Alaskan Christmas Cold Case

by Sarah Varland

  He hadn’t done it.

  “Let’s go.”

  They backed out of the driveway, note carefully put inside a notebook on the back seat. They would process it for prints or any other trace evidence, though if this guy had been terrorizing and killing people for longer than a decade, Noah held out little hope it would hold anything useful.

  “So much I didn’t say to her...” Erynn muttered. “I didn’t thank her for coming. Didn’t tell her I was sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner...”

  “You figured out more than we did about that case, it seems like. More than anyone else.”

  Erynn shook her head. “Not really. I had a hunch, that was all, but you can’t take a hunch to court. Can’t keep a case open for one.”

  “You can tell her everything you want when we get there.”

  She just shook her head again. “You don’t understand how he works.”

  “Then tell me, Erynn. Tell me everything.”

  “I’ve known him to take people from their beds while they were sleeping, with no one in the house disturbed, all the doors firmly locked when he left. He’s gotten people who were under police protection. Got an officer...”

  “Janie told me you knew the officer who was killed.”

  Erynn looked at him like she was asking him a question, asking his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  “She’ll be okay.” He believed it or he wouldn’t say it.

  “She won’t.”

  They drove on. His phone rang half a mile from Moose Haven.

  Janie Davis was dead.

  THREE

  Erynn could not remember the last time she’d cried, but she knew it had been years, likely connected to this case. But she wanted to now. If only she could make the tears come, relieve the pressure building in her face and forehead...

  She’d been too late. Again.

  Beside her, Noah’s body language was another worry to contend with. The man was past worked up, more so than she’d ever seen him. On most of the cases they’d worked together, Erynn would have taken it upon herself to help him calm down, to bring some perspective.

  Today she had nothing to give him. Wasn’t sure she had much left to give herself.

  Janie was dead.

  Erynn couldn’t see how she was supposed to escape the same fate. Not when every single person this killer had ever come after was dead. He’d already found Noah’s house, realized their connection.

  “I wanted to be able to look at you for this conversation, not driving, but I need to know now, Erynn. Who and what are we dealing with? What do you know?”

  He had managed to say the last part with no accusation in his voice.

  She might be a lot of things, but she’d never hinder progress, especially not in this case. Didn’t Noah get that? This was her life, not just her.

  Erynn had lost everything that mattered to her before. And thanks to this killer, she’d already come close again.

  She didn’t want that to happen. Didn’t want to die. She drew in a shaky breath. “It’s faster if you search for some of the details online—they’re all out there. Someone handed the press quite the lovely story.” Her first brush with how newspapers could destroy an investigation. Let one detail slip at the wrong time, let the criminal know you were on to something, and it all blew up in your face. In that case, a reporter had not just interviewed her dad and other officers about the case, they’d also employed less than ethical tactics and listened to their conversations, even recorded some. And had compromised their safety because of it. Those reporters had been prosecuted, but it didn’t bring Erynn’s dad back, or solve the case.

  “Give me the bare bones,” Noah said as he turned onto the main highway that would take them back to Moose Haven proper.

  “There was a serial killer in Anchorage about fifteen years ago.”

  “The link between his victims? Do they know that?”

  It had been what he was known for. Some had even dubbed him the “Foster Kid Killer,” though the nickname grated so much Erynn tried not to use it. Instead she just thought of the killer as him. The unseen presence that had haunted her life in one way or another for years.

  “Yes. He was killing foster kids. Some still in high school, some as they aged out of the system.”

  She felt Noah glance at her, could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. She’d managed to keep her past out of her life in Moose Haven, invent this new identity for herself, where all anyone knew about her past was that she was a trooper.

  She’d succeeded. Most days she was proud of herself. Today she knew Noah well enough to understand what a slap in the face it would be to him to learn he hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought... She wasn’t proud.

  She just hurt.

  “And you...?”

  Still, he asked her to clarify. Erynn took a deep breath. “Yes. I was in foster care for part of that time period. I was adopted the summer before my senior year of high school.”

  “So you knew the people who were killed.”

  “Yes.” Every single one. Erynn stared out the window, watched the spruce forest as they drove through it on the approach to town. The trees were thick and the woods looked almost like a shelter. If she was Noah’s sister Kate and good in the outdoors, maybe she could hide there, manage to survive. But she wasn’t Kate and it wasn’t an option. She had nowhere to hide and anywhere she ran would only provide temporary security.

  The fact that he was in Moose Haven proved that.

  “Which foster kids was he after specifically?”

  Erynn shook her head. “They never...figured that out exactly. Both males and females were killed. No other obvious patterns. One officer had a hunch. But he didn’t keep his speculations about that case in a file at work, since they weren’t founded on fact, and I don’t know where they ended up.”

  “So we go to Anchorage, ask him and—”

  She was already shaking her head. “He’s dead, too. And the notes weren’t found in any of his personal belongings.”

