by M. P. Cooley
This arrangement suited Pete. I crawled through a hole in the fence. Looking back, I saw Pete shrug as he comforted a sobbing Jackie. I pushed through the snow. Only a foot deep, the drifts were hard, having melted and refrozen into ice. Even in the dim light, I could follow Jackie’s trail, picking her footprints out from among the knots of tracks, both animal and human, that covered the area, identifying places where Jackie had fallen and stood back up. I still thought the drugs she’d taken were going to be the reason for this trip, but I had to know what had scared her out of her mind, even if it was just a hallucination.
I reached the edge and paused, taking in the waterfalls. Usually the power impressed me, the Mohawk River dropping in a rush before being subsumed into the mellow Hudson. Today, I was amazed at how absolutely that power had been stopped. I didn’t see even a trickle of water. The river glistened, and the falls had frozen in midmotion. Facets of the ice-covered river mimicked the current, tumbling over rocks and ledges, forming ice shelves in some places and waves in others. I followed the path of the river down, down. At the bottom, where the water would normally hit and form mist, were icy breaks—spikes—pointing up. As I surveyed the whole scene, my breath caught.
Impaled on one of the spikes was a girl.
CHAPTER 2
UP IN TOWN, IT hadn’t seemed that cold. Down here on the frozen river, the wind stung my ears, and if I spoke, a layer of frost glazed my cheeks. Thankfully, there was little reason to speak, out on the ice with the dead. Well, the dead and Norm, but he kept his own counsel.
The coroner, Norm Finch, had been on his way to 7:00 A.M. Mass at Saint Agnes when I made the call. He arrived first, and the two of us waited for the techs, paramedics, and detectives outside the crime scene perimeter I had marked out in the snow. A bear of a man, Norm didn’t mind if I used him as a windbreak.
“I hate the young ones,” he said.
Water froze quickly along the edge of the river, rocky steps slowing the current, quickly stagnating into ice in the winter months. To the left was Hopewell Falls, a ninety-foot wall of water that dropped abruptly. During mild winters, it didn’t freeze at all. This winter hadn’t been kind, and an ice shear formed where the ice from the falls was repeatedly ripped open and reformed against the stagnant shelf, creating a line of spikes that rose like dragon’s teeth out of the ice-covered river. She lay on her back, left leg jackknifing under her right one, her torso arched up around one of these points.
The woman’s cherry-red jacket was unzipped, revealing a T-shirt that spelled out I’M AMERICA’S SWEETHEART in rhinestones across her chest; still readable, which was surprising, considering the injury. Snow drifted against the angles of her body, blurring the line between the woman and the ice, curling around her elbow and nestling in the crook of her broken leg. Around her the frozen river rose and fell. She appeared adrift.
Her long, dark blond hair spilled out around her, whipping up when the frequent gusts hit it, its movement in sharp contrast to her absolute stillness. A wash of blood from the gash in her forehead blurred her features, but I put her age between eighteen and twenty-five. I was pretty sure she had got the head wound when she was alive, and was dead before she’d landed. Between that and where she was found, I called it in as a suspicious death. The crime scene unit would get here soon, along with the ADA and Dave Batko, our town’s one and only detective. For now, I could think.
I edged along the outside of the boundary I’d set, examining the scene from every angle. I eyed the cliffs, and raised my hand. It wavered in the strong winds, and I forced it straight, charting the possible trajectory with my eye. I took a step to the left, stopped, raised my hand again, and I knew. “There.”
“Hmm?” Norm said.
“There. That’s where they threw her from. The cliff kind of hangs out, jutting.” Norm shielded his eyes and looked to where I traced the arc in the air, following it down until it stopped where the girl lay. “It would be a clean drop from there, so she would hit the river instead of landing on the banks.”
Norm shrugged. After twenty-five years handling all the bodies on this edge of the county, death held no excitement for him. He had seen everything, and knew almost all the victims, most of whom had come to peaceful ends. Norm did his job well and with little remark; little remark, except for those he thought had their heads up their asses. “Do you think the boys stopped for Egg McMuffins on their way here?”
