by Stephen Frey
She looks up at me. “Do you think I should?”
I stare at her for a few seconds, then finally nod. Regretfully, because right now I don’t need another high-profile investigation in Dakota County. I don’t have much in the way of resources and I don’t want her to get frustrated with me when Karen doesn’t turn up right away. “Probably,” I say quietly.
I like Maggie. She’s a sweet girl and I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for vulnerable women. That’s what I thought Vivian was when I met her at that club in Madison. She caught my eye the first time I saw her, when I was in there doing a routine check one Friday afternoon before things got going. I found out she was from somewhere down near Illinois and that she’d been through a long line of foster homes and didn’t have any idea who her parents were. I hate those kinds of stories, and she looked so pretty and sweet. I know, I know, the stripper-with-a-heart story, but all I could think about as I stared at her was getting her out of that awful place. And she always thanked me for getting her out of that place, she was always so sweet to me—until she found out for sure she couldn’t have children.
Then she turned into someone I didn’t know for a few months, then into someone I didn’t want to know.
“Do I have to fill out paperwork?” she asks.
“I’ll do it. You’ll just sign it. Come by the precinct after the storm’s passed through, okay? On Tuesday or Wednesday morning.”
“Okay,” she agrees, her voice cracking. Two streams of tears run down her puffy cheeks to the corners of her mouth. Taking this step is admitting to herself that there’s a big problem. “It’s just that I—”
My cell phone goes off and it’s the precinct calling. “Hello.” I hold my hand up, letting Maggie know this won’t take long.
“Sheriff?”
“Yes, Mrs. Erickson.”
“You need to get over here. There’s someone to see you.”
“Who?”
“He says his name’s Darrow Clements. He says Mr. Prescott sent him.”
Darrow Clements. Jesus, Lew Prescott doesn’t screw around. And, of course, Mrs. Erickson would have to be there when Clements showed up. I consider telling him to pound salt, to come back after the storm, but that’ll only delay the inevitable and get us off on the wrong foot. “Tell him I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“All rightee.”
I shove the phone back in my pocket. “You were going to say something, Maggie?”
“I’m scared.”
“Why?” I ask, standing up.
“I keep hearing about this devil cult,” she says, standing up, too. “I keep thinking maybe that’s what happened to Karen, that maybe they got her.” She looks up at me and her tears start flowing even harder. “Are we safe, Sheriff?”
I move slowly to where she stands and put my hand on her shoulder. I can tell she needs to be held, but I shouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be appropriate. Here, alone in the trailer with her. “Yes, Maggie, you’re safe. Don’t worry.”
She starts sobbing and presses her cheek against my chest. Against my better judgment I wrap my arms around her and comfort her for a few minutes before I finally step back and bid her a gentle good-bye.
12
I EASE INTO my office chair at the precinct to the sound of its familiar creak, the way I always do when there’s someone I don’t trust sitting on the other side of my desk. I sit slowly and deliberately, never taking my eyes off the person, letting him know that I don’t trust him and that I’m watching everything he does.
Darrow Clements retired from the Wisconsin State Police Force two years ago. Like Peter Schmidt, Clements was someone I knew while I was a trooper stationed in the barracks on the outskirts of Madison, which was only two miles from that club Vivian danced in. Unlike Schmidt, Clements was someone I never got along with. Lew Prescott probably knows that, too. That’s probably the main reason Clements is sitting in front of me right now and not someone else who’s smarter. Prescott figures he needs a bulldog for this assignment, someone who can get under my skin, make me vulnerable, and get me to drop my guard. He has lots of other people who can sift through the clues and make assessments.
Clements always reminded me of a drill sergeant because of his build and because he has absolutely no people skills whatsoever. He has broad shoulders, a flat stomach, and not an ounce of fat on him, though he’s got to be in his midfifties by now. He’s completely no-nonsense except that he’s half an inch shy of six feet tall but tells anyone who’ll listen he’s an even six. He has little eyes and talks in rapid bursts, like an automatic weapon going off. His failing as a police officer is that he’s absolutely black and white. There’s no gray area for him, no interpreting the statutes, which is why we never saw eye to eye.
