Snow Blind

28

It was an old house – one of those massive boxy numbers they built in farm country when the state was new, and couples prayed for many sons to help work the land. Probably the original farmstead, Magozzi thought, but someone had taken a lot of care with it. The paint was fresh, the big front porch was new, and a modern air-conditioning unit was squatting between some bushes on one side. Funny, the things you noticed when you didn’t even think you were looking.

They hadn’t run far from the clustered houses of the village – maybe a hundred yards – but they all were breathing hard, and Magozzi felt the burn in his thighs from lifting his legs over the snow. Now they were crouched behind the last cluster of trees near the house, weapons drawn, senses screaming, catching their breath before they moved in.

Suddenly the front door opened wide, to show a woman-shape with light behind it. Magozzi squinted through the driving snow, but couldn’t see clearly enough to be sure there was no one behind her.

‘Officers?’ the woman called out, and he recognized Maggie Holland’s voice. ‘Officers, are you out there? It’s Maggie Holland, and it’s all right for you to come in now.’

Iris, Magozzi, and Gino exchanged wary glances, then Gino stabbed a forefinger at Iris’s chest.

Iris nodded, then called back. ‘Ms Holland, it’s Sheriff Rikker. Are you alone in there?’

‘Not exactly. This is Laura’s house. She’s here… and Julie Albright’s husband, but he’s dead.’

Gino and Magozzi looked at each other, then started to move toward the house, bent over in a crouching run, dodging between the scant cover of single tree trunks, just as if Kurt Weinbeck were alive and well and waiting behind the door with a gun on Maggie Holland. You never knew.

Iris mimicked their movements, cursing her short legs because she couldn’t move as fast through the snow. She fell twice, took a closer look at Maggie Holland smiling, waiting patiently in the doorway, then said the hell with it, stood up straight, and walked toward the porch.

‘Goddamnit, Rikker, get down!’ Gino whispered at her, but she was already at the porch and not dead yet. She poked her head in the doorway, then turned back and motioned them in.

It was like walking into a Freddy Krueger Disneyland. A fire crackled in the fireplace, cozy armchairs and old photos, even a little old white-haired lady sitting in a rocking chair with knitting in her lap, smiling in greeting, as if they’d dropped in for some holiday cheer. The only thing that didn’t quite fit was the body bleeding all over a faded area rug with roses on it. Sheriff Iris Rikker stood over it, looking like a bewildered child who’d walked into the wrong house by mistake.

Gino bent next to what was left of Kurt Weinbeck, checked the carotid, the huge hole in his chest, then looked up at Magozzi and shook his head.

‘This is Laura.’ Maggie Holland closed the door and gestured toward the woman in the rocking chair.

She was old, but unbelievably spry, and shot up from her seat, extending a bony hand with a lot of years on it. Magozzi was still standing with his knees bent and his weapon out front, and suddenly the posture felt a little foolish. He straightened reluctantly, shifted the nine to his left hand, and felt the old woman’s chilly flesh in his right. ‘Detective Magozzi. Minneapolis Police.’

She had new teeth in a face that looked like his not-permanent-press shirts when they came out of the dryer. Too new. Hollywood white. On a young woman, the smile would have been drop-dead. On her, it just looked weird. ‘I know who you are, Detective. Maggie told me all about you, and of course I see you on the television every now and then.’ She folded her hands under a sagging bosom and looked around, seeming distressed for the first time. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

Magozzi felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. This was an old woman who’d just witnessed a killing. There was a man bleeding on the rug in her living room. She was supposed to be horrified, frightened, trembling, in shock.

‘But you see, he had the gun on Maggie, and I really didn’t have any choice. None at all.’ Her blue eyes moved back to him, and Magozzi noticed that they looked faded, like an old photograph about to disappear. ‘You look upset, Detective. I’ll bet you’ve had a heck of a time. All of you. Perhaps you should sit down by the fire, I’ll have Maggie bring you some tea…’

Maggie Holland tried to talk her out of it; tried to send her off to bed, in fact, which seemed a sensible suggestion for an old woman who’d had such a night; but Laura would have none of it. Up until this point, she seemed remarkably sharp and self-possessed – almost abnormally so, considering the circumstances – but now Magozzi saw the first sign of petulance in her silent, head-shaking refusal. He thought first about shock, then dismissed it. None of the signs were there. More than likely, she’d started to make that slow slide backward into childish behavior that happens to many elderly when the mind starts to falter.

