Dead of Winter lk-2

by P J Parrish

Subject Stephanie Pryce stated she woke up when the gun went off. Mrs. Pryce stated it was very loud. Mrs. Pryce stated “Tom wasn’t in bed. There is no phone in the bedroom.” Mrs. Pryce stated she sat in bed maybe a minute then walked to the door. Seeing no one in the hall she crept to the children’s room. They were crying so Mrs. Pryce took them back to the master bedroom. Mrs. Pryce stated she was too frightened to go anywhere else for several minutes and called for her husband. There was no answer. Mrs. Pryce stated she went back to the hall and could feel a cold breeze. She stated she thought Thomas Pryce might be outside. She stated she walked to the top of the steps and saw Thomas Pryce lying at the bottom. Mrs. Pryce stated she wanted to call the police but couldn’t. Mrs. Pryce stated she could not get to a phone because she would have had to step over her husband’s body. NO MORE THIS REPORT.

  Jesse had signed the form on the bottom of the page with a sprawling signature boldly underlined twice. Louis closed the file.

  “Dale, did Pryce ever mention to you what he was working on in his last few weeks?”

  Dale looked up and shook his head. “He never talked about his work. I offered to help, you know, filing, tagging evidence, but he always said no.”

  “What about his notebook?” Louis asked. Every cop kept a small spiral notebook and Louis had found nothing in Pryce’s drawer.

  “Don’t know. Maybe the chief has it,” Dale said. He looked up at the wall clock. “Whoa, it’s almost eight. Coffee-making time.”

  “I already made it.”

  Dale went to the coffee machine, looked at the torn sugar packets on the counter then over at Louis. “You take three sugars in your coffee?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “No reason.”

  Louis watched Dale as he wiped the counter clean. “What? Pryce took three sugars, too?”

  “It’s no big deal, Louis. Ollie says it’s got something to do with karma trying to correct itself or something.”

  “Right,” Louis muttered. He turned his attention back to the Pryce file on his desk but his eyes went to the blotter. He hadn’t noticed before but it was covered with doodles. He wondered if they were done by Pryce or his night shift desk-mat, Ollie. The doodles were tight, intricate, heavily inked. They sprawled over the blotter, paisleys and amoebas curling around numbers and words. He scanned for the numbers 1 2 3. Nothing.

  The door flew open, letting in a whirlwind of snow and Jesse, bundled in a hooded parka. Jesse threw back the hood and struggled out of the jacket as he walked across the office. He paused by the mirror and raked his hair with his fingers.

  “Damn weather just ruins a good styling,” he said, as he headed toward the coffee machine. He poured a cup and came up behind Louis, who was still studying Pryce’s blotter.

  “What you doing?”

  “These doodles…You know if Pryce did them or Ollie?”

  “Pryce. Ollie was always bitching about it.” Jesse took a sip of coffee. “You can tell a lot from doodles, you know.”

  “Like what?”

  “These say that Pryce had an acquisitive mind.”

  Louis turned to look at him. “What, now you’re into handwriting analysis?”

  “I read a book on it once.” He pointed at a paisley shape.

  “Look, see how he tries to contain the numbers with those squiggly shapes? He was trying to organize his thoughts. The guy was a mental pack rat.”

  Louis shook his head.

  Jesse spotted the Pryce file. “What are you doing with that?”

  “The chief gave me the case.”

  Jesse fell silent. Louis felt an instant chill in the air. Jesse started to walk away then he turned back. “Sorry. I guess I didn’t see the shit on your nose. Blends with your skin.”

  Louis’s head shot up. “What?”

  But Jesse had stalked off to the locker room. Louis heard the slam of a door.

  “He didn’t mean that,” Dale said from his desk. “His mouth overruns his brain when he gets upset. Jess has been pissed for weeks. Jess and the chief are kind of close and I think Jess is mad the chief didn’t let him work the Pryce case more.”