Say you’re doing eighty in a forty. He’d write you up for reckless driving even though your wife’s lying passed out and cold beside you and she’s eight months pregnant. He doesn’t care that there wasn’t time to call an ambulance or that you’ll lose your license for six months if you’re convicted. Or that you’ll lose your job on top of that because you can’t drive to work. He doesn’t care that he’ll ruin your life. Worst of all, he doesn’t care that your wife and baby might die while he writes up the ticket. I know how that sounds, like it couldn’t possibly be true, but it is. I heard he was forced to retire because the judges couldn’t take him anymore.
See, he always figured that interpretation and compassion were for the courts. He always figured it was his job to haul as many people in front of the bench as he could and let the robes decide what to do with them. He believes most people are inherently bad and ought to be in jail anyway and that’s our fundamental difference. Even though I’m a police officer, despite all the awful things I’ve seen over the years, I still believe most people are inherently good.
“How have you been, Darrow?” I haven’t seen him in four years, not since I came to Bruner. “How’s your wife?” I ask when he doesn’t reply. I’m trying to start this thing off in a friendly way even if it kills me.
“She’s dead.” He stares at me impassively. “Ovarian cancer last summer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What about you? How’s that stripper you married?”
I grit my teeth so hard I feel like I’m going to crack one. “Fine, Darrow, Vivian’s fine,” I answer, somehow keeping my temper in check.
“I remember running her in one night for soliciting in front of the Drake Hotel in downtown Madison. It was a few weeks before you two got married.”
He’s such a prick. He arrested Vivian in front of the Drake that night with no cause whatsoever. She was just walking down the street, minding her own business. Okay, she was dressed provocatively, but that was how she always dressed back then, even nights she wasn’t working. He only arrested her so he could tell all the boys at the barracks she was a hooker, too, not just a stripper. That was his idea of fun, to make it look like I was marrying a prostitute. I’d never done anything to him; in fact, we barely knew each other at that point, but he didn’t care. It was a chance to really hurt someone else and he wasn’t going to pass that up.
He gives me a snide chuckle. “That was interesting. She wasn’t convicted, but I know she was trying to—”
“Why are you here, Darrow?” I ask coldly, trying to make him understand that in a minute I’m going to jack him up against the wall and make him wish he’d never come.
It did bother me that Vivian never gave me a good explanation for what happened. She never really came clean about what she was doing down there in front of the Drake so far from her apartment at one o’clock in the morning the week I was working a graveyard shift. I only asked her about it once, and she dodged the arrow, but I’ve always wondered if there was more to the story.
“How the hell did you get mixed up with that woman?”
I want to bang him back about the semi-truck he married but I can’t. I wouldn’t even if she hadn’t died, it’s not in me
. “Why are you here?” I ask again in the same gruff tone as I clench my fists tightly. He finally gets the message. I can tell by the way he crosses his arms over his chest and pushes his chin down.
“Lewis Prescott wants me to consult with him about his daughter’s murder.”
“Consult? What does that mean?”
“He wants me to make sure this investigation’s run right.”
Well, at least Prescott and his congressman son-in-law couldn’t have me replaced. If they could have, Clements wouldn’t be sitting in my office now. Bear was right on target with that one. “You’re a citizen now, Darrow,” I remind him, leaning forward over the desk. “You were fired.”
“I resigned.”
“Not according to people who—”
“I want everything on this case, Paul,” Clements interrupts. “I want access to all the records, all the reports, and all the evidence. Don’t try to stonewall me, either.”
I give him my best did-I-really-hear-what-you-just-said look. “I couldn’t give you anything having to do with this case even if I wanted to, Darrow. You know that. All the information I have has to stay absolutely confidential. I shouldn’t even need to say that.”
