Dead of Winter

by P J Parrish

  Before Gibralter could reply, Jesse came forward. “We’re here,” he said. Dale was trailing behind, his eyes sweeping the crowd nervously.

  “In the office. Now,” Steele demanded, nodding to Gibralter’s door.

  Jesse and Dale moved past Steele, neither looking at Louis. Gibralter and Steele followed them in and the door closed. The murmur of the office resumed.

  Louis sat down at his desk, his eyes going to the garbage bag. There was no way he could bring this up right now; it would have to wait. He opened his drawer, dropped the bag in and locked it. Pulling the Lansing State Journal from his parka, he put on his glasses to read the story.

  It was a sketchy, with Warren Little as the only source and the reporter covering her attempt to get quotes from Gibralter with the old crutch, “Loon Lake police did not return Journal calls.” Louis tossed the paper aside.

  Gibralter’s door opened and all heads snapped up.

  Jesse came out first, head down, walking fast toward the locker room. A few seconds later, Dale emerged, heading more slowly in the same direction as Jesse. Louis was debating whether to follow him when Steele’s voice drew his attention back to Gibralter’s door.

  “Your men interfered with an on-going criminal investigation that I have made clear is out of their jurisdiction,” Steele was saying to Gibralter.

  Louis tightened. The asshole was grandstanding.

  Gibralter said nothing, his eyes never leaving Steele.

  “They are facing criminal charges,” Steele went on, “and you, sir, will be lucky not to go down with them.”

  Steele went back to the command desk, his aids quickly circling him. Louis watched Gibralter but the man had not moved a muscle.

  “We have a sighting.”

  All eyes swiveled to one of Steele’s men, holding a phone. Louis felt his pulse quicken.

  “Where?” Steele asked.

  “Highway 33, twelve miles north of town.”

  The office eddied with noise and action. Steele moved to the center of the room, lifting his hands. “Listen up!” he shouted.

  The crowd quieted.

  “In the wake of the Red Oak incident I must remind you of an additional obligation,” Steele said. “We must conduct ourselves with the utmost professionalism. We are under the microscope now, gentlemen, and every move we make will be scrutinized. I do not want any witnesses touched, harassed or antagonized. I do not want one citizen angered. Do I make myself clear?”

  It was quiet but a current ran through the room, the charge of adrenaline.

  “I know how you feel about this suspect,” Steele went on, “but if we get a track on Lacey there will be no quick triggers, no hot heads. I want it by the book.”

  Louis looked at Gibralter. As he gazed at Steele, Gibralter lifted his cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag. His face was like granite but there was something new in it. Louis stared at Gibralter, trying to read it. Jesus, it was fear. It barely registered, just a flicker in the eyes, but it was there. Gibralter didn’t want Lacey caught alive; he wanted him dead. He needed him dead so he couldn’t talk about what Cole had told him about the raid.

  Steele left, going out to face the reporters. Louis looked back at Gibralter. He was gone, his door closed.

  Louis rose and went to the locker room. Jesse was gone but Dale was there, pulling on a sweatshirt. He looked at Louis as he approached.

  “It didn’t work, Louis,” he said.

  “What didn’t?”

  “Telling the truth. Steele says I could be arrested for...hell, I was so nervous I forget. Assault and coercion and something else.”

  Dale hung up his uniform shirt, running a hand down the front.

  “What happened in there?” Louis asked.

  “Steele was ripping Jesse apart, saying he was out of control, a renegade. He called him stupid.” Dale looked at Louis. “I had to say something so I said to Steel what you said to me.”

  “What?” Louis asked.

  “That Gibralter sent us and he did it knowing what Jesse would do.”

  Jesus, the kid had guts. “What did Gibralter say?” Louis asked.

  Dale’s face clouded. “He denied it, just out and out denied it. I couldn’t believe what happened next. Steele was telling Gibralter that Jesse and me should be fired. Next thing I know, the chief turned to Jesse and said, ‘You’re through.’ Just like that.”

  Louis shook his head. “What about you?”

