“Stars can mean a lot of things,” he said, and popped a sampler into his mouth.
“Or nothing at all. Remember those two little girls supposedly kidnapped from their own beds? Letter found in the house said don’t try looking for them. At the bottom of the note was a pentagram.”
“That’s right. Girls turned up dead in a swamp. Mom and Dad did it. They were abusers. Used the satanic junk as a smokescreen.” He pointed the spatula at her. “You broke that case.”
“Did such a bang-up job, they gave me beach time.”
“Saw that suspension in your file. Something about backdating a memo to cover up the fact that you delayed starting the investigation. Didn’t sound like you. I usually have to hold you back.”
A small compliment from him. She hadn’t had many of those this assignment. “It was bullshit. As soon as I was assigned to the case, I dug in—and my sight led us straight to the parents. When people started asking questions about how I’d figured it out, my ASAC cooked up a misconduct story to get rid of me.” As she talked about it, she got mad all over again. “Even when I get the job done, I’m an embarrassment.”
“Didn’t mean to hit a nerve,” said Garcia, taking the pan off the stove.
She wondered if she was an embarrassment to him.
He started dishing out the fish. “Want to eat in front of the fire? We could open a bottle of wine.”
In light of their history, both of those options sounded too comfy. She got up and took a stool at the kitchen island. Had a sip of water. “This is good.”
He stood across from her and ate at the counter.
While they were cleaning up, his phone rang. He wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and picked up. “Yeah … Hey, Forbes … Get anything good?”
Forbes was one of the ERT guys.
“That’s what I figured,” said Garcia, pacing the kitchen floor as he talked. “What about the storage room/morgue?”
Garcia sounded like he was going to be on for a while. There was something she wanted to check before they called it a night. She dropped down on the couch, opened her laptop, and started pecking.
There’d been a handful of fetus thefts over the years, the babies stolen by acquaintances or family members who wanted to pass the children off as their own. The cases had been quickly solved—all but one.
She went to the Division of Criminal Investigation, part of the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Its Special Assignments Bureau had a cold-case unit assisting local law-enforcement agencies in resolving unsolved Wisconsin homicides. She clicked on the link for Unsolved Homicides around Wisconsin. Half a dozen cases were listed under the heading UNSOLVED … SEEKING INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLIC. She couldn’t find the case there, and then saw another link to Missing from Wisconsin.
That brought up several thumbnail photos of missing adults and kids, and one black-and-white sketch—of an unidentified dead woman. Black-and-white police sketches could appear so generic, she could be looking at a drawing of her own face and not realize it. Bernadette put the cursor over the thumbnail and brought up a large poster.
UNIDENTIFIED was the heading above the sketch. To the right of the drawing were the bare-bones details: Age. Sex. Race. Height. Weight. Location found. Date found.
Below that was a narrative:
A female estimated to be in her mid-twenties was found dead in Brule River State Forest in northwestern Wisconsin. A fetus had been cut from her womb. The infant’s body has not been found. The victim was nude. Her ears were pierced, but she was wearing no jewelry. No identification or other personal items were found near the body. Anyone with information is asked to call Lt. Jerry Dupray of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.
Garcia was still in the kitchen, talking and pacing and sounding frustrated. She picked up her cell and called Douglas County to see if she could put her hands on the file. The deputy on the other end of the line asked her to call back on Monday, when the records folks were around. She made a stink and the deputy transferred her to a sergeant. The sergeant transferred her to Dupray’s desk, telling her to leave a message on the lieutenant’s voice mail.
Dupray was still there, working late on some paperwork, and picked up after two rings. He offered to buy her coffee on Saturday morning in Brule, a tiny town in the middle of Brule River State Forest. He lived around there and said he would be happy to bring the file home with him. The guy who’d originally worked the case had died and Dupray had inherited it.
Garcia closed his phone just as she was closing hers. “Nothing from the wedding tent. Too much from the storage room/morgue. Too many prints. Too much hair.”
She was back to reading. “No surprise.”
“Our Minneapolis crew is going to hit the other clinics around here, show the girl’s photo around. I told Forbes to tell B.K. to get going on some background checks. Ashe and Graham to start. The two out-of-towners.”
“Good, good,” she mumbled as she scrolled down her screen.
“What’re you looking up?”
“That thing in Wisconsin.”
He closed the dishwasher and started it. “We can take a steam later. They’ve got a steam room down in the basement.”
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” she said distractedly.
“Neither did I. We can figure something out.”
We again. She couldn’t hold it in any longer; she had to ask about his cold shoulder at the bureau bash. “You get all cozy here, but you ignored me at the party. What’s the deal?”
“Don’t want to talk about that stupid party.”
“Why not?”
He leaned a hand against the counter. “You were loaded, that’s why. You were loaded and I’m your boss, and it wouldn’t have looked good if we’d been together or left together.”
“I drank too much because you were ignoring me.”
“Are we in junior high? Jesus!”
