Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (25 page)

“I know.”

“That’s right. How could I forget? You’ve even met my ex-wife and visited the house I no longer own because I lost it in the divorce. I was surprised you hadn’t yet contacted my parents.”

“We haven’t had time. You keep unearthing bodies for us.” She spoke with equanimity and guided them into a dicey turn back onto the county highway in which she gained the opposite lane more than the one she wanted. Righting the car, she made the decision she’d been toying with anyway, hoping she wasn’t the biggest fool in the history of Wisconsin law enforcement. As casually as possible, since they were about to slide right off the road and she was with the prime suspect in a murder investigation, she said, “I’m not driving into Merrill, not in this, and I’m going to guess the motels are full from traffic from the freeway, besides probably out of power. I hope you don’t mind staying at my place tonight.”

*   *   *

It was difficult
to get a clear impression of Ellie’s house since the dark afternoon rendered visibility null and void and the ice had whimsically changed back to snow that swirled up in banshee sheets around them. Now, as if to solidify the ice, Mother Nature had decided to plunge the temperature and cause real problems.

They discovered her power was out when she attempted to switch on the lights. Two clicks—why did everyone try it twice when normally the lights came on at once—and the hallway was still dark and already chilly.

“I have a generator,” she said in her usual pragmatic tone, slender and so small she barely came up to his shoulder, but seemingly at ease with someone her department suspected of killing four women. “I’ll go out and get it started.”

“I can do it, if you’ll tell me where it is,” he offered, not positive he could deliver. His last experience with a generator had been at his grandparents’ farm about two decades ago.

“No need,” Ellie told him, her eyes only a glimmer in the shrouded hallway. “It’s a matter of throwing the switch and a push of a button. I’ll be right back.”

He dropped his duffel bag near the door, stamped off the snow from his boots, and tried to ignore that his jeans were wet and stiffly cold. In a few moments he could hear an engine come to life and the furnace kicked on with an audible whirl. She emerged from the door off the kitchen and pulled off her gloves. “At least we won’t freeze to death.”

“Which I might have if I hadn’t called you.” Bryce took off his damp coat and hung it on a coat tree near the front door. “Listen to that wind.”

“Impossible not to.” Ellie also slipped out of her parka and flicked on a table top lamp with a deep blue shade. “I hate these early winter storms.”

“The generator is a good idea.”

“My father insisted. He gave it to me as a housewarming present when I bought this place. It doesn’t run everything, but takes care of the essentials. Furnace, well pump, hot water heater, refrigerator, and the kitchen outlets.”

He looked around at soothing taupe walls, the various levels of steps and rooms an interesting architectural touch, and the fireplace a real beauty with river stone that rose two stories in the great room. “This is very nice, Detective.”

“I was in the half-million-dollar loft you owned in Milwaukee so I doubt you’re impressed, but thank you.” She headed off toward the galley-style kitchen, as businesslike as ever.

Three quarters of a million, he thought ironically, but didn’t argue it. The housing market was pretty much in flux right now, so she could be right, but that was Suzanne’s problem. It must have killed her to write that check when the divorce was settled because she’d insisted on buying out his half. He followed, still cold but at least not shivering. What would he have done if he’d never found those earrings but still had a gigantic fallen tree between him and Milwaukee?

Spent a cold, comfortless night in the cabin at a guess, with no water and no electricity, and from the way the weather was cooperating, maybe his stay would have been more extended than that.

The killer had done him a bizarre favor.

“Obviously the power has been off for a couple of hours at least, but it should warm up soon.” She hung up her coat on a peg by the back door, set her gloves on the radiator vent, and ran slender fingers through her blond hair. “I think we should probably start a fire.”

“That I can do,” Bryce offered.

“Thanks. I’m going to scrounge up some candles.”

There was kindling in a basket on the hearth and a few logs stacked nearby, though it wouldn’t last them long. Bryce knelt and went to work, pondering the hysterical humor of fate in general. Was he really going to spend the night at the house of a pretty cop investigating him in a serial murder case?

