Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (39 page)

Jane had been taken away first, dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia, but at least alive.

“Hell, yes, I am,” Rick said grimly.

“Go.” Pearson straightened and walked away.

Not a request. She knew that tone.

As the car nosed away, the beams catching all the activity, McConnell, who had to be freezing in his dress coat and suit, flashed them a glance and gave a half wave of dismissal. Rick said, “You all right?”

“I keep telling everyone it’s a graze, but truthfully, it hurts like hell.”

“Not what I meant.”

“If this is an inquiry as to my emotional state, why don’t we just save it for later? I’ll make you a promise to let you know if I ever regret what happened this evening, okay? I shot a serial killer, for God’s sake. I just saved the state of Wisconsin a lot of money. I have serious doubts I’ll lose sleep over it.”

To her surprise, Rick, who could be tenacious, dropped it. “Jane was so weak when they brought her out she could hardly do more than whisper my name, but she’s going to be okay. God, if we’d gone to that cabin just a little earlier—”

Her thigh throbbed in rhythm with her heart and Ellie leaned her head back, suddenly very tired. “Come on, Rick. All of life is like that. What if you’d stepped out in the street earlier in the path of the oncoming car, if your parents hadn’t caught the same bus and met you wouldn’t exist … please don’t expect me to be philosophical right now.”

She thought maybe he sent her a sidelong glance. Damn, she was exhausted.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “And sometimes your parents do meet on that bus. Think of it that way, dammit.”

Chapter 31

It was three in the afternoon, he noted, and he might be the only one who had gotten any sleep. Actually, when he’d been delivered back to the motel, he’d fallen onto the bed and slept like a baby.

Amazing, considering everything.

Bryce sat in the designated chair and surveyed the room of inquiring faces. Ellie looked pale, but somehow softer; not as taut. Pearson had told him her wound had been stitched and she’d insisted on being in on the conference.

It was nice to be downgraded from interrogation to conference.

“I have here your statement, Dr. Grantham.” One of the many official-looking people in the room, immaculate in his white shirt and dark tie, tapped a piece of paper. “We do appreciate your cooperation. But can we ask about a few points?”

He folded his hands on the table and nodded. “Fine.”

Pearson flipped his pen around in his fingers like a practiced baton twirler. “Most of this has been cleared up. Russell let us search the store. There’s a freezer they don’t use anymore—he’d all but forgotten about it—down in the basement. It still works. We found blood in there. That’s why we could never find them. He kept them there until the search died down. We postulate that he might have kept the last victim’s body until he had another one.”

It made sense, or as much sense as any of it could make. Bryce sat back in his chair, the memory of that moment on the attic stairs still too fresh and dark.

“We
can
guess, and I’m sure you’ve gone there, too. Because of you, he kept Jane alive when we doubt that was his normal pattern. Killing her at your cabin upped the stakes, and he was thumbing his nose at us too, capitalizing on our suspicion of you and keeping you engaged in his life,” Ellie said in a somber voice. There were a least a dozen tiny cuts from flying glass on one side of her face. “In the game.”

He’d told them about Hathaway coming into the cabin, about how he’d found Jane, about what the other man had said … before Ellie had shot him.

It had occurred to him he should be more upset over having another person killed right in front of him, but then again, Hathaway wasn’t all that human, he reminded himself.

“You are the only witness to the actual shooting besides Detective MacIntosh. Can you please go over it again?”

Ah, that was what this was about. To make sure Ellie wasn’t in the hot seat. She just looked at him with no expression whatsoever.

He did so. Same words as before. “Hathaway had seen me come into the cabin. When I saw the loft was open, I went up and found Jane Cummins there, and he had us trapped. I did my best to disarm him but failed, and Detective MacIntosh arrived, not to be cliché about it, just in time. Had she not taken decisive action, he would have killed us. He’d told us both, and while Jane Cummins might not have seen the shooting, I’m sure she will corroborate that Detective MacIntosh ordered him to drop his weapon but had no choice but to fire.”

Well, she’d ordered it afterward, but Bryce wasn’t about to split hairs over it. Had she waited, he wasn’t sure he’d still be alive.