“On top of that, you’ve been an asshole to me when it comes to work.” She knew that was an exaggeration, but he’d gotten her wound up. “Questioning everything I come up with and—”
“What have you come up with, Cat? We’re looking for a guy with two hands. No. Wait. Could be a big chick with two hands. He or she is someplace where it’s snowing. Stop the fucking presses.”
“Go to hell!”
“Watch your mouth, Agent!”
“Oh, now you’re the big boss. You just invited me to get naked with you in the steam room!”
“I did not.” His phone rang again, and he ignored it.
“Why did you want me to crash here instead of at a hotel with the others?” Another, more disturbing question occurred to her. “Do they know we’re here together?”
“No,” he said quickly. “They don’t know. Everyone’s at different hotels. Nobody’s comparing notes.”
“You hope.” She took a calming breath. “Tony I think I should drive to Wisconsin tonight.”
“That other stolen-fetus case? It was years ago. No connection. A waste of time.”
There he was, dismissing her ideas again. She grit her teeth and continued. “There are some similarities. Found in a state forest, like our girl.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “If this is about—”
“It’s about work,” she said.
“All we’ve got is the truck.”
He was reaching for arguments to this plan, and she wasn’t going to let him stop her. She needed to get out of there. “I can handle the truck. Have one of the Minneapolis guys come by for you in the morning. Use his wheels.”
His cell rang again, and he picked it up. “Garcia … No, Senator. This is fine …”
While he talked, she started to gather her things together.
“No apology necessary, sir … No offense taken. I can’t begin to imagine what you and your wife are going through.”
Dunton was sorry for taking Garcia’s head off earlier. Good, she thought.
“As a matter of fact, I have an agent working on
an angle right now. There’s a case similar to your daughter’s, and she’s heading on over there.” Garcia looked over at her and offered a weak smile. “Bernadette Saint Clare … Yes, sir. She’s the best.”
There was Garcia’s apology to her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bernadette caught a break: it stopped snowing.
She took Minnesota 200 to U.S. Highway 2 East. She gassed up after crossing the border into Wisconsin and got back on the highway. During the entire drive, she suppressed her worries about Garcia and thought about the northwestern Wisconsin murder. Radio stations along the way provided background music, mostly country-and-western dirges.
About the time Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl” made her consider slitting her wrists, she pulled into Brule. It had one motel, one restaurant, two gas stations, two bars, two churches, and a white clapboard town hall. Bernadette checked the dashboard clock. It was a quarter past ten. She’d made the drive in exactly three hours and twenty minutes.
She turned in to the parking lot of the Brown Trout Inn, a motel with a strip of rooms that faced the highway. The only other vehicle was a rusty Chevy sedan parked in front of the office. She pulled in next to the beater and hopped out.
The door to the office was open and the lights were on. Bernadette went inside. “Hello?” A door behind the counter was open to a front room. She heard machine-gun fire and the voice of Edward G. Robinson. An old gangster flick. She yelled louder. “Hello!”
A man wearing white chin stubble and black-framed eyeglasses shuffled out and leaned his arms on the counter. The night clerk was dressed in jeans and a thermal top, with the sleeves pushed up to his bony elbows. His wispy gray hair was matted on one side. He looked as if he’d been sleeping, and sounded like it, too. “What?” he croaked.
“A room.”
He hacked a couple of times and popped a cherry cough drop into his mouth. “You’ve got the place to yourself.”
“How about a room at the end?”
The clerk turned around and eyed the keys hanging on the wall behind him. “Which end?”
He reeked of menthol chest ointment, and her nose wrinkled. “Either.”
He plucked Room 8 off its hook and slapped it on the counter. “Twenty-nine a night plus tax.”
She picked up the key. “You need it now?”
Grinning, he revealed a gold top tooth. “Think I can trust you, little lady. Pay as you leave.” He slid a guest register across the counter and she signed it.
She parked the truck in front of her room and went inside. It smelled musky and salty, like the bedroom in Ed’s basement. The walls were aqua blue, and an acrylic-framed poster of a jumping trout hung above the headboard of each of the twin beds. Checking the bathroom, she was surprised to find the shower clean. So was the sink, and there was a night-light plugged into the outlet next to it.
She pulled down the pea-green spread of one of the beds; the sheets underneath looked and smelled questionable. Bernadette kicked off her boots but kept the rest of her clothes on. Her jacket and the rest of her gear went on the other bed.
Sitting cross-legged on the mattress, she picked up the television remote and pressed the power button. The set stayed dead, and she was too beat to walk across the room and turn it on manually. It had been thirty-six hours since Garcia called her at home about a dead girl and a missing fetus. Thirty-six hours since she’d slept.
Five minutes after she turned off the lights, she was asleep.
In the middle of the night, her eyes snapped open and she bolted upright in bed. Sitting motionless, she listened. Someone was jiggling the doorknob. Unless a motorist had pulled in even later than she, there were no other motel guests. The creepy clerk?
There was no peephole on the door, and the drapes of the windows on either side of the door were closed. She slid off the mattress, padded over to the other bed, and felt around until she found her Glock. Hunkering down low, Bernadette went over to the door and listened. The night-light provided just enough illumination. The knob moved again.
