Dead of Winter

CHAPTER 21

Louis put on his glasses, crossed his legs on the bed and opened Lacey’s ID file. It was several inches thick. Bjork’s department had done a thorough job.

Lacey’s mug shot was on top. Louis stared at it but didn’t touch it. Finally, he brushed it aside and turned to the lengthy general report.

Lacey was born March 1, 1940, in Houghton, Michigan. He graduated from Houghton County High in 1959, held back a year in junior high. He was arrested in July of 1959 for joyriding and failure to stop for a police officer. The judge recommended the armed services. Lacey joined the army on August 5, 1959.

Louis paused, wiping his brow. The hotel room was hot and stuffy. He glanced at the heater, a long metal contraption under the window that seemed to have two settings: high and stifling. He rolled off the bed and went to crack the window. A stream of cold air slithered in. Louis reached out to the snowy window sill and snagged a can of Dr Pepper from the six-pack he had set out there earlier.

He returned to the bed, taking a long swig then pulled out Lacey’s military record.

After basic training, Lacey spent an uneventful couple of years in the army, returning home to Dollar Bay in 1962 only long enough to marry Helen Scully and father Johnny and Angela. He reenlisted before they were born, and Helen and the infant twins stayed with Millie.

In 1964, Lacey was shipped off to Vietnam where he was assigned to something identified only as LRRP. He had a special medal for marksmanship and he volunteered for a second tour of duty.

Lacey had achieved an E5 rank, buck sergeant. But by the time he left the army, he was an E4, a corporal. Louis searched through the rest of the information but there was nothing to explain it, just a notation that Lacey had been issued an Article 15 and got out on a general discharge in 1967.

Louis set the Dr Pepper aside. General? He thought there were only two ways out: honorable and dishonorable. Louis rubbed his chin in irritation. He was ignorant about the military and wasn’t sure who he could ask. Phillip…

Louis reached for the phone and dialed. Phillip Lawrence answered the phone after two rings.

“Hey, Phillip, it’s me,” Louis began. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Came back early.” Phillip paused. “So, what do you need?”

“Why you think I need something?” Louis asked.

“A visit and a phone call in the same week?” Phillip laughed. “Not your usual M.O.”

“Okay, okay, cut the sarcasm,” Louis said, laughing softly. “I’ll call more often, I promise.”

“Just busting your chops. How are you?”

Louis shifted the phone to his other ear, looking at his bandaged hand. “Fine. Getting a cold, I think.”

“I won’t tell Fran.”

“Good.”

Louis closed his eyes. For a second, he considered telling Phillip Lawrence the truth, that he was drinking too much, putting his fist into trees, finding Kotex pads in his locker, and jumping every time he heard the snap of a tree branch. But he couldn’t. And Phillip Lawrence knew he couldn’t.

“Listen, Phillip, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something,” he said.

“You’re asking me for help? That’s a switch.”

“It’s about the case. Remember I asked you about my suspect being military? Well, it turns out I was right. I have his military record and a couple things don’t make sense.”

“I’ll help if I can, Louis.”

Louis picked up the top paper. “What’s LRRP?”

“It stands for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. We called them lurps. Your guy was in Vietnam?”

“Yup.”

“The lurps were the guys dropped by helicopter behind enemy lines to scout, not kill. They were usually left in there a week, ten days, before being picked up. Real testosterone cases.”

“Tough on the nerves,” Louis said.

“You had to be half nuts to be a lurp. If you made it out alive you were completely nuts.”

Louis was making notes on the margins of the report. “This guy made sergeant, but was a corporal by the time he got out.”

“On a general, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’re never promoted to corporal, you’re demoted,” Phillip said. “He probably did something to piss of a superior.”

“He got something called an Article 15.”

“That’s a non-court martial punishment. Probably a refusal of orders. I knew a guy like that in Korea. He was a good soldier but he was getting short — near discharge time — and one day we were ordered to go into this village. Well, the guy refused. Just put down his gun and refused.”