  Louis could feel his cheeks grow warm, signaling a slow-burn anger. Damn it, he wasn’t going to let this slide. He rose and went into the locker room. There were two other officers in there, both looking over their shoulders at Jesse. Jesse slammed the door of his locker, the clang echoing loudly through the tiled room.

  Louis waited until the other men had left. He leaned against the far wall, watching Jesse as he yanked on his uniform.

  “All right,” Louis said, “what the hell is your problem?”

  Jesse glanced at him. “Problem? Who says I’ve got a problem?”

  Louis sighed. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  “What?”

  “The black-white shit,” Louis said.

  Jesse let out a nervous chuckle.

  “I’m serious, Harrison,” Louis said. “I put up with this shit in Mississippi. I’m not going to tolerate it here. Do you understand me?”

  Jesse buckled his belt. “Hey, I told you, man. Nobody here is like that.”

  Louis came forward. “I suppose your little remark back there was just some little test? You want to find out if I can ‘lighten up’ like Pryce?”

  Jesse was silent. Louis waited, watching as he fumbled with his service pin. He dropped the clasp and jerked the bar from his shirt and looked at Louis.

  “All right. I’m sorry,” he said. “It slipped out.”

  “Freudian slip?” Louis said.

  “Give me a fucking break, Kincaid. It’s not like I called you a nigger or something.”

  “Well, actually it is like you called me a nigger or something. You’d be surprised how many people don’t quite catch that subtle distinction.”

  Jesse looked away, trying again to force the clasp on the pin under his shirt. His face was red, whether from anger or embarrassment, Louis couldn’t tell.

  “Look,” Jesse said, “I got a real bad habit of using my mouth to hurt people. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Right.”

  “Cut me a little slack here, Kincaid. The only black people in this town are a couple of maids over at the lodge and old Elton at the bait shop. I never worked with a black man before Pryce got here.” He dropped the clasp again and bent to pick it up. He still couldn’t fix it to the back of the pin. “Christ, my own father used to call black people porch monkeys.”

  Louis stared at Jesse, but Jesse couldn’t look at him.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Jesse repeated, finally facing Louis. “Okay?”

  Louis hesitated then nodded. “Okay.”

  Jesse got the last pin on and went to a mirror.

  “Look,” Louis began. “About this Pryce case. I’m not trying to show anyone up. I think the chief just thought I might bring a fresh eye to it.” He paused. “You could help, you know.”

  Jesse let out a grunt. “The chief doesn’t think so. Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks I’m stupid. Well, I’m not stupid. I may not have a college degree and I can’t play chess or spout out quotes and shit, but I’m not stupid.”

  Louis decided to let that one lie. He didn’t want to get involved in Jesse’s relationship with the chief, whatever it was.

  “Jess,” Louis said. “I need your help.”

  Jesse turned to Louis, studying him. “All right,” he said, “what do you want to know?”

  “For starters, I need to know more about Pryce. You think he might have kept a case file to himself for some reason?”

  “Shit, maybe. Pryce hated having anyone looking over his shoulder, that’s for sure.”

  “It’s got to be a former perp,” Louis said.

  “I told you, we looked. We went through every file in his desk.”

  “Did you ask Mrs. Pryce if he kept any files at home?”

  Jesse’s face colored slightly. “No. We’re not supposed to take files out of here.”

  Louis leaned agains
t the locker, folding his arms, looking at Jesse.

  “You think Pryce might’ve taken stuff home?” Jesse asked.

  “It’s possible, given what you’ve told me about him.”

  Jesse let out a long sigh. “I guess we’re going to have to go to Flint.”

  “I’ll drive,” Louis said.

  “No fucking way.”

  They started out of the locker room. Jesse stopped and turned. He patted his pins. “Straight?”

  “Damn straight,” Louis said.

  After shift was over, they made the three-hour drive down to Flint. Stephanie Pryce had moved back to her mother’s home, a simple shingled house on the outskirts of the city. When Jesse pulled the Loon Lake cruiser into the drive, the front door opened and a woman came out. She rubbed her hands on her apron as she watched the two officers get out of the car. Louis assumed she was the mother. A small child burst from the door and wrapped chubby arms around the woman’s legs. Louis recognized him from the photo. Louis put his cap on and walked to the door, Jesse behind him.