Luckily, that seemed to satisfy everyone. Pearson even smiled slightly.

“What gave you the idea to look up at the cabin on the river?” The officer introduced as McConnell looked at him with a quizzical expression, as if he was an animal he couldn’t quite place in the genus hierarchy.

“Something he said when I was in the store once.” Bryce had prepared himself for this question. He explained slowly, “I’d bought some minnows and he told me about a place on Prairie that wasn’t used anymore that was great fishing. As soon as I realized he might be the killer, it occurred to me. I’m not a trained psychologist, but if he was in the tavern the night I took Melissa Simmons home, it’s obvious now he followed us and killed her, so maybe he couldn’t resist mentioning it because he had every intention of putting her body there eventually. He kept calling it a game and I don’t know how clever he was, as much as cunning. He liked taking chances. Instead of taking his advice, I went out to the Paris place and accidentally found Margaret Wilson instead. He must have been stunned over the irony of it. I know I am. If I had to call it, I would guess at that moment he considered me a part of it all.”

“Better you than me,” McConnell said dryly.

“We found two sets of tracks at the river cabin where you discovered the body. Did Rick Jones accompany you, Dr. Grantham?”

That’s right, Ellie wasn’t the only one who’d bent a rule here and there. “For my own protection,” Bryce flat-out lied, but all in a good cause, looking the sheriff in the eye. “I told him I was going to go look, and he insisted on coming because I don’t even own a weapon, and let’s face it, gentlemen, he was right. Hathaway was a dangerous man. Officer Jones tried to talk me out of breaking the window, but truthfully, I was getting pretty desperate to prove that whoever was doing all this wasn’t me.”

Not a single person in the room believed he’d told the exact story of what happened, but Pearson nodded and stood, practically congenial, and said, “Thank you, Dr. Grantham.”

A definite step up from his other interviews with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, and to his relief, this seemed to be the last one.

Bryce walked with Ellie to the door of the station house, opened it for her, and stepped out into temperatures bordering on freezing. “Give you a ride home?’ he said jokingly, since he’d been duly picked up and delivered by a deputy as his car was still immersed in a crime scene, not to mention the tree and the flat tire.

She glanced at him, the collar of her coat flipped up against the cold. Her hair shimmered gold. “Yes.” She fished her keys out of her pocket. “If you drive, I’ll let you make me dinner, how’s that? I have to admit my leg is really sore. I could use a glass of wine.”

The flicker of hope he’d kept carefully banked, flared a little as he caught the toss. “That’s a deal.”

“You’ve looked there since I have. Anything edible in my freezer?”

Before he thought about it, he said, “We could stop and pick up something.”

“I’d just as soon not.” The wince she gave as she slid into the car wasn’t feigned and he carefully closed the door for her and got into the driver’s side. “It’ll be awhile before I look at a friendly store clerk the same way. We’re pretty sure that’s how he targeted his victims. A young woman alone comes in, pays cash, and if there is no one else in the store, he might have just locked up and followed them. Hathaway’s is a family-run business. They close up early now and then; just stick a sign on the door if something comes up. No one would think anything about it.”

Bryce started the car. “Why would the women stop for him?”

“Maybe he flashed his lights, got them to at least pull over, and walks up all nice and friendly, pretending that something didn’t get into their bag. We’ve all left a store and had a clerk come after us because we left something behind. You wouldn’t think a thing about it. That’s probably how he got Melissa Simmons to open her door also. He knocked, apologized real nice for not putting the animal crackers or whatever in her bag the day before, we’ll never quite know. He did the friendly, easygoing Neil pretty well and she was up here alone, and she might easily have told him the location of her rental cabin one day when she stopped by the store. She might even have been abducted right before you pulled in because we know the rain didn’t stop until the middle of the night. Maybe by then she’d realized her cell was missing and was grateful to have someone she knew who could possibly help her. When she unlocked the door, he had her.”

“Rick said Jane was really wary. To the point of asking him about getting a gun. It didn’t sound to me like she’d stop, even for a ruse like that.”

