The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery

by A. S. Andrews

  As she sent the customer on her way, Ingrid noticed a man looking at her through the glass door. He was standing closer to the window of the antique shop, maybe admiring its wares. Now seeing she was alone, he moved towards the door.

  “Closed,” she said, as he stuck his head in. It was six o’clock. Two minutes past to be precise. She could’ve turned the machines back on, but she felt the workday had reached its natural close, and her energies with it. Her duties were done. She could go home with the leftovers and not make dinner, have a stiff gin and soda and let her emotions tumble any which way they might. She deserved that. She was spent.

  “How can you be closed when I see you just serve them,” the man said.

  Up close she noticed his coat was dirty white wool, some sort of brown and beige pattern that had faded over the years. Hair a tumult of white. He wore green hip-waders and carried a tackle box.

  “I just go home from fishing,” he said. An accent, something Scandinavian. “One coffee. Please and thank.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re closed.”

  The man nodded. He didn’t move.

  Ingrid took her glasses off. Something about the way he stared at her. Lascivious was the word that came to mind, though that wasn’t quite right. Predatory. Like he was enjoying watching her, taking in her vulnerability. There was something of the wolf about him.

  The accent, the look—she realized who he had to be. The man Peter Quayle had been telling her about for years now. The Cover Model Killer. The one who’d--

  “You have to go,” Ingrid said. “Right this minute.”

  The man nodded but still didn’t move.

  “You are the mother, yes? I hear about your family. So sorry.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll be open again tomorrow morning.”

  Again the nod.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. “Maybe I can do something?”

  The man smiled. Broadly. Like it was all a joke. Yellow teeth with a discolored front molar, like a brown kernel on a cob of corn.

  Ingrid launched an empty cardboard tray at him. “Get the hell out of here.”

  The man batted the tray away with his forearm. His laugh was a bark, like a seal’s. He withdrew.

  But still smiling.

  Ingrid watched him through the windows. The man sauntered around the side of the café, waving to her through the window just before passing out of view.

  When he was gone, Ingrid exhaled, not realizing till then that she’d been holding her breath.

  Chapter 9

  The Cowlitz County Coroner’s office had sent the autopsy files for Susan and Andrew Gordon. They were on Jennifer Eng’s desk when she and Nadine arrived back in the office. Peter Quayle was sitting in her chair, reading through one. He dropped it, stood up as they entered.

  “Sorry, Chief,” he said. “I just thought, if there was something I should look out for on my rounds tonight, I should probably familiarize myself.”

  “All right,” Jen said. Quayle had left his mug on her desk. The chief cleared her throat and Quayle turned back, apologized, and retrieved it.

  Once he was gone, she opened up a napkin and worked at rubbing away the condensation ring Quayle had left on her desk.

  “He wants my job,” she said.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Nadine took a seat. “The glamorous places you get to go, the elevated company you get to keep.”

  Jen smiled with no humor behind it. “Peter thinks he deserves to be chief because he’s been here longer. Not realizing that it’s a different job than just being a good officer. And he is that.”

  “Admin is more political,” Nadine offered.

  “It’s more difficult. There’s much less margin for error.”

  “And everyone thinks they can do it better than you.”

  Jen nodded. “No different from being lead investigator.” She turned to the files on her desk. “I should have been present at the autopsies,” she said. “That’s the other problem with being chief—your time is stretched thin.”

  “No sense worrying about it now,” Nadine said. “May I?”

  She read through the report on Susan first. No surprises, no great distinctive clues. The same cause of death in both cases: respiratory failure following laryngeal-tracheal edema. Large amounts of carboxyhemoglobin were present in the bloodstreams of both husband and wife.

  Her phone began playing the first acoustic guitar notes of “Rusty Cage,” the Johnny Cash cover of the Soundgarden song. Nadine had shelled out money for the ringtone. The call was from Jimmy.

  “My ex,” she said.

  Jen nodded without looking up. “If you need some privacy, you can take it in the meeting room.”

  Nadine moved out of the chief’s office, down the hall to an empty room with yellow chairs and a messy bulletin board. “What’s up, Jimmy?” she said. Despite the break, they were close, still friends. More than friends when the occasion arose. Nadine sometimes entertained the thought that one day, when both their careers had settled down, they might start over. It was a pleasant thought to carry around.

  “I’m at your mother’s place,” Jimmy said. He sounded concerned. “Her smoke alarm went off.”

  “Ironic,” Nadine muttered. “Is she okay?”

  “Her stove is ruined.”

  Nadine remembered the melted ladle. “But she’s not hurt, is she?”

  “Nay, she tried to clean it off by heating it up and running water over it.”

  It was hard to judge over the phone whether her ex-husband was genuinely upset at having to assist Nadine’s mother, or merely bemused at the situation. Jimmy Russo allowed his face to handle the subtleties of communication, shading his rather deadpan voice with irony and wit, annoyance or resignation, depending on the context. On the phone, without a visual, he was a mystery, even to his former wife.

  “Did she call you for help?” Nadine asked.

  “She said you were out of town.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Jimmy. Give my love to her.”

  “You don’t understand, Nay. She could’ve hurt herself. The house still stinks of burnt plastic.”

