Snow Blind

13

Detective Tinker Lewis was buried under the down comforter, listening to the sleet on the bedroom window, being coaxed awake by the aromas of brewing coffee and frying bacon wafting up the stairs.

It had to be Sunday, otherwise Janis wouldn’t be anywhere near the stove. She could make coffee and fry a pound of bacon, and on a good day, three or four slices might be edible. Tinker was profoundly grateful that she attempted these things only one day a week. The kitchen belonged to him.

By the time he got downstairs she was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring down at a mass of greasy bacon languishing on a paper towel. ‘I suck at this. What kind of an idiot can’t fry bacon?’

Tinker sorted through the mess with a fork, looking for a piece that wasn’t either raw or burned black. ‘Maybe if you didn’t waste your time doing those silly heart surgeries, you could stay home and practice cooking, become a better wife to your poor beleaguered husband. I could buy you an apron.’

‘That’s all I’ve been waiting for.’ She looked up at him and frowned. ‘Why are you dressed for work? It’s Sunday.’

‘Cops die, we all work.’

He took one look at her face and wished he were agile enough to kick himself. Janis was on one of the transplant teams at the U, and they’d had a marathon surgery scheduled yesterday, maybe eighteen straight hours in the rarefied, isolated atmosphere of the operating room. No TV, no radio, no news from the outside world. He’d been sound asleep by the time she got home, and she hadn’t heard.

‘I’m sorry.’ He took her hands, sat down with her at the kitchen table, and told her one of the things that any cop’s wife dreads hearing. Someone out there was killing cops, and suddenly her husband was in the line of fire.

When he finished, she sat quietly for a while, still holding his hands. ‘So we’re inside saving a life yesterday, and on the outside, someone took two away. Sometimes I don’t even know why we try so hard to keep up.’

Tinker gave her one of his sad smiles. ‘So you saved the kid. I’m glad.’

‘He’s ten years old.’

‘I know. And now he’ll live to see eleven. That’s big time, Janis. It makes up for a lot.’

She closed her eyes for a moment, then got up and held out her hand, palm up. ‘Give it to me. Then make us something decent to eat if you’re going back out there.’

Tinker reluctantly unholstered his weapon and put it in her hand, then shook his head as she got the cleaning kit from a top cupboard and got to work. He’d taken care of that last night, but telling her that wouldn’t do a bit a good. It was some kind of peculiar ritual with her – checking and rechecking his weapon anytime there was a hint of something going down, maybe because it was the only way she could actively participate in keeping him safe. He had no clue how she’d learned how to do such a thing – probably just from watching him during those years he’d been on the street – but she did it meticulously and well. The irony of seeing those million-dollar life-saving surgeon’s hands ensuring the proper operation of an instrument of death had always disturbed him, and he’d learned long ago to turn away from the wrongness of it.

He was first to the phone when it rang. He saw Janis stiffen and stop working to listen, which she did whenever the phone rang during times like these. She relaxed a little when he said, ‘Oh, hi, Sandy. Good to hear from you.’ She started to tense up again a few minutes later, because Tinker wasn’t talking, and he had his little notebook out.

It took Tinker half an hour to get to downtown Minneapolis, a drive that normally took ten minutes. The sleet had put down a layer of ice on roadways and sidewalks that had barely been cleared after the big snow, and the Highway Patrol had travel warnings over half the state. For once, most Minnesotans had decided to listen, hunkering down until either the sun or the sand trucks came out.

The downtown streets were surprisingly empty, even for a Sunday morning, and a good thing, too, since the little Honda was sliding all over the place. The hot Sunday brunch spots were all closed, their overhangs dripping icicles, and for the first time since he couldn’t remember when, almost every church in the city had canceled Sunday services.

The sky was still raining ice when he slid to the curb in front of one of the old office buildings serving as temporary quarters, while the county sucked toxic mold out of parts of its new kazillion-dollar complex. Heads were still rolling over that one.

The uniform he had requested was waiting on the sidewalk, bundled up in winter gear, ice crystals sparkling on the fur of his cap. Tinker thought he looked like a Christmas decoration someone had forgotten to take down.

‘You Detective Lewis?’

‘Right.’

‘Chalmers, out of the Second. You want to give me the word on this before you make me break down the door of a government building?’

Tinker held up a key ring. ‘Turns out his wife had an extra set, so we’re legal. You weren’t briefed?’

‘I was just told to get my ass over here. Homicide calls, we’re there, especially after yesterday. Sarge figures anything you’re taking a look at might have something to do with what happened to our boys in the park.’

