Snow Blind

11

Magozzi awakened at five a.m. to the sound of sleet hitting his bedroom window. He rolled over, jammed pillows to his ears to block out the sound, then remembered that someone was killing cops and stuffing them in snowmen.

Half an hour later he was showered and dressed, scrambling eggs and deli ham in the same skillet, ignoring the evangelist who had popped onto the television screen when he’d turned it on. Shit. Sunday morning. Even in a state of news and weather junkies, religion topped the bill on the airwaves one day a week, and if you wanted to hear if the world had ended overnight, you had to wait until the men in black robes finished telling you that God’s love was everywhere. Magozzi figured none of those guys ever watched the news.

He channel-surfed while he ate and found a local news brief that was little more than all the stuff they’d run last night, but a couple of the cable news channels were running with the Minneapolis story, mostly because the video was so good. There were a couple of shaky, amateur clips Magozzi hadn’t seen last night – civilians were already cashing in on shooting their happy kids building snowmen, and then the MPD knocking them down, looking for corpses. He pushed away his plate and dragged a napkin across his mouth.

He heard the rumble and scrape of the city plow and sand truck out on the street, and felt that old twinge of disappointment, still with him almost thirty years later. When he was a kid, a snowfall like yesterday’s would have shut down the city for a day at least, maybe two – joyous, unexpected holidays that kept everyone home and turned back the clocks about a hundred years. Dads pulled their kids on sleds right down the middle of the street, moms stayed home and baked cookies and cooked up big pots of homemade soup, and every house smelled like wet woolen mittens drying on a radiator. But eventually you’d hear the dreaded sound of the big trucks pushing the plows, parents’ faces would sag in relief that everything was getting back to normal, and kids would groan and grumble and scramble to complete the homework they’d cast aside.

The Department of Transportation had come a long way since then, and Minneapolis had learned to handle just about anything nature could dish out. This city cleared roads and sidewalks and parking lots faster than any other place in the country, and Magozzi couldn’t remember the last time schools and businesses were closed for a whole day, let alone two in a row. Progress wasn’t always such a good thing, he decided.

Gino called just as he was heading out the door. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I was just going outside to find some kids and pull them on a sled.’

‘You’ll kill them. It’s icy out there. Come to work instead. Malcherson wants us both in his office as soon as you get in.’

‘You’re there already?’

‘Just pulling into the lot now, which is pretty full for a Sunday morning, by the way.’

‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

‘Not in one piece, you won’t. That stuff they put on the roads to keep the ice melted isn’t doing so hot this morning. I did a three-sixty on the freeway, sailed right through about four red lights on Washington, and I am not getting in a car again until the spring thaw. Wear your booties. There’s more snow coming.’

Chief Malcherson was the perfect embodiment of Minnesota’s stoic, Scandinavian sensibility – the man probably had actual emotions, but if he did, they weren’t for public viewing. But this morning, the gravity of losing two men was strikingly evident on his hang-dog face. The loose skin around his mournful eyes and his remarkable bloodhound jowls seemed to have dropped a couple of inches since the press conference, as if he’d been dragging his hands down his face all night. He barely looked up from the papers on his desk when Magozzi and Gino walked into his office. ‘Good morning, Detectives. Please have a seat.’

Even Gino, who rarely missed an opportunity to comment on the Chief’s sartorial savvy, was subdued and respectful and got straight to the point. ‘Morning, Chief. You did an excellent job with the press conference last night. That couldn’t have been easy, just standing there looking composed while all those reporters kept busting your balls.’

Malcherson ignored him. If he ever thought too hard about Detective Rolseth’s compliments, he would probably have to fire him.

‘We need to move very quickly on this case, Detectives. The press has its teeth in the serial-killer scenario, and we are going to have to address that, and hopefully eliminate it as a possibility. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything in your reports last night that would do that.’

‘Neither did we, Chief,’ Gino said. ‘But it could have been the ex-con with a grudge, like you said, or some nut-bag out of the asylum or who knows what. Serial killers aren’t the only sickos out there. The press just gloms onto them ’cause they’re ratings grabbers. And that’s the difference between us and the press. They jump to conclusions; we have to wait for the facts.’

Malcherson nodded, closed the folder containing last night’s reports, and filed it in a drawer. He never cluttered his pristine desk with anything he wasn’t using at the moment, including photos of his family, which were neatly arranged in their own cubbyhole in a bookcase. ‘Do you have anything new for me this morning?’

Magozzi nodded and laid a fat manila folder on his desk, feeling almost guilty for messing it up. ‘Copies of the ME’s and the BCA’s preliminary reports.’

Malcherson looked wearily at the volume of paperwork. ‘Can you summarize the new information for me?’

