In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (12 page)

She smiled back. The expression was strained
and thin, but still noticeable. “Your meatloaf should be up in just
a minute or two, Skip.” She leaned a bit closer and adopted a
conspiratorial tone. “I told Max to put a couple of double thick
slices on there for you.”

“You’re too good to me, Stella.”

That Place
was more of a U-shaped
lunch counter than anything else. It was crammed tightly into a
narrow storefront across from the sheriff’s department and kitty
corner from the town hall. The décor was typical small-town diner
of the late 50’s or early 60’s—chrome and Formica counters with
vinyl-topped stools bolted to the floor at evenly spaced intervals.
Just as the sheriff’s office looked like a throwback to the 40’s,
so did the small diner look as if it had been frozen in its own
particular era for the rest of time.

The establishment was surprisingly slow for
lunchtime, especially during the week. Besides the sheriff and
Constance, there was only one other patron, and he was at the far
end of the U. She took passing notice that he appeared lost in his
own little world, his hands folded in front of him on the counter
as he quietly contemplated his coffee cup.

However, there was something else about the
diner that struck Constance as even
odder
still. It was
December 22
^nd
, and with the exception of a poinsettia on
the counter, the restaurant was devoid of holiday decorations,
Christmas or otherwise. Just like the sheriff’s office had
been.

The waitress glanced over at Constance and
asked, “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she replied with a
shallow nod.

“Suit yourself. I’ll be back out in just a
minute or two.”

As she started away toward the kitchen at the
back, Sheriff Carmichael called after her, “Oh, hey, Stella, I
almost forgot. Clovis wants a piece of your mom’s coconut cream
pie. Think you could box up a slice for me to take over to her?
Just put it on my tab.”

“No problem,” she answered. “I’ll have it
ready to go when you are.”

Once Stella disappeared through the swinging
doors at the back, Constance twisted a quarter turn on her stool
and focused on Sheriff Carmichael. “She seems a little tense.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “That’s ‘cause she knows
who you are and why you’re here.”

“I’m here to help.”

“Like I told you, we’ve heard that before.
Folks don’t get their hopes up anymore.”

She glanced around again at the lack of
visible cheer. “So... People don’t decorate for the holidays in
Hulis?”

“Not many,” he grunted. “Not for a few years
now. Nobody wants to think about what Christmas brings to this
town. Hell, my wife and I don’t even put up a tree anymore. Don’t
know many folks around here that do.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

“It’s reality,” he countered.

“That doesn’t make it any less sad. It’s as
if the town itself is a victim too.”

“It is,” he agreed. “That’s the difference
between a small town like Hulis and a big city like Saint Louis.
We’ve got a population of less than a thousand folks. What happens
here is personal.”

“As I understand it, so far none of the
victims have been from Hulis though.” Constance gestured with her
index finger to indicate the surrounding area. “In fact, they’ve
all been unidentified according to the reports.”

“True,” he replied. “But this is where
they’re found, so that makes it personal, no matter who they are.
You have to understand, Constance, people here aren’t afraid of
being a victim of this killer. But they’re damned well on edge
about this. Doesn’t exactly help our reputation, and the population
is dwindling. This keeps up, Hulis could cease to exist.”

A quiet interlude fell between them as she
weighed the gravity of what he’d just said. On the surface it was
merely a statement of fact, but beneath the words, stark emotion
was grappling with the logic, and it was winning.

The cafe doors leading to and from the
kitchen swung open and Stella reappeared, plate in hand. A moment
later she slid it in front of the sheriff, a waft of aromatic steam
still rising from the pool of gravy welled in the center of the
mashed potatoes that flanked an easily five-inch thick slab of
glazed meatloaf.

Once the waitress had disappeared again,
Constance re-started the conversation. “So, what is it we need to
talk about, Skip?”

Sheriff Carmichael used his fork to carve a
trench into the side of the mashed potato volcano on his plate then
watched in silence as the gravy began to spill out. It flowed down
the side and began spreading across the plate toward the
meatloaf.

Eventually, the weighty pause ended and he
asked, “Exactly what did your file have to say about John Horace
Colson?”