‘I don’t know about that, but anything a little off-kilter sets me on edge, and I want to look at it. And straight up, this guy’s a friend of mine. Steve Doyle. A parole officer. He had a meet set up with a new parolee yesterday afternoon, and hasn’t been seen since. His wife got caught down in Northfield by the storm, didn’t get back until late last night, and found him gone. No calls, no messages, no luck tracking him down. She called me at home first thing this morning.’

Chalmers took off his cap and banged it on his leg, releasing a shower of ice crystals. ‘Well, friend of yours or not, I gotta ask. Any chance this guy just checked into the No Tell Motel while the wife was out of town?’

‘No chance at all.’

Chalmers looked him in the eye for a moment, then nodded and moved toward the door. ‘Then let’s get out of this weather and see what we can see.’

The building was as deserted as the streets, and had that musty smell of crumbling brick and old plaster. Chances were the county would be one of the last tenants before some kind of remodel happened.

The parole office was straight ahead, and the door was wide open. Tinker took a look at the open door and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. You could lose a pay grade for leaving a government office unlocked, especially a parole office. These places held a lot of information you couldn’t find anywhere else in the system: confidential witness information, victim addresses, and a lot of sealed files, especially on juveniles.

He unholstered his weapon, then felt a little silly when Chalmers followed suit. For all he knew, maybe Steve had been working late, then decided to stay put once the freezing rain started to fall. Or maybe another parole officer was putting in some weekend time to catch up on his workload and they’d walk in with weapons drawn and scare the poor guy to death. Which served him right, Tinker thought, for not at least closing the door.

He looked at Chalmers, sensed that his thoughts were traveling the same road, then the two of them shrugged at each other and moved forward, stopping on either side of the open door, listening. They both flinched at the sudden scurrying sound of some small animal inside the wall, then grinned at each other a little sheepishly. Truth was, the most alarming thing here was them.

But then they stepped through the doorway into the empty office and saw the first of the blood.

There wasn’t a lot of it; just a trail of drops and streaks that led straight to Steve Doyle’s desk. Officer Chalmers looked at the blood trail and actually scratched his head. ‘So, we got a crime scene here, or a really bad paper cut?’

‘Damned if I know. Too much blood for a paper cut; not enough to send someone hightailing for ER.’

‘Tough call.’

While Chalmers made a slow circuit of the office, Tinker walked over to Steve’s desk and stood very still while his eyes moved to take it all in, and suddenly it wasn’t a tough call at all. There were too many things wrong here. A coffee mug upended on the desk; a pool of liquid eating away at the wood finish. A muted television left on in one corner, its screen showing a raucous studio audience on its feet, shaking their fists, pointing at something or someone, yelling in complete silence. And, most telling of all, Steve’s coat, still hanging on a tree near the desk, the limp, empty fingers of gloves poking out of the pockets.

Chalmers sidled up next to him and looked around at the TV, the spilled coffee on the desk, the abandoned coat. ‘I don’t like this.’

‘Me either.’ Tinker pushed a blinking light on the phone with the end of the pencil. There were seven messages. Four of them were from someone named Bill Stedman, asking for an immediate call-back. The other three were from Sandy, each one more worried than the last.

‘That his wife?’ Chalmers asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘You want me to give Stedman a call?’

Tinker lifted his head. ‘You know him?’

‘Sure. He runs the halfway house over on Livingston. First stop for a lot of Stillwater’s bad apples when some asshole parole board decides it’s time to turn them loose on the public again.’ Chalmers pulled out his cell phone, pushed a number and handed over the phone.

‘You know his number by heart?’

‘Hell, we all do. Those places are top on our list when we’re shopping for dirtbags. Bastards all repeat, every damn one of them.’

When Bill Stedman answered, Tinker identified himself and his purpose, took notes for five minutes, then closed the phone and looked at Chalmers. ‘You have a roll of crime-scene tape?’

‘In the squad.’

‘I think we need to seal this place off.’

Less than half an hour later Bill Stedman blew into the lobby on a blast of cold air that dropped the temperature ten degrees in five seconds. He was a big man, more muscle than fat, and Tinker caught himself wondering if the man had spent some time on the prison weight benches. ‘Wind’s picking up, mercury’s going down,’ he said, peeling a knit cap that bristled with ice off a shaved skull. ‘And it’s going to dump on us again. How the hell are you, Chalmers? You guys took a real hit yesterday. Damn near broke my heart when I heard it was Deaton and Myerson. I liked them both.’

