Cold to the Bone

by Emery Hayes

  But she did see a black Escalade. A sticker on the license plate identified it as a rental, and Nicole knew she’d seen the vehicle before, parked at Big Horn—King’s fortress away from home.

  “We have a visitor.”

  Lars nodded. “King Arthur, Excalibur, and Morgan le Fay. How do you think Kenny felt about his father grooming our vic for medical stardom?”

  “Pissed.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Lars pulled into a space and cut the engine.

  “His size-ten hiking boot puts him in the lineup.” And motive kept him there. Jealousy. More murders were committed through rage than any other emotion.

  “You think he’s a match for the gloves?”

  The pair of men’s gloves found under the tree, one on top of the other, like a Christmas present.

  “Possible.” Very. She would ask Kenny about them. Better, she would present them like they were his lost possessions. She told Lars the plan, and he called the clerk in the evidence locker and asked that they be processed for checkout.

  “I’ll get them,” he said. “You going to put Kenny in the box?”

  “He has something for us.” Or he wouldn’t be here. “Let’s get that tucked away and then talk to him.”

  She pulled on her wool cap, shouldered out the door, and walked quickly into the station.

  Kenny was seated in reception. He had a file resting on his knees, the papers inside disheveled and the edges poking out. He sat stiffly but turned toward the door when it opened and the cold air swept in. His mouth tightened when he recognized her. He stood but waited, clutching the file to his chest.

  “Hi, Kenny.”

  “I have something here,” he said. “Something you should see.”

  Nicole stopped in front of him and put out her hand for the file, but he pulled back.

  “I want to talk to you first.”

  Lars came through the door next but ignored them. He took the stairs up, where the gloves waited for him.

  “Okay, Kenny. Come on back,” she invited, and led the way through reception and into the back recesses of the station to her office. “Have a seat.”

  But he didn’t comply. He stood in front of her desk and shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Remember when I told you Dr. Esparza wouldn’t give my father the super cell?”

  “I remember.”

  “So here’s the proof. But there’s more.” He put the file down on her desk and opened it. “Look at this.”

  He spread out papers. They were email communications Kenny must have printed from his father’s account. Most of them were brief, a line or two. Many were from Enrique Esparza and dated back more than a year. The bartering of a medical miracle. There were others. She recognized a few of the company names in the URLs. All pharmaceutical. Her eyes caught on Sanders’s name. She pulled the paper out of the fanned pile and read the brief message: Don’t be a sore loser, Michael. It had been sent that morning.

  Nicole used her fingertips to right the pile, then slid the papers back into the folder. They had something here. Context and implications, at least. She picked up the folder and moved across the room, opened a drawer, and tucked it inside.

  “Thanks for bringing this in, Kenny. It will be helpful.” She sat down behind her desk and invited Kenny to sit as well. “I’m going to look through it. My people will look through it,” she promised. “But there are other things at play here that I think you can help us with.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” He sat down but not comfortably. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair, but his hands were restless. He rubbed the tips of his fingers with his thumbs.

  “Remember those text messages, Kenny? We talked about them this morning?”

  “So what? We talked, we texted, we Skyped. I told you that.”

  “And you wanted more. You wanted Beatrice, but she was busy rising to glory. Both her father and yours believed she would have been an excellent doctor.”

  He shook his head. His agitation increased, his feet pumping, his legs jiggling.

  “It’s true. They championed her.”

  “That’s bullshit.” His lips trembled, but it was more than anger or outrage; his feelings were hurt.

  “Your father knew Dr. Esparza was breaking the law by experimenting on Beatrice.”

  Kenny snorted. “The law didn’t apply to my old man,” he said. “That’s what he thought.”

  “What does that mean, Kenny?”

  “Yeah, he knew. From the very beginning, and he didn’t care. He knew the FDA would never allow it. And it wasn’t the first time.”

  “You’re talking about those cutting-edge treatments for Violet?”

  “Some of them were taken straight out of Frankenstein,” he said.