“You play it that way and you’ll be sorry. Prescott thinks you know a lot more than you’re saying about what happened to Cindy, and I agree with him.”
“Screw him and you.”
Clements points at me angrily. “Listen, I’ve still got friends in Madison, friends who can bring the hammer down on you, people who can climb inside your life and see if there really is a conflict with you leading this investigation. People who can have you suspended from duty, maybe even fired.” He spears at me again with his index finger. “You lose this job, Paul, and you’re flipping burgers at one of the bars in town. There won’t be anything left in law enforcement for you. Not after Minneapolis and Madison.”
I can feel that vein in my neck bulging. “I was framed.”
“Not in Madison,” he counters.
I wasn’t ready for that. Prescott must have told him what I said about being set up on that trumped-up evidence-stealing charge in Minneapolis. I mean, everyone knew it was a complete joke. But Prescott had that precinct completely under his thumb and I went down. Of course, if I’d really stolen evidence from that room I never would have gotten the job in Madison. But the trooper gig was all set up for me as long as I agreed to leave Minneapolis without any trouble, as long as I agreed to put that distance between Cindy and me immediately.
“Nothing was ever proven.”
“We gave you a break, Paul. They were running drugs out of that club your wife was stripping in. You were the one who was calling over there to warn the bouncers on nights we sent the undercover guys in. We had proof, Paul, we had phone records.”
“You’re out of your mind. You didn’t have anything.” They didn’t, either. This was all just part of his bluster intended to get under my skin. “If you had, you’d have pushed me harder.”
“You had that itchy trigger finger, too,” Clements keeps going, raising one eyebrow as he leans back in the chair. “There were those two incidents,” he says, forming quotation marks with his fingers when he says the word “incidents.” “Those two people who got shot on routine traffic stops in less than a year.”
“They pulled guns on me. I was cleared both times.”
Clements breaks into a smug smile. “Then why’d you take the deal, Paul?” He makes a sweeping gesture with both arms. “Why’d you trade Madison in for all of this.”
My eyes narrow as I stare at him. I hate him almost as much as I hate Lewis Prescott. These two men could destroy my life, maybe even put me behind bars for the rest of my days without the slightest shred of evidence. I need to remember that. The law isn’t always fair, and no one knows that better than me.
• • •
After Clements leaves, I pull out the missing-person paperwork on Karen Brock. I really don’t want to start the process, but I don’t have a choice. Karen could be in real trouble. I’m convinced the handwriting on the “Dear Bear” note was hers, but you never know about these things. Maybe she hasn’t been able to handle life outside Bruner as well as she thought she could. My experience is that sisters have an incredible and inexplicable bond. It’s almost like ESP, like they can tell when the other one’s in trouble even if they’re on opposite sides of the world.
As far as ESP goes I know it’s irrational to believe in it, but I’ve seen Vivian pick some pretty crazy things out of thin air. She had a vision that Gus and Trudy Van Dyke were going to die two weeks before they did. She even called them on the phone and begged them to be careful, which was odd because they’d never been very nice to her. Gus gave her a real insincere thank you and laughed it off as Vivian just being Vivian. Bear told me how Gus and Trudy described the call in detail to a couple of friends over dinner at the Kro-Bar one night a few days after Vivian phoned them. He told me how the two couples got a big laugh out of it and called her nuts. How he almost went over to the table and told Gus off but he couldn’t because after all Gus was his father-in-law. I bet Gus and Trudy wished they’d listened to Vivian as they were hurtling toward that grove of white pine trees at sixty miles an hour screaming for their lives.
I stare down at the missing-person forms, wondering if Bear was the one who told Vivian about Cindy’s being in town by herself. It bothers me so much to think like that, but I can’t help it. I’ve been wondering a lot about their relationship over the last twenty-four hours.
