In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (3 page)

“I suppose that depends on how busy they are,
honey,” her mother told her. “Why?”

“I dunno…” she mumbled. “I guess I just want
to be home.”

“I know… We will be soon enough.”

Merrie considered her options for a second.
Her father worked an early shift and was almost always home not
long after she got in from school. She offered that fact as an
appeal. “Won’t Daddy be wondering where we are when he gets home
and we’re not there?”

“He’s working late tonight, sweetheart,” he
mother explained. “We’ll still be home long before him.”

Working late?
Merrie swallowed hard as
her stomach flipped over, and then flipped over again. If she had
felt panic just a minute ago, this was twice as bad. Her head
pounded some more, not that it had ever really stopped, and she
could feel the tightness returning to her chest once again as it
became hard to breathe. The previously growing light at the end of
her darkened tunnel had already dimmed when they made the right
hand turn. Now it had gone completely out. The blackness was moving
in on her again, and it was terribly bad.

This was worse than waiting for her birthday,
or Thanksgiving, or anything… The promise of everything being okay
was gone, just like that.

“How late?” she forced herself to ask.

“He probably won’t be home until after
dinner, honey,” her mother said.

After dinner! That was even worse. She wasn’t
sure she could wait another minute, much less until after dinner.
She was all kinds of sick inside, and the longer she kept this
secret, the more it hurt. The more it felt like it was eating her
up. Suddenly, she felt as if she had to tell someone what had
happened before she just exploded. She couldn’t take it
anymore.

As Elizabeth pulled the car into a diagonal
space in front of the store, Merrie looked over at her and said,
“Mom?”

“Yes, Merrie. What is it?”

Merrie opened her mouth, preparing to spill
everything, but before she could make a sound those painful words
hammered against the inside of her head.

“…
If you tell anyone, I’ll
have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill
them…”

“Maybe even kill them…”

“Maybe even kill them…”

She stared back at her mother, but was unable
to make herself let go of the pain she was feeling. She was sure
Daddy could protect them, but she didn’t have that same belief
about her mother. Not right now, anyway. It hadn’t been all that
long ago that Mom had been in the hospital for what she had called
“woman problems,” whatever those were. Merrie just knew that she
had been really sick for a long time, and finally the doctors had
to operate on her. And now, just a few weeks later she still heard
Mom complain about being sore and tired all the time. And most
especially, how she always said that she felt weak.

Merrie kept imagining the man in the red suit
doing the same things to her mother that he had done to her, and
Mom not being able to stop him. Even worse, she saw flashes of him
doing the terrible things to Becca as well because her mother was
too weak to save her. Then, she would see them dead. As the horror
of it played out inside her head, each image made her feel even
sicker than the one before.

No. She couldn’t possibly tell her mother
what had happened. Not just her alone. She had to wait for Daddy.
Only he could protect Becca and Mom.

“…
If you tell anyone, I’ll
have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill
them.”

Merrie balled her fists inside the arms of
her coat once again and squeezed as tightly as she could. She felt
her fingernails biting sharply into the palms of her hands. It
hurt, but in a way it didn’t. Not like it hurt when he had done the
bad things to her, anyway. It didn’t make any sense that something
hurting could feel good. But, it did. It made her feel like she was
here, and not there.

It made the other hurt go away, if only for a
moment.

“Merrie?” Elizabeth asked, a mix of confusion
and concern rimming her voice. “What is it?”

“Nothing…” Merrie finally said. “Just… I love
you, Mom.”

Elizabeth smiled; she could tell her daughter
had been on the brink of confessing the issue that appeared to be
bothering her so much. What held her back she didn’t know, but she
wrote off the sudden backpedaling to the earlier conversation about
keeping promises. With a quick nod she said, “I love you too,
sweetheart. Don’t worry. If you want to talk later we’ll sort
everything out when your father gets home, okay?”

Merrie nodded.

“Everything will be fine, honey. Whatever it
is that’s bothering you, I’m sure it can’t be that bad. Now… What
say we get this shopping done so we can get home, okay?”

Can’t be that bad?
Merrie thought to
herself. If only she could tell because she just knew this was bad.
And she knew that when her parents heard it they would think it was
bad too. Instead, all she could do right now was force a thin smile
and say, “Okay.”

“Can you do me a favor and help your sister
with her seatbelt?”

