Vanessa Gray Bartal - Lacy Steele 07 - Icy Grip of Murder (4 page)

Lacy sat on the bed in the dingy
hotel, shivering. Back home the weather had been autumnal. Here it was well
below zero with giant drifts of snow everywhere. The heater in the small motel
room was putting out a lot of air, but she still couldn’t get warm. She
suspected, though, that her shaking had more to do with exhaustion and information
overload than freezing temperatures.

She had been up since the wee hours
of the morning in order to catch the first flight. By the time she arrived in
Minnesota, she was already
travel
weary and tired and
the day had just begun. Next she had to rent a car and find a place to stay, no
easy task in a town so remote and tiny. There were two motels—she chose
the best, which wasn’t saying much. At least the heater worked and had the
possibility of eventually making her warm, or so she kept telling herself as
she looked at the yellowed walls and sagging beds.

When she was finally settled, she
went to the jail where Michael was being held, but she wasn’t allowed to see
him. Instead she was ushered into an interview room with one of the officers
who had come to arrest him. His name was Ted Anderson, one of four Andersons
she had encountered since she arrived in town. She had no idea if they were
related or if the name was that common here. They looked alike, but that could
be due to the Scandinavian ancestry on display. Everywhere she went she was
greeted by tall, solid figures with blue eyes and light hair. Her town wasn’t
incredibly diverse, but it was a melting pot compared to Wetherby, Minnesota.

“Good afternoon, Miss Steele,”
Officer Anderson had started.

Was it only the afternoon, Lacy
wondered.
But then she remembered the time change. “When can
I see Michael?”

“Soon,” he said, sounding vague. “I
thought it was important for you to have all the information available about
your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said.

“Partner then, whatever.”

She didn’t bother to correct him.
Her friendship with Michael was none of his business. At that point he pulled
out a thick file and set it on the desk between them. “Is that his case
folder?” she asked.

“This is everything we have on him
going back to his fourteenth birthday.”

“I thought juvenile records were
sealed,” she said.

“This isn’t CSI Las Vegas. This is
Wetherby, Minnesota. We’re lucky to have typewriters. There’s no such thing as
‘sealed’ here. Every handwritten note that’s ever been made about Michael Smith
is in this folder.”

“Smith?” she said. He smiled
knowingly, self-satisfied that the name had surprised her.

“What’s he been calling himself?”
he asked.

“Michael O’Donnell,” she said.

The officer shook his head. “That
sounds about right. He would choose something interesting, something ethnic.
The man’s a profiler’s dream, if only we had the budget for such a thing.
Without said budget, we’ve had to do our best to figure him out on our own, no
easy task, I’ll tell you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you
mean,” Lacy said.

“Maybe it would be easier if you
tell me what you think you know about the man,” he said.

“I know he came from here, he told
me that much. I know he lived in Ireland until he was five. I know he was accused
of a murder he didn’t commit.”

“He was adopted and raised here his
entire life until he disappeared and ended up in your community. When he was
five, his adopted parents died in a car accident. Michael somehow survived. He
was a cute kid, and several people wanted to adopt him. But by the time a
search was made for a proper guardian and the legal wheels stopped turning, he
wasn’t so cute anymore. He was put in the system and moved from home to home
until he eventually ended up in a group home. Some call it an orphanage, but
that has an ugly connotation. It was a good place run by good people. Anyway,
somewhere along the way, Michael discovered a gift for stealing things. From
there he moved on to burglary and finally car theft. That was his first arrest
when he was fourteen.

“The judge was a soft touch and
gave him probation with the admonition to get his act together. Michael
promised that he would, although the statement had a different meaning to him.
Instead of getting on the straight and narrow, he just got better at committing
crimes. Most of the pages in this book are things that we knew he did but could
never prove. Some of them were harmless pranks, such as freezing the police
chief’s car in a giant block of ice. Some of them were not so lighthearted.
We’re still trying to figure out how a sixteen year old robbed the bank. He
only got a few hundred bucks, but the fact that we could never pin it on him
was galling, as you can imagine.