Louis shook his head slowly. “But this man, he looked to be on a straight track. He made sergeant, got some citations….”

“The military changes men, Louis,” Phillip said. “Often for the better, but sometimes for the worse. Some guys just finally flip out. My C.O. called them cracked jugs. They’re okay, except for a tiny crack that you can’t see. You kept filling them up, pouring in more water and everything’s fine. Then one day, without warning, the crack gives way.” Phillip paused. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Louis, are you sure you’re all right up there?”

Louis leaned on the nightstand. “I’m okay.”

There was a pause.

“Louis?”

“I gotta go, Phillip.”

“Louis…be careful,” Phillip said.

“I will.” He hung up the phone and sat there for a moment. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A cracked jug.

A sudden vision of the advertisements in Lacey’s room came back to him. The infrared scopes. Long-range rifles. Had Lacey progressed from a shotgun to more sophisticated weapons? Were his days of walking up to his victims and killing them face-to-face over?

He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Louis got off the bed, grabbed a shoe and went to the heater. He banged on the gauge several times. The heater gave out a wheeze and a blast of hot air. Louis crawled back on the bed, turning back to Lacey’s personal history.

After his discharge, Lacey returned to Dollar Bay. Cole was born a year later. Here, Bjork had inserted her own notation that Lacey couldn’t find work and moved in with his mother, Millie. Louis thought of Millie’s gloomy little two-bedroom house in Dollar Bay. Three adults and three kids crammed into that dump. Who wouldn’t go crazy?

Louis read on. Back in Dollar Bay, Lacey resumed his criminal history. An arrest in a Houghton bar fight, an arrest for vandalizing the office of a Veteran’s Administration agent. Two years later, he assaulted a doctor at a VA hospital in Marquette. He served three days when charges were dropped by the local DA; the judge directed Lacey to remain on lithium.

Louis glanced at Lacey’s mug shot. Lacey’s eyes stared back, with the flat sheet of ball bearings. Louis went on reading.

There it was: the first domestic violence report. Christmas Eve, 1970. A drunken Lacey had thrown all the Christmas presents out into the snow, smacked Helen, and then passed out on the sidewalk. Bjork was the responding officer. In June 1972, Lacey put Helen in the hospital with a smashed jaw and two broken ribs. She, in turn, finally put him in jail. He served sixty days.

A year later Lacey was arrested again, this time for child abuse. Louis picked up the small Polaroid attached to the report. It was a close-up of Cole’s thin shoulders with six small red marks. The cigarette burns. Louis tucked the photo back into the file. He read a brief synopsis of the unsubstantiated sexual assault charge. As Bjork had said, Social Services had removed Cole Lacey from the home but he was returned six months later.

Up to this point, Lacey had kept to beating up women and kids. What had finally turned him into a murderer? What had finally caused the jug to break?

Louis returned to the rap sheet and finally reached February 1977 and the assault that had resulted in Lacey’s prison sentence.

Lacey had said it was a bar fight where he had just pulled a knife. Lacey had pulled a knife, all right, slicing open an old man’s abdomen five times. He was sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in Marquette State Prison. Bjork had included a brief report on Lacey’s prison record. It was surprisingly unremarkable.

Louis drained the Dr Pepper and leaned back against the headboard. But Lacey had been busy in prison, real busy. Somehow, he had found out about the raid. Maybe Cole had told him, maybe his mother. But Lacey had found out that his son and daughter had been killed by Loon Lake cops. And for two years, he just sat in his cell, with nothing to do but wait and plan his revenge.

Louis closed the file. There was a knot in his stomach, the same one he had felt earlier back in Lacey’s room but with a slight nausea creeping in. He knew Lacey now. And Lacey knew them. Lacey knew who he wanted to kill, knew where they lived, when they were on duty, even their call numbers. All Lacey had to do was pick his time.

Louis slipped off the bed and walked to the window, throwing it wide open. The sound of laughter drew his eyes down to the street. His room overlooked downtown Houghton. The snow was heaped in eight-foot drifts along Main Street, more falling now. But the town was alive with activity, mostly college kids, he guessed. He watched a couple stroll under the window. The woman’s laugh drifted up to him again. They paused to share a kiss.

