Cold Call: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  The sun had already disappeared behind one ridgeline, leaving the valley floor in shadow while the tops of the mountains around them were in bright sunlight. Drifts of bright white snow covered those peaks and around Lott snow still hadn’t melted under the nearby trees.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Julia said, standing and taking deep breaths and looking around.

  “More than I could have ever imagined,” Lott said. “We’re going to have to visit her more.”

  “Fine by me,” Julia said. “As long as we stay in Shore Lodge coming and going. That fish last night was amazing.”

  “Deal,” Lott said.

  To one side of the wide parking area there was a wood-plank garage and Lott moved over and pulled open the side door. As he feared, the garage was empty except for a few tools and two large snowmobiles. Julia had told him that in the winter this was snowed in and Trish used snowmobiles to get out to a trading post twenty miles along the main valley.

  “No car,” he said to Julia and she nodded, again looking very worried.

  Besides where he had tucked the Jeep in under some pine trees, there was nowhere else a car could be parked that they wouldn’t see. A wide gravel parking area in front of the garage looked large enough to hold ten cars.

  They climbed the fifty or so log steps up to the large log building. It had clearly been designed and built by someone with money, as it had the look of a mansion more than a log cabin.

  The steep, towering roofline seemed to pretend to mimic the pine trees around it and the building itself was tucked back into a hillside.

  From what Lott could tell, this place would be buried in snow in the winter and impossible to get to. Trish would have had to shovel to just get down to the garage and the snowmobiles.

  They banged on the door a few times and looked in the windows, but no sign of Trish at all.

  Julia found a key under the front door mat and opened up.

  “Trish!” Julia shouted, but only got an echo.

  The house had an empty and cool feel about it.

  It was clear she was not here.

  And that had been their biggest worry.

  Lott nodded to Julia and they both moved inside, clearly acting more like detectives in a crime scene than friends looking for another friend.

  The inside of the big log home was as impressive as the outside. Most of the inside was a massive main room showing all the log beams. The logs were polished to a golden brown, and a smooth stone fireplace dominated one side, surrounded by soft furniture. A log staircase went up one wall to what looked like bedroom and bathroom doors along a walkway above the big room.

  Lott used his sleeve to flick a light switch and could hear a generator kick in from somewhere behind the home as the lights came on.

  They spread out, he looking in the downstairs rooms and kitchen and bathroom while Julia went upstairs. They were both very careful to not touch anything.

  He saw nothing that set off alarm bells.

  Nothing.

  A woman had clearly been living here. No sign of anything to do with a man.

  And no sign of struggle at all in any fashion.

  “Nothing seems wrong or out of place,” Julia said as she joined him in the kitchen area that was open off the large room. “Three bedrooms and two baths upstairs, one clearly Trish’s. The other two made up for guests, but clearly not used in a long time.”

  “So what do you want to do now?” Lott asked, glancing at his watch. It was just after two in the afternoon. He wasn’t sure they could get back over that cliff road before it got dangerously dark.

  “We look around the grounds first some and then we stay the night,” Julia said. “Just as we planned.

  Without talking they did a quick walk around the outside of the building, again seeing nothing at all out of place. Trish had clearly locked up and just left in her car. Where she had gone from there was going to be the big question.

  They went back to the Jeep and unpacked their things, bringing them in and each claiming a guest room upstairs. Lott volunteered to cook an early dinner and Julia built a fire in the fireplace.

  By the time the lake was being sheltered in darkness, they had finished the two steaks and sliced potatoes in butter he had cooked them, eating mostly in silence at the dining table that looked out over the dark water.

  Finally Julia said what they had both been thinking. “Something’s happened to her.”

  Lott nodded. “But not here.”

  “I agree,” Julia said. “But where?”

  Lott had no idea. More than likely her car had gone off the road somewhere. It was going to take a pretty massive search to find her if that was the case. And after this long, if she had survived the initial wreck, Lott doubted they would find her alive.

  But he felt like he needed to do something, so he put his hand on Julia’s. “Let’s wash these dishes and get a couple of flashlights and go out and look around the lake a little and the shed down by the dock.”

  She nodded. They both knew her car wasn’t here, so any kind of search like that would be pointless, but better that they did it anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later they were both bundled up with down parkas and thick gloves. Not at all what two Las Vegas detectives looked like normally.

  Outside, the air bit at Lott’s face and surprised him that the temperature had plunged so quickly. No wonder the snow hadn’t melted yet.

  They first headed down the main path toward the dock. A lawn chair sat alone just above the dock. Clearly Trish had sat there alone at times, staring out into the water.

  Above the lake on the right, Lott could see the cut in the hillside where the road wound down from the top to the home.

  “We’ve got to find her,” Julia said, standing with her hand on the back of the chair.

  Lott said simply, “We will.”

  Seeing that single chair stabbed at Lott. He could only imagine what it was doing to Julia.

