Prey (Jefferson Winter)

by James Carol

  On top of the filing cabinet was a peace lily with a single white flower. The greens and whites were so vibrant they looked artificial against the faded backdrop of the rest of the office. Clarke walked over and carefully wiped the leaves. Mendoza was shuffling impatiently, watching but trying not to. He finished polishing the leaves, then sat down behind the desk and clicked back into the room again. He waved to the seats on the other side. Winter and Mendoza took that as their cue to sit.

  ‘You’re dying, aren’t you?’

  Clarke stared at Winter with those milky blue eyes. There was so much in the old guy’s gaze, more than he’d ever seen in a single look. Hope, despair, happiness, sadness, a whole lifetime. And plenty of curiosity, too. Despite everything, there was no hiding that one.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Outside the diner when you looked up at the sky, it was like you were looking at it for the last time.’

  Clarke didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘You know, you always imagine that finding out you’re going to die would be one of the worst things that could ever happen. It’s not. If you allow it, it’s actually one of the most liberating. All the day-to-day bullshit becomes irrelevant, and what you once thought of as mundane suddenly turns into a miracle. Who cares if the bills get paid? I sure as hell don’t.’ He looked over at the peace lily. ‘I cried when that flower appeared. Actually broke down and wept. Partly because I realised it would be the last time I ever saw it bloom, but mostly because it was the most incredible, awe-inspiring thing I’d ever witnessed.’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘A week, a month. The doctors told me a while back that I wouldn’t live to see the summer, never mind the fall, so who knows. It’s cancer, in case you’re wondering.’

  Winter motioned to the wedding band on the old guy’s left hand. ‘Your wife died last July, didn’t she? When that happened you decided it was time to shut the paper down.’

  Clarke looked down at his ring, then back at Winter. ‘It was an aneurism, so at least she went quick, which I guess was a blessing. The last edition of the Gazette came out the week I buried her. For the last couple of years it was just the two of us working here. When she died, I didn’t see the point in carrying on.’

  He fell silent, a distant look clouding his face. For almost a full minute the only sound was the sound of breathing, and the occasional squeak as Mendoza shifted impatiently in her seat.

  ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,’ Clarke said eventually.

  ‘Ecclesiastes Three.’

  ‘You know your Bible?’

  Winter nodded. He’d read it from cover to cover. That didn’t necessarily make him a believer, though. The things he’d seen made that impossible.

  ‘We’ve all got our ghosts, Mr Winter. This is where I keep mine. Where do you keep yours?’

  For a split second Winter was back in the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison. His father was lying strapped to a prison gurney, smiling and staring at him. Winter had stared back, determined to win this last round, this final battle of wills. And then his father had mouthed three carefully formed words, three words that changed everything, and nothing. They changed everything because of the possibility, however slim, that there might be some truth in there. And they changed nothing because this was something that he had already considered on countless occasions when the hours before dawn seemed the longest.

  A three-word curse.

  We’re the same.

  15

  ‘So what can I tell you about Melanie and Lester?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Well, you can start with what they were like,’ Winter replied.

  ‘That’s what you might want. But all your friend wants to know is why Nelson Price murdered them.’

  ‘You’ve got a point,’ Mendoza put in. ‘So why do you think he murdered them?’

  Clarke chuckled gently to himself. ‘The only person who could answer that is Nelson Price, and he killed himself. There were plenty of mysteries surrounding the murders, but, for me, the big one was always why. It was an apparently motiveless attack. As far as anyone could tell the Reeds were random victims.’

  ‘How about you give us everything you’ve got?’ said Winter. ‘And I mean everything. I don’t care how irrelevant it seems, I don’t care if it’s gossip or hearsay, I want to know.’

  Everything turned out to be a lot more than he was expecting. Clarke might have been old but there was nothing wrong with his memory. Half an hour later he was still talking.

