Perfect.
Noticing that the animals had stopped barking, the intruder looked toward the barn door. Were they gone? They must have found the treats dumped at the far end of the property. The dogs had been figured into the plan.
To neaten up the scene, pieces of busted pots were picked up and tossed into a trash can under the bench. The tipped stool in front of the pottery wheel was set upright. Every so often, an ear was tilted toward the barn door. Still quiet.
While cleaning up, the intruder eyed the pottery lining the shelves and found most of the items ugly and unworthy. Two pieces weren’t bad, however: a pair of little men wearing pointed hats. They were lost amid the other, larger objects. One of the fellows was scooped up and dropped into a pocket of the parka.
One last survey of the place, like checking a motel room to make sure nothing had been left behind. Eyes landed on the cell phone hiding behind an ashtray on the bench. Nothing on the witch’s cell would tell the cops what had happened here just now, or what had transpired elsewhere a couple of days earlier. Better to leave it alone.
The hood went back up over the head. A test, before the barn door was opened: “Here, boy! Come on, boy! Good dog!”
Silence.
The barn door was opened a crack. No animal snouts tried to bust through. A whistle was issued, followed by a clap of hands. No response, not even a distant bark. The treats had distracted them.
Ashe’s killer slid the barn door open and went back into the snowstorm. The boyfriend would be working through the night. On his way in, Vizner would clear his own road and driveway, thereby plowing away any telling tire tracks.
Like the dogs, the weather had been figured into the plan, and it had held up its end of the operation beautifully.
When Karl Vizner tried Jordan’s cell and didn’t have any luck, he decided to take a break and head home. He always worried that those damn dogs of hers were going to haul off and eat her someday for supper. Even a witch couldn’t charm the teeth off a hungry pit bull.
A private plow operator with a full-size truck and attached plow, Vizner made a good living clearing parking lots for businesses in the surrounding towns. He also picked up work doing plowing for cabin owners in the area. The big highway jobs were left up to the monster Minnesota Department of Transportation machines, however. As he drove along the state highway, he noticed that they’d managed to do a good job in the midst of the storm. Like him, however, they’d have to keep working it.
Once he turned down his own road, he lowered the blade and plowed his way home. When he got to the fork, he veered to the right and did the driveway in front of the barn. The dogs were milling by the doors. Jordan had to be in there, working on her pots. Then he went to the left and cleared the driveway leading to the garage. As he plowed, he noticed fresh tire tracks. Had the FBI stopped by the house because he’d refused to return their calls? He felt bad if she’d had to contend with them alone again. Assholes.
After he finished plowing, he hopped out of the truck and headed for the barn. A gust rolled down his back and he pulled up the collar of his work coat. He nudged the animals out of the way as he tried to get to the doors. “Make a hole, you monsters.”
Vizner froze in the middle of the pack of dogs. Drops of red splattered the snow. A couple of the bitches had gashes running down their muzzles. Had Jordan left them outside for too long? Had they tangled with one another, some wild animal, or the fence? No. She took better care of the animals than she did of her old man. Something was wrong. Terribly, fucking wrong.
The two largest males were digging under the door and steaming up the air like a couple of engines. They’d scratched away all the snow and had gotten down to the frozen dirt. Though it was as hard as concrete, the pair had managed to dig a shallow trench in the soil. The other dogs were standing behind the excavators, whimpering and wiggling their asses, anxious as hell to get inside the barn. Vizner clamped a hand over the collar of the biggest digger and pulled the dog off the door. The dog sat in the snow and looked at him.
“Fuck!” said Vizner. The dog’s snout was ground beef. “What the fuck is going on?”
Vizner put his hand on the door, took a deep breath, and slid it wide open. Barking and yelping, the dogs went around him to rush inside. He stood in the threshold with one hand on the edge of the door. His grip over the wood tightened, and for a second he wondered if he was going to puke or pass out or do both. He squared his shoulders, went inside, and closed the door after him.
