Iced Malice

by Marla Madison

  The red—it was blood: on her face, in her eyes, even in her mouth. One side of Rob’s head was beyond recognition—a gory, pulpy mess. The air in the car had a heavy, metallic odor. Karla screamed. Then, just as she realized she had to do something—get dressed, call 911, run, something—the door next to her flew open.

  A wall of frigid air slammed into her nakedness as a heavy hand grabbed her arm and pulled her from the car.

  11

  Kendall left the house Sunday morning at eleven with Brynn next to her in the car. They had been invited to Kendall’s father’s house for Sunday brunch. As they left the parking area behind their apartments, Kendall said, “Have you seen Ryan since you got back?”

  “No,” Brynn answered, gazing out the side of the car.

  “I thought you two were staying in touch.” While not really boyfriend and girlfriend, Brynn and Nash’s son Ryan were close. They had become friends when Nash and Kendall had been trying to find the Glausson baby.

  “He has a girlfriend now.”

  Kendall didn’t know what to say to that, but went with, “Is he spending all his time with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should call him. Just because he has a girlfriend doesn’t mean he won’t have time for his other friends.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Obviously the subject wasn’t up for discussion. Kendall knew something had been bothering Brynn since she got back from the cruise, but wasn’t sure what it was, although she had her suspicions. She was surprised Brynn had accepted Maggie’s invite today.

  When they arrived at the house, Kendall’s mouth watered at the fantastic aromas from the kitchen. But she’d been consoling herself with food way too often since Nash left, and a distraction other than food would be necessary if she were going to fit into her clothes. The table offered all her breakfast favorites—a pecan coffeecake, a dish of fresh fruit, cinnamon-raisin toast, sliced ham, and a stack of blueberry pancakes. Added to all of that, Maggie was taking omelet orders.

  After they ate, Kendall poured a cup of coffee. She, Maggie, and Brynn were in the kitchen after putting away leftovers and filling the dishwasher.

  “Kendall,” Maggie said. “I’ve been meaning to call you about the Wetzel case. I spent quite a few nights at that R-Bar, and interviewed dozens of people. I never found the person who drove him home, and I told the Wetzels I’d found nothing to indicate their son’s death was anything but an unfortunate accident.”

  “Then you won’t be suing anyone?” Kendall asked.

  “I told them to forget about suing. I really liked Nick, the R-Bar owner; I even met his wife, and they’re a nice couple. In all honesty I can’t see him as negligent, and I don’t believe a jury would either. I explained that to the Wetzels.”

  “Did they accept it?”

  “They seemed to.”

  Kendall’s phone buzzed, and she left the room to take a call from her partner.

  “Hey Kenny,” Alverson said. “We got an ugly one. I’ll pick you up.”

  “We’re off duty. Why are we getting it?”

  “Not sure. Whoever is on today must be out on a call.”

  “I’m at my Dad’s place.”

  In the car, Ross explained that a young man had been found shot in the head while sitting in the passenger seat of a Jeep Cherokee. The SUV was parked in the employee lot of a supper club east of the city and discovered when the owner came in to get ready for the Sunday buffet.

  When they arrived at the scene, a patrol car was parked in front of the restaurant, but no one was around. The officer must have taken the owner inside. They drove behind the building where the Cherokee was parked facing a large stand of pine trees.

  The inside of the car looked like a container of blood had exploded. Half of the man’s head was missing. He was naked from the waist up, and his jeans were pulled down below his knees.

  “Looks like a sex crime.” Kendall said.

  “A sex crime?” Alverson snorted. “Yeah, right, it was a crime this guy’s sex got interrupted by a bullet. Only question I have is where’s the girl that was riding on his lap?”

  There was a distinct gap in the blood spatter on the dashboard in front of the boy. It had been blocked by something in front of him. Was it a woman? “I wonder if the first responders have searched the area?”

  “Let’s go ask them.”

  Two officers were in a small office at the back of the restaurant with a large man who was sitting with his head in his hands. He looked up when the detectives entered the room.

  “This is Mr. Tobin,” one of the officers said. “He found the car when he came in about an hour ago.” He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Mr. Tobin, these are Detectives Alverson and Halsrud. They’re going to ask you some questions.”

  Tobin wiped his face on his sleeve. “I gotta call people. We can’t open like this.”

  “If you’ll just answer a few questions,” Kendall said, “then you can make your calls.” She felt sorry for the man, but they needed to get his interview over with.

  Tobin said he arrived just after one p.m. The Sunday special was a burger buffet, and they didn’t open until three o’clock. It was his habit to be the first one in, make sure the cleaning crew had done their job, and check that the bar was stocked. He noticed the red Cherokee when he pulled in. It wasn’t unusual for a car to remain in their lot overnight, but it was unusual for it to be in the employee parking area, and as far as Tobin knew, none of his people drove that kind of car.

  He walked over to it after he noticed something splashed on the windows. It wasn’t until after he lost his breakfast right there next to the Cherokee that he dialed 911.

