In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (37 page)

“I guess that really depends on how you look
at it. Believe me, I tried the truth with the first Fed. It ended
up being more trouble than it was worth.”

“How so?”

“Well, on the first murder in oh-three I
didn’t even call. We hadn’t put the pieces together yet, and
besides, when I found Merrie standing in the street just like she
had been in seventy-five, I wasn’t all that sure that I hadn’t lost
my damn mind.”

Constance shook her head. “How did you manage
to find her in oh-three anyway?”

Skip shrugged. “Dumb luck, just like
seventy-five. Why I even turned down that street I have no idea.
Maybe it was some sort of divine intervention, who knows? Either
way, I did, and there she was. I honestly thought I was
hallucinating. But…as you can see, I wasn’t.”

“Unless we both are…” Constance offered
quietly.

“Sometimes I wish that was true,” he
replied.

“How did you know to bring her here to
Holly-Oak?” Constance asked.

“I didn’t.” He shook his head, voice tinged
with sadness. “That ended up being a very bad year for Merrie. We
actually thought we were going to lose her.”

“What happened to the little girl?”

“That’s a good part of why I thought I was
hallucinating,” he explained. “She disappeared.”

“Disappeared how?”

“I mean she vanished. It was like she was
never there. No trace. Anyway, then in oh-four when I called after
receiving the same Christmas card as before, we had an Agent by the
name of Graham show up. During the interview to get him up to
speed, I told him about finding Merrie and such. All of it… The
bare naked truth, every bit… Right then and there he decided I was
either insane or covering something up. To be honest, after what
happened in oh-three I was almost inclined to believe him on the
insane part.

“Either way, because of all that I went right
to the top of his suspect list. We sat in my office the whole night
Christmas Eve, and on into the morning Christmas Day, with him
profiling me. Once we got the call he headed straight to the scene,
but I made a detour… As crazy as it seemed, I had to go look.
And…as I’m sure you can guess, I found Merrie again.”

Constance offered a matter-of-fact
observation. “And that’s when you brought her here for the first
time.”

“Yeah,” he said with a shallow nod. “Still
don’t know what made me do it, but obviously it was the right
thing.”

Skip paused for a moment, then shrugged and
continued relating the history. “Then, in oh-five when I got
another card, I called again. Graham showed up and turns out I was
still his prime suspect. He just figured I had an accomplice. He
beat that horse to death for a while then finally gave up. At that
point he was just convinced that I was a head-case. Insisted I be
evaluated by a shrink. That was a mess.

“Then, oh-six rolled around. Another card,
another call, and he was back again, but that time he staked out
the house with us and saw everything first hand, including Merrie
coming out the front door. He didn’t handle that so well. In fact,
he left town before we ever started processing the scene, and
that’s the last time we ever saw him around here. After that, I
stopped calling you Feds. Sorta figured I was on my own with this.
Kind of like my own private hell, I guess.”

“So you haven’t contacted the bureau for help
on this case since two-thousand six?”

“Nope. Hasn’t stopped any of you from showing
up though, regular as clockwork. It’s just been a new face every
year. Either way, ever since the first unsolicited visit in
oh-seven I’ve kept my mouth shut and just let you all see it first
hand for yourselves.” He shook his head. “Of course, don’t know
that it’s worked any better that way either.”

Constance mulled over what he had just said.
Her tired brain was having enough trouble processing everything she
had seen tonight, and these latest revelations definitely were not
helping her to make sense of the situation. As if there weren’t
enough curiosities about this case already, the fact that the SAC
had implied that the assignment came out of DC was even more
intriguing now.

After a moment she offered, “I’m not really
sure what to say about all that, Skip…”

“I suppose there’s not much you can,” he
grunted. “Just so you realize that the lack of up-front information
on my part wasn’t anything personal against you. Seeing is
believing, I guess… Don’t know what to tell you about the lack of
support at your end, other than join the club… I haven’t been
getting any either.”

“Yeah… I’m not exactly clear on that myself,”
she admitted.

Skip suppressed a snort, then nodded. “I hear
you… Well… I’ll say this much, Special Agent Mandalay, you’re
different.”