  She could feel the tension building, knew the questions were coming. Erynn took a deep breath. “I know because my adoptive mom and I looked. He was my adoptive father.”

  * * *

  Noah absorbed Erynn’s story, careful not to let his face flinch. She was better at reading him than anyone he knew, and this was one of the times he didn’t like that fact.

  The killer they were after might have more than one reason to be tracking Erynn down—she wasn’t just another former foster kid who might have been in danger. She was the daughter of an investigating officer. Was she in danger because her dad had been killed? Janie had mentioned a police officer losing his life in the investigation, so that meant Erynn’s dad...

  “He was law enforcement?”

  “Yes.” She still wouldn’t look his way. He knew because he kept glancing over at her as he drove.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” Of course, he’d said the same thing to Janie earlier. He’d thought putting her in protective custody would be enough. He’d underestimated the man Erynn was so afraid of. He wouldn’t do that again.

  “You can’t say that.”

  He didn’t argue, knew it was better not to when Erynn was like this. But he meant it. If he had to stop sleeping, follow her around every day, armed, quit his job—

  Noah almost jumped in his seat. The thought had come out of nowhere, and made no sense, not when his career gave him access to information that could help figure out who was behind the killings, and could help keep Erynn safe. Nevertheless, the fact that he’d even consider sacrificing the dream he’d always had if it would be enough to keep her safe...

  It might be time to stop trying to deceive himself about his feelings for Erynn.

  Those emotions were much different than Noah had ever had for any o
ther coworker or any friend. He’d been half in love with Erynn for years and had just avoided it.

  He didn’t see how he’d be able to entirely sidestep the feelings now. But he’d had to keep them hidden. He had always known there was more to Erynn, just hadn’t known exactly what. This was more than he’d expected. And it hurt to know she’d kept it from him.

  But he understood. And was going to do everything in his power to make sure that sooner, rather than later, all of this would be in her past, the threat removed. That she could continue with her life, doing what she wanted to do with it without thinking of the implications her choices might have on the madman who was after her.

  Noah pulled the car into the back lot at the station. Every vehicle in the department was there and he wished again he had a bigger police force. Not that Moose Haven saw an excess of crime, but if someone drove by and saw that all officers were at the station, it would be an ideal time to get into trouble elsewhere.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed his brother, who acted as a reserve officer on occasion.

  “Tyler, can you come by the station if you get a chance, get a car and just drive around town a bit?” It was more to reassure himself about preventing small crimes than to show the murderer how well equipped they were. Clearly they were not, if he’d been able to waltz into the jail.

  Tyler agreed and Noah took a breath.

  “Ready?” he asked her when he disconnected.

  Erynn was looking out the window. He watched her as she inhaled, squared her shoulders and nodded once. “Ready as I can be.”

  He stuck close to her as they walked inside, into the chaos. The police department was small but adequate for what they usually needed. Today it seemed crowded, the energy building in a way that made the air feel thick. Too tense. They were already playing defense when they should be on the offense.

  He stopped, waited for Erynn at one point. She was still in her uniform and right now looked every inch the trooper she was. Any little chinks that might exist in her armor were not part of her reality in here. She was good at pulling herself together, he’d give her that.

  “Where is the body?”

  “In the cell. The ME is back there now, getting ready to transport her.”

  “He can’t do that when we haven’t had a chance to sketch the scene, process it or anything.”

  “Officer Hitchcock took care of that. He’s back at his desk now, writing it up.”

  At least he knew that had been handled right. Clay Hitchcock had as many years of law enforcement experience as Noah himself, or at least close. He was also Noah’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Summer.

  “Let’s go talk to Clay,” he said to Erynn, motioning with his head at the area with the officers’ desks.

  Erynn shook her head. “I want to see the crime scene.”

  “Erynn...”

  There it was again. That ridiculous protective instinct toward her that was all too familiar. He had been fighting it for years. Some women liked it when a man wanted to protect them. At least, that was what Noah had gathered from the movies his sisters used to watch and the way he’d seen several of his siblings fall in love. His own personal experience with love was limited. Besides one or two girlfriends in high school that hadn’t been serious, he hadn’t dated much.

  Because the only woman he was interested in dating saw him as a coworker and a friend. Nothing more.

  Protective instincts toward her aside, she didn’t needed protecting. At least not from the crime scene. If they were going to catch the serial killer responsible, he’d need every good law enforcement mind in town working on the case. And Erynn was one of the best. He couldn’t just exclude her from the investigation, which he could only if it really was a conflict of interest for her to investigate a case directly tied to her past. But technically there had been no threat directly to Erynn—at least neither she nor Janie had made him aware of that. The fact that her father had been killed did make her involvement dance close to the line of ethics, but this wasn’t a city where police and law enforcement resources were unlimited. She was far enough from the case emotionally to still be involved.

