Snow Blind

17

Iris was sitting in the oversized leather chair in the sheriff’s office – her office, now – stuffing another bite of a peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich in her mouth, feeling strangely guilty for eating at all while there was a BCA team on the lake outside her window, addressing the messy aftermath of the violent death of a human being. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the frozen horror of Steve Doyle’s dead face, and still she ate the damn sandwich. There was something wrong with her.

The paper in front of her was filled with the scribbled notes she’d taken during Detective Rolseth’s call. Just looking at them gave her a headache.

The upside was that if this Kurt Weinbeck character really was Steve Doyle’s murderer – and by all accounts, it sounded like he was – her first homicide was already solved. The bad news was, he was still loose, probably somewhere in her county, stalking one of her citizens, and it was ultimately her responsibility to catch him before he could murder anybody else.

Her butt sank so far into the cushy chair that she felt like she was being swallowed, and her feet didn’t touch the floor. Surely a sign from on high if ever there was one. She didn’t fit in the chair, she didn’t fit in the office, she didn’t fit in the job. The last bite went down like a dry brick, peanut butter sticking to her throat.

By the time she got downstairs Sampson was already in the lobby, and the Minneapolis detectives were coming through the front door. Magozzi gave her a nod of recognition, and Iris nodded back. That, she decided, was the secret to communicating with men. Whenever possible, use signals instead of words. Words just confused them.

Magozzi was thinking that Iris Rikker was looking a little worn around the edges, and small wonder. First day as sheriff of a peaceful rural county, and already she had one body, and maybe a murderer hanging around, trying to raise the count to two. No way she could have bargained for that when she put her name on the ticket.

Sampson, on the other hand, seemed surprisingly nonchalant. He looked up from retying his boots. ‘I called Julie Albright, let her know we were coming.’

Gino was stamping his boots on a doormat that was already soaking wet. ‘Our guy talked to her, said we might have a tough time talking her into protective custody.’

‘You got that right. She thinks she’s safe in Bitterroot.’

Gino’s thoughts went back to the airport parking lot two days ago, when they were pulling a half-dead woman out of a trunk. She’d thought she was safe, too. ‘No place is safe when you’ve got one of these bastards going after a woman, and this one’s worse than most, because he’s willing to kill other people to get to her. We all need to be on the same page when we talk to Julie Albright or we’re never going to get her under the wing.’

Sampson straightened and shifted his utility belt under his parka. ‘The thing is, I’m not so sure we’ve got anyplace half as secure as where she is right now. Take a look at Bitterroot first; see what you think. You ever been out there, Sheriff?’

Iris shook her head, sticking to her new signaling plan.

‘I’ll drive, then. You might want to ride with us, Detectives. It’s kind of tricky to find unless you know the back roads.’

‘Fine by me,’ Magozzi said. ‘How far away is this town?’

‘It isn’t a town, it’s a corporation.’ Sheriff Rikker was having trouble with the zipper on her parka, and it was frustrating her. ‘According to Lieutenant Sampson, some of the employees live on site. Julie Albright is one of them.’

‘Ten minutes as the crow flies,’ Sampson said. ‘Twenty in a car.’

‘You know, I never got that.’ Gino was eyeing a bakery bag sitting on the dispatch counter. ‘If a crow always gets someplace faster, why didn’t they just follow the crows when they were building the roads?’ His stomach growled noisily, making Sampson smile.

‘Too many lakes, too many swamps. Roads up here twist like crazy going around them. Half the time even the locals need a compass to know which way they’re going. Grab that bag, will you, Detective? Sounds like we all missed lunch.’

Gino actually put his hand over his heart, a gesture only food could inspire.

Ten minutes later Sampson was powering the big county SUV down a narrow, curving road with ten-foot snowbanks towering on either side. Sheriff Rikker was next to him, clutching her pocketbook as if it were an airbag; Magozzi and Gino were in the backseat, which was just the way Gino liked it. Way he figured, the people in the front would get it first when they ran smack-dab into one of those snowbanks. He leaned forward and breathed jelly bismarck into the front seat.

