Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (23 page)

“Are you at home?” he asked without thinking it out. “Doors locked, lights blazing?”

“Worried about me?” she shot back, but under the flippant tone, he thought he caught something else. “Are you at home?” Detective MacIntosh countered, “Lights blazing?”

“Blazing might be an exaggeration. Kitchen light and one small lamp.”

She laughed on a small breathy exhale. “Don’t go macho on me now. I was just starting to like you.”

He liked her too. In the vast desert of sexual loneliness of the past year—longer than that if he counted the insidious slide his marriage had made toward first ambivalence and then acrimony—he hadn’t pursued any kind of a relationship. This seemed like an awkward as hell time to start.

“Macho? Me? I don’t think so. Trust me, I’m probably more scared over what might happen next than anyone else around here, but maybe not for the same reason.”

“I can only imagine.” She paused. “You should have gone back to the motel. I think a good night’s sleep would really help you out.”

A polite way of saying he looked like hell. Okay, he conceded he probably did register on a scale somewhere between haggard and half dead, but the sterility of the motel room hadn’t really done much for him the night before. He was tempted to explain he planned on going back to Milwaukee, but suspected that fell into the “don’t tell” category Alan had cautioned him about. “I appreciate the concern, Detective.”

Another brief hesitation, and she said, “Good night then.”

“Good night.” He flipped the phone shut and rose wearily to his feet. His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as he walked into the kitchen. If it hadn’t been so late when the last technician and police officer left the property, he might even have driven home this evening. However, at least he had the sense to know fatigue, darkness, snow, and a four-hour drive were a bad combination. Besides, the cabin had to be closed up properly, which included draining the pipes and pump, not terribly time consuming but difficult in the dark.

One more night. He could endure one more night.

Tomorrow they could either arrest him, or he was going home.

Chapter 18

Dawn. Quiet as death, cold, snowy, with an icy kiss in the air.

It was time to up the ante. The Hunter moved with methodical care because the ground was slick, the blanket of white snow from the night before pristine and unmarred.

A small sound made him glance up in time to see a startled doe lope off in a graceful bound, her shadowed form fading into the gloom. The drive was long, wooded, and went up a hill. Except for the conifers, the trees were mostly bare, so there wasn’t much cover, but he approached obliquely, knowing his tracks would be there for a while anyway, but they wouldn’t tell anyone much, and if the wind picked up like the forecasters predicted, they’d be gone soon enough.

The weather was getting worse. He’d have to get in and get out fast.

He had a gift to deliver … rather like Santa Claus, stealing in under the cover of the now waning darkness.

The comparison made him laugh
.

*   *   *

Ice clicked against
the window, the crisp sound ominous. Ellie didn’t mind snow so much. Everyone in northern Wisconsin knew how to handle snow. Ice storms took down power lines and rendered roads impossible to navigate.

The file slapped down on the desk dangerously close to her cup of coffee. She looked up, startled. Pearson was usually calm despite his restless habits, but his unruffled Midwest composure was seriously
ruffled
. He eased half his skinny ass down on the edge of her desk and said, “Read that. I’ll sit right here.”

She flipped open the folder, scanned the forensic report, almost missed what had him not devouring a cholesterol-bonanza egg and cheese bagel at his desk as usual this time of day and instead propping himself on hers, and then scanned over the line again. A flicker of excitement went through her. “There was other blood on her clothes. Margaret Wilson had someone else’s blood on her clothes? Seriously?”

“Would I lie? After talking to the ME on the phone to get his initial report I thought we were done.” Pearson heaved himself back to his feet, his face as gray as the still snowy sky outside. “All I heard was there were no defensive wounds on the victim, nothing under her fingernails, no sign of struggle other than the bruising around her neck and the bump on her knee. But there was that strange cut on her face so I assumed it would be hers. Apparently forensics found out otherwise. I should have just brought the file right over to you. I finally had a minute to read the report but it has been on my desk since yesterday morning.”

