Dead of Winter

by P J Parrish

  Louis looked at the clock over Gibralter’s head. It was almost 9 a.m. They had already been at it three hours and they still had boxes of old case files to wade through.

  “Yes, sir,” Louis said. He reached for the evidence bag with the card but Gibralter snapped it up.

  “I’ll take it, Kincaid. I know a colonel over in Grayling. Let me see what I can find out about this. If we go through normal channels it will take weeks.”

  Louis glanced at Jesse. He was still staring out the window at the snow.

  Gibralter rose and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Breakfast is on me. Good job, Kincaid,” he said.

  “What time is it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yeah, I do. What time is it?”

  Louis looked at his watch. “Eleven-thirty.”

  Jesse laid his head on the desk. “Wake me up at roll call.”

  Louis rubbed his face. They had been going through the case files for hours and were no closer to finding a legitimate perp than they had been two days ago. What a way to spend Christmas Eve.

  He glanced over at the dispatch desk, where Edna sat, immersed in her latest romance novel. The radio was quiet. The only sound was the occasional crunch of a cookie. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Damn, he was tired.

  Louis looked at the pile of folders spread on the desk between him and Jesse. They had gone through at least a hundred files since leaving Dot’s this morning and the best suspect they could find was an ex-sergeant who was busted in 1981 for armed robbery, served three years and was out since 1980. When they called to check on his current status they were told he was in a wheelchair.

  Louis reached over the files and grabbed the computer printout he had asked Dale to run several hours earlier. It was a half-inch thick, listing all the red Ford trucks in the state. All thirty-five hundred of them. They had begun cross-checking the owners with local ex-cons but so far had no matches.

  Louis dropped the printout. How come nobody knew this guy? And why the hell was he after Loon Lake’s cops? Why pick an innocuous nine-man force in the middle of nowhere?

  He’s on a mission. These crimes are personal.

  Louis rose and went to the coffeepot. Maybe it wasn’t a local. Maybe it was a relative of someone exacting revenge for a family member. But as he realized how many more suspects that gave them he felt even more depressed.

  The door opened and Ollie Wickshaw came in, carrying a bag. He was sprinkled with snow and he shook it off like a wet greyhound. Ollie greeted Edna, who gave him a grunt from behind the book, and he went to his desk.

  Louis poured a second cup of coffee and took it over to Ollie. Ollie looked up, blinking his pale gray eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking it.

  “No problem.”

  Ollie wriggled out of his jacket and as he did, a small prescription bottle tumbled to the floor. It rolled to a stop at Louis’s feet and he picked it up. He held it out to Ollie but couldn’t miss the label on the front: VALIUM.

  Ollie mumbled a thanks, averted his eyes and slipped it back into his pocket. Then he reached down and pulled a bright new Hot Wheels bike from behind a desk. When he saw Louis looking at him, he smiled wanly.

  “Grand kids.”

  Louis nodded. “How many?”

  Ollie pulled a bow from the drugstore bag and stuck it on the bike. “Three.”

  “How old?” Louis asked.

  “Five, three and two. This is for the two-year-old, Joshua.”

  “Nice.”

  “You got kids?”

  Louis shook his head. “Need a wife first.”

  Ollie looked at him blankly. “I guess that would help.”

  Ollie picked up the paper bag and rose, going to the mailboxes on the wall. Louis watched as he reached in the bag and deposited little gifts, wrapped like candy kisses, in each officer’s mailbox. He came back and held one out to Louis.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  Louis hesitated then took the little package. “Hey, thanks, man,” he said, surprised.

  Ollie nodded and moved back to his desk.

  Louis unwrapped the gold foil paper. It was a rock. A pretty polished black rock with little white flecks, but still a rock. He looked up at Ollie, who was watching him.

  “It’s a snowflake obsidian,” he said. When Louis didn’t reply, Ollie gave him a small smile. “You don’t believe in the power of crystals, do you?”

