The Girls in the Snow: A completely unputdownable crime thriller (Nikki Hunt Book 1)

by Stacy Green

  Amy slowly sat up, tears running down her face and dripping off her chin. She took a deep breath and drew Bailey into her arms. “Mommy’s really sad about Madison, honey.”

  “Me too.”

  She pressed her forehead to Bailey’s. “Why don’t you come upstairs and have a camp out with me tonight?”

  “Okay.” Bailey glanced into the kitchen. “What about Daddy?”

  “Don’t worry about him. It’s just you and me tonight.” Amy took his hand.

  As soon as they left the room, Nikki nodded at Miller and then went into the kitchen where John sat, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

  “The fuck do you want?”

  “Justice,” Nikki said.

  “Then find out who killed Maddie, because I sure as hell didn’t do it.”

  “Oh, I will,” Nikki said. “And I won’t stop until I have the truth about everyone you’ve hurt.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  She could shatter his perfect nose in a single, well-placed punch. A knee to the groin would put him on the floor. Nikki would stand over John with all the power, just as he’d probably done with her father. “I’m talking about my parents. Mark’s innocent. Their killer has had twenty years of freedom, but his days are numbered. I will bring him to justice.”

  He sneered at her. “You’re delusional.”

  “You’re a sexual predator who’s assaulted his last woman.”

  “Get out of my house.”

  “No problem. See you soon.”

  She glanced at the table next to John’s chair as she made her way through to the living room and back to the front door.

  Miller had bagged up the broken pieces of the stein.

  Forty

  Nikki’s yawn nearly split her head open. Across the big conference room table, Liam didn’t look much better. He stared at his tablet, his eyes drooping. He’d delivered the bagged stein to Courtney at the lab last night and hung around while she processed it, hoping to at least have fingerprint confirmation. But since the stein was in so many pieces, Courtney had to piece it back together in order to get a full print. She’d promised to have something for them this morning.

  Liam stirred his coffee. “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Not really.” Nikki had replayed the confrontation with John a dozen times, trying to remember every little nonverbal cue and wondering if she was being objective or seeing what she wanted to see. She still wasn’t certain.

  “Taking the cup from his house—how much is that going to hurt us in court?” Liam asked.

  “He threw it at me,” Nikki said. “Technically it’s evidence in the assault of an FBI agent.”

  “I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how you were going to make it work. But you were right about the drinking. And damned if you don’t know how to push a person’s buttons.”

  Nikki cracked a smile. “Years of practice, my friend.”

  Liam shoved the tablet away from him. “Even with the algorithm, I can’t narrow down enough names to figure out the initials. There are just too many factors.”

  “Too damned many,” Nikki said.

  “Precisely.”

  “You ran them in various combinations? Like maybe Madison was so out of it she messed up the order.”

  Liam gave her a dirty look. “That’s the first thing I did.”

  “Sorry, grumpy.” Nikki’s phone vibrated with Courtney’s number. She turned the speaker phone on. “Please tell me you matched John’s prints.”

  “I wish I could.”

  Nikki’s adrenaline evaporated. “What?”

  “I’m still waiting on DNA, but John’s prints didn’t match any taken from the motel room,” Courtney said. “He wasn’t with Janelle in that motel room.”

  “What about Madison’s effects?”

  “A partial match on the watch, which will never hold up in court since they lived in the same house.”

  Liam looked as defeated as Nikki felt. “Do you have anything good to tell us?”

  “Maybe,” Courtney said. “I got the results back on some of the hair I lifted from the girls’ clothes. It’s cat hair. It’s on both of them, but Kaylee had much more, like she’d practically lain in it.”

  “Can you tell what kind of cat?”

  “Not without more testing.”

  Liam drummed his fingers on the table. “I didn’t see a cat at the Bankses’ place.”

  “Kaylee didn’t have one either. Or the Hansons, at least not that I saw.” Nikki felt numb. Could she have been that wrong about John? Had she been so caught up in her past that she hadn’t been objective about his involvement in the girls’ murders?