  Both Lester and Melanie had grown up in Hartwood. Melanie was the only daughter of the town’s pastor, and Lester’s parents had run the general store. They’d known each other since kindergarten and nobody was surprised when they became high school sweethearts. They were engaged at eighteen, married at twenty, and dead at twenty-one. Lester was the elder of two, and he was set to take over the family store. Melanie taught in the town’s elementary school and she was one of the more popular teachers. According to Clarke, both Lester and Melanie loved living in Hartwood. They’d been born here and had no intentions of moving anywhere else.

  Melanie had made no secret of the fact that she wanted kids. She was fourteen weeks pregnant when she died, a detail that came out at the autopsy. Because it was still early days, she’d kept it quiet. Nobody knew about the pregnancy except her and Lester. The reason they’d kept the news to themselves was because Melanie had previously suffered a couple of miscarriages.

  It came as no great surprise that Clarke knew all this. Winter had first-hand experience of the way that murder stripped away any illusion of privacy. When someone was murdered, it wasn’t just their death that went under the microscope, their whole life entered the public domain. It was the final atrocity. Not content with stealing the future, murderers also corrupted their victims’ pasts. Nothing was sacrosanct.

  Clarke had made the Reeds out to be the perfect couple, but Winter wasn’t buying that. Nobody was perfect. The whole might be greater than the sum of its parts, but it was still going to be flawed. The truth was that the Reeds probably existed some way to the south of perfect. From what Clarke was saying, they’d been decent people, and Winter could buy into that. However, they would have had their ups and downs just like everyone else, because that’s how life worked.

  ‘And what can you tell us about Nelson Price?’ Mendoza asked when Clarke had finished.

  He smiled. ‘Not as much as you’d like. The Prices lived out on the edge of town and kept themselves to themselves. They moved here when Nelson was still small. Soon after, his mother committed suicide. She hung herself in their barn. Nelson and his sister, Amelia, found the body. Nelson was about ten or eleven when this happened. Amelia was a bit older.’

  Winter felt his heart suddenly speed up. An image of the blonde pushing the knife into Omar’s eye flashed into his brain. ‘Tell me more about Amelia. Is she still here in Hartwood?’

  ‘Yes she is. She still lives at the Price place out on the edge of town.’

  ‘She’d be in her mid-twenties?’

  ‘Closer to thirty, I’d say. Nelson was twenty-one when he committed the murders. Amelia was a year or two older.’

  ‘What else can you tell me about her?’

  ‘She’s the shyest, saddest creature I’ve ever seen. I see her around town every now and again, head down, hiding behind her hair, but I’ve never spoken to her. Few people have. Come to think of it, it’s got to be a couple of years since I last saw her.’ He paused for a second, then nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, it’s got to be that long at least. Last I heard she was working as a nurse over in Rochester.’

  ‘What colour are her hair and eyes?’

  ‘Her eyes? I couldn’t tell you. But her father definitely had blue eyes. I can still see them now. Even when he smiled they looked cold. As for her hair?’ Clarke went quiet and studied the peace lily for a second. ‘Light brown, or maybe a mousy brown colour.’

  ‘Are
you thinking that she’s your mystery woman?’ Mendoza asked.

  It was possible, thought Winter. Amelia was the right age, and anyone could disguise their hair colour. He closed his eyes and pictured her sitting at his diner table. Her platinum-blonde hair had looked almost white underneath the artificial lights. Maybe she’d been wearing a wig, or maybe it was dyed. As for her eyes. Maybe they were blue like her father’s and she’d disguised them with green contact lenses. He thought it through some more and saw something that didn’t add up.

  ‘Well?’ Mendoza prompted.

  Winter opened his eyes. ‘It could be her. The sticking point is their personalities. Amelia Price is shy, the woman who killed Omar was anything but. Could someone fake their character for all those years?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Any idea why the mother killed herself?’ Mendoza asked Clarke.

  ‘Sorry. She didn’t leave a note.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean you don’t know why she killed herself,’ Winter put in. ‘What about rumours? Something like this happens in a place as small as Hartwood and everyone’s going to have a theory.’