‘This is supposed to be a road? What happens if we meet a car going the other way?’

‘Plenty of room.’ Sampson braked hard just before a sharp curve and they fishtailed for a second. ‘Looks narrower than it is because the snow’s so high.’

Gino snorted, not believing that for a minute. To a pair of eyes used to a six-lane city freeway, it looked like they were driving down the white throat of some enormous monster.

‘And it’s a good road,’ Sampson added. ‘Gross-weight standards up for eighteen-wheelers, what with all the shipping they do out of here.’

‘You’re telling me we could meet a semi on this cow path?’

‘Probably not on a Sunday.’

‘Seems like a pretty out-of-the-way location for a business. You’d think they’d locate on a major road, instead of back here in the toolies. Anybody want to split the last bismarck?’

Ten minutes later the road uncoiled a little and Magozzi and Gino could see a tall cyclone fence that stretched as far as they could see in either direction. It was even more interesting when they got closer.

Magozzi nudged Gino with his elbow. ‘Look at the top of that fence.’

Gino leaned over his partner and peered out the window. ‘Huh? What are those thingamajigees?’

‘Looks like the cameras Grace has mounted all around her place.’

‘Oh, great. A whole corporation as paranoid as Grace MacBride. What the hell do they make here, Sheriff?’

Iris was staring out at the fence and the cameras mounted every twenty feet or so, mystified by all the security. ‘As far as I know, organic products. Food, cosmetics, things like that. I’ve ordered a few things from their website.’

‘Looks more like a military installation, if you ask me. Or maybe a prison… Jesus, look at that.’ They were pulling up to an enormous pair of gates with a brick guardhouse on the left. A small woman in boots and a big parka exited the little building and headed for the car. ‘That woman’s carrying, Leo.’

‘I see that.’

‘They’ve got their own security force.’ Sampson rolled down his window. ‘All of them have permits to carry.’

The female guard pushed back the hood on her parka and bent toward the car window, looking past Sampson as if he weren’t there. ‘Sheriff Rikker?’

‘That’s right.’

The woman grinned. ‘Congratulations on the election, Sheriff. Great pleasure to meet you.’

Magozzi thought Iris looked a little flummoxed by the greeting. Or maybe it was the congratulations.

‘Thank you very much.’

‘And will you vouch for your passengers?’

‘Yes, this is Lieutenant Sampson -’

‘Aw, come on, Liz,’ Sampson interrupted. ‘Don’t give me a hard time. The two guys in the back are Minneapolis PD, and they won’t give you their weapons, either. I’ll let you frisk me, though, if you want.’

‘Tempting, but I’ll pass. Straight to the office,’ she reminded him.

‘I know the drill.’ He closed the window, waited while one of the electronic gates swung open, then pulled through.

Gino was puzzled. ‘I don’t get it. They knew we were coming, they could see it was a county car, and they stopped us anyway.’

‘They stop everybody. Drives me nuts, but they’re pretty strict about it. Except for Liz. I think she does it just to piss me off.’

‘So every time you get an emergency call out here you’ve got to stop while they check the car? That’s just plain crazy.’

‘Well, the thing is, we never get called out here. Not one call as long as I’ve been on the job, and that’s fifteen years. Only reason I’m a familiar face is that I’ve got a friend who lives here in the residential neighborhood around the back of the complex.’

As they drove inside the gates, all that could be seen in any direction were woods and fields, all buried under snow. ‘What complex?’

‘Over the next hill.’

And indeed it was. A cluster of modern buildings with a courtyard and landscaped parking lot. It looked like a dozen other corporate complexes that grew like weeds all over the Minneapolis suburbs. Except this one was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a ten-foot-high cyclone fence with armed guards at the gate. It wasn’t the first time Magozzi had seen elaborate corporate security, but this seemed a little over the top for a place that made jelly and face powder. So did the metal detector and second armed guard at the building entrance.

