She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her sooner. It made perfect sense. She turned to Brad, the excitement in her voice a giveaway of the first hopeful feeling she’d had in days. “Does the island paper subscribe to a wire service?”
“A wire service?”
“Like the Associated Press. You know, where they get the news from other parts of the country—places other than here on the island.”
“Well, yeah, I guess we do. That’s how I read about the case Mitch was working on last summer. Why?”
She clapped her hands together, then reached for her purse. “If the paper subscribes to a wire service then we just might be able to learn something about this killer after all.” Her voice rose in pitch as the possibility of finding some much-needed information hit her full force. “Agent Walker said they’d been tracking him for a while and that he’s killed others. There’s got to be stories about those killings.”
“Elise, that’s awesome.” Mitch ran his hand across his eyes, then over his hair. The excitement in his voice was hard to miss as he turned and looked at his buddy. “Where’s the paper’s office, Brad?”
“When you get to the bottom of the alleyway out here, you head in the opposite direction of Sophie’s. It’s the pale blue building on the left-hand side. Merlin Webber’s been running that paper for something like twenty years. He knows everything about everything. But fair warning—he’s a pretty cranky dude.”
“How would we find this guy?” Mitch asked.
“That’s easy. He lives behind the office.”
Elise reached for her coat and scarf, a smile stretching her face for the first time in days. “I know where I’m gonna be while you two are visiting the livery.”
~ ~ ~
Merlin Webber was a man who had undoubtedly devoted his entire life to news. She could see it in every corner of the small dusty newsroom, every ceiling-high pile of yellowing paper, every bulletin board covered with multiple layers of highlighted articles, every burned candle that had provided writing time despite the lengthy power failure they faced. And she could almost sense it in the way he studied her, a probing examination that made her feel as if he could see straight through to her soul.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Webber, but it really is important.” Elise extended her hand toward the man, watched the way his thick brows furrowed momentarily then rose as a slow smile crept across his face.
“You say you’re a reporter, eh?”
“Yes, I am. For a weekly—”
Merlin Webber leaned forward, tilted his shiny head in her direction and tapped his ear. “You gotta speak up, honey, I have a slight hearing problem.”
Elise smiled and raised her voice an octave. “I work for a weekly paper in Ocean Point, New Jersey.”
“Ocean Point, New Jersey, you say?”
And Merlin Webber, the newsman, apparently didn’t forget a thing. It was obvious from the moment she said the words that he had connected the name of her town with the events of last summer. She nodded.
“You say your name’s Elise Jenkins?”
“Yes.”
The man reached his hand out and gripped hers tightly. “I’ll say you’re a reporter. One helluva reporter.”
Embarrassed by the praise, she said, “I take it you heard about the fortune-teller murders?”
“Um, heard about ’em? No, honey, I followed that story from the moment the wire services first got hold of it.” Merlin turned and led the way toward a desk covered with books and papers, stopping momentarily to push a carelessly stacked mountain of paper off a nearby chair. “Sit. Sit.”
Elise unzipped her coat and draped it over the back of the chair, then perched gently on the edge of the seat so as not to wrinkle the few remaining papers left behind. A faint medicinal odor permeated the room, reminded her of the chest rub she’d had to inhale every time she had a childhood cold.
“That final article you wrote, when it was all over, was a mighty fine piece. I’m surprised you didn’t get offers from some of the big-time papers to come work for them.”
“I did. I just didn’t take them up on it. I love my boss too much. He teaches me more about the craft of writing than I ever learned in college. I couldn’t walk away from that.”
A curious look flashed across the man’s face, a look she’d almost bet was grudging respect.
“So what brings you to this island?”
“A vacation. Only it’s not what I was envisioning.”
“Yeah, this blizzard is a doozy, ain’t it?”
If you only knew.
She shifted in her seat, reveled in the warmth that emanated from the kerosene heater in the middle of the room. “Mr. Webber, I don’t want to take too much of your ti—”
“Call me Merlin. And there’s no need to rush off, I don’t have plans. In fact, this is the first time I’ve been out of bed in over a week thanks to a touch of the flu. I’m a good bit better now, but can’t shake this feeling that the world’s passed me by while I’ve been shivering under the covers these past few days.”
She studied the man’s clean-shaven head and face, her gaze coming to rest on the stubby tooth-marked pencil that seemed at home—though a bit cliché—above his right ear. A pencil that would be moving at warp speed if Merlin Webber knew about the murders.
“You don’t know, do you?”
The man’s piercing gray eyes rounded, his dark eyebrows arched. “Know what?”
Elise took a deep breath and spoke slowly, the disbelief in her voice still evident despite the time she’d had to grasp the events as reality. “There’ve been two murders here in the last forty-eight hours.”
Merlin swiped his hand across his mouth and closed his eyes.
“Mr. Webber, are you okay?”
The man’s eyes opened, stared at her from behind thick glasses. “Did you say two?”
