In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel

by M. R. Sellars

  “Jeezus…” he moaned. “I still don’t like it. Not at all.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” she appealed. “Just see what info you can get for me. Maybe then I’ll know where I stand.”

  “Yeah… Okay… Let me make some calls. I dunno how quick this is gonna happen with it bein’ a holiday, especially if I gotta fly low. I’m prob’ly gonna hafta call in some markers.”

  “I understand. But the sooner the better.”

  “Yeah… Always is.”

  “Okay… Well, I have some leads to follow up, and then I need to try to grab a nap. We’re staking out the repeat crime scene tonight,” she said.

  Ben huffed out a sympathetic sounding snort. “Hell of a way ta’ spend Christmas Eve.”

  “Tell me about it,” Constance agreed.

  “How late can I call ya’ back? Don’t wanna interfere.”

  “You’re probably good up till ten.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I’ll try to check in later if I don’t hear from you first.”

  “You’d better,” he returned. “Ya’ got Kevlar with ya’?”

  “Of course. It’s out in my trunk.”

  “Damn lotta good it’s doin’ ya’ in there,” he spat.

  “Don’t worry so much.”

  “Get the vest outta the trunk and wear it, hear me?”

  “I will.”

  “And watch your back, okay?”

  She sighed. “Stop worrying… I need to go… Later…”

  “Yeah… Later…”

  Constance started to pull the phone away from her ear then pressed it back up and said, “Oh… Wait… Are you still there?”

  She heard a quick fumble then his voice came back on the line, a bit of sudden concern evident in the tone. “Yeah, I’m here, what is it?”

  “Nothing really important. I just have a weird question. Kind of a riddle someone asked me,” she explained. “What would you say is ‘heavy symbolism of the Christmas season’?”

  She lied about the importance. She was already asking him to do enough, but if the searches set off any flags, he shouldn’t be the one to take the heat; it would come down on her. However, she had no idea what was in that hidden file or from whom it had come. If it turned out that it was something she wasn’t supposed to be seeing, then it was definitely not something Ben should know about. She wanted to keep that brand of trouble contained to herself if possible. Besides, she didn’t need him rushing up here to save her right now.

  “Heavy?” he snorted. “That’s easy. My Lieutenant’s wife’s godawful homemade fruitcake.”

  CHAPTER 21

  AFTER thumbing the ‘end’ button on her cell, Constance quietly stared across the narrow space between where she was sitting on the corner of the bed and the desk that was positioned against the opposite wall. Her notebook computer sat there waiting, the screen empty and dark at the moment because the unit had finally dropped into standby mode due to inactivity. It mimicked her blank stare, patiently awaiting a key press or even a quick tap on the touch pad to bring it to life. While it was only a few feet away in physical distance, for all the bad luck she’d had with cracking the encryption key thus far, the gulf might as well have been countless miles.

  And now that she had reached out for help, all Ben had to offer was “fruitcake.”

  That was definitely one she hadn’t tried. But then, it had nine characters, not eight. Not to mention it really didn’t jibe with the theme of the song to which the mysterious file was attached. Things like silver and gold decorations, shepherds, kings, and all of the other associated religious myth surrounding the Christmas holiday. She had exhausted those clues to the best of her ability, using kludged together pieces of the lyrics, and even going so far as to try various permutations of—and words from—“The Christmas Story” in the books of Matthew and Luke, but she still had no luck. She was pretty sure she had tried all of the secular options even remotely related to the song by now as well—all of them that she could think of, anyway.

  She could probably have given him some guidance by throwing the song out there too, but doing so might have led to questions, and it wasn’t easy for her to lie to him. In the long run, the less he knew about that segment of this debacle, the better. Besides, the song was really just a delivery vehicle. There was nothing to say it was absolutely connected to the answer. That was just a guess on her part.

  She muttered, “But fruitcake? Yeah…right,” and then she shook her head and sighed.

  After a handful of minutes spent staring off into space, she stood and deposited her cell phone onto the desk next to the computer, then proceeded to make the bed. She had placed a standing “do not disturb” request with the office when she’d checked in, as was her SOP while working. It was just safer for everyone concerned that way.

  Before heading out for breakfast, she had tucked all of the carefully sorted reports into her suitcase, out of sight, just in case the housekeeper didn’t get the message about the DND or the wind took off with the door hanger. None of the information she currently had was sensitive, otherwise she would have taken it with her. However, being not sensitive didn’t necessarily make any of it fit for public consumption either.

  She dug out the semi-ordered stack of paper and began systematically arranging the different parcels of documents atop the now mostly smoothed comforter. She had no idea what a third run through was going to do for her at this point, other than confuse the issue more, of course. Nothing at all seemed to add up where any of these murders were concerned. A locked, empty house with no forced entry. Not only that, a locked, empty house with no forced entry and cops watching it inside and out. But like magic, out of nowhere, a body appears—or parts of one, to be more accurate.

  Magic. That’s exactly how it seemed.

