Snow Blind

18

Magozzi, Gino, Sampson, and Iris followed Maggie Holland down a hallway and out a side door into an enclosed parking lot. The only vehicles parked there looked like something Walt Disney dreamed up.

‘What the hell are those things?’ Gino asked. ‘They look like golf carts on growth hormones.’

Maggie laughed politely. ‘You’re very close, Detective Rolseth. They’re electric, like golf carts, but with the large tires and high clearance of ATVs. Enclosed, of course, to allow for our weather, and large enough to accommodate all of us if you don’t mind close quarters for a few moments. They’re the only vehicles allowed in the village.’

She opened one with a key card and settled behind the wheel while the rest of them piled in behind her. There were three rows of two seats, one to a side. Gino and Magozzi took the ones at the rear and automatically looked for seat belts.

‘You won’t need them, Detectives,’ Maggie called back. ‘Top speed on these is fifteen miles an hour, and the streets curve a bit too much to ever go that fast.’

The heaters kicked in immediately – the one and only good thing about electric vehicles, Gino thought, his eyes busy as he watched Maggie open the lot gate with a remote, then head out onto a narrow strip of tar that curved sharply to the right and nowhere else.

‘This is the one and only way into the village,’ he heard Maggie explaining to Iris, who was riding next to her. He felt like he was on a tour bus with one of those annoying, chatty guides. ‘Through the corporate complex with all its security, then the locked parking lot and onto this road. And as you can see, the road is much too narrow to accommodate a standard-sized car.’

Gino was scowling out at the thick stands of mature trees crowding the road that looked more like a bike path. ‘The people who live here can’t drive their own cars to their own houses?’

‘That’s correct. There is no road that connects to this one. It begins and ends at the enclosed parking lot we just left.’

‘So you come back from town with a buttload of groceries and do what? Hoof it all the way through the building to get to the carts? Sounds pretty damn inconvenient, if you ask me.’

Maggie smiled at him in the rearview mirror, a little wickedly, he thought. ‘Not as inconvenient as having your nose broken.’

Gino shut up and looked out the window. They were moving into a residential area that looked like any small town in America about a hundred fifty years ago, before they widened the streets for traffic. It was an idyllic scene of uniform, well-kept homes that could have been transplanted right off the set of Leave It to Beaver, complete with tidy shrubs, charming lampposts, and an ensemble cast of smiling, red-faced children playing in the fresh snow. Without exception, every single one of them stopped what they were doing and waved at the cart as it passed.

Gino nudged Magozzi and said under his breath, ‘When was the last time some kid on the street waved to you for absolutely no reason?’

‘Five years ago. He waved, then chucked a rock at my back window.’

‘That’s what I thought. Does the word Stepford ring any bells?’

Magozzi sighed and watched the scenery roll by: an open, parklike area with a gazebo and playground equipment, and adjacent to that, a larger brick building that looked very much like a school.

‘That looks like a school,’ he heard Iris echoing his thoughts from the far front seat.

‘It is indeed. Multiple grades and fully accredited, for any children who might be at risk on the outside. But just as many attend public school.’

And the school and the houses and the park were just the tip of the iceberg, Magozzi realized as they drove farther into the village. There were businesses, too – a mom-and-pop grocery store, presumably without the pop, a beauty salon, a little coffee shop, even a health clinic. It was the perfect reproduction of a perfect little town; a tranquil snapshot of traditional Americana, at least at first glance. But if you looked a little closer, it was anything but traditional, because this town belonged exclusively to women. For some reason, that made Magozzi very sad.

Julie Albright greeted them at the front door of her little house, and every one of them except Maggie Holland had to concentrate furiously not to wince at the woman’s face, which looked like a jigsaw puzzle put together very badly. It wasn’t as though Magozzi hadn’t seen it a hundred times before, but it always set him back on his heels. She was such a tiny thing – a full foot shorter than he was, at least, with watchful, wary eyes, still haunted by the lingering remnants of terror. He wondered if that look ever went away.

Her eyes finally found his and stayed there. It was a funny thing about abused women, he thought. No matter how many female officers they took on a call, the victims ultimately always sought solace in the very gender that had treated them so badly.

‘Won’t you all please come into the living room and sit down?’

All five of them were crowded onto a small section of tiled floor by the entrance, their boots dripping melted snow.

‘Thank you, no,’ Magozzi smiled at her. ‘We won’t take that much of your time. We just needed to confirm personally that you’re aware of the situation, and prefer to stay where you are.’

Julie Albright’s smile might have been pretty once. It wasn’t anymore. ‘You’ve seen the security?’

‘It’s impressive. But we do need to remind you that your ex-husband still hasn’t been apprehended, and that we’re presuming he kidnapped and murdered his parole officer for one reason: to get to you.’

Julie nodded. ‘Maggie told me.’

‘Did she tell you the officer was murdered here in Dundas County, not so far from Bitterroot? He knows where to find you, Ms Albright.’

One of her hands crept up to finger a rope of scar tissue near her mouth. ‘He’s always been able to find me, Detective. No matter how far I ran, or how well I hid, he’s always found me. He’s very good at that.’

