Red Snow

by Michael Slade

  * * *

  Now, decades later, Mephisto studied his butchered face in the bathroom mirror. The longer he eyed his features, the angrier he got. Not at the surgeon, who had already suffered for his crime, but at DeClercq for forcing him to erase his father’s image. The face in the mirror no longer resembled the son of the fantasy father Mephisto’s psychotic imagination spawned years ago. Erasing those features had sparked his severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. He was like an astronaut whose lifeline to the space station had snapped, leaving him drifting into nothingness.

  His actual father wasn’t a globetrotting archeologist, and he had never ventured into the Amazon with him.

  He had repressed all memory of his early life and replaced it with a fantasy because of a long-ago atrocity committed in a hellish jungle on the far side of the world.

  Headhunters

  Inspector Zinc Chandler’s steel gray hair—the source of his name—had been that way since birth. His eyes were the same metallic hue, and so was the two-inch scar along his right jaw line. His sharp-angled features made for a ruggedly handsome face, and he moved with the fluid stealth of a panther. Savvy people sensed that Zinc should not be provoked, understanding instinctively that this man thought well under pressure and would be most dangerous with a knife at his throat.

  Something about the inspector was sexually attractive to prowling women, so that made him the ideal bait for the femme fatale who had waylaid Nick Craven. DeClercq was certain she worked for Mephisto, and he knew that megalomaniac wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to squash the chief’s second-in-command.

  White knight to black king 4, thought the Mountie.

  The chief circled around to the driver’s door of the inspector’s vehicle and pulled him aside to brief him on all that had happened while he was out of contact.

  “Nick’s dead too!” Zinc exclaimed.

  “Yes, but we don’t know how. The evidence suggests that he was picked up in a bar and was killed while engaged in sex in this hotel. So far, we’ve found no wounds on his body, so poison is likely.”

  “We’re talking the bar in the El Dorado?”

  “That would be my first guess. But the only solid lead we have is this Post-it Note found stuck to a room key in Nick’s pocket.”

  The chief gave Zinc a Xerox of the note and showed him the original to compare.

  “If Nick got picked up in the Gilded Man, it was probably yesterday afternoon. If we find the woman, she could lead us to Mephisto.”

  He passed Zinc Nick’s driver’s license to show to the bartenders, Karen and Stew.

  “Smoke her out,” he said.

  “What about the girl?” The inspector glanced at the child curled up in a fetal ball in the Rover’s backseat.

  “I’ll take care of her. Mephisto must be trying to eliminate survivors of his prior schemes. Nick, Becky, and Gill were the three people who could identify him. Nick’s dead, and I’m off to look for Gill. To safeguard Becky, Rachel and Rick will hide her at Gill’s chalet.”

  “Why not use our detachment in the village?”

  “This crisis has too many strangers going in and coming out, and the staff’s stretched too thin responding to all the emergency calls. Becky may not be safe enough at the detachment. It’s a risk, but I doubt that Mephisto would suspect I’d hide Becky at Gill’s chalet.”

  “Right. That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Can we use your Rover instead of the marked car?”

  “Sure,” said Zinc. Lowering his voice and arching an eyebrow, he asked, “Why Rachel and Rick?” Both had lost the chance to join Special X when they’d botched important cases.

  “We’re shorthanded.” The chief shrugged. “I know it’s not ideal, but I guess they were the best Ghost Keeper could get me under the circumstances. As soon as Dane and Jackie are free, I’ll send them in as relief.”

  Zinc tossed him the keys.

  Unnoticed by the Mounties, the weary skier who’d been regrouping with a cigarette across the road began to approach. Passing in front of Zinc’s vehicle, he lost his footing and slipped off the curb, crashing to the ground in a clatter of equipment. Sheepishly, he struggled to his feet, then gathered up his skis and poles to shuffle his leaden legs into the hotel.

  While on the ground, out of sight, Stopwatch had stuck a GPS tracker to the Rover.

  * * *

  DeClercq’s beef with Corporal Rick Scarlett went back to the Headhunter case.

