White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller)

by Danielle Girard

  “Derek Hudson is dead,” Vogel said.

  “One of the victims ID’d the body,” Ross said. “Hudson kept the girls blindfolded, and when they weren’t, he wore a mask—Casper the Friendly Ghost, if you can believe it. Luckily, one of the girls had gotten a look at him, so she was able to confirm that the dead man was their captor. The monster was dead; that much we knew.” Ross sounded relieved.

  “But if this is someone copying his work, then maybe he’s chosen strangulation to emulate Hudson.” She looked to Gary Ross.

  “Only one girl died in captivity in Hudson’s cabin. Hudson kidnapped five in total. Another girl died during the escape, but that first one. . . I believe it might have been blunt-force trauma that killed her,” Ross said. “Can’t believe I don’t remember.”

  “It’s something to consider,” Davis agreed.

  “I can check,” Ross said. “From the coroner’s report, it looks like Abigail Jensen also bled a fair amount before the asphyxiation,” he added.

  Kylie glanced at him, then back to Davis. So they were still sharing everything with the FBI guy. “Could they get anything from the prints on her neck?” she asked.

  Davis shook his head. “No. The killer wore gloves.”

  She would read the full report later. She glanced at her screen, where Sarah Ollman’s email attachment was still opening. Wi-Fi in the department was from the Stone Age. “Any luck tracking down the caller who said she’d seen Larson driving around at two a.m.?”

  “No,” Davis admitted.

  The call was the only real evidence they had that Iver Larson might not have been at home when Jensen was killed.

  “What about the gun Sullivan collected at Larson’s?” she asked.

  “Some partial prints. Only ones we could identify belong to Lily Baker.”

  “Is the gun registered?”

  Gilbert shook his head.

  Maybe Baker had tried to get it away from her attacker. Or maybe it was her gun. Kylie thought about her roommate’s text. Lily Baker had been in the hospital on Thursday morning. Like she’d had an accident, Amber’s message said. A car accident?

  “We’ve got the stuff we collected from Larson’s truck,” Gilbert said, piping up from the far end of the table. “No results yet, though.”

  “I didn’t realize we were issuing a warrant for his truck,” Kylie said, a rush of heat rising up her neck.

  “We found some interesting stuff there,” Davis said, nodding to Gilbert. “You collected it, Carl. Why don’t you tell us?”

  “First off, Larson had just washed the truck, so who knows what we might have lost.” He leaned back in his chair, posing like a long, thin version of Vogel. “I collected fiber and blood from the front seat. Then I found these in the crossover toolbox in the bed of Larson’s truck.” Gilbert wheeled his chair until he was beside Kylie, his shoulder almost touching hers. On the screen of his phone was a pair of women’s suede boots.

  “Those are Abigail Jensen’s?”

  “Not sure yet,” Gilbert said. “But they’re the right size.”

  “He went to the trouble of washing the truck but left the victim’s shoes in the truck bed,” Kylie said. “That make sense to anyone?” No one responded.

  Just then, the first image from Sarah Ollman filled the screen. Sarah Ollman stood beside a man in a Def Leppard T-shirt. In place of his face was a black circle.

  “What the hell?” Vogel asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “She’s trying to hide the identity of her boyfriend,” Kylie said. She scrolled to the next picture, then the next, looking for Abigail Jensen in the images. Three pictures later she saw the same T-shirt on a man at the edge of the image. She recognized him as one of the bartenders they’d interviewed after Jensen had been found.

  Davis pointed to the man in the T-shirt. “This must be Sarah’s boyfriend.”

  “He’s a bartender. Kevin something,” Gilbert said.

  “We’ll deal with Kevin later,” Davis said.

  They huddled around Kylie as she flipped through the images. Black circles replaced faces on the bodies of several young women Kylie assumed were Sarah’s teenage friends. The bartender was in at least a half dozen of them, his face exposed. Either Sarah Ollman was an idiot or she thought Kylie was. Lucky for Sarah, Kylie had bigger fish to fry.