In the next heartbeat of a moment Ellie reminded herself that elation was premature, but this was another piece of physical evidence. Pearson hadn’t ever supervised a case like this one—with this much urgency, and neither had she worked one like it. She took in a breath. “I take it there is no DNA match.”

“Nope. Too soon. There were a lot of hair samples from her car, and though we can check it against the Simmons case, the others have to go through their families to narrow down the probability genetically, which isn’t an instant process. The blood’s human though, and like it says right there, not hers. Rick wouldn’t have known it at the time of autopsy, because during the actual procedure, the lab results weren’t in, of course. They rushed it through as it is.”

“Okay. All right.” Ellie blew out a short frustrated breath. “One step forward and two steps back. We’re all up in the air over this case anyway. So the delay probably means nothing without more information. How long before we hear from DCI on how they are going to handle this?”

It was a bit of a tough question to ask because she’d been on this investigation since the first disappearance.

“I recommended they keep you and Jones on their task force, and they agreed.”

Ellie felt a surge of relief. She had an emotional investment in this case, and she knew Rick did too. Even if someone else was handling it, she’d still be on it. “Thank you, sir.”

“You know I have never thought all that much about this profiling business, but we’ve got a phone conference set up this afternoon to talk to one of the FBI’s best.” The sheriff frowned, his tanned face drawn into linear planes and vertical lines. “I hope it helps us,” he added bluntly. “We’ve got a bit of egg on our face right now with one dead, three missing, and nothing solid.”

“Yes, sir. I take it you want me to deal with the phone consultation.”

“It’s like you read my mind.”

“God forbid, sir.”

That at least wrung a bark of a laugh. “I’m just saying you’ve at least come close to this before so talk to the profiler, keep the notes we’ll need, and let Jones do the legwork, okay?”

Ellie tapped the report with a forefinger, thinking hard.
The other blood? What did that mean?

“Rick has a theory. He thinks he keeps them somewhere alive, but I disagree. I think he just keeps their bodies.” She sat back and stared out at the bleak parking lot with the beginning of snow ruts that would persist the entire winter. “He stores them in the same place.”

Suddenly nothing seemed more distant and cold than the steely sky outside.

“Keeps them?” Pearson looked more gray than ever.

“Human blood on her clothes. Think about it. If the blood isn’t hers, it might be
his,
but as you pointed out, there were no defensive wounds. Other missing women and human blood. He has a storage place. That’s why when they initially disappear, we can’t find them with cadaver dogs and search teams. Then, when the case goes cold, he maybe dumps them.”

“Makes sense to me, though I wish like hell it didn’t. Jesus. I hate this investigation.” The sheriff walked away across the cracked linoleum floor to where the coffeemaker and a stack of Styrofoam cups sat on a steel cart by the fax machine. He poured himself a cup and went back into his office, shutting the door.

The phone call came about an hour later, transferred to her desk. The man on the end of the line identified himself as special agent Montoya, said he’d read the reports faxed to him, and waited politely for her to interject something.

Ellie flipped a pencil around with her fingers. “As for reading the file, that must have taken all of about fifteen minutes. We don’t have much, I know. “

“Maybe more than you think.”

“That’s music to my ears. Keep talking.” She had paper ready for notes and turned the pencil to a more businesslike position. “We have only one suspect right now, but not a very viable one. Not one shred of physical evidence against him and the only reason he’s on our radar is he was the person to last see Melissa Simmons, he’s the one who found Margaret Wilson, and skeletal remains were discovered—also by him—on his property.”

“I’ve been reading about it. The press picked it up even here in Virginia and now on the national news. It’s interesting, Detective.”

CNN. Great
.

“Tell me
how
interesting.” Her tone was reasonable and she hoped objective, but she couldn’t help but remember how Bryce Grantham looked, pallid and shaken, his hands in his pockets, as the crime scene crew tore apart his parents’ property.

“We’ll get to the latest disappearance later. Let’s talk about what evidence we do have. The first remains were found in a remote property off a county road, correct?”