  Everything about Rick was wound too tight. Athletic and lean, he looked strained even when he was relaxed. Every strand of his short brown hair was slicked into line, and his mustache was clipped as neatly as Errol Flynn’s. The swashbuckler in him, however, had little respect for rules, and his “ends justify the means” attitude had run him afoul of DeClercq on more than one occasion.

  Rick was too free with his fists.

  And that lost cases.

  Sergeant Rachel Kidd had overreached as well. There was a time in the tenure of Mounties still on active duty when there were no women and no blacks in the ranks. As the first black female to make corporal, Rachel had been a PR man’s dream. Everyone knew her rocket was shooting up to inspector or beyond, and all she needed to reach the stars was a high-profile conviction. To that end, she had charged Nick Craven with the death of his mother, only to watch the case crumble when DeClercq proved his innocence.

  The chief had not been impressed.

  Rachel’s rocket had sputtered and crashed, stalling her career at sergeant.

  Now, the two minders leaned against the fender of the marked four-wheel-drive, cooling their heels until DeClercq finished talking to Zinc. As he approached with their orders, the two pushed away from the vehicle and stood at loose attention.

  “You know what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Mephisto,” Rachel replied.

  “Three eyewitnesses can ID him. One’s dead. Gill’s another. And the third is the girl you see in the backseat of the Rover. I want her taken to this address”—he passed Rachel a slip of paper—“and kept safe until I call.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rick said, seeing his chance for redemption.

  “You defend her with your lives. Understand?”

  Both nodded.

  “Do this properly, and I’ll forget the past.”

  * * *

  Joseph called as they were walking to Zinc’s vehicle. Robert stepped away from the bodyguards for privacy.

  “Can you come to the morgue?” asked the Russian. “I think we’ve found the head from the body on the chairlift. Use the front door to preserve the crime scene.”

  “I’m off to look for Gill.”

  “No need. She’s here,” said Joe.

  * * *

  While Robert was on his cellphone, Katt peered into the side window of Zinc’s vehicle. Inside, the terrified girl clung tenaciously to her mother’s blanketed corpse, as if to hold her in this realm by refusing to release her to whatever might lie beyond. Dry sobs had replaced tears.

  Gently opening the door, the teen crouched and leaned in.

  “Hi. My name’s Katt. You must be Becky. I know the hurt you’re feeling. I lost my mom, too.”

  “She’s dead!” the girl rasped, her face twisted from heartache.

  “Let her go, Becky, and come to me. What you need now is your sister.”

  “I don’t have a sister!” wailed the girl.

  “Yes, you do. From now on, I’m your sister.”

  Katt held her arms open and waited patiently. Becky was afraid to let go, but she desperately craved comfort. She needed someone to make it all right.

  Just then, a tear rolled down Katt’s cheek, and that convinced the miserable girl. Loosening her grasp on the lifeless bundle, she crawled through the space between it and the front seat, burying her face in Katt’s shoulder and enclosing arms.

  Behind her, Zinc cracked the far door and retrieved Jenna’s body. Rick helped him transfer the remains to the other vehicle.

&
nbsp; Becky didn’t look back.

  Pocketing his cellphone, Robert rounded the Rover and poked his head in through the far door. “Becky, I want you to go with these two officers,” he said. “They’ll keep you safe.”

  “I’m going, too,” Katt said. “Sisters stick together.”

  Whatever magic they’d used at that London “finishing school,” Robert thought, had worked a charm.

  My, how Katt had grown up.

  * * *

  Stopwatch reported in to Mephisto.

  “DeClercq just drove away in a marked car with the body of Jenna Bond.”

  “He’s going to the morgue,” said the psycho killer. “He’s in for a shock.”

  “We’ve got a tracker on the unmarked car transporting the girl to Macbeth’s chalet. Two cops, Becky Bond, DeClercq’s daughter, Katt, and a dog. The Icemen are following. They’ll strike at the supposed safe house.”

