Dark Ice: A Hard-Boiled Crime Novel: (Dan Reno Private Detective Noir Mystery Series) (Dan Reno Novel Series Book 4)

by Dave Stanton

  “The murders of Valerie and Terry are definitely related. They both were with Nick Galanis.”

  “That perv screwed both of them?”

  “We don’t know that about Terry.”

  “Do you think Galanis killed them?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  “What a crazy deal.”

  “It’s strange.” I shook my head, then said, “It’s a nuthouse out there.”

  “You just think that because you’re sane.”

  I laughed. “You think so?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  I finished my drink and helped her make a salad to go along with the chicken and rice she’d prepared. After we ate, we went to her art room and she showed me a painting she’d begun, a surrealistic rendition of the meadow and mountains visible from my backyard.

  “Groovy, baby,” I said.

  “This is a serious work,” she admonished. “I’ve taken pictures of this scene every week since I’ve moved in, capturing the change of seasons. The sky, the trees, the grass, the mountains, all in a continual state of flux.”

  “Very cool.”

  She took my hand and backed her body into mine, her head tucked under my chin.

  “I love it here,” she said, staring out the big window into the night.

  “Me too,” I said.

  I closed my eyes and we stood silently, her soft curves against me, her hands holding mine around her waist. Then the moment was interrupted by the blare of my cell phone.

  “Goddammit,” I muttered. I waited for it to ring again and gave Candi a final squeeze before picking it up.

  “Dan, it’s Liz. There’s a man here at Zeke’s who wants to talk to you.” Her voice was shrill.

  “Who is he?”

  “He wouldn’t say. But he acted like he expects you to get right over here.”

  “Tell him that’s not going to happen. If he wants to see me, he can make an appointment.”

  “Dan,” she said, her tone hushed, “I think he’s a member of those bikers that came in.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s got a Nazi tattoo and he rode up on a Harley. Some people left when he came in. He’s bad news. You want me to call the sheriff?”

  “No.” I checked my watch. 7:00 P.M., a busy hour at the restaurant. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “What’s up?” Candi said.

  “There’s someone at Zeke’s I need to have a few words with.”

  “Is it trouble?”

  I paused for a moment. “If it is, I’ll put a stop to it.” I smiled. “Nothing to worry about, should only take a few minutes.”

  I hurried out to the garage and started my truck, but before I backed out, I unlocked the steel toolbox welded behind the cab. I removed my bulletproof vest, my .40 cal automatic, and a spring loaded sap I called “Good Night, Irene.” Moving quickly, I shrugged into the vest and my shoulder holster and hit the gas out toward 50. The single traffic light for the turn onto the highway was green, and I gunned it through the intersection and, a minute later, banged into Zeke’s parking lot.

  The Harley was parked next to the steps to the main entrance. It was low slung, the tank red, the rear tire fat between chrome pipes. I looked for an empty spot and took a lap around the packed lot before parking in the handicap stall next to the bike. Then I stepped out of my cab and went through the front doors.

  The only empty seats at the bar were to either side of a man who wore black boots, jeans, and a jean vest with a patch of a growling, red-eyed dog sewn on the back. His torso was linebacker wide and his shoulders and biceps looked ready to blow out the seams of his T-shirt. A black swastika stood out in the maze of tattoos on his upper arm. His forearms and hands were so densely covered in blue ink I couldn’t make out individual tattoos.

  I walked up and sat at the stool to his left. “You wanted to see me?” I said.

  He turned slowly and rested his eyes on mine. There was no hair on his head or face, save for scant eyebrows, above which some indecipherable German words were tattooed. His pale blue eyes were shadowed by the thick, jutting ridge of his skull. Nose bent and flat like a boxer’s, jaw thick and square. A thin white scar ran from aside his nostril down over his lips.

  “I hear you’re part owner of this joint.” He smiled with his mouth and his eyes were like pinpricks of light.

  “What do you want?”

  He looked away, scanning the bar, and when he looked back at me, his thin smile was gone.