‘I will not be sent to bed like a child!’ she shouted suddenly, startling them all. ‘And I will serve these officers tea, and I will answer their questions!’ The outburst had been fast and unexpected; so was the sweet smile she instantly turned on Iris Rikker, as if there had been no outburst at all. ‘You do have questions for me, don’t you, Sheriff Rikker? I do love company.’

Creepy, Magozzi thought. Around the bend, or at least moving toward it in a big hurry.

Iris smiled right back at her, which Magozzi racked up as a point in her favor. Quick on the uptake, good instincts. ‘It might be nice to chat a bit, if you’re not too tired.’

Laura reached over to pat Iris’s arm. ‘Not at all, child.’

‘She’s very old,’ Maggie Holland whispered to Gino when he followed her into the kitchen. She busied herself with boiling water and porcelain cups on a tray. They rattled when she set them down because her hands were trembling. ‘And her memory is going. She gets confused. Remembers things the way she wished they had happened, instead of the way they actually did.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

Gino pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Pretty quick on the trigger for a confused old lady.’

Maggie shot him a cold glare. ‘It wasn’t the first time I had a gun pressed to my head, Detective, and I think I’m pretty much of an expert on whether the man holding that gun is prepared to use it. She probably saved my life.’

Gino had the decency to feel bad, which didn’t mean he had the motivation to show it. Something wasn’t right, and it was eating at a part of his brain like a termite.

‘She tells some tall tales sometimes, but she’s a dear woman. Founded Bitterroot with her sister, over half a century ago. This was their land; this is her town.’

‘Gotcha. So she shot Weinbeck?’

Maggie Holland’s lips were pressed tightly together, bleeding all the color out. ‘She thought he was going to kill me. And he would have. He was crazed when he broke in. Crazed.’

‘Uh-huh. You want me to carry that in?’

‘Please.’ She hurried to follow him, and moved immediately to stand behind Laura’s chair. Her posture was rigid, protective, almost like that of a bodyguard, which Gino thought was pretty strange, considering the old lady had just saved her life.

Iris and Magozzi were sitting on a sofa opposite the rocker, both with notebooks propped on their knees, when Gino carried in the tray like a college waiter. He set it down on the coffee table between them and listened.

‘So he broke in, grabbed Maggie, pointed a gun at her head, and asked where he could find Julie, is that about right?’

Laura was nodding emphatically. ‘Exactly right. So I did my little-old-lady act, told him I’d get a map, and toddled out to the kitchen.’ She looked at Iris and smiled. ‘I don’t usually toddle, you know. I do stretching exercises every morning to keep myself limber. That was just an act.’

Iris smiled back. ‘That was very clever.’

‘I thought so. And I do have a map of the village in the kitchen drawer. But that’s also where I keep the gun.’

‘Ah.’ Iris nodded. ‘The.357 on the table over there.’

Gino sat down in an armchair and actually started pouring tea. Christ, this was weird.

‘Yes, indeed. Maggie said I couldn’t put it back in the drawer, although that’s where it belongs. She said I had to put it down and leave it so you people could check it. For what, I just don’t know.’

‘It’s just procedure, Miss Laura.’

Funny how she knew to call her that, Gino thought.

‘So you came back into the living room, what? Holding the gun under the map?’

Laura beamed at her. ‘Now, you’re the clever one, because that’s exactly what I did. Toddled back in, pretending to study the map, then when he reached for it, I shot him.’ She looked over at Kurt Weinbeck’s body and shook her head. ‘I just hate doing that.’

Magozzi felt a chill run up his spine. ‘You hate to shoot people?’ he asked conversationally.

‘Well, of course I do, Detective. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then you understand. It’s dreadfully distasteful, but… we do what we have to do. We take care of our own. Not that I’ve shot that many, of course. Not personally.’

Not that many? Not personally? Whoa.

He glanced at Maggie Holland, whose features suddenly looked paralyzed. When she caught him looking, she rolled her eyes and actually tapped a forefinger on the side of her head.

Iris was still bent over her little notebook, continuing to write, as if Laura hadn’t said anything unusual. Magozzi had to bite his tongue to keep from firing questions. Batty or not, you couldn’t just let a statement like that hang there without a token follow-up, at least.

Iris stopped writing and looked up a second later, her expression blandly pleasant. ‘How many, do you think?’ she asked Laura.

Way to go, Iris Rikker.

The old woman blinked, then her eyes wandered to follow her brain. ‘Oh, my. All together?’