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Lars opened it without waiting and walked in, the suede gloves, sealed in a clear evidence bag, tucked under his arm.

  “Hi, Kenny.” He held out his hand and waited for the young man to take it, an action that was noticeably slow as he adjusted to the intrusion. All of his anger seemed to escape through the opened door, and Nicole watched him deflate. His hands opened, his shoulders sank, and his breath expanded his chest unevenly, catching on the remnants of emotion.

  “We didn’t get to meet this morning,” Lars continued. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  Kenny snorted and turned toward Nicole. “Who is he?”

  “A police detective, Kenny. He’s very good at his job. We’d like to share with you what we know.” She moved her gaze to Lars and said, “Kenny was just telling me that his father has been breaking the law for years, all in pursuit of a cure for Violet.”

  “Yeah, and some of them were freakish,” Kenny said. He would have sprung from the chair, but Lars placed a hand on his shoulder and lay the plastic evidence bag with the gloves on Nicole’s desk.

  “Take a good look at these,” Lars advised. “Science is a wonderful thing, but of course you already know that. I hear your father was training you, getting you ready for medical school. Isn’t that right, Kenny?”

  Kenny’s eyes were locked on the evidence bag, and his composure was shifting under the pressure. His voice became high, thin, desperate. “No. No, he wasn’t. He should have been, but he was all about Beatrice.”

  Lars ignored his outburst. “Police work is a lot of things. But what we rely on most is science. We have tests and methods and even the psychology that predicts behavior, and you know what? It’s solid. It’s numbers, and there’s nothing gray about those. It’s tangible, we can hold evidence in our hands”—he raised the gloves under Kenny’s nose—“and say things about them that are absolutely true.”

  “Have you heard of epithelials?” Nicole asked.

  “Skin,” Kenny said.

  She nodded. “And we have equipment that will recover microscopic tags of skin for analysis, and from that analysis we will know—”

  But Kenny jumped ahead. “DNA. I get it. So what? They’re my gloves. I left them outside last night.”

  Lars nodded. “We know. You took them off because wearing them was awkward. You dropped something—a condom packet—small, slippery, and definitely impossible to pick up when you’re wearing flippers.”

  “You took them off, set them aside, and left them in the snow,” Nicole said. “Why did you do that, Kenny?”

  “You’re wrong,” he said, but Nicole was already shaking her head.

  “Evidence, Kenny. Facts. You knelt in the snow—we have impressions of that. We have your fingerprint on the condom packet. We have your text messages. You wanted her, Kenny, but Beatrice wasn’t interested.”

  “So maybe you thought no one should have her,” Lars offered.

  “Who gave Beatrice the Rohypnol?” Nicole continued. “You or your father?”

  “I did.” He laughed. It was wet with tears and snot. “But she got away from me anyway. How sick is that? Even drugged, I couldn’t get her in bed.”

  “She ran an
d you followed.”

  Kenny nodded.

  “Beatrice had a head start, and she was fast,” Nicole continued.

  “She was slow and stumbling,” he said.

  An effect of the drug.

  “And you caught up with her.”

  “Easy.”

  “And then what?”

  “She told me she would never love me. Not like that.”

  “And you killed her?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I just lost it, you know? And I tried to fix it. I gave her CPR, but it didn’t work.”

  “How did you do it, Kenny?” Lars asked.

  “With my hands.” He held them up, stared at his palms, and then buried his face there. “I choked her. It makes an awful sound. She gasped. She whistled. But she didn’t change her mind.”

  “She was never going to love you,” Nicole said, and Kenny looked up and met her gaze.

  “Never,” he said.

  “And you told your father about it?” Nicole continued.

  “I had to. He knew I took the roofie from his supplies. That I was looking for her. That she was gone.” His eyes were glazed, and Nicole could see hysteria building in them. “He thought it was that blond freak. The broker. Because she was looking for Bea too, but I found her first. And then the woman came in and scared her away.”