“What do you mean?”

“After what you’ve seen and learned in the
past hour, you’re still here. I can’t say the same was ever true
for most of your colleagues.”

Constance paused, still digesting the influx
of bizarre data. Eventually she blew out a heavy sigh and looked at
Sheriff Carmichael. “So, what now?”

“We grab some coffee and go process a crime
scene,” he replied, then bobbed his head toward the door next to
them. “In about two hours Merrie will wake up just like usual, and
for her, it’ll be Christmas Day nineteen seventy-four all over
again.”

“Which one of them, Sheriff?” she asked.

“There’s only one Merrie, Constance.”

“But you just–”

He cut her off. “I know.”

She cocked her head and blinked. “And all of
the other Merries?”

“Trust me, Special Agent Mandalay. There’s
only one Merrie Frances Callahan.”

C
HAPTER
28

6:17 A.M. – December 25, 2010

632 Evergreen Lane

Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

QUIET
is a relative term, especially
at 6 A.M. on Christmas morning. Constance was certain, however,
that no matter the day, the hour, or the point of reference used to
define the concept of
relative quiet
, the portable generator
parked outside the abandoned house on Evergreen Lane didn’t qualify
as such—even though the words
Super-Quiet
were emblazoned on
the side right next to the manufacturer’s logo.

The pulsing thrum of the running engine was
spilling into the frosty air in competition with the moan of the
wind through the trees. The incessant staccato popping of the
exhaust was being carried aloft on the undulating breeze, and
together they were most assuredly splitting what little calm
remained of the pre-dawn darkness. The mélange of noise wasn’t
helping Constance’s headache either, nor were the extra-strength
aspirin Martha had given her back at Holly-Oak. At this point, the
only thing that would do her any good would be sleep, but that was
a prescription she couldn’t fill just yet.

She followed the ropes of multi-colored,
heavy-duty extension cords that snaked away from the generator and
across the porch, running in through the front door. Inside, the
harsh glow of a halogen work light illuminated the way through the
front room. A second of the adjustable lamps was positioned farther
inward to light the hallway.

The bulk of the cords continued along the
floor of the main room until they bent sharply into the corridor at
the archway and angled across its length. After running diagonally
across the floor for several feet, they hooked to the left and
disappeared through the open basement doorway—a twisted green,
orange, and yellow stripe that marked an obvious path toward the
remnants of horror that waited below.

The tight bundle of electrical cords ran down
the stairs—carefully arranged, safely out of the way—against the
uprights that supported the handrail. At the bottom they spilled
out across the concrete floor in a bright pile of coils before
shooting off in a spindly fan, each ending in its own caged,
halogen work lamp.

Constance lowered herself down from the
double-height step at the bottom of the staircase and then tiptoed
gingerly around the pile of cables. To her back, the basement was
still bathed in oblique shadows, illuminated only by residual glow.
But in front of her, beyond the semicircle of tripod-mounted lamps,
a man-made sun had risen. Even during the day, there hadn’t been
anywhere near this amount of light filling the subterranean room,
but then again, during the day there had only been rough outlines
to see. Now those outlines were grotesquely filled in.

Deputy Broderick was facing away from the
spotlighted carnage, hands buried deep in his coat pockets. His
face was harshly shadowed due to the angle at which he was
standing. The reflected wash of brilliance from the nearest lamp
fell in an oblique swath across him, and what little of his face it
revealed was sickeningly pale.

He looked up at Constance and nodded. After a
moment he said, “Sorry about…you know…earlier.”

She returned the nod. “Yeah. Me too.”

They stood staring at one another for several
heartbeats until the awkward silence became too deafening to
endure.

Broderick gave in first. Lolling his head to
the side and angling it toward the dismembered victim, he offered
in a quiet voice, “Fourth Christmas for me. Wish it would get
easier… You know… Seeing it and all…”

“No,” Constance replied without hesitation.
“Trust me, Deputy; you really don’t.”

He appeared to frown then gave a shallow nod
in response to her statement. A second later a fresh pair of
footsteps began to echo from the stairs, and the sullen officer
cast his flat expression upward toward the source.