  “I’ll deal with it when I get back,” she said, adding, “Everyone messes up a can of soup now and then.”

  Jimmy sighed into the phone. Never a good sign.

  “I’ll spell it out, if I need to, Nay. This isn’t a onetime thing. Your mother has reached that age.”

  “What age is that?”

  “Where her daughter is supposed to help her make some tough decisions.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Nadine said.

  “How would you know?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “She’s my mother.”

  After they’d hung up, Nadine wondered why she’d said that. Jimmy had basically accused his mother of being senile. Demented. Or at least heading along that road. Her response had been illogical and heartfelt and absolutely stupid.

  She realized later that she hadn’t asked Jimmy how he was doing, how the restaurant was faring with the new Greek place opening down the block. Relationships, she thought. Say what you want about the dead, you didn’t have to worry so much about their feelings.

  Nadine returned to Jen’s office. The chief had a cloth lunch sack open on the desk and was eating from a plastic tub. The smell of oyster sauce hung above the small room.

  “I can order something in for you,” Jen said.

  “Not hungry just yet.” Nadine wiped at her eyes. It was four o’clock. She couldn’t take the I-5 again, not right now. She’d stay in town at least till seven. “Are your parents still alive, Chief?” She didn’t know where the question came from.

  Jen nodded and tapped her chopsticks against the side of the container. “My mother made my lunch.”

  “Does she sign your permission slips for the field trip, too?”

  Jen shook her head and resumed eating.

  “Apologies,” Nadine said. “
I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

  “Comes effortlessly, then.”

  “Sometimes. My mother burned some soup. She may have set her stove on fire. My ex is making it this whole big thing. People just get clumsy, right? That’s not allowed anymore?”

  “Are you worried about her?” Jen asked.

  Nadine thought about it, began to answer, then cut herself off. “She’s strong, she’ll be fine. My ex is making mountains out of mole hills. Back to the matter at hand. There was nothing unexpected on the reports that I saw. How about you?”

  “One small thing. Maybe nothing.” The chief flipped open the report on Susan. “Mrs. Gordon had a tattoo, the inside of her left ankle. The letters R&T.”

  “R for Bobby, I assume.”

  “That’s what I’d guess. But look at the letters.”

  Jen held up a picture from the file. The blue ink on Susan Gordon’s ankle had faded to the color of an old library stamp. “The R and T are slightly different,” Jen said. “The R is more seriffed—more stylized. It looks newer, too. It’s not a perfect match to the T.”

  Nadine squinted. Her reading glasses were in her suitcase in the trunk of the Pilot. Holding the picture closer, she noticed it was true. The R was almost cursive, with a slight flourish at the top left, while the T was more basic. A less assured hand had done the first letter, she thought.

  “Excellent catch,” Nadine said.

  The chief shrugged. “My husband is a graphic designer. I know way more that I want to about fonts and typefaces. Doesn’t help us figure out who T is.”

  “That’s high on our list of I-don’t-knows,” Nadine said. “What we do know is that the CO detector was rigged not to go off. We may differ on how the fumes seeped in there, but it wasn’t a slow leak. It was deliberate, and done by someone familiar with the Gordons and their home.”

  Jen nodded. She lidded the container and slipped it in a drawer. “Where should we start looking for someone like that?”

  “Has the fire department ever been called to the home?”

  “Don’t know but I can check.”

  Jen picked up her phone. Nadine scanned the reports again, and tried not to think of her mother.

  After a short back and forth, Jen put down the phone and shook her head. “No good. There’s never been a call to that residence.”

  “Have you talked with the brother since that morning?”

  “Not since he gave us his statement.”

  Jen found it in the hillock of papers on her desk. Nadine glanced at it but didn’t pick it up.

  “Gary is mechanically inclined, close to the family, and knows the layout,” she said. “Plus he claims to have found the bodies. It makes sense to start with him.”

  “He couldn’t have done this, I don’t think,” Jen said.

  But there was doubt in her voice.

  Chapter 10

  Gary Gordon’s trailer was set up in a camping ground and RV park off Mount Saint Helens Way. A walkway had been carved out of the snow. Bouquets of flowers and casserole dishes with tin foil covers sat on the doormat.

  A woman in a quilted green jacket three sizes too large for her frame worked at clearing the driveway of the trailer next to Gary’s. Her shovel carved into the snow with a pleasant chuff.

  “Not home,” she said to them, pausing as Chief Eng readied to knock on Gary’s door. “I’m gonna bring that mac and cheese in soon’s I’m done. Just so the coyotes don’t get it.”

  “Nice of you to clear his drive,” Jen said.

  “He did it for me last year when my fibro was acting up.”

  Nadine knocked on Gary’s door anyway, waited a minute to make sure he wasn’t home. No lights on inside, curtains haphazardly drawn across the small kitchen window. It was 5:15, already almost dark.

  “What an awful thing to happen,” the driveway shoveller said. “I always say, if the power goes off, you get yourself a blanket, a candle, and a good book. Most folks don’t read anymore. On their phones all the time. Ask me, it does some good for a soul to go without, once in a while.”