Gino was looking over a planter into a cozy living room with toys on the floor and a playpen in the corner and windows on every wall. Sure, the front door had a deadbolt, but that didn’t do a hell of a lot of good in a glass house. ‘Listen, Ms Albright, you gotta understand. He could still be in the area, the guy’s a killer, and I don’t care how good the security is out there on the perimeter. If he finds a way into this town, you’re an open target in this place. You ask me, you’d be a whole lot safer under guard someplace in the Cities, out of the area.’

‘How many guards?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How many guards will there be at this place in the Cities you’re talking about?’

‘Well, I don’t know. A couple, maybe. Police officers. One inside, one out, whatever we need to secure the place.’

Julie tried to smile again. ‘No offense, Detective, but I have a whole town protecting me out here.’

Gino was getting frustrated. ‘No offense back at you, but you’ve got four hundred untrained women out here and a hell of a lot of space to cover, and I don’t care how good their intentions are, they can’t protect you like a couple of highly trained cops in close quarters -’

‘It didn’t do me a lot of good the last time,’ she interrupted quietly, and Gino’s mouth closed slowly. ‘I know you mean well; I know there are good men who would do anything to stop this from happening. I had two of them guarding my house the night Kurt broke in and cut me. They meant well, too.’

Gino’s eyes screwed up. ‘Yeah, but were they cops?’

She looked at him for a minute as if she felt sorry for him, and Gino didn’t get that until she answered. ‘Yes, they were. MPD.’

There wasn’t a lot more to say after that. Just Sheriff Rikker’s assurances that the county would keep a heavy patrol schedule around Bitterroot until Weinbeck was caught; Magozzi’s feeble, paternalistic reminder to Julie Albright that she lock her doors, keep a phone close, and avoid trips out of the complex until further notice. She nodded politely, as if everything they said had meaning, even though they were part of the system that hadn’t been able to protect her in the first place.

Gino shook her hand as he went out the door, which was an unusual thing for him to do. ‘Be safe,’ he said, and she would have had to be blind not to see how deeply he meant that.

They were halfway down the front walk when Julie called out to Iris. ‘I forgot to congratulate you on the election, Sheriff Rikker. I voted for you. We all did.’

The ride away from Bitterroot and back toward the sheriff’s office was silent for a time, then Gino started spewing words like a volcano that just blew the cork off. ‘Jesus Christ, Magozzi, MPD right there on duty when Weinbeck did that to her face? How the hell does that make you feel?’

‘Like shit.’

‘Tell me about it. And I’d like a word or two with the sergeant of the two assholes that pulled that duty, because there’s no way you can justify it. No way that animal should’ve gotten to her. And why the hell didn’t we ever hear about it? Hell, Kristen Keller should’ve been all over it, abysmal failure of MPD to protect its citizens, shit like that, man, somebody’s sleeping with somebody or we never would have dodged a bullet like that one.’

‘It happens,’ Sampson said quietly, ending Gino’s rant. ‘No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you get somebody dead-set on getting to somebody else to do them harm, they’ll find a way.’

Magozzi looked at the slice of the man’s profile he could see from the backseat. ‘You speaking from personal experience? I’m only asking, because you said you had a friend in Bitterroot.’

‘Actually, it’s my sister. Another one who did everything right. Got restraining orders, went to a bunch of different shelters, but the son of a bitch kept coming after her. I’m a cop and I couldn’t even protect my own sister. Not without going down for murder, anyhow.’

Iris was turned sideways in the passenger seat, watching his face. ‘So you knew about this place all along.’

‘For a few years now.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess I figured it was the kind of place you had to see for yourselves. I could have told you that Julie Albright is safer here than anywhere; I could have told you what Bitterroot was all about, and that they haven’t had a single incident in sixty years; but that doesn’t mean much until you see the kind of security they have.’

Gino was shaking his head. ‘I still can’t believe this place has been around for that long and nobody’s ever heard of it. Why’s it a secret?’

‘It’s not a secret, exactly, they just don’t advertise. Adds another layer of security.’

‘Then how do the women find out about it?’ Iris asked. ‘How did your sister?’

‘There’s kind of an underground network – and I hear there’s a website you can access if you know the right people to ask.’

‘A lot of their security is pretty high-tech,’ Magozzi pointed out. ‘Stuff that hasn’t been on the market for sixty years, like the motion detectors and the cameras. So what did they do for security before?’

Sampson shrugged. ‘They always had their guns. Maggie said we’d be surprised at how many of the bastards turn tail and run when they see women holding weapons, instead of cowering in a corner, like they’re supposed to.’

Magozzi wasn’t surprised by that at all. Most of the men who beat women were instantly docile when they faced someone who could fight back. But there were always a few exceptions: the ones so crazed by rage that even an armed cop couldn’t stop them from making one last desperate lunge at the woman.

He’d been on half a dozen domestic calls like that back when he still rode a squad, and he couldn’t imagine a single one of those men turning tail and running at the sight of a gun.