Snow Blind

14

Sheriff Iris Rikker looked tiny behind the wheel of the big SUV, and Magozzi hoped she was tall enough to reach the pedals. He took the passenger’s seat and let Gino slide into the back – that way, his view out the windshield would be obstructed, and he’d have less opportunity to anticipate the worst. His nonstop commentary on the way up here had nearly driven him crazy, and he was used to it. He figured the sheriff didn’t need the extra stress this morning.

Gino poked his head between the front seats. ‘You got the four-wheel engaged on this thing?’

Iris nodded. ‘The four-wheel is always engaged.’

‘Yeah? Are you sure? Because I think there should be a little light on the dashboard or something that tells you the four-wheel drive is on, right?’

‘I suppose there is.’ She put the truck into drive and eased forward out of the parking lot.

‘I don’t see it.’

‘What?’

‘The four-wheel-drive light.’

Iris glanced over at Magozzi, who was trying not to smile.

‘It’s right there, Gino.’ Magozzi pointed to the center console.

Gino slumped back in his seat.

As they crawled down the hill toward the lake, the crime scene and surrounding activity materialized out of a blurry white mist of snow: there were county cars, state patrols, the BCA vans, and a few civilian vehicles that Magozzi hoped belonged to off-duty cops and not the general public. No media yet, thank God. But most notable was a garishly colorful tent with stripes and polka dots and smiling clown faces plastered all over it erected out on the frozen lake itself.

Gino leaned forward again. ‘What the hell is that? Is the circus in town, or what?’

‘That’s the crime scene,’ Iris replied.

‘Nice tent,’ Gino remarked. ‘Really sets the mood. Are you handing out candy, too?’

As far as Iris knew, she didn’t even have a temper. Cats threw up on her, men cheated on her, the high-schoolers she taught used to ignore her most of the time, and not once had she felt the compulsion to fire back an answering shot. Maybe it was because she placed cats, husbands, and high-schoolers on the same mental level – all creatures who were incapable of change, biologically mandated to behave a certain way. Or maybe it was because fighting back simply wasn’t in her nature. She had the feeling that Detective Gino Rolseth was going to change all that, because she had to struggle to keep her tone even. ‘Bob’s Party Rental on Main Street was kind enough to donate it. It was all we could get on short notice.’

Gino grunted. ‘Great. We’re gonna have every kid in the county swarming the place, trying to buy tickets.’

‘Perhaps we could leave you at the entrance and you could hold them off with your big gun,’ Iris said sweetly, and then snapped her mouth shut, wondering where that had come from.

‘Yeah, well I took a look, and your gun’s bigger than mine. Besides, from what I hear, dealing with kids is what you’re trained for.’

Magozzi slid down in the passenger seat a little and covered his eyes.

Iris skidded into an empty space at the landing and slammed the truck into park. So that’s what this was about. Not just the pompous city cop looking down his nose at the county cops. This was all about her, the English teacher wearing the sheriff’s badge. The woman wearing the sheriff’s badge. He probably hated all women. Sexist pig. Then again, he could just be a conscientious detective who didn’t want an important investigation fumbled by someone as inexperienced as she was. Lord knows she couldn’t blame him for that. If there was one thing Iris knew, it was the extent of her own incompetence.

She sighed and turned in her seat to face him. ‘The only alternative to that tent would have been to drive stakes into the ice to support a tarp, but with the ice in such poor condition, we didn’t want to risk it.’

Gino frowned at her. ‘What do you mean the ice is in poor condition? It’s the middle of January.’

‘You might recall that we had a very mild winter until just last week, and the lakes around here are all spring fed, so there’s still some open water and weak spots. Be careful.’

‘Are you telling me this ice isn’t safe?’

‘Well, they told me it was. By the way, if you hear the ice cracking under you, don’t panic. That happened a lot when I went out there earlier, but they said not to worry.’

When he reached the landing’s edge, Gino stopped dead, his eyes wide and busy as he examined the ice. ‘There’s a crack – a big, zigzaggy crack right there.’ He pointed it out to Iris. ‘What’s that mean?’

Iris looked at it worriedly. ‘I didn’t see that before. Try not to step on it.’

They watched her walk gingerly out onto the ice, careful to skirt the crack. ‘Let’s go,’ Magozzi said.

‘Just a minute. I want to see if she falls in.’

‘Come on, Gino, look at all the fish shacks out there. If the ice can hold them, it can hold us.’

‘So says you. When was the last time you were tromping around on a spring-fed lake after a warm snap?’

Magozzi shrugged. ‘Never.’

‘Goddamnit,’ Gino muttered.

By the time they caught up with Iris, she was talking to the two deputies stationed in front of the tent’s entrance. Both of them were starting to look like snowmen themselves as the heavy precipitation accumulated on their hats and parkas, and they didn’t look particularly happy to be there, or to be talking to Sheriff Rikker, for that matter.

