08 - December Dread (18 page)

“Mira James, good work. Since no one answered them all correctly, you’ll receive the extra points. Any questions?”

I was surprised, then happy, then, ultimately, so curious that my ears buzzed. How could I, or anyone for that matter, answer only one incorrectly? Seven secrets had to be matched with seven names. If one name was assigned the wrong secret, that meant another one had been as well. I waited until the rest of the class shuffled out and it was just Mr. Denny and me. I studied his back while he erased the board. He seemed unsurprised to see me still in my seat upon turning.

“A question, Ms. James?”

“Which one did I answer wrong?”

The grin spread slowly across his face like a sunrise. “That curiosity will serve you well in this profession.” He lifted his foot onto the small table in front of him and hiked the leg of his pants to his knees. Underneath was a red-and-black argyle sock. Peeking over the top of that was a pink but plastic-looking calf. He knocked on it. It made a dull sound. “Fake from the knee down. Lost it in a motorcycle accident.”

“I’m sorry.” Those words were automatic. The next were not. “Isn’t that cheating? To hide your secret in the pile, I mean.”

He pushed his pants leg down, still smiling, and placed his foot back on the ground. “Not at all. It’s the nature of the business. Assumptions are your enemy. You have to look at information from every possible angle.”

I watched him line up the papers in front of him and stick them into his briefcase. “You’ve done this exercise before, haven’t you?”

“Every time I’ve taught the class. Only twice has someone gotten them all right. Usually, students average about 50 percent correct. Rarely do they consider me. We often let a person’s position or authority distract us, don’t we?”

His final comment brought up a mental picture of Agent Briggs, which caused me to flush painfully. I’d let him use his position to intimidate and embarrass me. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. “I guess.”

He studied me. “There’s something else?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, yeah. So I
am
on the FBI watch list?”

“Yes and no. You’re not in the official Terrorist Screening Database, or, obviously, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. You are a person of interest, though.”

“For what?”

He studied me. “You tell me.”

Two nights of too-little sleep, a humiliating morning, and seven months of dancing with dead bodies weighed me down. I asked rather than answered a question. “You found out about me being a person of interest through unofficial routes?”

He nodded. “I called in some favors. I do it for all the students, but rarely do I find an FBI connection.”

I sighed. What great news. “Do you mind if I stay here for a little bit? I have some research I need to finish.”

“Not a problem. Make sure the door closes behind you, and it’ll lock automatically.”

I nodded my thanks and returned my attention to the computer screen in front of me. It took a full minute to realize Mr. Denny had stopped at the doorway and was considering me.

“What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head as if dismissing an idea, then seemed to think better of it. “I think you’ve got a gift, Ms. James. Let me know if you ever need my help.”

“Okay,” I said, uncomfortable with the praise, especially since I hadn’t even matched up all the secrets correctly in his little game. “Thanks.”

He smiled, tapped the door jamb with his hand, and left.

What a day it’d been, and it was hardly even noon. I closed out Lynne’s Cherry Pits blog and returned to the Google main page, using “Candy Cane Killer” as my search term. The articles that I pulled up focused mainly on the White Plains and River Grove killings in Minnesota, with only a cursory mention of the Wisconsin and Chicago killings. I skimmed all of those, but none of them offered me any new information. Digging deeper, I located an article from three years ago with Adam De Luca’s byline. It was coverage of the third murder in Chicago. The victim was named Betty Cyrus. An unopened package of candy canes had been found on a table near her murdered body. That wasn’t the detail that caught my attention, however. Instead, my eyes were drawn to a brief paragraph toward the end where the name of the Candy Cane Killer’s first victim was mentioned: Monica De Luca, aged 37.

twenty-five

“Do you have family?”

Adam De Luca sat across the table from me at Tucks Café in Paynesville. The restaurant was exactly as I’d remembered—a lunch counter with a pie case behind it, comfy booths covered in red Naugahyde, and the delicious smells of broasted chicken and homemade soups. Strings of red and green garland were draped across the pie case and over the doorways, and a small, fake Christmas tree sat in the window, strung with lights. We’d snatched a booth in the back, though the small restaurant was mostly empty. Adam appeared more haggard than when I’d last seen him, almost a perfect reflection of how I felt. The murders were getting to both of us. “Just my mom and me,” I said.

He thanked the waitress as she slid him a cup of coffee and a caramel roll. “Don’t ever stop appreciating her. Family is all we have in this world. One day they’re there, the next day they’re gone.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Appreciating my mom was the opposite of what I’d been doing ever since my dad had died. “Monica was your sister?”

“Yes. My sister, my best friend, my only family. She was the oldest. Our dad disappeared when I was still in the crib. Mom ditched out on us shortly afterward. It was Monica and me against the world. Nic basically raised me.” He drank his coffee black. His caramel roll sat untouched.

The waitress began to clear the circular table next to us. A large party must have left shortly before we’d arrived. I raised my voice to be heard above the clatter of plates. “I’m sorry.” I felt like I’d been saying that a lot lately.

He raised a shoulder in a noncommittal gesture. “Me too. I get sorry all over again every time I see other people go through what I did. Did you see the look on Mrs. Garcia’s face at the funeral? That was shock so deep it knocks you out of this world for a while. I saw it all the time when I used to cover war zones. And I saw it on my own face when I found out about Nic.”

I leaned forward, trying to get him to look at me. “Why do you do it?”

He blinked, surprised. “Do what?”

“Cover this serial killer. It must be torture for you. I’m surprised your editor lets you.”

“Yeah, me too.” He ran his hands through his hair and lifted his cup for more coffee. “She didn’t, not at first. Said I couldn’t be objective, that it wasn’t healthy. Then the writer she originally assigned to CCK moved to LA, and I wouldn’t let up.”