  Dale pulled on his parka. “Jesse tried to tell him I didn’t do anything and I tried to tell Steele I wasn’t a real cop and I didn’t even have a gun but he wouldn’t’ listen. He was yelling, saying we weren’t fit to wash a uniform let alone wear one. And the chief was just watching, not saying a word.”

  “So he fired you, too?”

  “I quit.”

  Louis stared at him in disbelief.

  “I can’t work here anymore,” Dale said. “I just can’t.”

  “Dale...”

  Dale zipped up his parka. “I gotta go,” he said briskly. Dale brushed by him, heading back out to the office. He stopped then slowly came back.

  “Guess I better go out the back,” he said.

  Louis reached out to put a hand on his shoulder but Dale moved quickly away. Louis heard the door close and let out a slow breath.

  This stunk, every damn part of it. Jesse was beyond his sympathy now, even if Gibralter had sacrificed him to Steele. But damn it, Dale didn’t deserve this.

  Louis went back out to the office. The men had dispersed and only two of Steele’s aides lingered. Steele was on the telephone. With a glance at Gibralter’s closed door Louis unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out the garbage bag. He went over to the command desk and stood, waiting.

  Steele hung up the phone and swiveled around to face Louis, his eyes dark with anger. “What do you want?” he said.

  “I need to talk to you,” Louis said.

  “I don’t have time.”

  “I have something —- ”

  The phone shrilled impatiently. “Do something about these phones!” Steele yelled.

  Louis held out the bag. “You need to see this. It’s —- ”

  Steele stood up. “Listen you little ass kisser. There are real cops here working damn hard to save your incompetent asses. Steele grabbed his overcoat off the chair. “Now get out of my way, I have a chopper to catch.”

  Louis stepped around the desk, blocking Steele’s way. “Look, I need to talk to you. Now!” he said.

  “Make a damn appointment!”

  He brushed by Louis, knocking him aside.

  Louis glared at Steele’s back, debating whether to follow him and shove the damn garbage bag down his throat right in front of the cameras. He saw one of the aides looking at him.

  “What are you staring at?” Louis demanded.

  The suit gave a shrug.

  “When’s your boss coming back?”

  “In the morning.” The aide smiled. “You want to make an appointment?”

  Louis felt his hand curl into a fist. The hell with Steele. He would see this through himself, take the damn evidence wherever he needed to take it, give it to NBC or the fucking FBI, if he had to. They liked to bust cops, too.

  He went back to his desk, tossed down the bag and dropped into the chair. Make a damn appointment. Fuck him.

  Make an appointment.

  He was staring vacantly at Pryce’s doodles on the blotter, the curlicues and numbers fading in and out.

  Make an appointment...

  Slowly, a phone number came into focus in his head. He looked down at the blotter, at the number. He grabbed the phone and dialed it.

  “Michigan State Police. How may I direct your call?”

  Louis swiveled to look out the front window. He could see the chopper lifting off. “Mark Steele’s office, please.”

  “That line is busy. For future reference, the extension is thirty-one.”

  Louis hung up. He unlocked his desk drawer and pul
led out Pryce’s small notebook. He flipped through it, stopping when he found the right page.

  C.L. J.L. CIS @ 5661 x 31

  C.L. was Cole Lacey.

  J.L. was Johnny Lacey.

  CIS was Chief Investigator Steele.

  And 5661 X 31 was his phone number.

  Make an appointment...

  That was exactly what Pryce had done. Pryce had found the proof about the raid that he needed to bury Gibralter and the others and he planned to take it all to Steele.

  Louis redialed the state police, asking for extension thirty-one this time.

  “Chief Steele’s office,” a woman answered.

  Louis introduced himself, explaining he was investigating the death of a police officer and needed to track the officer’s last movements.

  “How can we be of help?” she asked politely.

  “I need to know if Thomas Pryce made an appointment with Chief Steele around the end of November,” Louis said.

  He heard pages turning. “No, I don’t see one.”

  Louis started to thank her when she interrupted. “I do have one for December third but Officer Pryce didn’t keep it.”

