way to the house she hadn’t seen neighbors anywhere close.
Sean motioned toward a pile of wood by the living room fireplace. “I’ll get a fire going just in case.” Then he caught himself. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m all right.”
“You want some juice or something?”
No sense fighting it. You’re not gonna fall asleep anyway.
“How about some coffee?”
“At this time of night?”
“I expect to be up for a while,” she said simply.
41
Alternating ice baths-fifteen minutes in ice-cube-filled water, then a soak in the other bucket for ten, in water as hot as I could stand.
Repeat.
Again.
The chilled water takes the swelling down, the heat rushes blood flow to the area, helping circulation.
It’s one of the best ways I’ve found to treat a sprain, but admittedly it isn’t exactly nirvana in the moment you switch your foot from the steaming water to the ice bath.
I’d been at it for nearly an hour, my computer on my lap, working on the case as I soaked my ankle.
We knew Donnie drove his Jeep to work on Thursday, left at noon with the sawmill’s truck, but where was it now? If he’d returned to the house and then left on the snowmobile, what did he do with the truck?
Obviously, if he was abducted, his captors could have hidden it somewhere, but I was a bit surprised it was still missing.
It hadn’t been overcast yesterday afternoon or this morning, so now I checked the Defense Department’s Routine Orbital Satellite Database, or ROSD, to see if I could get a glimpse of anyone driving to or from the Pickron home around the time of the crimes.
Since this is a remote, sparsely populated region, I wasn’t surprised to find gaps in the footage between satellite passes, but it was informative to note that one of those coincided exactly with the time someone would have needed to access the house immediately preceding the crime, then again ten minutes later when they might have exited the scene.
The killers knew the precise times the Defense Department’s satellites would and would not be passing overhead.
I had footage from 1:54 to 1:58, could even see the cracks appear in the glass from the gunshots.
Shots fired through the living room window. Why?
I considered the time: 1:54 p.m… the date: January 8… the orientation of the window to the sun… the longitude and latitu Hang on.
Going back to the satellite images, I saw that Yes.
Oh yes.
At that time of day, with the position of the house, the sun, the satellite, there was no glare on the house’s northern exposure living room window.
The interior house lights were on when the police arrived, remember? Only the study’s lights were off.
I don’t believe in coincidences.
No, I don’t.
The cracks in the glass obscured the view of the house’s interior; however, it wasn’t a person outside in the marsh that might have peered in and seen the killers at work, it was a satellite.
I zoomed in on the image of the window. Looking at the house, first without the cracks in the glass, then with them, I realized that with the carefully placed shots causing the networked pattern of cracks, I could not see clearly inside the house.
Then there was the phone call, then the final shot Was someone watching a live feed through the ROSD? Is that the reason for the call, to let the killer know another shot was needed? A status report on the satellites? A warning? A signal?
It was impossible, of course, to discern what the caller or killer might have been thinking at that moment, but the precise timing and location of the shots told me that whoever was coordinating this thought like me.
No. he’s smarter than you.
You almost missed this.
Frustratingly, this line of thinking brought up more questions than it answered: How could someone have accessed the DoD’s Routine Orbital Satellite Database in the first place? Were we looking for a federal employee? Obviously there was a team of people involved, but how many?
You would need a world-class hacker to pull off something like that.
It was impressive as well as unsettling.
Researching further, I found that the cloud cover earlier today hid any view the satellites might’ve had of Chekov’s movements. And if someone did place the helmet in the open water on Tomahawk Lake, they must have done so during the night when there wasn’t enough light for the satellites to image the area.
Based on crime scene photos and lab analysis, I confirmed that one set of boot prints from a men’s size 9, LaCrosse 400 G pac boot matched prints approaching the open water on Tomahawk Lake and the prints exiting the Pickron residence.
Donnie Pickron wore size eleven.
Nothing solid pointed toward him as the shooter, absolutely nothing.
I felt strangely encouraged, however. Taking into account all the effort someone had gone through to make it look like he was dead, I began holding out hope that he was still alive.
I wouldn’t be able to do much tonight to track Chekov, so I did the next best thing and took some time to study the ELF files Margaret had sent me concerning the now-closed Navy communication base.
Here’s what I learned:
The Extremely Low Frequency electromagnetic transmission technology was developed during the Cold War and was used to communicate with US and British Trident nuclear submarines. At the time, it was the only communication system that was able to contact subs while they were at stealth depths and running speed.
The signals were nearly impossible to jam or decipher, which provided a perfect way to get messages to subs while they remained submerged.
Radio signals can travel through water, but their ability to spread out is reduced as the frequency of the signal is increased: lower frequency, longer distance under the water. To get the messages to subs, the signals would need to travel hundreds of feet below the surface, thus the extremely low frequency of 76 Hertz or less, allowing the signals to travel down a thousand feet or more.
There were two locations for the ELF stations, one in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, the other about 150 miles away in Republic, Michigan. The sites were chosen because of the efficient low conductivity of the underlying bedrock, which helped transmit the signals, not through the earth’s crust as I would have expected, but up into the atmosphere. Apparently, the ionosphere and the curvature of the earth served to diffract the electromagnetic waves into the oceans around the world. Every ocean that the subs patrolled was covered by the signals.
Every ocean.
Every route.
Every sub.
I found it impressive that this technology was developed in the eighties, but when I read on I saw that it had actually been pioneered in the 1950s, which was even more astonishing. The original proposal was to build a deep underground system in Wisconsin called SHELF-Super Hard ELF.
The Navy had given the development of this original extremely low frequency system the name Project Sanguine and had debated using dozens of underground bunkers with buried electrical wires running thousands of