“Martin called,” Broderick announced as
Sheriff Carmichael came into view and continued down the staircase.
“He’s having trouble getting the hearse to turn over this morning,
so he’s running behind.”

“Yeah,” Skip replied, stepping off the bottom
precipice with a grunt. “I just got off the radio with Johnson. He
told me.” Hitching up his belt, he picked his way through the
tangle of electrical wires and drew himself up next to
Mandalay.

“Is Martin your County Coroner?” Constance
asked.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Martin Hornbeak. He owns
the funeral home here in town too.”

She acknowledged with a nod.

The sheriff sucked in a deep breath then blew
it out in a loud huff, as if to state unequivocally for the record
just exactly how they all were feeling. After a long measure with
nothing more than the muffled drone of the generator outside to
fill the space, he grumbled, “Déjà goddamn vu… Every year… Every
goddamn year…”

“Do you have a Crime Scene Unit on the way?”
Constance asked.

“You’re looking at it,” he snorted. “We could
process this scene in our sleep.”

“I’m not doubting you, Skip,” she replied.
“But have you considered calling in outside investigators? Maybe
from the MHP Crime Lab?”

“Sure,” he told her. “But not for a few years
now.”

“Why not?”

“They’ve made it clear that they prefer to
leave this one alone,” he explained.

“Why?

“Hold that thought,” Carmichael said, then
turned his gaze toward the deputy. “You take the pictures yet?”

“Yeah,” Broderick replied. “Same as last
year.”

“And the year before; yeah, I know,” Skip
grunted. “Bag the axe?”

The deputy nodded. “Yeah. Bagged and tagged.
Whiskey bottle too. Just waiting on Martin to show up for the
remains. I’ll take prints and do a DNA swab over there. Called Doc
Harper too. She said to let her know if Special Agent Mandalay
wants an official autopsy, otherwise just have Martin sign off on
the death certificate as usual.”

After a pause the sheriff asked, “Did you
check…?”

He purposely left the half-asked question
dangling in the air. While not fully spoken, it seemed that between
the two of them it was implicitly understood.

“Yeah,” Broderick replied. “Same as
always.”

“Good,” the sheriff replied with an approving
nod. “Give Constance a glove.”

Broderick dug around in his coat pocket, then
produced a latex glove and handed it over to Mandalay.

“You still haven’t answered my question,
Skip…” she said.

“I know, but I’m about to,” Skip told her and
indicated for her to follow as he started across the basement. “Go
ahead and put the glove on. I need to show you something.”

She followed along behind him, stretching the
sheath over her hand and working it onto her fingers as they
stepped out in front of the arc of halogen work lights. Their
shadows fell against the far wall in harsh, misshapen silhouettes.
After skirting around the congealed pools of rusting blood, which
were already showing the first-stage signs of freezing to the
floor, they stopped amid the scattered remains of the butchered
victim.

“Have a look,” Skip said, pointing at the
severed head a few feet away.

Constance furrowed her brow at the sheriff.
She had worked far too many cases involving violent death to be
squeamish as a rule, so she wasn’t exactly a lightweight when it
came to crime scenes. However, the egg salad sandwich was still
lodged sideways in her gut, and her headache wasn’t helping either.
Getting up close and personal with a dismembered corpse wasn’t
exactly high on her priority list.

Still, after a moment’s hesitation, she
stepped forward, then gathered her coat and squatted down in front
of the disembodied head. She tilted her gaze, inspecting the
grotesque tableau.

“What am I looking for?” she finally
asked.

“You can move it,” the sheriff answered. “Get
yourself a better look.”

Somewhat reluctantly but with great care,
Constance reached out with her gloved hand and carefully rolled the
head up to fully reveal the face. The victim’s expression was
flaccid, mouth open, eyes half-lidded and staring lifelessly back
into hers. Blood bathed the chin and most of the face, as well as
the ragged portion of the neck that was still attached. A deep gash
ran from the cheekbone just below his left eye, down across the
jaw, revealing raw muscle and crushed bone. It had apparently been
a wild strike from the blade of the axe—not unexpected given the
circumstances.