Ice Shear (2 page)

“The kid's been sleeping since you kissed her good night. She's over that damn cold.” As he spoke, a light three houses down flicked on and a woman drifted to her sink, coffeepot in hand.

“She ready to go back to school?” I asked.

“Yeah. She misses those friends of hers, and if I have to spend another day with a six-year-old who's not sick enough to nap, I'll lose my ever-lovin' mind. Want Luce to call you before school?”

“No.” I felt small and a little mean, but I wanted more than a phone call. “I'm doing one last pass. I'll be home around seven thirty or so and can walk her over to the bus. And hey, if she's up to it maybe we can ice-skate after school.” I had taken Lucy to the rink the previous week. She had never been on the ice, and it was my first time since college. I fell as often as she did, her ankles arched in on rented skates. “I think she liked it.”

“Hmm,” Dad grumped. He never liked me on skates, convinced I went too fast and would crack my head open. He liked his granddaughter on them even less. “I'll pick up helmets for you two speed demons.”

“Dad, I spent the whole time skidding across the ice on my ass, and Lucy was primarily interested in the concession stand. We don't need helmets.”

My father sighed. “Want me to hold breakfast?”

“Nah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. But thanks.” Dad had been amazing since Kevin died, but sometimes he acted like I couldn't raise a child, let alone make my own breakfast. Kevin, Lucy, and I had moved back to my hometown three years ago after Kevin's cancer had lasted (and lasted and lasted) long past his disability and my ability to take care of a sick husband, a daughter, and a job. Dad had offered me a spot on his force: “Jeez, June. You're an FBI agent. Seriously, you think you're going to fail the Hopewell Falls civil service exam?” The job paid the bills and kept me sane through Kevin's death.

I decided to make a peace offering in the fight Dad didn't know we were having. “Hey, we need anything? I'll stop at Price Chopper.”

“Nah, we're good. Stay safe, and get yourself home.”

During the conversation, the rest of the world awoke. More houses lit up, the cops on the day shift sounded over the radio, and traffic picked up. I half slid and half drove down the Manor Avenue hill toward the Mohawk River, the sun rising over the Taconic Mountains in Vermont. The greenish gold spread warming the horizon. I couldn't remember a time when it wasn't winter. Just the idea of sunshine was wonderful.

Turning left, I could see Harmony Mills in the distance. The buildings were long empty, no longer needing the waterfall's energy to power the industrial looms or the Erie Canal to ship gloves, shirts, and collars to such exotic places as Rochester and Cleveland. The inactive mills continued to dominate the city: they took up a huge chunk of downtown real estate, and people were always gossiping about who might move in and restore Hopewell Falls to its former glory. The “former glory” mostly consisted of being named an All-American City in 1947, when Harmony Mills last operated at full steam. Everyone talked about how if we gave a tax break to a high-tech company, built a new park, or attracted an Internet café, young people would come back and renew downtown and draw congregants to keep the churches from closing. That seemed unlikely: We lived in an area our former governor called “like Appalachia,” a comparison that was unfair to Appalachia. West Virginia had job growth seven times our measly 0.2 percent, and our population had dropped as the jobs disappeared. New York City, only three hours away, might as well have been on another planet.

A jolt of excitement rushed through me as my tires rumbled over cobblestones. The pavement had worn away, exposing the roads from the last century—or the century before?—and the vibrations that shook the cruiser were my signal that my shift was almost done.

I'd almost reached downtown when I saw Jackie DeGroot. The teenager was currently caught, her silver jacket snarled in the chain-link fence that kept people away from the river. She twisted left and right, like a cigarette wrapper blowing in the wind. I couldn't tell if she wanted in or out.

I slowed and rolled down my window, the cold hitting my face like a slap. The microphone on the cruiser didn't work, so I yelled to her. “Jackie!” She didn't respond. I turned off the car and repeated myself. “Jackie! Shouldn't you be getting ready for school?”

Still no reaction. I parked and approached her cautiously. She appeared healthy. The puffy coat, big jeans, and Timberland boots that were popular right now kept her warm, but unfortunately were ideal for concealing drugs or a weapon. I was pretty sure this wouldn't be more than a talking-to and a ride to school, and I'd still be home in time to walk Lucy to the bus.