“CCK?” I translated the initials as soon as the question left my mouth:
Candy Cane Killer.
“Oh.”

He nodded. “I convinced her that I’d be obsessing about the case anyhow, so she might as well take advantage of that. By then, CCK had struck twice. My sister and a woman named Audrey Jordan. He killed twice more before he left Chicago. Do you know the crazy thing?” He tipped his head, a bitter smile on his face. “I was furious when he went underground that first time. How could we catch him if he stopped killing? That stupid fury lasted right up until he struck in Wisconsin the next December. That’s when I decided I didn’t care if I ever found out who he was, so long as another woman wasn’t murdered. If he could just die a nameless death and the killings would stop, that would be enough.”

I tried to imagine how difficult it would be to let go of the need for justice if someone I loved had been brutally murdered. “You still feel that way?”

“Yes.”

He appeared so desperately alone for just a moment that I wanted to hug him. I obviously didn’t know him well, but I could see he was driving himself crazy following this case. I was reaching over to comfort him when his pocket chirped. He reached in and yanked out a phone.

“Yeah.”

I watched in amazement as five years were added to his face. Lines around his mouth deepened and his eyes sagged. He rubbed his hand over his forehead and leaned into the phone as if it were whispering to him.

“Jesus. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.” He ended the call and fumbled the phone into his pocket. He brought his eyes slowly to mine, and they looked like two holes drilled into his face. “There’s been another murder. Northern Minnesota. In a place called Orelock.”

Twenty-six

Orelock was located approximately
two hours northeast of Battle Lake. Depending when the murder had taken place, the killer would have had ample time to drop orange begonias off at the
Recall
office last night before driving to Orelock to seek his next victim. Adam had no more information; he’d gotten the call from his editor, who’d gotten it from an FBI contact. He’d left immediately for Orelock. I gathered Mrs. Berns from the nursing home and filled her in on the terrible news on our way to self-defense class. She was so struck by the horror of it that she didn’t even have a comeback. It had all become too much.

By the time we arrived at the gym, everyone was talking about the news. The room was tense, a mixture of outrage and fear. Master Andrea, knowing she had no chance of getting the class started until everyone was focused, brought us into the workout room and clicked on the television above the treadmill.

“… in Orelock, Minnesota. The town of 1,700 people is reeling from the news. At noon today, the body of Samantha Keller was found in her home. Police say the time of death was between midnight and four AM this morning. While they have no suspects, they have taken a woman in for questioning. She currently lives in River Grove, Minnesota, the scene of the Candy Cane Killer’s previous murder, though she is originally from Orelock.”

I grabbed Mrs. Berns’ arm. “Did you see that?” It had been just a flash, a split-second shot of a tall brunette with short hair being led into the Orelock police station.

“What?”

“Lynne Bankowski. She’s their main suspect!”

Mrs. Berns’ considered this. “And the timing of the Orelock murder clears Sharpie. We watched him in his motel room until early this morning.”

“You watched the inside of your eyelids.”

Mrs. Berns smiled, immune to shame. “Good thing you’re the private dick.”

The rest of the newscast recapped what we already knew about the killings in Chicago and central Wisconsin. It ended with a panoramic shot of Orelock, a sleepy, Iron Range town drifted with snow and dotted with snug houses and shops. We all watched, shell-shocked or riveted. The instructor snapped off the TV.

“Back to work,” she said.

_____

Saturday, December 22

Mrs. Berns and I were up at 4:00 AM to drive to Orelock. I felt guilty leaving my mom in charge of two animals in a hotel room, but she promised me she’d be fine. Her eyes made it clear that she was worried about me, but she held her tongue. I knew she didn’t want me to be a PI, couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy being a librarian, or an English teacher, but she was going to support me if it was the last thing she did. I thought back to Adam’s words and vowed to be more appreciative of her.

It was too early to even be called morning, and the accumulated wear of three nights of little sleep made me twitchy. I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eyes, but when I’d look, there’d be nothing there. We poured ourselves old coffee in to-go cups in the hotel lobby, tempered it with powdered creamer, and headed into the bracing cold.

Even knowing that it was fifteen below this morning didn’t prepare me for the slap of winter. My tips immediately froze as I raced to the car, holding the door open for Mrs. Berns. I was worried my Toyota wouldn’t start, but I needn’t have been. She was as reliable as the moon. I scraped the windows while she warmed up, and Mrs. Berns did the seat dance to try to coax heat to her extremities.

Every house we drove past was dark, and none of the Paynesville businesses were open. It was even more lonely once we hit the highway. Except for the occasional semi truck, it was only us and the drifting snow, hardly a building in sight. The sky pinked the farther north we drove, but the traffic never picked up. The prairie of central Minnesota gave way to rolling hills and pine forests which gave way to the stark landscape of the Iron Range. The lack of other humans on the road made me edgy, and Mrs. Berns must have felt the same way, because we were arguing about everything from the radio station to the speed I was driving.

“That’s black ice ahead.”

I squinted. “You can’t see that.”

“Can too. You should slow down.”

“I can’t. We have too much to get done today.” We didn’t actually have a plan, more of a sense that we needed to be in Orelock. Still, not having a plan would take more time than actually knowing what we were doing, and I was itching to get to Orelock.

She flashed me her angry eyes. “You should learn patience.”

“I don’t have time for patience.”

Mrs. Berns glared silently the rest of the way, not speaking to me again until we pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of Orelock. It wasn’t a name-brand stop and sported only two pumps. The tiny building was a 1970s, space-station-looking construction, no larger than a bedroom, and glass on all four sides. I could see the nametag on the shirt of the older man working inside, though I couldn’t read it.