  They had moved past the chair and down toward the water when Julia stopped and pointed to something floating in the dark water out near the end of the wooden dock.

  Lott felt his stomach twist into a knot.

  He knew what that looked like. He had seen it far too many times over the years and he didn’t want to think about it now.

  Quickly, the two of them went out onto the dock just as a slight rain started to fall. Very light, very cold rain.

  Lott could feel it against his neck as he bent over the end of the dock and stared into the black water.

  A woman’s naked body floated face-down, rubbing against the dock like it was a hard-up lover. The bluish-white skin on her leg was streaked by the green moss growing on the wooden pilings and her long blonde hair seemed to appear and disappear in the water around her making it seem like she was getting closer one moment, then farther away the next.

  Lott glanced over at the shocked expression on Julia’s face, then got down on his hands and knees and leaned over the edge of the dock, trying to get a closer look without really wanting to.

  Beside him Julia did the same, her breath coming hard and fast as she struggled to control her emotions.

  “See the distinctive star pattern of moles on the left shoulder?” Julia asked. “Trish always called it her star on her shoulder and considered it good luck.”

  It clearly hadn’t been, but he said nothing.

  Lott stood, helped Julia back to her feet, and forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. The night around them suddenly seemed a lot darker, the rain suddenly harder than it had been just a few minutes before.

  A spotlight on the back of the main lodge of the building was aimed at the dock, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to cut through the rain and illuminate much of the water. And the beams from their flashlights seemed to be sucked into nothingness.

  However, the light was enough for them to see Trish, a white, ghost-like figure floating against the blackness.

  “Damn it,” Julia said to hersel
f, her voice swallowed by the tapping of the rain on the water. She turned and moved away from the edge of the dock a few paces, then came back.

  “Damn it all to hell.”

  Lott couldn’t have agreed more.

  Lott eased his arm around Julia and the two of them stood there, on the end of the wooden dock, saying nothing more.

  The cold rain pounded his head and the back of his neck as they stared out over the water, not looking down at what was floating near their feet.

  Lott knew they were both hoping something would happen.

  Anything but what they had found.

  Julia shuddered and hugged him with one arm.

  He hugged her back.

  There was little either of them could say.

  It was now time for the detective training to take over. Something had happened to Trish and they had to figure out what.

  Lott forced himself to move.

  He left Julia standing in the middle of the dock again stepped closer to the edge to study the body. He couldn’t think of that body as Trish, Julia’s friend. He had to think of it as just a body for the moment.

  The white body’s up and down rubbing against the footing of the dock was hypnotic and after a moment Lott made himself look away so he wouldn’t get dizzy.

  He was glad he couldn’t see Trish’s face. He had seen pictures of what she had looked like alive, and keeping that image in his mind was enough for the moment.

  He looked back at where Julia stood, staring out over the dark lake.

  He knew that soon they would have to get around to pulling Trish out of the water. Considering how she was floating, Trish must have been in the cold water for at least three days.

  Lott had no doubt that living image of her face was going to be forever replaced by a white, bloated one, with black, empty eyes. He had pulled far too many people out of swimming pools to not know that look.

  “What the hell happened?” Julia asked, her voice raspy, her head shaking back and forth in clear disbelief.

  “Maybe drowned while skinny-dipping,” Lott said, without looking back at the body. “Hit her head or got too far out in the cold water to make it back. An accident. Logical as anything else.”

  Julia nodded, her eyes clearing some. Lott could tell that the detective training was coming back to her as well.

  Lott turned and stared down at the floating body of one of Julia’s best friends.

  This was not the outcome he had hoped for, but one he had feared.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  May 14, 2015

  7 P.M.

  High Mountain Valley

  Near the Central Idaho Primitive Area

  Julia just couldn’t get her mind to accept that the white form floating there in the black water was her friend Trish. Yet she knew it was.

  Trish could not be gone. She had been a part of Julia’s life forever. Trish had always been this wild element that Julia loved to watch and talk to and laugh with.

  Now Julia would never hear Trish’s wonderful laugh again. How was that even possible?

  She stood there beside Lott in the rain, staring out at the black lake.

  She had to get her brain back.

  As a detective, she had seen a lot of death. Right now she needed to figure out what happened. She would mourn Trish when the time was right.

  “So you think it was an accident?” Julia asked, taking a deep breath of the cold night air to make herself try to think.

  “There doesn’t seem to be obvious marks on her body,” Lott said, “from what I can see in this light.”

  Julia was glad he didn’t shine his flashlight on Trish again.

  But then something bothered her about Trish’s body.

  Something didn’t look right.

  If she had been in the water and was floating, her body would be bloated, at least enough to make it float. Trish didn’t seem to be bloated at all. Maybe the cold water of the mountain lake had kept that effect down.

  Julia had seen enough three- and four-day-old-bodies pulled from the water to suit her for a lifetime. She had hated it worse when it was kids.