  “Too bad we can’t go door-to-door asking for cat hair donations.”

  Nikki’s phone vibrated with another call from an unknown number. Normally she’d let it go to voicemail, but she had made calls to a few places that might have blocked numbers. “Court, hang on.” Nikki put her on hold and then accepted the new call. “This is Nikki Hunt.”

  “Nikki?”

  She sat up straight. “Bailey? What’s wrong?”

  “Daddy’s scaring me.” Bailey’s frightened whisper was barely audible. “He says he’s going to hurt Mommy. And she’s crying.”

  “Are you somewhere safe?” Nikki was already shrugging her coat on.

  “I’m in Madison’s room.”

  “Lock the door. We’re on our way.”

  Liam grabbed his coat. “What’s going on?”

  “John Banks is losing it.”

  Nikki hit the brake and slid back down the Bankses’ street. She’d alerted emergency services as soon as she got off the phone with Bailey, and two Washington County Sheriff’s cruisers blocked the driveway, lights flashing.

  Sirens squalled a block away, and the ambulance came around the corner.

  Nikki bolted from the jeep and raced up the slick sidewalk. “Agent Hunt with the FBI. Where’s Bailey?”

  “We haven’t located him.” She recognized the deputy from the crime scene when they’d first found Madison and Kaylee’s bodies. “We have a single white female, beaten pretty badly. No sign of the husband or the boy.”

  “Liam, look outside and in the garage.” Nikki took off upstairs and ran to Madison’s room. The door wasn’t locked. “Bailey?” Nikki yanked open the double closet doors and shoved her way through a sea of clothes. Bailey wasn’t in the room. He wasn’t anywhere in the house.

  She nearly fell down the stairs. The paramedics were trying to stabilize Amy. Her face was a purple mess, with a deep gash in her temple, a black eye and a bloody mouth.

  “Amy, it’s Nikki, can you hear me?”

  Amy moaned, her swollen lips purple.

  Nikki grabbed her hand. “You’re going to be okay. Did John take Bailey?”

  Another moan, this one far more distraught.

  “Do you know where he’d go?” John’s parents were in Florida. Would he try to flee? “Amy, please, if there’s any place, we need to know.”

  “Her jaw’s broken,” the medic said. “She can’t talk.”

  Nikki opened the notebook app on her phone and handed it to Amy.

  The phone quickly slipped from Amy’s hands. Her eyes fluttered closed.

  “We have to take her.” The paramedic tossed Nikki her phone, and she moved out of the way.

  “Liam, we need to put out an APB for John Banks. He’s driving a Tahoe and he’s a danger to the boy and anyone he encounters.”

  Forty-One

  “The entire area has the information.” Miller had arrived a few minutes after the ambulance left with Amy. “Checkpoints are set up on every feasible way out of town. Airports are being monitored. His face is being broadcast everywhere. He’s not getting far.”

  Nikki wanted to believe Miller. The deputies had entered the Bankses’ house seven minutes after Bailey’s call. John’s car was already gone, but they couldn’t have gotten very far.

  This was her fault. Nikki had p
ushed John too far, and they were no closer to finding out who killed the girls. Bailey and his mother had paid the price for her impulsiveness. “Property records?”

  “Nothing in Washington County,” Miller said. “My people are looking statewide. We haven’t found anything in John’s or Amy’s name.”

  Nikki studied the family photos, trying to will information from them. One had been taken outdoors, in a field that could have been anywhere. She wrangled the picture from the frame and checked the back. No date or location. She didn’t remember his parents owning any other property, but a lot of things changed in twenty years. “Check under Ronald and Madge Banks, too. His parents live in Florida, but they might have a residence somewhere around here as well.”

  Liam tried to get into the Bankses’ laptop, but the password protection locked him out. “Fucking Mac. I’ll need a warrant to get their tech people to unlock this.”

  Nikki searched the cabinets and drawers looking for anything that might point her in the right direction. John’s desk and office were suspiciously clean. No sign of his pictures, but her gut said he had them stashed somewhere.

