“It’s all right.” Gary stood staring at the fumes dissipating from the mouth of the garage. “Who would do that?”
“That’s what we’ll find out,” Jen told him. “Two questions. First, how did the car get returned to the driveway? Wouldn’t the person have to have a mask like Bill?”
“The engine is already running, remember. Theoretically a person could open the door, drive the car back fifteen feet, walk some distance from the fumes, and from there click the door closed and kill the engine. An average person can hold their breath for half a minute to two minutes. This could all be done in under sixty seconds.”
“But why would they move the car back out to the drive?”
“To put it back where they found it and confuse us, maybe. To make the deaths seem like a generator accident.”
Gary hugged his shoulders and turned away from them.
“Second question,” Jen said. “Why would the back door of the house be unlocked? I assume the Gordons would’ve locked it before bed.”
“I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible Andrew and Susan left it open on purpose. Maybe if they had to refuel the generator, they didn’t want to worry about fiddling with the door. Another possibility is the killer opened it. Perhaps they drove the car inside, then walked through the house, either to take something, or to make sure the Gordons were asleep. Or maybe someone else other than the killer is involved.”
Nadine handed the clickers back to Bill, who bagged them.
“Here’s what I think, though—and admittedly, this is conjecture. I think the call from Ingrid’s house to Andrew was about picking up Bobby. Andrew drove over there in Susan’s Jeep, collected his son, didn’t wait for Susan, and came home. He assumed the clickers were with his wife. It’s cold and he’s in a hurry, and his car is in the shop, so what does he do?”
Nadine paused—a little theatrically, perhaps, but she could almost see the dead man rushing through the empty house, collecting what he needed, cursing under his breath.
“So Andrew opens the garage with the switch on the wall, starts the car and drives it into the driveway, then leaves it running while he re-enters the garage and hits the switch. Then on the way back, he and Bobby go in the front door, leaving the car outside.”
“It’s possible,” Jen said. She asked Gary, “Do you remember if Andrew left that night on foot or by car?”
“I think he took the Jeep,” Gary said. “But I’d had a few drinks by then.”
“He had a spare key, right?”
“Yes.”
“But not a spare clicker.”
“No, Susan had the only one. There’s only one spot in the garage, so Andrew parked his car in the drive.”
“It’s a very clever piece of business,” Nadine said. If Andrew had taken the clicker when he left Ingrid’s house on New Year’s Eve, it must have been stolen from the house or the Jeep. If he hadn’t, someone had taken it from Susan’s purse while she’d still been at Ingrid’s.
Gary looked at the house and winced.
No one spoke after that. All four of them seemed to be feeling the same heaviness. Whoever had killed the Gordons knew their home well enough to use it against them. A murder like this took planning. Deliberation. And rage.
Chapter 29
Ingrid was surprised to see Peter wait his turn. Normally the officer would sidle up to the side of the counter, launch into conversation, and when Ingrid finished the order of whoever was at the front of the line, he’d interject and ask for a double double and a cruller to go. “Police business,” he’d say half-seriously, if anyone gave a look of objection.
Today, though, here he was, waiting his turn like an average joe. Business had subsided after lunch, and only a few people lingered in the café. After placing his order in his usual jovial voice, he slid over to the pickup window and leaned closer.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“It hurts,” Ingrid said. “But I’m coping as best I can.”
“You need anything, just say. I mean anything.”
“Thank you. What kind of progress are you making?”
“The chief doesn’t tell me everything,” Quayle said. “But I heard Bill say that Ms. Kelso had the details of the murder all figured out.”
“That one’s clever,” Ingrid said. “Have you talked to her about your friend?”
Quayle nodded, a sullen look passing over his face. “Tried to last night. You know how people from cities are. It’s hard to get them to see what’s right in front of them. A little more foam, please. Right to the brim.”
“He came by here the other day,” Ingrid said.
“Roach did?”