I touched Jackie's arm. She jumped like she hadn't seen me coming. I cataloged her responses. Her eyes weren't dilated, but she was disoriented. Drugs? Shock? Injury?

“Jackie.” I kept my voice low and soothing. “Let's get you someplace warm. You okay? What're you doing here?”

Jackie's face was red with tears and streaked with heavy black eyeliner. Her earrings bobbed as she pointed wildly, the chained hearts snagging in the fleece of her hood. I reached over and unhooked the hearts before Jackie tore her earlobe. I searched where she pointed, toward the waterfalls. The Hopewell Falls weren't visible from here, hidden beyond the cliff that rose above the river. I struggled to maintain my composure even as Jackie pointed again and again, pulling until her jacket ripped away from the fence.

“Well, that solved our problem,” I said and smiled, trying to make eye contact with her, but she stared through me, back toward the falls.

I guided her over to the cruiser. “Okay, Jackie, you're not tracking right now. Did you take any drugs? You're not in trouble, but I want to help you.” Jackie started crying again. I kept my voice firm. “How about I get you settled and go investigate whatever's on the other side of this fence. Okay?”

Jackie nodded, her chin trembling, taking great gulping breaths. I called for backup, and continued to try to coax answers out of Jackie, but she was disturbingly silent. Pete arrived in two minutes, having just started his shift. He contemplated the snowdrifts that led to the river.

“I don't want to do my whole shift in wet pants,” he said apologetically.

I would've given him shit about that if Jackie hadn't been there. “You take Jackie. I bet getting her fixed up will take more time than it'll take me to walk over, evaluate the scene at the river, walk back, and write up a report.”

This arrangement suited Pete. I crawled through a hole in the fence. Looking back, I saw Pete shrug as he comforted a sobbing Jackie. I pushed through the snow. Only a foot deep, the drifts were hard, having melted and refrozen into ice. Even in the dim light, I could follow Jackie's trail, picking her footprints out from among the knots of tracks, both animal and human, that covered the area, identifying places where Jackie had fallen and stood back up. I still thought the drugs she'd taken were going to be the reason for this trip, but I had to know what had scared her out of her mind, even if it was just a hallucination.

I reached the edge and paused, taking in the waterfalls. Usually the power impressed me, the Mohawk River dropping in a rush before being subsumed into the mellow Hudson. Today, I was amazed at how absolutely that power had been stopped. I didn't see even a trickle of water. The river glistened, and the falls had frozen in midmotion. Facets of the ice-covered river mimicked the current, tumbling over rocks and ledges, forming ice shelves in some places and waves in others. I followed the path of the river down, down. At the bottom, where the water would normally hit and form mist, were icy breaks—spikes—pointing up. As I surveyed the whole scene, my breath caught.

Impaled on one of the spikes was a girl.

U
P IN TOWN, IT
hadn't seemed that cold. Down here on the frozen river, the wind stung my ears, and if I spoke, a layer of frost glazed my cheeks. Thankfully, there was little reason to speak, out on the ice with the dead. Well, the dead and Norm, but he kept his own counsel.

The coroner, Norm Finch, had been on his way to 7:00
A.M.
Mass at Saint Agnes when I made the call. He arrived first, and the two of us waited for the techs, paramedics, and detectives outside the crime scene perimeter I had marked out in the snow. A bear of a man, Norm didn't mind if I used him as a windbreak.

“I hate the young ones,” he said.

Water froze quickly along the edge of the river, rocky steps slowing the current, quickly stagnating into ice in the winter months. To the left was Hopewell Falls, a ninety-foot wall of water that dropped abruptly. During mild winters, it didn't freeze at all. This winter hadn't been kind, and an ice shear formed where the ice from the falls was repeatedly ripped open and reformed against the stagnant shelf, creating a line of spikes that rose like dragon's teeth out of the ice-covered river. She lay on her back, left leg jackknifing under her right one, her torso arched up around one of these points.

