The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery

by A. S. Andrews

  “Can I speak to Timothy?” Jen asked. Nadine paused her pacing as the chief turned on the speaker and returned the phone to the cradle.

  “Who’s this?” the voice demanded.

  “Jennifer Eng, Chief of the Castle Rock Police Department.”

  “For a minute I thought you were the woman that calls.”

  “Which woman is that?” Jen asked.

  “I have her number here. She’s called for Timothy a few times over the last couple of years. My husband says if she calls again we’ll sue.”

  “How much does Timothy know about his birth mother?”

  “He knows she’s unstable, and he’s got people here who love him.”

  “Can I speak with Timothy?”

  “Not possible,” Mrs. Miller said. “He and my husband have been hunting with some friends in Vermont for the last two weeks. I can get him to call you when he’s home. That should be Wednesday night.”

  “It’s important I speak with him. Susan Gordon and her family are dead.”

  For a second Mrs. Miller didn’t speak.

  “I never wished a bad thing to happen to that woman,” she finally said. “I’ll get Tim to phone you soon as he gets back. Might as well let him enjoy another couple of days.”

  Jen gave the woman her number. “If you or your husband have questions, I’ll do my best to answer.”

  “That’s good of you. Here it is.” She flipped a page. “That woman who called, her name was Ingrid Moody. I think she said she was his grandmother.”

  “Did Ingrid phone multiple times?” Nadine asked.

  “Three, according to the pad we keep by the phone.”

  “And she never spoke with Tim?”

  “Not that I know,” Mrs. Miller said. “Of course, he could have seen the message and called her. I’ll ask him when I see him.”

  Jen thanked her and hung up. She began lacing her boots.

  “Let’s talk to Ingrid,” the chief said. “I’m beginning to think I don’t know anyone in Castle Rock at all.”

  Chapter 47

  Before leaving for Ingrid’s, they checked in on Peter Quayle. He was sitting in the holding cell reading a Rod and Reel, looking tired and uncomfortable. He managed a smile at the chief when they entered.

  “It’s funny,” he said, “I never really appreciated fishing, the art of it, until what happened with Roach. Following him, doing what he did, I guess it just became second nature.”

  “How are you holding up, Peter?” Jen asked him.

  “I’m okay here for a night,” he said. “I understand the position I put you in. It’s not fair to ask a police officer to look the other way, even for a colleague.”

  Nadine shifted uneasily. “Can you tell us anything more about the night of the 1st?” she asked.

  Quayle repeated that he’d been on patrol in the afternoon and early evening. He’d taken his dinner break at the Traveler’s Lounge, gone home after a few drinks, and been in bed around midnight. He lived alone, and couldn’t prove anything more than the fact he’d been at the restaurant.

  “Did Ingrid or Andrew ever talk about Susan’s son Timothy?” Jen asked. “He would be older, around twenty.”

  Quayle shook his head. “I only know about Bobby.”

  “Think about the route you took home from the Lounge that night,” Nadine said. “Anyone you might have seen.”

  Quayle closed his eyes. She began to wonder if he was going along to make up for what he’d done, or simply humoring them.

  “Kelly was on the desk. I remember saying hi and patting that dog of hers. I walked outside to my car and drove straight home.”

  “Anyone on the road?”

  “No,” Quayle said. “It was cold. I hit the sack. Next thing I remember is you calling me to come in early.”

  “All right,” the chief said. “Hang tight, Peter.”

  Outside, Jen said to Nadine, “It pains me to leave him locked up like that. But if the story gets out that we found the rifle at his place, we’ll have to charge him, won’t we? If only to avoid favoritism.”

  “I’m probably the wrong person to ask,” Nadine said.

  The lights were off inside Ingrid’s house. They knocked and waited. After a few minutes, when it was obvious no one was going to answer, Nadine suggested driving around the back. In the alley they found the garage doors unlocked and the station wagon in its place. Puddles of water beneath the tires. It had been driven recently.

  They returned to the front door and knocked again, louder this time. Ingrid finally answered, wearing a robe and her hair in a towel turban.

  “Bobby’s sleeping,” she said. “We can talk in the hall if we have to.”

  Jen asked again where she’d been on the night of the 1st.

  “Bobby went home with Andrew, like I said. I drove Susan home. I watched some TV, cleaned up, and went to sleep.”

  “What time did you get to the café the next morning?”

  “Early. I like to get there before six.”

  “Did you see anyone on your way?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not far to walk. I usually don’t get many customers until seven or so.”

  “Did Susan leave anything here—purse, keys, anything like that?” Jen asked. “A clicker of some sort, perhaps?”

  “She left her purse when she went walking with Gary. She took it when I drove her home.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I remember because I wanted her to take some turkey home. She said that with the laundry, she had all that she could carry.” Ingrid crossed her arms. “It’s been a long day. I hope that’s the last of your questions.”

  “We talked to Lee Miller’s wife,” Jen said.

  Ingrid busied herself re-tucking the ends of the towel around her hair. “Oh?”

  “She says you phoned for Timothy three times, maybe more.”

  “That’s not a crime, is it? I’m his grandmother. I won’t be here forever. He should know his family.”

