Authors: Rick Mofina
40
Saint Paul, Minnesota
T
he state’s main crime lab was housed in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s headquarters, a three-story brick-and-glass building on Maryland Avenue. Displayed in the atrium was a large steel-and-stained-glass sculpture known as “Exquisite Corpse.”
Staci Anderson considered the eye-catching artwork a beautiful metaphor for uniting the crime-solving work done in the complex. She drew heavily on its inspiration today as she worked, for she was feeling the pressure of this new case on all fronts.
It had been twenty-four hours since her crime scene team had returned from the grisly homicide in Lost River State Forest. Today she’d learned that it had been given priority status. The BCA state lab also functioned as one of the FBI’s regional mitochondrial DNA labs and Anderson was told there was a “federal push” to expedite the case, given its ritualistic nature.
The lab was already grappling with a backlog, but the team set aside all other ongoing work to undertake analysis of the evidence they’d collected at Lost River.
Anderson’s husband, an engineering contractor, was not pleased when she’d called him to say she’d miss dinner and would be late getting home. Again.
“It means you have to take Chloe to the mall tonight to get a birthday present for her friend’s party tomorrow,” she told him.
“Me? But I’m meeting the guys to watch the game at Stan’s tonight.”
“I’m sorry. See if Taylor can sit when you get back from the mall, then catch up with the guys.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. You’re putting in a lot of OT these days.”
It was true.
But when she measured her personal guilt against the agony of the victims and their families, it was easy to concentrate on her job. She was good at it and was often called upon to coordinate investigations.
Anderson held a master’s degree in microbiology from the University of Illinois and degrees in science and chemistry from the University of Wisconsin. She was one of the section’s strongest scientists when it came to presenting court testimony and was being considered for a senior supervisory post.
Today she’d been working steadily at her station on the hair sample taken from the victim’s scalp, which included the root. With the first level, microscopic examination, she was studying shaft characteristics, scale patterns, color, length and many other aspects before extracting the DNA, which could conclusively prove identity.
DNA analysis involved many time-consuming steps.
Extraction usually took a day. Then there was quantitation and amplification, usually another day. They were followed by an instrument run that could take half a day. The procedure then called for a rigorous cover-to-cover review of her work by another section scientist, which could take up to a week. Once that was completed the results could be submitted for comparison to state and federal databases like the FBI’s CODIS databank, a variety of state and national missing persons networks, and new systems holding the DNA of victims of major crimes.
After working for several hours amid the white countertops and neat array of equipment, Anderson collected her tablet and left her station. She needed to check the status of work under way by scientists in other sections who were examining items from Lost River.
Glancing at her screen, Anderson continually insured that the team had taken care with the proper collection and disposition of the evidence. Each piece had been stored separately in proper containers, marked with its position, location, description and the name of the analyst responsible for it. Anderson checked that each item had been photographed before it was removed from the scene.
Janice Foley, expert in biological fluids, was handling what they believed to be blood. She’d scraped some dried traces. Where she couldn’t scrape, she’d moistened a gauze pad with distilled water. Foley was also analyzing a discarded fast-food take-out cup and straw for traces of saliva. She didn’t find much else at the scene in the way of substances.
“We didn’t find any indication of urine, feces or vomit,” Foley said.
“Yes, we’ve noted that.”
“I’ve got no semen traces near the body or at the scene.”
“Okay.” Anderson made a note on her tablet. “We’ll send a reminder to the ME in Ramsey to take a vaginal swab while he’s conducting the autopsy. I know they know, but it’s our job. Keep me posted, Janice.”
Anderson moved on to Heather Wick, who was responsible for trace evidence. Wick was studying the fibers, fabric and additional hair she’d collected at the scene near the impressions.
“I’ve got some hemp, some cotton, nylon polyester, chips of treated wood.” Wick was bent over her microscope. “And I’m looking at thread counts and fiber twists before I can be conclusive.”
“When will you have that additional hair ready for me?”
“Shouldn’t be much longer, then you can start extracting.”
“Sounds good, Heather, thanks.”
Travis Shaw was one of the country’s best analysts when it came to tracks and footprints. Tire impressions filled his large computer monitor when Anderson approached him for an update. Head nodding to the music flowing through his earbuds, he was the youngest scientist on the team. Anderson tapped his shoulder and he tugged at his plugs, music ticking from them after they’d fallen to his shoulders.
“What about the tripod theory, Trav?”