As they drew closer, Magozzi heard Sheriff Rikker ask one of deputies if he was keeping a sign-in sheet for everyone who entered the crime-scene area. ‘What do you think?’ the deputy snapped back, and then remarkably, unbelievably, Iris apologized to the man for asking the question in the first place.

Magozzi and Gino exchanged a look. Any sheriff they’d ever met would have had that man on the ground first, and in the unemployment line second.

So there was a little attitude flying around Dundas County, Magozzi thought, obviously directed at the new sheriff. How Iris Rikker posed a threat was beyond him – maybe it was just pure Neanderthal stuff and men up here didn’t like women in charge. But more likely, it was because she seemed like the kind of woman who’d gone through life with doormat stamped across her forehead. Nobody liked or trusted an authority figure who couldn’t command respect; in fact, most people resented it, as if it were a betrayal of some kind. Her students probably threw spitballs at her, and that deputy was doing the adult equivalent right now. So how in the hell had she gotten elected?

Jimmy Grimm was standing inside, near the door of the crowded tent, when they walked in, giving space to the techs who were swarming around a snow-encrusted figure, shooting photos and video. Magozzi noticed Iris taking a quick step backward, looking a little shell-shocked by all the lights and activity.

‘Jimmy. How goes it?’

‘Well, I almost died five times on the drive up here, all so I could freeze my balls off in a circus tent, but other than that, I’m just peaches. But if it keeps snowing like this, we’re all going to end up checking into the Bates Motel. You notice that place on the drive into town?’

‘Yeah. The Dew Drop Inn or something like that. Put it this way – I wasn’t surprised by the vacancy sign. Have you met Sheriff Rikker?’ Magozzi gestured her closer.

Jimmy was all smiles as he took her hand. He was almost as good at assessing people as he was a crime scene, and he pegged the sheriff as a greenhorn the minute she walked into the tent. She had a lost, little-girl look about her, as much as she tried to hide it. Probably her first body; certainly her first murder investigation, if it turned out that way.

Jimmy was a nice guy in general, but he was especially kind to kids, animals, lost souls, and the uninitiated – he didn’t have to know her history to figure out that she was out of her element and stumbling up a sharp learning curve, and he made the effort to put her at ease. ‘If you have any questions, Sheriff, come to me – these two don’t know anything – they’re just a couple of pretty faces. We let ’em hang around so they can schmooze the media.’

Iris smiled, shaking his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Grimm, and thank you so much for coming.’

Jesus, Magozzi thought. She’s standing in a tent with a dead body and a bunch of crime-scene techs and she sounds like a hostess at a cocktail party. ‘So what have you got so far, Jimmy?’ he said, interrupting the nice-fest.

‘Take a look for yourselves. Make a hole, boys,’ Jimmy directed the techs with cameras, and they cleared a space for Gino and Magozzi to step in closer.

Gino looked at the thing, then his face crunched up like it did that time he took a bite of McLaren’s anchovy pizza. Rikker had been right. If it had started out like one of the storybook snowmen in the park, the weather had made a mess of it. The big head was sleet-pitted and misshapen, with icy rivulets frozen on the fat cheeks, as if the damn thing had been crying. But the snowman shape was absolutely there, and the guy attached to those blue-white hands sure as hell hadn’t built it around himself.

‘Could be number three,’ Magozzi said, standing next to him, and Gino nodded.

Iris stood rock-still a few paces back, feet, hands, and nose already numbed by the cold, trying to look somber and professional, although what she really wanted to do was jump up and down and clap her hands. Number three meant it was the Minneapolis killer, and that meant it was their case, and they’d snatch the investigation right away from her. Oh, darn. She kept her smile deep inside.

‘Or it could be a copycat,’ Magozzi said.

Iris’s inside smile faltered.

‘I don’t like the posing thing,’ Detective Rolseth was saying. ‘Damn fishing pole freaks me out as much as the skis did. Almost worse if it is a copycat – that means there might be more than one out there this sick.’

‘Maybe it’s not posed,’ someone said from behind them, introducing himself as Lieutenant Sampson when they turned around. ‘Seems I heard the two you found in the park were skiing when they caught it. Maybe this guy was ice-fishing.’

‘No way anybody’s going fishing in this kind of weather,’ Gino said.

Sampson shrugged. ‘It’s winter. It snows. Weather doesn’t bother the fish, and it sure doesn’t bother the fishermen. Every one of those shacks out there is pumping smoke right now.’

‘Pumping smoke?’

‘From the heaters.’

‘They got heaters in those things?’ Gino asked.

‘Heaters, TVs, beer coolers. Standard equipment. But those are the players. The die-hards still sit outside in the weather, like this guy. Easier to move yourself than a shack when it’s time to auger a new hole.’

‘This is the damnedest way to have a good time I ever heard of.’