A woman Sampson introduced as Maggie Holland was waiting for them in a large office just off the lobby. She could have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty-five years old – Magozzi was finding it harder and harder to tell these days – but it was an age span that made him a little uneasy, probably because a lot of women in that group were long past the time when they expected anything extraordinary from men. Fractured fairy tales, he thought. We all take the rap for that.

Ms Holland greeted them all cordially enough, but made a particular fuss over the new sheriff, just as the guard at the gate had. Iris Rikker apparently had a fan club out here she didn’t know about.

After the pleasantries, she slipped straight into no-nonsense mode. ‘Julie Albright will not go with you.’

Gino nodded. ‘That’s what she told our detective on the phone. We might need your help talking her into it.’

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly do that. She’s much safer here than she would be with you. Perfectly safe, in fact.’

Gino got a little impatient when he still had a long drive to make it to Angela’s spaghetti. ‘Listen, we saw the security you’ve got out here, and let me tell you, a fence, a couple of guards, and a metal detector might put a damper on corporate espionage or whatever the hell you’re worried about, but it’s not going to stop a man like Kurt Weinbeck. He already killed a man to get to her. Your little fence isn’t even going to slow him down.’

‘There’s a little more to it than a fence and a couple of guards, Detective Rolseth.’ Ms Holland pressed a button on her desk computer and a portion of a wall parted to reveal an enormous computer screen. She pressed a few more keys and a mosaic of live video feeds appeared.

Magozzi recognized the guardhouse at the entrance, the parking lot, and the lobby they’d just passed through, but there were at least twenty other views displayed, some outside, some showing various offices and labs he assumed were somewhere in this building. He examined them all carefully.

‘This screen is displaying views from all the security cameras in what we call Quadrant One. Bitterroot is divided into twenty quadrants, all monitored with cameras and motion detectors and analyzed in real time by our security staff in the media room, twenty-four hours a day. It’s based on the surveillance the casinos in Las Vegas use.’

‘Impressive. How many cameras?’

‘Hundreds of them. But we can’t possibly monitor every square inch of a thousand-acre compound, so we had a local software company integrate the motion detectors and the cameras. Now when something moves out of camera view, the detectors direct the nearest camera to adjust the view to follow it.’

Gino was jabbing Magozzi with his elbow, jerking his head toward the screen, but Magozzi had already seen it: a tiny Monkeewrench logo at the bottom of the screen.

‘We also have security around the clock patrolling the compound and particularly the perimeter. And there are more layers of security, but I think you get the picture. Nothing you have on the outside can offer this level of protection to Julie.’

Magozzi looked straight at her while his thoughts moved fast, racing through the details his cop’s eyes had recorded for the brain to sort through later. ‘So just exactly how many Julie Albrights do you have living here?’

He’d surprised her with that one, and Maggie Holland didn’t look like the kind of woman who surprised easily. ‘Very good, Detective. Quite a leap, actually, in view of the little you’ve seen…’ She glanced at Sampson. ‘Or were you told in advance?’

Magozzi caught the look. ‘No. And it wasn’t that much of a leap. The only people I’ve seen here so far are all women, including the ones on your camera screens up there. Now that probably isn’t so unusual for a cosmetics company, but your security guards are all women, too, and you don’t see a lot of that. Add Julie Albright and the security to the mix and it makes you wonder. Plus, you’ve got a real faint scar across your throat that looks a little ragged for surgery, and your nose has been broken and healed a couple of times. Way I figure, that makes two of you, at least.’

Gino had been frowning hard, trying to follow the underpinnings of the conversation. Suddenly his face cleared. ‘Oh, man, it was right there in front of my nose and still I was about ten steps behind on that one. And there are at least three, by the way. The guard at the metal detector had some broken fingers on her left hand, never set. Twist injury, from the way they healed. So how many more?’

Ms Holland looked at him calmly. ‘All of them.’ She glanced over at Sampson, who was looking down at the floor, but of course he had always known; and then over at poor Sheriff Rikker, who was struggling to put it all together.