On wobbly legs, he walked into the middle of the barn while pulling off his hat. “Jordan, no,” he whispered up to the dangling figure. “No, no, no, no, no.”
When he reached the tipped stool, he cranked his foot back and booted it. The stool was airborne for a few seconds, and then landed on the wood floor with a clatter. The closest dogs yelped and scattered.
Vizner ran to the anchored end of the rope and squatted next to the workbench leg. Gloves still on his fingers, he started to undo the knot. “Fuck!” He pulled off his gloves with his teeth, spit them out, and continued untying with his bare, trembling fingers. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Help me. Forgive her. Please forgive her.”
The smallest female was sniffing around Vizner as he struggled to undo the knot, tears welling in his eyes. The bitch licked his cheeks. “That’s enough, girl,” he said with a sniffle. “Sit. Go on. Sit.” With a whine, she did as she was told.
One of the big males was standing beneath the body, barking and standing on his hind legs. The rest—the fucking four-legged mercenaries—were in back of the barn, preoccupied with digging into their food. They didn’t give a shit about the one who had filled their bowls that morning. Every morning.
“Come on, puppies. Here you go. Momma’s got food.”
“Chow wagon’s here, you big mooches.”
“Hey, fellas. Let the ladies have some.”
Gathering up his end of the rope, Vizner stood straight and pivoted around to face the suspended figure. Her back was to him. She could have been a scarecrow, those arms and legs so heavy and lifeless. Those braids in such disarray. Quickly, he let the rope run through his hands and lowered Jordan to the floor. With a soft thud, she landed in a heap and then flopped onto her back, tangled legs still under her. Her hair all over her face. A scarecrow cut down.
Vizner dropped the rope and ran to the body, kicking a dog out of the way as he went. He fell to his knees by her shoulders. He knew she was dead, but he went through the motions anyway. He loosened the noose and slipped it off her head. Put his fingers to her neck. Lifted her wrist and checked for a pulse. He dropped her hand and pushed aside the braids to look at her face.
Her forehead.
He reached out an index finger to touch it, but then pulled his hand away. He sat back on his heels and rubbed his eyes with his palms to make sure he wasn’t delusional. Seeing things topsy-turvy because he was so freaked out.
He took down his hands, leaned over her, and checked her face again. There it was, an upside-down star. Painted in red. Jordan hadn’t done this. She hadn’t committed suicide. One weight was lifted off his heart, only to be replaced by another.
As he got to his feet, an icy draft rolled through the barn and wrapped itself around his body. Shuddering, his attention was drawn to the door. It was open a crack. Had he left it that way? Had the wind blown it open?
Boots thumping like a bouncing rubber ball, he ran to the door, slid it shut, and locked it. More thumping as he ran to the back of the barn and took an old double-barreled shotgun down from a shelf. He fumbled around the dusty boxes of shells until he came to the right one. He ripped off the top of the box and took out two shells, dropping them both on the floor. “Fuck me,” he muttered, and took out two more.
He hadn’t used or cleaned the old hinge-action shotgun in a long time. He had to work the release to get the action to open, revealing the empty chambers. As he fed a shell into each rusty chamber, he wished like hell he had more dependable firepower. The rifle was in the ho
use, and he didn’t want to make the run across the yard. He needed to stay and protect Jordan’s body. That’s what he told himself as he stuffed more shells into his jacket pocket.
He went over to the door and stood there with the gun. The two big males followed, one standing on each side of him. The pair didn’t bark or whine or wag their tails. They just stood at the door, staring at the wood and breathing hard. Smart bastards. They knew something wicked could be going down and they wanted in on the mayhem. The others were busy eating and licking their crotches. A female was nosing around the body. Vizner would have to keep one eye on that situation. If the animal looked like it was going to start sampling Jordan, he’d put a hole in the dog. Any excuse and he’d put holes in all of them. Where had the pack of ungrateful fuckers been while Jordan was being killed? Were they too busy fighting with one another to fight for her? Why hadn’t they saved the woman who’d saved them?
My little witch.
