Snow Blind

12

It was pushing nine a.m. and snowing hard by the time Magozzi and Gino finally got on the road in one of the department SUVs and headed north out of the city.

Magozzi was behind the wheel, Gino was rigid and still in the passenger seat, giving himself a gastric bypass with a too-tight seat belt, staring out the windshield as if he could prevent catastrophe by not blinking. ‘I hate these damn SUVs,’ he said. ‘We’re too damn high. Bet we tip over twenty times on the way up there.’

‘Can’t tip over,’ Magozzi said. ‘The ice ruts under the snow are too deep.’

The morning’s icy pellets had turned to snow, the wind was gusting, and the plows were having trouble keeping up, even on the city freeways. Magozzi figured visibility was about two car-lengths, give or take. It got worse once they cleared the shelter of the downtown buildings; worse yet when they left the suburbs behind and hit open land.

‘Starting to feel like we’re driving off the edge of the world here, Leo. I can’t see for shit.’

‘We’ve got swampland on both sides, nothing to stop the wind. It’ll get better once we hit some woods.’ Magozzi was four-wheeling it through the new four inches that had accumulated since the last plow run.

‘You sure there are woods up here?’

Magozzi was concentrating hard, trying to see the edges of the road. ‘Hell, I don’t know. We’re heading north. There are woods in northern Minnesota, right? Lean back. You’re fogging the windshield.’

Gino tried to sit back and relax, but within seconds he was canted forward again, squinting through the driving snow. ‘You’re going too fast.’

‘Goddamnit, Gino, relax. You’re driving me nuts, and you sound like an old woman. Back when we were on the street you used to drive like a maniac.’

‘Yeah, but then I got married and had kids, and I’d like to make it to their graduations.’

Magozzi sighed and eased up on the accelerator. ‘There. I’m going thirty. Can you live with that?’

‘I’ll let you know. Damnit, this trip better not be for nothing – it already took at least ten years off my life.’

‘It’s either the same guy or a copycat. Bad either way, and I’m not exactly clicking my heels about working a tandem with this particular sheriff.’

‘Tell me about it. Chief said English teacher, and I had a high school flashback to Miss Kinney, smacking her ruler on the desk. Tall, sour-faced old biddy. Pursed her lips all the time like she was pissed off at the whole world. She talked just like this Rikker woman, and I could never understand her, either. Spewed words like they were old pennies she was dumping out of a jar all at once. Just because you know a lot of words doesn’t mean you have to use them all in the same sentence, you know?’

‘Maybe she was nervous.’

‘Whatever. Just get ready to translate for me. When cops get more than one adjective going I think it’s multiple choice and my brain stops dead… Jeez, Leo, the damn snow’s going sideways. Can you see the road?’

‘Nope.’

It took them exactly two hours to travel sixty miles, and that was on the freeway. By the time they took the right exit and hit the secondary roads, Magozzi was wishing he’d brought a snowmobile instead of an SUV. They sailed sideways through the first turn, then kissed the ditch a couple of times plowing through the rutted snow on a puny two-lane road with no shoulders. Gino was not happy.

‘Man, this is starting to look like Fargo. Don’t they have snowplows up here?’

Magozzi’s knuckles were white on the wheel, something that rarely happened. ‘Open fields in this spot, nothing to stop the wind. They could have plowed this ten minutes ago, and you wouldn’t be able to tell. Keep an eye out for road signs, we got another turn coming up.’

‘Thanks for the great news. Are we gonna go through that one sideways, too?’

‘You want to drive?’

‘I don’t even want to be in a car in this stuff. We pass any kind of a hotel, just drop me off, pick me up in April.’

Another twenty minutes and they were fishtailing through the left turn onto Kittering. Once the SUV straightened out, Magozzi hugged the right edge of the road, looking for some purchase on the snowcovered slope. Gino squinted through the snow, but couldn’t see the top of the hill. ‘Forget Fargo,’ he grumbled. ‘This is a mountain, and the way our luck is going, it’s probably Donner Pass… Oh, man, that’s a hell of a drop-off on the left, Leo, so you don’t want to be doing any of that sideways stuff on this road, okay?’

‘Spoilsport.’

Magozzi felt the back end begin to slide and eased up on the accelerator, hoping like hell they didn’t start sliding backward down the hill. By the time they finally reached the top, it took a full five seconds for him to unclench his jaw. He pulled up between two county cars parked along the side of the sheriff’s office and shut down the car. He and Gino just sat there for a moment, breathing.

Finally Gino stirred and released his seat belt. ‘I kind of feel like we oughta get out and kiss the ground or something.’

Magozzi shook his head. ‘Can’t do it. The country boys could be watching from inside, and they drive that road all day long. We’d look like a couple of wusses.’

‘We are a couple of wusses.’

‘No need to lay that out right at the start.’

The female deputy behind the dispatch station eyed their badges and nodded. ‘Good morning, Detectives. The sheriff’s expecting you. She’ll be right down. How bad was the drive?’

Gino grunted. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. The only way I’m going back down that hill is behind a salt truck.’

‘They never salt that hill. The runoff pollutes the lake.’