  The thought made Constance recall an old trick her brother used to do back when they were kids. He used a prop called a Lippincott Box, and he would make a borrowed coin or ring disappear from a handkerchief and then reappear inside the locked container, right in front of your nose, much to the amazement of family and friends.

  Looking at the individual reports now, it was as if the house on Evergreen Lane was itself a giant Lippincott Box and the killer a stage magician doing one show per year for a very select audience. The only problem was that the victims weren’t inanimate objects, and there was more going on behind the scenes than simple sleight of hand.

  There was another puzzle within a puzzle too—the victims themselves. There were seven men dead and not a single ID made on any of them in all these years. Except for the external genitalia, all of their body parts were accounted for, meaning they had to have fingerprints and dental impressions—or they should. That was something else sorely lacking from any of the files. No autopsy reports, no ten-print cards, and not even a close-up photo of any of the faces. Why?

  It just didn’t make sense. Especially with the bureau involved. This wasn’t shoddy investigative work; this was deliberate. More than that, it was a manufactured nightmare with strings attached, because someone else was going to die if she didn’t wake up and figure it out.

  She was feeling like she’d been told to go sit in the corner and play solitaire and to not come out until she’d won; but as some kind of sick joke she had been handed an incomplete deck of cards to use. For all intents and purposes, that was exactly her situation. The SAC had to have known what she was up against, and moreover what was not in that envelope when he handed it to her. Then there was the fact that this assignment had possibly come out of DC, with her name at or near the top of the short list.

  The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Why her? Why was she being set up to fail, and why had the same been done to the other agents before her? What were their sins that had landed them in this hell? But more importantly, what had they discovered that they were now complicit in hiding?

  Her mind raced through scenarios, none of which made any more sense than the files from which she w
as working. Why they had been redacted by the process of apparently deliberate—and definitely egregious—omission was obviously a part of this mystery. One thing that kept coming back around was her bizarre phone conversation with Agent Keene.

  What was it that he’d told her? ‘Call him after Christmas Day if she still had any questions but that he didn’t expect to be hearing from her… Not about this case anyway?’

  What kind of sense did that make? It certainly sounded as if he knew something but wasn’t about to spill it. If there was a brass ring out there, and he and the other agents had grabbed it, why wasn’t this case solved? Why was she here now? And why was there almost certainly going to be another body cooling in the morgue if they had already found an answer to this puzzle?

  She sighed and stepped back from the bed, slipping her fingers up through her loose hair, pushing it away from her face, and holding it atop her head. Staring at the piles of useless paper was just giving her a headache. She’d only been at it for a few minutes, but she was already dying for a break.

  She gave in to that desire. With a sigh she wandered over to her suitcase and dug out the bottle of ibuprofen. Then, she opened a warm soda and washed down a pair of the caplets with a quick swig from the can. She knew she should probably just lie down and try to nap as much as she could. It was going to be a very long night in a very creepy house, and she needed to be clear-headed and alert. Wearing herself down even more by chasing her tail wasn’t going to help accomplish that at all.

  She started to take another drink, then stopped herself, held the soda can in front of her face, and glared at it, her mouth twisting into a thoughtful frown. Continuing to pour caffeine into her system wasn’t going to do her much good either. Shaking her head, she dumped the can into the sink, then walked over to the desk and sat down. Hopefully the ibuprofen would start kicking in soon, and she could relax. However, until that happened, she wasn’t going to be able to even think about sleeping. While she waited for the marriage of human biology and pharmaceutical chemistry to be consummated, she could pass the time checking her email. Maybe when she was finished with that, the pain would be dulled, and she would feel up to cleaning the papers off the bed again.

  She reached out and thumped her middle finger on the touchpad, causing the slowly winking amber light on the front edge of the notebook computer to hiccup mid-flash and then glow solid blue. There was a soft whirr, the screen flickered for a second, and then it flared to life. Staring back at her was the box with the taunting prompt: ENTER ENCRYPTION KEY.

  Constance skated her finger over the pad, pulling the arrow-shaped cursor down to the task bar, then started to click herself over to the email client. Her finger hovered over the button, hesitating as she continued to stare at the leering box in the center of the screen.

  “Oh, what the hell…” she muttered, then shifted forward in the chair and moved her fingers up to the home row of the keyboard.

  The prompt was still winking in the encryption field, so with a quick series of taps she spelled out “FRUITCAK” and dropped the fifth digit of her right hand down on the enter key with a heavy finality. The system whirred, flickered, and then as she’d seen countless times before, it announced: INCORRECT KEY!

  “Yeah, figured as much…” she mumbled.

  She started to drag her finger across the pad once again but stopped. Pursing her lips, she creased her forehead and slitted her eyes for a moment. Reaching forward, she allowed her fingers to stab the alphanumerics once again. This time she keyed in “FRUITC8K.”

  She stared at the eight simple characters for a moment, then stiffened her index finger and drove it down with a deliberate stab against the return key. Falling slowly back in the chair as the screen winked and the hard drive whirred, she frowned at the computer and waited for the inevitable error message.

