Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (29 page)

Vaguely sick, Bryce closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled. There went his career, his
life
.

“It’s on the front page.” Alan’s voice sounded polished, urbane, and detached in a typical lawyerly manner Bryce recognized all too well from those years with Suzanne. “If the national news networks don’t pick this up, I will be surprised, so I thought I should warn you.”

“Thanks,” he said ironically.

“I thought you were coming back here.”

“A serial killer and a fallen tree got in the way.”

Alan was silent for a moment. “Care to explain?”

He outlined briefly the afternoon before, leaving out how he’d spent the night in Ellie’s bed. As far as he was concerned, that was no one’s business but theirs.

“That sounds like a complication.”

Complication? That was a simplistic way to put it. “Tell me about it.”

“Where are you now?”

“Staying with a friend.”

“I’m going to have to think about this.” Alan sounded thoughtful, his words measured. “The killer has obviously taken an interest in you. Maybe you can help the police. Talk to them. Be cooperative.”

Testily, Bryce said, “I’ve been so cooperative they’ve searched my parents’ property, confiscated my laptop, and now someone is vandalizing my car and planting evidence. It doesn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. If I remember correctly, you told me not to talk to them.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Besides, they have nothing at all. Proof positive is that you aren’t in jail.”

“That’s because I haven’t done anything wrong,” Bryce told him, his knuckles whitening as he clutched his cell too tight.

“If you think that’s how it works, my friend, think again,” Alan said succinctly. “If it did, I’d be out of a job. Keep me informed.”

Chapter 23

The first time he’d kept her forever.

Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but he’d carefully kept her hidden, just for him. He’d thought about her every morning when he woke, when he was making a sandwich at lunch, when he brushed his teeth …

And then he started to forget. It scared him frankly, because the Hunter was so tuned to death, he knew it very well.

So he’d replaced her with a new memory. It had worked too, for months, and he’d visited the new shrine until he’d grown restive and knew she wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t realize each time made it more dangerous. He did. But he couldn’t help it, or maybe didn’t want to help it—the semantics didn’t matter so much as to why, but they did as to effect.

There was a leak in the roof. He could hear the steady drip on the floor and he took out a cigarette and lit it, sitting back sprawled in an old rocker and listening to the soothing sound.

Inhaled deeply. Blew the smoke out slowly.

He had patience. All good predators did.

Then finally, two more nonfilters later, he heard something else besides the rhythm of melting snow and the creak of his chair. What he’d been waiting for: that beautiful, beautiful sound.

The first terrified whimper.

*   *   *

“The scene was
too deteriorated by the melt off.” Pearson toyed with his glasses, taking them on and off twice. Since he’d quit smoking he was so fidgety that they had all considered telling him to just go back to it. “They were able to follow some indentations that were tracks to the road through the woods, but then again, anyone could have walked out there. It could have been Grantham himself.”

Sitting at her desk, Ellie rubbed her temples to try and ward off the onset of a throbbing headache. It all came back to Bryce each time, as it had from the beginning. Of all the times for the unpredictable weather to do a fickle upturn, this had to be it. “Any sign of a vehicle parked along the road where the tracks came out of the woods?”

“All kinds of signs.” The sheriff put his glasses on again and pushed them up his nose with a forefinger. “Several of the deputies pulled off in that location. How could they know? We had no perimeter designation on this, Detective. A plow had been by anyway, so the point is moot. We wouldn’t have found anything.”

He was probably right and it was a miracle he’d found personnel to go out there at all. “The earrings?” she asked.

“They were there all right, by the back rear tire, which was flat, just like Grantham said.”

“And for all we know he did it himself.” Rick had kept his mouth shut fairly well so far about finding Bryce in her house, but the silence between them to and from the Walters crime scene had been tense. “Have you told her yet about the call we got this afternoon?”

Her head swiveled as she glanced from one of them to the other. Pearson said heavily, “Apparently Grantham was in the tavern, asking about the patrons the night Melissa Simmons disappeared. Wanting to know who might have seen them together. The owner recognized him from the picture in the paper. Said he was acting a little weird.”

