Dead of Winter

CHAPTER 10

It was almost eleven. Still no sign of her.

He had stood out on the porch for an hour, waiting for her to emerge from the fog that covered the lake. Finally, he went in. Now he sat slumped on the worn sofa, staring into the dying fire. A yellow legal pad lay on his lap, filled with notes about Pryce and Lovejoy.

He couldn’t get the images out of his head. Fred Lovejoy’s face as he lay frozen in the ice. Pryce’s face as he lay dead on the stairs, captured in the crime-scene photo.

And Jesse face. He couldn’t shake off that look on Jesse’s face after he had run from the cabin. Some cops were lucky enough to go their whole careers without pulling a gun or seeing a corpse, and living in a place like Loon Lake Jesse had probably never seen a dead man before Pryce. No, not just a dead man — a dead cop.

Louis let out a breath, thinking now of Gibralter. No matter how distraught he was about his friend Lovejoy he had been too hard on Jesse. Jesse had a right to be afraid. Hell, they all had a right to be afraid.

He stared vacantly at the television. The sound was off, the images throwing flickering shadows over the walls. He pulled the afghan up around his shoulders but nothing seemed to warm him. The cold came from somewhere inside him. It had started in Lovejoy’s cabin when he had seen that dog. It had built in the shanty when he saw the bloody jagged hole in the ice. And it had finally overtaken him as he stood in the bitter cold and listened to Gibralter’s command.

Find him.

Find what? A monster who had murdered two men. A deviant who might kill again. A phantom who was as ephemeral as the fog. Louis tossed the legal pad aside, his feeling of impotence growing. He didn’t know what he was doing, where to start with this investigation.

Louis reached for his glass of brandy but it was empty. He pushed himself off the sofa to get a refill. As he trudged back from the kitchen, he spotted the box of books in the corner. He stared at it, something pricking his memory.

Setting the glass down, he knelt and started rummaging through the books, pulling out the blue paperback had had been looking for. The title was The Criminal Mind by Dean Franklin.

Picking up his brandy, Louis returned to the sofa and turned the book over to the back cover. Franklin’s penetrating eyes stared back at him, transporting Louis immediately back to the lecture hall at University of Michigan. The elective class was called “Investigative Analysis,” taught by Franklin, a retired FBI agent who believed that killers could be apprehended by understanding their psychological makeup.

Louis had taken it because he couldn’t get the elective he wanted, and he remembered thinking, like all the other students, that it was all hocus-pocus bullshit and that Franklin was a washed-up desk jockey put out to academic pasture. He had only half-listened to the craggy old agent who droned on about the brave new world of “criminal profiling.”

Louis stopped at a chapter called “Inside the Mind of the Monster.” He skim-read it, digesting its point that a profile of a killer could be constructed from evidence and tendencies like an abusive childhood.

Louis closed the book. Shit, so all he had to do was find some poor, mistreated dirtbag who had mutated into a cop killer.

He tossed the book aside, and his eyes drifted to the television screen. The eleven o’clock news was on, a feed from a station down in Lansing. It flashed a photo of Fred Lovejoy in the corner. Louis jumped up to turn up the sound but was too late. Great, Loon Lake had made the big time.

He watched listlessly through a series of other news stories, until a familiar graphic caught his attention. It was a blue-and-gold shield, the badge worn by Detroit police officers. Over it were the words “Drug Bust Gone Bad?”

The talking head blabbed on about cops and then cut to film footage of a tall man in a suit emerging from a building. He was stone-faced but strikingly handsome with reptilian eyes. The type under his face identified him as MARK STEELE, CHIEF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR FOR THE STATE POLICE.

Louis leaned forward. He vaguely remembered hearing about Steele during his days in Ann Arbor. Steele had headed an internal affairs case involving Detroit cops accused of brutalizing an innocent couple during a drug raid. The cops had been suspended; the couple settled out of court. But the episode had made Mark Steele’s career. The combination of his telegenic looks and the anti-police sentiment in Detroit was too potent for the media and politicians to resist. It was no secret the Steele wanted to be state attorney general, and he was paving his path to the capital with the crushed careers of cops.

Louis stared at the man’s flickering face. He suddenly remembered something he had seen in the locker room of the Ann Arbor station. Someone had cut a photo of Steele from the newspaper, smeared it with excrement and hung it on the bulletin board.

Steele’s face disappeared. The talking head moved on to a story about a puppy rescued from a drainpipe.

Louis turned off the television and sank back into the sofa. He reached for the glass of Christian Brothers, raised it to his lips and drained it.