  “To meet the man who sent my three partners to jail.”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  He took stock of me, his eyes deliberately roaming up and down my person as if I were a product on a shelf.

  “That black hair of yours. You ain’t a Jew-boy, is you?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jake Massie. But you don’t need to know that, because I won’t take your check. I only take cash money.”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “You owe me.”

  “Regarding your partners?”

  “That’s right. It’s ten grand a head, my friend, to cover expenses. Cash money, like I said.”

  I felt the lump of the sap in my coat pocket, and for a long moment, I considered cold cocking Jake Massie right there and then. But I didn’t want another altercation in my place of business.

  “Let’s go out back, talk about it over a smoke,” I said.

  “It’s tempting, but no, thanks. Your beer garden is covered in snow. You ought to get it shoveled.”

  “Our conversation is finished, then.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you here ten tomorrow morning. That should give you enough time to get to your bank.”

  This time I chuckled. Massie’s brow creased over one eye and his lips pulled back from his teeth.

  “You think this is funny? You won’t, if I don’t get my money. That’s a promise.”

  I reached in my coat pocket, grasped my sap, and said, “If I see you again, you’ll be joining your friends in jail. Or worse. That’s my promise. Now get out of my bar.”

  He smiled again, but his eyes stayed hard and fixed on my face. “I heard you were a tough son of a bitch. Maybe next time we’ll meet at your house. Just around the corner, right?”

  “I see you around my property, and that includes this restaurant, you’ll regret it.”

  “I’ll regret it? Let me spell something out for you, toadstool. I’m a busy man, and I’m not sure you’re worth my time. But I have plenty of friends who’d love to meet you. The brotherhood is only a phone call away.”

  “The Aryan Brotherhood?”

  He grinned, his teeth glistening. “You’re not so fucking stupid after all, are you?”

  With those words, he shrugged into his leather coat and walked out, his gait bow legged and cocksure. The words WAR DOGS were stitched across the back of his jacket.

  Liz hurried over, her nipples scribbling under her blouse, and stared at me with unblinking eyes.

  “If you see him again, call me,” I said.

  6

  Cody called at eight the next morning, his voice thick and groggy. “Hey, Dirt, I overslept.”

  “When can you be here?”

  “You better drive up Kingsbury yourself. I’ll meet you in Gardnerville around ten thirty.”

  “You get in any trouble last night?”

  “Nothing unusual.”

  “Well, take some aspirin and vitamin B.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  He hung up, and I gulped the remainder of my coffee and went into bathroom where Candi was in her bra and panties, putting on her makeup.

  “I don’t want you to worry about what I told you last night,” I said. “Just call me if you see anyone on a Harley on our street. Or at the college.”

  “I keep my gun loaded, you know.”

  I looked at her and realized she was serious.

  “It’s hidden in a cupboar
d in the kitchen,” she said.

  “You’re not going to have to shoot anyone, babe.”

  “Don’t think I won’t if someone messes with us.”

  I shook my head and went to the garage and loaded my truck. Skis, boots, poles, and a pack complete with binoculars and a compass. And also a collapsible metal detector that I’d bought years ago. Used it once, and it had collected cobwebs ever since.

  After double-checking my gear, I backed out of the garage. Then I stopped in my driveway and dialed Marcus Grier.

  “First thing in the morning, huh?” he said.

  “That’s right. Sorry to start your day off with this, but I was paid a visit last night by a man named Jake Massie. War Dogs member, claims to be Aryan Brotherhood.”

  “Go on.”

  “He told me I’m responsible for his three buddies landing in jail, and I owe him thirty grand for it.”

  “He was serious?”

  “Afraid so. Said the AB was backing him up.”

  Grier exhaled. “I’ll pull up a mug shot on him. If I see him, I’ll bring him in.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to let him know he’s not welcome here.”

  “All right. One other thing. Could you send a squad car by my house every couple hours? And maybe one by the college too? Massie said he knows where I live.”

  “Great. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “I’d say you owe me a steak dinner, but I don’t take bribes.”