“During this time when he was
perfecting his technique, he gained a few followers. They became a little gang,
but the problem was that they were likable. It was very much a Robin Hood
situation. To the outside observer, it seemed that we mean police officers were
persecuting this harmless group of well-behaved kids. We knew the truth,
however. All the little things that were going missing in town, all the petty
thefts, annoying vandalisms and pranks were because of Michael and his gang.

“So you can see that we had a
fairly contentious history already, and the kid wasn’t even out of high school
yet. The real irony here is that he was a smart kid, good student, talented
musician, and star hockey player. He could have gone places. Instead he
graduated and stayed here, annoying us for the sake of annoying us, it seemed.”

“Pardon me for interrupting, but I
still don’t see how any of this is leading up to murder,” Lacy said.

“Don’t you? The pattern is clear to
me. Smith’s crimes grew in nature, the way that tends to happen with all career
criminals. In fact, if I were you, Miss Steele, I would call home and ask for a
money count. You might be surprised by how much is missing.”

Lacy’s only response was to frown
at him. He shrugged and continued.

“Anyway, I mentioned his gang. Most
of them were flunkies who never got it together as well as Michael. Most of
them we pick up on a regular basis. Their records are now bigger than his, so I
guess he can be proud of that. There was one, though, who had what it took.
Jenny could have gone big time, if she had lived that long.”

Lacy remained
quiet.
The officer arched an eyebrow. “No comment?
Too
painful to hear about a rival?
Believe me, I’m doing you a public
service. Michael has always had a way with the ladies, and Jenny was no
exception. It was actually sort of disappointing when we got access to her computer
records. He was pathetic there at the end, begging her not to break things off.
Then she did, and he killed her.”

“What proof do you have?”

“We don’t need proof. We simply need
enough evidence to present to the court.”

“Fine, then what evidence do you
have?” she asked.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he
said.

“But you were at liberty to divulge
everything else about his life to me,” she said.

“Like I said before, public
service.”

“I have to say, Officer Anderson,
that this sounds an awful lot like a vendetta.”

He didn’t like that. She could tell
by the tightening of his lips and eyebrows. “See for yourself. If you see one
thing in here that contradicts what I’ve told you, I’m happy to take it all
back.” He slid the large folder to her and left. After returning a minute later
with a cup of coffee for her, he left her alone again. Lacy immediately flipped
to the back, but there was no mention of the murder. Instead the folder read
like what it was: a sad journal of an orphan’s
descent
into crime. Lacy had looked at every page, sometimes skimming when her eyes
blurred from sleepiness.

When she finally finished, it was
night and most of the staff had left for the day. Her request to see Michael
was denied. Dazed and defeated, she returned to the dumpy hotel where she now
sat staring into space, trying to process it all.

She knew, of course, that Michael
had edited parts of his life. But she had no idea the extent to which he had
concealed things. He had told her he was Irish.
Lie
number one. He had told her that he traveled the country like a troubadour. Lie
number two. He had alluded to the fact that he had a shady past. That part
wasn’t so much a lie as a gross concealment of the truth. Michael’s criminal
history read like a handbill for a play about a juvenile Bugsy Malone. It was
clear from the notes she had read that he had orchestrated multiple crimes and
been too clever to get caught. Who was he, really? What had brought him to her
town? Was it, as he said, a chance for a fresh start? And what of Jenny? Who
had she been?

Until now, the dead woman had been
hypothetical. Now she was real, and a misguided orphan, too. If Michael hadn’t
killed her, who had? And why? Lacy realized she had mentally included an “if”
and shuddered. Michael hadn’t killed anyone. She may have been misled on the
facts of his life, but she wasn’t misled about his ability to take another
person’s life. Was she?

