by Stephen Frey
I can smell his brand of chewing gum, he’s so close. It’s Big Red. “Get out of here, Darrow, while you still can.”
“First it was Cindy, then it was that whore you call a wife!” he shouts.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hate Darrow Clements right now. Not even Lew Prescott. “I’ll give you one more chance to get out of my office,” I say with my teeth clenched, “then I’m locking you up for interfering with a police investigation.”
“You’ve always hated women, haven’t you?”
“What?”
“Hell, I bet you push your wife around whenever you get the chance.”
Clements’s face blurs before me. “Are you out of your mind?”
Then he does something a civilian absolutely cannot do, even an ex-cop. He makes physical contact with a law officer. He shoves me with both hands. Then he does it again—harder.
I grab him by his wool sweater and toss him over the desk like he’s a rag doll. He crashes off the chair he was sitting on and onto the floor and I hear Mrs. Erickson shriek as I haul my ass around the desk and grab him again by his sweater as he’s just starting to scramble to his feet. I hear the door fly open as I jack Clements up against the wall. Clements’s eyes are as big as saucers as I cock my fist and I can tell he’s scared out of his mind. My God, I can’t wait to slam his face, I can’t wait to split that nose wide open and send a few teeth down his throat. They say revenge doesn’t taste sweet. Well, it tastes like I’m eating a warm, chocolate-covered doughnut right now, let me tell you.
I grab Clements by his throat and pull my clenched right hand back a few inches farther, then let go. But my arm’s not moving, there’s something holding it back.
It’s Bear.
He throws me back against the far wall with one quick extension of his massive right arm, then he points at Clements. “Get out, Darrow, before I tear you apart with my bare hands.”
The man doesn’t wait to be told again. He dashes out of my office, grabs his coat, and sprints for the precinct door.
I gaze at Bear, breathing hard. “You should have let me kill him,” I gasp, adrenaline still coursing through me so hard my hands are shaking like cans in a paint-mixing machine.
He shakes his head slowly. “Just thank God I got in here when I did.”
I keep staring at him. I know I shouldn’t start this but I can’t help it. “Is that what you think of Vivian?”
“What are you talking about?”
Clements shouted it so loudly that Bear and Mrs. Erickson had to hear him even with the door closed. There’s no way they couldn’t have. “Do you think she’s a whore, Billy? Like he does?”
“I don’t know what you’re on, but—”
“You heard him, you heard what he yelled. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”
“The guy’s just a giant prick and we both know it,” Bear says, like it’s as obvious as the fact that he’s tall. “He’s just trying to get into your grill any way he can, Professor, and it looks like he’s doing a pretty good job of it. I care about Vivian very much. I don’t think of her that way at all. You know that.”
I flex the fingers of both of my hands, flex them into tight fists. “Yeah, maybe you care about her a little too much.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Billy.”
18
AFTER BEAR RAN Clements to his car faster than a bloodhound runs a rabbit to his hole, I figured I had two choices: get back to the cabin or get going south. The obvious choice was to get back to the cabin because there’s probably a ton of evidence out there waiting for me, but I also had a duty to get to Hayward to give Sheriff Wilson an accurate account of what happened to the girl in the Gorges. To tell him about the two men who were chasing her and how one of them looked like Caleb Jenkins, though I can’t be absolutely sure it was him. Wilson’s got a firestorm on his hands now that the girl took off from the hospital—or was taken from it. Her parents are hysterical—they never even got to see her before she went missing—and I want to help him any way I can. Plus, I’ve got a couple other important things I need to get to right away that are farther south of Hayward.
So I sent Davy and Chugger McDowell—another of my deputies—out into the woods for me. I thought about telling Davy to recruit Sara to guide them to the cabin, but then I thought better of it. She’s unpredictable and not always the most helpful soul around. I don’t want her to start popping off about everything in the middle of the Saloon when they go get her and suddenly send the town into an uproar because people are at the counter having a late breakfast and they hear her ranting. And I’m still not sure about her motives; I’m still worried that there was something else going on yesterday when we “happened” to meet in the woods and those two guys “happened” to come to the cabin at the same time we did. Bear got me thinking about how she could have easily made it seem like it was a coincidence that we ran into each other out there.
I told Davy what happened at the cabin—except for the part about the shootout—then I gave him the best directions I could. I told him to look for my footprints coming out of the woods on the east side of 681 north of my house and to follow them over the ridges. My tracks should still be obvious despite the warm-up in the north-country overnight. They’ll find the cabin, I’m confident they will. Chugger McDowell is the second-best tracker in Dakota County behind Sara.
Right before I hung up with Davy, I told him to bring back anything that looked important, then I warned him to be extra careful. I told him in no uncertain terms that he and Chugger needed to have their guns chambered and ready at all times. Then I told him twice not to tell anyone what they were doing. I hope Davy understood what I was saying. That I meant for Chugger and him not to tell anyone.
After I hung up with him I ordered Bear and Frank Holmes—my fourth and, at twenty-three, my youngest deputy—to go out and make sure everyone’s accounted for in both directions on Route 7. I didn’t tell Bear about Davy and Chugger heading to the cabin. Even though it’s Bear, I’m trying to keep things as compartmentalized as I can.