Magozzi opened his own folder and started ticking off points. ‘All the slugs from the scene were.22s, and ballistics is working on them now. We should hear something by noon. There’s some trace, but both scenes were so contaminated, Jimmy Grimm isn’t optimistic it will yield anything. Also, the BCA found a blood trail after we left the scene yesterday that matched Toby Myerson’s blood type, along with one of his gloves.’

‘So we’re thinking this is how it went down,’ Gino continued. ‘Tommy Deaton was ahead of Myerson on the trail, and the killer was waiting for him under the cover of trees and surprised him point-blank just as he was skiing out of the woods. Myerson sees his friend get shot, takes off a glove and goes for his gun. But the killer either gets lucky or is a dead-eye dick and hits him in his shooting arm, which explains the blood trail. Myerson skis all the way to the other side of the field, which is no mean feat, considering the arm shot shattered the radius, then he caught one in the back of the neck, probably real close to where the snowman was built around him, because that slug most likely paralyzed him instantly.’

Malcherson took a moment to process the scene Gino had just laid out, his mask of Scandanavian ice still intact. ‘Unfortunately, what bothers me most about this scene does absolutely nothing to dispel the serial-killer notion. In fact, it may support it.’

Magozzi asked, ‘What’s that, Chief?’

‘The carrots.’

Magozzi smiled at him. Underneath the great suits and polished personna of the Chief, there was still an investigator, alive and well and still thinking like a cop. ‘Good call, sir. A lot of people carry rope in their cars for emergencies, but the carrot’s a dead giveaway. Whoever it was came prepared to build a snowman.’

Malcherson’s phone lit up. ‘Please excuse me a moment, gentlemen.’

Magozzi smiled a little at the Chief’s pervasive politeness, then watched Malcherson answer the phone and reach for a fresh tablet. For what seemed like a long time he took fast and furious notes without saying much to the person on the other end. ‘I’ll call that up immediately, Sheriff,’ he said at last. ‘As it happens, Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth are in my office right now. If you’d stay on the line for just a moment, I’ll put this on speaker.’ He pushed hold, and Magozzi noticed the Chief was three shades paler than he’d been a few minutes earlier.

‘This is Sheriff Iris Rikker from Dundas County.’

Gino nodded, recognizing the name from the papers a few months back. ‘The green-as-grass deputy who skunked the sitting sheriff.’

‘Correct. She may have a snowman of her own. You need to listen to what she has to say.’ He pushed SPEAKER and nodded at Magozzi, who inched closer to the phone.

‘Leo Magozzi here, Sheriff Rikker. The Chief tells us you’ve got another one of our snowmen up there.’

‘As I told your chief, I’m not entirely certain, Detective. From what I saw on the news last night, it doesn’t look precisely like the ones you discovered in Theodore Wirth Park yesterday, although it may have originally. It’s difficult to assess that at this point.’ Magozzi frowned, trying to sort the relevant from all the words she’d spewed out. It was like talking to an FBI agent. ‘Explain, please.’

‘Your snowmen looked very carefully crafted; almost artistic, in fact.’

‘And yours?’

‘Well, we’ve had freezing rain here this morning, then sleet, and now snow…’

‘Same here.’

‘… so even if this had started as a recognizable duplicate, the weather conditions would have altered it considerably. I’ve sent a photograph to your chief so you can make an assessment for yourself.’

Magozzi saw Chief Malcherson at his computer on the credenza behind the desk, downloading a file from online.

‘In the meantime,’ Sheriff Rikker went on, ‘we are preserving the scene as well as we can under the circumstances, which of course means we haven’t begun to dismantle the snowman yet, and without at least rudimentary examination of the deceased, we haven’t yet determined with any degree of certainty that this was a homicide.’

Gino yawned noisily, and even Magozzi was getting a little impatient. ‘You are sure there’s a body in there, right?’

He could almost hear a backstep in the pause that followed, and then a snippiness in her speech. ‘I’m very sure, Detective. His hands were exposed. You’ll see that in the photograph.’

‘Any chance it could just be someone who got caught out in the storm and then covered with snow?’

Another long pause, and Magozzi sensed a little temper in there somewhere. That was the trouble with a lot of woman cops, in his experience, especially women in power spots. They couldn’t take a little good-natured ribbing like a man could. ‘There is a very definite structure to this form, Detective. Whether or not it was perfectly executed, and in spite of the weather damage, it was obvious to all of us that someone constructed a snowman around this body. Whether or not it relates to your case remains to be seen. From our perspective at least, this was a courtesy call. After you’ve examined the photograph, you may be able to better determine the necessity of sending your people up here in these weather conditions.’

… better determine the necessity…? Who the hell talked like that? Magozzi rubbed at his temple and saw Gino doing the same thing, a pained expression on his face. The woman was giving them both a headache.

‘Fine, Sheriff Rikker. I see the Chief has your photo loaded now. Can you hold a moment while we take a look?’