  “Katt, too!” Mephisto was thrilled. “That’s a bonus. Bring me the heads of both girls.”

  Phantom Footprints

  Crouched on his haunches in the tumbling snowfall outside the rear door of the trauma center, Robert found himself face to face with horror. The head of the skier decapitated on the chairlift had been mounted atop a ski pole and stuck in a snowdrift on the inside edge of the yard. The tangled hair was matted with blood, and the eyes had rolled back in the skull so only slivers of pupil met the chief’s gaze. Blood trickled from the nostrils down the yawning jaw. The tongue protruded from purple lips. The handle of the ski pole was rammed up the neck to the base of the brain.

  The Russian had been waiting for the Mountie at the front door of the makeshift morgue and immediately ushered him down the hall to the rear exit. The moment they stepped out into the storm, the bodiless head was in their faces.

  “After we spoke, I came out to look for Gill,” said Joe. “That was waiting for me.”

  “So where is she? You said Gill was here.”

  Joe placed his hand on Robert’s shoulder. “I couldn’t tell you on the phone. Steel yourself, my friend. Gill and the sports medic are both dead.”

  DeClercq sucked in a gasp of air. Bile rising to his throat, it took all the self-control he could muster to keep from throwing up.

  “Take me to her,” he said.

  “When I came out,” the Russian explained, “the storm was lighter than this. I could see both bodies in the middle of the yard. The ground was undisturbed, except for these two sets of boot prints.” He indicated tracks extending into the yard. “Had I not spotted the bodies, I would have followed the trail by stepping into the impressions. They had to lead to Gill.”

  Joe directed Robert to a third set of prints off to the left.

  “Instead, I kept to one side to avoid ruining their tracks. My prints are a safe path to the bodies. I’ll sweep the flashlight if you’ll carry this.” He passed the Mountie his Murder Bag.

  Single file, they followed Joe’s footprints into the whiteout. So thick was the snow that it had already erased the patterns made by the soles of his boots. With flakes flying at their faces, the two men used the flashlight beam to keep them on course to the victims.

  The bodies lay side by side in the red snow, their boots facing the trauma center. Joe and Robert arced in from the left, the side on which the Finn was sprawled. Joe’s footprints ended at his neck, where two long grooves indicated that the Russian had knelt beside the corpse.

  “He died from a single stab wound through the neck,” the scientist said. “The attack came from behind. The diameter of the hole suggests an ice pick.”

  The Mountie ignored the male victim. His eyes were locked on the snowy figure beyond.

  “Gill was stabbed three times in the back,” said Joe. “Once in the nape of the neck, like Pekka, and twice in the torso. One of those jabs spiked her spine. The other went through her heart, as you can see from the location of the ice pick still sunk in her back.”

  The Russian’s footprints arced like a halo around both victims’ heads, ending in two more grooves along Gill’s right side. Robert trudged across and stood next to his murdered lover.

  Gill’s death put to rest any doubts he’d had that Mephisto was the mastermind behind this scheme. But if that madman thought he could crack the chief’s psyche like the Headhunter had before, he was mistaken.

  Robert was stronger, not weaker, at the broken places.

  In the tropics, you learn firsthand the value of a hurricane room. On a vacation with Gill at one of her resorts, the chief had weathered a powerful storm in such a sanctuary—a strongly built cell designed to withstand the ravages of rampaging winds.

  In the concrete jungle, you learn how a panic room, with its walls and doors of reinforced steel, can protect residents against robbery and rape.

  The military equivalent is a redoubt, a fort within a fort for making your last stand.

  That’s what Robert was doing now: building his redoubt. Grieving would come later, when he had time. For now, he inured himself to the horror at his feet, then filled that vacuum with cold resolve to thwart this toxic monster.

  “How do you see it?” the Russian asked, challenging the detective in his friend. “Walk me through the crime.”

  “The killer snuck up behind them as they trudged across the yard. First, the Finn was stabbed through the back of the neck. Then Gill was stabbed before she could turn. Three jabs in quick succession to the back of her neck and torso. The killer left the ice pick stuck in her heart and retreated to the trauma center.”

