Dead of Winter (21 page)

“Twelve years,” Ollie replied. “Only eight years and forty-five days ‘til retirement. But who’s counting?”

“When’s the last time you had a homicide? Before Pryce and Lovejoy, I mean.”

Ollie’s wan face creased up in thought. “Ah, the Swope brothers...1973, no ’74. Got drunk and one stabbed the other.”

Louis shook his head, stacking a pile of folders. “But nobody pissed off at the local cops. Hard to believe.”

“Well, Jesse has had his run-ins. But I can’t think of anybody who would, I mean, to cause this kind of...retribution. It, this isn’t normal, it isn’t...” Ollie’s voice trailed off. He caught Louis’s eye and looked away. He went back to his desk.

Louis glanced at Jesse, envying his deep sleep. Man, he was tired. He was tired of thinking. His brain actually ached.

“Shit, this is nuts,” he said, more to himself than anyone. “We’re never going to find him this way.”

Ollie looked over. “Why not?”

“Whatever it was that pissed the guy off could have happened ten, twenty years ago.”

“But then why did he wait?” Ollie asked.

“What?”

“If it’s an old crime why would he wait so long to kill?”

Ollie had a point. Hatred usually didn’t wait to go unvented. Murder was almost always a violent and immediate reaction to something. What could have forced the killer to wait so long?

Louis sat forward, planting his feet on the floor. “Prison,” he said softly.

Ollie looked over at him blankly.

Louis stood up. “He’s been in prison. I’d bet on it. That has to be it.” He turned to Ollie. “Think about it. Some jerkweed’s sitting in jail, stewing about something the cops did to him. Every day, every week, every year, he gets madder and madder and he thinks of a plan. I mean, what else does he have to do? He plans and waits.” Louis took a few quick steps toward Ollie. “Then when he gets out...bang.”

Ollie took a step back, blinking rapidly. His slack face looked gray in the harsh fluorescent light. Louis suddenly wished he could take back his vivid image. For several seconds, they just stared at each other.

Then Ollie turned away, busying himself with packing up the Hot Wheels and putting on his coat. Clutching the bike, he hurried to the door. But he paused, turning.

“Louis,” Ollie called.

“Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas.”

Ollie left and the office was quiet again. Louis rubbed his eyes, focusing his thoughts. He needed to get a list of prison releases. He quickly scribbled a note to Dale, asking him to run a list of every state prisoner released after November 30, 1984. He taped it to Dale’s phone.

“Edna?” he called out.

No response.

“Edna!”

Her round face appeared over the book. “Edna, when Dale comes in would you tell him to leave these files out? He’ll refile them if you don’t. I’m heading home.”

Edna popped the last bit of cookie in her mouth. “Ten-four, Louis.” She nodded to the snoring Jesse. “What about Jess?”

“Let him sleep, I guess.”

Louis yawned and rose, stretching. His thoughts drifted to his cold cabin with its cold bed. He wondered what Zoe was doing tonight. He hadn’t seen her in three days; she had told him she was going home for Christmas. His mind shaped a sudden image of her sitting in a fancy high-rise on Lakeshore Drive, unwrapping a gift of lingerie from some faceless boyfriend. Christ, where had that come from?

He slipped on his jacket. The phone rang and he grabbed it before it woke Jesse up.

“Loon Lake Police, Officer Kincaid.”

“Is Jesse there?” a feminine voice asked.

“Julie?”

“Yes.” She sounded very young.

“Hold on, I’ll wake him.”

“He’s sleeping?” Julie asked. “Where?”

“On his desk.”

“Wait, don’t wake him up.”

Louis frowned. He couldn’t let Jesse sleep in the station on Christmas Eve. “Julie — ”

“Let him sleep, please,” she said quickly.

Louis sensed something anxious in her voice and he wondered if they were having problems.

“Julie,” he said, “I can bring him home.”

“No, he’s safe there,” she said softly. “Let him stay. He’s safe there. He’s safe.”

Dawn. Christmas Day. The world had stopped.

Louis walked slowly down Main Street, past the dark storefronts, past the pillared First National Bank and under the silent marque of the Palace Theater. His eyes caught sight of the bare-chested Sylvester Stallone holding the machine gun above the type: “Rambo: First Blood II”. He hurried on.

The Mustang had refused to start again but this morning the idea of walking to the station hadn’t bothered him. After a night of restless sleep he needed time to think. He could almost feel his brain cells gulping in the chilly air.

He felt stiff, fragile somehow, as if his bones might snap. Funny what lack of sleep did to the body and the mind. His whole body ached, from the constant tension of keeping muscles and senses on alert. Alert for what? The clues that might be lurking in the blotter doodles? Alert for what? A bullet that would come out of nowhere some morning when he opened the door?

Ahead, he saw the glow of the station sign and increased his pace. There was a faint pink in the eastern sky. Above, a few errant flakes floated down in the amber light of the street lamp.

He crossed the street, climbing over the bank of snow. All through the night, between bouts of jagged sleep, his mind had worked. Pieces. Nothing but pieces of a puzzle whose whole he could not yet see.

Lovejoy...a murder probably committed in the afternoon but unnoticed by fishermen. Or committed before dawn when no one went out on the lake to fish.

Pryce...a smart, experienced detective who kept unintelligible notes, scrawled senseless doodles on a blotter and was peppering the state with résumés.

Someone had already shoveled the station walk. He stamped his boots on the concrete and went inside. Dale was at the coffeepot, setting out a box of donuts.

He looked up at Louis. “Do you ever sleep?”

Louis shook his head. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

Dale filled a cup, plucked a sprinkled donut from the box and set them on Louis’s desk. “I got your note. Request for the ex-cons is already sent. I told them I needed it ASAP. They said they’d try but with the holiday and all they couldn’t promise anything.”