  “Agent Hunt? Sergeant Miller?” The big deputy gestured to the front door. “A friend of the family is here.”

  Mindy Vance, wearing only sweatpants and a baggy sweater, stood in the doorway, shivering. Worry lined her round face. “Are Amy and Bailey all right?”

  “Amy’s seriously injured, and John has taken Bailey. He’s in serious danger.”

  Mindy sagged against the doorway. “I told her he was a ticking bomb. Amy’s gone through so much already.”

  “Did Amy or John know you were coming over?” Nikki asked.

  “Amy did,” Mindy said. “She wanted me to get Bailey and take her to her parents. She wouldn’t tell me why, but I could tell she was scared. She sounded much worse than she did yesterday.”

  Nikki motioned for her to come inside and led her into the kitchen, away from the sea of cops. “You talked to her yesterday?”

  Mindy sat down on one of the tall barstools. “She called to tell me that they had confirmed more details for a memorial for Madison. She wanted to make sure I’d heard about it.”

  “How did she sound?” Miller had joined them.

  “Exhausted. Almost robotic. But that’s what you do when something awful happens, isn’t it? You put your head down and go through the necessary motions.” She glanced at Nikki and then quickly looked down at her hands.

  “You’ve known the family for a long time.” Nikki waved Liam over from the computer. “You remember Agent Wilson.” Mindy nodded. “Did Amy ever give you the impression she was afraid of John?”

  Mindy tugged at her graying hair. “Afraid, no. But John’s a powerful man. He likes to put on a certain façade for everyone, and he would certainly get frustrated if she didn’t go along with everything he set out.”

  “Bobby told me about the argument over John’s heroics the night Mark attacked me.” Nikki worked to keep the venom from her tone. “It sounded like Amy embarrassed him.”

  “That’s right,” Mindy said. “I’d forgotten. She said something about his embellishing every time he told the story. My husband took John outside to calm down. Things were never the same between them after that, and they just got worse.”

  “What happened between your husband and John?” Miller asked.

  “John convinced Bobby to come work for him at Roan. He promised him a guaranteed number of clients, which meant the opportunity for large bonuses. That’s not how it worked out, and Bobby felt he’d been misled.”

  “John didn’t agree?” Had he ever liked to admit when he’d been wrong? Nikki wondered.

  “He said Bobby wasn’t the salesman he’d once been. Bobby suffered from severe depression, and that just made it worse. He couldn’t afford to just quit his job since he hadn’t worked at Roan long enough to have much severance. And then he was gone. He couldn’t take it anymore.” Mindy wiped the tears off her cheeks. “John and Amy came to the funeral, and I was cordial. But I’d only spoken to her a handful of times since, until Madison went missing.”

  “Did she ever talk about John hurting their daughter?” Nikki had suspected Mr. Vance had died by suicide, but how much of his decision could be attributed to the secrets he might have kept for John?

  “My God, no. John Banks is a lot of things, but he loved Maddie like his own. She called him Daddy and thought the sun rose and set on the man.” Mindy’s lips pressed into a tight line. “But you said he hurt Amy, and I never would have imagined him doing such a thing. Why do bad things always happen to good people?”

  “I wish I had an answer,” Nikki said. “Can you think of any place John might have taken Bailey?”

  Mindy twisted a stray sweater thread around her finger. “Well, the boys always liked to camp. Fishing, not hunting. My husband didn’t like guns, and John wasn’t going to get that dirty.”

  Nikki glanced at Liam and Miller and knew they were both thinking the same thing. A freezer for the fish. “What kind of fishing? Lake fish? Bluegills, that sort of thing?”

  “Sometimes, but they used to get a charter and go out on Mille Lacs. They wanted to catch the big trophy fish.”

  “That’s up in Aiken County, off Highway 169,” Miller said. “People fish for muskies and walleyes. Big ones in there, too.”

  “Did they stay at any of the resorts?” Little fishing resorts were scattered along 169 all the way into the Boundary Waters.

  Mindy made a face. “They never liked staying in those places. John said they weren’t clean enough. The three of them went in on a cabin just north of Lake Mille Lacs. I don’t know if John still uses it.”