He moved back to the bed, staring down at the files spread over the rust-colored spread. He had to get out.

King’s Tavern was quiet except for a jukebox near the back that was playing “All My Ex’s Live in Texas.” A trio of coeds sat at the bar, heads together, giggling softly. Louis slid onto a stool, laying his coat on the stool next to him.

He ordered a Heineken and when it came he ignored the glass and gulped it quickly. The beer dripped onto his chin. He started to reach for a bar napkin but one appeared in front of his face.

Louis looked to see Bjork standing next to him. He accepted the napkin and wiped his chin.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I was sitting in the back and saw you come in,” she said. She wasn’t in uniform. She was wearing jeans and a heavy, cream-colored sweater.

“Join me?” Louis asked.

“You buying?”

“Sure.” He pulled his coat into his lap and Bjork slid onto the stool. She looked different, softer. Her braid was gone and her hair was a red washboard of ripples down her back. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears and gold earrings glimmered in the neon lights of the bar. It took Louis a moment to realize they were tiny handcuffs.

Bjork saw him looking at them. “A gift from my ex,” she said.

“Was he a cop, too?”

She shook her head. “Lumber worker.”

Louis hesitated, wondering if he should get personal. There had been only one woman back at the academy and he never worked with one.

“What did he think about you being a cop?” he asked. He didn’t know what had prompted the question. Maybe the idea that something in Bjork’s experience could give him a clue about Zoe.

“Wasn’t crazy about it,” Bjork said. “Guess that’s why he finally split.” She fingered the earrings, smiling. “He got these for me one Christmas. It was a hint after the black nightie didn’t work.” She waved at the bartender. “Ed was not the most subtle guy in the world.”

Louis stared at her, questions swimming in his head. He looked away, finished off his beer and set it out in the well. Another appeared, along with a Stroh’s for Bjork. She held up her bottle.

“To catching the son of a bitch.”

Louis clinked his bottle and took a sip.

“You finish reading the file?”

“Almost. I got hungry,” Louis said.

“Looks to me like you’re drinking your dinner.”

Louis covered up his mild annoyance with a smile. “Occupational hazard.”

“Want to bounce a few things off me?” she asked.

“Like what?”

Her face grew serious. “Two dead cops. Maybe I can help.” Louis hesitated then looked around the tavern. There was an empty booth and he picked up his beer, motioned for her to follow. He slid in one side, Bjork across from him. Neither said anything for several long seconds. The jukebox launched into Artie Shaw playing “Summit Ridge Drive.”

“So tell me about how they died,” Bjork said.

“Both surprised by a shotgun to the chest, both off duty,” Louis said.

“Ballsy little bastard, isn’t he?”

Louis nodded. “One was an easy target, a retired old fart who drank a lot. He was out fishing at six a.m. The other was active duty, young, alert and experienced. He carried his gun to his own front door. Lacey was on his porch and blew away the door with him behind it.”

“Christ,” Bjork said.

“It gets sicker. He leaves these cards.”

“What kind of cards?”

“A military thing, death cards. A sign that was supposed to tell us ‘I was here.’”

Louis caught the bartender’s attention, circling a finger to indicate another round.

“Kincaid, what is Lacey after?” Bjork asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is he targeting your cops?”

Louis hesitated. “Revenge. Two of his kids, teenagers, were killed by us in a barricade situation five years ago. They fired on the cops and refused to surrender. The girl drew on one of the officers.”

Bjork took a sip of her beer, digesting his words. “What about Cole?”

“He’s at Red Oak until he’s twenty-one.”

“Stiff sentence for a kid.”

“He pulled a shotgun when they took him into custody.”

Bjork shook her head. “Well, pardon my bluntness but given what you just told me why did it take you guys so long to name Lacey as a suspect?”