The flame caught, licked upward through the kindling, and he carefully added a log, aware of Ellie moving around, lighting candles, and the howl of the wind outside. The panes in the windows actually rattled at times.

“Wine?”

Straightening from his crouch, he turned.

She was at the counter now, the flickering light playing over her face, a corkscrew in hand. “I know you like wine,” she said as if she felt the need to fill in the quiet with conversation. “It’s only late afternoon, but it sure feels later.”

“That sounds great.”

“We might as well. No television.” She gestured at a blank screen perched on a small stand in the corner. “A fire and wine is going to be about the best we can do, though the generator will at least allow us to have something to eat later. You might be stuck with canned soup and a sandwich. Just fair warning.”

“Wine and a fire? Considering what my evening might have been like, that’s pure luxury.” He did his best to keep his tone light, though he was trying to imagine what she was thinking. Trapped in a cabin in an ice storm with a suspected murderer? “I’m going to have one hell of a time getting that tree cleared out.”

“The county might help out.” Ellie handed him a glass, and then sat in a somewhat worn chair close to the fire. “We need to get technicians in there to look at the earrings and your flat tire.”

“Maybe I should just make up another set and give them keys to the cabin.” He was only half joking.

Her gaze was assessing in an unsettling way. If she was afraid at all, it didn’t show. “Maybe you should, the way this is going. You didn’t hear anything at all? Notice anything unusual?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” He took a sip of wine. It was a white, probably a Riesling and a little sweet for him, but the cabin was warming up and the fire beginning to go and he had no complaints. Still sitting on the hearth, Bryce shook his head. “I finally nodded off close to dawn. From the way the earrings were on top of the snow, he had to have let the air out of my tire sometime this morning, pre-ice.”

She digested that, her glass suspended in her fingers, her face drawn into a small contemplative frown. “The profiler agreed with what you told me in the restaurant the other night. The killer is a risk taker, but a careful one. An opportunist, but also a plotter. Somehow he stopped Margaret Wilson on the road, abducted his first victim from a campsite in broad daylight, and even went to the house of Melissa Simmons when she didn’t have her car or cell phone and convinced her to open the door. How the hell did he manage it?”

All of that had been in the papers, so it wasn’t as if she was revealing anything new. He murmured, “He couldn’t know I wouldn’t come outside and see him last night. He had to have used a flashlight.”

“Or night-vision goggles. Lots of hunters have them.”

How pleasant was that thought? Bryce drank more sweet wine and tried to ignore how damp his jeans were from the knee down. “What else did the profiler say, or is that privileged information also?”

After a short pause, she shrugged. “I can’t see that there’s an advantage one way or the other to keeping his comments secret. What it comes down to is this: It’s educated guesswork, but still guesswork. Evidence is a different matter.”

“I would agree that when working with the human psyche, that is always true. There are no certainties.”

Ellie set her wineglass on a small table and leaned forward to unlace her wet boots and pull them off. “Our killer is probably a white male, between twenty and forty, athletic, an outdoorsman, intelligent, and he most likely isn’t a drifter.”

“Not stellar psychological deductions there, if you ask me.” He propped an elbow on his bent knee. “I could have told you that.”

“How so?” She lifted a brow and curled up in her chair, legs tucked under.

“Not because I know personally,” he said with a humorless smile. “It’s just common sense. He carried Margaret Wilson’s body to a remote place where it was unlikely to be found, so he must be athletic, and he must know the area. I’m guessing he counted on no one going there for months, maybe the entire winter … longer even. If I’d decided to take a week or two up here in the spring instead of now, I would never have looked in the boathouse. It was the smell. By then, there wouldn’t be.”

That distinct odor he would never forget. The wine might be a little sweet, but he took a quick gulp anyway.

“Chance tripped him up then.” She didn’t pose it as a question, and he chose to not treat it as one either.

Yes.

“Weird as
hell
chance.” Rather like finding himself in Ellie MacIntosh’s house, drinking wine with her around the fire, he thought. “And do me a favor and skip quoting the astronomical odds of finding two bodies so close together, all right?”