  Nikki looked sharply at Miller, who looked like he’d just won the lottery. “Do you remember where the cabin’s located?”

  “Maybe, if I look at a map. I haven’t been up there in a long time, but all three families took the kids a couple of summers when they were much younger. Bailey wasn’t even born yet.” She glanced from Nikki to Miller. “He’ll be okay, won’t he? Parents are supposed to protect their kids at all costs. John wouldn’t hurt his own child.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Nikki said. “Would you help me locate the cabin? Whatever you can remember will be a huge help.”

  Liam quickly pulled up a detailed map of the area on his tablet. Mindy put on a pair of reading glasses and studied the screen.

  Nikki pulled Miller aside. “He took the girls to the cabin. Is there any chance the security footage from this house and the surrounding ones were altered?”

  “Not according to my tech people.”

  “Liam said the county judge is hedging on the warrant because Roan’s such a powerful company. Can you update him? Maybe he’ll sign the warrant for the emergency exit footage when he learns a child is missing.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Agent Hunt.” Liam’s voice was sharp with excitement. “I’ve got the cabin’s location. We can make it in two hours if we haul ass.”

  Forty-Two

  It felt like they’d been on Highway 169 for days, and they still had at least fifteen minutes to go. “I can’t believe the main route to all the fishing resorts up north hasn’t been widened. Traffic is even worse than it was when I was a kid.” Nikki cut into the left lane and gunned past a slow-moving vehicle.

  “It’s January,” Liam said. “Are all these people ice-fishing?”

  They’d been stuck behind a trailer carrying two small ice-fishing shanties for the past five miles, and passing zones were few and far between thanks to the many curves and villages the road ran through.

  “Probably,” Nikki said. “People love it for some reason. We always came up in the summer.”

  “You and Tyler?”

  The image of Tyler trying to endure the relentless mosquitoes and cleaning fish would have made Nikki laugh if they weren’t racing to save a kid’s life. “God, no. My parents and me. We always came up the last two weeks in August.”

&
nbsp; “What about school?”

  “Minnesota schools start later because of the lake season,” Nikki explained. “Why do you think the state fair is in September?”

  “Makes sense. Where did you go?”

  “A little family-owned place called Satkos on Fawn Lake. My dad went there as a kid, and he knew the owners.” Every year, as soon as August started, Nikki’s mother began to stress about packing and planning for the trip. What should they take from home, and what should they buy from the stores up north? Having enough fish for multiple dinners was never a guarantee, so meals had to be planned ahead. By the time they actually left for the trip, Nikki was so irritated with her mother’s fussing she wanted to scream. They were going on vacation. Why did so many things have to be planned?

  But she understood now. Taking Lacey anywhere for two days meant planning, let alone spending two weeks in the boonies. Nikki wasn’t sure she could manage it.

  “I waited all summer for that trip,” she said. “The same families usually went at the same time every year and stayed in the same cabins. I have a lot of good memories from that place.”

  They’d stopped going the summer before high school. Money was too tight, and the crops weren’t doing well. Nikki had told herself she was too old to go fishing, but she’d secretly been heartbroken. Starting high school had been scary enough, but losing one of the last rites of her childhood made it even worse.

  “Yeah, well the signal through here sucks. I can’t even access public records.”

  “Call the office—”

  “I texted Courtney.”

  “Does she have access?”

  “I gave her my user information.” Liam paused. “Don’t you want his head on a platter? I mean, this guy, he’s done terrible things to you, if he really did kill your parents… How are you so calm?”

  For some reason, Rory’s face flashed through her mind. “I just want justice,” she said. “For my parents. And for Mark.”

  Lake Mille Lacs stretched over 132,000 acres, and most of the private property was only accessible by dirt roads. The lake had only a handful of public access points, and most were shuttered for the winter. The majority of the resorts were owned by people who didn’t live in the area during the winter, but a few, like the one Nikki’s family went to, lived on the property year-round. Just the thought of being shut up and at the mercy of the ice and terrain made Nikki anxious.