She shrugged. “The pertinent details. He had
a record ranging from petty larceny to aggravated battery. There
was also a conviction for sexual assault on a minor. He did just
under a year in the adult correctional institution at Gumbo Flats
for the latter. And, of course, there was the abduction and rape of
Merrie Callahan, and then his subsequent murder.”

He finished chewing the hunk of the meatloaf
he had stuffed into his mouth, then swallowed hard. After taking a
sip of his coffee to wash it down, he repeated her words with a
razor sharp edge of bitterness. “The abduction and rape of Merrie
Callahan... Makes it sound like a made-for-TV movie from one of
those damn cable channels.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I’m just answering
your question. I didn’t mean to sound callous.”

“I know, I know... Truth is, the story might
as well be a movie. It sure as hell plays out like one... It just
doesn’t have a very happy ending.” He nodded as he spoke, waving a
hand and sighing in apology himself. After staring wordlessly at
his plate, he finally laid the fork aside and combed his fingers
through the snowy brush on his upper lip. When he finally started
speaking again, there was a fire in his voice that seemed
unquenchable.

“Thirty-five years ago Merrie Callahan was
ten years old,” he began. “She was a bright, freckle-faced kid,
with a mop of chestnut hair and a personality too big to fit her
body.

“Late on the afternoon of December
twenty-second, Merrie’s mother picked her up from school. It was
the last day before Christmas break. They were Catholic, so she
went to the Immaculate Conception school over in Mais. That’s the
next town west of here. Since there wasn’t any bus service,
Elizabeth—that’d be her mother—would shuttle her back and forth. On
the way home she stopped over at Norris’s Market, just up the
street here, to do some last minute grocery shopping for their big
Christmas Eve dinner.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder
to indicate the direction.

“As the story goes, Merrie’s little sister,
Rebecca, was pitching a fit about wanting to see Santa Claus and
give him her list,” he continued. “Just so happened, Norris’s was
pretty much right next door to the Five-and-Dime. Back then we had
a little more by way of population, including kids, so they always
had a Santa Claus. Usually it was Elvis Babbs, the manager’s
husband, but he’d come down sick that year so they hired themselves
a replacement for that last week before Christmas. Anyway, Merrie,
being the sweetheart she was, volunteered to take her sister next
door so that her mother could finish the shopping in peace.”

“And Colson was that Santa Claus,” Constance
offered, nodding. “That was in the report.”

“Yeah...” Carmichael grunted. “He was going
by John Carter, which we found out later was apparently a known
alias of his. How that sonofabitch got hired I don’t know. Of
course, back then there wasn’t a sex offender registry, so I guess
he just flew under the radar... Anyhow, about twenty minutes or so
after Merrie took her sister next door, a clerk came rushing over
to Norris’s looking for Elizabeth. Rebecca was standing in the
middle of the dime store in hysterics, and all they could get out
of her was that Merrie had taken Santa away, or some such. Of
course, as we know, it was the other way around, but sometimes
five-year-olds see the world differently than the rest of us.

“At any rate, Merrie was nowhere to be found,
and no one except Rebecca had seen a thing. Colson had supposedly
gone on a break, but he never returned and couldn’t be found in the
vicinity, so he instantly went to the top of the list of people we
wanted to interview.”

“‘
We?’” Constance asked.

“Yeah... ‘We.’ Thirty-five years ago I was a
commissioned deputy in this very sheriff’s department,” he
explained.

“So, you didn’t just retire here,” Constance
said. “You’re originally from Hulis.”

He nodded.

“That wasn’t in our files,” she puzzled
aloud.

“I told you we needed to talk.”

“Obviously. Go on.”

“Well, back then I was green. I’d been on the
department for less than a year, and we’d never had anything like
this happen in Hulis. If you had a kid go missing, you found ‘em at
a friend’s house, or they were skipping school and just forgot to
make sure they came home in time to not get caught. But I knew this
was different almost right from the minute I arrived.

“I was the first one on the scene. Both
Sheriff Morton and I figured it was a nuisance call when it came
in, but I rushed on over anyway. The minute Missus Babbs started
filling me in I had a gut feeling that there was more to it. Then,
I found the shoe.”

“The shoe?”