“One was chance, the other was design, and Melissa Simmons is still missing,” she said, looking unfazed by his acerbic tone. “We aren’t dealing with chance any longer. There’s someone out there, and he’s watching. According to my profiler, he’s excited by all this. You walked into his life, and you turned his work into an exhibition.”

“Lucky me,” Bryce muttered.

“So he now relates to you.”

“I’m feeling better by the second.”

“Law enforcement is grateful for the break, if that does make you feel better.”

“It doesn’t. I’d rather be almost anything else than a divining rod for dead bodies.”

For the first time, she looked amused. “That sounds heartfelt and I, for one, believe you.”

Chapter 20

The exhilaration of the bad weather was exactly what he’d needed. It was as if the spirits understood, felt that raw need and supplied the backdrop. It was frigid, the roads impassable, and the odds against him.

And still he hunted.

He liked nothing more. Nothing more and here it was, just the beginning of November. This winter offered such possibilities for a true sportsman.

Her car was just ahead. He’d followed close, waited until the right moment, and then accelerated to pass on a curve, skidding a little too close, forcing the sedan to the side.

It wasn’t hard. Not in this weather. She swerved, caught the edge with no traction, and he’d seen in the rearview mirror the nose of the hood at a crazy angle against the backdrop of ice-covered trees as she went off to the side, the lights pointing upward.

All his fault.

Tsk tsk tsk, no one should be out driving in this mess. The Hunter stopped, backed up his truck, and got out, going around the side of the car in the ditch, half sliding on the icy pavement, and knocked on the driver’s window.

He smiled, friendly, unthreatening, apologetic. “I’m so sorry. I was going way too fast. In a hurry to get home, I guess. Need some help?”

*   *   *

It was really
getting damn cold outside.

Temperatures falling through the floor. Ice. Blackness. All the amenities.

But inside, no. Inside it was warm with candlelight, with the fire burning brightly, with the smell of chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese, and the scent of red wine.

Second bottle of wine. Was that a wise idea?

Curiously, Ellie was unafraid. Or maybe it wasn’t so curious, she thought, sipping from her glass. Instincts were worth something in police work. If she had to gauge it, she’d say she was 95 percent sure Bryce Grantham was nothing but what he seemed. A successful, sensitive, good-looking man who was having the most macabre vacation imaginable. As for the other 5 percent, well … the only person she knew for certain wasn’t the murderer was herself. It could be anyone capable of carrying Margaret Wilson to the boathouse. Gravelly, the surly bartender where Melissa Simmons had encountered car trouble. Some other patron there that night. A friend they didn’t even know she had … one of the definitely sleazy and unsavory Walters brothers …

Bryce came in, shaking snow out of his dark hair, carrying more wood. He’d insisted on being the one to go out for it, and truthfully, she wasn’t interested in the biting cold wind or trying to carry in logs with a glazing of ice on them, so she’d only argued for about two seconds before acquiescing and dropping the hostess routine. By the fire it was nice and cozy, and she sat with her legs curled under her, watching him stack the wood in the carrier and tug off his gloves.

Nice hands, as she’d noticed before. He had long graceful fingers, right now held out to the fire as he crouched by the hearth. A droplet of moisture ran along the clean line of his jaw. “Pretty nasty out there.”

“I’ll bet.” The shriek of the wind under the eaves bore out his assertion.

“Just snowing now, though.”

That was something, but with all the ice already on the trees, the wind was more of the problem now. “I shut the weather radio off,” she said with a grimace. “I can’t take the alert going off every few minutes.”

“Sort of ruins the ambience,” he agreed, and smiled as he rose to settle back down near the fireplace.

Ellie was pretty sure she’d never seen him genuinely smile before, though that was hardly a wonder. Crime scenes had been their main interaction except for that one dinner in Merrill the other night, and even then the case was the reason they were together and the main topic of discussion.

“Tell me about the chair.”

“What?”

He gestured with his wineglass toward where she sat. “I’m not exactly an interior decorator but it doesn’t fit with the rest of your taste. Why do you keep it?”