  “Did Susan know about you contacting her son?” Nadine asked. “Did she agree with it?”

  “It wasn’t her decision to agree with or not,” Ingrid said. “She gave up her rights to be a mother to that child. I never agreed not to be his grandmother.”

  “You fought about that,” Nadine guessed.

  “Susan did a remarkable job of getting her life on track. I didn’t want to upset that. Instead I decided to try to make my own relationship with him.”

  “Is there any way Timothy could be mixed up in what happened to the Gordons?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ingrid said. “You people question me at all kinds of hours, accuse Peter Quayle of everything under the sun. And all the while there’s a known killer in town who you don’t say boo to. I bet if you went through his house you’d find something interesting.”

  “Is that what you were up to tonight?” Nadine said.

  For an instant Ingrid froze. Regaining her composure, she said, “I’ve been here all night.”

  “Your car hasn’t.”

  Again the hesitation.

  “What did you find in there?” Nadine asked.

  “Nothing. I didn’t go anywhere.”

  “If I can guess, will you tell me?”

  A look of suspicion crossed the woman’s face, like it was some sort of joke.

  “A photograph,” Nadine said. “With a family on it. Maybe labelled with the name Rasmussen.”

  Ingrid didn’t have to answer. Her face spoke for her.

  Chapter 48

  There was no way to obtain a search warrant for Karl Roach’s home. Not at this hour. Not off an expression from Ingrid’s face. Not knowing that Ingrid had broken into the house, giving Roach the excuse that anything they might find had been planted. They could only ask him to let them look around.

  Roach refused.

  Pointing at Nadine, he said, “You I asked in before. I show you everything. Now you want me to show it again?”

  “We’ll be very quick,�
�� Nadine said.

  “That old woman is working for you?”

  “No.”

  “You ask her to go in my house when I’m not here?”

  “That’s illegal,” Nadine said, “and I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “I’ve never hurt anyone,” Roach said. After a second of posed indignation he looked away.

  “Did you break into Peter Quayle’s house?” Nadine asked. “There was a photo missing from his room. Of you with a woman and child. Did you take it?”

  “Of course I did not.”

  “Did you plant the gun under Quayle’s bed?”

  “Go to sleep,” Roach said, closing the door on them.

  Demoralized and tired, Nadine asked the chief to drop her at the Lodge. The lobby was dead. Nadine hobbled through the doors and parked herself on the piano bench, in no hurry to take the stairs.

  The door opened behind her. The chief sat down in an easy chair.

  “Play something,” Jen said.

  “It won’t be any good.”

  “Then maybe it’ll help us both get some sleep.”

  Nadine played the melodies to “’Round Midnight” and “Dear Prudence.” Songs she’d learned to impress her parents, stored so deep in her muscle memory they leapt to her fingers. To her credit Jen didn’t patronize her with applause.

  “Without lies,” Jen said, after a quiet moment, “this job would be far too easy.”

  “Are you talking about Ingrid or Roach?”

  “All of us,” she said. “Even you, holding back your theory.”

  “I have reasons.”

  “But we’re running out of time.”

  “Where were you the night of January 1st?” Nadine asked.

  Jen was startled for a second. “At home asleep,” she said. “My shift ends at five, usually. I made dinner and watched some TV, called my son, then went to bed. Where were you?”

  “Helping my ex-husband with a problem at his work. Hoping we’d sleep together soon.”

  “Your back doesn’t prevent you?”

  Nadine smiled. “It just means we have to take our time.”

  She put down the piano cover and stretched, standing up gingerly.

  “If I leave without having solved this, I’ll regret it,” she said. “But it might come to that. Fair warning.”

  “We still have a day,” Jen said.

  “Maybe.”

  Nadine said goodnight and took the stairs to her room. She took two pain pills and stared out the window, watching the lifeless Main Street. It wasn’t snowing, which meant tomorrow would be a good day to travel.

  It was past midnight. Tomorrow was already today.

  The undefeated enemy, the chill

  She made the decision to leave town as soon as it was light out.

  Part III

  The Ultimate Dark

  Chapter 49

  Gary Gordon stood outside his brother’s house—Susan’s house—and brought the bottle to his lips. One mistake and everything was over. If he’d never spoken to her, never set in motion the chain of events—

  A person couldn’t think like that, he reminded himself. That day on the bridge, that woman, Kelso, had told him he wasn’t at fault. Every day afterwards, though, she and the chief found some new way to insinuate that Gary was culpable.

  And maybe he was.

  The amount he drank, the places his mind went when he did—dark, dark places—maybe he’d done it and didn’t remember. Was that possible? A blackout situation?

  What did he really remember of that night?

  Driving to clear his mind. Parking and watching the house. Was it so farfetched that he’d taken Andrew’s keys from the wall of the shop?

  He hadn’t. The keys had still been on the board of the shop.

  Tipping up the mouth of the bottle, he squeezed its plastic sides until the last of the vodka was in his throat. No driving tonight. No anything. Hopefully no thoughts of his brother and Susan and their perfect family, sleeping amidst a cloud of invisible poison. No memories of carrying Bobby from that bedroom, his lungs feeling like they’d burst.

