Just Intuition (17 page)

She took the picks and emulated his technique, Zimmerman verbally firing instructions at her. "Cookies?" she queried. "She sent cookies." He didn
't so much as twitch. "Cinnamon buns?" Her stomach grumbled with the sweet buttery possibility. A wily eyebrow raised and he began to whistle again, his devious manner beginning to grate on her. "Frigging butter tarts?" His whistling skipped a few beats and he chuckled. "Are you gonna hog them all for yourself?" This made him chortle loudly and she wrinkled her nose at him, working on the lock until Striker's amused face appeared beside them.

"Can I have my picks back?" He tilted his head in silent criticism of Erin
's dubious technique. Finished a walk through the surrounding grounds, prickly thistles still clung to Striker's pant legs and he brushed a dried leaf from his sleeve. "I should have known better than to leave them in Z-man's car."

Erin shot an accusatory look at her smugly annoying whistler and backed away from the door. She handed over the picks. Striker bent, inserted the pick, and opened the door with a flourish a moment later.

"Bert's dad is a locksmith," Zimmerman said defensively. "I would have—"

"You did NOT just call me Bert!" Striker jabbed him in the ribs, feigning anger. Erin snorted through her nose trying to stifle a laugh. How could she have imagined that she was the only one who thought that Striker and Jenssen looked like Bert and Ernie?

"I could have done it if my hands didn't sweat." Zimmerman shoved them into his pockets with a facetious pout.

"Don
't think so, Zee." Striker said confidently, furry dark brows crowding down over his eyes in amusement. It occurred to Erin that he actually liked the nickname. He was hamming it up.

"Does that make you Kermit, Frog-man?" Erin directed this last at Zimmerman, who replaced his
pout with open-mouthed faux outrage.

"Oh, Miss Piggy, you
're so cheeky," he quipped back. He looked through the open door and his playfulness vanished. "Are we going to stand around here all afternoon or are we going to do this?"

She marched past them and began with the kitchen. There was
always something in the kitchen. Zimmerman deposited a copy of the search warrant onto the counter and made for the bedroom. That was also likely to yield results. Striker busied himself taking photos and making notes while Erin sat at the table and rifled through Gunther's mail. The old man led a simple life with not many bills to pay: Power, electric, water. She opened each, and stacked them to the side.

The cable company was canceling service if the bill wasn
't paid, the school wanted money for outstanding fees but offered to reduce the amount if Gunther filled out another form requesting financial assistance. Dated two months ago, the form was still blank. She was temporarily blinded by the brilliant flash from Striker's DSLR camera aimed in her direction.

"Whoa! I don
't want to be in the picture." She bolted out of the chair. He shrugged and continued shooting. "Give a girl a little warning would you?" She took the last handful of mail and ducked out of camera range to finish.

There were three unopened envelopes from the First Minnesota Bank and she slid her pen down the flaps to tear them open. The monthly statements were what she expected: A pension deposit at the beginning of each month, followed by withdrawals for bills, gasoline and groceries. As she perused the itemized list, she noticed one oddity. Near the middle of the month, there was an extra deposit. Gunther was getting supplemental income.
Income to the tune of $650 a month. She made sure that Striker photographed the documents before sliding them into an evidence bag and marking the label.

When she finished, she joined Zimmerman and watched him from the master bedroom doorway before she entered. He neatly stacked piles of clothing back into dresser drawers, and was he still whistling? An opened and empty coffee can
lay on the quilted bedcover.

"You are not obligated to tidy up," she reminded him, rapping her knuckles on the inside wall. "We don
't work for Molly Maid."

"It
's a habit," he confessed. "My mom taught me to clean up after myself." He stopped stacking as she moved from wall to floor, tapping her knuckles against wood. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for false walls, hidden floor hatches," she said. The skeptical
expression never left his face so she explained. "This house was built a long time ago, there is a lot of history here and people who did not always obey the law needed places to hide stuff." He gave a pessimistic shrug and continued searching and repacking drawers. She finished her knocking and proceeded to the other rooms. Striker ignored her, as if her actions were completely normal.

She had just finished Lily
's room, the only one in the house that looked like it was inhabited by a young girl, when Zimmerman loomed in the doorway, Striker right behind him.

"There are clothes all over the floor," Erin told them. "It looks like she packed in a hurry but I can
't find anything to suggest where they've gone."

Zimmerman waved an opened envelope at her, and she crowded close to view the contents with him. There was no address or mailing label on it, indicating that it had been hand delivered. "We
've been wondering why Derek has been hanging around out here," he said, his voice tense. "How is he going to explain this check he wrote to Gunther?" He pulled out a personal check, showed it to them, and Striker photographed it.

"Perhaps he bought something from the old man?" Striker didn
't sound like he would even buy this story himself. "Maybe it's a loan, or…" His voice trailed off and he lowered his eyes. "You're right, I like the guy, but this looks bad."

"Is the check for $650?" Erin asked. Striker
's head popped up from behind the camera's viewfinder and she didn't need to see it to know that it was. Zimmerman nodded warily and she held up the evidence bag with the bank statements.

"Derek paid the same amount to Gunther on the same date for the last four months, and probably longer. These are all the statements I could find." She waved the plastic bag like a flag. Her phone chirped and she handed the bag to Zimmerman, who stowed it with the check. She turned away from both men to check her text message. It was her girlfriend again.

Allie: R u there?

Erin: Got your caps lock fixed?

Allie: Just did an update. Did you find Gunther yet?

Erin: Not at house.
Finishing search now.

Allie: No, he
's there.

Erin: House empty. Shed empty.

Allie: Check again. I feel he's there. Pls.

