer field and was met by the other officer on duty.

  “What’s up, Bill?” he asked as soon as they were close enough to talk.

  “Not sure yet. The ambulance just left with a young man who’s in pretty bad shape. I don’t know what happened to him. We might have a hit and run, or we might have a beating. I don’t know what else it could be. He sure as heck didn’t do it to himself, that I know.”

  The area had already been cordoned off with crime scene tape, and the two officers began to assess the situation. “We’d better get the chief out here. Another set of eyes will be good, and I think this is going to end up being a serious case. We’ll let him g
ive the orders. That’s why he gets the big bucks.”

  Bill made the call, which was answered by the groggy police chief. He grumbled something into the phone but was at the scene in fifteen minutes. Two Harbors is a small town, barely three thousand residents, and it didn’t take long to get from one end of the community to the other.

  “What you got here?” he asked. Bill was tired of answering the same question, but he went through the same explanation he had given Dan.

  The chief, Sig Swanson, surveyed the scene. “Let’s get some spotlights set up. I don’t want to wait until morning to do a search of the area.” He punched a number into his phone and ordered the person on the other end to bring a generator and some lights so they could get started with their investigation.

  Dan shined his flashlight on the ground inside the taped perimeter. “Looks like something on the ground over there.” He pointed at an object in the grass. “I’m pretty sure it’s a baseball cap.”

  Sig shined his light where Dan was pointing. “Yeah, it is, but let’s wait to retrieve it until we have better lighting so we don’t trample evidence we can’t see.” They shined their flashlights around while they waited for the spotlights to arrive and be set up.

  Within fifteen minutes the lights came on, illuminating the grassy area enough that the investigators could move in for a closer look. Sig pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, carefully made his way to where the baseball cap lay on the sod, and picked it up. He mumbled to himself as he examined it, “Whoever wore this had one big head.” The adjustment strap was on the last notch. Then he turned it over and took note of the Harley symbol. In bold letters above the visor was embroidered the word Hammer. Sig dropped the hat in an evidence bag, signed and dated it, and wrote the time, 11:05 p.m.

  “Sig, take a look at this,” Bill called to his superior. “This will answer some questions.”

  Sig kept the evidence bag in his hand and walked over to where Dan and Bill were standing. When he got closer, he saw they were looking through a wallet.

  “We’ve got an ID on someone.” Dan held the wallet in one hand and his flashlight in the other. “It’s a Minnesota driver’s license for a Justin Peters, seventeen years old, five-foot-nine, one hundred fifty-five pounds. He lives only a few blocks from here, on Sixteenth Avenue.”

  Sig looked over Dan’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you what. We definitely have evidence of two people being here. The cap I picked up sure as heck wouldn’t fit this person. Take care of this evidence. I’m going to the hospital to find out what I can about the guy the EMTs picked up here.

  “Don’t be sloppy. We’re going to have to vouch for our methods in court. You can bet on that.” Sig left as his officers finished sweeping the area for clues. He would return in the daylight with fresh eyes to check one more time before the tape came down.

  At the hospital he stopped at the nurses station. “A person was brought in a couple of hours ago. I need to talk to somebody about the patient.” The nurse looked up.

  “Which one? Two came in at about the same time. One is in the drunk tank and the other is just coming back from the CT lab. He’s in room five, but he’ll be transferred to Duluth as soon as Life Flight gets here.” Sig told her he wasn’t interested in some drunk.

  “Did the victim have an ID on him when he was brought in?” Sig wanted to know. He strongly suspected he knew the answer, and the nurse shook her head. Sig checked his notes. “We think he is Justin Peters. He lives on Sixteenth. Can I use your phone book to check on a number? Maybe we can get somebody over here to tell us who he is.”

  There were four Peterses listed, but only one on Sixteenth Avenue. Sig dialed the number.

  “Hello,” an anxious woman answered.

  “Is this the Peters’ residence?” Sig began, but before he could continue, the woman blurted out, “Is he okay? Justin, I mean. He was supposed to be home two hours ago, and I haven’t been able to get him to answer his cell phone. Where is he?”

  For a minute Sig was speechless, then he asked, “Are you Justin’s mother?”

  “Yes, yes. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “Try to calm yourself, Mrs. Peters. Justin has had an accident, and he’s in the hospital emergency room. From the address on his license I see you live only a few blocks away. Will you come immediately?” Then Sig caught himself. “Please, Mrs. Peters, don’t speed or drive recklessly. You can’t do your son any good if you’re in an accident. Are you okay to drive, or do you want me to send someone for you?”

