Prey (Jefferson Winter)

by James Carol

  Mendoza took another look around the room, then nodded down at the body. ‘We still need to call this in.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘You really liked the old guy, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes I did.’

  Clarke’s notepad was lying on the table next to one of the ledgers. Winter picked it up and flicked through it. The pad contained page after page of shorthand, but without Clarke it was no use to them. Given enough time Winter reckoned he might have been able to decipher the symbols. Maybe. The problem was that Clarke had been a journalist for most of his life. Over the decades he would have developed his own form of code, and the chances were those symbols wouldn’t have made sense to anyone except him.

  ‘Looks like Greek to me,’ Mendoza said at his shoulder. ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘Unfortunately no.’

  He put the notepad back on the table and looked down at the ledger. It was open to the front page of the edition that had come out the week after the Reed murders. He scanned the lead story. There were two main differences between this story and the one that had appeared the previous week. First, it was more detailed. There was less speculation and more fact. The prose had been calmed down, too, and was less inflammatory. The second difference was that Nelson Price had been mentioned in connection with the crime.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ Mendoza asked.

  ‘Only that it’s like I thought, the Reed murders happened right on the paper’s deadline. It might have even happened close enough to the deadline for Clarke to stop the presses. A story this big in a place this small, it would merit that. If he was that close to the deadline, it would explain why there was no mention of Nelson Price in the original story. Everything would have been chaos when the crime occurred and Clarke would have been battling to discern fact from fiction. Chances were that he knew Nelson did it but didn’t have enough time to get confirmation.’

  Winter turned the page and felt the air catch in his lungs. Amelia Price was staring back at him from an old black-and-white high school photo. This was her in her natural form. No wigs, no contact lenses, no disguises. Her hair was a light colour that brought to mind Clarke saying that she had mousy brown hair. As for her eyes, it was impossible to tell. Maybe they were blue like her father’s, but they could just as easily be brown or green.

  ‘What?’ said Mendoza.

  Winter tapped the picture. ‘You wanted irrefutable proof that Amelia Price is our mystery woman? There’s your proof.’

  36

  It was after ten by the time Peterson arrived to process Granville Clarke’s death. Birch was nowhere to be seen. According to the deputy, Birch had insisted on heading over to the Price house to secure the scene, which led Winter to wonder why. Perhaps Birch saw himself stopping Amelia single handed. If that was the case then he was going to be seriously disappointed. Amelia wouldn’t be going anywhere near her old home today. Then again, that was probably a blessing. If Birch tried to arrest her he’d probably end up as dead as Omar.

  Mendoza tapped Winter on the shoulder. ‘We need to get going.’

  Winter took one last look at Clarke then headed for the door. Leaving him in Peterson’s hands felt like a betrayal, but Mendoza was right. Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the Price’s house. Mendoza parked in the same spot as yesterday and reached over to open the glove box. She removed the yellow rubber gloves she’d got from Jerry Barnes and held a pair out to Winter.

  ‘Do I have to? They make my hands sweat.’

  ‘The alternative is that you stay here in the car and I go in alone.’

  Winter gave her a pleading look and she shook her head.

  ‘Okay, give me the damn gloves.’

  She handed them over and he put them on and they got out of the car. Their doors closed one after the other in quick succession. Bang bang. There was no sign of Birch. No sign of the Hartwood PD’s battered old police cruiser.

  ‘So much for Birch securing the scene,’ said Mendoza. ‘Do you think he stopped off somewhere for doughnuts?’

  ‘That would be my guess.’

  Winter stood next to the car, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. No lights came on, and Amelia didn’t come screaming out on to the porch waving a gun at them. The house looked as still and deserted as it had done when they were here last. Mendoza took her cell phone out and called the sheriff’s department again. Winter was able to hear enough to get the gist of the conversation. The standoff was over and the kid was okay. Unfortunately, the father was, too. Mendoza hung up with a promise that they were going to get someone over to the Price place as soon as possible.

  ‘Did you get all that?’ she asked as she put her cell away.

  ‘It sounded like you were getting palmed off.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my take. You can’t blame them, though. I’m sure they’ve got better things to do than look into a six-year-old murder case that they’ve already signed off on.’ She added a brisk ‘Shall we?’ then walked off towards the house without waiting for a reply.

  Winter caught up with her at the bottom of the porch steps and they climbed them one at a time again. This time he went first. Mendoza caught up with him at the door and knocked hard. She stepped back and waited. No response. The house was so quiet Winter was beginning to wonder when it had last been inhabited. A year ago? Six years? Mendoza stepped forward and thumped the door again. Bang bang bang. She hit it even harder this time, hard enough for the vibrations to rattle through the brittle porch floor and into their feet. He stepped back and they waited some more.

  Still nothing.

  ‘Looks like no one’s in again,’ Mendoza said.

  ‘Looks that way.’

  Winter removed his right glove and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, then took out the leather wrap containing his lock picks and held it up for Mendoza to see. She nodded for him to go ahead and he went to work. The lock was old and stiff and in need of oil, and it took a bit of persuasion, but he got there in the end. He put the picks away, pulled the glove back on, then opened the door and motioned for her to go in. Mendoza didn’t move.