  “I’ll buy you one anyway. Thanks for your help, Marcus.”

  • • •

  There was little traffic, and it only took fifteen minutes to reach the crest of Kingsbury at 7800 feet. I followed a brief line of cars down the curvy road leading to the ski lodge, passing rows of condos and fancy vacation homes. The sun had just peeked over the ridge, and the sky was clear and bright, the blue void split by a brilliant streak of white jet exhaust rising from the east and slowly making its way across the expanse.

  It was twenty-two degrees according to the digital readout on my dashboard. Visibility excellent, a perfect day for recon. I parked, wedged into my boots, and assembled my gear. Beanie, goggles, gloves, all accounted for. I zipped my jacket, slung my skis over my shoulder, and hiked to the near side of the lodge. Once on the snow pack, I clicked into my skis and sidestepped up a tall berm until it leveled out. I skated from there to the back side of the lodge, which overlooked a long stretch of thickly forested flatland flanked by a granite headwall about half a mile away.

  There were no tracks leading out, but it had snowed twice, heavily, since Valerie Horvachek was murdered. I didn’t see any sign of anything resembling a trail, so I pushed off and let gravity pull me, my skis slowly cutting through the dense snowpack until I reached the woods. The snow was firmer under the trees, and I poled my way to the right until I began to coast along the tree line.

  I kept my head up and scanned for any evidence this path had been taken recently. The grade steepened and my speed picked up. Even in a straight line, it was difficult snow to ski, water heavy and grabby, threatening to catch a ski at the slightest adjustment in balance. I concentrated on keeping my weight neutral over both legs. My thighs had started to burn by the time I reached the headwall. I looked back the way I’d come. It would have been easy going for a snowmobile, far less so for a skier towing a gurney.

  Ahead of me, a logical path cut across the bald mountain side. I followed it, careful to stay high and not drop down into the deep valley below. The snow became variable, heavy in parts, and then thin enough for my edges to scrape along the hard-pack beneath the surface. I steered into the mountain, going just fast enough to keep momentum.

  I traversed the hill for ten minutes, above cliff bands and around jutting boulders, until ahead of me and to my right, the terrain turned uphill. Now about a mile deep in the backcountry, there was no option but to go left, down the mountain. I pulled the map from my jacket pocket and estimated I was on course. If I could proceed straight, I’d run right into Got Balls Bowl, but like the patroller said, I’d be forced to go below it.

  I headed down into a maze of trees. It was steep and jagged conditions, very difficult to ski fluidly. I made jump turns and skidded over low branches and the occasional rock. Every couple turns I stopped to reset. Then I realized I was going about it wrong. I’d seen plenty of patrollers bringing sleds down a hill. They used the oldest trick in the book, the first thing taught to every beginner skier.

  I widened my stance, brought my tips together, and flexed my ankles inward. “All right, then,” I muttered, and skidded down the slope in a classic wedge, the good old snowplow. Slow and steady, good speed control, no need to turn. It was then that I noticed a broken branch half buried in my path. Maybe it was nothing, but I saw two more.

  Stopping again, I surveyed the trees around me. A few broken branches were no kind of evidence, and there was nothing else to indicate anyone had been here. I snowplowed to the bottom of the slope and turned right and picked my way through some more trees until I looked up and saw I had passed beneath Got Balls. Another half mile or so to where I was going, I estimated. I found a bit of clearing and made a few turns until I came out of the trees and saw the banked slope I had skied the day I found the body.

  Back on familiar terrain, I resisted the temptation to speed up, instead falling back into a wedge and looking for any sign of passage. I reached the trail to the glade and proceeded slowly. A foot or two beneath my skis were my tracks from ten days ago, and maybe other tracks. Unfortunately there was no way to dig down like an archeologist for clues. Once new snowfall obscures old tracks, they’re lost for good.

  At the entrance to the idyllic glade, I paused and scanned the area. I skied on and saw the yellow police tape, now broken and scattered and partially buried.