  Clarke didn’t answer straightaway. He tapped his fingers on his desk and glanced over at the peace lily. ‘The mother’s name was Linda Price. If ever there was a woman who was constantly walking on eggshells, it was her. Like Amelia, she wouldn’t meet your eye. Occasionally she had bruises.’

  ‘Her husband?’

  A nod. ‘I never liked Eugene Price from the get-go. Never trusted him. He was pleasant enough, but he was too smooth. It was almost as though he was trying a bit too hard to be liked.’

  ‘So, Eugene had been beating his wife and when things got unbearable she killed herself.’

  ‘That’s my take. Ask a dozen people around these parts what happened and you’ll get a dozen different stories, but most of them will be a variation on that particular theme.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mendoza. ‘Let me take a shot at what happened next. Eugene brings up the kids on his own, only now instead of Linda turning up with bruises, it’s the kids.’

  Clarke shook his head. ‘That’s not what happened. After Linda killed herself, everyone was keeping an eye out for those kids. If Eugene had been beating them then they would have been taken away.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Hindsight is a marvellous and truly frustrating thing. There weren’t any bruises, but there was something going on. Everyone knew that but there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done about it. Child Services were called in to investigate, but the kids were allowed to stay with their father so they presumably didn’t find anything. Who knows, if they’d looked a little harder then maybe Lester and Melanie Reed would still be alive.’

  ‘So Eugene raises the kids and then one day Nelson snaps and kills the Reeds. Is there any way that the police might have made a mistake about Nelson being the killer?’ Mendoza glanced over at Winter as she asked this.

  ‘No. His fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, and there were witnesses who put him at the crime scene. Add in the fact that he was so guilt-ridden that he hung himself afterwards, and there’s no doubt in my mind. He definitely did it.’

  ‘The same barn as his mother?’

  ‘The same beam.’

  ‘What about Eugene? What happened to him?’

  ‘Nelson killed him.’

  ‘Before or after he murdered the Reeds?’

  Clarke gave Mendoza a quizzical look, and she added, ‘I’m just trying to get an idea of the timeline here.’

  ‘It’s impossible to say for sure. Eugene’s body was never found so there wasn’t an autopsy. Also, Nelson died before he could be questioned. And before you start jumping to conclusions, Eugene is dead.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because he left without packing a case, or taking his passport. His car was parked in the garage. Does that sound like someone who’s done a disappearing act?’

  ‘Actually it does,’ said Winter. ‘If I was going to disappear that’s how I’d do it. I wouldn’t want to take anything with me that connected me to my previous life. I’d be looking for a fresh start.’

  Clarke studied him for a moment. ‘Okay, I can see that, but I’d still bet everything I’ve got that Eugene Price is dead.’

  16

  Winter folded the page of notepaper into perfect quarters then tucked it into the inside pocket of his sheepskin jacket for safekeeping. Clarke had passed the note to him as they were leaving. Underneath his contact numbers were directions to the Prices’ house. The sun was burning a pale yellow that was almost white. Everything suggested a pleasant summer’s day, but it was all an illusion. The trees lining the street were turning, and leaves the colour of fire lay scattered over the sidewalk. The breeze was cold against his skin. He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke.

  ‘Wishing you were in Vegas?’

  Mendoza said nothing. She put her sunglasses on, then reached behind and straightened her ponytail. Her back was to the sun, and her face was in shadow.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked her.

  ‘How many triple homicides do you think Birch has worked?’

  ‘Triple? Since there’s no body for Eugene Price, you might want to rethink that one.’

  ‘Okay, how many double homicides?’

  ‘If I was being generous I’d say one, maybe two.’

  ‘Well you’re more generous than I am. So we’re agreed that Chief Birch was out of his depth?’

  ‘Well and truly.’