‘Oh, yeah? You’d think the dead bodies from all the people sliding off the drop-off into the lake would pollute it a hell of a lot more than a little salt, and we were nearly two of them.’

The deputy blinked at him. ‘You’re kidding me. You actually came up Kittering Hill?’

‘Left on Kittering, up the hill to the sheriff’s office. Those were the directions.’

She let out a silent whistle. ‘Man, nobody drives that hill in this kind of weather. That’s just plain suicide. You should have come the back way.’

Gino’s face was getting red. ‘There’s a back way? A better way?’

‘Well, sure, you just pass Kittering until you get to Cutter. That sort of loops around the hill, easier grade, and the trees pretty much protect it from the weather. What joker gave you those directions, anyway?’

Gino and Magozzi remained stone-faced, and the deputy’s face reddened as she made the connection.

‘Oh… hey… listen, just for the record, Sheriff Rikker probably doesn’t know about the back way, either.’

‘Seems like something the sheriff ought to know,’ Magozzi said stiffly.

The woman shook her head. ‘She’s the new kid on the block. Somebody should have told her about it before she came in this morning, but I guess it’s kind of a hazing thing for the newbies, you know?’

‘Just how long has she been on the job?’ Gino asked.

‘Well… she worked dispatch for a couple months before she was elected, but we didn’t have a lick of snow back then, and today’s pretty much her first day as sheriff. Heck of a way to get your feet wet, huh?’ The switchboard started buzzing and she smiled apologetically. ‘Excuse me, Detectives.’

Gino grabbed Magozzi by the arm and pulled him aside. ‘Did I just step into an alternate universe or are my ears shot, because what I thought I just heard was that a couple months of dispatch is all the experience this broad has…’

‘I’m going to tell Angela you referred to a woman as a “broad.”’

‘… which means that the least qualified law enforcement officer in the whole state is now the sheriff of one of the largest counties in Minnesota and she’s the lead on a homicide investigation we might have to piggyback.’

‘She was just elected in November, Gino. You knew that much.’

‘Sure I knew that. I just figured she already had a few years on the job, and now it turns out all she did was push a button on a dispatch desk. Jesus, Leo. How does shit like this happen?’

‘I think it’s called democracy.’

‘If we end up having to work the case with her, it’s gonna be called on-the-job training, and I’m not in the mood to babysit…’

‘Detectives?’

Gino and Magozzi both winced at the sound of a voice behind them, the same voice they’d heard over the speaker in Malcherson’s office. As he turned, Magozzi wondered how much she’d overheard.

The person who went with the voice was neither a sour-faced old biddy or a woman who looked tough enough to throw her hat in the ring for sheriff. Iris Rikker was a petite blond with a sweet face and wide blue eyes that probably wouldn’t shelter a lie easily. She was about as unofficial-looking as you could get, right down to the absence of a uniform. She did have a gun, however, and Magozzi couldn’t decide if that made him feel better or worse about the situation.

‘Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth?’ she asked again uncertainly.

‘Yes… Sheriff?’

‘Sheriff Iris Rikker. Pleased to meet you.’ She smiled politely and shook their hands while Magozzi made quick introductions.

‘I’m really sorry you had to drive up here in this weather. Were the roads horrible?’

‘Nah, they were spotless,’ Gino said, irritable as he always was after a brush with death, real or imagined.

‘Is the BCA here yet?’ Magozzi asked.

‘Yes, they arrived a few minutes before you did. I had one of my deputies take them down to the site. Would you like some coffee?’

Magozzi blinked at her. They had a dead body and a BCA team waiting for them out in the middle of a snowstorm and she thought they should all sit down for coffee? He glanced over at Gino, who was doing a really good job of concealing his disdain, except for the big eye-rolling part, and then the sharp tone he used when he said, ‘The BCA can’t start their job until we get out there for a first look, and they’re going to be really pissed if we keep them waiting.’

Iris Rikker looked a little startled, and then more than a little embarrassed. ‘Oh, God. Of course. I’m sorry. I just thought…’ She grabbed a heavy parka from a wall hook and hurried out the door ahead of them before she remembered to put it on.

Gino zipped up as he watched her through the glass door, shaking his head. She slipped and slid across the parking lot toward a big new SUV, then took a header just as she reached for the door handle. ‘If this case belongs to us and we have to work with that woman, I’m going to kill myself.’

Magozzi pulled on his gloves. ‘It’s her first day, and definitely her first murder. Maybe you need to cut her a little slack.’

‘Screw that. We’ve got two of our own down, and we don’t have time to cut anybody any slack.’

‘Bobby Windemeyer.’

‘Huh?’ Gino paused just before he pushed open the door.

‘Bobby Windemeyer, your first DB, remember? You took one look at the kid and broke down and bawled like a baby. Moved the body, stepped in blood, pretty much trashed the whole scene.’

‘Hmph. That was a long time ago.’

‘Exactly. This is Iris Rikker’s long time ago. We all get one of those.’

Gino acted like he hadn’t heard him, glowering out at the SUV that had just pulled up to the door, a red-faced Iris Rikker behind the wheel. ‘Oh, Christ, now she expects us to ride with her? I sure as hell hope she drives better than she walks.’