  “Mrs. Reanardo?” Louis asked, hoping he had pronounced it properly.

  The woman nodded. “Officers. You made good time. Stephanie is in the kitchen. Come on in.”

  The house was warm and filled with the smell of chocolate chip cookies. The child hopped off to the kitchen and Mrs. Reanardo motioned for them to sit. Both men politely declined as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Louis wandered to the bookshelf. His eyes locked on a frame that encased Pryce’s badge against blue velvet. There was a plate with an inscription from Winston Churchill: “The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. With this shield, however fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”

  Jesse saw him looking at it. “The chief gave that to Mrs. Pryce at the funeral,” he said.

  Next to the framed badge was a large piece of lavender quartz sitting on a tripod. Louis picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

  “I’m sorry I — ” someone said.

  Louis turned, the quartz still in his hand. Stephanie Pryce was staring at him, her hand at her throat. The expression on her pale face was so strange Louis couldn’t immediately speak.

  Jesse spoke for him. “Mrs. Pryce, I’m Officer Harrison. This is Louis Kincaid, my partner.”

  Louis came forward and she held out her hand. “Is there something wrong?” Louis asked.

  She shook her head. “No. It was just…just the uniform. From the back…”

  Her eyes went to the crystal in Louis’s hand.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, holding it out.

  She hesitated then took the quartz from Louis, carefully placing it back on its tripod. She walked back to the sofa and sat down. Louis was sure that in better times she was quite lovely. But today she wore an oversize shirt that probably had belonged to her husband. Her straw-colored hair was pulled back in a haphazard ponytail and there were dark circles under her blue eyes. She started chewing on her already bitten-down nails.

  “You drove a long way to see me,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Do you feel up to talking with us about your husband, ma’am?” Louis asked.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you.” She ran a hand over her hair. “Please, sit down.”

  Louis waited until after Stephanie Pryce’s mother brought coffee. He cleared his throat, edging forward on the sofa.

  “Mrs. Pryce, we’re looking for some files,” he began. “Did your husband ever bring work home from the office?”

  “Occasionally,” Stephanie Pryce said.

  Louis glanced at Jesse.

  “Did he ever mention anything specific he was working on?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t talk to me about what went on at work.”

  “Do you ever remember seeing any files like this around the house?” Louis held out a manila file with a case number printed on the front.

  She looked at it then shook her head. Louis handed the file to Jesse. He wasn’t sure where to go now; he had been banking on Stephanie Pryce simply handing over a batch of files. He glanced at Jesse, who seemed equally perplexed. Louis thought suddenly of the bits of paper in Pryce’s desk and Jesse’s comment about his doodles.

  “Mrs. Pryce,” he said finally, “was your husband the type to keep things — papers, documents and the like?”

  She smiled slightly, nodding. “He kept everything. He had one of those minds, you know, always moving. He was always writing notes to himself, stuffing them in drawers, his pockets, then forgetting them. I used to put these little baskets all over the house, trying to get him to throw his stuff in them. It didn’t really work.”

  If there were any missing files, Louis thought, they could be sitting in the county landfill by now.

  “What is this about?” she asked, her face clouding.

  “Some of your husband’s case files might be missing,” Louis said. “We were hoping he might have brought them home.”

  “Did he have a place at home, you know, like a private drawer maybe or cabinet?” Jesse asked.

  “Well, there was a file cabinet but I don’t think he used it for work things.”

  When she did not offer to show it to them, Louis knew he would just have to ask. “May we see it?”

  She sighed. Her mother was hovering nearby, and Stephanie looked up at her and then out the window. “What difference can it make now?” she whispered.

  Louis knew what she was thinking. What’s the difference? He’s dead and nothing can bring him back.

  “Mrs. Pryce,” he said. “There is a possibility that something your husband might have been working on could have played a part in his death. We need to check all leads, no matter how small.”

