Pushed Too Far: A Thriller (2 page)

Val closed her eyes, then opened them, but the face remained the same. One she’d never forget. One that sent shudders through her, head to toe. “This isn’t possible.”

Olson stepped beside her, pulled off his hat and rubbed a hand over the blond stubble he called hair. “Where has she been all this time? And who was the body in the barrel?”

Questions she couldn’t answer.

She let out a heavy breath that condensed in the air before being whipped away by the wind.

About two years ago, she’d spent countless hours searching for Kelly Ann Lund, the thirty-three-year-old daughter of a local dairy farmer. After shards of her bones were discovered in the farm’s burning barrel, Val had spent countless more tracking down the man who’d murdered her and putting him in prison.

And now Kelly Ann was staring up at them, not burned in the least.

Olson finally broke the silence. “So much for DNA.”

“Mito DNA,” she reminded. Unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA wasn’t unique to one person, but to a maternal line. Passed down from mother to offspring, it could belong to any of Kelly’s maternal relations.

Olson scuffed the ice with the toe of one boot. “She doesn’t have an evil twin, does she?”

Val appreciated the attempt at levity, but she couldn’t manage a smile. A sergeant at the time, she’d been lead investigator on the case. The facts were burned into her memory. The bones recovered belonged to a female. The mito DNA indicated the victim was part of Kelly’s maternal line. And yet … “She had no siblings at all. No living maternal relatives. That’s why I was so sure it was her.”

“We were all sure.”

She gave Olson a grateful glance.

“We need to call the chief.”

She tried not to feel the sting of his words. “I’m the chief, Pete.”

“Sorry. Schneider. We need to call Schneider.”

Jeff Schneider had been a mentor, almost a father figure, to them both. Of course unlike Val, Pete had spent his entire career working his way up through the ranks of the tiny Lake Loyal PD. Val knew he’d assumed he would take over as chief when Schneider retired. The whole town had assumed.

Then she’d arrested the brutal murderer of Kelly Ann Lund, and the job was hers—first female police chief of the village of Lake Loyal.

She pulled out her cell phone.

“He’ll know what to do,” Olson said.

“I’m not calling Schneider. I’m calling Harlan.” At least this late in the afternoon, it wasn’t likely the coroner was up to his elbows in a dead body, not that that would faze the delusional old Casanova. “No point in moving forward until we have an official ID.”

“Maybe we don’t have to get an ID.” Olson’s voice was so low, she could barely hear it over the wind. He squinted toward the shoreline. “I secured the scene as soon as she was brought in. No one’s gotten a good look at her. No one except Lund.”

“David Lund?”

“He was the one who towed her in.”

She glanced toward shore and spotted Kelly’s estranged husband for the first time. He sat a few feet from the truck, one hip hitched up on the edge of a playground structure, cradling a steaming foam cup in his hands. He still wore the neon yellow suit the firefighters used for ice rescue. Hood peeled back, he watched them, the wind ruffling his dark, wavy hair.

“I know it’s a crazy idea. Probably stupid. That’s why we need to talk to the chief.”

Val forced her focus back to Olson. “What idea?”

“Like I said, no one else has seen her. No one knows it’s Kelly.” He stared straight at Val, as if willing her to understand. A muscle along his jaw flexed.

“Pete ...”

“We say we can’t ID her, not local, fell in the lake.”

“I don’t think you should say anything more.”

“You don’t think Kelly ending up in the lake is an accident, do you? That she just happened to be strolling over ice so thin even the most rabid ice fishermen haven’t put up a single shanty?”

She didn’t have to glance around to note the public park and forest preserve, the upscale houses rimming the lake, the Shoreline Supper Club overlooking the expanse of water and ice. The park was well used in the summer, but even in winter, a number of people walked area trails and gazed out over the beautiful vista.

Not to mention the fact that an officer checked Rossum Park in the afternoon and once after midnight on routine patrol. Kelly hadn’t been in the water during the midnight check, not that the officer could see. But in the light of day, there she was. “Obviously she was supposed to be found,” Val said.

“And the one person it helps is serving time in Waupun. You know what’s going to happen as soon as his lawyer hears we found Kelly’s body.”

She knew. Her head pounded with it.

Guilty verdicts weren’t something one could transfer from body to body like a change of clothing. She’d arrested Dixon Hess for killing Kelly Lund—the witness seeing them together, rumors of an affair, her blood in his truck; that was the evidence that tied him to those charred bones. Without Kelly as the glue, Val’s whole case disintegrated.

“Forty-eight hours. That’s all we’ll have,” Olson said.

She felt sick to her stomach. About Kelly Ann’s death, about the prospect of a killer going free, about the fact that Olson could even suggest they decimate every ethical standard and break the law themselves to fight back. “We’ll make our case, but we’ll follow the law.”

“We don’t even have a fucking clue who he burned.” Olson looked away and took several breaths. Turning back, he lowered his voice. “Our job is to serve and protect the people of Lake Loyal. You think letting a monster loose is the way to go about that?”

“We’re officers of the law. We have to follow the law.”

“And if we aren’t able to come up with a new case against him, he goes free. Just like he did in Omaha.”

She shook her head, remembering the horror of the Omaha case, the poor girl he tortured, the case that should have been a slam dunk. “If the Omaha police had played everything by the book, he would have been convicted.”

“You don’t know that.” Olson twisted his stocking cap in his hands, and Val had to wonder if it was a stand in for her throat. “There was a lot of evidence against him. It should have been enough, even with the illegal search of his car.”