The woman's cherry-red jacket was unzipped, revealing a T-shirt that spelled out
I'M AMERICA'S SWEETHEART
in rhinestones across her chest; still readable, which was surprising, considering the injury. Snow drifted against the angles of her body, blurring the line between the woman and the ice, curling around her elbow and nestling in the crook of her broken leg. Around her the frozen river rose and fell. She appeared adrift.

Her long, dark blond hair spilled out around her, whipping up when the frequent gusts hit it, its movement in sharp contrast to her absolute stillness. A wash of blood from the gash in her forehead blurred her features, but I put her age between eighteen and twenty-five. I was pretty sure she had got the head wound when she was alive, and was dead before she'd landed. Between that and where she was found, I called it in as a suspicious death. The crime scene unit would get here soon, along with the ADA and Dave Batko, our town's one and only detective. For now, I could think.

I edged along the outside of the boundary I'd set, examining the scene from every angle. I eyed the cliffs, and raised my hand. It wavered in the strong winds, and I forced it straight, charting the possible trajectory with my eye. I took a step to the left, stopped, raised my hand again, and I knew. “There.”

“Hmm?” Norm said.

“There. That's where they threw her from. The cliff kind of hangs out, jutting.” Norm shielded his eyes and looked to where I traced the arc in the air, following it down until it stopped where the girl lay. “It would be a clean drop from there, so she would hit the river instead of landing on the banks.”

Norm shrugged. After twenty-five years handling all the bodies on this edge of the county, death held no excitement for him. He had seen everything, and knew almost all the victims, most of whom had come to peaceful ends. Norm did his job well and with little remark; little remark, except for those he thought had their heads up their asses. “Do you think the boys stopped for Egg McMuffins on their way here?”

As if summoned, the paramedics and crime scene techs crested the hill, followed by Dave Batko and—shit!—the DA, Jerry Defoe. I'd assumed, hoped, really, that it would be one of the ADAs on call. Dad had spent ten years ranting about Jerry, who always hesitated when Dad thought a conviction was a gimme. Politics being the Irish-American blood sport, Dad had made a lifelong enemy of Jerry when he failed to endorse Jerry for his DA run. When Dad had his heart attack and retired, Jerry decided to keep up the payback, aiming it at me.

In his haste, Dave kept slipping down the hill, the paramedics a few steps behind. The two techs struggled behind with cameras, lab specimen bags, and bottles. They arrived at the river's edge streaked with snow. Jerry, trailing behind, stepped only in spots that had proved secure. Jerry's gray pinstripe was snow free, but he was heavily winded.

The paramedics, eager to declare her dead and get out of the awful weather, moved quickly across to the victim. Dave lurched slowly sideways, like Frankenstein. The ice was so thick his caution was unwarranted. He had been a nose tackle in high school but, unlike a lot of other football players, hadn't aged into fat. I remembered him, an immovable object who stood on the field and let the opposing team run into him.

“Glad you called me!” he yelled cheerily. “You know how we Slavs love a good impaling!” He slowed as he got close to the young woman. His face remained impartial, his voice steady, but he swallowed three times before he spoke. “God, the vic, she's . . . destroyed.”

I pointed to the spot I'd charted. “I think she was thrown from there.”

“Oh, please.” Jerry sneered. “I cannot believe you called me down for this. I think the brain surgeon we got here decided to drown herself in a river that had less running water than a bathtub. She should've done it in the comfort of her own home. It would have worked better, and a bathmat is easier on the knees.”

“That's correct.” I was furious, both for myself and for the girl, but kept my voice even. “But there's no blood from the
gaping intestinal wound,
which means she died before she hit the ground. They killed her up above, and tried to dump . . .”

From behind Jerry, Dave gestured wildly. He looked like he was miming cutting his throat, but after a second I realized he was signaling me to zip my lips. These days, it seemed I always had to give up responsibility for cases that should have been mine, and smile as I did it. I walked to where the paramedics huddled over the body, wrote down the time of death, and trained my face into the impassive expression I'd used when interrogating witnesses for the FBI. At least my training helped with something.

“So, Norm,” Jerry asked, turning his back on me, “any idea who our jumper is?”