Vizner stifled a sob and put his ear to the barn door. All he heard on the other side was the wind whipping through the yard, yowling like a cat that was being kicked to death.
He looked back at the lifeless heap in the middle of the floor. “No!” he yelled at the sniffing dog. “Bad!” Reprimanded, the bitch retreated to the back of the barn to join the other chickenshits. Only the two large males stayed at the front. Soldiers flanking their leader.
“Good boys.” With his free hand, Vizner reached into his coat pocket and withdrew his cell.
The sheriff was already pulling down the driveway. It had taken Bernadette a while, but she’d convinced him to check on Jordan Ashe. She told the sheriff she had a hunch.
She figured Garcia’s buddy would believe a hunch before he believed her second sight.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
While she was on the highway headed north, Bernadette’s cell rang. It was Garcia calling. She picked up and asked, “Did you get the bastard?”
“Too late.”
She pounded the steering wheel. “Fuck!”
“Seth said you sent him over there based on a bad feeling.”
“My sight.”
“I figured.”
She steered around a slow-moving minivan. The weather and the traffic were both bad, but she was making good time. Flying in the monster truck. “So Wharten is the one who found her.”
“Boyfriend found her, hanging from a beam in the barn. Lowered her to the floor. Called the sheriff just as Seth was pulling in. I’m on my way over there now.”
“I tried calling you as soon as I saw.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw the star being painted on Ashe’s forehead.” Before he could ask about identifying marks, she added, “The painter wore gloves.”
“Obviously we can’t tell them what you saw,” said Garcia. “We’ll be tap-dancing as it is trying to explain how you’ve got this great gut.”
“I don’t want that poor man thinking his girlfriend killed herself, but I don’t want my sight outed, either.”
Garcia assured her that she wouldn’t have to reveal anything about her abilities. The inverted pentagram alone convinced Vizner that his girlfriend hadn’t committed suicide: a Wiccan wouldn’t have painted a satanic symbol on herself as one of her final acts. The sheriff agreed that it was a murder set up to look like a suicide. The ERT guys, already at the scene, concurred. The Ramsey County ME had agreed to do the autopsy and was sending a wagon up north. Again.
“Why was she killed, Tony? You think she knew something? Was someone afraid she was going to give up and spill it to us?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Did the boyfriend name any names for the sheriff? What’d he tell Wharten?”
“Seth found him awfully fucking reticent for a guy who’d just discovered the love of his life dangling from the end of a clothesline. Wharten doesn’t believe Vizner did it, but he thinks the guy knows something. Afraid to open his mouth about it.”
“Scared it will implicate him in something?”
“Scared period,” said Garcia. “When they got to the place, he was holed up in the barn with the door locked and a shotgun in his hands.”
“Thought he was a big guy,” said Bernadette. “Plus, they have all those dogs. Why didn’t the dogs protect Ashe?”
“Might have gotten preoccupied with some wild animal. Seth said they were all clawed up.”
“Have a hard time believing those dogs just happened to come across a raccoon at the same time their owner was being attacked,” said Bernadette. “Somebody baited them. Got them away from the barn.”
“We could have B.K. check the perimeter of the property. That’d be a good job for him.”
“Tony, something else.”
“Yeah.”
“When I used my sight this last time, I wasn’t holding that scrap from Lydia’s gown. I … borrowed something from the files of that old case.”
“What are you saying?”
He was having trouble processing this. She was having difficulty herself. She spoke more slowly. “I found a hunk of yarn in the old file, in an evidence bag. I took it.”
“Illegal, but keep going.”
“When I held on to it, it took me to the eyes of Ashe’s murderer.”
“A piece of string from the Wisconsin murder case took you to Minnesota,” he said.
“Right.”
“So that seals it.”
“Exactly,” she said. “The two cases are connected.”
“Doesn’t rule out my two-note serial-killer theory,” he said.