“I’m afraid so. The first victim was Pete Garner, a skier who was here to participate in an orienteering competition. The second was a young woman who worked as a clerk at the Lakeside Inn.”
The legs of the man’s chair dropped to the floor. “It wasn’t Annie, was it?”
It hadn’t occurred to her to consider whether Merlin Webber would know Annie. But of course he would. He was the eyes and ears of Mackinac Island.
Elise reached for the man’s hand and squeezed it gently, his skin dry and puffy against hers. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Webber, it didn’t even dawn on me that these were people you would know.”
Merlin shot his hand upward and shook his head. “No. Don’t apologize. What’s happened has happened.” He reached for a pad of yellow paper and pulled the pencil from his ear. “What do we know at this point?”
She studied the man for a moment, marveled at the way he was able to push his personal feelings aside and focus on the task at hand.
“If you remember my name from the news articles last year, then I’m sure you remember the name of my boyfriend—Detective Mitch Burns.” She saw the man nod, his head bent close so as not to miss a word she said. “We arrived on the island Thursday afternoon and discovered that Mitch knows one of the police officers here. So we headed over to the station after dinner to spend some time with Brad.”
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the fun they’d had walking through the snow after leaving Sophie’s that first night. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“While we were there, Brad got a call from an FBI agent. The agent believed there was a good chance a suspected serial killer had gotten onto the island before the storm started. He wanted Brad to be prepared since the weather was making it impossible for the FBI to get here.”
“What do we know about this guy?”
Elise sighed, her shoulders sagged. “Nothing.”
Merlin’s eyebrows arched once again. “What do you mean nothing?”
“Nothing. A sketch of the killer was being faxed over when the power and phone cut out.”
Merlin jotted things down on his pad of paper
, a string of whispered noises escaping his mouth as he wrote.
Elise continued. “The only thing the agent was able to tell us is that he sometimes takes on the vocation of his last victim.”
Merlin’s pencil paused in midair. “I take it we don’t know anything about the last victim either?”
“No.”
“Any leads so far?”
“We had such hope the agent was wrong. Hope that lasted for just a few short minutes until the captain of the orienteering club walked in to report the disappearance of one of their members. The moment the words were out of his mouth, we suspected the killer was here. Mitch and Brad organized a search party at daybreak and that’s when they found the body of the missing skier.”
“Maybe he just plain froze out in this weather.”
Elise sighed and twisted her gloves with her hands. “He’d been stabbed. Repeatedly.”
A low shrill whistle escaped Merlin’s lips as he straightened in his chair, a look of naked disbelief momentarily replacing his unreadable features. “Are you serious?”
She frowned down at her hands for a moment before meeting his gaze once again. “Almost from the get-go a man who joined the orienteering competition that morning emerged as a suspect in Mitch’s eyes. He’s aloof, quiet, even a little surly at times.”
“What do you think?” Merlin asked as he stood and walked toward the window.
Elise closed her eyes and willed herself to think clearly. “I don’t think it’s Mark. I talked to him for a long time the night we found Annie. I think he’s just a misunderstood loner.”
Merlin turned, his eyes hooded and distant below his thick brown eyebrows. “Then go with your gut for now.” He crossed the room once again and perched on the edge of his desk. “So what brought you here? To see me?”
She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders, her spirit buoyed by the opportunity to voice her gut instinct to someone.
“I had a few questions I wanted to ask. Though you’ve already answered the first one.”
Merlin tucked his pencil behind his ear once again. “Oh? What question was that?”
“I was wondering whether you subscribed to a wire service.”
The man’s head bobbed as he rubbed the raw skin on his face. “I can’t imagine not keeping up with the news. It’s a window to the troubled soul of our world. Stars are born because of the media. Lives destroyed because of them as well.” Merlin’s voice trailed off momentarily, then resumed its clarity. “Some people like to pretend the world stops at their door, but it doesn’t. And there’s no use sticking our heads in the sand pretending that it does.”
She noticed the piles of paper that seemed to cover every surface in the room. “Do you keep the stuff you get across the wire?”
“Of course I do. Why?”
She smiled as understanding replaced curiosity in Merlin’s eyes.
“Wait! Don’t answer that. You’re thinking we might find something in an old wire story or two that will give us something to go on.”
“You got it. I mean, maybe they don’t know who this guy is, but knowing something about his crimes might help paint a picture. And at this point anything is better than the nothing we have right now.” Elise looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes momentarily. “In a perfect world, the sketch we didn’t receive from the FBI will be on the wire stuff somewhere.”
Merlin popped his glasses into his shirt pocket and pushed off the desk. “The service is down now with the power situation and all.”
Elise stood and followed Merlin to the small windowless corner on the far side of the newsroom. “Of course it is. I just thought maybe we could wade through any of the stories you already have on file.”
Merlin squatted in front of a small cabinet beneath the fax machine. “I keep some of those stories right here.”
He pulled a small wooden door open and jumped backward as a pile of papers fell out onto the floor, scattering in different directions.