“I agree one hundred percent. The impressions and the positioning with the buried body are consistent with recording, photographs, video or both.”
“But?”
“As we’ve said, this is bird-watching country. A birder could’ve set up there. Still, soil conditions match what we’ve got on the foot and tire impressions. Take a look.”
Shaw clicked on an array of enlarged tire tracks in the dirt.
“I got great images and casts of everything. I’m still analyzing the tire impressions, but we’ve ruled out police or park vehicles. I’m confident, given the conditions of the soil that captured the impressions and the soil that entombed the victim, these impressions are from our suspect vehicle. You know, weather wear, timing, all concern the same time period.”
“Good.”
“As with my earlier analysis, again, given soil depth, estimated vehicle weight and tread, we’re looking for a heavy-duty pickup, utility or a van, as the suspect’s vehicle. I’ve still got work to do on damage, wear, then I’ll start going through the directories to confirm tire type and model.”
“Okay.”
Shaw clicked on images of foot and shoe impressions. “Like with the tires, I ruled out all other potential shoe impressions—our witnesses, the first responding officers.”
“Good.”
“Got some awesome ones here. The soil was very moldable—it worked to our advantage.”
“I see that.”
“The victim was buried without shoes, so these are her foot impressions. Now here—” he clicked “—it looks like a male size-twelve boot. I’m still working on it. And here, another set of smaller impressions from footwear from a female. Again, in both cases, I still have to study characteristic properties, tread wear and look for shoe type and model.”
“What do you think?”
“My preliminary take? I think there were three people at this crime scene. Two women and one man.”
“And if we only have one victim that means two people connected to this woman’s murder are still at large, and I don’t know if anyone’s stated the obvious.”
“What’s that?”
“This is one of the most horrific scenes we’ve ever had.”
41
Ramsey, Minnesota
T
he unidentified victim’s naked corpse lay on a stainless-steel tray in one of the autopsy rooms of the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Ramsey.
Female. White. Five feet four inches. One hundred twenty pounds. Age between twenty-four and twenty-eight.
Her open, lifeless eyes stared up into the brilliant LED exam light.
What dreams did they hold? Did she have a good life?
Pathologist Dr. Garry Weaver wondered before he and Monica Ozmek, who was assisting, resumed their work.
Weaver and Ozmek had conducted many autopsies over the years.
They’d grown accustomed to the coolness of the autopsy room with its smells of ammonia and formaldehyde. They knew the egg-like odor of organs, their meaty shades of red and pink. They were familiar with the
pop
sound when the calvarium was removed, opening the skull to reveal the brain and dura. Weaver made the usual primary Y incision across the chest as they worked their way through the external and internal examination of the body.
They’d photographed it, weighed it, measured it and x-rayed it.
Their job was to determine the manner, cause, time and classification of death, as well as positively confirm the victim’s identification. Weaver was confident about manner and cause, but identification would be a challenge.
“The dermis of the victim’s fingertips has been disfigured, likely due to being subjected to a caustic substance,” he said.
“Yes, I noted that when we were bagging the hands after we’d removed the body from the ground.”
“This tattoo may help.”
Weaver’s rubber-gloved right hand pointed a finger at the left upper neck and the tattoo of a small heart with wings.
“It should.”
“Did you submit the dental chart to the databases?”
“Yes.”
“And we also have a shot if Anderson’s team down in Saint Paul gets a hit through DNA—Monica? Are you all right?”
He saw that, behind her plastic shield, her face had saddened.
“Yes, let’s continue.”
Weaver hesitated before resuming.
Bearing in mind that his assistant seemed to be struggling with her composure, he maintained his clinical, professional distance as he found the facts to support his findings. The victim had been buried and as a result she had suffocated. There was thorax compression, but death by asphyxiation was a result of occlusion of the respiratory tract.
For a moment, before they’d concluded, Weaver considered the sensations of the victim’s last moments of being buried alive. She would have felt the crushing pressure of the soil. The pain of it pressing on her, on her organs, would have numbed her, but she would’ve still been able to think as she slowly became entombed. The soil would’ve grown warm around her face. Reflexively, she would’ve clenched her mouth shut, but eventually she’d have been forced to inhale soil, which, in combination with the earth encasing her, led to death.
He was at his computer writing his report after they had finished when Ozmek came into his office and sat in the chair near him.
She contemplated the frosty can of diet soda from the vending machine that she held in her hands.
Weaver stopped.
“Want to talk about it?”