“He stared at me through the window. I’ve heard you talk about him, but I’d never seen him up close. At the time I was shocked, a little afraid. He left before I finished closing up.”
Quayle swore.
“Peter, do you think I should tell Ms. Kelso about my car?”
Quayle shook his head. “It would only confuse things. ‘Sides, she’s almost on the right track without us saying anything. This is a pure-bred investigator we’re talking about. Sharp as any I’ve seen. I want this done legally. The right way. Like it should’ve been done for the others.”
“How much longer, do you think?” Ingrid asked.
“Days at the most. And then justice for everyone involved.”
Quayle rubbed her shoulder. Ingrid tensed, then allowed herself to accept the gesture as one from a friend. It did nothing to reassure her, though. If Roach did this—and she was far from convinced—why would the chief refuse to interrogate him? Was there any evidence to support Peter Quayle’s assertions?
And yet when she’d seen Karl Roach through the glass, the man had radiated evil to her. Malice.
“If this woman from Seattle decides she doesn’t think it’s Roach, what then?”
“We’ll deal with it when we need to,” Quayle said. “I’d hate to resort to that man’s level.”
But you would if you had to, Ingrid thought. Maybe I would, too.
Since the late afternoon’s trade had all but died away, Ingrid began a top to bottom clean of the kitchen. It had been months since the bowls and trays had been bleached. She’d just rotated the first batch, rinsing and hanging them to dry, when her last customer of the day came in.
She walked out of the back, removing her rubber gloves, and unlocked the door for Kelly Wells. Nero sat flapping his tail against the dry patch of concrete beneath the store’s awning. Normally Ingrid Moody didn’t allow pets into the café, but in the days after the deaths of her daughter and son-in-law, she was still rediscovering what normal was.
Dropping the day’s newspapers on the floor, she coaxed the dog inside and onto them. Kelly took a handful of paper towels and cleaned off her dog’s feet and head. Nero huffed contentedly.
“I’m closed but I’ve got half a pot and a few leftover glazed,” Ingrid said.
“Sounds wonderful. How are you holding up, Ingrid?”
She was sick to death of the question, wanted to spit in the girl’s face. What exactly was she supposed to be holding up? And for whose benefit? Instead she muttered “fine” and poured the dregs of the coffee into a to-go cup.
“I think you’re very brave,” Kelly said. “I admire how you just throw yourself into your work. Sorry if I’m embarrassing you, but I’ve never gone through anything like this.”
“When she was much younger, I watched my daughter sink under heartsickness. I won’t make that mistake, though there are times I admit it would be nice. A body needs to keep moving.” Ingrid tried for a smile. “Like a shark.”
“Are the police making any progress?”
“From what I hear,” Ingrid said. “Peter and the others seem to have a lot of confidence in Ms. Kelso.”
“She’s been staying at the Lodge. Did you know she plays piano? At night, after everyone else is in bed. I don’t know that she sleeps all that much.”
Ingrid began
rinsing the second set of trays, submerging the third into the bleach solution. “I imagine that work takes something out of you.”
“Guess so,” Kelly said. “Sorry for asking so many questions. Like I said, it’s just that I’ve never been around anything like this. I’d like to help if I can.”
“There’s not much a person can do to speed up the grieving process,” Ingrid said. “It’ll hurt for a long time. For always. I’ll endure it the best I can.”
“Oh, shoot.” Kelly blushed. “What I meant was, I’d like to help you clean those pots.”
It was the first genuine laugh Ingrid had enjoyed since January 2nd.
She cleared room for Kelly to rinse and dry while she scrubbed at the older trays, the ones she and Walt had bought when they first opened, which now bore stains and dents and black marks that would never come off. Dented but still employable. Like herself. She should get rid of them—no sense being sentimental—
She didn’t hear the gunshot, only the crunch of the glass in the window facing the parking lot, a wet sound as it embedded in the wall. She paused with the tray in both hands. The second shot smashed out the pane. Kelly screamed and Ingrid felt the girl drag her towards the floor.