  His feelings were going to get in the way of keeping her safe if he wasn’t careful. Surely he could make it a few more weeks, till this guy was behind bars, no longer a threat.

  It wasn’t optional. Noah didn’t have a choice. Treating her like any other colleague was the only course of action that was going to work here. So he nodded. “Okay, let’s go to the crime scene.”

  They made their way through the halls. Noah was careful to look for anything that seemed out of place, but nothing caught his attention.

  “She was still locked in her cell,” one of his officers told him as they walked up to the scene. The man shook his head.

  “Do we know how she died yet?”

  “Elsie at the front desk mentioned that her lawyer came to see her. I’ll go get Clay, he probably knows the most.”

  As he started to walk away, Noah took in the body on the floor of the cell. It never stopped striking him how once a person had died, they didn’t look like they had in life. The body truly ceased to be a person and became a shell, something his law enforcement mentor had taught him when he’d first started.

  Janie was pale, her skin lacking the healthy appearance she’d had while alive. Her hair was spread out on the floor behind her, touching the puddle of blood pooled beneath her. She’d been shot in the chest, at very close range.

  Noah looked around the cell. The chair was sitting upright. Nothing indicated there had been a struggle.

  Was the killer someone she knew? Someone she’d expected to be there to help her?

  His mind ran with that thread as he reviewed what the officer had just told him, and he asked, “Janie’s lawyer came?” She hadn’t been arrested long enough for any lawyer to arrive from Anchorage or even Kenai, whichever place she’d been living. While she could have called a local lawyer...Noah didn’t think she had.

  The officer nodded.

  If his guess was right that the “lawyer” hadn’t been one at all, that explained how the killer had gotten inside. Walking in in plain sight. It spoke of a level of overconfidence that could possibly work to their advantage if they could get a step ahead. At the moment it just scared the stupid out of him. “Thanks. Yes, get Hitchcock, please. And do we have video footage?” The cameras in the jail should tell them something, even if the killer had avoided showing his face.

  Officer Smith shook his head. “Cameras cut out just before he came in. We’ve had so many issues with that old system lately that we thought it was a technological glitch.”

  Noah felt anger stir inside. Not toward his officers. Moose Haven didn’t often see crime like this—he understood how they wouldn’t have been immediately suspicious—but he hated that evil had won this battle today.

  Hated that it felt personal.

  “She was sitting in this chair when she was shot, it looks like,” Erynn was saying as she moved closer to Janie, tilted her head like she did when she was focused. “See where her body is positioned in relation to the chair? And the blood splatter?”

  “Is that significant with past cases or are you just walking through what you see?” Noah forced himself to sound professional, though at the moment he felt anything but. He didn’t want Erynn considering victims, blood splatter or anything but keeping herself safe.

  But it wasn’t his place to keep her out of this. Not when she was already involved so deep her safety was at risk either way.

  A second or two passed before she answered. “I think the second? But I’ll let you know.”

  Clay walked into the room just then, his face as sober as Noah felt. They nodded at each other and Noah was as thankful as he had been in the past that Clay had come to Moose Haven. He would need all the help he could get on this one.

&
nbsp; “What do we know, Hitchcock?”

  The other man shook his head. “I’m trying to go slow, not make assumptions. The fact that someone was able to get into this building and kill someone in our custody... No one even heard a shot.”

  “He used a suppressor?”

  Clay nodded. “That’s the working theory.”

  Noah understood. Hated how Janie’s death made him feel. Like he was powerless.

  “Has the body been moved?” Noah hadn’t wanted to disturb the ME from where he knelt beside the body. The man wore a look of perpetual concern on his face, though Noah guessed if he looked at dead people for a living his face might get stuck like that, too.

  “Not yet. Wanted to make sure you had a chance to see the scene if possible. I don’t want us to miss anything obvious.” Clay’s eyes moved to Erynn, who usually would have interrupted several times by now to remind them it was her case, too.

  “You okay, Trooper Cooper?” Clay asked.

  Erynn barely nodded. “Fine.”

  Noah spoke at the same time. “She knew the deceased.”

  Erynn’s eyes snapped to him and he saw what she’d tried to hide. She was close to broken by this, looked more fragile than he’d ever seen her. But what really surprised him was the expression of betrayal in her eyes. Because Noah had said she knew the victim? He wanted her on this case, but he couldn’t hide anything, couldn’t conceal the facts from his own officers.

  Still, the way Erynn looked at him, silently begging for more time...

  “How?” Clay asked Erynn, but Noah spoke up again.

  “High school.”

  Clay looked like he might ask something else, but the ME interrupted. “There’s something underneath her.”

  All three of them turned as he slid a piece of paper out from beneath her.

  “Same color. Same weight. Probably the same pen,” Erynn muttered under her breath.

  Noah hadn’t been expecting the note, but now he remembered Erynn had said that one was always left.