  Mendoza frowned. ‘There’s no way Eugene Price’s murder was investigated properly. Not a hope in hell. Everybody would have been too focused on the Reeds. They were the primary victims. Eugene Price was just an afterthought.’

  Winter finished his cigarette and crushed it out on the sidewalk. He picked up the butt and dropped it in a nearby trash can. ‘So what have we got? Nelson goes off the reservation and murders the Reeds. Either before that or after, he also murdered his father and hid the body so well that even now, six years on, nobody’s found it. That’s the official version of events, and people were prepared to believe it because it’s the easy explanation. So, the first question’s got to be: alive or dead?’

  ‘If Eugene Price is alive then he’s done a really good job of disappearing.’

  ‘And if he’s dead, then Nelson was busy.’

  Mendoza nodded.

  ‘Here’s a question for you,’ said Winter. ‘Is Nelson Price guilty or innocent of the Reed murders?’

  ‘So far everything points towards him being guilty. I can see the cops screwing up with Eugene Price, but not the Reeds. They had fingerprints and eyewitnesses. It sounds airtight to me.’

  ‘Which once again leads us back to the woman who murdered Omar. Why did she follow me? And why the hell did she point me in the direction of the Reed murders? It makes no sense. What does she stand to gain? I’ve never seen her before. I don’t have a clue who she is.’

  ‘And you’re sure about that?’

  Winter closed his eyes and imagined himself back into the diner again. He saw the blonde sitting at the back table, saw her in the mirror behind the counter, saw her sitting opposite him. He opened his eyes. ‘I’ve never seen her before. I’m absolutely certain.’

  ‘Could she be connected to a case you’ve worked?’ Mendoza suggested. ‘A girlfriend or wife of someone you’ve put in prison, perhaps? I’m guessing you’ve made plenty of enemies over the years.’

  ‘Sure, but someone I can connect to this?’ Winter shook his head.

  Mendoza’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out, checked the display, frowned. Her finger was hovering over the answer button. ‘It’s Lieutenant Jones.’

  ‘Ask him to get someone to look at Amelia Price. And make sure they call the local hospitals to find out which one she works at.’

  ‘I can’t just start giving my boss orders.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s my bos
s.’

  ‘So?’

  Mendoza looked as though she was going to argue some more, but she didn’t. Instead, she sighed and answered the call. Winter sat down on the kerb, the sun warm on his face, his mind spinning in overdrive. He closed his eyes and replayed Omar’s murder from the points of view of the main characters. His perspective first, then the cook’s, then the blonde’s. No matter what direction he came at this from, it still made no sense. He’d walked in, ordered breakfast, sat down. The woman had come over, they’d exchanged a few words, then she’d stabbed Omar and left.

  If she had wanted to get his attention, then she’d succeeded. But why would she want to do that? That was the question he kept returning to. Why? She’d gone to a lot of trouble, and you didn’t do that without a good reason.

  Mendoza said a terse ‘Bye’ and he opened his eyes.

  ‘Is Lieutenant Jones going to get someone to look into Amelia Price’s background?’ he asked her.

  ‘No. He’s passed the buck on this one. The murder happened on the Seventh Precinct’s turf, therefore it’s their problem. We’re to liaise with Darryl Hitchin.’ Her cell sounded a text alert. ‘And that’ll be his direct number.’

  The call to Hitchin lasted longer than the call with Jones. Long enough for Mendoza to tell him that they’d just got started here, and for Hitchin to tell her that they weren’t getting anywhere in New York. She killed the call and dropped the cell phone into a pocket.

  ‘He’s going to get someone to look into Amelia Price.’ Mendoza stood there for a second, biting her lip. ‘Okay, we need to talk to the coroner’s office.’

  ‘All arranged. We’re meeting up with the ME who carried out the Reeds’ autopsies at two.’ Winter ignored the quizzical look that Mendoza was giving him and added, ‘Which means we’ve got plenty of time to keep looking at Melanie and Lester. Clarke said that Lester’s family owned the general store. I vote we start there.’