A soft sound behind him made him freeze.

It had come from somewhere outside. He tensed, his ears alert. Nothing. Wind stirring the pines. Man, he was jumpy.

A thump. Out on the porch.

Louis set down the glass and with one quick move jumped up and flattened himself against the wall near the door. His eyes darted to his gun, visible on the dresser in the bedroom beyond. His heart hammered as he tried to put the image out of his head of Thomas Pryce opening the door to face his murderer.

A knock on the door. “Louis?” The voice was soft, female.

He exhaled and opened the door. She was standing there in the dark, her slender form encased in a parka, her round face framed in fur. Her eyes searched his face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He hadn’t realized it, but his body had been tensed, and now it trembled in relief. “Come in,” he said.

Zoe entered in the same wary manner as the first time. Her eyes darted around the room and back to him. “I knew you were here. I saw the smoke from the chimney.”

“It’s late. You shouldn’t be out alone,” Louis said.

“It’s safe.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not safe, Zoe.”

“He’s not killing women, Louis, he’s killing cops.”

There was something in her voice, a matter-of-fact tone that stunned him. She hadn’t meant it to sound cold; her observation had come from pure innocence. It had come from something else, from sheer relief. He could see it in her eyes. I am not the target. I am safe. It struck him in that moment that he had seen the same look on other people’s faces in town, always women. He had seen it in Florence’s and Edna’s. He had seen it on the waitress’s face at Dot’s Cafe. They were distressed that a killer was in their midst but they were also relieved. We are safe. For once, we are not the target.

He shook his head at the irony. Women feeling safe to walk the streets in the dead of night when he and the other men — cops — trembled behind locked doors.

“Louis? What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She was looking up at him, waiting for something.

“I didn’t think you would come back,” he said.

She smiled slightly. “I didn’t think so either.”

He glanced down at her boots. “You didn’t run?”

“No, I drove.”

He looked down into her dark eyes. For a second, he saw the dark hole in the ice hut. But this darkness was warm and he felt as if he could fall into it and drift down to some secret place where he could hide away from the cold.

“Can you stay?” he asked.

“For a while,” she said softly.

He helped her out of the parka. She was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. She rubbed her arms as she went to the fire. He hung up her coat and followed. As she sat down on the sofa he spotted the legal pad on the floor and kicked it under the sofa. He glanced to the bedroom. His holstered gun was on the dresser. He went to the door and closed it, returning to the sofa to sit by her side.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“Beer?” she said.

He went to the kitchen and brought back two Heinekens, sitting down next to her. He still felt edgy, like his skin was too tight. She was watching him as she sipped her beer, as if she sensed his tension.

“It’s cold,” he said, getting up to toss a log on the fire.

“I love the cold,” she said.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Well, you’re from Chicago so you’re used to it. I never seem to warm up.”

“Where are you from?” she asked, setting the beer aside.

“Michigan. But I was born in Mississippi.” He sat back down, acutely aware of her shoulder touching his. A surge went through him, electric, magic. Slowly, he felt himself starting to relax.

She turned to face him. She studied his face.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Your bone structure. I’m an artist, remember?”

“Of landscapes, I thought.”

“Well, I’ve taken life-drawing classes.”

“Ah, nude men.”

“Lots of nude men.”

Her gaze traveled over him, down from his face. He held his breath. It was intimate, more erotic than if she had touched him.

“You have an athlete’s body,” she said.

“Used to. Out of shape now.”

She smiled, her eyes moving on.

“Your second toe is longer than your big toe.”

He glanced down at his feet in their tube socks. “You know what they say about that, don’t you?”

She laughed, then her eyes returned to his face. “You’ve got a white relative somewhere,” she said.

It caught him off guard. He thought of saying something flip but the warmth of her eyes stopped him.

“My father,” he said.

Her eyes held his. “Then you know,” she said softly. “You know what it’s like.”

She raised a hand and touched his cheekbone. She ran her fingers down his face, under his chin. He closed his eyes at the excruciatingly light touch.

When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him. The fire bathed her in gold. Tiny beads of sweat glistened on her high broad forehead. The soft tight curls of her hair formed a dark aureole around her head. She touched his lips. Her own lips parted.

He kissed her. He held her upper lip softly with his own, savoring it. When he let go, she leaned into him, placing her cheek against his. He could feel the fast rise and fall of her chest against his. Slowly, he raised his hand, brushing his fingers along the small curve of her breast.

“Can you stay?” he asked softly.

“For a while,” she whispered.