Louis thanked him and slithered out of his coat. He saw the stack of case files still sitting on the desk where he and Jesse had left them the night before. He couldn’t face them right now. It could wait until the report came back of the newly released prisoners and they could compare names.

Louis dropped down into his chair, sipping his coffee. His gaze strayed to the desk blotter with its doodles and nonsensical number. He focused finally on several sets of numbers. Seven digits, no hyphens but possibly a phone number. He called Dale over and asked him if he recognized them.

“That’s Ollie’s home phone,” Dale said, pointing. “And that one there is the chief’s.”

Louis pointed to the third, almost obscured in the doodles. “What about this one?”

“Don’t know.”

Louis dialed it. He got a recording that said he needed to dial a “1” for long distance. He tried it again and a woman answered.

“Michigan State Police.”

“Uh, sorry, wrong number.” He hung up.

“What was it?” Dale asked.

“The state police.”

“Figures. They had an ad in the Lansing paper last month for officers.”

Louis pulled open a desk drawer and got out Pryce’s résumé file, looking for something from the state police but there was nothing.

“Hey, Louis?”

He looked over at Dale.

“I almost forgot. Mrs. Pryce called yesterday. She asked when you were going to send her file cabinet back.”

Louis picked up the papers. “I’d better pack it up.”

Dale opened the evidence room to let him in. Louis went to the file cabinet, opened a drawer and stuck the résumé file back in. He was about to also put in the legal pad when he paused. There it was again — that big sprawling doodle on the back with the number in the center: 61829. Where had he seen that number before?

The notebook...

Taking the legal pad, he went back to his desk and retrieved Pryce’s pocket notebook from a drawer. He flipped slowly through the pages, searching for the number.

There it was — 61829. But this time with the words in front of it: SAM YELLOW LINCOLN. Sam...Yellow...Lincoln. Damn, Pryce wasn’t referring to a car or a plate; he was using standard radio code: SYL61829. Was it a serial number for a gun? He jotted it on a paper and went over to Dale’s computer.

“Dale, I need you to run a gun check.”

“Sure. No prob.”

Louis glanced at his watch. Shift was starting soon; he had to get into uniform. He hurried off to the locker room. Dale was watching the report print out as Louis came back into the office, buckling his belt.

“It’s a Beretta 9-millimeter,” Dale said, ripping off the printout. “It’s registered to Calvin Hammersmith, 4578 Pine Bluff Road, Kalkaska, Michigan.”

“Check an arrest record,” Louis said, his heart quickening.

Dale started punching in numbers. Louis sat down at his desk and stared at the name on the printout. Who the hell was this Hammersmith guy? And why did Pryce care about his gun?

“Hammersmith was arrested a bunch of times,” Dale called out a few minutes later. “The last time was in 1975 for assault. And it was right here in Loon Lake.”

Louis jumped up from his chair. “Here? You’re kidding.”

“He served two years.”

Louis came over to the computer to read the report. “Nothing after that? Nothing since ’77?”

Dale shook his head.

Louis began to pace. “I need to know more about this guy.”

Dale picked up the phone. “I’ll call the sheriff over there.”

Louis returned to his desk and picked up Pryce’s notebook, staring at the gun serial number. The radio crackled and he listened while Flo gave directions to a traffic accident.

Dale hung up. “Well, I have some bad news and some good news,” he said. “Hammersmith was a badass. Disabled vet with a history of violence and alcoholism.”

Louis’s heart skipped. “And?”

“He died in 1980. Motorcycle accident.”

Louis tossed the notebook on the desk. “Shit!”

“What’s the matter?” Dale asked.

Louis looked over at him, shaking his head. “I was just hoping for a nice Christmas present.”

He picked up the notebook again. Pryce had written the number down twice. It had to mean something. Or did Hammersmith, even though he was dead, have some connection? He stared at the number, locking it away in his memory. It had to mean something.

“Did you get anything for Christmas?”

Jesse looked at Louis from behind his sunglasses. “I got laid.”

“I meant presents. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

The light changed and Jesse moved the cruiser down Main Street. “Sorry. Julie’s on my ass. Says she’s scared for me. Neither of us is getting any sleep.”

“Well, it seems you found an acceptable substitute.”

Jesse smiled weakly. “Right. Actually, she got me a cool present, a compact disc player. You ever seen one?”

“Sure. What kind of music you like?”

“Good old-fashioned rock and roll, man. I like the Stones best. How about you?”

“I like lots of different music.”

“But what do you listen to at night, you know, when you’re alone?”

“Rhythm and blues...Chuck Willis, Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter. You know them?”

Jesse shook his head. “Don’t like that old shit.”

“You should try it. The Stones are really just repackaged R&B.”

“The Stones are rockers, Louis.”

“You know their song ‘Time Is on My Side’?”

“Sure. 12 X 5, fifth cut, first side. Great album.”

“It’s an old blues song by Irma Thomas.” Louis smiled. “Your boy Mick is rock’s blackest white boy.”

Jesse frowned, digesting the information as Louis laughed.

Louis reached for the computer printout on the seat between them. It listed the seventy-one red Ford pickups in the tri-county area but when cross-referenced with felons they still had eight names to check out. They had already done two with no results.

“Who’s next?” Jesse asked.

Louis read off the address, and Jesse took a right at the next corner and they headed out of town. They passed the Sunoco station and rounded a curve. Ahead of them was a log building set down in thick pines. Louis had seen Jo-Jo’s Tavern once before on a drive during a sleepless night. He had considered stopping in for a drink but the place had such a foreboding aura that he had passed it by and gone home. He scanned its exterior now. It seemed more benign in the daylight, with its red Budweiser signs in the windows, smoke curling from the chimney and scattering of cars in the muddy lot.