  Louis shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “The snowflake is the stone of purity. It balances the mind, body and spirit,” Ollie said. “It brings the wearer strength and protection.” He pulled a chain out of his shirt. “I’ve been wearing one for ten years.”

  Louis rubbed the rock between his fingers. He watched, in mild amusement, as Ollie went about his routine of putting his desk items away for the night. He was about to stick a geode of lavender quartz in his drawer when Louis realized he had seen the same quartz in Stephanie Pryce’s home.

  “Pryce had one of those,” he said.

  Ollie looked up, holding the quartz. “Yes, I gave it to him. About a year or so ago.”

  Odd, Louis thought, considering Pryce didn’t have friends in the department. “Christmas present?” he asked.

  Ollie shook his head. “No. I thought it might help him.”

  “With what?”

  “With whatever was troubling him. Amethyst brings serenity, peace of mind, forgiveness.”

  “You think Pryce was troubled?”

  Ollie gave him a wry smile. “We all have demons, don’t we?”

  Louis resisted the urge to say what he was thinking, that if the damn serenity crystal worked so well why was Ollie chucking down Valium?

  Ollie gently placed the geode in the drawer, closed and locked it. He looked at Louis. “It’s all yours,” he said.

  Louis nodded.

  “Oops, forgot,” Ollie said. He opened the middle drawer, retrieved Louis’s reading glasses and placed them carefully on the pencil holder where Louis had left them hours ago. “I’m sorry I moved them,” Ollie said. “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”

  Louis walked over and picked up his glasses. “I thought Florence was the one who cleaned up my desk every night.”

  “I’m something of a neat freak,” Ollie said, almost apologetically. “Hope you don’t mind me straightening your stuff. Pryce didn’t like it much.”

  “Hey, knock yourself out, man.”

  Louis went back to the desk where he had been working on the files. Jesse was hunched over, snoring lightly. Louis sat down and picked up another file. Moments later, he felt someone behind him and looked up to see Ollie.

  “Lots of bad karma here,” Ollie said, nodding at the case files.

  “But no murderers,” Louis said. “This town doesn’t seem to breed weirdos. Must be something in the water supply.”

  Ollie smiled weakly.

  “How long you been on the force, Ollie?” Louis asked.

  “Twelve years,” Ollie replied. “Only eight years and forty-five days ‘til retirement. But who’s counting?”

  “When’s the last time you had a homicide? Before Pryce and Lovejoy, I mean.”

  Ollie’s wan face creased up in thought. “Ah, the Swope brothers...1973, no ’74. Got drunk and one stabbed the other.”

  Louis shook his head, stacking a pile of folders. “But nobody pissed off at the local cops. Hard to believe.”

  “Well, Jesse has had his run-ins. But I can’t think of anybody who would, I mean, to cause this kind of...retribution. It, this isn’t normal, it isn’t...” Ollie’s voice trailed off. He caught Louis’s eye and looked away. He went back to his desk.

  Louis glanced at Jesse, envying his deep sleep. Man, he was tired. He was tired of thinking. His brain actually ached.

  “Shit, this is nuts,” he said, more to himself than anyone. “We’re never going to find him this way.”

  Ollie looked over.
“Why not?”

  “Whatever it was that pissed the guy off could have happened ten, twenty years ago.”

  “But then why did he wait?” Ollie asked.

  “What?”

  “If it’s an old crime why would he wait so long to kill?”

  Ollie had a point. Hatred usually didn’t wait to go unvented. Murder was almost always a violent and immediate reaction to something. What could have forced the killer to wait so long?

  Louis sat forward, planting his feet on the floor. “Prison,” he said softly.

  Ollie looked over at him blankly.

  Louis stood up. “He’s been in prison. I’d bet on it. That has to be it.” He turned to Ollie. “Think about it. Some jerkweed’s sitting in jail, stewing about something the cops did to him. Every day, every week, every year, he gets madder and madder and he thinks of a plan. I mean, what else does he have to do? He plans and waits.” Louis took a few quick steps toward Ollie. “Then when he gets out...bang.”