  They thanked her. Jen drove on until the lane widened enough they could turn the car around.

  “Gary’s work truck is a flatbed with a red cab,” Jen said. “Castle Rock Truck-N-Tow. It’s hard to miss, so he’s probably working, or caught in rush hour.”

  “He runs the garage alone?”

  “Andrew owns the business,” Jen said. “He did the books. I guess Gary owns it now.”

  “That would be worth verifying against Andrew’s will.”

  “One more thing to ask Gary about.” Jen picked up the receiver. “Bill, Peter, did either of you see Gary Gordon’s tow truck today?”

  “Not today, Chief,” the voice said over the speaker. Nadine couldn’t tell if it was Bill Coker or Peter Quayle. “Want me to put out a BOLO?”

  “No,” Jen said, “Just if you happen to see it.”

  They drove back to the town center. Ingrid’s Café was closed. The sign above the gas station was the only one lit up. Already the sun had dropped, clinging to the edge of a stainless steel sky. Nadine remembered the ruined church she’d seen on her approach to the town. Castle Rock had an air of desolation to it, even apart from the murders of the Gordon family.

  A line of poetry dropped into Nadine’s head. “The governing dark’s begun,” she quoted softly.

  “What’s that?” Jen glanced over at her.

  “A line from a poem. My father taught English literature.”

  “That’s a nice thing to do. Is he retired?”

  “He passed,” Nadine said. “A long while ago.”

  For a moment they were silent. You spend your life investigating death, Nadine thought. Trying to be as impartial, as scientific, as you could be. But your own losses were always there, waiting for you. The governing dark, forever at your back.

  “If Gary’s not around,” Jen finally said, “the next logical person to speak with is Ingrid Moody.”

  Nadine agreed. Jen course-corrected, heading southeast to a strip of two-story residences. Susan’s mother lived in the corner house.

  “Everyone still thinks this was an accident, don’t they?” Nadine asked.

  “We haven’t announced anything else,” Jen said. “It’s not like we get a lot of reporters down here.”

  “That might work in our favor.”

  “You don’t want to tell Ingrid that her daughter might have been murdered?”

  “For now, let’s play it as it lays. See how she answers our questions.”

  Ingrid had no coffee in the house, an irony they would have commented on under better circumstances. She put a kettle on for tea. Her home was small and well-maintained, though the faded red shag carpeting spoke of older, better times.

  Susan’s mother wore a floppy blue bathrobe over a night gown, feet flapping in battered moccasins. She’d wiped her mascara into a black streak that reminded Nadine of the teardrop tattoos common among outlaw bikers who’d shed blood for their club. Ingrid smoked and wiped at tears, and did both freely and unapologetically.

  “Bobby is a good kid,” Ingrid said. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Quiet,” she said. “He hasn’t spoken much. Or eaten. Even Jell-O, the nurse practically has to spoon feed him.”

  “It’s important for us to have an accurate timeline,” Nadine said. “You all spent New Year’s Eve together.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Gordons stayed with you that night?”

  “Susan and Bobby did, yes.”

  “The power was off at their place, but not at yours.”

  “Yes. They’ve lost power before. Once in late November, I think, and then again a few days before Christmas.”

  Nadine made a note to check on that. “Had they owned a generator for a while?”

  “Years. You have to around here.” She looked to the chief to support this. Jen nodded.

  “So it’s safe to say the
Gordons were familiar with how to use one. They knew the dangers of CO fumes. Setting it up inside the house, for instance.”

  “They weren’t idiots,” Ingrid said.

  “Could this have been an accident on Bobby’s part? Could he have gotten cold and turned the generator on?”

  Ingrid stared daggers at her and didn’t answer. The kettle squealed. She stood up to attend to it. Nadine looked around the living room. A photo of Bobby smiled down from the fireplace mantle. A groove on the carpet next to Ingrid’s recliner told Nadine the chair had been recently shifted so the photos weren’t in its line of sight.

  The bereaved woman returned with a chipped teapot on a Coca-Cola tray, three mismatched mugs advertising Delta-Ware Systems, Castle Rock Middle School Stage Band, and the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, respectively. No cream or sugar. Ingrid slung tea into the mugs and left them on the tray.

  “What time did Andrew leave on the 31st?” Nadine said.

  “Sevenish? During dessert.”

  “He and Susan had an argument.”

  “That’s right. He seemed tense all day.”

  “What about?”

  “It’s always hard to tell with Andrew. When he’s upset he chips away at people. Like he’s looking for an excuse to be angry.”

  “How did Susan take it?”

  “She knows his moods. But there’s only so far you can push that girl.”

  Nadine helped herself to a cup of tea. The first sip landed in an empty stomach, and at once she was aware of an acute and growing hunger.

  “Gary stayed with you until after midnight?” she asked.

  “Yes. I was nodding out by then.”

  “How did he get along with his brother’s family?”

  “He loves being an uncle. But he and Andrew—“ Ingrid lifted a shoulder in a fatalistic shrug. “It’s not always good to work with your family. Andrew picked at him, more often than he did anyone else. Gary likes a drink, and Andrew is much more buttoned down. He thought his brother should be more like him. Responsible.”