A heavy knock sounded at the door.
She jumped, staring around the room in confusion. Had she nodded off? She
didn’t think so, but her mind felt foggy, as if she had just been asleep. She
scrubbed her hands over her face to provide a bit of stimulation and went to
answer the door. Belatedly she realized she should have checked the peephole
before she answered, but it didn’t matter. The face on the other side was
familiar.

“Jason!”

He didn’t speak, and she realized
he couldn’t; his teeth were chattering too hard. She reached out and plucked
him inside. “Where is your coat? It’s like thirty below out there.”

“F-f-forty,” he said, attempting to
chafe warmth into his arms with stiff, blue fingers.

Lacy ushered him further into the
room, pushed him to a sitting position on the bed, and wrapped him in a
blanket. “Why aren’t you wearing your coat?”

“I stuffed it in my suitcase, which
the airline assures me has been hopelessly lost.” He pulled her into his lap
and pressed his face to her neck. She resisted the urge to wriggle away from
his coldness.

They sat in silence until warmth
began to creep back into his appendages, and then she spoke. “Why are you
here?”

“Because apparently I love you
enough to brave the arctic tundra with no coat. What is wrong with this place?
It’s only October.”

“It’s northern Minnesota,” she
reminded him.

“I know they have harsh winters,
but it’s
October
.”

“I’ll be sure and tell the next
weatherman I see,” she said. She was so delighted to have him there that she
felt almost giddy. Though she had been prepared to brave the ordeal on her own,
now that he was there, she was ecstatic that she didn’t have to. She kissed
him. “I hate it when we argue.”

“I didn’t like how we left things,
either. But, babe, if we never argue, how will we ever make up? Do you know
that the quickest cure for hypothermia is body heat?”

“I think you’re opportunistically
manipulating survival facts,” she said.

“Let’s check and see,” he said. His
lips migrated back to her neck as another knock sounded on the door. “Did you
order room service?”

“Does this look like the type of
establishment that has room service?” she asked. She eased off his lap. He
followed her to the door, sighing in impatience when she forgot to check the
peephole again.

He glanced through it with an,
“Oh,” of surprise and opened the door. “Tell me this isn’t a fugitive
situation.”

“No, as it turns out, high-priced
lawyers really are worth their weight in gold. I’m out on bond,” Michael said.
“And since my assets are frozen—literally and figuratively—I have
nowhere else to go. Can I come in?” His glance fell uncertainly on Lacy.

“Yes,” she said, but for some
reason it also came out sounding like a question. He eased past Jason who shut
and locked the door. An awkward silence fell over the trio until Jason broke
it.

“I’m starving,” he said. “Where is
there to eat in this town?”

“Nowhere, at least not this late.
The sidewalks roll up at six,” Michael said.

“Six?” Jason repeated.

“It gets dark at three,” Michael
said.

“No wonder you became a criminal
here,” Jason groused.

“It’s fine. Grandma sent plenty of
food for all of us,” Lacy said.

“Bless her,” Jason said.

“Your grandmother packed you food?
Did she think you were going to fat camp?” Michael asked.

“She fears lutefisk,” Lacy
explained.

“Wise woman.” He plunked onto one
of the beds while Jason landed on the other. Lacy rooted in her suitcase,
displacing clothes to get to the hefty food stash. Her room had a microwave,
another point in its favor. She put a container of lasagna in to heat, but
Jason couldn’t wait. He carried her suitcase to the bed and began rifling
through.

“Oh, man, look at all this stuff,”
he said. He selected a container and began noshing.

“You’re eating cookies,” Lacy
informed him. “With raisins. You hate raisins.”

“Hungry,” he said and continued
eating.

The timer on the microwave dinged.
Lacy retrieved the dish and three plastic forks. Her grandmother had stocked
her with utensils, but not plates, probably presuming she would eat from the
containers since she was supposed to be alone. They ate in silence. When they
were finished, they took turns in the bathroom. Jason was the last to go in,
leaving Lacy and Michael alone.

“Michael, we need to talk,” Lacy
said. She was lying in one bed and he was lying in the other.

“All right,” he said, sounding
resigned.