Code 61 - Donald Harstad [11]
“Always, Carl. You know me.” He picked up an incident report sheet from his desk and handed it to me. “Ring any bells?”
I scanned the sheet, and the driver's license stapled to it. The deceased was a white male, twenty-four years of age, named Randy Baumhagen. His driver's license indicated he was from Freiberg, Iowa, but I didn't know him. His color photo showed a fairly good-looking young man in a frilled white shirt with black trim. The standard uniform worn by employees of the General Beauregard, the gaming boat moored in Freiberg.
“Works on the boat,” I said.
“Worked. You know him?”
“Nope, just can tell from the shirt.” I grinned at Harry. A small “gotcha,” but it was all part of the game.
“You must be a detective,” said Harry.
“I work at it,” I said lightly. “Any reason I really should know him?”
Harry glanced at Byng. “He thinks so.”
I looked over at the Freiberg officer, and raised an eyebrow.
“Remember the car that I told you got scratched? The boyfriend of Alicia from last night?”
“You're kidding,” I said, without much conviction.
“Nope. Same kid.” Byng looked almost sad.
“Well, hell,” I said. “That's a shame.”
“It gets worse,” said Harry, in his garrulous way. “You're gonna love it.”
“Oh?” I don't know where Harry got the impression I was as ghoulish as he was. “I don't know, Harry. I'm a sensitive kind of guy.”
He motioned to his computer monitor, on a side stand near the window. “Take a look at these.”
I walked over, and watched as he pulled up a series of electronic photos that showed young Baumhagen. The first two were of him floating; facedown, in a pretty shallow area, judging from the vegetation. “Pretty close to shore?”
“Just above Frenchman's Landing,” said Harry. “Water there's about three-feet deep. Looks like he went right off a floating dock.”
“He drown?” I asked as Harry brought up a different set of images.
“Christ,” said Harry, “I hope not. Look here.”
On the screen was a close-up of the right side of Baumhagen's head. It was just about completely caved in, like he'd fallen from a height and gone into rocks headfirst. That kind of completely. Never happen from a floating dock. He couldn't have fallen more than five feet.
“That ought to have done it,” I said. “I didn't see any rocks in the other photos. Murder?”
“You bet,” said Harry. “See, I told you you'd love it. Wait, though, it gets better than this, even.”
I didn't see how that was going to be possible, but I've learned to trust what Harry says over the years.
The next series loaded. This time Baumhagen was lying on his back. His neck was a mess.
“Whoa,” I said. “You don't see that every day. Is that what got him?”
“Not sure,” said Harry, “but we don't think so. He's in Milwaukee right now, getting autopsied. Great bunch, some of the same people who worked the Dahmer case. Top of the fuckin' line, Carl. Lemme tell ya.”
“Name dropper.”
“No, really. Anyway, they tell me that they think the cause of death was the blow to the head, and that the neck was done post mortem.”
The hole in the neck was pretty large. “Somebody try to remove the head? Or are the turtles just hungrier this year?”
“The forensics people are just guessing, but they say that it was done with a sharp object, but not a blade. More rounded, like a sharpened pencil, you know? Only probably steel. One of the docs is a farm kid, and he said that it reminded him of the sort of wound you might get from something like a fencing pliers.” Harry looked up from the screen. “You know?”
I knew. A fencing pliers was kind of a big gripper or snipper, really, with a long, rounded point on one side of the head, so you could slip it under one of the big staples used to hold wire onto a wooden fence post. Heave on the handle, and you pulled the staple out.
Harry went on. “No damage at all to the cervical vertebrae. Most of the major muscle groups are intact. Just a big fuckin' hole, Carl.”
“This is a little way from usual, isn't it?”
“You