  Louis thanked her and hung up. His thoughts began to coalesce, coming together with cold certainty. Pryce had found out that something about the raid was dirty and started his campaign to get out of Loon Lake. But something happened to make him change his mind and he decided to go after Jesse and Gibralter.

  Pryce was going to Steele. He had been within days, maybe hours, of taking down four respected police officers for the murders of two kids. But then Lacey surfaced and began his rampage, blowing Pryce away.

  What a stroke of luck for the Loon Lake police.

  Louis felt a chill creep up his back and he turned to see if someone had opened the door. No one was there. The cold spread slowly through him and with it came a horrible new thought. Was it really luck?

  Gibralter’s words came back to him, and the coolness with which he had spoken them.

  Gambit, you know what a gambit is, don’t you? A gambit is when you sacrifice one of your pieces to throw an opponent off...The permanent sacrifice, a move that elevates the game to artistry.

  Had Gibralter somehow found out what Pryce was going to do? Had Gibralter killed Pryce to silence him?

  Louis ran a hand over his forehead. No, no, his mind was outracing all logic now. Gibralter had been involved in the deaths of the Lacey kids but no matter how threatened he felt he would never kill one of his own men.

  Gens una sumus. But Pryce wasn’t one of his men, one of the family. Pryce was an outsider.

  A shadow moved behind the glass of Gibralter’s door. Louis held his breath as his eyes followed it. He felt suddenly nauseous, lightheaded. He rose quickly, picked up the garbage bag and threw Pryce’s notebook inside. Grabbing the bag and his jacket, he bolted for the door.

  CHAPTER 36

  Louis set down the pen and leaned his head back on the sofa, closing his eyes. For the last three hours the same looped tape had been running through his head and everything on it was leading him to the same conclusion: Gibralter had murdered Pryce.

  It didn’t matter how Gibralter had found out Pryce was on to them. Gibralter had decided that “a permanent sacrifice” had to be made and with Jesse had formulated a plan to kill Pryce.

  But Lacey...that was the ingenious part. However they had found out about Lacey they had used him. Lacey was, after all, the perfect suspect, a wacko vet with a hard-on toward authority. A suspect who would not be able to defend himself because Gibralter had always intended Lacey to be conveniently shot and killed during his capture. That was why Gibralter had not wanted any outside help.

  Louis opened his eyes and looked down at the legal pad in his lap, at the notes he had made in the last couple of hours. He stared at the names at the top of the page: PRYCE...WICKSHAW, LOVEJOY.

  It all fit. Except for one thing. There were three dead cops, not one. Three.

  The theory had come to him only in the last hour, a second theory about the three deaths, a theory so grotesque he had immediately dismissed it. But it wouldn’t go away and he was finally forced to confront it.

  Had Gibralter also killed Ollie and Lovejoy? Had they somehow also become threats? If Gibralter was desperate enough to kill two kids and a cop, why not two others?

  The idea was outrageous, that Lacey didn’t kill anyone, that Gibralter had somehow engineered the murders to make them look like Lacey’s work before Lacey had a chance to make his own move. But it explained why Lacey had gone home to Dollar Bay and complained to Millie that “everything was fucked up.”

  Louis read again the notes he had written under Lovejoy’s and Ollie’s names. What could have happened to make Gibralter turn against them? Did they know Pryce was going to expose them and try to come clean? Or, after five years of keeping the secret, did they just crack?

  Ollie...He could see how guilt could have consumed him, especially if he had, in fact, been the one to shoot Angela, as the reports said. Ollie was a docile man, just trying to slide into retirement. Ollie knew Pryce was troubled and had given him the serenity crystal. Had Pryce confided in Ollie, trying to turn him to his cause? Had Ollie cracked under the pressure?

  Lovejoy...He was different. He was an old drunk living off a medical settlement but he was friendly with Gibralter. Had Gibralter tried to enlist his help in the plan to eliminate Pryce? Had that been the subject of the ten-thirty phone call the night before Lovejoy’s death? And had Lovejoy balked, thereby sealing his own death?

  Louis took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. If you’re going to move on this, be right, Kincaid.

  Motive...it was there.

  Means...both Gibralter and Jesse carried twelve-gauge shotguns in their cruisers.