‘Yes, if you please.’

‘Goodness. I guess… I’m not quite sure…’ She was blinking faster now, and her eyes were starting to water. ‘Well… I guess we could look in the lake. Is it important?’

Maggie Holland closed her eyes.

‘Not really,’ Iris said. ‘Is that Lake Kittering?’

‘That’s the one. You live on Lake Kittering, don’t you, dear?’

Iris stopped writing, but she kept looking down at her notebook. ‘Close to it. I didn’t realize you knew that.’

Laura chuckled a little. ‘Of course I know that. We all do. You bought Emily’s place.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, just so you know, Edgar isn’t in the lake.’

Iris started writing again, but the script was a little shaky. ‘He isn’t?’

‘No. We buried him. Of course we were much younger, then. Ruth – she was my sister, did I tell you that? – at any rate, she was even younger than I was, and Emily was just a little swell in her tummy…’ Her eyes wandered and seemed to lose focus until her gaze found Maggie, standing right next to her. ‘Oh, Maggie. Hello, dear.’

Gino and Magozzi exchanged a knowing glance. This sure as hell wasn’t going to go much further. The old woman was losing it, if she ever had it in the first place.

‘Are Alice and Bill coming?’

Magozzi’s mind twitched a little at the names, but he let it go when Maggie answered her.

‘They’re on their way. I called them before the officers came in, remember?’

‘Oh. Should I go to the bathroom first?’

‘Would you like to?’

‘Oh, yes, very much.’

It took her a while to get out of the rocker this time, as if the muddle in her mind could no longer manage to control the still-limber body.

The moment they heard the bathroom door close behind her, Iris looked at Maggie Holland. ‘Who was Edgar, Maggie? The one they buried?’

Maggie looked disgusted. ‘Don’t be silly. Nobody buried anybody.’

‘And I don’t suppose there are any bodies in the lake, either?’

‘Of course not.’

For some reason, Magozzi believed her.

‘Quickly, before she comes back,’ Iris said, and Maggie sighed.

‘Edgar was Laura’s husband. That’s according to Laura’s grand-niece – she’s the woman on her way here now, and certainly in a position to know since Laura and her sister raised her right here at Bitterroot. Apparently he was an abusive, hateful man. He kept both sisters virtual prisoners on the original farm, which happened to include your land in those days, Sheriff. He beat them, treated them both like chattel, impregnated Laura’s sister, and then simply disappeared. God knows where he went.’

Just like Lars, Iris was thinking, but she didn’t say anything.

‘There was no outside help for mistreated women in those days. Not that there’s all that much these days,’ she added bitterly, touching the scar on her neck. ‘Laura and Ruth suffered under that reality, and after Edgar left, they were determined to create a sanctuary where things like that never happened to women. That was the beginning of Bitterroot.’

‘So they didn’t kill anybody,’ Gino said, and Maggie glared at him.

‘You don’t understand, Detective. You can’t possibly. You suffer under abuse long enough, you start to fantasize about killing your abuser. You don’t act on it, of course, because that’s the nature of your own psychology. You love your abuser, or at least convince yourself you do. Except in a very few cases, all of which make the national news, killing him would be utterly impossible.’

Gino nodded reluctantly at a truth he’d seen a thousand times.

‘But you dream about it, especially afterward, and maybe when you get very old and the mind and the memory dim, the dreams become reality, and reality becomes the dream. That’s the place where Laura is living now. I did warn you that she wasn’t quite -’ She stopped talking abruptly when Laura came back into the room, looking bewildered to find it full of strangers.

‘We have company?’ she asked in a small, timid voice. ‘At this hour?’

Gino cleared his throat. ‘We just stopped in to use your phone, ma’am, if that’s all right.’

‘Oh. Well, Maggie, I think I’d like to go to bed now.’ She left the room without once looking at the body of the man she’d killed, lying on the rug.

Iris touched Magozzi’s shoulder as he got up to leave. ‘I have to stay until the others come.’

‘You have some kind of crime unit?’

Iris shrugged. ‘Such as it is. I radioed Lieutenant Sampson when I came in. He’ll take care of it.’ She gestured vaguely toward Kurt Weinbeck’s body. ‘This seemed pretty cut and dried. I don’t think we’ll need the BCA.’

‘Probably not.’

‘But I’d like to ask your advice on something else. Will you wait?’

Magozzi nodded. ‘No problem. We’ll be in the car.’