Sampson smiled at him. ‘You ought to give it a try sometime.’

‘No way. God made ice for hockey and scotch, and that’s about it. But either way, posed or not, we’ve moved on to another winter sport here…’

‘And another killing field,’ Magozzi added. ‘If it isn’t a copycat, we got a traveler.’

Gino looked down at his boots. ‘Shit.’

‘All yours.’ A tech carrying all the cameras passed Jimmy on his way out of the tent. ‘I’m going to get these back in the van.’

Magozzi looked around at all the faces inside the tent. ‘Where’s Anant?’

Dr Anantanand Rambachan was chief medical examiner for Hennepin County; philosopher of the world, as far as Magozzi was concerned; and the one person he knew in the whole system who’d managed to retain every ounce of his humanity. More important, he’d examined Deaton’s and Myerson’s bodies in the park yesterday after Gino and Magozzi left, and Magozzi had really wanted him on this scene, too.

‘He’s back in the Cities with a five-year-old girl on the table,’ Jimmy answered. ‘Went through the ice on Cedar Lake last night, and you know how Anant feels about kids.’

Magozzi did. No matter what else he was working on, if a child came through the ugly swinging doors, Anant tended them before all others. Always, Detective Magozzi, we put the babies to bed first. In life, and in death, this is the right thing.

‘So who do we have?’ he asked Jimmy.

‘Dr Dredlock.’

Magozzi gave him a disapproving head shake.

‘Hey, I call him that to his face all the time. He thinks it’s funny. Besides, his real name’s Rowland, and it plain doesn’t go with hair like that. Anyway, he’s good, Anant likes him, I like him, and he assisted on Deaton and Myerson yesterday, so he’s running with the book. He already did a prelim and pronounced our friend here, then hightailed it back to the van to warm up. He’ll come back out for the finish once we get the snow peeled away.’

Jimmy watched the rest of his crew snugging a plastic tarp all around the ice-fishing snowman, and when they were satisfied, he rubbed his mittened hands together. ‘Okay, just like yesterday at the park, boys and girls. Let’s crack this snowman, see what we’ve got.’

Iris held her ground but closed her eyes and listened to the sound of snow chunks being laid carefully on the plastic tarp. She opened them when she heard a big piece fall to the plastic and someone hiss, ‘Oh, shit.’

The snowman – what was left of it – looked bizarre. Although the head was relatively intact, all of the snow on the man’s torso had fallen away at once. Probably, Iris thought in a detached, scientific part of her mind, because all the blood had kept it from sticking properly. The man’s chest was a mess. So you had Frosty the Snowman’s head stuck on top of a horror movie.

Iris felt herself start to tip over, and then she felt a strong, mittened hand on her upper arm, pushing against her, holding her steady.

‘Deep, slow breaths,’ a voice said very quietly. ‘Move your eyes away, don’t close them. Just breathe.’

If she made the tiniest movement, like turning her head to see the face, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she would pass out in a dead faint. Or maybe throw up. But she recognized the voice. Rolseth, of all people, was saving the day, trying to make her look like an actual cop.

When they removed the snow from the head, Iris stared at the exposed bluish face; the closed, swollen eyes; the gaping mouth.

‘Anybody know this guy?’ Magozzi was asking.

Nobody did.

‘And I don’t suppose we have a chance in hell of printing those hands until he thaws.’

Jimmy Grimm shook his head. ‘Not a full set. They’re frozen tight to the pole. Try to move the fingers, they’ll snap like pretzel sticks. Try to pull the pole out, we’ll be ripping some serious skin.’ He crouched down for a closer look. ‘Might be able to give you something off that one thumb, though. It’s sticking out a little.’

‘Give it your best shot. The sooner we ID him, the sooner we’ll be able to look for a connection with the other two.’ Magozzi glanced back at Iris. ‘You’re hooked up to the database, right?’

Iris opened her mouth to speak, pretty excited to know the answer to at least one question, but Lieutenant Sampson beat her to the punch. ‘You get a print, I can run it from my squad in about ten minutes. Faster if he’s been printed by the state. We’ve got them all set up to run through the Minnesota database first. Saves a lot of time.’

That got Gino’s attention. ‘Wait a minute. I can’t make a cell call out here and you got computers in every squad with that kind of muscle?’

Sampson shrugged. ‘Sure. Wireless computers, satellite GPS. Just like downtown.’

Gino folded his arms over his chest and grunted. His car didn’t have GPS.

Sampson was as good as his word. He slogged back from his squad in the lot within five minutes, holding a printout. ‘Got a hit in about two seconds. The guy’s a parole officer out of Hennepin County. Lives in Minneapolis. Name of Stephen P. Doyle. Ring any bells?’

Magozzi looked down at the sorry remains of one Stephen P. Doyle and shook his head. The man was wearing a gold wedding band. ‘It’s going to ring a real sad bell with somebody.’