by J. S. Marlo
“Near his body was a pair of broken snowshoes that didn’t belong to him. His own pair was missing. He’d made them himself, you know, and he’d attached a rabbit paw at the end of each one…for luck. He’d gone into the woods seeking peace only to meet a violent death. Not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Hannah.” The intensity in his stare suggested this was more than a casual statement. “I read the initial report. At the time, you implicated three people. Would you elaborate, please?”
She hadn’t believed—she still didn’t believe—the native kids to be responsible. Brent had investigated her claims, but he’d come up empty handed. The homes of the kids were searched but Gramp’s snowshoes were never recovered.
“As I approached the creek, I spied three people dashing into the woods. The heftier individual seemed to lean on the other two, as if he had difficulties walking. Come to think of it, they weren’t using snowshoes. They all wore black snowsuits. Before they disappeared behind the trees, the shorter one looked in my direction. The bottom hole of his ski mask was tucked under his chin exposing his mouth and the lower portion of his face.”
His vicious smirk had chilled her bones, overshadowing his other features. If only I’d paid more attention.
“I swear he was a white man.” Not many aboriginals lived on The Rock. “Did I see any of them kill my grandfather? No, I didn’t. Do I believe they were somehow implicated? Yes, or they wouldn’t have been running away. Do I expect you to believe me?” She shrugged off the rhetorical answer.
“I believe you, Hannah.”
“You what?” Though her eyes had seen the words he’d mouthed, she had trouble wrapping her mind around the idea that he said what she read. “You do?”
“I’d like to show you something, but it needs to stay between us. Can I trust you?”
The question resounded like a plea, the same desperate plea she’d received from the girls before they entrusted their lives into her hands. Despite everything it’d cost her, Hannah had never betrayed that trust. “Yes, you can.”
He reached inside his jacket and presented her with a sheet of paper. “I made a copy of the notes you received. At the bottom is a copy of the confession/suicide letter found on one of the teenagers accused of killing him. I’d like you to look at it and see if anything strikes you as odd.”
Brent had told her about the confession, but he’d never shown her the note. The exact content had remained a mystery—until now.
Old man Pike caught us drinking and sniffing glue. He wouldn’t leave us alone. Percy didn’t mean to bash his head. We don’t want to go to prison. Booze and drugs ruined our lives. We want to die.
Reading it after all those years didn’t bring any of the closure Hannah had longed for, it only acerbated the pain. As her gaze lingered on the reasons behind the murder, the curly B in Booze jumped at her like the full moon on a cloudless night.
“It’s the same handwriting, but it can’t be.” Her eyes were betraying her. It couldn’t be the same Bs and Ps. “The teenagers are dead, Avery. They can’t be the ones who wrote the threatening notes dropped on my porch, not unless—”
The only possible explanation punched her in the guts, uprooting her past.
Chapter Fourteen
Haunted by Hannah’s shocked expression, Avery looked at the ceiling of his cramped bedroom.
He could pinpoint the exact moment that realization had struck her, as if he’d opened a window into her mind and stared directly into it. The speed at which she’d connected the dots only to come to the same conclusion as he did had made him proud. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to shed any new light on her grandfather’s death, though Avery was convinced she’d glimpsed the real killers.
“Old man Pike is in the woods where he stumbles onto three thugs.” Talking aloud in the dark helped Avery think. “Or maybe the thugs stumble on Pike. In any case, they kill him.”
Maybe they’re drunk. Maybe they’re doing something illegal—or maybe they have no reason.
“So they kill Pike and steal or stash his snowshoes. Hannah sees the three perpetrators as they walk away. She’s alone in the woods—a damaging witness and an easy target—but they don’t kill her. They don’t even try…unless the one leaning on his friends is injured and needs medical attention. Still, they take an awful risk by letting her live.”
Hannah had just returned to town after many years of absence. On the spur of the moment, the suspects may not have recognized her—mistaken her for a stranger incapable of identifying them—or they may not have felt threatened. The latest possibility added a disturbing twist to the case.
“They choose not to kill her, but they frame two innocent aboriginal youths for the murder, which means the two suicides aren’t suicides. Now I’m dealing with three unsolved murders and possibly three murderers on the prowl for Hannah. But why?”
No matter from which angle he looked at it, Avery couldn’t fathom a plausible motive behind their puzzling behavior. At this rate, I’ll need a Red Eye before sunrise.
“One of the murderers writes the suicide note. Then last December he starts threatening Hannah. Why does he wait five years? Is it possible that he left Mooseland after the murders only to have recently returned? Is he afraid Hannah will suddenly be able to identify him?”
Something had happened in the fall to change the status quo, but what? The first thing that came to Avery’s mind is Abbott’s disappearance. The deceased officer had investigated the murder and the suicides. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I need the mysterious evidence you unearthed, Abbott. What did you do with it? Give it to Foxy with your badge?”
The idea that Foxy had warmed up his seat with Abbott, or someone posing as Abbott, irked Avery every time he drove around town. Since trying to sleep was a waste of time, he decided to get up and head out to the garage to clean the truck, instead of waiting for the alarm clock to go off.