  She kept clicking through the images until she saw one that took her breath away.

  A man stood in the parking lot, his hand extended, his face twisted with anger, his right hand a bunched fist. His left held tightly to a thin female wrist. Along the edge of the image was the sliver of a woman’s profile, a nose and a wave of hair—blonde hair like Abigail Jensen.

  The furious face belonged to Iver Larson.

  CHAPTER 34

  IVER

  Iver Larson opened his eyes and scanned the unfamiliar room. The smell, the sounds—he knew in a moment he was in a hospital. A sudden surge of adrenaline drew him upright. He couldn’t be back in the hospital.

  “You’re okay.”

  He turned, expecting to see his ex-wife’s face. But the woman beside the bed was Lily Baker. He thought immediately of the man, the attack. Had he come back? Had Iver been knocked out? He recalled waking on his floor. Lily had been there . . . and someone from high school he’d barely recognized, wearing a police uniform.

  “What happened?”

  “You had a seizure.”

  He shook his head and rubbed his face. His skull pulsed with a dull ache, like he’d hit his head on something the day before. Maybe he had.

  Lily rose from the chair and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you have seizures often?”

  “Never.” He adjusted the blanket around his waist, unsure exactly what he had on beneath the covers.

  “The doctor should be back soon,” she said. “What do you remember?”

  Iver tried to think back. He’d been working on the bar receipts. There was money missing: $700 over the past five days. He’d wanted to send Mike a text about it. He’d walked out of his home office to look for his phone.

  “Iver?”

  “I came into the living room for my phone . . . next thing I know, I saw you and that cop. He looked familiar.”

  Lily shook her head. “Who?”

  “The cop. He was in our class, I think. Or maybe the class behind us. Played soccer.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Iver clapped his mouth shut. “Sorry.”

  She started to stand, and he took her hand, then released it when she turned back. An awkward beat passed between them. “Thanks for coming to the hospital,” he said.

  “Of course. I wanted to—”

  The door opened, and a woman in a white coat entered the room. “I’m Dr. Prescott.”

  Iver had thought he knew every doctor in a two-hundred-mile radius, but Prescott was not familiar.

  “I joined the hospital team here a few months ago,” she said, as though she’d read the confusion in his face, “but I was able to pull your chart and look at your history. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” he said. But he wasn’t fine. In only a few minutes of consciousness, the hairs on his neck had stood on end. The way the doctors spoke, the patronizing looks that were both confident and worried, the clipboards, the white coats with their names stitched in blue—all of it made him crazy.

  “Iver?” Lily prompted.

  He shook his head. “Sorry?”

  The doctor approached and used the penlight and stethoscope. She asked about his head and the seizure. “You’ve never had a seizure before?” she asked, though he’d already answered this question.

  “Never,” he repeated.

  “But you live alone?”

  Iver opened his mouth to reply.

  “I told her,” Lily said.

  “Right,” he confirmed. “You’re saying I might be having seizures without knowing?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Your girlfriend was able to get a list of the medi
cations in your house.”

  Neither of them bothered to correct the doctor, who pulled a printed paper off her clipboard and handed it to him. “Can you confirm these medications?”

  Iver scanned the list. For vision issues, for headaches and migraines, for the nausea caused by the migraines. Medications he’d been prescribed right after the accident—for cognition and memory issues, for motor-systems deficits, for pain management; he also had antipsychotics for sleep disturbances, anticonvulsants to manage the panic attacks, and antidepressants for the obvious reasons. All of them right there in black and white. He was a walking pharmacy.

  “I don’t take most of these anymore.” He glanced sideways at Lily, who was watching him.

  The doctor looked at her, too.

  “Should I leave?” she asked.

  He shook his head and looked to the page, pointing at the medications as he went down the list. “I still take Imitrex for the migraines when they happen and the Wellbutrin and the citalopram, and occasionally Zofran for nausea. I think that’s it.”