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Ellie stared straight ahead, her expression tinged with anger, even if Hathaway was dead. “He ran her off the road in the storm. She didn’t realize it wasn’t an accident until she’d already rolled down her window. God, it was so simple. It shouldn’t be that simple. It should never,
ever
be that simple.”

There was nothing he could think of to say, so he just braked at the red light and sat silent.

Ellie cleared her throat and turned to finally look at him. “Thanks.”

“For what?” His laugh was incredulous.

“There might have been an inquiry if you’d told them exactly what happened.”

“I get that impression, but why? He’d fired his weapon already, he’d even shot you.”

She shrugged. “I still should have given him a chance to surrender, but sometimes you have to go with your gut. However, the public doesn’t like it when police officers kill suspects.”

“Some of the public does. My hearing will never be the same. All I know is that he was going to shoot me, and you came to the rescue. It’s a bit of a blow to my ego, but I’m already over it, Detective.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said dryly. She went on after a moment. “Those earrings belonged to Julia Becraft, his first victim. I sent pictures to all the families and her younger sister recognized them. They tore apart the basement below the store and the cabin and still can’t find a trace. Nothing.”

Bryce stared at the road as a truck passed. There was slush in the gutters that hit the hood in a thick spray. “I’m not surprised.”

“I’m not either. You go first and tell me why.”

“Just a feeling. Nothing based on fact of any kind.”

“Yeah, well, I’m starting have some respect for these
feelings
. Tell me.”

“She was June, wasn’t she?”

“What?”

“Something Hathaway said to me. He didn’t call them by their names, but by the months when he killed them. He gave me July. The bones in the woodpile. Wasn’t that the second one? She was the first one.”

“I’m thinking the same thing. She’d be special. He’d be really careful then, maybe scared. If I had to guess, he hid her very well. She was abducted from her tent. I’m going to also guess it set the pattern. She’d been in the store, maybe chatted with Neil, and she told him where she was camping. He was a hunter. Maybe he watched them, saw her friends leave, and decided he had the opportunity.”

They slid out of town into the countryside. He liked the quiet, he’d found, even with the bleak trees and utter absence of life. The road was wet, but clear, and the trunks and branches just black silhouettes.

“You don’t think we’ll ever find her.”

“No.” Ellie gazed at him from the passenger seat. “Just speculation, but I believe he must have been thinking about doing something like this—like murder—for a long time. None of the killings were an act of rage. Just like a favorite deer stand or fishing spot, he had a special place in mind to put her before he ever settled on his first victim. He didn’t rush around, tossing the body in a ditch after the killing, or leaving messy clues. He killed each woman and planted them all around the county in strategic spots he knew firsthand were remote and unlikely to be discovered.”

A thin rain had started and Bryce tried to figure out how to turn on the wipers in an unfamiliar car. Ellie frowned, reached over and did it for him, and settled back.

*   *   *

The pain medication
made her sleepy, so she declined to take it, opting for a glass of zinfandel instead. Bryce had somehow managed to make a delicious soup out of what was left in the cabinets. Along with some bread toasted in the oven, it was not bad at all for a self-proclaimed average cook.

She liked him in the kitchen, Ellie thought, watching him settle into the club chair he seemed to have chosen for his own. Actually, she liked
him
. Period. No problems with his masculinity. No pretention or affectations. Didn’t flaunt he had a good job and made some money, but didn’t hide it either. He was good-looking and aware of it, but not arrogant.

Was he perfect? Hell no, but she was well aware perfect didn’t exist. She had a feeling he thought too much about every detail before he acted, and that was the reason he was drawn to confident women like his ex-wife because they took the initiative in most cases. Despite that he’d essentially helped solve a serial murder case; the circumstances had been forced on him, not a choice. He preferred to avoid confrontation at all costs usually. He sought quiet, solitude, and a structured life.

She was a cop and her life was so rarely structured that every day when she got up in the morning, she had no idea what might happen out there. She liked the risk, fed off the challenges, and was passionate about her job. It was going too far to say being a police officer was her life, but it was definitely a lifestyle. She wasn’t ever going to be easy to live with, and she was never going to apologize for that either. Law enforcement was still, in her opinion, very much a man’s world, but she could hold her own. This case had taught her a lot, not just about investigation, but about herself.