***
The light beams cut through the darkness, illuminating the snowy road leading to town. By the time she drove to Freddy’s house, Hannah had encountered three coyotes and two moose, a mother with her calf, the offspring grazing her bumper. Had she applied the brakes a fraction of second later, her old station wagon would have ended up at the scrapyard, the calf in a freezer, and herself—in one of Freddy’s refrigerated bays. She was seeking her brother, but not in that manner.
Freddy’s green Hummer wasn’t in his driveway, and he never kept it in the garage. It didn’t fit alongside the minivan he’d bought Justine for Christmas. That her brother was ready to start a family of his own seemed obvious to everyone but Justine. He’d even built a brand new house on an acre of land outside Mooseland.
Hannah wasn’t fond of the self-centered girl, but for Freddy’s sake, she showed courtesy towards his girlfriend.
Seeing no sign of the Hummer in the neighborhood, Hannah didn’t bother ringing the doorbell and went directly to the clinic. Freddy had parked his green monster near the side door, which he never locked when he was on the premises.
With Rory in her arms, she walked down the well-lit staircase and found her brother in the morgue, working on paperwork.
“How can you trade a warm bed for a freezing basement filled with dead bodies?” she teased, though in his place she’d trade Justine’s body for a cold slab.
“If this isn’t my favorite sister.” Two long strides later he greeted her with a hug before taking Rory from her arms. “And my favorite nephew. How are you doing, buddy?”
Half asleep in his pajamas under his snowsuit, her son leaned his head against his uncle’s shoulder. “He’s doing better. That’s not why I’m here.”
“It’s not?” Her brother gave her a dubious look. “It’s six a.m. You should be in bed, not in my morgue.”
She’d turned and tossed all night thinking about the confession. “Avery came to visit me yesterday.”
“You mean Officer Stone?” A smile crept on Freddy’s face as he rocked R
ory like a newborn baby. “Are you seeing him?”
“No!” Where in Freddy’s skull did that ludicrous idea spring from? “He’s…”
If she told him everything Avery had shared, Fred would worry. He’d insist she came to live in his new house. A move she wasn’t ready to make. Besides, involving him might place his life in jeopardy. A risk she wasn’t willing to take when there was nothing he could do to change the situation she found herself in. Does that even make sense?
She blinked away her exhaustion. After a sleepless night, focusing on Freddy’s lips already required all the mental effort she could muster. She didn’t care if her twisted reasoning wasn’t logical as long as it rang true.
“He seems like a nice guy, Hannah. If he’s interested, you shouldn’t reject him offhand. A boy needs a father.”
Freddy had never pried into her private life, and of all the mornings to breach the subject of Rory’s paternity, this wasn’t a good one. “I’m not here to discuss Rory, okay?”
A heavy sigh deflated his chest. His mouth opened and moved, then it closed again before she read anything coherent.
“Why are you here?” Though he articulated clearly, she still sensed his annoyance.
“I need a favor. A huge favor.” Her brother had never refused her anything, but she’d also never abused the privilege of asking him favors. “I need to look at the autopsy reports of Gramp and the two teenagers accused of killing him.”
***
Avery combed the passenger and driver seats with a magnifying glass and flashlight, only managing to lift a few crumbs from the blueberry muffin he’d eaten the previous morning. No spill and no discoloration anywhere on the leather seats. Not even a coffee stain.
Good, and not so good. He was relieved the truck had been cleaned at least once in the last three and a half months. At the same time, he was disappointed that he wasn’t able to corroborate Foxy’s story.
As he returned the passenger seat to its upright position, the flashlight slipped from his hand and rolled underneath.
Great. Reaching blindly for it, he grazed it with his fingers, only to push it farther away. Just great.
Crawling between the glove compartment and the doormat wasn’t his idea of fun. If it weren’t for the light shining from under the seat, he’d write off the flashlight.
He squeezed his head and shoulders inside the truck. With his ear touching the doormat, he looked underneath the seat. The flashlight was wedged between two steel bars near an electrical wire. Careful of the wire, he gripped the flashlight. When it didn’t move, he tried jerking it. Come on.
All of sudden, the flashlight slid free. As he shifted his head, Avery saw something yellow out the corner of his eye. He shined the light upward. Bloody luck.
Taped to the bottom of the seat was a large envelope. Abbott, that better be it.
A ridiculously large amount of duct tape had been used to secure the package to its hiding place. Once he pulled the last strip, it fell on the floor. Abbott’s name was scribbled on top.
Avery smiled.
The heated garage had been built at the back of the detachment, halfway between his mobile home and office, visible from both places. Aside from his truck, two snowmobiles were parked inside. While Avery was the one who used the garage the most, he still shared its access with Cooper and Reed. He couldn’t take the chance that someone might see him walking back home with a yellow envelope in his hand.
Before he extracted himself from the truck, he slipped the evidence inside his jacket and zipped it.
As Avery closed the door of the truck, a draft of cold air swept inside the building.
“Stone? What are you doing here?”
Avery could ask the constable the same question since none of the vehicles parked inside were assigned to Cooper.