  “So you’re no longer suffering from sleep disturbances?”

  Sleep disturbances was a mild way of describing the nightmares he’d had upon his return from Afghanistan. “Correct.”

  “How long ago did you stop that medication?” she asked.

  “Probably almost a year. Maybe ten months.”

  “And there’s nothing else you’re taking that isn’t on this list?”

  “I take Advil and occasionally NyQuil, but I haven’t taken either in weeks.”

  “That’s it?” the doctor pressed.

  He raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor.” He might have sounded sarcastic, but Prescott didn’t seem to notice.

  She took the list back and stared at it again. “How about recreational drugs?”

  “None,” he said. “Never.”

  “And no prior seizures,” she said again.

  Iver didn’t answer. How many times did he have to tell her? It was like she was waiting for him to change his mind.

  “What about memory loss?”

  Iver froze. His eyes tracked to Lily, who seemed to flush. Her gaze shifted to the ground.

  He did have memory loss. Would that be related to his seizure? But the memory loss was Wednesday night, and the seizure had happened Friday. A punch of terror struck him. What if he was developing new symptoms? The doctors had told him that his brain would change, that his pain might go away and his vision might steady, even off the meds. But what if the opposite had happened? What if his brain was getting worse?

  He looked at Lily, who nodded.

  “Actually, I did have some memory loss,” he admitted finally.

  “And when did that start?”

  The room shrank, and his breathing grew rapid. “It was maybe one time for a few hours, earlier this week.”

  Lily watched him, but he focused on the doctor.

  Prescott flipped through the pages in her file, shifting them around and making “hmm” sounds. Finally, she met his eye again. “I’m just looking at the blood work we did. The spike I’m seeing would explain the memory loss and the seizures, but it doesn’t make sense with the medications that you’re taking. There had to be something else . . .” She cocked her head, appearing to study him.

  “Booze?”

  She frowned.

  “Alcohol. I had a few drinks.”

  She shook her head. “Even a bender wouldn’t cause these tox screens.” She smiled like this was a joke.

  He didn’t tell her that it had been a bender, that recently every night was a bender.

  “And nothing else you’ve taken?” the doctor asked.

  “Nothing else,” he said firmly.

  “I’m afraid that can’t be the truth,” the doctor said. “There has to be something else. Is it possible that you took something without knowing what it was? Did a friend give you something? A candy or piece of chocolate? Anything suspicious?”

  He wasn’t a damn kid. Of course he hadn’t eaten candy from a stranger. He’d opened his mouth to respond when a hard knock sounded at the door.

  Iver sat up with a silent prayer that his mother hadn’t gotten wind of this. She’d done enough worrying about him for a lifetime. He was grateful that his mother had come down with a cold and canceled her visit. Maybe the cold would keep her in bed for a few days, prevent her from learning about the dead woman. But what then? She’d hear eventually.

  The woman who entered the room was not his mother. It was Detective Kylie Milliard, followed by Carl Gilbert.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” the detective said to the doctor. She obviously didn’t care that she was interrupting him in a hospital bed.

  Lily stood quickly, as though she were the one being summoned.

  “I’m not here for you,” the detective said. “But just for the record, you lied. You came to the hospital Thursday morning looking like you’d been in an accident.”

  The words came out like a shot in the dark. Iver almost told the detective to leave, but he caught the fear in Lily’s eyes.

  “A car accident?” the detective pressed.

  Lily’s complexion flushed, and she gripped her hands together like she was praying. Iver tried to sit up in the bed. What the detective was saying was true. Why hadn’t she told him?

  “You weren’t with Iver the night Abby Jensen was killed, were you?”

  “I—” Lily’s gaze bounced between the detective and him.

  Iver started to shake his head.

  “You were in the car with Brent Nolan. Were you in that car when it crashed? Did you go over that pass with him?”

  What the hell was the detective talking about? Iver turned to Lily, waiting for her to tell the detective she was crazy.

  “He died, you know,” the detective went on.