  No rejection. No shame.

  The thought of nothing was welcome to him.

  Kelly Wells had been surprised when the police chief had accompanied her guest into the front room. She’d heard them talking as she took her nap on the cot in the back room. Nero had scratched at the door, but then gone back to sleep.

  Nadine Kelso played piano with a delicate touch. Which just went to show, folks could always surprise you.

  Like Andrew.

  If he hadn’t started swinging by the Lounge for a drink, they might never have struck up a conversation. He’d been funny, handsome. Older than her by almost ten years, but boyish in a way. And what did age matter, anyway? Her guest was even older than Andrew, and if anything it made Nadine Kelso dignified.

  In Andrew’s case, Kelly had found it idle fun to talk with him. He was married, after all, and had a family. Why couldn’t the two of them be friends, without anything further to it?

  She’d gone over to his house expecting a proper meal and an enjoyable conversation. More than anything else, she missed her mother’s cooking, missed sitting in a dining room, smelling kitchen smells. The meal with Andrew hadn’t gone that way. He had made the meal seem furtive, as if they were meeting behind Susan’s back. Their conversation had turned unpleasant. Kelly had turned him down, and soon after his phone had rung. Something to do with his kid, she surmised. After he’d hung up, he’d been curt to the point of rudeness, practically ordering her out of the house.

  So she had left. Angry.

  Andrew Gordon could be an odd, unpleasant man. She wished she’d found that out before agreeing to have dinner with him.

  Nero was whining in his sleep. Kelly opened the door to the office and prodded the dog awake. He promptly sat up, licked his chops, then settled back down to sleep.

  She wished she could sleep, too, and forget about men and their awful ability to surprise.

  Peter Quayle had read the fishing magazine twice through, even the classifieds. The guard didn’t answer when he asked for something else. Probably having a smoke, Peter thought. He’d done cell duty before. It was thankless, especially at night.

  With nothing else to do and sleep unwilling to come, his fingers tore at the corner of the magazine’s cover. The glossy paper easily ripped, and soon he’d made a long tendril, like hair. Then another.

  How had things gotten this bad? He’d been discovered. But what exactly had he done that was so wrong? Point out the very real threat of a suspected killer. Taken steps—some extreme, admittedly—to get the town to acknowledge the danger lying in wait.

  Now the Gordons were dead. His ally, Andrew, and the daughter of his friend. All because of this demon. That’s what Karl Roach was, what he had to be. Some satanic thing sent up to earth to torment Peter Quayle.

  Was he losing his mind? Roach was only a man. A clever, lucky, ruthless man. What old-time cops would call a wolf—a predator that stalked the flock of townspeople, preyed on them, unless a sheepdog stepped up to protect them.

  The sheep fear the sheepdog. Sometimes see him as no different than the wolf. Until the wolf attacks them.

  It was awful to think that if he’d waited for Roach to strike, he wouldn’t find himself in prison right now. Stripped of his status as a peace officer—a sheepdog—and unable to save the people he wanted to protect.

  Roach had played things masterfully, set up him as a lunatic. And to be fair, Peter had given him ammunition with that sign. He’d been so sure Roach’s judgment was at hand. That this new year would see that menace locked up. Where had that confidence come from?

  From the resolution he’d made himself. No matter what. In many ways that sign had been for him much more than for Roach. It was his mission statement, to prove the domain of law covered all of them.

  To the ends of the damned earth.

  Looking around the cell, Peter Quayle had to admit t
hat if this wasn’t the end, it was close.

  It didn’t seem like the old woman had taken anything. Karl Roach closed the door of the basement, wondering what it was she’d been hoping to find. Did she think he was stupid enough to leave evidence behind of his work?

  Roach opened his closet and shoved aside the pile of boots, sandals, and laceless shoes. He worked his thick, yellow nails under the edge of the floorboard. The woman hadn’t been here. He could tell from the smear of road salt he’d placed near the edges of the board. Still intact. The board slid up easily.

  Beneath it, amidst the joists of the floor, was a small automatic pistol, a Walther. He’d taken it from a neighbor in Spokane, almost a decade ago. It hadn’t been cleaned in years. The cloth he’d wrapped it in was undisturbed.

  A time was coming when he’d have a choice to make. Even with Peter Quayle seemingly out of the picture, Roach had to admit that things were beginning to unravel. He’d been so quiet for so long, and now this business with the Gordon family threatened to force him to the surface.

  It was a shame. Castle Rock had seemed like the type of place he could happily disappear into. Hadn’t he earned that? Wasn’t he entitled to some peace, after being hounded by that reckless cop? He’d done things that were undoubtedly wrong, but in his mind he’d paid for them with years of looking over his shoulder.

  Years.

  New Year’s Eve had changed everything. Up until then, all he’d wanted was peace, fishing, anonymity. Now his hopes were beginning to slip away. Soon he’d have a decision to make. He feared that Seattle woman would force him to it.

  Roach stared at the gun, wondering if the ancient ammunition would even fire. The cartridges for the rifle had. Both of his rifles. That was a positive sign. You had to stay positive, especially in times like these. Otherwise the darkness would own you.