  34

  Next to his own home, Nicole’s would be considered a cottage. And not a very nice one. Tidy, respectful, but no flair. Benjamin turned the SUV into the gravel driveway and started up the incline. His tires spun on the gravel, announcing his arrival, but who cared? Nicole had alerted them already. He was sure of it. She’d given the old lady who stayed with Jordan a list of instructions, no doubt: lock the doors, check the windows, don’t answer a knock, a ring, a snarl from outside. Too bad he had a way around all that.

  He parked in front of the garage. No need to turn the SUV around for a quick getaway. Nicole was busy. Two dead and another on the way. He’d disposed of Charlene. She wouldn’t be found until the first thaw and by then would be completely unidentifiable.

  Nicole had no idea who was next or she would have been here herself, armed and aiming for him.

  He laughed, anticipating the moment when he brought Nicole’s world to a screeching halt. Sanders had put him in a killing mood. The woman was impossible to please, and in that, she and Nicole were very similar. Nicole would suffer for it. She would know that Benjamin had their son and that he was up to no good. He wanted to be there when she realized that all hope was lost. In this case, it would pulverize her. Nicole would have little left to live for.

  He pulled up his hood and pushed out into the cold. He was coming to hate Montana. Winter was only a wonderland from the inside out—gazing from a window with a fire crackling at his back. The consistencies were tedious—the temperature flowed between freezing and breathtaking, and snow looked the same no matter how it fell or lay on the ground.

  He knocked on the front door. This was purely a courtesy and executed to further mess up their minds. Surely a drug dealer, a thief, a murderer, didn’t knock on doors. By now, Jordan or the old lady would be dialing Nicole’s cell. Maybe they’d even gotten through. He watched a curtain panel peel back from the living room window. Not close to the front door, but on the side of the house facing the garage and his SUV. He saw a blur of short, gray curls.

  “Jordan,” he called through the wood. “Daddy’s home. Come unlock the door.”

  Nothing. As he’d expected. He pulled a slim LED flashlight from his pocket and walked around the side of the house. The electrical box was padlocked. Another expectation fulfilled. Nicole was a cop. Of course she locked up everything.

  He lifted the hem of his parka and unsnapped his holster. He pulled Charlene’s Sig Sauer out and stood back from the padlock. He was a good shot from five feet. Fifty/fifty at twice that. He didn’t want to get hit by the shrapnel, but he didn’t want to start a bonfire either. He settled on eight feet and aimed for the outer rim on the Schlage. He pulled the trigger, and the loop popped and slid from the box. Benjamin kept the flashlight steady, located the main breaker, and tripped it. The entire house, security lights included, went black.

  Nicole would know from the street that something was terribly wrong. He smiled, enjoying the thought. Then moved on. He stopped at the long sidelight window beside the front door and used the butt of his gun to break it. He knocked out fragments of glass and pushed his arm through and turned the locks easily. Then he walked through the door.

  “Let’s try this again,” he shouted into the dark, cavernous house. “Daddy’s home!”

  There was no response, and for a moment he damned people’s predictability, though he knew it was useful to him. He aimed the flashlight into the corners of the living room, behind the sofa and an overstuffed chair. Nothing. He moved on, deeper into the house.

  “Let’s see. You’re the child of a cop. I’d say she taught you to lay low, behind a locked door.” He entered the kitchen and opened the pantry door, but it was empty. He moved into the dining area, swept the light under the table. “Nothing here,” he called. He loved the sound of his voice. He loved fucking with people’s minds. He turned into a short hall. Four doors. Three bedrooms and a bath. “Maybe you’ve burrowed under the things in your closet? Is that where you stuff your dirty laundry, son?” He tried the knob of the first door. It turned and he pushed it open. A bedroom. He stood on the threshold and checked the corners, waded slowly into the room, swung open the closet. Winter coats and rain boots. No kid. He knelt and checked under the bed. Dust and cobwebs.

  He left that room behind and moved on to the next. Another bedroom, probably. The knob didn’t turn. “Now that’s a dead giveaway,” he said. “Excuse the pun. ‘Lock the door. Scurry under the bed.’ Some of the worst advice ever given. Do you know how easy it is to pop a lock this weak?”