“Weird how?” This wasn’t exactly welcome news and Ellie had no idea what to make of it. “Are we talking about Gravelly, who has a record? Who might very well smoke the same brand cigarette as our killer?”

“Grantham asked if all the other people in the bar were locals.”

“How is that weird?”

“I’m just quoting Tom Gravelly.”

Phones were still ringing all around them, making it difficult to hold a conversation. The aftermath of the storm held on, like a bad cold. Ellie said moderately, “If someone followed him when he took Melissa Simmons home, it makes sense they might have been in the bar. It isn’t a bad line of questioning. We’ve been in there ourselves. Dr. Grantham”—she deliberately kept it as professional as possible—“isn’t stupid. I’m sure once he figured out he was our number-one suspect, he thought it might be a good idea to look around a little himself.”

Pearson glanced at his watch. “There’s a meeting in an hour in my office. Lieutenant McConnell from DCI is now officially in charge of the task force and these cases.”

Ellie had worked with McConnell before on a homicide case involving a child abduction by the guilty spouse and he was not just professional but intuitive. She had no problem at all with him running the task force as long as she was still on it.

“He taking care of the Walters case too, sir?” she asked.

Pearson’s face was haggard with lack of sleep. “Depends if the two are connected. The Walters case looks drug related from the report I read. Any word on Keith Walters?”

“Everybody’s looking for him,” Rick said, drinking what was probably stale coffee, his short, fair hair sticking up because he’d taken off his hat. “He didn’t register his truck, and he didn’t buy it under his own name. We don’t have a plate number or a VIN. Just the description.”

“If he even bought it,” Pearson said in disgust. “For all we know it’s stolen.”

“We should have checked it when we were out there the first time,” Ellie admitted. “But we were investigating a possible murder, not car theft. We were trying to get a feel for Walters and his alibi for Margaret Wilson’s disappearance.”

We fucked up
. She and Rick exchanged a glance. It didn’t have plates. They should have insisted on the registration.

“The problem is, we’re not used to this,” Pearson said heavily. “There’s homicide, and then there’s something out of control like our killer. For one thing, we don’t have the manpower. As it is, Ellie is spending all her hours on this damn case, so I’m short a detective, and we have other problems. Investigating the disappearances is a lot different than investigating four serial homicides, but I’ve pushed to keep you both in on this because of the time you’ve put in until now. We have this nut job now bringing us evidence. Let’s make sure we use it. Thanks to Grantham, one way or the other, we have those earrings and they mean something. Find out what it is.”

One way or the other
. Ellie kept her mouth shut but it took some effort.

The sheriff went on. “This county has only one decent-size town and pretty much everything else is unincorporated villages and rural housing. Lots of trees, lots of lakes, and our killer is moving around out there. We need to catch him fast and you two know the terrain.”

“Sir—” Rick started to say, his face set.

Pearson held up a hand impatiently. “The jewelry is in evidence right now. I’d say take pictures of it and contact the families of the women who are still missing. Let me know what you find out. In the meantime, let’s stick a deputy on Grantham. No matter how you swing it, he’s in the thick of this. Either he’s dangerous, or he’s in danger.”

Stick a deputy on
 … Ellie felt her face heat.

“I think you can find a volunteer for that duty,” Rick muttered, not quite under his breath.

“Hey, Rick.” One of the deputies came into the room, his face showing the same strain they probably all felt. “I thought you might need to see this. We’re getting a list of the stranded vehicles as they are reported. Just routine, but … well, here.” He extended a piece of paper. “I recognized the name. They found it out on county road B.”

Rick took the report, scanned down it, and lifted his head, lines suddenly by his mouth. “Jane’s car? She’s at the hospital.”

“Call her,” Ellie said immediately, because she
felt
it. The surge of unwelcome unease, the sickening twist in her stomach. “Call the hospital. If she went off the road, no doubt someone gave her a ride. There’s a whole list of stranded cars.”