When I’m finished with the paperwork I drive over to the trailer so Maggie can sign everything. I know she didn’t want to wait until after the storm, and, now that the weather people are saying this monster could dump so much snow on us, it might be the end of the week before things get back to normal. Even though 681 is technically a state road, it usually takes a while for the plows to get this far north. We just aren’t that important to the people in Madison.
Maggie starts to cry when I show up. She tells me I should be home with Vivian as she signs the forms with a shaking hand at the cheap table in the trailer’s kitchen. If Maggie only knew how I’ve stayed awake at night staring at the bedroom ceiling, worried that I haven’t done my job in this case, she might not be thanking me so much. But then she’d understand my conflict and I can’t have anyone understand that.
Vivian couldn’t have been nicer about my deciding to go into the precinct after church. She told me just to get home as soon as I could and that she’d have something good waiting for me. I know there’s a connection between her new attitude and Cindy’s murder. I just pray it isn’t direct. When I get back to the precinct with the signed papers, Mrs. Erickson is beside herself. She’s banging desk drawers, stamping her feet and muttering.
“This has got to be illegal,” she fusses as I pass her desk.
I don’t say anything at first.
“It’s just got to be!” she shouts even louder.
I hesitate. I should walk straight into my office and pay no attention, but my curiosity gets the better of me. “What’s the problem?”
She nods at her computer. “There’s a damn chat room on this website that’s dedicated to Cindy Prescott’s murder. Some woman down in Hayward’s put it together already. Everybody’s on it.”
Even Mrs. Erickson can’t fight technology and I have to admit it makes me happy to see her so irritated. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“What?”
“Call all the deputies and tell them we won’t be having our weekly meeting tomorrow afternoon because of the storm.” I close the door to my office without waiting for an answer.
I spend fifteen minutes sending Karen’s information out to the other contiguous county police forces and to the state boys in Superior and Madison, then pack it in for the day. I’ll think about widening the search if we don’t hear something after the storm is gone.
By the time I come back out of my office it’s a few minutes before three and Mrs. Erickson�
�s gone. She didn’t even stick her head in to say good-bye. The thing is, she wouldn’t have said good-bye even if I had been more compassionate about that website infringing on her territory. I’ll have to call the deputies myself to make sure they know about the meeting being canceled. I doubt she followed up.
Davy comes into the precinct just as I’m leaving. He’s the deputy on duty tonight but I tell him to leave when the snow starts. I don’t want him getting stuck here away from his wife and three kids.
Finally, I head home down SR 681 beneath a threatening sky. The gray clouds are so thick it’s almost dark even though technically it’s another hour to sundown. It’s like we’re experiencing a solar eclipse or something and everyone’s gone for their burrows. Hardly anyone’s on the road. I only have to dim my high beams once for an oncoming car.
I spot that first flake as I’m passing the campground. It’s small, not like the big fat flakes the storm a few days ago started with. This storm is serious. At least it isn’t starting with the freezing rain and sleet the weathermen had predicted it would. Fortunately, the temperature dropped this afternoon more quickly than they anticipated. It was twenty-three degrees when I left the precinct and the temperature was still falling fast.
I race past the Campbell estate on the right, then past two more gates. I’m only a couple of miles from home when a lone figure darts out from the tree line up ahead of me on the left. Then two more figures appear, apparently chasing the first one. It’s difficult to see much through the gloom, but the first one looks like a teenage girl and the second two look like men. Then all three of them are gone, swallowed up by the forest on the west side of 681. What’s so crazy is that the girl didn’t look like she had much on. In fact, it looked like she wasn’t wearing anything at all.
I skid to a stop at the spot where I figure they ran into the woods, grab my gun from the glove compartment, chamber the first round, hop out of the truck, and lock it. Then I race ahead until I pick up the tracks in the snow: three clear sets of prints heading off into the trees and the underbrush. Suddenly I hear a scream and I sprint ahead, holding my arms in front of my face to protect against the low-hanging branches swatting me.