Chalmers nodded. ‘Everybody did. Detective Lewis here was on scene.’

Stedman turned to Tinker. ‘You think this has something to do with the dead snowmen?’

Tinker concentrated so he wouldn’t wince. Simple truth, he was doing a favor for a missing friend’s wife, but these men were going the extra mile because they thought he might be on the trail of whoever killed Tommy Deaton and Toby Myerson. Tinker was starting to feel guilty. It wasn’t exactly a deception, but it was close. ‘No way of knowing at this point. We aren’t sure what exactly went down here yet, but some of what you told me on the phone gave me a bad feeling about it.’

Stedman eyed the yellow tape crisscrossed over the doorway to the parole office. ‘I surely don’t like the looks of that.’ He walked over and looked into the office.

‘So far, it’s just a precaution. Like I told you, there’s not a lot of blood. Might not even be a crime. Maybe an accident of some kind.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Stedman looked grim. ‘Let me tell you how this works. When these guys get out, we tag-team them pretty close for a while, especially the repeats running through the system for the second or third time. You never know what those guys are going to do, which means we do everything by the book, and then some. If he hadn’t shown up for the meet yesterday, Doyle would have called me, right after he called out a warrant. Plus, Weinbeck never checked into the house by curfew last night – another automatic for a warrant, which was why I was trying to reach Doyle. Trust me, the man was here, he’s running now, he’s got a history of violence, and this doesn’t look good.’

Tinker kept his face expressionless. He was just hearing what his gut had told him all along, but didn’t much like hearing it out loud. He looked at the soft case Stedman was carrying. ‘Thanks for bringing that over. Hell of a day to ask a man to come outside.’

‘No sweat. I’ve been locked in a house for two days with sixteen stir-crazy ex-cons. I need to see your creds before I show you this.’

Tinker handed over his badge case and watched the man’s eyes shift from the ID to his face, then back again. ‘Okay, Detective. Did you get a chance to look around for Doyle’s copy of the file?’

Tinker nodded. He’d spent the last twenty minutes in latex gloves going through every piece of paper and every file in and on Steve’s desk, including the locked drawers. ‘There’s nothing here with Weinbeck’s name on it, except a notation in Steve’s day planner for yesterday’s meet.’

Stedman sighed and headed for a padded bench on one wall. He sat down, put his case on the floor between his feet, and pulled out a fat file folder. ‘Kurt Weinbeck, did three out of five in Stillwater. They cut him loose Friday on a conditional release – six months with me and my boys.’

Tinker asked, ‘What was he in for?’

‘This.’ Stedman handed him a sheaf of photos.

Even Officer Chalmers recoiled when he saw the one on top. ‘Jesus. What is that?’

‘That,’ Stedman replied, ‘is what his wife looked like last time he was through with her. Seven and a half months pregnant.’

Tinker took a closer look at the photo. He could recognize it as a person now that he knew what he was looking at, but just barely. He glanced at the rest of the photos of a ruined face, then turned them upside down on the bench. ‘Are you telling me he only did three for a double?’

Stedman sighed and started thumbing through the rest of the papers in the file until he found the wife’s hospital records. ‘Believe it or not, she and the kid lived through it. Six months in the hospital, and about a million surgeries over the next two years to put her back together again. She’s the reason I wanted you to tear this place apart looking for Doyle’s copy of this file. That’s the one and only place you’ll find this woman’s address.’

‘You don’t have it in yours?’

‘Nobody has access to the addresses of victims trying to stay out of sight, not even the court. Doyle had it because she had to be notified when her ex was released, and you can bet your ass he wouldn’t let that file out of his sight.’

‘So he wouldn’t have left it at home.’

‘I’ve worked with the man a long time. He wouldn’t even take that file home with information like that inside. He’d keep it here under lock and key with all the other confidential stuff. You sure you hit all the locked cabinets?’

Tinker held up a jangling key ring. ‘Every one.’

‘So we’ve got a missing parolee, a missing parole officer, and now a missing file with a victim’s address in it.’ Stedman pulled out a cigarette, leaned forward on the bench, and lit it. No one mentioned the laws against smoking in public buildings. ‘I’ve got copies of the public court documents. She took back her maiden name after the divorce. Julie Albright. That’s all I know, that’s all I can give you, except a hell of a lot of experience with guys like Weinbeck.’ He turned his head and looked Tinker in the eye. ‘He’s going after her, Detective.’