  “I agree that all the wounds were fatal,” said Joseph. “So there was no fighting back. Both were paralyzed instantly by the stabs to their spines.”

  “I see the problem,” the chief said. “There are only two sets of footprints in the snow.”

  The scientist nodded. “So how did the killer reach them?”

  “In Western movies, the villain always erases his trail by dragging sagebrush behind his horse.”

  “Not here,” said Joe. “Once the snow is compacted, you can’t erase your trail. And if you try to fill your boot prints with snow, you’ll leave other indentations behind. I scanned the area carefully when the snowfall was lighter. I’ll swear that the yard was untouched except for the footprints you see.”

  “No marks from snowshoes or cross-country skis?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Tarzan?” suggested the chief.

  “The buildings aren’t tall enough to allow someone to swing in on a vine. I can’t see a tightrope either. And anyway, how would that work? The lack of disturbance around the bodies tells us that both were stabbed to death before they could react.”

  “Taken by complete surprise?”

  “Yes. Stab, stab, stab, stab, and it was over,” said Joe. “Gill didn’t suffer.”

  “So what does that leave?”

  “No,” said the Russian, “I’m not the killer. I didn’t sweep in from the side, pretending to bring them a message, and explain away my tracks by claiming I found the bodies.”

  “I never thought that, Joe.”

  “Well, all we have are footprints from the severed head to here.”

  “Maybe that’s the answer,” the chief replied. “The killer crept up behind them by stepping in the Finn’s footprints. After both murders, he or she walked backwards in the same tracks.”

  “But that’s the puzzle,” said Joe. “The evidence is telling us we have an impossible crime.” The scientist followed his own footsteps to Gill’s feet. “Hand me my Murder Bag,” he said to Robert, “and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Setting the forensic kit down in the snow, he withdrew several soft brushes. With the flashlight in one hand, he dusted fluffy flakes off the soles of Gill’s boots.

  No need to explain to Robert what he was doing. Footwear tracks are made up of both class and individual characteristics. The class characteristics, common to all boots of the same make, include size, style, and above all, tread design. The individual characteristi
cs, which set each unique boot apart, include random defects, cuts, wear patterns, and stones wedged in the treads. Individual characteristics can identify a particular boot, to the exclusion of all other footwear.

  Earlier, Joe had used his scarf to cover several of the footprints, protecting them from the falling snow. Removing it, he lightly brushed the surface of one print, exposing the tread pattern Gill’s boot had left in the snow. Robert picked out both the class and the individual characteristics.

  “My initial trudge from the morgue to the crime scene left sharp prints like these,” said Joe. “I ruined them when I tried walking back in the same holes. The new patterns did not mesh exactly with the old.”

  “What about the Finn’s tracks?”

  “They’re as crisp as these. There’s no doubt in my mind that all the prints leading to Gill’s feet were made by her, and all the prints leading to Pekka’s feet were made by him. Not including the two of us, the only people who trudged to the center of this yard were the victims. Whoever stalked and stabbed them did it in a way that left no footprints.”

  “How?” asked Robert.

  “I have no idea.”

  Vamps

  Before departing for the morgue, the chief had given Zinc Chandler Nick Craven’s notebook to check for leads. In it, the corporal had jottings about Mandy the Blonde, Jessica the Redhead, Corrina the Raven, and their respective ex-boyfriends. His notes compared Mandy to Lana Turner, Jessica to Rita Hayworth, and Corrina to Jane Russell. Thanks to him, Zinc had nothing but sex on his mind as he weaved his way through a throng of paranoid barflies talking violence in a smattering of tongues.

  He was hunting for a femme fatale.

  “What’ll it be?” the server asked when he finally bellied up to the bar.

  “Are you Karen?”

  “Is that not what’s printed here?” The brunette tapped the name tag on her breast.

  “I wasn’t looking,” Zinc replied, his focus on her eyes.