For a second they lay there, listening over the sound of running water, the agitated yips of Nero. Suds slithered down the front of the sink. They were hidden by the counter and display. Kelly’s fingers were wrapped tightly around Ingrid’s arm, tight enough to leave bruises.
She waited and then ventured to look over the counter. The feeble gray sunlight was already diminished. Hard to see anything, but the parking lot seemed deserted.
Ingrid snatched Nero by the collar and dragged the startled dog behind the counter. She took up the phone, then realized her gloved hands were still wet, and that she was shaking too hard to dial. She handed it to Kelly and told the frightened girl to call the police.
Part II
The Steadfast Dark
Chapter 30
Jennifer Eng wondered if luck was simply against her.
She and Bill Coker were first to reach the café. Nadine Kelso had stepped out to call her mother, and they hadn’t seen her on their way out of the station. Jen and Bill had made sure Ingrid and Kelly were okay, then Bill had remained with them while Jen walked out into the parking lot to see where the shots had come from.
The parking lot stretched to the antique store. Beyond that the asphalt continued, past a Vietnamese restaurant, past Gary’s garage, all the way to where the street kinked eastward. Jen played her flashlight over the slurry of melting snow, hoping for a clear set of tracks.
The lights in the garage were off. Evidently Gary hadn’t returned to work after assisting the officers at his brother’s house. The edge of the building provided a windbreak, a place out of the snow. Jen turned and looked at the café, maybe three hundred yards back. Not a difficult shot for someone familiar with rifles. Had the goal been only to frighten Ingrid and Kelly? Or had the shooter missed? And how did this connect to the deaths of the Gordons?
Near the corner of the building, Jen saw where water dripped from the roof onto snow, forming a gray puddle of slush. Stirring it with the tip of her boot, she saw something glint, bent and picked it up. A casing for a rifle slug. A dull gray, rather than the more common brass. 7.62 stamped on the butt.
Great, Jen thought. Right now she knew more about the rifle than about the person who’d fired it. But it was something.
Ingrid had no clue who would want to shoot at her. She hadn’t seen anyone suspicious, and had no idea what it could be related to.
“All sorts of people have been coming through the café in the last day or so,” she said. “Some just to gawk. It could be any one of them.”
“But no one specifically jumps to mind,” Jen said.
“No.”
Kelly Wells was more agitated about the shooting. She bit her thumbnail and mentioned that she’d just come by to check up on Ingrid, and couldn’t imagine someone wanting to do this. A dumb prank, maybe? People could be cruel.
Bill volunteered to drive them home and park his prowler outside Ingrid’s house. Kelly would remain in the hotel. Nadine would be there tonight, assuming she was staying another night, and Peter Quayle could check in throughout his shift.
Jen put in a call to the forensic lab in Longview and asked if they could send an evidence collection team. She asked Peter to grab a piece of lumber and a drill on his way over. He showed up twenty minutes later, and together they boarded up the smashed window.
Quayle seemed jumpy, sleep-deprived, and lacking his usual good humor. As they headed back to the station he said, “Chief, we’ve got to talk about Karl Roach.”
She sighed. Roach was Quayle’s pet boogey man. The summer before last, his conduct had come dangerously close to harassment of the man. They’d agreed that so long as Jennifer Eng was his boss, Quayle wouldn’t bring up the man’s name. So much for that agreement.
“You were doing so much better, Peter,” she said.
Jen lengthened her strides, but Quayle kept up, huffing. “If this isn’t his work, I’ll eat my hat.”
“I can’t arrest someone based on you telling me it’s his, quote-unquote, work. That’s not evidence, Peter, and you know this.”
“He owns a rifle.”
“So do I. So do most of us.”
“He won’t have an alibi for tonight.”
