A Cold Day for Murder

by Leigh Mayberry

  “Can you field any calls tonight from your house?” she asked. “I’m heading back to the department to do some work. I’ll probably be working late again. If you don’t get any calls, stay home. If something comes up, I’ll give you a call. That okay?”

  “Sure, Boss.” He grinned and started the Polaris. “Hey, I got a call yesterday from a pilot says someone was siphoning fuel out of his plane again.”

  Meghan nodded. “When are the next snowmachine races?” While the rest of the world called snowmobiles—well, snowmobiles, real Alaskans called them snowmachines. It was essential to fit in whenever possible, and while it didn’t seem like much, villagers respected when people called them by their proper names.

  “Not for a while, eh?” Winter was officially over. There was still snow lingering in places, and the races were significant when the lakes and rivers were solid ice and opened for racings. People used airplane fuel in their snowmachines because it burned hotter and faster than regular gas. He laughed and swung the four-wheeler around in a U and accelerated out to Wolverine Drive where the oncoming Durango slammed on brakes and blasted a horn. “Sorry,” Oliver shouted, waving to the driver.

  Meghan climbed into the Suburban shaking her head. If her officer was trying for a cool exit, he’d failed miserably. She still needed to address the conversation he started with Vincent, abruptly accusing him of murder as soon as he opened the door. Oliver was a good cop, just needed a little refining.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Meghan switched on the local AM radio station. It was a non-profit station that started broadcasting in 1975. With state and federal grants, the radio station had a range that reached, depending on the weather, all the way to the zinc mines. Even with the limited range, people used it to communicate upcoming bingo events, birthday wishes, and potluck dinners at the church. Once in a while, people sent oral messages to other villages, calling into the station to have the communiqué transmitted a few hundred miles because cell phones didn’t reach outside the city; impossible to use a cell phone without a cell tower nearby.

  That night Meghan had the radio on for background noise and to see if there was any broadcast news of Nancy McCormick’s death. Since the local newspaper intended to run a biography on the woman, thanks to Calvin, there wasn’t any competing news coverage that updated the fact there was still a killer loose.

  The smartphone buzzed on the table next to Meghan while she was concentrating, startling her as she read the text. Smiling, she stood up. Veering toward the bathroom to check her hair, straighten the sweatshirt, pulling it down on her hips, Meghan went to the front door and unlocked it.

  “You know, people are going to talk if you keep coming here,” she said.

  Calvin chortled as he carried a pizza box through the door. There was a bag on the lid and by the smell of it, garlic sticks inside the container.

  “What are you working on tonight?” he asked, seeing the table was covered in the collection of makeshift fingerprints.

  Meghan collected and stored the evidence photographs in her office. The fingerprints were going to yield better results, as far as she could tell. Eating was something that she’d forgotten since the murder. It wasn’t healthy to go without food, forgetting to eat, but Calvin wasn’t helping when he brought an extra-large pizza and expected her to eat it with him. She had to draw the line.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea you keep coming here, bringing me food.” She talked as Calvin went to the small counter where the coffee pot sat, still warm and now empty. He grabbed a paper plate, dropped a slice of pizza on the plate, then used a napkin to pick up a breadstick and put it on top of the pizza. He shoved it at Meghan.

  “You eat; I’ll leave if you want.” He added the last part after a pause that was meant to elicit some guilt from her for bringing more food. He looked at the laptops with the scanner and the collection of fingerprint cards made with packing tape. He lifted one to look at it and brought it closer to his nose to smell it. “This smells like burnt matches.”

  “I had to improvise.” She carried the plate back to the main table where she’d been working. It was already on the plate; she had to eat at least that slice; and the garlic breadstick.

  Calvin placed the card on a stack of similar cards. He looked at the program on the screen of the laptop.

  “You’re checking fingerprints in the national database?” He sat down in the available chair beside Meghan.

  She had to finish chewing, covering her mouth with a napkin before answering him. “I don’t have access to the database. That costs a lot of money. I did download the program to scan and analyze the fingerprint based on known and unknown prints.”

  Calvin slapped his hands together and rubbed. “What can I do to help?” There were two laptops; she downloaded the program on both computers, one for the department and one on her personal laptop for the backup.

  “Officially, there’s nothing you can do.” The pizza tasted great. For some reason, even with the scent of garlic on the breadstick, Meghan could still smell Calvin’s refreshing aftershave. It wasn’t just sleep and food that Meghan had denied herself when she took the job as chief of police.

  “Are you going to say something like I’m a suspect and I’m inserting myself into the investigation because that’s what crazy people do?”

  “Well, maybe not that, as far as I know.” There was a little tiny red flag that went up in Meghan, but it was too hard to see past the hazel eyes.

  “Then let me help. I have great attention for detail, and this looks like something that needs attention. You’ve got two programs here. Did you scan all the fingerprints? I can do that.”

  “They’re all scanned.”

  “Then let me categorize them for you. I see you’ve used a numbering system. You made a map of the apartment. I can make sure they’re matched to the rooms of the apartment.”

  “For someone who is supposed to be a casual observer, you sure are making yourself an obvious suspect.”