As if summoned, the paramedics and crime scene techs crested the hill, followed by Dave Batko and—shit!—the DA, Jerry Defoe. I’d assumed, hoped, really, that it would be one of the ADAs on call. Dad had spent ten years ranting about Jerry, who always hesitated when Dad thought a conviction was a gimme. Politics being the Irish-American blood sport, Dad had made a lifelong enemy of Jerry when he failed to endorse Jerry for his DA run. When Dad had his heart attack and retired, Jerry decided to keep up the payback, aiming it at me.
In his haste, Dave kept slipping down the hill, the paramedics a few steps behind. The two techs struggled behind with cameras, lab specimen bags, and bottles. They arrived at the river’s edge streaked with snow. Jerry, trailing behind, stepped only in spots that had proved secure. Jerry’s gray pinstripe was snow free, but he was heavily winded.
The paramedics, eager to declare her dead and get out of the awful weather, moved quickly across to the victim. Dave lurched slowly sideways, like Frankenstein. The ice was so thick his caution was unwarranted. He had been a nose tackle in high school but, unlike a lot of other football players, hadn’t aged into fat. I remembered him, an immovable object who stood on the field and let the opposing team run into him.
“Glad you called me!” he yelled cheerily. “You know how we Slavs love a good impaling!” He slowed as he got close to the young woman. His face remained impartial, his voice steady, but he swallowed three times before he spoke. “God, the vic, she’s . . . destroyed.”
I pointed to the spot I’d charted. “I think she was thrown from there.”
“Oh, please.” Jerry sneered. “I cannot believe you called me down for this. I think the brain surgeon we got here decided to drown herself in a river that had less running water than a bathtub. She should’ve done it in the comfort of her own home. It would have worked better, and a bathmat is easier on the knees.”
“That’s correct.” I was furious, both for myself and for the girl, but kept my voice even. “But there’s no blood from the gaping intestinal wound, which means she died before she hit the ground. They killed her up above, and tried to dump . . .”
From behind Jerry, Dave gestured wildly. He looked like he was miming cutting his throat, but after a second I realized he was signaling me to zip my lips. These days, it seemed I always had to give up responsibility for cases that should have been mine, and smile as I did it. I walked to where the paramedics huddled over the body, wrote down the time of death, and trained my face into the impassive expression I’d used when interrogating witnesses for the FBI. At least my training helped with something.
“So, Norm,” Jerry asked, turning his back on me, “any idea who our jumper is?”
Norm watched the techs demarcate the line of broken ice that arced out from the body, doing weapons analysis on a stalagmite. He didn’t look up.
“No. Ask June,” he said.
I explained that we had no wallet or purse and, so far, no other way to identify the body.
“So’d those fibbies teach you anything of value when you were on their payroll?” Jerry asked.
Every time I seemed a little too uppity, Jerry would bring up my time in the FBI. As far as he was concerned, I was an overtrained snob who was a gross incompetent—really the best of all possible worlds. Too furious to do the smart thing, I argued.
“Well, they did teach me not to let myself be prejudiced in any way when approaching a case.”
I was going to pay for the comment, and I didn’t care. Jerry was a small man, who tried to make sure I felt smaller. He pursed his lips, ready to spe
w forth misery.
“You know,” Dave said, not looking up from his notebook, “radios are for shit out here. Lyons, why don’t you head up and brief everyone.”
Dave was backing me up, in his way. Jerry couldn’t abuse me if I wasn’t there, so problem solved, right? But in being nice, he got the same results as Jerry did being cruel.
I skidded along the ice toward the river’s edge. Above I could see Pete marking a path, orange flags flickering in the wind. At the bank, a tangle of roots from a tree washed away by the river jutted out at the river’s edge, a perfect toehold. I heaved myself up.
The cold air stabbed my lungs, and I drew the air in hard to get the oxygen I needed, another reminder that I was no longer in peak condition. My ponytail caught in a branch. I yanked my head forward and wrenched free, leaving behind three long blond hairs. I heaved up until I was level with Pete, who hauled me up the last few steps, both of us panting.