“It’s a wonder he hasn’t sued you,” Jen said, stopping in her tracks. “The second there’s some evidence pointing towards him, I promise you we’ll look. But there isn’t. He’s just an old man.”
“Who’s an old man?” Nadine was on her way back from the restaurant, carrying several take-out cartons, along with chopsticks and soy sauce packets.
Quayle said, “I was telling the chief I think this shooting was Roach’s work.”
Nadine nodded and looked at Jen, who impassively said, “He’s a local retiree who was a suspect in a murder case, years ago, in another city.”
“So I’ve heard,” Nadine said.
Jen eyed her subordinate with displeasure, but not surprise. Typical Quayle to spread his theories to anyone who might appear sympathetic.
“All due respect, I’ve been on the job longer than either of you,” Quayle said. “A cop develops intuition. A sense for people. You’re saying it’s all just coincidence, Andrew and Susan’s murder, someone shooting at Ingrid, and this guy living within ten minutes of them? Am I nuts?”
“Biased, Peter,” Jen said. “No one’s saying you’re nuts. Look at the evidence.”
“You and Ms. Kelso have been doing that for days now, and what’s it got you?” A pleading note entered his voice. “Just talk with him. The two of you. I won’t even be there. Talk with Roach five minutes and if you don’t get the same sense I do, I’ll hand you my badge on the spot.”
“That’s not an outcome I want,” Jen said, almost adding, despite what you seem to think. She looked at Nadine, seeing a way out that didn’t involve giving in to her officer. “I’m not going to take part, but I won’t speak for others.”
Nadine was transferring battered prawns into a pile of lo mein. She didn’t look up until her task was complete and she’d finished chewing her first bite.
“I’ll talk with him,” she said, picking up her phone. “What’s his number?”
“He doesn’t have a phone,” Quayle said.
Nadine nodded. “Then I guess I’ll have to drop by unannounced.”
She resumed eating. Jen and Quayle sat down and helped themselves. During the meal, they didn’t speak about the case.
Outside, it had begun to snow.
Chapter 31
Nadine was driving on the side of the river opposite from where she’d walked the previous night. She made the wrong turn twice. With the snow falling, and the streets winding both around the river and according to their own logic, it was difficult to find the avenue that Karl Roach lived on.
The man’s criminal histor
y was long and curious, but not proof positive that he was a killer. Bigamy. Check-passing. Twenty years ago a Karlheinz Rasmussen had fled to Spokane from San Francisco in an effort to avoid paying alimony and child support. His common-law wife had tracked him down there, sued him for money and charged him with assault. Rasmussen fled again, this time to Seattle, where he legally changed his name to Karl Roach. At that point a different woman came forward, claiming he’d choked her after a fight in a bar. Witnesses verified her story, and Roach served a short stint in prison.
When he was released, he found a job working for the owner of a chain of low-rent motels. Seattle and Spokane were both cities on his route. While on paper he was a custodian, in fact he did maintenance work, including electrical and plumbing.
The second of the Cover Model Killings had taken place in one such hotel. It was determined that Roach had a master key to access any room in the building. He had no solid alibi for either date.
Seattle PD had tried to make a case against him and failed. There was circumstantial evidence—Roach was lefthanded, and the ligature mark on the first victim suggested a left-handed assailant; he’d spent time in bars where the victims socialized; a neighbor had seen him burning clothing one night, a week or so after the Seattle killing.
Most curious, though, were the umbrellas.
The victims of the murder in Seattle had been posed in fashionable clothes, the male victim in a top hat and tuxedo pants, the female in a red skirt and blouse. The handle of a cheap tourist umbrella had been looped over her wrist, so the two looked as if they’d been out for a stroll.
The surviving victim in Spokane had claimed Roach had brought a pastel blue umbrella with him to the second crime scene, but had taken it with him when he’d fled. This detail was mentioned only once, and later the witness claimed to no longer remember the umbrella.
The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery Page 13