  “If you want me to insert myself, I can do that too.” The smile faded. She saw the look change because something in Calvin, the right person that understood someone was dead and this wasn’t a game, that person knew how important it was that she did everything in her power to see the person who killed Nancy was brought to justice.

  “I know this is important,” he started. “I know it feels like you’re against the entire world. You care what happened.”

  “It gets me in trouble.”

  “How can doing your job get you in trouble?”

  “I know, right? But tomorrow morning, the mayor is going to come storming into this office and want to know why I spent town money on a software program for fingerprints.”

  “Can’t be that expensive,” Calvin said offhandedly. The look on her face suggested that he was wrong. “Well, if you get something from all this then it was worth the price you paid for it.”

  Meghan sat back in the chair. One slice of pizza wasn’t filling that hole in her gut, but she wasn’t about to go for a second slice with Calvin sitting right beside her. She finished off the breadstick.

  “I feel like no one wants me to do my job.” Meghan stood, put away the paper plate, wiped her face, and went into the small bathroom to wash her hands. “The detective from Anchorage is indifferent about all this. I talked to him again a few hours ago, and he told me they were doing everything on their end. I don’t even know what that means.” She stood watching Calvin, turned around to look at her from the chair. He was handsome and trying to be helpful, and Meghan knew she only needed one of those at the moment.

  “Let me show you what I’m doing,” she started and retook the seat beside him. The radio station played a mono version of a classic pop song from the 1960s. It wasn’t the kind of music anyone wanted for a montage. Over the next hour, they worked quietly side by side, processing the fingerprints that Meghan collected throughout the apartment.

  There were three prints she focused on after elimina
ting Nancy, Cheryl, and Brian’s fingerprints from the crime scene.

  “So, you’ve got this print here you wanted me to check the others against.” Calvin sat back, pushing away from the table, rubbing his eyes. “This print matches the one in the bedroom.”

  Meghan felt a flash of excitement. She looked at the two prints on the screen. The computer software program put them as matches. There were two different prints from two separate locations. Both match up to the one in the bedroom.

  “Which one are you comparing it to?” Meghan leaned over to look at the laptop screen. She pressed her shoulder against Calvin. She tried to ignore him as she looked at the numbers of the prints.

  Grabbing the note, she used to mark the print locations, Meghan frowned. While she wanted to relay the information to Calvin, Meghan stopped before any words left her mouth. The numbering system didn’t have any names on the list. She omitted names because she wanted to use only a number system to eliminate any chances of bias reporting.

  The individual scan came from the nightstand. She’d lifted it clean of the other overlapping fingerprints of Nancy’s impressions. The labeling system she used had the prints belonging to suspect #2.

  “Is this the killer?” Calvin asked of the 99.3% accuracy of the compared data. The whorls, ridges, and double loops were identical to ones she’d collected from individuals known to Nancy.

  “I—I can’t tell you that,” she said. Her words seem to hurt Calvin. He stood up, moving away from her. She was honest. It wasn’t that it had nothing to do with him. He wasn’t even part of the police department. In some circles, the reporter was the antagonist in the story. Calvin was a misplaced hero, at best. She wanted to explain it wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him, it was a simple fact; Meghan wasn’t sure if the print found on the nightstand belonged to the killer or if it was something else.

  “I need to get going.” He slipped on his coat, gloves, and ski cap. Before he departed, leaving the leftover pizza and breadsticks, he gave Meghan and heartfelt look. “I know you’re just doing your job. I have no right to get in the way, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t worried for you.”

  “Thank you, Calvin. Really, I appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” he said, moving through the small swinging gate, unlocking the door. “I’ll see you later.” When Calvin opened the door, warm air from inside the police station slammed against the wall of ice fog that built up outside. The fog rolled into the waiting area before Calvin slammed the door behind him.

  Meghan went back to the computer. She pulled up the list of suspects. It wasn’t necessary. She used her prints in the system, along with Lester’s, Oliver’s, Nancy’s, Brian’s and Cheryl’s prints as part of the control group. Each of them, including her, was assigned ‘suspect’ and a number. Out of the control group, one of the fingerprints was in a place it shouldn’t be, a member of the control group wasn’t telling the truth about their association with Nancy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The thing about death, whether natural or not, it got in the way, but life went on afterward. Cheryl and Brian had a business to run. They were down a waitress, and people in town deposited money in a tip jar with Nancy’s name on it out of respect. They had to keep working, taking even a few days off put them behind on everything and while they didn’t have competition, people in town still had expectations.

  “What did you find out?” Cheryl asked when she saw Meghan walk through the front door of the café on Wednesday morning.

  The place was full of people, and no one breathed or spoke upon realizing that the chief of police walked through the front door and was immediately called out by the victim’s sister.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?” she asked quietly. Standing at the cashier counter, watching Brian and Cheryl’s expectant faces wasn’t helping the situation.

  “Come on out back,” Brian offered, lifting the counter flap, allowing Meghan to pass through under his arm. She followed Cheryl through the small kitchen to the back of the building where the exterior door opened, and the end of the diner smelled of spoiled garbage from the tall plastic trash cans that lined the outer wall under the awning.