As I speed past the house my cell phone rings. I assume it’s Vivian but it isn’t. A number I don’t recognize flashes on the screen. Most people I know wouldn’t answer a ring from an unknown number or a private caller, but I have to. Again, that’s part of being sheriff, part of the covenant I made with the people of Dakota County when I swore to protect them.
“Hello.”
“Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Paul, it’s Peter Schmidt over in Superior.”
As in the Peter Schmidt who headed the CSI team at the Prescott estate the other night. “Hi, Peter.”
“You survive the storm okay?”
“We’re fine. Madison came through for us this time. They’ve already got 681 and 7 passable. We’re still digging out around town but we’ll be all right. Thanks for asking.”
“Well, they had the resources. They damn well should have gotten to you fast.”
“What do you mean?”
“South of Hayward only got a foot.”
I never thought about checking on that. I figured everybody in Wisconsin and Minnesota ended up getting hammered by the storm as badly as we did. That was the prediction.
“And Madison barely got a dusting. Just a few inches,” Schmidt adds.
He takes a labored breath, like he doesn’t really want to get into whatever it is he called about. There’s something bad coming, I know it. For some reason people always feel like they have to work themselves up to telling me something bad. More than they do with most other people. Cindy always told me it was because I was naturally intimidating, but she was never specific about what she meant by that.
“Paul, we’ve been working overtime on this thing because of who’s involved.”
“Of course, I understand that.”
“I hate to admit it,” Schmidt goes on in a guilty tone. “I mean we work hard on every case, but when it’s
the Prescott family the whole thing gets elevated in terms of priority. And then there’s the whole Jack Harrison factor on top of that.”
“Believe me, I get it.”
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you about something we found.” Schmidt’s voice grows serious. “It’s something that has to do with Cindy’s body.”
“You mean that thing that was carved into her forehead?”
“No, it’s something else.” He takes an even longer breath than he did before. “We found two different semen samples inside her.”
It seems like every gasp of breath is sucked out of my lungs instantly. And my palms start sweating right away. I can feel the perspiration on the steering wheel immediately. “Two?” Schmidt must hear that tension in my voice. I do.
“Yeah, I know,” he says slowly, subtly acknowledging that he did, “we’ve got to be delicate about this. I know Harrison was up there at the estate the day Cindy was murdered. I’m assuming one of the samples is his. But, like I said, there’s another one. The lab just called and told me about it.”
I can hear Schmidt struggling. He doesn’t want to be the one to tell Lewis Prescott or Jack Harrison that Cindy was a cheater. He doesn’t want to be the messenger because often times the messenger gets shot in situations like these. And Lewis Prescott can aim a damn big gun at you in this neck of the woods.
“My guess,” he goes on, “is that she had sex with someone down in Minneapolis before she drove up to the estate, probably the morning of or the night before. Then she had sex with Harrison after he surprised her at the estate the next day. He took off that afternoon, right?”
“That’s what I understand.”
“He was going to Europe early the following morning.”
“Yeah, London.”
My mind’s spinning. One of those semen samples is mine, from when Cindy and I had sex the afternoon of her murder. When I went back the second time that day without her calling me. When I got there she was crying because she said Jack had roughed her up again before he left, and I was holding her and consoling her and it just kind of happened. She said she was so glad I’d come back even though she told me not to, and we started kissing and my defenses crumbled when she told me she wanted me so badly and that we were meant to be together and it was stupid that we weren’t. Then, when it was over, she took everything back and told me she’d just been caught up in the moment. I couldn’t believe how easily she could lie to me about wanting me forever just to get me to be close to her.
“At least, that’s what Prescott told me.”
“Have you confirmed that Harrison left the estate that afternoon?” Schmidt asks. “And that he went to London the next morning?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
There wouldn’t be anyone on the planet more excited to find out that Jack Harrison wasn’t on that early flight to London the morning after the murder. But I’m pretty sure I won’t turn up anything like that. Besides, what motive could he possibly have for killing Cindy? She already assumed he was cheating on her in Europe, she had for a long time. And it wasn’t like he was afraid his father-in-law was going to do anything about that. She’d told me several times how she’d tried to convince her father that Jack was cheating on her but that Lew wouldn’t listen. Like he wouldn’t listen to how the guy was beating her, either. She made the comment about his being more excited to spend nights at the White House than to have grandchildren. I mean, what kind of father is that?
But now I’m wondering if maybe those were just things she was telling me to make herself feel better about our relationship, about us having our affair. I’m wondering if they were just props in the drama. Maybe those bruises on her side were self-inflicted, maybe Jack never touched her. What a fool I’ve been.
“Peter, I hate to even ask you this question because I hate to think of Cindy going through it, but is it possible that she was raped by the person or persons who murdered her at the estate? Could that have been what happened? Could that be why there were two samples.”