  “I tried to get him out of the car,” Lily said in a rush. “I must’ve been knocked out, and when I came to, the car was on the edge. I tried to wake him up. I barely got out myself.”

  “We can talk about that later.”

  Lily looked confused as the detective’s gaze shifted from her to him. One look at the detective’s face, and a pit formed in Iver’s stomach. They were coming for him. He pressed his eyes closed.

  “Iver Larson, you are under arrest for the murder of Abigail Jensen.”

  “What?” Lily cried out. “That’s impossible.”

  Carl Gilbert stepped forward and read Iver his rights, his words broken as though Iver’s hearing was cutting out. “You have the right to remain silent . . . to an attorney . . . if you cannot afford . . .”

  Iver shook his head. “I didn’t. I couldn’t—”

  “Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them?” Gilbert said, cutting him off.

  “Yes, but—”

  Milliard turned to the doctor. “When can he be discharged?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, glancing at Iver. “Sunday at the latest.”

  “Fine,” Milliard said. “We’ll have to put a patrol officer outside the door for the remainder of his stay.” She turned to Gilbert. “Gilbert, stay here until I can get someone posted to the door.”

  Milliard started to leave.

  “Detective,” Iver called out, his heart slamming against his ribs. She couldn’t just arrest him and leave. He should have a chance to respond.

  She looked back.

  “You’ve made a mistake.”

  “It doesn’t look that way,” Milliard said with a shake of her head.

  He licked his lips, trying to wet the desert in his mouth. “Don’t I at least get to hear what evidence you have against me? So I have a chance to refute it? I’m not a killer.”

  Milliard crossed her arms. “For starters, we found blood in your truck. Blood that matches Abigail Jensen’s blood type.”

  Iver felt himself panic. He wanted to get out of the bed, to cross the room and stand eye to eye with her. The words tumbled around his brain. His truck, her blood.

&n
bsp; “It matches her blood?” Lily asked.

  “Her blood type,” Milliard repeated.

  “What type is it?” Lily asked.

  Milliard frowned.

  Iver watched them. Lily was trying to make a point, but he felt as he had the first days after his head injury. He knew the words, but he couldn’t make any sense of them.

  “Type A positive.”

  Lily swung to face him. “What blood type are you?”

  He shrugged.

  “He’s O positive,” Milliard said.

  Lily shook her head. “Okay, so it’s not his blood. Maybe it’s mine. More than thirty percent of the Caucasian population is A positive. You can’t arrest him on that.”

  “We didn’t,” Gilbert said. “We arrested him because he had the victim’s shoes in the bed of his truck. She was found dead without them.”

  Lily stepped backward as though the words had struck her physically.

  The victim’s shoes. In his truck? Iver shook his head. “That’s not possible. I never met her.” The bed of his truck was open. “Anyone could have put them there,” he added. “My truck is parked outside all the time.”

  “They were in the lockbox,” Gilbert said. “I used your keys to open it.”

  Panic seared his chest and throat. The lockbox. What lockbox? Then he remembered the steel box in his truck, the one he hadn’t used in years. “I never use that toolbox,” Iver argued. “I don’t even lock it.”

  “Well, it was locked when I went to search it. Found the key in your ashtray.”

  He thought about leaving his car in his own driveway, unlocked with the keys inside. “Anyone could have done that. The key is always there, and my truck is never locked.”

  The room was silent.

  “And what about the attack at my house? The man who tried to strangle Lily?” Iver went on, throwing things out. This was wrong. Totally wrong.

  “We don’t have any evidence that it wasn’t you,” Milliard said.

  “Me?” he charged. “I saved her.” He pointed to Lily. “Tell them.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Lily said. “The man who attacked me wasn’t Iver. I know it wasn’t.”

  Gilbert aimed a finger in Iver’s face. “It was you who killed that girl, Larson. We know it, and we have a picture of you grabbing her that proves it. We’re going to get that footage and nail you to the wall with it.”