I considered the tableau before me. The men down on the ice continued to investigate the case, while I stood above, useless. Their voices wafted up, indistinct. Dave and Norm huddled over the woman and seemed to be ignoring Jerry. Good, I thought meanly.
“Who’s the girl?” Pete asked.
“I was going to ask you. Jackie didn’t say?”
“Jackie didn’t say much of anything. Mostly she cried. She cried a lot.” Pete shook his head. Someone as low key as Pete might not understand hysterics, even if they came from a teenage girl who’d found a dead body. “I ended up calling her dad, and he came down. She calmed down some once we told her there was only one body down there. Dave had someone run them both to the station, let ’em warm up.”
Not my case, I reminded myself. I pointed up along the path he’d marked. “I should go.”
Pete viewed the rest of the trip down with skepticism. “Geez, I don’t know why I’m doing this. You know we’re going to have to airlift Jerry out of there.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll blame it on the body. Or me. We’ve already ruined his day.”
I crested the hill. Two techs stood at the edge of the cliff taking pictures of the footprints, confetti-colored tape marking different tracks. Traffic control was going to be fun: the main artery to Albany was down to one lane, turning everyone’s fifteen-minute commute into an hour. A yellow bus drove past on the way to Holy Trinity, and I could see small faces pressed against every window.
Lucy! I hustled to my cruiser and pulled out the cell. Zero calls. Knowing my father, he’d probably called the station first, expecting Lorraine to have a handle on what I was doing now and what I would be doing next. He wasn’t wrong. I gave a brief update to everyone and radioed Dave. No response. He’d claim he couldn’t get reception, but really he was avoiding me. To be nice.
I slogged along the side of the road, pressing face-first against the fence every time a vehicle passed, the cold metal a relief against my anger-red cheeks. A flash popped down on the ice as the techs recorded every distorted angle of the woman’s body, and then another flash at the edge of the road. Onlookers had gathered and were peering over the edge, some with camera phones. I scanned the crowd. A couple of teenage girls with toddlers perched on their slim hips pointed at the scene, and the ladies coming back from early Mass had their heads together, talking. Then there were the boys, scaling the fence and dropping, or getting pulled off by their friends, showing off. They didn’t respect the dead because they had no fear of death.
Below, Norm was zipping the victim into the black body bag. The girl disappeared except for a few strands of gold hair that were caught in the zipper, blowing in the wind.
CHAPTER 3
I EXPECTED A QUIET KISS-OFF at the station. That was fine. I had done good work, the best I could, but it seemed that Dave was now fired up for me to type up my report and pulled me off traffic duty. Still, I appreciated it when Lesley put a caller on hold so she could yell, “Good job.” Lesley handled dispatch and the desk during the day. Lorraine’s twin, she had her sister’s nasal, flat tone. The two provided a certain reassuring continuity on the other end of the radio.
The squad room was uncomfortably crowded. This was hard to accomplish. The station was built when the population was closer to fifty thousand than fifteen, and now half the room was cordoned off with paste-colored dividers to store unused desks. With high ceilings, no windows, and few warm bodies, the remaining space was usually more than enough for our shoe-leather-and-gum operation. It sometimes echoed. Today, the crowd forced me to hug one wall, avoiding the day shift guys as well as the county and state law enforcement folks who occupied most of the desks, including my own.
In the corner, Chief Donnelly briefed a couple of local reporters. He avoided giving chairs to what he affectionately called “the vultures,” lest they stay too long. I caught his eye over a reporter’s shoulder and he arched a formidable eyebrow at me. His version of a smile.
Halfway to the women’s locker room, I ran smack into Jackie DeGroot, her hood pulled low, almost to her nose. Her father escorted her, rubbing her back gently, his calloused hand swishing softly against the nylon of her jacket.
“I need it!” she said, flouncing out of her father’s reach. The swishing stopped.
“I’ll buy you another one, sweetheart. A better one,” he said.
“But Ray won’t have my number! What if he needs me?!”
Chuck DeGroot smiled apologetically at me. I knew that smile well. I would give it to people in restaurants when Lucy was a toddler and, having dropped a French fry, mourned its loss for a long time, at top volume.