  Sig could hear her crying on the other end of the call. “I’ll be all right. It’ll take me only five minutes to get there.” He heard the call disconnect, and he hoped she wasn’t going to get in trouble in her haste to be with her son. Sig went outside to wait. Two minutes later, as he looked down the highway, he saw a set of headlights approach the road from the direction of Justin’s address. The car made a rolling stop and sped into the intersection. Luckily, no other traffic was on the road. Its driver didn’t signal but made a left turn into the ER parking lot, and a middle-aged woman sprang from the car.

  “Where is he. Where is Justin?” she demanded without breaking her stride. She rushed into the hospital with Sig close behind. He caught up with her and slowed her at the nurse’s desk.

  “This is Mrs. Peters,” he announced. “She would like to see her son in room five.” Sig didn’t wait for permission. He escorted the distraught woman to the victim’s bedside.

  “Oh, Justin, my poor child. What have they done to you?” she moaned as she touched his hair. There was no response. She turned to Sig. “Who did this,” she sobbed and then went back to stroking the boy’s hair.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Peters, but I need you to confirm that this is Justin. Can you make a positive identification?”

  Mrs. Peters looked at the boy again. “Yes, this is my son, Justin. It’s him.”

  Sig led her away from the bed as the doctor and nurse pulled back the curtain. The doctor demanded, “Who are you, and what are you doing back here? Who gave you permission?”

  Mrs. Peters was too upset to answer, but Sig spoke up. “The person on the bed is Justin Peters,” he said, not answering the doctor’s question. “This is his mother, and I wanted her to be able to see her son as quickly as we could. I’m sorry we didn’t follow proper protocol.” He wasn’t, but he knew this wasn’t the time to ruffle feathers. “Is it okay if she stays by his side?”

  The doctor was hardly listening as he viewed the monitors. The steady beeping of the equipment matched the peaks and valleys of the line display. Suddenly, the line became irregular, with periods of rapid peaks followed by a flat line. The peaks appeared more and more random and decreased in amplitude. Sig put his arm around Mrs. Peters’ shoulders as they heard the doctor bark orders and saw the nurse disappear to get help. In an instant, four people were huddled over the boy, working feverishly to restore a normal heartbeat. The monitor’s signal became a monotone buzz, and the doctor stepped back from the bed.

  “Time of death, eleven forty-eight.” He hung his head and left Justin’s bedside as he stripped off his gloves, turned to Mrs. Peters, and placed his hand on her shoulder as Sig gently removed his own arm. “I’m so very sorry. We tried everything to save your son, but sometimes the damage is just too great. I’m sorry.”

  Joannie stepped forward and put her hand on Mrs. Peters’ arm. “Is there anyone you want me to call for you? A member of the clergy, a relative, perhaps a friend?” Mrs. Peters shook her head.

  “I knew someday this could happen,” the bereaved mother said, her voice monotone.

  Sig gently asked, “”Why do you say that, Mrs. Peters?” She shook her head again as though not really believing her boy had died.

  “My son was gay, and over the years he suffered so much abuse. He was mocked in school, pushed about outside
of the building, humiliated every time he turned around, it seemed. I just knew someday the harassment would escalate to something more violent.” She buried her face in her hands

  Joannie asked if she wanted to be alone with her son’s body, and Mrs. Peters mumbled that she would like that.

  Chapter Four

  When his phone rang the next morning, Officer Zemple had a bad feeling that his long weekend off was about to become overtime. “Dan, this is Sig. I’m afraid I’m going to need your help out here this morning. Meet me in my office as soon as you can. I want the two of us to go to the crime scene and look around in the daylight. We could have missed something last night.”

  Dan mumbled into the phone that he’d be right there and cursed out loud when the chief cut off the call. Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in Sig’s office, sipping a cup of coffee. He needed the caffeine.

  “I hope we can find something else,” the chief groused. “All we have right now is a cap, and that won’t be much help. What did you think of the word above its visor? Mean anything to you?”

  Dan looked surprised. “I didn’t see the cap. You bagged it and took it as evidence.”

  Sig shook his head. “Could have sworn I showed it to you. Must have been Bill. Anyway, it had the word Hammer stitched on it.”

  “Holy shit!” Sig looked up, shocked at Dan’s words. “I brought a guy into the ER last night. Picked him up down by the breakwater. He had Hammer tattooed on each arm. Great big guy. I thought I was lucky he was passed out. Now I know why.”

  Sig had his hat on and was already to the door. Dan caught up with him. “Ride with me. We’ve got to get to him before he gets away.”

  “We don’t have to rush,” Dan reminded him. “He’s in the drunk tank for forty-eight hours. We’ve got time.”