Fourteen

The waning heat of the corpse had been sufficient to cause it to melt down into the old snow so that it could not be easily seen. The crows saw it, however. Two boys were out with their .410 shotguns, looking for rabbits. They had tried to sneak up on the crows but that is always impossible. When the crows flew away, the boys went over to see what the birds had been after. They expected to find a dead dog.

The Wayne County Sheriffs department was first on the scene, but then a lot of other people showed up, including the state police, the coroner's office and the Ecorse police. What the .44 Magnum had started, the activity of the crows had aggravated. It was no longer possible, for instance, to tell what color the eyes might have been. And there were many white stains on the corpse.

It was a patrolman from the Ecorse police who tramped around and suddenly reached down into the snow. He came up with a revolver. Part of the grip was broken off.

“Hey, look at this,” he yelled. The gun was passed from hand to hand before a state cop angrily interceded, too late to save fingerprint evidence.

Frank Zeppanuk saw the gun when it came into the forensics lab. He immediately called Mulheisen.

“Must have seemed like a good idea to shoot up the identifying characteristics that way,” Frank told Mulheisen when the latter arrived. “It almost worked. I haven't gotten very far on my matchups, but I'm willing to bet you a box of cigars that this guy was the character who was in the tub with Mrs. Clippert. There were two types of blood found, you know, and one of them was Mrs. Clippert's. The fragment from the pistol handle fits perfectly and the hair matches the samples from the tub. The blood match will be done shortly.”

“We still don't have a name, though,” Mulheisen said. “Homicide is checking the gun registration.”

Frank pushed up his dark rimmed glasses with a forefinger. “You notice that the gun is an H & R .32.”

“Yes,” Mulheisen said, “and I suppose the ballistics match the slugs found in Mrs. Clippert.”

“The best match was with the slug that came out of the mattress,” Frank said, “but any one of them will do. They all came from this gun.”

“Bully for you,” Mulheisen said. He gave Frank a cigar and left.

The pistol was registered to Mr. Emil Earle. Mulheisen drove out to Mr. Earle's residence in Redford in the company of McClain and Joe Greene. Mr. Earle was getting ready to leave for his job on the swing shift at Pontiac.

“Yes,” Earle said, “I own an H & R .32. Or did. It was stole last fall.”

“Why didn't you report its loss?” Joe Greene said.

“I did! And the gun was registered, too. I kept it in my cabin, up north. It was stole last fall along with a buncha other stuff. Some bastard broke in and damn near cleaned the whole joint out.”

Mr. Earle showed Mulheisen a map of the area. It was a map printed up by a development corporation showing the layout of numbered lots around a peculiar-looking lake, which consisted of a ten-acre central body out of which a dozen or more perfectly straight “legs” had been dredged. It resembled a child's drawing of the sun.

“Yeah, they went in there with a dragline,” confirmed Mr. Earle. “It used to be called Paton's Pond, but the corporation changed the name to Black Beaver Lake. Maybe it ain't like building on a real, natural lake, but the land was cheap and it's right off the freeway. You can get there in a coupla hours. The wife and kids love it and the lake is well stocked with bass. I figure it's an investment, you know?”

The lots were laid out along the legs, or channels, of the lake. Mulheisen could just picture it: an instant holiday village of prefabricated cabins and cottages jammed together like a rusticated version of the suburbs from which these vacationers were fleeing. There would be a thousand kids running along the dusty streets of the community all summer. Teen-aged boys and girls would roam the streets at dusk and drive to neighboring towns at night for movies and beer parties. The wives would lie in the shade and talk to one another, just as they had done in Redford, or Harper Woods, or Royal Oak. The husbands would do a bit of desultory fishing and a lot of beer drinking while they watched the Tigers on television. They professed to want to get out of the city: but they insisted on bringing the city with them.

The officers got a list of other stolen items and the name of the county sheriff there and left. Sheriff Tate was not in. Deputy Barrett was. He told Mulheisen over the phone that he had sent a complete list of goods stolen in several break-ins that had occurred last fall around Black Beaver Lake.

“We figure these things'll be fenced in your larger cities,” Deputy Barrett said, “so we sent the lists to Flint, Detroit, Grand Rapids and so forth. One thing you have to realize, of course, is that these people all have insurance. They'll report a lot of things that maybe weren't stolen.”

Within an hour, Mulheisen and McClain had several teams on the streets going from hock shop to junk shop to known fences, looking for the goods. Mulheisen's crew was from the Ninth Precinct, a couple of bulldogs named Jensen and Field.

The weather was gray, damp, cold and sloppy. The worst kind of Detroit weather. The streets were filled with Christmas shoppers and shoplifters, pickpockets, molesters, and guys who exposed themselves on parking-ramp staircases. Traffic was mercilessly heavy and there were multiple-car accidents. The hallways of the precincts were crowded with shoplifters and purse snatchers, waiting for interrogation and adding their greasy head stains to the walls. The drunk tanks filled early.

Mulheisen thought of his blue-haired mother lolling in balmy Miami. Soon he would receive the first of the post cards from the dog tracks, the jai alai courts, and the house cards from the Fontainebleau. He also thought of Lou Spencer. There was no time to see her now.