“I thought about that and of course it’s a possibility,” Schmidt agrees. “But there weren’t any bruises or scratches on her thighs and there usually are in cases like this. Either because the victim is resisting so hard or because the attacker has so much adrenaline in his system he’s basically out of control. And,” Schmidt continues, his voice going low as though he doesn’t want someone at his office to overhear him, “her vaginal walls showed no signs of trauma, either. Now,” he says, his voice growing stronger again, “that’s not proof positive of what did or didn’t happen in that house. I’m just telling you that in my years of being a police officer, if it’s a rape situation, I almost always see some kind of trauma to that area of the victim’s body. Again, as easily caused because of the attacker’s heightened state of agitation as by the victim trying to defend herself.”
“Okay.”
“She did have a few bruises on her left side but they were faded. They didn’t look like they’d been made on the day she was murdered.” He pauses. “The fact that two samples showed up could be helpful for you in terms of your investigation,” Schmidt volunteers. “You ought to try to find out if Cindy was having an affair down in the Twin Cities. Maybe she broke it off and that’s what happened. Maybe whoever she was seeing couldn’t take being tossed aside so he followed her up to Bruner and killed her. Then made it look like a cult killing to send you in the wrong direction. I’ve had three or four other cases like that over the years. Where the killer tried to make it look like a cult or a gang did it.”
I’m pretty sure I know who the two samples came from: Jack and me. But I’ve got to play along, I can’t have him getting suspicious. “That’s a good idea, Peter, and I’m going to the Twin Cities later today. Maybe I’ll stop in and see Cindy’s sister, Chelsea. They were close. Maybe Chelsea will have something to tell me.”
“Why are you going down there?”
“It’s not related to this case,” I lie.
“Oh,” he says slowly, like he’s not convinced.
There’s silence at the other end of the line for a few moments. “Well,” Schmidt finally says, “I’d leave it up to you in terms of what you want to do with this information about the two samples, but that prick Darrow Clements who’s working for Prescott on this thing keeps calling me every ten minutes. He keeps demanding information. I haven’t given him much, just enough to get him off the phone each time he calls. But sooner or later and one way or another Clements is going to get the details, I can tell you that, Paul. I’ve already gotten two calls from Madison, from people way up the chain in the department. And I’m going to have to turn Cindy’s body over to Prescott here soon,” he says. “That’s gonna cause you a lot of problems, too, because then they’ll see that pentagram carved in her forehead. I can’t cover that up. I’m not supposed to let her body be materially altered while I have it, other than things we have to do specific to the autopsy, and I’m not going to risk my career. Sorry, but I’m too close to my pension.” He hesitates again. “I’m assuming you’d like to keep that pentagram thing quiet.”
My first thought is that somehow he knows about the Bruner Washette ticket and the two bloody steak knives I’ve got locked in my strongbox at home and that’s why he thinks I desperately want to keep news of the pentagram quiet. Because he figures—like I do—that there’s a connection. Then a wave of relief rolls over me and I understand what he’s getting at. He’s saying it in a general way. I’m being too paranoid, but I have to keep it going. I can’t let my guard down for a second.
“I think that might cause a lot of panic you don’t need to deal with,” Schmidt says. “You don’t want people thinking there’s a cult hunting people down in Dakota County. God, you’ll have a vigilante situation on your hands. And we all know what happens then, don’t we? Accidents,” he keeps going, answering his own question. “Bad accidents.”
The word’s out with the locals that we’ve got a cult in Dakota County, but Schmidt doesn’t
understand how efficient the information web is and I’m not going to tell him. But he’s exactly right. I do want him to keep Cindy’s body as long as he can so I can buy time with Prescott and Clements. “Peter, will you call me before you release Cindy’s body to the family?” The entrance to the Prescott estate flashes by on the right. No one’s been there to plow it yet. The driveway’s still covered by a deep blanket of snow.
“I’m going to try to delay that until Friday but I might have to do it late tomorrow. Either way, I’ll give you a heads-up at least a few hours before it happens.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Well, good luck over there.”
“Thanks, I—”
“Oh, oh,” Schmidt breaks in, “I meant to tell you one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
He takes a deep breath and suddenly I realize he’s about to tell me what he’s wanted to tell me the entire call but couldn’t bring himself to say.
“Every time I talk to Darrow Clements he mentions that you were at the Prescott estate twice on the day of the murder. Once in the morning right before Jack Harrison got there, and once in the afternoon, probably after Harrison left. Clements keeps telling me that Lew Prescott doesn’t understand why you went there twice that day.” Schmidt hesitates. “I thought you should know that, Paul. I don’t know why Clements keeps bringing it up, but it’s getting kind of annoying. I mean, he seems to remember everything else he tells me.” Schmidt hesitates again, longer this time. “Well, like I said, Paul. I thought you should know.”
I swallow hard, trying to figure out how Prescott could possibly have known about my second visit to his estate that day. The only answer I can come up with is that he and Cindy spoke that afternoon and she told him about it, but that doesn’t make sense. Cindy’s always wanted to keep our relationship away from her father.
After I hang up with Schmidt I call home but there’s no answer. I can’t remember if Vivian was supposed to work today or not. I figured the washette would be closed at least another day because of the storm but maybe not. By the time I left for Hayward a few minutes ago, Main Street was clear and there were narrow paths from the street to most of the shop entrances. Life gets back to normal pretty fast in the north-country, even after three feet of snow.