  Suddenly the way Trish was floating there just didn’t seem right.

  She took out her cell phone and took some pictures of how Trish was floating. Both down close and back a ways.

  Lott nodded and did the same on his phone, making sure he got Julia in the picture as well. They needed to document anything they did here.

  “Help me look at this,” Julia said to Lott after they finished with the pictures.

  Once again they both moved so they could see Trish’s body.

  The rain was easing some, so their flashlights were clear on her naked back.

  “See something wrong with this?” Julia said

  “Her arms seem to be tucked up under her chest,” Lott said. “That’s not the way a body floats.”

  He was right.

  She knew that.

  Floating bodies mostly float face down, arms out, not tucked under as Trish’s arms seemed to be.

  Suddenly both of their years of training as detectives seemed to kick in full force.

  “Help me turn Trish over,” Lott said, his voice soft, yet firm, “I need your help to turn her over.”

  Julia nodded and both of them got down on their hands and knees on the wet wood of the dock.

  Then together they slowly reached down and grabbed Trish, Lott on her left shoulder, Julia just below her left knee.

  “Pull up and roll her over,” Lott said. “On the count of three.”

  Julia only nodded.

  Julia took her grip on Trish’s cold, almost slimy-feeling leg. For an instant she was surprised. She had expected to feel the soft, almost pulpy flesh that she had felt with many bodies after days in water, but Trish’s flesh was almost hard and waxy.

  “One. Two. Three,” Lott said. “Pull up.”

  Like a canoe, not wanting to right itself, Trish fought them for a moment, then finally flipped over.

  Both of them let go at once, drawing back as if they had been shot at. Julia almost felt as if she had been.

  “What the hell?” Julia asked, staring at her friend’s body floating there.

  Lott just stared, shaking his head.

  In the dim light it was clearly Trish’s face, only drawn and almost mask-like. Not bloated at all.

  Trish was smiling slightly, her eyes closed, her face peaceful in the faint light as water washed over it. Far more peaceful than Julia had ever remembered Trish being in life.

  Trish’s hands were clasped across her stomach, almost as if she were asleep there in the water.

  “Not possible,” Lott said softly.

  He had his phone back out and taking pictures. Both down close and back.

  It took Julia a moment to pull her gaze away from Trish’s face, then she glanced at Trish’s neck, then down her body until Julia found what she was looking for.

  “She’s been embalmed,” Julia said, standing up and turning away.

  For the first time in a few minutes, she noticed the pounding rain, the cold mountain air, and the remoteness of the valley.

  “Embalmed?” Lott said softly. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Julia forced herself to take a deep breath and think.

  They were a good hundred-plus miles of winding mountain roads from the nearest funeral home. They hadn’t seen another car in the last seventy miles of road. Trish had no neighbors and no one was in this valley but the two of them.

  And the house was completely clear of any struggle or signs of something like this being done.

  “Embalmed,” Lott said, climbing to his feet. “It can’t be, but it is clear she is.”

  Julia turned around and stared at her friend’s white body, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she looked up at Lott.

  There was a haunted look in his eyes.

  “Someone embalmed her,” Julia said. “That means she was murdered.”

  “Looks that way,” Lot
t said. “But the real question is what is she doing in the lake?”

  “And why?” Julia said softly.

  “Exactly,” Lott said. “Why?”

  Part Three

  PLAYING THE HAND

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  May 14, 2015

  8 P.M.

  High Mountain Valley

  Near the Central Idaho Primitive Area

  They had come to find Julia’s friend Trish and they had done just that.

  And everyone had been worried she had been murdered by Willis Williams. Well, if she had, this was the first body of any of his victims that had ever been found.

  It didn’t seem like Williams to just leave a body floating in a mountain lake. That seemed far, far too careless for a serial killer flaunting his actions to three major police departments.

  But something was nagging at Lott and he couldn’t remember what.

  Lott kept trying to put pieces together, but none of this made any sense at all.

  They had come afraid they would find Trish missing. Lott wasn’t sure if this was worse.

  He stood on the short dock and stared at Trish’s white skin as her body floated face-up in the dark water. Light rain roughed the surface of the mountain lake, and a gentle wind formed waves that rocked Trish up and down against the wooden pier.

  Trish’s face had a gentle smile on it, her hands were folded below her chest, and her legs appeared and disappeared into the black of the water. She was nude, missing rings and all other jewelry.

  Julia stood beside him on the dock, her back to the body of one of her best friends. Lott had no doubt that Julia was managing to hold her emotions in check by sheer will and years of training as a detective.

  In all his years as a detective, Lott had never seen anything like this. There was no doubt it was going to be difficult to tell how long Trish had been dead, let alone how long she had been in the cold water.

  And the biggest puzzle was why, and how, she had ended up embalmed, floating in a small mountain lake in the primitive area of central Idaho, a hundred plus miles of dirt road away from the nearest funeral home.