In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (21 page)

“I’m not a rookie, Special Agent. What’s your
point?”

“My point is that you aren’t looking at this
crime objectively.”

“I never claimed to be,” he replied, his
voice even sharper than before. “You’re a smart girl; I thought
you’d figured that out by now.”

Constance felt herself bristle at the
condescending remark and immediately opened her mouth to fire back
a rebuttal. However, before she released the volley, her training
kicked in to override her emotions. She didn’t know what had
sparked this sudden escalation of tempers between them, but she
knew it wasn’t productive, and it needed to end right now.

She drew in a deep breath, then forced her
tone to remain calm and even. “Skip…” she began. “I’m not trying to
be adversarial here. I’m just–”

“You sure as hell could’ve fooled me,” he
snapped, truncating her sentence before she could finish. His voice
rose as he launched into a short-lived tirade, “Goddammed
know-it-all Feds. You’re all the same… Coming in here uninvited and
placing blame where it doesn’t belong… Screw the whole lot of
ya’…”

Constance felt heat radiate from her cheeks
as her face flushed, but she continued to bite back her temper and
held her tongue. Conflict resolution wasn’t an easy task in the
first place, even when you were the detached outsider. It was much
harder when you were firmly entrenched in your own side of the
argument.

“Have you seen enough?” Carmichael demanded
on the heels of his outburst. “Are we done here?”

“Yes,” Constance replied as calmly as she
could manage. “I think we are.”

He turned and started for the stairs. “Come
on then. I’ll drop you off back at the Greenleaf.”

“Actually, why don’t we just go to your
office,” she said as she turned to follow. “I’d like to have a look
at the original case file. If you still have it, that is.”

Skip didn’t answer. He simply kept walking,
then stomped up the stairs, flashlight in hand, leaving her to
negotiate the uneven bottom double-step alone and in the dark.

CONSTANCE
glanced over the top edge of
the thirty-five-year-old police report as a hand slid an unmarked,
cardboard burger carton across the break room table and brought it
to rest in front of her. The carton was soon followed by a plastic
fork and then by a thick-walled, stoneware mug that had wisps of
steam wafting slowly up from the coffee it contained.

In the seconds following the appearance of
the items, there ensued a balloon of silence that was slowly
expanding to fill the room. It finally popped when Skip cleared his
throat and said, “Hope you like cranberry-mince pie. It’s all they
had over there this morning.”

“Peace offering?” She asked without looking
up from the file.

“Works with my daughters,” he grunted. “Not
so much with my wife, but with the girls it does…most of the time,
anyway. And, since you remind me a lot of my oldest, I figure I
might have a fifty-fifty shot…”

Constance gave in and laid the open file on
the table, then looked up at him with a curious expression. “Why
just fifty-fifty?”

“Because my oldest takes after her
mother.”

“I see… But pie? For breakfast?”

“Think of it as a doughnut you have to eat
with a fork.”

She arched her eyebrows and nodded. “Never
thought of it that way.”

“So…” he said after a measured pause. “Is it
working?”

She chuckled as she quipped in return, “I
guess that all depends on how good the pie is.”

“Yeah. You’re definitely a lot like my
oldest,” Skip replied. He dropped a second carton on the table,
then pulled up a chair and parked himself across from her. “For
what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know I was kind of a jackass back
there.”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, I was a complete jackass,” he
replied.

“Apology accepted,” she said with a quick
nod. “And I should say that I’m sorry if I offended you with my
observations on this case. I realize that what happened with Merrie
is a touchy subject for you and everyone else in this town for that
matter. I truly wasn’t trying to be insensitive to that fact.”

“I know you weren’t. You’re just following
the leads like you’re supposed to. Truth is, I should’ve warned you
up front.”

“About?”

“Me… That house…” he huffed, then paused,
leaving a pregnant question mark hanging in the air. He thumbed the
tab on his box and opened the hinged lid to reveal a wide slice of
homemade pie that had been accessorized with a huge dollop of
whipped cream. He stared at it for a moment, then picked up his own
fork; but instead of digging in, he waved the utensil through the
air and proceeded to fill in the blank he had left. “This sort of
thing has happened before. More than once. You can ask your Fed
buddies about it. I just don’t do well in that house. Too many bad
memories, I guess… And just more gettin’ made.”

“I think I can understand that. Between the
painful memories and the frustration you must feel with this case,
I’m sure it can’t be easy on you.”

He bobbed his head in agreement. “Not so
much, that’s the truth. Most memories dull with time. Eventually
they fade enough that they get easier to deal with…but not this
one. It just gets harder for me every year. Still, that was no
cause for me to take it out on you.”

“Would it help if I confessed something?”
Constance asked.

“What’s that?”

“Being in that house was getting to me too. I
know that might sound crazy, especially since I don’t have the
history with it that you have.” She paused, then shrugged and
added, “To be honest, I was actually even a little spooked by it
yesterday. I hate to admit it, but I was sort of relieved when your
flashlight didn’t work.”

“Hard for me to imagine you being spooked by
much of anything,” he replied, then puckered his lips into a
thoughtful frown and offered, “I guess I was too wrapped up in
myself to notice. Sorry.”

“What was that you said earlier? ‘Now we’re
even’?”

“How’s that?”

“It’s hard for me to imagine you not noticing
something.”

“It happens,” he replied, a half chuckle
following the words. “As a matter of fact, that’s when I usually
end up buying somebody a piece of pie. Oh…how’s your shin, by the
way?”