“Let’s go over that goofy scenario. The maniac kills a pregnant woman and her fetus in Brule. Sees Lydia in Brule years later. Follows her to Walker and kills her. Goes back to Brule. Tries to scare me off when I get there. Goes back to Walker and kills Ashe.”
“It’s only a three-hour drive or so between the two towns. Plenty of time.”
“Why kill Ashe?”
“My serial-killer guy could have found out she was a witch. She was famous around these parts. Killing Ashe was a red herring, like Lydia’s pentagram.”
“Your theory sucks,” she said. “The randomness of it pisses me off.”
“Come up with your own theory, then.”
“We still need to know what was in those letters Lydia found. We still need to find her backpack.”
“Then hurry and get your ass up here.”
“I will,” she said, and hung up to concentrate on her driving.
About three hours later, she reached the turnoff leading to Ashe’s place. Wharten’s deputies lifted the yellow tape and let the truck through. She bumped past the bureau’s ERT van, a white monolith parked to one side of the narrow road. The back end was sticking out, forcing any vehicle going in either direction to swerve into a snowbank to get around the van.
The lights of the Nissan shined down the driveway leading to the barn, illuminating a plastic evidence bag being held up by one of the crime-scene guys. Whatever was inside the bag used to be covered in striped orange fur and wear a collar with tags. Another crime-scene guy came up with a second sack; the contents were similar.
The pit-bull bait, she thought.
As she hopped out of the truck and headed for the barn, Bernadette noticed Cahill standing on one side of the building, next to the woodpile. Another agent from Minneapolis was facing him, and they were both shaking their heads. Bernadette wondered if B.K. was the one who’d made the bloody find. She suddenly remembered that he liked cats—he owned two or three of them—and she felt bad for him. She clung to the possibility that the evidence bags contained the remains of some woodland creatures. Mutant raccoons with striped orange fur, collars, and nametags.
Garcia was standing outside the barn, talking to a tall, slender man with a thick mane of white hair and a white mustache. He wore a sheriff’s jacket and heavy leather gloves, but he had pulled off one glove and his cap and was vigorously scratching his head with the tips of his bare fingers. Hat hair. In
Minnesota in the winter, everybody had it. When she came up to them, they were taking a break from crime talk.
“So how’s the fishing been up here?” asked Garcia.
“Crappies have been good on shiners, mostly late afternoon,” said Wharten, still scratching his scalp. “Northerns have been hitting steady on sucker minnows.”
“I gotta get out with you,” said Garcia.
“Yeah, you do,” said Wharten, pulling his hat and glove back on.
“I’ll call you,” Garcia said.
“Don’t be making promises you can’t keep, Antonia. Don’t be breaking my heart.” Wharten looked at Bernadette and winked. “He’s always breaking my heart, this one.”
“My agent, Bernadette Saint Clare,” said Garcia.
Wharten shook Bernadette’s hand. “Quite a hunch you had today. What precipitated it?”
At that instant, two ERT guys exited the barn, slamming the door loudly after them. They were talking and laughing. One of the pair spotted Garcia and nudged his partner. They stopped yapping. “Sir,” one of them said to Garcia.
“Agent,” Garcia responded stiffly. As the pair headed for the ERT van down the road, Garcia glared at them.
Bernadette smiled pleasantly at the sheriff. “Thanks for putting up with us, sir.”
Wharten grinned, revealing straight teeth as white as his hair. “Are you kidding me? I’m happy as hell the bureau is taking the lead on this quagmire. I got plenty else to do that doesn’t involve a politician’s dead daughter, a dead witch, and a sack of dead cats.”
“A sack?” Bernadette asked with a curled lip.
“Makes me sick,” said Wharten. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m a dog man all the way. But this was so barbaric.”
“Do we know where the cats might have come from?” asked Bernadette.
“Was just telling Antonia here that hardly anybody up here puts collars and ID on their felines,” said Wharten. “But these tabbies were special. They belonged to a particular elderly woman in town who treated them like … well… this is gonna put her straight in the grave. Deputies did rock, paper, scissors to see who had to go to her house and break the news.”
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