  ‘When we arrived we found the door open,’ she told him. ‘Amelia Price was supposed to be in, but she wasn’t answering. Naturally, we were concerned about her safety so we went inside to make sure she was all right. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds like you’re a natural born storyteller.’

  ‘I’m serious, Winter. I’m a cop. I can’t just break into someone’s home.’

  ‘Technically, I’m the one who’s broken in so you’re off the hook.’

  She gave him a look that said she wasn’t convinced, then followed him through the door. The inside of the house was as tired and old as the wood stretching around the outside of the building. It smelled stale, like all the air had been used up long ago. The carpets were threadbare, the wall coverings jaded. There were dark rectangular marks on the walls where pictures had once hung.

  Four doors led off the hall and a flight of stairs disappeared up into the gloom. The first door they tried opened into the dining room. Winter went in first. Behind him, Mendoza let out a whispered elongated ‘Shit’. Winter knew exactly where she was coming from.

  The first thing that caught his eye was the table. Like the table at the Reed’s house, it was big enough for four. For some reason, though, it had been laid for two. The white tablecloth had turned grey with age, as had the napkins. The place mats had faded from red to pink. There were wine glasses and water tumblers, and silverware for three courses. Starter, main, dessert. A three-arm candelabra sat in the midpoint between the two place settings. There was melted wax around the bases of the red candles. All three had blackened wicks. Everything was covered with a layer of dust and cobwebs. Six years’ worth, at a guess.

  The second thing that caught his eye was the portable record player on the credenza. It was covered in red vinyl and looked like it dated back to the sixties. Winter walked over to get a better look. The LP on
the turntable was old. Strauss performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He picked it up, blew the dust away, put it back down. Then he turned the record player on and placed the needle at the start of the disk. The gloves made this tricky but he got there in the end. There was a series of crackles then the unmistakeable sound of the Blue Danube filled the room.

  Mendoza appeared at his shoulder. ‘That thing looks ancient. I’m surprised it still works.’

  ‘I’m not.’ He lifted the needle up and turned the record player off.

  Mendoza nodded towards the table. ‘Why are there only two places set? Why not four?’

  ‘A better question is who are those places set for?’

  ‘Mom and dad?’

  ‘I don’t think so. The mom would have been long dead before this table was laid. I’m thinking it’s for Amelia and her father.’

  ‘This would have been before Nelson died. So where did he eat?’

  Winter shrugged.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking that we’ve got one very screwed-up family here. An abusive father, a mother who hung herself in the barn, a son who brutally murdered two innocent people, and a daughter who stood by watching while it happened.’

  ‘And turned into a killer herself. Let’s not forget that.’

  Winter nodded. ‘Okay, let’s back up a second. One day, the Prices up sticks and move to Hartwood. Why? What does this place offer?’

  ‘Anonymity.’

  ‘Exactly. According to both Clarke and Hailey Reed, the Prices kept to themselves. Nobody really knew them. Remember what Hailey said about Nelson and Amelia. She described them as ghosts. So where did they come from? And why did they move? In this case the why is easier than the where. If they changed their names, which is a distinct possibility, then that’s going to make it harder to work out where they came from.’

  Winter paused for a second then added, ‘The reason they moved here is because life became uncomfortable for Eugene Price. Maybe the kids were turning up to school with bruises and questions were being asked. Maybe the mother walked into one door too many.’

  ‘So they move here,’ continued Mendoza, ‘a smallholding in the middle of nowhere, and Eugene wises up and makes sure the bruises don’t show. The abuse gets worse because that’s the way it works.’

  ‘And the mother is the first casualty,’ Winter added. ‘Maybe Eugene murdered her or maybe it was suicide. Whichever way it played out the end result was the same. And who becomes the substitute mother and wife? Amelia does. She more or less told me as much last night. We were talking about why she’d set the table after the Reed murders and she said that she got to “play mother”. At the time I thought she was making a joke, but I think she was being literal. She didn’t just play mother, there were times when she became her mother.’

  Winter fell quiet again, thinking this over, rearranging the pieces in his head. He glanced over at the table and saw the ghostly figures of Amelia and her father sitting down to eat. Amelia was dressed in clothes that were a couple of sizes too big and a couple of decades too old for her, clothes that had once belonged to her mother. She was awkwardly filling the space in their lives that had been created when her mother died. Strauss was playing gently in the background, creating an illusion of civility that was light years from the truth.

  ‘After the mother hung herself, that’s when Amelia’s nightmare really began. However bad it had been for her mother, it would have been infinitely worse for Amelia since she would have been dealing with the fallout from her mother’s death. Eugene Price needed someone to blame, and that someone was Amelia. Every time he looked at her he would have been reminded of what happened. He would have been filled with guilt, hate and self-loathing, and Amelia would have borne the brunt.’

  ‘And she was just a kid.’ Mendoza was shaking her head. ‘You know something, Winter? I could almost feel sorry for her.’