  Ollie took a step back, blinking rapidly. His slack face looked gray in the harsh fluorescent light. Louis suddenly wished he could take back his vivid image. For several seconds, they just stared at each other.

  Then Ollie turned away, busying himself with packing up the Hot Wheels and putting on his coat. Clutching the bike, he hurried to the door. But he paused, turning.

  “Louis,” Ollie called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  Ollie left and the office was quiet again. Louis rubbed his eyes, focusing his thoughts. He needed to get a list of prison releases. He quickly scribbled a note to Dale, asking him to run a list of every state prisoner released after November 30, 1984. He taped it to Dale’s phone.

  “Edna?” he called out.

  No response.

  “Edna!”

  Her round face appeared over the book. “Edna, when Dale comes in would you tell him to leave these files out? He’ll refile them if you don’t. I’m heading home.”

  Edna popped the last bit of cookie in her mouth. “Ten-four, Louis.” She nodded to the snoring Jesse. “What about Jess?”

  “Let him sleep, I guess.”

  Louis yawned and rose, stretching. His thoughts drifted to his cold cabin with its cold bed. He wondered what Zoe was doing tonight. He hadn’t seen her in three days; she had told him she was going home for Christmas. His mind shaped a sudden image of her sitting in a fancy high-rise on Lakeshore Drive, unwrapping a gift of lingerie from some faceless boyfriend. Christ, where had that come from?

  He slipped on his jacket. The phone rang and he grabbed it before it woke Jesse up.

  “Loon Lake Police, Officer Kincaid.”

  “Is Jesse there?” a feminine voice asked.

  “Julie?”

  “Yes.” She sounded very young.

  “Hold on, I’ll wake him.”

  “He’s sleeping?” Julie asked. “Where?”

  “On his desk.”

  “Wait, don’t wake him up.”

  Louis frowned. He couldn’t let Jesse sleep in the station on Christmas Eve. “Julie — ”

  “Let him sleep, please,” she said quickly.

  Louis sensed something anxious in her voice and he wondered if they were having problems.

  “Julie,” he said, “I can bring him home.”

  “No, he’s safe there,” she said softly. “Let him stay. He’s safe there. He’s safe.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Dawn. Christmas Day. The world had stopped.

  Louis walked slowly down Main Street, past the dark storefronts, past the pillared First National Bank and under the silent marque of the Palace Theater. His eyes caught sight of the bare-chested Sylvester Stallone holding the machine gun above the type: “Rambo: First Blood II”. He hurried on.

  The Mustang had refused to start again but this morning the idea of walking to the station hadn’t bothered him. After a night of restless sleep he needed time to think. He could almost feel his brain cells gulping in the chilly air.

  He felt stiff, fragile somehow, as if his bones might snap. Funny what lack of sleep did to the body and the mind. His whole body ached, from the constant tension of keeping muscles and senses on alert. Alert for what? The clues that might be lurking in the blotter doodles? Alert for what? A bullet that would come out of nowhere some morning when he opened the door?

  Ahead, he saw the glow of the station sign and increased his pace. There was a faint pink in the eastern sky. Above, a few errant flakes floated down in the amber light of the street lamp.

  He crossed the street, climbing over the bank of snow. All through the night, between bouts of jagged sleep, his mind had worked. Pieces. Nothing but pieces of a puzzle whose whole he could not yet see.

  Lovejoy...a murder probably committed in the afternoon but unnoticed by fishermen. Or committed before dawn when no one went out on the lake to fish.

  Pryce...a smart, experienced detective who kept unintelligible notes, scrawled senseless doodles on a blotter and was peppering the state with résumés.

  Someone had already shoveled the station walk. He stamped his boots on the concrete and went inside. Dale was at the coffeepot, setting out a box of donuts.

  He looked up at Louis. “Do you ever sleep?”

  Louis shook his head. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  Dale filled a cup, plucked a sprinkled donut from the box and set them on Louis’s desk. “I got your note. Request for the ex-cons is already sent. I told them I needed it ASAP. They said they’d try but with the holiday and all they couldn’t promise anything.”