Louis was glad it was so dark; she couldn’t see his embarrassment. Over what? That Jesse had fucked up? That the DOC was filled with incompetents? That no one bothered to bring up the raid? That Gibralter was too pigheaded to ask for outside help? That he himself had let Lacey go?

Her question hung in the smoky air, waiting to be answered. Maybe he was embarrassed because he had no idea how to answer. Hell, maybe he was embarrassed because he didn’t know what in God’s name to do next.

He met her eyes, seeing again the spread of fine wrinkles at the corners, seeing for the first time the depth on the inside. All right, she was a woman. But she was also a cop. A cop with decades more experience than he had. If anyone could understand about his letting Lacey go, she would.

“We had him once,” Louis said.

“Lacey?”

Louis nodded. “Day after Christmas. We picked him up for running from us when we walked into a bar.”

Bjork waited for more.

Louis sat back. Just say it. “I cut him loose.”

“You didn’t check on him? You didn’t put two and two together?”

“I didn’t know who he was. The name meant nothing. And the DOC had him listed as being in prison. It turned out to be a typo.” Louis let out a breath. “A damn typo.”

Bjork studied him.

Louis stared into his beer. “It was Christmas. I tried to do something decent.”

“Well, Louis, there is decent and then there is dumb.”

“Thanks,” Louis said.

“Did you expect sympathy from me?”

He met her eyes briefly then looked away. “I don’t know what I’m expecting anymore.”

“How come nobody in the department thought of him, thought the barricade situation would — ”

“I have no idea,” Louis interrupted. He stared at a set of carved initials in the tabletop.

“Louis,” Bjork said. “You will get him.”

He looked up at her. “Right.”

She shook her head and glanced at the bar. Her eyes lit up and she waved to someone, who hollered a friendly hello across the room.

Louis stared at her. “You like it here, don’t you?”

“I love it. It’s my home,” she said with a smile. “I mean, I’ve traveled some, lived below the bridge for a year even. But I always come back. I belong here.”

He could almost feel his mind slowing, slowing as it approached this strange bend in the road. Home. That’s what he had thought Loon Lake would be. A safe place that he could settle into. But it was not as it had first seemed. Nothing was as it first seemed. Loon Lake wasn’t a postcard paradise; it was a place of death. Jesse wasn’t a partner he could count on; he was a coward, his judgment clouded by blind loyalty to Gibralter. And Gibralter, what was he? Certainly not the perfect chief.

And Zoe…what he had felt with her. What was that?

“Louis?”

He glanced at Bjork. “What are you thinking?”

“About Loon Lake, the job. My chief.”

“I talked to your chief today. Strange man.”

“He called you?”

“Ya, wanted to make sure you arrived okay.”

“Christ,” Louis said under his breath, looking away.

They were silent, the laughter and music of the tavern floating around them.

“What else did he have to say?” Louis asked finally.

Bjork fiddled with the neck of the Stroh’s bottle.

“What else?” Louis pressed.

“He said he was concerned because you, quote, couldn’t find your ass with two hands, unquote.”

Louis felt the heat creeping into his face but he didn’t look away.

“Sounds like a hard-ass,” Bjork said.

Bjork reached across the table and touched his hand. Louis looked down at her hand. Her nails were short with chipped, rose-colored polish. There was one of those mother’s rings on her finger with three little gemstones. He withdrew his hand and dropped it in his lap.

Bjork sat back, looking at him. Then she quickly raised her bottle and drained it, setting it down loudly.

“Well, I need to call it a night. How about you? You okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Bjork stood up, looking down at him. Her eyes were watery in the neon light and he wanted to believe it was from the booze, no veteran-to-rookie sympathy. Or worse, some woman-to-man thing. Christ, he had started the night thinking about what Bjork might look like handcuffed to a bed and now she was looking at him like he was her kid.

“Lieutenant Byrd will have your evidence ready for you tomorrow morning,” she said. “Swing by and pick it up.”

Louis nodded.

Bjork hesitated then extended a hand. “It was a pleasure, Officer Kincaid.”

Louis took her hand. “Thanks, Bjork,” her said softly. “Thanks for everything.”