She stared deep into the framed painting of the sun setting on the Caribbean Sea that Weaver had on the wall next to his degrees.
“I don’t know, Garry.”
“What don’t you know?”
“We go way back, don’t we?”
“Sure, way back to before the ME’s office was at the Mercy and the morgue was in the basement, remember that?”
“Sure.” She took a hit of her soda and swallowed. “But the thing is, we’ve seen it all—the fires, the car wrecks, stabbings, shootings, drownings, hypothermia, suicides, just about everything you can think of.”
“Right.”
“But this. I mean she was buried alive. We both know what she would’ve gone through.”
“Yes, but it would’ve been short, a minute or two, if that’s any comfort.”
“It isn’t. What I cannot comprehend is why someone would take her life with such vile, calculating malevolence.”
Weaver nodded.
“This one just pierced me. It just—” She shook her head.
Weaver patted her hand.
“Let’s move on getting our findings to BCA, submit everything to every possible database, so we can help catch her killer.”
42
Chicago
A
s the jetliner approached O’Hare International Airport, Kate took in Chicago’s sprawl and skyline, knowing that time was ticking down on the inevitable.
Sooner or later Vanessa would be identified as one of Nelson’s victims, but Kate couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
She had to find him.
During her flight from JFK, she’d reviewed key aspects of the story. It took some convincing, but Chuck, who was a hard-core old-school reporter, had approved the trip. He’d agreed that if they struck out on her hunch about Nelson’s links to Chicago, Denver and the Alberta abduction, they struck out.
“That’s the way it goes. With this story we have to roll the dice,” he’d said, behind his steepled fingers. “We’ll put in the legwork and see where this leads. We’re not going to risk having a competitor beat us. You’re sure you’re okay to go?”
“I’m sure, Chuck. I need to do this.”
“All right. I’ll alert our Chicago bureau. Call on them if you need anything, like a shooter if you find something.”
“I will.”
“I’ll give you a couple of days. Good luck.”
Before she left headquarters she’d put in more research with the news library, then she went to Davidson. Viper had not given her a way to contact him. She needed Hugh to reach out to him through his sources.
“I will, Kate. But you know that he might not respond.”
Now, as the jet’s flaps groaned, Kate turned her thoughts from the window to her files, rereading the document dealing with the Chicago burial site for Krasimira Zurrn.
Who was she?
Kate concentrated on the newest information she’d uncovered: A death notice that appeared in the
Chicago Tribune
in 1998.
Krasimira Anna Zurrn, 53 years old, died Oct. 12, 1998. Beloved mother of Sorin Zurrn. Visitation on Tuesday 10:00 a.m. until Mass 11:00 a.m. at Glorious Martyrs and Saints Church, Belmont. Interment Service 2:00 p.m. at New Jenny Park Cemetery, 9200 Kimball.
After landing Kate made calls while waiting in line for her rental car. She could’ve had someone from the bureau pick her up, but she needed to do this on her own.
The funeral home that had handled Zurrn’s service was no longer in business. Kate’s calls to the Glorious Martyrs and Saints Church for help reaching the dead woman’s son, Sorin Zurrn, had not been returned. But Kate’s earlier search of archived public records had yielded a nugget of information: In 1998, Krasimira Zurrn lived at 6168 Craddick Street. Kate entered the address in the GPS of her rented Nissan Altima before leaving O’Hare.
Merging with traffic on the Kennedy Expressway, Kate experienced the familiar rush of self-doubt that usually plagued her whenever she embarked on a difficult assignment.
This time her stomach tensed.
Oh, God, what am I doing here? This is likely a waste of time, my way of avoiding the truth—that Vanessa is dead in Rampart or died twenty years ago in the river, and that somehow someone found her necklace and it made its way to New York and... Stop it! Just stop it and work!
She took the Kimball Avenue exit.
Craddick Street was on the Northwest Side of Chicago. It fell between the areas of Avondale and Belmont Gardens in a neighborhood known as New Jenny Park, which had a large Polish and Eastern European population. According to the park’s history, the name arose from the phonetic sound of Nee-WOE-Jenny, thought to be the Polish word for
peace
.
Kate agreed with her research—this was a solid blue-collar community. Meat shops, bakeries, grocery stores and cafés sprinkled the business district. The streets were lined with modest bungalows on small lots, a playground here and there.
She found the Zurrn house at the fringe of the neighborhood, where freshly painted homes with neat lawns stood next to those with overgrown yards and boarded-up windows laced with graffiti.