  When he had told them the little he knew, Kendall advised him to put out a closed sign, at least for the day, even though the inside of the restaurant wasn’t a crime scene. There would be no way to predict when they would release the parking lot, and they couldn’t have a parade of cars driving in and out of the crime scene.

  After determining Tobin had nothing further to tell them, Kendall and Alverson went back out to meet the medical examiner.

  Franklyn Teed backed his head out of the Cherokee when he saw them approaching. “No mystery here; gunshot to the head. I’m going to let crime scene take over. Have you found the girl?”

  Was it a girl? It looked that way, but unless they found some trace of her, they couldn’t be sure. “No. We have every available officer out searching the area and we’re calling in more. If there was a girl with him, it doesn’t look good. She could have run off, hysterical, but she would have died of exposure; the temperature was way below zero last night. If she was abducted, at least there’s a chance she’s still alive.”

  “He’s probably been dead at least eight hours, but I’ll call you when I finish the autopsy.”

  Kendall watched him leave, his spot next to the Jeep quickly replaced by a crime-scene specialist.

  “Can you get us the guy’s wallet so we can ID him?” Alverson asked. They already knew the car was registered to fifty-two-year old Walter Kolterjohn, most likely the boy’s father.

  “Only if I can get at it without disturbing anything,” he answered brusquely. The detectives donned gloves when the wallet appeared and opened it to reveal the driver’s license photo of Robert Kolterjohn, twenty years old. He weighed one hundred eighty pounds, stood six foot one, and wore his hair long, just like the boy in the Cherokee.

  12

  Brynn rode back home in the front seat of Maggie Cottingham’s black vintage Cadillac, all the while listening to Maggie’s endless chatter. A captive audience, Brynn wondered how Maggie could prattle on like that and still handle the car.

  The talk didn’t get interesting until Maggie opened up the subject of one of Kendall’s recent cases, the one she had heard them talking about after breakfast. An inebriated twenty-two year old man, an alcoholic, was given a ride home from a bar on a double-digit, below-zero night. While someone gi
ving him a ride home rather than letting him drive under the influence was a good thing, the bad thing was that he ended up on the wrong doorstep. A mentally challenged eighteen-year-old girl was home alone, babysitting a younger brother. When she heard the guy banging on the door and calling to be let in, she ignored him because her mother always told her never open the door to strangers.

  “I wouldn’t be able to talk about it, but the whole story was in the papers, even that the Wetzels hired me to look into it.” Maggie continued, “The parents had a terrible time with his death, of course. They felt that no matter what their son had done, even if he was drinking, he didn’t deserve to die. Which he didn’t. They wanted to sue whoever was responsible; not because they wanted the money, but to punish them.”

  “But it was an accident,” Brynn said, her first words since they had gotten into the car.

  “They thought someone should have made sure he got home safely.”

  “He was an adult, wasn’t he?” Brynn asked.

  “See, that’s the problem. It brings us back to the never-ending debate about addicts: Are they victims of a disease and therefore can’t help themselves, or should they be held accountable for their actions?”

  Intrigued as she was, Brynn didn’t feel up to taking a stand against Cottingham, who had a law degree and years of experience arguing her cases. Lawyers always knew just what to say to prove their point.

  “My mother taught me to always wait until the person is in the door before you drive away,” Brynn said, for want of any knowledgeable words on the subject of addiction. “But not everybody does that; it’s a courtesy thing. If he told the person driving him that it was his house, then you can’t blame the driver for what happened, right?”

  Maggie tapped her hand on the steering wheel. “That is exactly why I tried to convince the Wetzels not to sue—most people believe that addicts have choices, so Charles Wetzel shouldn’t have been drunk in the first place. A jury wouldn’t be sympathetic unless it was made up of people whose children were alcoholics.”

  Brynn thought that would be the perfect way to commit murder—deliberately leave him at the wrong house. “Maybe someone wanted to kill him.”

  Maggie laughed. “That thought did cross my mind, but it would be just too bizarre. Like a plot on Law and Order, no?”

  She was right. Too many things would be up to chance: the weather, the guy being too drunk to give accurate directions or realize he’d been dropped at the wrong house, whether the people in the house were home and would answer the door, and how many people saw him leave the bar with Wetzel and if they could identify him. It was interesting, she thought. If all those things could be controlled, it would be a totally undetectable murder.

  At home, Brynn found an email from Ryan asking her to call him. Lately, when they talked he told her way more about his new girlfriend than Brynn wanted to hear. Jealousy was a new feeling for her. She shouldn’t be jealous. She and Ryan were never boyfriend and girlfriend, even though, for Brynn, sometimes it felt like it. He wanted her to meet the girl, how crazy was that? Why would she want to meet some bubble-headed, Barbie-doll type and have to feel inferior because of her white skin and hair, even though she probably had more than forty IQ points on the girl? It wasn’t fair.

  She sat idly front of the iMac. Computers were the kind of friends you could count on; they didn’t come and go in your life like people did. Brynn thought about the poor man who had frozen to death and how his parents were desperate for someone to blame. Who was to blame, really?

  She typed, “alcohol related freezing deaths” into the Google search box.