He nodded. “Colson apparently took Merrie out
the back, through the stockroom. Since he parked his car behind the
store in the employee area, that made it even easier for him to
slip away unnoticed. When I was searching for her, I noticed some
things that led me in that direction, and when I went out onto the
back lot, I found one of her shoes. That’s when I knew for sure
she’d been taken.

“We set up road blocks and organized a
search, of course. I think just about everyone living here at the
time helped look for her. There were even some State Highway Patrol
officers sent in. Tom—that was her dad—and Elizabeth were basket
cases, understandably, what with their little girl being stolen
like that.” He shook his head and stared out the window for a
moment before continuing. “I still remember my mom going over and
staying at their place to help out with Rebecca, and just to make
sure they had someone there.

“Anyway, we searched the rest of that night,
even through the snowstorm that was hitting us. We didn’t stop. The
searching went on all day the next and into that night too. By then
we’d found out about the alias and pulled a complete background
check on Colson, so we knew about his record, including the sexual
assault on a minor charge. I’m here to tell you that information
didn’t do much for our spirits.”

“I understand.”

Sheriff Carmichael drew in a deep breath and
then puffed his cheeks in a drawn out sigh. “There was no such
thing as an Amber Alert, but we got the word out to all the
agencies, including yours. And then there was the media. They
jumped all over it too. Next day was Christmas Eve,” he said. “We
figured by that point Colson had probably gone across the state
line into Iowa, or maybe even east into Illinois, so APB’s went out
in every direction. But we kept lookin’ around here anyway. We
weren’t about to give up. Of course, we still couldn’t find a
thing. Not a trace of either of them. So...later that afternoon I
went home and caught a nap. I had a regular shift coming up and I’d
been running on next to no sleep. That evening I headed in for my
regular overnight duty shift. Next mornin’ is when I found
her.”

“How?”

“Luck, I guess,” he replied. “I’d just been
sittin’ there in the office and twiddlin’ my thumbs the whole damn
night. Soon as my shift ended, I figured I’d go out and cruise. You
know, have another look even if I was just covering old ground. I
was out for an hour...maybe a bit more...and everything just
started to catch up with me. It was pushin’ five A.M., so I decided
to go on home and hit the sack. I was out on the west side of town.
Turned a corner to loop around the block and there she was.
Standin’ in the middle of the road.”

He paused and Constance could see the fresh
pain of an old memory creasing his face. He started to speak again,
but his voice cracked, so he cleared his throat and took a sip of
his coffee before finishing the story.

“At first I just thought I was seeing
things,” he offered. “You know…that the lack of sleep was causing
me to hallucinate or something… But… I wasn’t. It was her. She was
covered in blood. Didn’t find out till later that wasn’t all of it
hers. She was wearing her school uniform, or what was left of it.
It was torn...just ripped up by that sick bastard. But I guess
she’d put it back on after...well...you know.

“There was a good eight inches of snow on the
ground, with even bigger drifts, what with that blizzard having
blown through. Temp was in the twenties... But there she was, torn
clothes, one shoe, and just standing there in the middle of the
road, starin’ off into space. She wasn’t even shivering.” He
hesitated momentarily as the vivid recollection welled inside him,
gathering pressure before escaping via his tortured voice. “The
ungodly things that bastard had done to that sweet little
girl...cigarette burns...cuts...bruises...and... I... I... I just
can’t even... I...”

“It’s okay,” Constance soothed. “I
understand.”

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head. “It’s
not okay. And unless you’ve seen it...I mean really seen it...then
you don’t understand.”

“You’re correct,” she replied. “I don’t,
really.” There was no reason to argue.

“Long as I live... I just...” Sheriff
Carmichael stopped and blew out a heavy sigh. “Anyway...I wrapped
her up in a blanket and called it in. She never said a word the
whole time. Just sat there in my cruiser and stared out the window.
They hustled her off to the hospital over in Mais while we started
searching the neighborhood looking for Colson. About two hours
later we found what was left of ‘im in the basement of a vacant
house. It was a few blocks from where I found Merrie. It had been
checked the day before. Or it was supposed to have been—nobody was
sure—but if it was, where they were prior to that is still a
mystery.