  It was a little after nine, leaving me an hour before I needed to ski down to meet Cody. I found the sunken area where Valerie’s body once lay and took the metal detector from my pack. Then I released my ski bindings and jammed my skis into the snow, the tips crossed and pointed toward the sky. From there I began walking outward, sweeping the snow in six foot sections. Forty feet out, I stopped after the surrounding brush became tangled and thick, then returned and began again. In this manner, I covered a circle eighty feet in diameter from the site of Valerie’s body. The metal detector did not register a single blip. I then surveyed the area beyond the perimeter of the glade. Much of it was rough terrain, and there were plenty of places where a clue might be hiding within the dense trees and deadfall. I spent thirty minutes searching, my boots often breaking through the crust up to my knees.

  I finally stopped and switched off the metal detector and took a long swallow from my water bottle. My hopes that the killer may have discarded a bungee cord, or maybe even a sled, had not panned out. Worse, I now doubted more than before that anyone would take the route I’d just navigated at night. But someone had taken some route, in the dark, through difficult terrain. That much was certain, and it suggested the killer was an accomplished backwoodsman.

  Sweating, I yanked off my beanie and guzzled more water. When I finished, I wiped my mouth, and my eyes settled on a tree at the far end of the glade. There was a brief flash of pink on a branch. I squinted, then knocked the snow from my boots, clicked back into my skis, and glided to the tree. It was a small, snow-covered pine. I reached out with my pole and tapped the pink object. The snow covering it fell away. Among the pine needles hung a purse.

  “Bingo,” I said. From my pack I pulled a pair of rubber gloves and forced them over my callused hands. Then I gingerly lifted the purse by the strap. It was medium-sized as purses go, faux leather, shiny. The vinyl had begun to curl away at the edges. It was zipped shut.

  I stepped out of my skis again and sat where the snow was flat and arranged the skis in my lap to provide a surface. I set the purse down and unzipped the main compartment. Inside were keys, a woman’s wa
llet, a cell phone, a plastic bag containing various makeup items and a couple of condoms, a lighter, a pen, a few business cards, a bracelet, sunglasses.

  An inner side compartment was bulging, the material tight. I tugged the small zipper open and saw a smooth lump of clear plastic. I eased it free with my fingertips. It was a double-layered baggie of white powder. Too big to be her personal stash. At least an ounce. I opened the first Ziploc, then the second, licked my little finger and tasted a few tiny particles. Cocaine. Not flaking or rocky, but mostly powder. Probably heavily cut with baby laxative. Weak, street grade blow.

  I replaced the coke, closed the purse, and fit it into a plastic evidence bag in my pack. “Shit,” I said, looking at my watch. I was behind schedule. I got back on my skis and fit my goggles on my face and pushed out of the glade into a steep section that required my full attention. My skis chattered like jackhammers over the rough conditions as I pounded my way down, muscling through crud and over boilerplate and nearly losing it on a patch of harbor chop. When I reached the flats leading to the road, I was hot in my coat.

  I skated to the road and called Cody. A minute later, he came along in his red truck. He stood and waited while I opened his tailgate and stowed my skis and boots and took a pair of jogging shoes from my pack.

  “Find anything?” he asked. His face looked bloodless, the skin dry and cracked around the lips, his beard like rusted wire.

  I pulled out the plastic bag holding the pink purse. “Hanging from a tree,” I said.

  Cody lowered his head and eyeballed my find. “Missed it the first time?”

  “I wasn’t looking for evidence when I was there before.”

  “I meant the cops.”

  “Oh. Yeah, apparently they missed it.”

  “Did you find her driver’s license?”

  “I haven’t gone through all the contents yet.”

  “Check and see if her license is there.” Cody sat on the tailgate with me. The rear shocks hissed and conceded a few inches.

  I set my ski gloves aside and stretched the rubber gloves over my hands again, then carefully removed the wallet, a lime green unit with a metal clasp. I snapped it open and checked the compartments. “Credit cards,” I said, “but no license.”