  13

  Kendall got back to her apartment late, aching for a good night’s sleep. There would be a lot to do the next day, and she would need to be alert. Sleep, however, didn’t come easily since Nash left. In the few weeks they were together she’d gotten used to the feel of him in her bed, a secure feeling, warm and comfortable. Now her bed felt cold and unwelcoming, too big for one person.

  A hot shower chased away the chill, and she went to the kitchen to warm up half a frozen pizza left from last week. Her eating habits were sporadic now that she was alone again; she either forgot to eat or overate. When Nash was here, every meal was an adventure. All of that contentment could have brought back the weight she’d taken off. She smiled, remembering. If only he were here and gaining weight her only worry.

  She’d just put the pizza in the oven when she heard a knock on her door. Brynn came in carrying her favorite teapot and two delicate, rose-painted teacups.

  “I saw you come home.”

  “I suppose you saw the news.”

  “Yeah. Did you find the girl?” Brynn poured the tea and they sat across from each other at the counter.

  “No. At first we thought she ran off after the boy was shot, but that’s unlikely now. She would have shown up somewhere.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “The kids in the car met last night at a fraternity party. The girl’s boyfriend was off with his friends on a spring break trip and so was the boy’s girlfriend. They were students at UWEC.”

  “It said on the news they were parked behind a restaurant. Did they go there for something to eat after the party?”

  “No, the restaurant closed at ten that night. They parked there because they wanted to be alone.”

  “So they parked there to have sex?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Because you don’t know or because it’s classified?”

  “Same answer. I’ve told you more than I should have already, but the whole story will be on the news tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “Today.”

  Brynn took a sip of tea. “Maggie gave me a ride home. She told me about the man who froze in the storm last week.”

  She would, Kendall thought. “What did she tell you?”

  “She said his parents wanted someone to blame, but she was trying to talk them out of it.”

  Now it was “trying”? At breakfast, Maggie said she had convinced them to drop it.

  Brynn added, “What if someone did it on purpose?”

  “We explored that, but it didn’t pan out.”

  Brynn stood up and collected her things after pouring Kendall the rest of the tea. “I’m sleepy now.” Her special tea had sleep-inducing qualities.

  Kendall watched her leave. At least Brynn was talking, even though Cottingham had introduced the subject matter that had piqued her interest. Brynn’s questions about Chuck Wetzel made Kendall wonder if they’d given up on the investigation too soon. She still hadn’t turned in the final report, and now she had the more immediate case on her hands—the Kolterjohn murder and the disappearance of Karla Foley, the girl Kolterjohn left the party with. She and Alverson had to spend their time on that one. The sensible thing would be to delegate the Wetzel case to another detective if she had any doubts about closing it.

  But she would worry about that after getting some rest. Her eyelids were heavy; Brynn’s tea always relaxed her enough to bring on sleep. Kendall headed for bed, thinking she should get a generous supply of the stuff, even if she didn’t own a fancy teacup to drink it from.

  14

  Kendall and Alverson met with the staff early the next morning and compared notes about the Kolterjohn-Foley case. When they finished and the others filed out of the room, Alverson grabbed Kendall’s arm.

  “Hang on for a minute. I have to tell you something. A girl named Courtney came in a couple days ago. She was interested in a case from way back, the one the media called the Fiancé Murders.”

  “What about it?”

  “This could be one of those all over again.”

  “How do you figure? Those couples were never found, and that happened over ten years ago.”

  “They all disappeared in the spring or early summer,” he said. “Think about it. This weather? Where are you going to get rid of two bodies?”

  Kendall had to wrap her head around this. “I don’t kn
ow, Ross. Other than the fact that these two were the same age, I don’t see where you’re coming from here. They weren’t even a couple.”

  He sat heavily in one of the chairs. “Whoever killed them wouldn’t necessarily have known that, right? That girl who came in is going to write a book about those disappearances. She wanted to talk to someone who worked the case back then.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I introduced her to Hank.”

  Kendall had forgotten that her former partner had been involved in that case.

  “What did he think?”

  “He talked to her about it and gave her the name of his friend from Menomonie who was the lead on the first one. Pete Jasecki.”

  Kendall sat down across from Ross. “I don’t get it. She’s writing a book, and you helped her out. We don’t even know if the Foley girl has been murdered. Why do you think this murder could be related to those disappearances?”

  “I told you, because this was a couple, too, and also something she said about her book club.”

  “Book club?”

  “Yeah. They read and talk about books—mysteries. There’s a guy she said was superinterested in those disappearances. When it was his turn to pick a book for them to read, he chose one about that case.”

  “You think that makes him a suspect?” Kendall asked.

  “Just saying, there’s still a lot of interest in what happened to those kids, and maybe we should at least consider that we have the same perp here.”

  “But that was what, twelve years ago?”

  “Yeah, the first one. But we’ve seen it before. The perp moves away, does time, or gets married, and the urge goes to sleep for a while.”

  Kendall stood to leave the room. “It’s something to keep in mind, but it doesn’t change how we investigate this one.”