Obviously he hadn’t missed the fact that
she’d stumbled over that bottom stair when he stormed off and left
her standing in the dark.

“Sore,” she answered. “And I’m sure there’s a
bruise on the way, so I doubt I’ll be winning any sexy legs
contests in the near future.”

“Maybe not, but from the language I heard
coming up the stairs I’d sure put money on you to win a cussin’
contest.”

C
HAPTER
16

4:26 P.M. – December 23, 2010

Greenleaf Motel

Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

CONSTANCE
straightened her posture,
then interlaced her fingers behind her neck and arched her back as
she stretched. She held the position for several seconds before
unclasping her hands and slowly reaching toward the ceiling. She
heard a pop from her left shoulder and rotated it carefully, then
made another mental note about that massage when she was finally
back home in Saint Louis.

Finally, she relaxed and allowed her arms to
drop to her sides as her back unbowed. Then she closed her eyes and
slowly rolled her head in a circle, first left, then right, then
left again. When she was finished working the muscles in her neck,
she glanced at her watch, then at the paper-strewn bed. She’d been
hunched over for better than two hours this time, so she definitely
needed a break.

She sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled
slowly, shaking her arms and rocking her hips as she danced in
place to get her circulation going. It seemed a bit chilly, so she
turned away from the bed and wandered over to the wide heater unit
that was mounted through the wall beneath the window of her motel
room. It wasn’t pushing any air at the moment, so she bent over and
inched the temperature control dial up another notch. It kicked on
immediately.

Straightening up, she reached out and pulled
back the edge of the dark burgundy insulated drapes that covered
the smudged panes, and then peered out through the gap. On the
other side of the glass, it was reaching the cusp of darkness. The
last throes of what little sunlight had been managing to penetrate
the low clouds were throwing themselves against the coming night in
a futile suicide assault. However, the dirty blue-gray shadows were
winning, just as they always would.

In the dimness she could see that a light
snow was still falling, the same as it had been since mid
afternoon. Something on the order of an inch had accumulated so
far—maybe even a bit more. What she’d been able to tune in earlier
on the two-decades-old television had told her that it would be
picking up the pace, and there would likely be three to five more
on the ground by morning, at least. Sometime around midday tomorrow
the weather system was supposed to finally taper off to flurries,
leaving another day of overcast skies and an added blast of bitter
cold slipping in from the northwest.

It looked like it would definitely be a white
Christmas for northern Missouri, not that anyone here in Hulis
would be celebrating. Except for Merrie, of course.

Constance felt a sudden chill run the length
of her spine, and she shivered.

Out of instinct, she rested the heel of her
palm on the butt of her Sig Sauer. Her index finger was extended,
and the others were curled lightly over the grip, while her thumb
hovered against the quick release. As she leaned in toward the
window and twisted to scan the rest of the parking lot, the edge of
her hand pressed against her side, sending a brief but sharp pain
through the cell-phone bruise. She winced and adjusted her torso a
bit, but left her hand resting on her sidearm.

She didn’t consciously believe that she was
being watched, but she was still on edge. This wasn’t the first odd
chill she’d felt since returning to her room, and it wasn’t because
of the heater. While she was at the house on Evergreen Lane, she
could almost understand it. Not without some question as to why, of
course, but at least it made some kind of sense for it to happen
there and then. Here and now, it didn’t.

Her being spooked was unusual enough in
itself, but for it to carry over like this was just unheard of.
After all, she worked cases on a regular basis with Rowan Gant, a
paranormal consultant for the Saint Louis police and the FBI as
well. She had been witness to some truly inexplicable things during
some unbelievably bizarre cases, so this shouldn’t be a big deal at
all.

However, what she was really accustomed to
was Rowan’s preternatural cognition, not her own; that was because
she didn’t have any. Maybe she’d get a gut feeling here and there,
but nothing like he had. He was the supernatural member of the
team, not her. She was the skeptic and sometimes his official
handler during investigations, but that was all. Yes, she made it a
point to remain open minded; however, she was still a rationalist.
And, as much as she liked Rowan, she simply wasn’t in a big hurry
for his mysticism to start rubbing off on her.

Of course, the more she thought about it, the
more she had to admit that all of the exceptional observations
being made by Sheriff Carmichael probably weren’t helping her
anxiety either. They were certainly nothing inexplicable—as he had
proven with his explanations—but they were peculiar nonetheless. As
benign as the curmudgeonly old cop seemed on the surface, she still
wasn’t sure quite what to make of him. In fact, she had a strange
feeling that he was hiding something from her. She didn’t know
exactly what it was, but she felt positive that she wasn’t getting
the whole story from him.

One thing she did know for certain, however,
was that, explicable or not, being the focus of such intimately
detailed perceptions coming from someone she really didn’t know was
just plain creepy—on too many levels.

Constance let out a heavy sigh and glanced
back over her shoulder at the bed. Papers were arranged all across
the comforter in semi-organized stacks sorted by dates, case
numbers, and in many instances, obvious connections.

Following Sheriff Carmichael’s instructions,
Clovis had photocopied the original Merrie Callahan–John Colson
case file for her, as well as those pertaining to the seven copycat
murders. While they were definitely more complete than the FBI’s
own documentation, so far they hadn’t furnished any real answers.
If anything, they had created a whole host of new questions after
she had been through them the first time. The list of queries had
only grown upon the second run through. At this point, she was
almost afraid to go for a third pass for fear of becoming even more
confused.