“Yes. The medical examiner concluded strangulation, but the decomposition was out of sync with the disappearance in the professional opinion cited in the autopsy.”

“I see the notes. Another possible victim was placed on our suspect’s property?”

“That’s accurate, sir, with the emphasis on
placed
. Stacked between rows of logs in the woodpile.”

“Were you at the scene?”

“Of course. This is a fairly small county in terms of manpower.”

“Tell me about the case from your perspective. What are your impressions of what is happening, Detective MacIntosh?”

She didn’t usually deal in impressions, she wanted to point out, as police were not supposed to draw conclusions but just support facts. On the other hand, he was in Virginia and she was dealing with this case.

“The skeletal remains were planted and we know Margaret Wilson was manually strangled. We also believe our man is very familiar with the area. He’s comfortable with the environment and athletic. Not everyone would walk through the woods in the cold with a skeleton, much less could carry a body to a deserted lake and store it in the boathouse. That, so far, to me, is our common denominator. He’s young, I’d guess, no more than forty probably.”

“I’d agree. Pretty classic profile otherwise, but the knowledge of the area seems undisputed, including the outdoorsman persona. You are looking for someone who is using his tools as a predator to utilize the country up there.”

“Great.” Ellie resumed twirling the pencil, her jaw set. “It doesn’t narrow the field. Have you ever gone deer hunting up here in November? Some of these idiots get up at four in the morning to freeze their asses off in deer stands with their .30-06 Springfield rifle because they think it’s fun in subzero wind chills. So far, you aren’t helping a great deal.”

He had the gall to sound amused. “Give me a few more minutes.”

“A few? I’m not sure we have it. Anyone sitting in the stone-cold ignorance of a blind investigation and facing a winter that will bury any possible evidence would count every second, Special Agent Montoya. It’s your turn.”

She thought there was a tinge more respect in his tone when he cleared his throat and said, “He’s methodical. Good at what he does, and that’s why no one has caught him at it yet. He’s a hunter, not an impulse killer. He plans. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s spur of the moment. No one does four murders in eighteen months without a bit of trace evidence if he isn’t careful. It speaks of some sort of training. Medical, military, the business world, something like that. If the blood found on Margaret Wilson’s clothes belongs to another one of the victims, he has set up shop, Detective MacIntosh, and unfortunately, it is in your neck of the woods.”

He’d deliberately given that last phrase an irritating southern accent, but she chose to ignore it. “What can we expect next? Any ideas?”

“I wish we had more than one certain manner of death. I don’t think—because of the blood in the Melissa Simmons’ case and maybe on the other victim’s clothes—he limits himself to strangulation. He’s careful, but a sportsman. A real dangerous combination. The best serial killers are opportunists, but they also know when not to strike. I’m guessing you have potential victims out there who escaped because the timing wasn’t right.”

“Lovely,” she muttered.

“In a way, he is. Picture a lion hunting a zebra. Waiting, tail twitching, in the long grass. Not necessarily a bigger animal, just a much more deadly one. On the hunt, nothing personal in it, but the game is the kill. That’s it in a nutshell. The thrill of the hunt is getting him off. I doubt he knows the victims, or if he does, it’s in passing only. According to the report, you can’t link them together. There’s a reason. Except for a relative age similarity and that they are female, there just
is
no link.”

“Margaret Wilson wasn’t sexually assaulted.”

“It can still be a sexually based crime.” His tone was pragmatic and clinical. “Not all murderers are rapists and not all rapists are murderers. He might hate women, or he might choose them because they are generally smaller and easier to kill. Often the arousal is in the danger, the control, and when he kills them is the culmination.”

“I’m not getting real reassured here, Agent Montoya.”

“So you shouldn’t be. You need to keep in mind all the talented ones break rules.”

Talented ones?
If she could have broken the pencil in one crisp snap, she would have. Ellie pushed her blotter two inches to the left. “Outline the rules to me like I’ve never investigated a serial before, would you?”

“You never
have
investigated a serial before, have you?”