  “So, I wanted to let you know what I’ve been doing the last few days.”

  “John said he saw the lights on the police station most of the nights.” Brian lit a cigarette as he talked.

  Meghan nodded. She didn’t know who John was, but it was no secret that she’d been working late since the murder.

  “I’ve been on the phone a few times with Detective Gregory Anderson. He’s with the Alaska State Troopers based in Anchorage.” She handed Cheryl a sheet of paper with the contact information for the detective and the troopers. “He’s been monitoring the flights out of town. I spoke with him yesterday, and he’s sent the information about Nancy to the Fairbanks trooper branch in case there were any charter flights from town that went there. I think if any trips left here and went to Barrow, we’d know about it.

  “I’ve done some follow-up around town and am in the process of eliminating suspects.”

  “You think the person who killed my sister is still in town?” Cheryl asked. She looked older, worn-down as if age caught up to her in the last few days and added a few more years to her through the bags under her eyes.

  “I can’t comment on that right now. When I know for sure what’s going on, I will let you know. I promise.”

  Brian faced the two women, smoking his cigarette without added to the conversation. He looked more frustrated, almost annoyed at the whole mess.

  “You determined other than the money from the cookie tin, nothing else was missing from your sister’s apartment?”

  “The only thing that I didn’t recognize was the glove on the dresser.” Cheryl had an eye for detail that Meghan liked. Maybe it was woman’s intuition, perhaps it was the fact that Nancy was her sister and she was protective, but the only real item that was out of the ordinary in the apartment was exactly what she brought up.

  “The olive-green glove,” Meghan clarified.

  “It looked like something issued from the army, you know?” Brian added. He’d finished the cigarette and dug into his pocket for the pack again to light another one.

  “I want you both to keep that piece of information quiet. I hope you haven’t mentioned it to anyone else.” The glove was a key piece of evidence. Meghan felt that the moment she saw it, photographed it, bagged it and took it back to the police department to lock in her office. She suspected the instant she saw it that it belonged to the killer. It was a crime of passion, something unplanned, unpredicted. The only piece of evidence left behind happened because someone murdered a poor girl out of spite, jealousy, or rage. That kind of crime was disorganized and often came with a string of mistakes. Robbing Nancy was an afterthought, spur of the moment following the murder. Leaving the glove behind was blind luck on Meghan’s part. She hoped to get it back to Anchorage for DNA testing, but so far, the troopers weren’t taking any physical evidence for the crime.

  Brian and Cheryl exchanged glances. “I told my mother.”

  “Your mother lives in Arizona, right?”

  “Yes, she talked about coming up here.” Cheryl went quiet.

  “She wanted us to buy her a plane ticket to come up here,” Brian added. “I don’t see how that’s going to help anything.”

  “She’s trying to help, Brian.” Cheryl crossed over the verge of tears and had facial tissue handed, tucked into the front pocket of her apron she used to wipe her nose. “I don’t even know if we can afford to bury Nancy. We don’t have the money to get her cremated.”

  “People are putting money in her tip jar,” Brian said. “It’s nice, but…”

  Meghan felt the tugging to avoid the family quarrel that was brewing. Using the excuse of looking at the face of her smartphone, Meghan had something else to do. “Listen, Brian; I got a problem with the starter on the Suburban, think you can take a look at it for me?”
>
  He nodded. “We can walk around the side of the café while I finish my cigarette.”

  “Great, I’m parked across the street.” She looked at Cheryl. Meghan wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of woman. Years in the Bureau taught her to keep a professional distance from suspects and victim families. If her unit supervisor saw her getting chummy with the local newspaper reporter, he’d have shot her with a beanbag round for good measure. She rubbed her glove briefly on Cheryl’s arm because the woman looked as if she was starving for physical attention. “I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

  “Thank you, Chief.”

  “You’re welcome, and it’s Meghan.” Familiarity wasn’t getting familiar.

  She stepped away from the back door of the restaurant and caught up to Brian, walking along the back of the building. Meghan sidestepped to clear the cigarette smoke that trailed after him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Suburban sat catty-corner to the restaurant. Meghan could have parked closer, but she intended to use the disabled vehicle conversation as a subterfuge. She climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door with the window down to talk to Brian.

  He finished the second cigarette, snuffed it out in the gravel under the toe of the work boot. He hadn’t worn a jacket outside; flannel shirt sleeves rolled up on his forearm revealed a tattoo on the inside of his arm just above the wrist. It was muted from age, a somber American flag with a silhouette of soldiers marching.

  “Were you in the army?” Meghan asked. She sat in the truck because she was alone with Brian and had to talk to him about something potentially volatile and since Oliver was asleep at home because it was daytime, Lester was busy with a domestic violence call that came in that morning, and Meghan was on her own when it came to interviewing suspects.

  “Coast Guard reserves,” he said, lifting his arm to show off the tattoo more. He had to raise the folded sleeve to show the coast guard logo above the rest of the symbol. When he dropped his arm again, staring at Meghan through the window of the truck, he breathed through his teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with your truck is there?”