Erin: OK. Will keep looking. Headache better?

Allie: Ice helped. Called in sick anyways. Going to watch old movies today.

Erin: LOL. Such luxury. Take it easy.

Ignoring inquisitive stares from the men, Erin turned the volume off and tucked the iPhone back into her pocket. It was unheard of for Allie to take a day off work, and if she was skipping her daily workout, she must really be having a bad day.

"Something doesn
't sit right," she announced, as if it were her idea. "I think we should take another look around the property before we call this done." She headed out the back door, leaving Zimmerman and Striker to exchange a look.

Striker lifted a shoulder noncommittally. "Chicks," he said, and followed her. "I
'll take the bush side by the dock. I think there might be a few thistles down there I haven't got on my pants yet."

"Okay," replied Zimmerman. "I hate to say it but look for old wells, root cellars, you know what I
'm talking about. Erin is headed past the driveway to the north end so I'll take this area by the house." Striker tromped off through the brush and Zimmerman pulled a broom from the back porch, using the handle to probe through the shrubbery growing wild against the house. He walked all the way around but there was no hidden access to the foundation. Erin did the same with a stick over by the shed.

She flattened the grass near the side of the wooden structure, knelt down and directed her flashlight into the dark spaces underneath. As far as she could see, it appeared to be sitting on a collection of cinderblocks. The moist dark earth had been home to many small critters over the years but none were in residence now and grass had grown thickly all around the building. She could not see through to the other side and poked her stick at gaps in the cinderblocks. At the side furthest the door, she found no gaps at all. The foundation was continuously solid. Why had the builder had expended more effort here? To take more weight?
To conceal something?

She
laid on her belly in the grass but weeds obscured her view ands she poked into the darkness, with the stick. A spirited grasshopper whizzed into her shirt collar and she jumped to her feet, trying to dislodge it with body contortions. It scrabbled down her back and lodged somewhere above her belt line, twitching its legs. Untucking her shirt, she vigorously flapped the fabric until the hopper escaped out the bottom and turned to see Zimmerman regarding her with interest.

"Rain dance?" he asked, poker-faced.

"Grasshopper dance," she deadpanned in response.

"Did you save it for me?" Zimmerman looked genuinely interested. "Merlin would be highly appreciative."

"Yes, I have a whole pocketful of grasshoppers," she retorted sarcastically. "Right alongside the half dozen mice I caught for my cat." Did she say my cat? Now she was taking ownership of that ornery feline!

"You seem fascinat
ed by this end of the shed," he said. "Let's have another look inside." This time, he did the wall thumping and Erin stomped her way across the floor. It reverberated with a dull thud until she reached the far side, when the sound became hollow.

Erin
's iPhone silently vibrated in her pocket and she covertly viewed the text message on her screen.

Allie: Old man thinks enemy is here.
Afraid to die.

Erin texted back: Maybe he hears me.

She quickly stuffed the phone into her pocket when Zimmerman joined her. He stomped one heavy boot onto the floorboards and a fine plume of dust escaped the cracks of a loose one. Then he leaned over and tugged a couple of soft cotton threads trapped in the wedge.

"These aren
't even dirty yet," he stated. "They're fresh." He handed them to Erin who looked more closely. She twisted the light blue threads between her fingers.

"Lily was wearing a light blue cotton nightgown," Erin blurted. "Get something to pry this up."

"How do you know what she was wearing?"

Allie told me. She dreamt it. My girlfriend is psychic. Or something
. The words sounded ridiculous in her head and would sound more implausible if Erin said them out loud, even to someone she knew as well as Z-man. She kept her mouth shut and grabbed the largest flat screwdriver from the tool bench, jamming it between the cracks in the boards. A two-foot square hatch opened upward and Zimmerman wrenched it backward on its hinges to reveal a narrow ladder leading downward to a dank underground cellar. In the scant beam of her flashlight, she strained to see the hard-packed dirt floor in the cinderblock-lined room. Plastic wrappers and crushed beer cans littered the floor.

Erin placed one boot on the top rung of the ladder. "I
'm smaller," she explained. "I'll go." He held the trap door up and she shinnied down. The first two ladder rungs squeaked angrily with her weight. The hidey hole, as Gina called it, was about six feet deep, and six rungs to the bottom but Erin only took the first three. Halfway down, she leapt to the ground and shone her light into the face of Gunther Schmidt, lying supine on an old army-style cot.

The smell below ground was foul, a mixture of vomit and urine. She spotted a bare incandescent bulb affixed to the ceiling and yellow light illuminated the room when she yanked the chain. The scene before her was awash in a sickly twenty-five watt glow. The additional light revealed blankets tossed carelessly aside on a second cot in the
hidey hole. A small TV, now switched off, perched on the edge of an overturned plastic milk crate, its electrical wire snaking upward through floorboards.

"He
's here!" Erin shouted. There was scuffling above and she hoped Zimmerman was not going to try to get through that hole. It would be truly claustrophobic down here with him and a corpse. Erin peered down at Gunther, partly covered with a moth eaten blanket, his face a waxy pallor. She detected no obvious signs of life but reflexively placed two fingers against the carotid artery at the old man's throat. She sprang back, startled by the presence of a faint pulse.

"Call an ambulance!" she shouted. Lying on the floor with head and shoulders squeezed down through the hatch, Zimmerman let go of his flashlight. It swung crazily on its wrist strap, creating deranged shadows around her as he hiked himself back up through the hole.

"Is he alive?" His muffled voice came through the ceiling.

"Unconscious!" she called out. "Heart rate around thirty beats per minute!" She listened while he repeated the information over his radio.

"How's his breathing?" Zimmerman called back.