“She was at work when this started,” Rick said. “It doesn’t make sense—”

“Then she’s at home,” Pearson interjected, but his fingers, which had been endlessly toying with the button on his shirt, began to work overtime. “
Call
her.”

Rick’s hand was visibly unsteady as he whipped out his cell and began punching buttons.

No answer. All four of them waited, taut, worried. The deputy was young, and looked vaguely guilty, as if he was responsible because he’d brought the news.

“Call the house.”

“Motherfucker—”

“Call the house.” Pearson said it in staccato tones.

Rick did, his knuckles white as he clenched his phone.

Ellie picked up the phone on her desk, and punched in the number to the hospital. Calmly as possible, she asked for the surgical floor, and when the nurse’s station picked up, for Jane.

Jane Cummins, she was informed, had left the day before, around one o’clock when it was starting to get really bad. Their patient load was light, said the unconcerned staff nurse, and since she was scheduled to be off the next day, the shift supervisor had let her duck out a couple of hours early because of the storm so she wouldn’t be stuck there.

In the fluorescent lighting, Rick had gone from ruddy to a dull gray. “She wasn’t at home last night. She wasn’t at home.
Goddammit,
she never came home.”

The repetitive monologue didn’t make anyone feel better. Ellie swallowed a lump that had suddenly risen in her throat and said evenly, “Parents? Friends? If she slid off the road, she would have called someone.”

“Me. She would have called
me
.” Rick’s voice sounded harsh and abrasive.

“Cell towers were down,” Ellie argued, her mind rejecting the possibility something was actually wrong beyond the ice and snow dumped all over northern Wisconsin. “I had no signal at my house.”

It was as if she hadn’t spoken. “I went home, I
slept,
” he said, as if it was a crime. The office had gone quiet, and Ellie could hear him breathing in raspy bursts.

“We don’t know she’s missing,” she insisted.

But she had a dismal feeling that was untrue, and from the sheriff’s expression, he agreed.

*   *   *

Bryce found a
package of ground chuck in the freezer, thawed it in the microwave since the power had come on around four o’clock, and tossed it into a pot with a little olive oil. He chopped an onion and some garlic while he browned the meat, stirred it all together with some tomato sauce he’d come across in the pantry, and liberally added spices. Ellie didn’t have any spaghetti noodles but he did find some penne and Parmesan cheese—the real stuff, not the shaker—and she had romaine, so he could improvise a salad.

Simple, but then again he wasn’t a superstar cook, just adequate, yet after a long day, maybe she’d appreciate something hot to eat.

If she came home at all.

By seven, he was starting to think maybe it wouldn’t happen and his level of disappointment told him a great deal about how he felt about the night before. When he met Suzanne he’d been at first attracted, then infatuated, and then embarked on a journey he’d told himself in retrospect he knew was a lapse in judgment fueled by a lot of factors, not the least of which was the timing. It sounded inane, but he’d been almost thirty, and his friends had been getting married, having children, and it seemed like the timing was right. He should have asked himself one crucial question; opposites may attract, but how often do they solidify into the cement of a true relationship?

Older now. Wiser, right? Maybe not. Here he was, stirring spaghetti sauce on the stove of a woman he knew only because of a murder investigation …

His emotional reflexes did not appear to be any more honed now that he was supposedly older and wiser, he thought wryly.

The hands on the clock crawled to eight. Ellie didn’t call, didn’t return.

He was tempted to try her cell phone, but didn’t. It wasn’t as if he had any right to ask her when she’d be home, and the excuse of all time for being late had to be investigating a double homicide. Any homicide investigation was not in the realm of his experience.

And thank God for that, he thought as he drained the pasta and set about making two plates finally, hoping she’d walk through the door at any moment. Penne, sauce, grated cheese, a little salad with vinaigrette on the side. He sat at the kitchen bar, since her dining room table was covered with papers, and ate his dinner methodically.

Walters. He didn’t recognize the name, but obviously Ellie had.