Iris had been staring at the scar on Maggie Holland’s neck ever since Magozzi mentioned it. It was unforgivably rude, which was totally unlike her, and yet she couldn’t pull her eyes away. It was one thing to watch the news stories and learn the statistics in class; even listening to all the domestic calls that came over dispatch still kept her one step removed. But to see evidence of the reality was like a hard slap across the face. She felt like she’d been sucked up from her world and abruptly dropped into a new one, where men didn’t leave their wives, they beat the crap out of them.

‘Every woman who lives here came because she wasn’t safe on the outside,’ Ms Holland was saying.

‘Same thing with the men?’ Gino asked.

‘There are no men. That’s what keeps the women safe.’

Gino was frowning. ‘Wait a minute. How many people live here?’

‘Almost four hundred.’

‘And not one of them is a man.’

‘That’s correct. No man ever enters this property without a day pass and an escort.’ She smiled at Sampson. ‘Not even police officers.’

Gino looked at Magozzi. ‘Is that even legal?’

‘Probably. It’s private property. We keep men out of the safe houses in the city, and basically, that’s what this place is starting to look like. One big, permanent safe house.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘It’s not a safe house. It’s a town that happens to be safe. That’s all any of us wanted, a place we could be safe from rape, murder, assaults against our children… It didn’t take long for the founders of Bitterroot to figure out that all they had to do to eliminate those dangers was one thing: eliminate the men.’

Eliminate the men. Magozzi’s brain ran into the brick wall of those three words and revved there like a useless, speeding engine. He tried to remember that his real job was back in the Cities, trying to find the murderer of two cops, that Kurt Weinbeck probably didn’t have a thing to do with his real case, that he had a job and a sort-of life and a woman he cherished who wouldn’t talk to him – but he was having trouble focusing. He kept hearing those same three disturbing words over and over in his head, and the worst part was the brain tickle that told him he’d heard those words before, or something like them. ‘That’s a pretty damn extreme solution,’ he finally managed to say.

Maggie Holland nodded. ‘But it is a solution. We haven’t had one violent crime in Bitterroot in the sixty years of its existence. Can you think of one other town in the entire country that can make that claim?’

Magozzi didn’t reply.

‘And when you really think about it, it isn’t that extreme at all.’ Maggie’s eyes shifted to Iris. ‘You live alone, do you not, Sheriff Rikker?’

Iris nodded.

‘Well, in a sense, is what we do here so very different from what you do in your own home? You lock your car doors, you lock the doors to your house when you come home, your ground-floor windows when you go to bed, and you probably don’t admit strangers readily. These are sensible precautions women everywhere employ to keep themselves safe. Bitterroot does the same thing, only on a larger, even more secure scale, because our residents are higher risk.’

‘So you built yourself a prison and put the innocents inside,’ Magozzi commented, sounding much more judgmental than he’d ever intended.

Maggie smiled, but the smile had a real hard edge to it. ‘We may have prison-style security, Detective, but it’s not to keep the innocents inside, it’s to keep the monsters out, and we do that very well.’

And you couldn’t argue with that, Magozzi thought. If Bitterroot really hadn’t had a single violent crime in sixty years, they were doing a hell of a job protecting people he and Gino and Sampson and Sheriff Rikker couldn’t. That kind of failure was a tough admission for any cop, and probably a big part of the reason he was finding it hard not to be defensive. It just all seemed so wrong – the law was supposed to provide refuge, not inspire mass exodus to a high-security facility that probably put San Quentin to shame.

Apparently his thoughts were printed in big type across his forehead, because Maggie Holland was looking straight at him with one of those little smiles people reserve for idiots who just don’t get it. ‘I think it’s time you saw the real Bitterroot,’ she said quietly, but Magozzi wasn’t going for the carrot.

‘We need to speak with Julie Albright. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Of course. But Julie’s daughter has a cold today, so we’ll go to her house instead of having her come here. It isn’t far, and you can see a bit of the village on the way.’ And then her demeanor shifted abruptly from all-business to all-roses, and she looked at each of them with one of those kindly, grandmotherly expressions Magozzi imagined the Big Bad Wolf had used on Little Red Riding Hood. Damn woman was a shape-shifter.