Chuck held himself close to the wall so I could slide past. This didn’t leave much room. I had slim hips and no breasts to speak of, but Chuck was almost as wide as he was tall, and the buttons on his Carhartt jacket snagged on my radio. By the time we had disentangled ourselves, Jackie was already at the door.
“Dad!”
Chuck’s apologies echoed down the hall, following him out of the building. I had taken two steps when I felt a sharp tug on my arm, Dave yanking me into the chief’s office and slamming the door behind us. Propelled forward, I crossed the room in five steps, using the momentum to put the desk between us. Facing off with Dave, I tried to match the ferocious expression and crossed arms of the first police chief, whose portrait hung behind me. I thought I did a pretty good job, even without the muttonchops.
Dave tried to smooth down his hair, but his wiry black curls defied his efforts, sticking up in odd directions. Finally he gave up.
“Look, I need your help,” Dave said.
“Really? More traffic control?”
“Lyons, you know I wasn’t pushing you out. Jerry needs to be managed.”
“By managing me.”
“C’mon, Lyons. Things go faster when he thinks he’s calling the shots.”
Good intentions counted for a lot with Dave, but not with me. “He was calling the shots. I was out.”
“No. You were first on scene, so you’re in no matter what. You stay with me on this, solve this case, and you will be made.”
“Oh, really.”
Dave took a step toward me. “I got the dead girl’s name.”
I wasn’t surprised. Dave often charmed information out of people, presenting himself as just one of the guys, and criminals often confessed much more than was good for them. People he’d jailed had invited him out for beers on more than one occasion, and he sometimes accepted with a shrug: “They paid their debt to society, and hey, who am I to turn down free beer?”
“This case, it’s about to get big,” Dave said. “Bigger than me. Bigger than us.” He leaned forward on the desk. In the gentle light of the milk-glass pendant lamp, the circles under his eyes, always there thanks to his Ukrainian heritage, looked cavernous.
“It’s Danielle Brouillette,” he said finally.
“Brouillette?” Fingers of fear ran down my spine. “Like Amanda—”
“Yup. The dead girl was the daughter of our representative to Congress, Amanda Br
ouillette. Jerry’s working with some local party bigwigs to pass the word on to higher-ups in Washington, who will be on hand when DC Metropolitan breaks the news to the congresswoman.”
God, I loved Albany politics, where even a death notification was a chance to schmooze.
“And our friends in the press know something’s up,” Dave continued. “The Schenectady and Troy papers had someone over here before I got back, and the Times Union guy will be here shortly. As a bonus, the FBI will be arriving in an hour to explain to us how to do our jobs, since obviously we can’t be trusted to investigate the murder of a federal official’s daughter. Cluster. Fuck. We need to interview the husband fast.”
“The congresswoman’s husband?”
He walked around the desk, bumping shoulders with me. “You are going to love this: Danielle was married to the brother of Jackie’s boyfriend.”
“Ray?” I asked.
“Yeah, he has a brother, Marty. . . .” Dave’s shoulders sagged, and even his mustache drooped. “Wait, how’d you know?”
“Jackie mentioned him in the hall.”
Dave grimaced. “Great. Hope the papers heard it, too. What else did she say?”
“She didn’t say it to me. More like near me. She was saying Ray wouldn’t be able to contact her.”
“Oh, wait till you see what Chuck gave me.” He opened the phone that sat on the desk. Over his shoulder, I watched him flip through the texts. The four most recent were from Ray. The message at 6:38 A.M. read, “cnt mAk it. wiL caL l8r.” At 7:37, another text: “CaL me xoxoxo,” followed at 7:48 with “whr R u? CaL me.” A final message at 8:45 read, “DIS shit iz feckD ^ CaL me,” which Dave translated as “This shit is fucked up. Call me.”
Ray sounded delightful, and I wondered if his brother was equally charming. I knew I hadn’t seen Danielle’s wedding notice, which I assumed would make the front page, and I had to wonder if the Brouillettes weren’t thrilled with their new in-laws.