  Louis thanked him and slithered out of his coat. He saw the stack of case files still sitting on the desk where he and Jesse had left them the night before. He couldn’t face them right now. It could wait until the report came back of the newly released prisoners and they could compare names.

  Louis dropped down into his chair, sipping his coffee. His gaze strayed to the desk blotter with its doodles and nonsensical number. He focused finally on several sets of numbers. Seven digits, no hyphens but possibly a phone number. He called Dale over and asked him if he recognized them.

  “That’s Ollie’s home phone,” Dale said, pointing. “And that one there is the chief’s.”

  Louis pointed to the third, almost obscured in the doodles. “What about this one?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Louis dialed it. He got a recording that said he needed to dial a “1” for long distance. He tried it again and a woman answered.

  “Michigan State Police.”

  “Uh, sorry, wrong number.” He hung up.

  “What was it?” Dale asked.

  “The state police.”

  “Figures. They had an ad in the Lansing paper last month for officers.”

  Louis pulled open a desk drawer and got out Pryce’s résumé file, looking for something from the state police but there was nothing.

  “Hey, Louis?”

  He looked over at Dale.

  “I almost forgot. Mrs. Pryce called yesterday. She asked when you were going to send her file cabinet back.”

  Louis picked up the papers. “I’d better pack it up.”

  Dale opened the evidence room to let him in. Louis went to the file cabinet, opened a drawer and stuck the résumé file back in. He was about to also put in the legal pad when he paused. There it was again — that big sprawling doodle on the back with the number in the center: 61829. Where had he seen that number before?

  The notebook...

  Taking the legal pad, he went back to his desk and retrieved Pryce’s pocket notebook from a drawer. He flipped slowly through the pages, searching for the number.

  There it was — 61829. But this time with the words in front of it: SAM YELLOW LINCOLN. Sam...Yellow...Lincoln. Damn, Pryce wasn’t referring to a car or a plate; he was using standard radio code: SYL61829. Was it a serial number for a gun? He jotted it on a paper and went over to Dale’s computer.

  “Dale, I need you to run a
gun check.”

  “Sure. No prob.”

  Louis glanced at his watch. Shift was starting soon; he had to get into uniform. He hurried off to the locker room. Dale was watching the report print out as Louis came back into the office, buckling his belt.

  “It’s a Beretta 9-millimeter,” Dale said, ripping off the printout. “It’s registered to Calvin Hammersmith, 4578 Pine Bluff Road, Kalkaska, Michigan.”

  “Check an arrest record,” Louis said, his heart quickening.

  Dale started punching in numbers. Louis sat down at his desk and stared at the name on the printout. Who the hell was this Hammersmith guy? And why did Pryce care about his gun?

  “Hammersmith was arrested a bunch of times,” Dale called out a few minutes later. “The last time was in 1975 for assault. And it was right here in Loon Lake.”

  Louis jumped up from his chair. “Here? You’re kidding.”

  “He served two years.”

  Louis came over to the computer to read the report. “Nothing after that? Nothing since ’77?”

  Dale shook his head.

  Louis began to pace. “I need to know more about this guy.”

  Dale picked up the phone. “I’ll call the sheriff over there.”

  Louis returned to his desk and picked up Pryce’s notebook, staring at the gun serial number. The radio crackled and he listened while Flo gave directions to a traffic accident.

  Dale hung up. “Well, I have some bad news and some good news,” he said. “Hammersmith was a badass. Disabled vet with a history of violence and alcoholism.”

  Louis’s heart skipped. “And?”

  “He died in 1980. Motorcycle accident.”

  Louis tossed the notebook on the desk. “Shit!”

  “What’s the matter?” Dale asked.

  Louis looked over at him, shaking his head. “I was just hoping for a nice Christmas present.”

  He picked up the notebook again. Pryce had written the number down twice. It had to mean something. Or did Hammersmith, even though he was dead, have some connection? He stared at the number, locking it away in his memory. It had to mean something.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Did you get anything for Christmas?”