She’d put the security chain in place. Slowly, she raised her arm over her head, felt the chain, and gently slid it out of the slot. The instant she grabbed the knob, it stopped moving. The intruder had felt her hand on it. She stood up and threw the door open.
By the floodlights of a building across the street, she could see a figure running across the motel parking lot. She didn’t want to lose him. Dressed in only socks, jeans, and a sweater, she took off after him. “Stop! FBI! Stop now!”
As he ran across the road, he glanced at her over his shoulder. He had a ski mask pulled over his face. Given the distance and the darkness, she had a tough time judging his size, and had no clue whether he carried a weapon.
He darted behind a gas station that faced the highway.
“FBI!” she yelled. “Stop!”
Behind the station was a residential street lined with small houses. He ran alongside a rambler and she thought she saw him hook around to the home’s backyard. She followed, her gun in her hand. With each bounding step in the snow, her stocking feet stung.
Pitch-black behind the home. Neither it nor any of its neighbors had outside lights. Squinting in the darkness, she tried to look for a shape or movement against the white of the snow. Her lungs burned from the freezing air, and her feet and hands were growing numb.
“Fuck!” she said in a cloudy puff of air. She pointed her gun into the darkness. “FBI! Come out now, hands over your head!”
Nothing.
She yelled a less professional warning: “Don’t try anything, asshole! I’ve got a gun!”
The lights went on inside the rambler, and the back door opened. A rotund man with a jacket pulled over boxers and T-shirt came out on the back stoop, a shotgun in his meaty fists.
She lowered her Glock and raised her free hand. “FBI, sir.”
The first thing he noticed was her lack of outerwear. “Where in the hell’s your clothes?”
His question confused her. “What?”
“What’re you doing in my yard?”
“Chasing a suspect.”
“Bullshit!” He noticed the pistol in her hand and started raising the barrel.
“Don’t! I’m an FBI agent!”
“My ass!” He pointed the gun at her.
Bernadette dropped to the snow, and a shot rang out over her head.
“Jerry Dupray from the sheriff’s office!” Bernadette hollered from the ground. “I’m meeting him tomorrow!”
Another blast over her head. “Next one’s gonna be for real!”
A woman in a bathrobe and hair rollers stuck her head outside. “Boyd! Put it down! We know Jerry!”
He lowered the barrel. “She’s making it up!”
The woman yanked the gun out of his hands. “I’m sorry, miss. Kids broke in to the garage last fall.”
Bernadette got to her feet. “Call nine-one-one! Send them to the Brown Trout!”
Those instructions seemed to impress the man. “Crap.”
“Is Boyd in trouble?” asked the woman. “He really wouldn’t have shot nobody.”
Bernadette was freezing, and she wanted to return to her stuff. She’d left the door to her room wide open. “Call!” she yelled, and started running back to the motel.
As she dashed across the highway, she glanced over her shoulder. No one following her, neither an armed homeowner nor a guy in a ski mask.
When she got back to her room, she called the cops herself. Minutes later, a young male deputy came to her door and took notes while a female deputy roused the caretaker and questioned him. Patrol cars were out in the neighborhood, looking for the intruder. Deputies were also at the Zastrow residence.
“I don’t want him arrested,” said Bernadette.
“He shot at an FBI agent,” said the deputy.
Bernadette was angry about being forced to drop, but she’d been without a jacket or identification. It had to have looked suspicious. “Scare the crap out
of him and let him off with a warning,” she suggested. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her bare feet to get the sensation back.
“We’ll see what the bosses want to do.” The deputy clicked his pen. “You think someone came after you specifically? Who knew you were in town?”
“Jerry’s the only one,” she said. “Meeting with him on a case tomorrow.”
The deputy grinned. “Wasn’t Jerry messing with you. I know that.”
She grimaced as she asked, “Got a registered sex offender living around here?”
“Not for fifty miles.”
“Good,” she said.
“You think someone followed you here? Did you stop at a wayside rest and see some scumbag giving you the eye as you were leaving?” The deputy tipped his head toward the parking lot. “Maybe someone coming down the highway spotted the nice truck all by itself and, I don’t know …”
“I don’t know either,” she said tiredly“How about we leave a man outside your door tonight?”
“That’s not necessary,” she said, and got up to see him out. “Thanks, though.”
Bernadette contemplated getting a different hotel but figured at that hour she could have trouble finding something, and she was dead tired. She went to the office to have the clerk give her a different room. The guy still had the television blaring. “Anyone call for me tonight?” she asked.
“No calls,” he said groggily.
While he took down another room key, she eyed the guest register. It was sitting open on the counter. Anyone could have sneaked into the unlocked office and figured out that she was there. She chastised herself for signing her real name, but she never would have guessed that she needed to be so clandestine in this tiny town.
He handed her a key. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Good.” He turned around and went back to his program.
While pacing the new room, she called Garcia. Even though she’d wakened him in the middle of the night, he was paying complete attention. “Are you all right?” he asked.
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