‘Certainly.’

Malcherson pushed the hold button, then stepped aside so Gino and Magozzi could see the computer screen.

‘Jeez, she’s touchy,’ Gino grumbled. ‘Like talking to a porcupine.’ Then both he and Magozzi stared at the digital image for a long moment.

‘Oh, man,’ Gino said. ‘We got another one.’

Magozzi leaned over and punched the speaker button on the Chief’s phone. ‘Sheriff Rikker? Sorry to keep you waiting. Detective Rolseth and I will be up there as soon as we can. You have any problem with BCA handling the scene?’

‘The BCA was my next call.’

‘Let us do that. I’d like the same guys who worked the park snowmen.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Magozzi raised his brows. First she was snippy, now she was calling him ‘sir,’ and then she made nice by giving them detailed driving directions and closed with thanks to all of them – at least that was what Magozzi thought she was doing. All very polite and proper and way too long, mentioning them each by name as if reading from her notes, which she probably was. If she was a cop, Magozzi was a bowl of cornflakes.

‘Doesn’t sound like any cop I ever met,’ Gino remarked after the Chief had closed the call.

‘In point of fact, she was an English teacher before she entered law enforcement,’ Malcherson said.

‘No kidding? Well, that explains it. Only an English teacher would take five hundred words to say what she could have summed up in four. I’d hate to get Mirandized by her – she’s probably got her own ten-page version.’

Malcherson gave him a sour look. ‘I happen to find her linguistic precision refreshing. And I’m certain I don’t have to remind both of you to treat Sheriff Rikker with the same respect you would afford any other elected official and fellow law enforcement officer, elocution notwithstanding.’

‘No problem, Chief. She has my respect until she screws up, and so far, she seems to be handling things okay. I just wish she’d get to the point a little faster. Most of the stuff we do on the job is time sensitive, you know?’

Up in Dundas County, Iris Rikker hung up the phone, closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the office she was sitting in, and replayed the conversation in her mind, trying to shake the feeling that the Minneapolis detective thought she was a total idiot.

A cursory rap on the door frame interrupted her thoughts, and Lieutenant Sampson stomped in, throwing back the hood on his parka and scattering snow all over the place. ‘MPD coming?’

Iris mentally added a verb and prepositional phrase so that she could understand the question. ‘Detective Magozzi and Detective Rolseth are on their way. They’re also sending the same BCA team that processed the Minneapolis scene.’

Sampson flopped down in a big leather recliner and jerked up the foot rest. ‘Good deal.’

She got up and looked out the wall of windows over the lake, thinking how convenient it was to have a crime scene right outside the sheriff’s window. She couldn’t see much through the thickening snowfall, and was glad of that. ‘We need to put up some sort of plastic sheeting to preserve as much of the scene as possible. Do we have such things in the building?’

Sampson didn’t say anything for a second, so she turned around and looked at him. She didn’t like him lying back in the recliner as if he were in his own living room. It was disrespectful, wasn’t it? And if she ever intended to take charge of this office and do the job well, it was important that she establish the ground rules of respect right at the beginning, and now was as good a time as ever to start…

‘That was good thinking about the plastic sheeting,’ he said, messing up the mental speech she was planning about behavior modification, thoroughly confusing her because she thought he may have actually said something nice to her. ‘But a little slow. I already had some boys pick up a tent from the rental shop. They’re putting it up now. Christ, what a morning. You going to put lace curtains up in here or what?’

Iris just stared at him for a minute, finally deciding that she had a better chance of modifying the behavior of an earthworm. The truth was, a man like Sampson belonged in this office more than she did. He looked different with the hood pushed back. Dark hair, which seemed appropriate for some reason, squinty dark eyes, and the scruff of a weekend beard. Precisely the appearance of a man you’d expect to find in a wood-paneled office with a flat-screen television, leather recliners, and a stack of Playboys on a table.

Sampson pushed himself up from the recliner, apparently weary of her silence. ‘Well, I just wanted to see if the Minneapolis boys were going to show or if we had to start processing the scene ourselves. I’ve got to get back out there.’ He stopped at the doorway. ‘I suppose you want to interview the night janitor who found the body.’

Iris blinked. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘I’ll send her in. Margie Jensen, in case you haven’t met.’

‘Thank you.’

Iris waited until he was well out of the office before she sagged back down into the stupid leather chair and started wishing she were dead, or at least home, with her cat throwing up on her foot.

She’d never even thought to ask who had found the body. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. And Sampson knew it.

You’re not fooling anyone, Iris. You never walked the street or manned a patrol or processed a crime scene. You don’t even speak the same language as these people.

A short older woman in coveralls rapped on the door frame with a broom handle and walked right in. ‘I’m the janitor, Margie Jensen, and I don’t know anything.’

Iris smiled at her. That makes two of us.