  The drive continued to spin, and the backlit LCD panel flickered as the computer clunked through the hackneyed routine. Five seconds passed, then ten. After fifteen, Constance raised an eyebrow and started to sit forward. At twenty-five, the installed reader software was opening. At thirty, it had maximized to fill the display, and a document was in the process of loading.

  Judging from the progress on the status bar, it was sizeable.

  AFTER a while, you discover that darkness isn’t really what you think it is.

  You get used to it. And when you do, it stops being the absence of light. In a way, it becomes its own kind of illumination—a mix of blue, and black, and gray, with shapes and shadows everywhere. There are things you can see, and things you can feel, and things that you just somehow know.

  That’s what darkness really is.

  Of course, the getting used to it part doesn’t happen right away. Accepting the darkness for what it is takes some time. Constance didn’t know how long a span that happened to be, but since the world around her was a mix of blue, and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere, she knew she must have been in the darkness for at least that long. But to tell the truth, she really couldn’t be sure, because in a peculiar way, it seemed like it had been much longer, and it seemed like it had been no time at all.

  A terrible noise pierced Constance’s skull and she pressed her palms tight against her ears, squeezing her eyes closed to shut out the brilliant darkness. Now the sound of her own breathing became loud and inescapable, trapped behind her hands to echo inside her head.

  She waited.

  The terrible noise, blunted only slightly by her hands, reverberated against her again. She steeled herself in fearful anticipation of the next blast, but it didn’t come.

  Now only the sounds of her breaths filled her ears.

  She let go and drifted.

  Constance was so cold that her skin was numb, but that didn’t stop the pain. It couldn’t. Not on the inside, and that’s where she felt it most. Her body was aching in ways she had never known before, even during her time at Quantico. Back during those first few weeks of physical training at the academy, more than once she’d been certain she was going to die. But this wasn’t like that at all. This was worse. And it was different.

  It wasn’t just physical.

  It was beyond merely that. It was a violating kind of ache that never ended. It pulsed straight through her core, making her want to vomit. In fact, her mouth tasted sour, so she wondered if she already had but that she’d simply forgotten.

  The terrible noise came again, loud and urgent. Behind it was a strange rattle. She reached to press her hands against her ears again, but the noise was too quick for her. It rang out and penetrated her skull with its violent sound. The rattle forced her to clench her teeth as it filled her head with a disharmonic chord.

  Then silence… And the silence continued.

  Constance sighed. The ache seemed to be gone now, but it had left a phantom in its stead. While the pain itself had faded, the violation remained, and the bitter taste of bile still survived on the back of her tongue.

  The silence shattered like crystal.

  The terrible noise bit into her brain, forcing a familiar pattern to form. Sharp notes escalated in front of a hard plastic chitter. Midway through the awful chime a loud clatter joined in, followed almost immediately by a dull thud.

  Then the terrible noise sounded again and again.

  Constance came awake with a start, snapping her eyes open and sucking in a quick breath. It was a mix of blue, and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere throughout the room, but the shapes and shadows were different than her recent memory. Or was that memory just a dream? She blinked and exhaled hard, fighting to push away the fog that was clouding her head.

  The urgent peal of her cell phone tore a wide swath through the quiet once again. She breathed in, then exhaled with a deep groan as she rolled over and reached for the nightstand, fumbling through the shadows for the screaming device. Her hand came up empty. She shifted then pushed up on her elbow and groped some more, sending her eyes along with her hand to go searching in the b
lue and the black and the gray. Still nothing.

  She yawned and then cleared her throat. The fog was starting to lift, and she vaguely recalled a clatter and thud. Rolling forward onto her stomach, she thrust her arm over the side of the bed and pawed the carpet below. It was rough and cold. She was ready to give up when her fingers brushed against something hard. She wrapped her hand around it and then rolled over onto her back.

  The device had fallen silent. She cleared her throat again and swallowed hard. Her throat was dry and her mouth not much better. Trying to will away the remnants of sleep, she held the phone up and aimed her bleary eyes at its glowing display.

  It read: 5 MISSED CALLS.

  She started to thumb over to the lists when it began to bleat out a familiar ringtone once again. She pressed the answer button, cutting off the tune, then lazily pushed the device up against her ear.

  “Yeah, Ben…” she answered; her voice was as thin and arid as her throat.

  “Constance?” Ben’s concern was wrapped tightly around the words that issued from the speaker. “You okay?

  She coughed, then cleared her throat a third time. It didn’t really help. “Yeah…” she croaked. “I’m fine…”

  “I wake you up?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sorry…” he replied, although it was relief that threaded through his voice. “When ya’ didn’t answer right away I started ta’ get a little worried.”

  “Like you needed another excuse,” she mumbled.

  “Sue me.”

  “Too much trouble,” she replied, her words quiet and lazy. “What time is it anyway?”

  “‘Bout ten after five.”

  Her heart thumped and she rolled her eyes quickly around the shadowy room. “In the evening, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” she breathed.

  “When’d ya’ finally crash?”

  “Around three.”