  37

  Winter lifted the tablecloth with a gloved finger and checked under the dinner table. Nothing but floorboards and dust. He let the tablecloth drop back into place and straightened up. Mendoza was walking around the room, looking but not touching.

  ‘Amelia was obviously mentally stronger than her mother,’ she said. ‘So instead of killing herself, she killed her father. But she didn’t do it straightaway. If the length of the hairs we found back in the guesthouse are anything to go by, then she kept him alive for years before she did it.’ She stopped walking and turned to face Winter. ‘Assuming, of course, that he’s dead. So what do you reckon: alive or dead? I’m thinking dead.’

  Winter nodded. ‘I think so too. Omar’s murder proves that. For years she flies under the radar, then suddenly changes her MO and actually goes out of her way to get noticed. A change like that, there’s got to be a trigger. The death of her father would do it.’

  ‘You’re frowning. What’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem is that the chronology doesn’t work. Amelia claimed that Omar was the first person she’d killed. Before you say anything, I don’t think she was lying. Nor am I overanalysing the situation.’

  Mendoza gave him a cynical look.

  ‘She wasn’t lying, Mendoza.’

  ‘You’re words are saying one thing and you’re body language is saying something different.’

  Winter sighed. ‘Okay, before I talked to her last night I’d come to the conclusion that she must have killed before.’

  ‘And maybe you were right about that.’

  ‘Except I’m trained to tell when someone is lying to me, and she wasn’t lying.’

  ‘And that lie detector of yours is one hundred per cent accurate? I don’t think so. We know she likes to play games, Winter. That’s all that’s going on here. She’s trying to mess with your head. What’s more, it’s working. Anyway, what does it matter if she’s killed one person or two? The fact is she’s a murderer. That’s all I need to know.’

  ‘It matters.’

  ‘If you say so. Okay, moving on. The one thing we can be certain of is that she kept him alive for a very long time. In which case the question we should really be asking ourselves is where she kept him locked up. The cellar would be my first choice.’

  ‘Mine, too.’

  They left the dining room and tried the next door along. This one led to the living room. Like the dining room, it looked as though nobody had been in there for years. The next door they tried opened on to the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. Plates, bowls, pans and flatware neatly put away in cupboards and drawers. The tiled floor was scrubbed to a high sheen, as were the work surfaces. All the appliances were clean, too, the metal gleaming.

  ‘This I wasn’t expecting,’ said Mendoza.

  Winter opened the refrigerator and peered inside. No junk, just healthy options. Fruit, yogurt, salad vegetables, fresh juice. One shelf was taken up with low-fat microwave meals, the packets piled neatly on top of one another. He opened the milk and sniffed it, then checked the vegetables in the bottom drawer. Everything was relatively fresh, bought within the last week or so.

  ‘She cooks here,’ Winter called over his shoulder. He picked up a tomato, ate it in two bites, then picked up another.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I missed breakfast, remember. All I’ve had today is a candy bar.’

  ‘And you’re kind of missing the point. As usual.’

  Winter smiled and took a bite out of the tomato, leaving Mendoza shaking her head. He finished eating then carried on searching the kitchen. The second drawer he looked in contained tablecloths. The difference between these and the one in the dining room was that these were clean and dust-free, smaller too. The next drawer contained candles and place mats.

  ‘Weird,’ Mendoza said at his shoulder.

  ‘Not really. I think that Amelia is still playing mother. At least she was until her father died.’

  ‘Maybe she still is.’

  Mendoza’s comment sparked an image of Amelia si
tting down at a table neatly set for two, something healthy on her plate. He could hear an orchestra playing, and he could see her lifting her glass in a toast to the empty chair opposite. Alone but alive.

  ‘These tablecloths are smaller. They’d be more appropriate for a two-set table.’

  ‘You think that they were still eating their meals together after she imprisoned him.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Weird,’ Mendoza said again.

  The door at the far side of the kitchen led down into the cellar. Mendoza and Winter peered into the darkness, neither one in a hurry to cross the threshold. Winter leant forward and sniffed the air. ‘I don’t think Eugene’s down there.’

  ‘I’m not smelling anything either.’ A pause. ‘Unless he’s down there, and he’s still alive.’

  Winter turned on the light and leant through the doorway again. ‘Anyone there?’ he called out.

  No response.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  Winter led the way, Mendoza trailing two steps behind. The stairs creaked under their weight, but held up okay. The cellar was colder than the kitchen by at least ten degrees. At the bottom he zipped his jacket to the chin and drew his hands back into his sleeves.

  The shelves lining two of the walls held enough jars and tins to keep a family fed for a year. And the shelves on the third wall held a variety of items that didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go. Mousetraps, a flashlight, empty glass jam jars, a tower of metal dog bowls and a couple of boxes of batteries.

  The small freezer was square topped rather than rectangular, presumably because it would have been impossible to get a full-size model through the cellar door. The freezer was filled with TV dinners. Winter lifted two of them out. Macaroni cheese and spaghetti bolognaise. He put them back again.