  As an answer, Benjamin stepped back, canted left, and launched a roundhouse kick so that the heel of his boot delivered a direct blow backed up by his body weight and momentum. An object in motion and all that. But it focused about five hundred pounds on an interior lock. Sandbox play, really. He heard the pin spring.

  “That’s just a little trick your father learned early on in his career,” Benjamin said. The door had swung open, bounced off the wall, and now came back at him. He held up his hand and caught it. “Back when I had to do my own cleanup. Your daddy has come a long way, Jordan.”

  He paused and listened. The darkness was total, the curtains in this room closed against any moon that might be in the sky. And the silence here was complete. No breath, taken or expelled. No involuntary shifting of muscle in a new and cramped position. He knew before he opened the closet door that he would find it empty. But he searched it anyway. Laziness when it came to personal safety was not a choice.

  “Is this your room, Jordan?” He raised his voice, because he knew his son and the little old lady were not in this room. “I think so. Lots of Star Wars and blue jeans. Definitely not your mom’s style. She always favored those tailored shirts, blazers that would hide her gun.” He turned and let the beam from the flashlight fall over the room. Planets hung from fishing line, books were scattered on the bed and nightstand, Legos filled boxes that were pushed against a wall. Benjamin had never had such a room when he was a kid. Mostly he’d slept on the couch in the living room. A change of clothing had been a luxury. “I like your room, Jordan,” he called out, then bent and lifted the bed ruffle under first one and then the other twin bed and found nothing but rolled-up dirty socks, scattered pieces of what looked like homework, and a single shoe.

  He left that bedroom and walked quietly down the hall. “Are you in the bathroom, cowering behind the shower curtain?” he wondered, loud enough that he could be heard anywhere in the house. “Let’s see.”

  He stepped into the bathroom, which was small. Maybe forty square feet. White toilet, basin, and tub; burgundy towels hung from the rack; exhaust fan, no window. Certainly Nicole ha
d taught their son better than to seek refuge in a box with no escape hatch. But he swept an arm forward and pushed the curtain back on the metal rod with a scratching sound. Empty.

  “That leaves one room, Jordan,” Benjamin said. Glee made his voice light. It floated up from his throat like bubbles from champagne. He was getting closer. Soon he would have his hands on the prize. Nicole’s raison de vivre.

  The door to the master bedroom stood ajar, and he pushed it back with the tips of his fingers and stood on the threshold. Nicole’s private domain. Thick carpeting and a full-sized bed in a lifted iron frame that was a complicated pattern of curlicues. No walk-in closet here, but double doors that slid back on a metal track. A small door leading to the master bath.

  Didn’t people know they could live better? he wondered. And then he heard a snuffling sound. The wet nose of an animal sniffing, panting. His hand tightened on the gun grip. He felt its beaded texture against his palm. He didn’t like dogs. They were loyal and brave beyond reason. They lacked common sense.

  He followed the sound with his ear, his head turning toward the right. Beyond the bed a wall with two windows, heavy curtains, and a swath of carpet. Were they huddled in the shadows? Seemed likely. But why hadn’t they gone for the windows?

  “Jordan, come say hello to your father,” Benjamin demanded.

  “No thanks.”

  The voice was calm, and bigger than Benjamin had expected.

  “Well, that’s polite,” Benjamin returned. “Really. I’m glad your mom taught you to say please and thank-you. Didn’t she also tell you it’s a common courtesy to greet people when they come to your house?”

  “Invited guests,” Jordan agreed. “But you’re not invited. In fact, we’d like you to leave.”

  Definitely coming from the floor on the other side of the bed, below the windows, which he could shatter with a single bullet.

  “But I just got here, and I went to a lot of trouble to see you, Jordan.” He took another step into the room, lifted the flashlight, and tried to illuminate the well behind the bed, but the beam touched only the wall and curtains. “It’s been too long for a hug, and there’s no picking up where we left off. I get that. A handshake will do. A ‘happy to see you, Dad’ would be okay.”