Kate shut off the car.
The motor ticked down as she studied the compact wood-frame house, sneaking a few quick pictures with her phone. The small front yard was overtaken with weeds. A couple of panels of the vinyl siding had warped and bent out from the walls. Shingles curled or were missing from the roof, and the chimney had gaps where the mortar had eroded and blown away.
The place stood as a tired headstone to hope, she thought as she knocked on the door. Flyers overwhelmed the mailbox. No one responded. A dog barked far off in the distance. A siren faded. Kate knocked again and pressed her ear to the door.
Nothing.
She took out a business card, jotted a request for the residents to call her cell phone ASAP, wedged it in the frame, turned and tapped her notebook to her leg. Of course different people had lived in the house over the years, but she was hopeful someone might remember Krasimira Zurrn and her son, Sorin.
Bright patches of blue and yellow flashed from the backyard of the house across the street. Kate would try the neighbors.
The house across the street had a lush manicured lawn, a thriving flower garden. The brick bungalow, with its gleaming windows, gave off a pleasant soapy smell as Kate walked along the driveway.
“Hello!” she called as she approached the back.
A man and woman were on their knees working in the small jungle that was their vegetable garden. The man wore a ball cap. The woman wore a large straw hat. They were gathering berries into a plastic bowl.
“Can I help you?” The man got to his feet, eyeing her carefully.
“I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead.” Kate fished her Newslead photo ID from her bag and showed it to him.
“You come here from New York?”
“Yes, I’m researching the history of Krasimira and Sorin Zurrn, who used to live across the street. I was wondering if I could talk to you about them.”
“Krasimira Zurrn?” the old man repeated. “Why come from New York?”
“Well, we’re looking at family history for a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“A crime story.”
The woman stood and spoke a long stream in what Kate thought was Polish to the man, who debated with her in Polish before answering Kate.
“Krasimira Zurrn died a long time ago,” he said.
“I know. Did you live here then? Did you know her?”
“I remember that one.” His eyes glinted.
The woman spoke in Polish again and the old man waved her off.
“Yes. This Zurrn woman, she had problems.”
“What kind of problems?” Kate took out her notebook.
“Are you going to write my name down in your story?”
“I don’t know your name, unless you want to give it to me?”
“I don’t care. Stan Popek, eighty-three, retired welder. My wife is Magda.”
“I don’t want my name in the paper.” Magda Popek waved her hand.
“Okay,” Kate said. “Just Stan. How do you spell Popek?”
“P-o-p-e-k.”
“Got it.”
“This Zurrn—” Popek nodded at the house “—she was a nurse, but then she took drugs. She had men coming and going. That’s how she paid her rent. This was very bad for the boy.”
“What can you tell me about Sorin, her son?”
“He was strange.”
“What’d you mean?”
“He always played by himself. He had no friends. He had a bad limp. He was a sad boy. Always running after butterflies and working on electrical things in his basement.”
“Did you ever talk to him?”
“A little bit. I used to give him old tools because I felt sorry for him. He was pretty smart about computers. Once he showed me in their garage how he built one using parts from others. It worked really well. I think he was very intelligent.”
“Do you know where Sorin lives now?”
Popek stuck out his bottom lip, shook his head, then turned to his wife and said something in Polish before returning to Kate.
“No, it’s been too long.”
“Do you know if the people living in the Zurrn place now might know?”
“Nobody’s there now. The landlord’s trying to rent it. Lots of people have lived there since the Zurrns.”
“Do you know the landlord?”
“Tabor something.”
“Lipinski,” Magda Popek said. “Tabor Lipinski, he’s rented it for years.”
“Do you have number for him?”
“No,” Magda said. “He’s a nasty, greedy man.”
Kate made some notes.
“Did Sorin Zurrn have any brothers, sisters or any other relatives?”
Popek shook his head.
“You say he had no friends, not even one?”
“Never saw him with other kids.”
“Did he belong to Scouts or any clubs? Did he work after school?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“What school would he have gone to? What high school?”
“Thornwood High School. It’s not too far. I can draw you a map.”
Kate asked a few more questions before thanking Popek and exchanging contact information.
“You know, he had a mean side,” Popek said.
“How so?”
“He never went to his mother’s funeral.”
“Did you go?”
“Yes, we both did. She was our neighbor. But there were less than ten people and Sorin, who was a grown man, was not one of them.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s worse than sad. His mother committed suicide and they say he never showed up when they buried her. That’s cold-blooded.”