“I’m so sorry, let me get that.” Elise quickly bent down and scooped up a handful of papers, glancing down at the top one on the misshapen pile. “It’s hard to be sure in this light, but these look like faxes, not wire stories.”
“What?” Merlin looked at the papers in her hand and sighed. “I hired a young high school kid to help me get my files together so I’d have some sort of system for the first time in my life. It doesn’t look like her system was any better than mine.”
Merlin dropped into a nearby chair and rubbed his eyes. “This low light is really taking a toll on me today. My eyes actually hurt.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he continued. “And when I think of Annie, my head hurts too. She was a real fighter.”
Elise stuffed the papers back into the cabinet and shut the door quickly. “I’m so sorry I had to hit you with all of this.”
The limited natural light in the room had all but faded as the darkness of an early winter night loomed. “I have an idea. How ’bout I come back in the morning when we have more light. We can go through the past six to twelve months of wire stories and see what we come up with. And until then, you can try to get some rest. You don’t look as if you’ve completely licked that flu.”
Merlin swiped his hand across his eyes again. “I never imagined stuff like this could happen here. And now that it has, I’m laid up, dealing with the remnants of some damn bug. Figures, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll put our heads together in the morning.”
Merlin walked her toward the door, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans. “Just come on in when you get here. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help, though I doubt I’ll be able to resist the urge to find what I can before bed.”
Elise pulled her coat from the chair as she walked by, slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled the zipper to her chin.
“Okay, but no worries if you don’t,” she said, tugging her gloves onto her hands. “I better head out. Mitch and Brad should be back from the livery by now.”
“Good. You don’t need to be on your own in that station. You’ve got good instincts, I can tell. But all the same, don’t let your guard down around this Mark guy you told me about. Just in case your Mitch is right. Someone had to have killed that skier.”
“And Annie.”
Merlin inhaled slowly, his shoulders sagged. “And Annie.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand one last time. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Mr. Webber. Try to get some rest.”
“Merlin. Call me Merlin.”
Chapter Eighteen
5:30 p.m.
Elise could sense the tension the second she opened the door. It hung in the air like a thick heavy storm cloud.
“I was just getting ready to head down to the paper to check on you.” Mitch covered the distance between Brad’s desk and the door in seconds, pulled her in for a hug. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“Um, guys? Do you want me to leave?”
Elise looked over Mitch’s shoulder at Brad, his boyish grin a contrast to the worry in his eyes. There was no doubt about it. Something was up.
She kissed Mitch’s mouth gently, then pulled back to look into his golden brown eyes. “What happened? Did you meet R.J.?”
Mitch ran his hand across his eyes and through his hair, exhaled slowly through puffed cheeks.
“We never made it to the livery.”
Elise looked from Mitch to Brad and back again. “Why not? Did you have trouble with the skiing?”
“No. Mitch took to skiing like he does everything else.” Brad pulled his desk chair out, sat down, and leaned back against the wall. “He was actually faster than me on the way back here.”
Elise waited for something that would explain the tension in Mitch’s body, the worry in Brad’s eyes.
“We decided to check out the rental place on the way out to the livery. To see who rented skis Thursday morning.”
“And?”
&nbs
p; “No one did. But the killer’s been there. Just as he’s been here.”
She stared at Mitch for a long moment, her mind reeling with a million questions at once.
“Here?”
Mitch nodded, his eyes fixed on hers. “Brad and the hotel clerk, Tom, didn’t just run out of gas in their snowmobiles. It was drained.”
“Drained? How do you know that?”
“Because every one of the fifteen snowmobiles in the rental shop barn were empty despite having been filled up Thursday morning. And they haven’t been used since then.”
She gasped. The killer was circling, waiting.
Mitch’s warm arms pulled her close once again, his lips pressed against her forehead, her temple. “It’s okay, ’Lise. We’re gonna be okay.”
She waited for his words to stop the familiar fear in her heart, but they didn’t. This guy, whoever he was, was toying with them. Simply because he could.
Pulling her lower lip inward, Elise willed herself to find strength in Mitch’s arms. She had to. It was the only thing she could draw on right now. That, and the possibility that she might find something at Merlin’s that could give them the upper hand.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft yet determined. “We can’t let this guy beat us.”
She felt Mitch’s warm breath against her ear. “That’s my girl.”
“Hey, how’d it go with Webber?” Brad asked.
Elise pulled away from Mitch and leaned against the half wall that separated the tiny waiting area from the rest of the station.
“It went well. I filled him in on what we’re dealing with and asked him about the wire service.” Elise unzipped her coat and slipped her arms out. “He’s got one and has actually kept all of the stories from the past year.”
Mitch whistled. “That’s gotta be a lot of stories.”
Elise nodded. “It is, which is one reason why the place is almost wall-to-wall paper.”
“Did you find anything?”
She shook her head, drummed her fingers along the edge of the wall. “By the time I finished filling him in on everything, the lighting inside the newsroom was simply too poor to see anything. And Merlin was moving slow.”
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