“I can’t believe no one told me about Foxy and Abbott on the front seat.” Feigning indignation wasn’t too hard. “I scrubbed the inside. Now I’ll go drown the memory with a drink. Want to join me?”
The cocky grin on Cooper’s face morphed into a scornful grimace. “I can’t believe I wasted my time cleaning the damn truck for you.”
“You did?” Ever since Avery heard about the tryst, he’d wondered if DNA samples had been collected to positively identify the participating individuals. “Did you take any swabs to check if Foxy was the only…girl who contributed her DNA to the mix?”
“You’re one sick son of a gun, you know that.” Cooper’s voice rose in indignation. “I wasn’t going to hammer another nail in Abe’s coffin. I don’t stab my brothers in the back, but I’m ready to make an exception for you, Stone. Consider yourself warned.”
Chapter Fifteen
How dare Freddy refuse?
Hannah understood about privacy rules and regulations, but Gramp was family, and it could be argued that the two teenagers fell under the jurisdiction of Social Services.
In the rearview mirror, she caught Rory’s reflection. Wide-awake, he was playing with a car toy, transforming it into a robot. It was a gift from Freddy after he refused her request. You’re not forgiven yet, Big Brother.
Vexed by his refusal, she stopped by the arena. Hannah had come into town for answers. She refused to go back home empty-handed. “Come on, Munchkin. We’ll go inside for a few minutes.”
The curling rink was deserted, the snack bar was closed, but the hockey rink was open. Teenagers in blue and green jerseys chased a black puck on the ice under the frantic gestures of their coaches.
Rory climbed into the bleachers to watch the game while she browsed through the ads pinned to the announcement board. No Bs and no Ps. This was a waste of time.
“Five years ago, I missed something. I need to go back to the creek where Gramp died. This afternoon—”
Sensing a presence, she spun around. A guy with dark brown eyes, short brown hair, and a goatee was staring at her from the doorway of the men’s dressing room.
A hockey bag was slung over his shoulder and his mouth formed an O.
Unsure what to make of his reaction, she watched him divert his gaze and stride away.
***
Seated at the kitchen table with the doors locked and blinds closed, Avery sipped on a bad cup of coffee while reading the content of the sealed envelope he’d found taped under the seat of his truck.
November 6th. Five drunken men arrested for disorderly conduct.
The report in the envelope was an exact copy of the one that had waited on his desk when Avery had first reported to Mooseland. The five men in question had paid a fine and been released. It’d taken Avery more time to set a password on his computer than to close and file the case.
“What did I miss?”
The men had been arrested at The Polar Skin for exchanging insults. In the shuffle, a table was damaged. They’d sobered up during the night, and in the morning Abbott had sent them home.
According to this, four of them had no prior record, but the last man, Noel Foley, was flagged with a star. Shoplifting was written beside his name.
“That’s odd.” The unfiled report on Avery’s desk had made no mention of shoplifting.
He flipped to the next page and frowned. The handwriting was different. It took him a few seconds to realize he was looking at Foley’s shoplifting arrest.
As Avery read over the report, he summarized the information in his mind.
Five years ago, eighteen-year old Noel Foley and a fifteen-year old cousin were arrested for shoplifting and received probation and community service. The younger cousin was referred to the juvenile court.
“Talk to me, Abbott. What does Noel Foley have—”As Avery spoke the name aloud, a possible connection occurred to him. “Is he Percy Foley’s cousin by any chance?”
***
“Cooper? Sergeant? Anyone in?”
The door to Reed’s office was open. Cooper’s desk was unoccupied. The cells at the end of the corridor were empty.
If Cooper came in to work after his surprise visit
in the garage, he was now gone.
Perfect. Their absence gave Avery the opportunity to snoop into the old reports stored in the filing cabinets.
An hour later, he was no closer of finding any reference to Noel Foley than when he started. Something isn’t right. It was as if Foley had never been arrested prior to the drunken mishap, but the copy of the arrest made by Abbott indicated otherwise.
A door banged and footsteps resonated inside the building. Sliding the drawer shut, Avery hurried to meet the newcomer in the corridor. “Morning, Sergeant.”
Feet planted some eighteen inches apart with his knees slightly bent, the burly officer puffed his chest and glared. “I heard from Terri, Abbott’s widow. She wasn’t happy to be harassed at seven in the morning.”
Not the least intimidated by the gorilla stance, Avery crossed his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the wall.
“Abbott wasn’t thorough. I thought he might have kept some files at home.” The encounter had happened days ago, and he’d behaved rather properly. The widow had no ground for a complaint. “And for the record, I didn’t harass her.”
“I convinced her not to lodge a formal complaint. In your place, Stone, I’d count my lucky stars and stay the heck away from her.” His superior poked a finger at his tie, intruding upon Avery’s personal space. “Got it?”
“Terri Abbott is out of bounds.” To resist the urge of grabbing the finger and breaking it in half, Avery inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “Got it, Sergeant.”
“Good. Now do some work instead of wandering aimlessly all day. And next time, shave before you put on your uniform.”
Spinning on his heels, the sergeant marched away. Seconds later, a door slammed inside the detachment. His superior had withdrawn to his office.