As we passed the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest on the way to Woodborough, Jake gave me his thoughts about the information contained in the police reports.
“Looks like we have a single EAMD,” he said, referring to the four locations every murder includes-the site of the initial encounter between the killer and the victim, the attack (which might include abduction), the murder itself, and the dump site.
When all four occur in a single location, it makes it harder to develop a geoprofile since you have only one site to work with. On the other hand, when a body is found in a home like this, evidence is preserved, making the site an ideal crime scene from a forensic standpoint.
Jake spoke for a few more minutes about the reasons why husbands shoot their families. Textbook, fill-in-the-blanks profiling that might or might not be pertinent to this case. I did my best to give him my attention, keeping my points of contention to myself.
“From my experience,” he said, “with a crime like this he won’t have spent too much time with the bodies.”
Jake had been in the Bureau eight years, a second career after working as a forensic psychologist in the Midwest: Rockford, Madison, a short stay in Cincinnati. With a master’s in abnormal psychology from Cornell, experience consulting with law enforcement, counseling rape victims, and an impressive curriculum vitae, the Bureau was glad to have him. Now he was based out of Quantico, Virginia, at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. But he was a man who tended to jump to conclusions too soon based on gut instincts and “experience” rather than relying solely on the evidence, and I avoided working with him whenever I could-but he’d requested the Reiser case, Ralph had approved it, and here we were in Wisconsin together.
In the conversational lull following Jake’s words, I called Deputy Ellory, the officer who’d contacted the FBI Lab to see if they could identify the snowmobile tracks. The whole situation struck me as incongruous. Multiple homicides in a rural area and a possible suicide, and a deputy rather than the sheriff was taking the lead on this? It didn’t make sense.
Ellory picked up. A quick greeting, then I asked, “What made you think to call the Bureau?”
“I figured they’d have the fastest ways to look up the model of the sled. You know, like when they have tire track databases or something.” He sounded young enough to still be in high school. “How they do all that stuff on CSI.”
Honestly, it was a good idea. Most agents I’ve worked with wouldn’t even have thought of it. “Okay. Tell me about the house.”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t there too long. Your director told us to leave. Lizzie, we found upstairs. Mrs. Pickron-Ardis-she was on the steps. She was shot in the back. Probably with a. 30-06.”
There was no mention in the police reports about the murder weapon being found. “Did you find cartridge casings?”
“No. That’s just what it looked like.”
“What it looked like?”
“The bullet hole, the entry wound. I hunt. You get to know gunshot wounds pretty good.”
He would have to know GSWs incredibly well to distinguish between calibers on an entry wound-I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Exit wounds yes, but Jake waved a couple fingers to get my attention. “Ask him about Donnie.”
I said to Ellory, “Have you found Donnie Pickron or recovered his body?”
“No.”
If the stretch of water was wide enough, we might have a chance at getting divers in to find him. “Any divers up there who can search the area?”
“Far as I know there’s just one guy around here who dives-Denny Jacobson. But he’s down in Florida this month. Visiting relatives, I think. Parents moved there last year, you know. But Donnie’s body is obviously down in that lake somewhere.”
We didn’t have nearly enough facts yet to know what was obvious and what was not, but I decided that pointing that out might not get us off on the right foot. “I was told there were no boot or shoe impressions, just the Ski-Doo tracks.”
“That’s right.”
“Has it snowed recently? Is there any chance footprints might have been covered or obscured?”
“No.”
“Are you a snowmobiler?”
“Everyone around here is.”
Growing up in Wisconsin I’d ridden my share of snowmobiles, but I hadn’t been on a sled in over fifteen years. Putting the question of the sled’s weight and the thickness of the ice aside for the moment, I said, “I understand this will depend on the speed, but how far do you think a Ski-Doo 800 XL would go without someone squeezing the throttle?”
“Let’s see… the trail along the lakeshore is pretty steep. I’d say he couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles per hour. Forty tops. That would mean…” He paused, obviously evaluating how that would relate to my question. “I guess it would cruise twenty, thirty yards maybe. But it went under a hundred yards from shore.”
Tonight when we arrived it would be too dark to get a good look at the lake, at least not with respect to its orientation to the surrounding terrain. We could check it out in the morning.
“We’ll be at the house in about twenty-five minutes. Does it work for you to meet us at the Pickrons’?”
“You betcha.”
End call.
The full moon, the first of the year, had risen, and from where it hung low in the sky it looked impossibly round and bright, like an unblinking orange eye staring at us from the heavens. Its light reflected boldly off the snow, lending a surreal feeling to the evening, a spectral glow whispering across the fields.
Jake broke the brief silence. “So, they haven’t found him yet?”
“Not yet. No.”
He typed a few notes into his iPad. I hopped off Highway 77 and began winding down the county roads that led to the Pickron residence just outside of Woodborough.