The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [3]
Roelke waited until the parade had disappeared, and took one last look around. The police tape looked obscene in this peaceful place of greens and browns. He pounded one fist against his leg, and turned away.
Back at the parking lot, Skeet was handling the scene log. “Have you searched the car?” Roelke asked.
“Not yet,” Skeet said. “Traffic control, including a couple of reporters.”
“Piranhas,” Roelke muttered. He didn’t hate the press. He did hate reporters who thought it was OK to, in this case, broadcast a shot of Bonnie’s car before the cops had a chance to reach the family. “I’ll ask Bandacek to handle them.”
After siccing Marge on the press, Roelke searched the Caddy. “Simon and Bonnie Sabatola,” he read from the vehicle registration. The form listed a Town of Eagle address.
What he did not find was Bonnie Sabatola’s wallet. “That’s odd.”
“What?” Skeet asked.
“She said she’d leave her wallet on top of the left front tire. It isn’t there. It’s not in the car, either.”
Skeet leaned against the oak tree, folding his arms. “The woman was about to blow her brains out. I don’t suppose she was thinking clearly.”
“Clearly enough that she didn’t want anyone but us to find her.” Roelke turned away and scanned the gravel near the car. Nothing. He moved out in widening circles, moving the tall grasses bordering the lot with his foot. Still nothing. Finally he spotted an unnatural patch of brown along the trail, almost invisible against the leaf litter. “Got it.”
“Hers?” Skeet called. He hadn’t bothered to move from the shade.
Roelke flipped the wallet open. The coin pocket and bill slot were empty. Three of the four little credit card-sized sleeves were empty, too. The fourth held a Wisconsin driver’s license. Roelke stared at Bonnie Sabatola’s picture. Her face was thin and elegant; her chestnut hair obviously styled with care. Her expression seemed to hold something more than the blind stare he usually found in drivers’ license pictures. Birth date, July 21, 1954. She had killed herself one week after her twenty-eighth birthday.
Bonnie Sabatola had been the same age he was.
Why did you do this? he asked her silently. What made you lose all hope?
The ME waddled from the woods. “That her license?”
“Yeah.” Roelke handed it over.
The other man scrutinized it for a moment, then handed it back. “No doubt on the ID. Approximate time of death is consistent with the call she made to your office. I’ll go through the motions, but the cause of death was obviously a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The DNR ranger on the scene stopped a Chevy that had slowed to turn into the lot, and spoke through the window to the driver. Skeet straightened, dusting off his trousers. “Listen, do you mind if I catch a ride back to the station? I can still make class on time. You’ll handle this, right?”
Handle it: the death notification, the paperwork. “I’ll handle it,” Roelke said. “But something isn’t right.”
“The wallet? Listen, she just tossed it on her way down the trail. It doesn’t mean anything.” Skeet waved a hand in a vague gesture of dismissal.
“The steps were off, too.”
Skeet sighed. “What?” He had ginger hair, and a pale complexion that betrayed his impatience.
“The steps,” Roelke repeated. “She said she’d be three hundred paces up the trail. I found her at one hundred and eighty-six.”
“So what? You were running. No way her strides were as long as yours. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Skeet headed toward the ME’s sedan. “Hey, Sid! Give me a ride?”
Roelke watched them go. Skeet was a family man who still found time to take college classes in Waukesha. That might well put him on top when the next full-time, permanent job opened up. The police department in Eagle, Wisconsin, was tiny. Roelke was committed to the department, and to the village he had come to care so much about. But opportunities for advancement were few and far between.
Then he stared back at the driver’s license in his hand, at Bonnie Sabatola’s enigmatic face, and his ambitions and worries disappeared.