She couldn’t disagree. Even now she could hear echoes of the Omaha PD Lieutenant’s anguish when she’d called about the case.

“He was the worst I’ve ever known,”
said the thirty-five year veteran.
“The cruelest man I’ve ever seen.”

“We’ll stop him.” Her voice sounded weaker than she’d wanted, and she straightened her spine to compensate.

Lips in a hard line, Olson looked past her and focused on the shoreline. “You better be right.”

She followed his gaze.

A white van drove through the parking lot and past the playground equipment, the logo of a local television station emblazoned on its side.

Great.

Once the media sank their teeth into this, there was no going back. Hess’s attorney would file a habeas corpus motion and the clock would start ticking.

Forty eight hours.

It was all the time she had, and it wasn’t enough.

Not nearly enough.

D
ale Kasdorf wasn’t surprised when he saw police and fire trucks and ambulances stream into the park. If anything, he wondered why it took them so long.

He trudged down the ridge in the adjacent forest preserve. Dressed in snow camo, he couldn’t be seen today any more than he had been last night, and that was good with him. Nothing came of talking to cops. Nothing but harassment.

He’d learned his lesson the first time.

Approaching his traps, he spotted the news truck. For a while he just stood and watched them unload the camera, set up the reporter, get ready to intercept the pretty blond police chief when she reached shore. Apparently they’d tell the story on the news tonight—or at least they’d try—but he wouldn’t watch.

He knew the story better than they did.

He continued, checking each of his four traps. Two rabbits. One for freezing one for eating. A good day. Maybe he’d use the fur to make a hat. Get real Native American and use all the parts of the kill.

He liked that idea.

After bagging his game, he reset the traps in different spots, far from the smells of blood and struggle that would surely scare off the next round of game. In summer, it was hard to utilize the forest preserve without some kid or dog stumbling on the steel jaws and ripping their damn fool legs apart. But after deer season ended, people left the woods to the rabbits and squirrels, foxes and coyotes.

And to him.

The way he liked it.

Ready to head back to his place and cook up some stew, he took one last glance at the lake below. His eyes skimmed over the young female cop collecting trash along water’s edge and found the bright orange raft, the body strapped to it barely visible in the long grass reaching through ice.

He’d seen a woman die early this morning. That had to be marked.

But he wasn’t going to tell this time. Not a goddamn word. Because the only thing worse than being a victim in this world was being a witness.

And he would never make that mistake again.

Lund had lived through a lot of bad days, but this one might be the worst.

He’d barely moved since he’d pulled Kelly to stable ice. Hadn’t been able to face taking off the thermal suit, as if the clinging rubber was the only thing keeping him from shattering into a million pieces.

She’d died two years ago, and his failure to save her still stung like an open wound. Still he’d pulled himself together. He’d gotten through the investigation, the trial, and the months of nothingness after.

Now he had to face it again.

He watched the police chief pick her way over the ice. She was a beautiful woman, high cheekbones and serious, gray eyes. If he’d met her under other circumstances, he was sure his attraction would be his focus. Instead, every time he saw her, he felt raw and wary.

She would want to talk to him, not just about the failed rescue today but where he’d been this morning, what he’d done last night, and it would all start over.

The news crew met her as soon as she’d stepped onto shore, camera heading her off, microphone pushed into her face. He could read her lips from here.

No comment.

No comment.

“You done with the suit?” Dempsey tromped up next to him and held out a hand.

Lund pushed himself up from the playground equipment and forced himself to peel off the protective layer. “I can take care of it.”

“You did the paddling.”

“You drove.”

Dempsey shot him a sideways look. “Just give me the suit.”

Lund handed it over. He knew Dempsey and Johnson were just trying to share the load. They didn’t get that helping pack up wasn’t a burden. On the contrary, being able to do something might help get his mind off Kelly, off the police chief and her inevitable questions.

Of course, he hadn’t told his fellow firefighters exactly who he’d pulled from the water. Pete Olson had insisted he keep that information quiet, and now he was glad he’d listened. Dempsey and Johnson were coddling him enough just thinking he’d failed to save a woman he didn’t know.

Too bad it wouldn’t stay a secret for long. As soon as they found out, they would start treating him like he was as fragile as the ice on that lake.

Covering an area of rural land and small towns, the fire district didn’t have a live-in firehouse. It had only two full-time firefighters, the chief, who handled the administrative end, and the fire inspector/community outreach director, who happened to be Lund. The rest were paid volunteers who trained regularly and responded to the radios they kept in their homes.

But the lack of other full-time firefighters wouldn’t prevent the chief from insisting he take some time off, leaving him with nothing to do but sit around and think.

He looked back toward Police Chief Ryker. One last no comment, and she broke away from the camera and started his way.

He yanked on his boots, stood and tried his best to relax. He’d been through this drill before, knew what was coming, but that didn’t mean he had a clue how to handle it. Or that he ever would.

“Mr. Lund. I’m glad I caught you.” She skirted the ambulance and Unit One, wind streaming her blond hair across her face despite her efforts to push it away. She wore a dark wool coat over police blues, as usual, something that always struck him as odd compared to most chiefs of police who tended to prefer suits. He suspected she counted on the uniform to remind citizens of her authority, to give her an edge.

Not that she needed it.

Stopping in front of him, she shoved one hand in her pocket and studied him as if reading his mind. “This must be a shock. I’m so sorry.”

The first time Kelly had been murdered he’d spent so much time studying Val Ryker’s expressions, he no longer needed subtitles. “But you need to ask me a few questions.”