  She kept gazing out the window. For a moment, Louis was afraid she was going to cry.

  “We were very happy in Loon Lake,” she said softly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Louis said, not knowing what else to say.

  Stephanie’s mother moved around to sit next to her daughter, a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’ll find the man who killed him, Mrs. Pryce, I promise,” Louis said. He had no right to say that but he knew she needed to hear it.

  “Show them the cabinet, Stephanie,” the mother said gently.

  Stephanie wiped at her eyes. She took a deep breath and stood up. “All right. Come with me.”

  They followed her to a back bedroom cluttered with boxes. She moved a box and exposed a beige two-drawer file cabinet. Louis stepped over a carton and reached for a handle. It was locked.

  “Do you have a key?” he asked.

  “Somewhere,” she said absently, glancing around.

  They could easily break it open, but he couldn’t do that here in her home. They could take the whole damn cabinet back to Loon Lake but he wasn’t sure how she would take that suggestion.

  Although she seemed detached, he knew better. She was hurting and her indifference was her only defense. If she had hated her husband’s job before he had been killed she surely had little interest in their motivation now, even if it was to find his killer.

  Jesse was the one who asked, “Mrs. Pryce, would it be possible for us to take the cabinet with us? We will return it to you later.”

  Stephanie sighed and brushed back her hair. “I don’t know.”

  “Mrs. Pryce, I understand what you’re feeling,” Louis said. “I understand that some stranger took away everything, changing your life in second. I understand how you want to try to forget it and get on with things. And now we come into your home, bringing it all back again. I’m sorry for that.”

  Her chin quivered.

  “Please, let us try to help you by finding the man who killed your husband.”

  Stephanie wiped a tear away. The small room was silent and warm. Louis pulled at the fur collar of his jacket.

  Finally, she looked up at Louis. “All right, take it. But please mail my papers ba
ck to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Louis said.

  CHAPTER 6

  Louis knelt before the fire, prodding the logs with a stick to renew the blaze. The cabin was cold and there was no heat other than what the fireplace supplied. The rustic charm that had so captivated him when he first saw the place was dissipating as fast as the pile of logs on the hearth.

  He stared balefully at the last two logs. There were only a few more left outside. He would either have to go into town and buy some wood or venture outside and cut down a damn tree. Tomorrow, he vowed, he would go to the Sears catalog center in town and order a space heater.

  He rose, grabbed the afghan from the back of the worn sofa and wrapped it around his shoulders. He stared at the small television set, knowing there was no sense in even trying. There were only two stations and the last time he tried, all he got was “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns and a curling tournament out of Canada.

  A book, maybe a book. He went to the box in the corner and started sifting through the volumes, mainly college books and a bunch of paperbacks he had already read. He picked up The Golden Apples. He ran his fingers across the gold letters, thinking about Grace Lillihouse, the woman who had given him Eudora Welty’s book. Now don’t forget to return it to me. He felt bad that he would probably not make good on his promise. Hell would freeze over before he returned to Mississippi — or he would.

  He went back to the sofa, tried to find a comfortable place amid the broken springs and opened the book. He read a paragraph and read it again. Finally, he put it aside. It was no use. His mind was spinning too fast.

  His thoughts drifted to Thomas Pryce’s filing cabinet. After returning from Flint, he and Jesse had spent two hours going through its contents, but they had found nothing useful in the paper-crammed drawers. Thomas Pryce had been a pack rat, keeping every bank statement and phone bill he’d ever been issued. But there was nothing about work, and finally, Louis and Jesse had given up, too tired to continue. It seemed like the only thing left to do now was pack up the cabinet’s contents and ship them back to Stephanie Pryce.

  Louis stared in to the dying fire. Stephanie Pryce’s face had stayed with him all day. Her expression when she first saw him, as though she had seen a ghost. And the other look, that look of defeat. He had seen it before at the cop’s funeral back in Ann Arbor, on the face of the widow. I give up. You win. I lost. He’s yours.