  Opportunity...he could see that, too.

  Pryce’s death was clear, the details born from the echoes, scents and ghosts in Pryce’s empty house. Gibralter had been the one to plan everything out, right down to duplicating Lacey’s fatigue jacket and boots. But Louis was sure Jesse had done it, maybe out of some perverse need to impress Gibralter.

  He could see Jesse driving into the darkness of the park, taking the shotgun down from the rack and calmly walking to Pryce’s house. He could see him pulling the trigger and running to the backyard, criss-crossing the yards to avoid the dogs. Only Jesse didn’t jump fences well and he snagged the jacket on the last fence, leaving the scrap.

  Lovejoy’s death was also easy to imagine. He could see Gibralter going to the fishing shanty at dawn, renewing the argument they had begun the night before on the phone. He could see Gibralter raising the shotgun, holding it low so the trajectory would match Lacey’s height.

  He could almost see the look of confusion on Lovejoy’s face as he realized what was happening. Was the generator on, covering the sound of the shotgun blast? Had Gibralter returned later to put Lovejoy in the ice, thinking that by spacing the deaths over weeks they would appear more like a pattern of a serial killer?

  But Ollie’s death...he couldn’t see it as clearly as the others. Ollie had died from a sniper’s bullet. But who had fired it? How much time had elapsed between the shooting and Gibralter’s first radio transmission? Enough for Gibralter to make it from the field back to his cruiser hidden nearby? Or had Jesse been the shadow he had seen running across the field?

  Louis shook his head. He couldn’t remember; the details of that night were too blurred. Except for one: the bullet in his own back, stopped by the vest. Who had fired it and why? Did they intend to kill him along with Ollie or had they fired at him just to make it look convincing?

  He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure. Damn it, he just wasn’t sure about any of it. And he couldn’t accuse Gibralter of murder until he was.

  Gibralter...

  No matter what route his thoughts took they always came back to Gibralter and what kind of man he was. Louis thought about the two events in Chicago. An investigation that had tested Gibralter’s
definition of loyalty and a gang attack so humiliating it had driven him from the job.

  What kind of man what he? A cop who put loyalty above anything else? A paranoid who would do anything to avoid crucifixion by Mark Steele? A genius capable of planning the perfect murder?

  And where was Louis’s own place in the plan? Why had Gibralter given him the Pryce case in the first place? There was only one answer. Gibralter needed someone to lead the investigation away from himself and Jesse and right to Lacey.

  He needed a pawn and I was perfect.

  A sudden pounding at the door made Louis turn, his heart jumping against his sternum. He lunged for his belt lying on the counter and pulled out his gun.

  “Louis!”

  Shit, it was Jesse.

  Louis put the gun back in its holster and moved to the door. Jesse hollered for him again and Louis swung open the door.

  “What do you want?” Louis hissed.

  Jesse’s face was red from the cold, his hair flecked with snow. “I wanna talk....Can I come in?”

  Louis’s hand balled into a fist at his side as the stink of whiskey floated up to him. Louis started to close the door in his face but Jesse stuck his arm in the door.

  “Hey! Louis! I wanna talk, man!” Jesse said.

  Louis stared at him. Okay, he wanted to talk and he was drunk. Maybe drunk enough to talk about things he didn’t want to talk about. Louis stepped back and Jesse stumbled in, dropping his keys as he fumbled with the zipper of his parka.

  “I guess I’m a little tipsy,” he said, looking at Louis.

  Louis reached down, picked up the rabbit’s foot and stuffed it roughly in Jesse’s jacket.

  Jesse fell backward. “Hey, man, what’s with you?”

  Louis turned away, going into the living room. He stood, his back to Jesse for several moments, trying to quell his anger. But he couldn’t hold it in.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said, turning.

  “Huh?”

  “I know what you did.”

  Jesse frowned. “What you talking about?”

  “Angela and Johnny Lacey. I know how they really died.”

  For a moment, nothing registered on Jesse’s face. Then, slowly, comprehension penetrated the alcohol fog. He closed his eyes and bent forward slightly as if he were going to vomit.