From the back seat, Becca started to
gleefully chant once again, “He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus
is coming… He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus is coming…”

CHAPTER 2

4:01 P.M. – December 22, 1975

Sheriff’s Department

Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

“…
JUST
a little past four in the
afternoon and this is Rockin’ Ronnie comin’ at you from the middle
of Cornelius Bremerton’s cornfield, here on K-I-M-O FM. Reach on
over to the dash, pull out that tuner button, and punch it right
back in for a lock on great music every day…”

The final rolling beats of a song’s
orchestral drums were still reverberating in the background as the
radio announcer voiced over with the station ID. He wasn’t joking
about the cornfield; that’s exactly where the transmitter and
cramped broadcast studio were located. Cornelius Bremerton came
from the proverbial “old money” in Hulis, and he owned the small,
local station as well as the land on which it was parked. If you
wanted to get right down to it, the truth was that the Bremerton
family owned more than half the town, and when Cornelius and his
wife finally went on to their final rewards, their three kids would
bicker over the spoils that were left behind. Unfortunately, their
offspring hadn’t inherited their values or sense of community.

Once the tune finally faded out, the disk
jockey continued, “That was a new solo release from Greg Lake
called
I Believe In Father Christmas…
Wheww! I’m not sure
what he found in his stocking that made him write that one but
sounds to me like it was probably a lump of…”

Rockin’ Ronnie’s voice came to an abrupt halt
before the sentence was finished. Somewhere out there he was still
filling the airwaves, but not here. Deputy Addison “Skip”
Carmichael had killed the engine of his patrol car, cutting off
power to the radio.

Letting out a quiet snort, he mumbled to
himself, “Yeah… I’d say that one was just a little to the
depressing side.”

Shaking his head, he unbuckled his seatbelt
and then popped the door and climbed out of the vehicle. Out of
habit, Carmichael gave a quick glance upward. The sky was a gray
drop ceiling that had been hung just a little too low, and it
seemed to be darkening even as he watched, almost like a lamp
attached to a dimmer switch. He allowed his skyward gaze to linger
for a good minute, maybe even two. He knew that what appeared to be
a flat expanse of cloud cover was really a pregnant winter storm,
and it looked like it was ready to deliver at any moment.

Deputy Carmichael grunted, then started to
swing the door of the police cruiser shut, but stopped mid-push. He
thoughtfully checked the timepiece on his wrist and let out a soft
harrumph. He’d been busy running errands and fulfilling some
personal obligations for a good part of the day, so he hadn’t yet
heard the latest weather report for the evening. What he saw above
seemed pretty obvious, and while the fact that it was going to snow
was a given, the accumulation totals were a different story. The
way things changed here in the Midwest you just never knew, and
judging by what was hanging over his head, he was betting they were
in for something bigger than the three to six inches they’d been
predicting this morning.

He decided it probably wouldn’t hurt for him
to be up to date before going on duty. According to his watch—which
he kept set to the clock in the office—he was almost an hour early
anyway. His shift didn’t actually start until five. Since he had
some time to waste, he opened the door wider, climbed back into the
seat, and then pulled it shut. After shoving the key back into the
ignition he gave a half twist to click it over to the ACC
position.

The gauges on the dash came to life and the
various engine status lights flickered for a moment as the seatbelt
warning chimed for attention. With a staticky pop, the radio
blipped back on and the announcer was rambling once again, or maybe
still. You just never knew with him, but one thing hadn’t
changed—as usual he seemed overjoyed by the sound of his own voice.
“…ing up in just a couple of minutes. Hey, here’s some news. I
don’t know if any of you caught this or not, but it seems Winter
Solstice happened at around five forty-five central standard time
this morning. That means last night was the longest night of the
year. Or is it tonight? Who knows? Probably the NASA guys, right?
But it’s good news for you night owls, I guess. And on the up side
for you sun worshipers, the daylight hours start getting longer
from here on out.

“Just for fun I dug up some info on this
stellar
event, so here are some Solstice facts for you
stargazers out there. Number one…”

“C’mon, c’mon. Give me some weather…” Deputy
Carmichael muttered.

“…
moment the Earth’s axial tilt is at
its farthest point from the sun, whatever all that means.” There
was an audible shrug in the disk jockey’s voice that underscored
the latter words. “Two. It is the official start of the winter
season… Yeah, like the white stuff falling out of the sky starting
around Thanksgiving didn’t give us a clue about that already,
right?”

“Sheesh, Ronnie…” Skip grunted. “Quit
screwin’ around. Just get to the actual weather forecast, will
you…”

Oblivious to the deputy’s frustration, of
course, the announcer was still ticking off his list of factoids.
“…also called midwinter. Hey, what kind of sense does
that
make? Is it the start of winter or the middle of winter? Make up
your minds, guys. You have to wonder if those astrologers are
getting a little tipsy at the office party, huh?”

Carmichael shook his head as he grumbled.
“Astronomers you idiot. Astronomers, not astrologers.”

“…
And four: Did you know that in
ancient Pagan cultures, the Winter Solstice marks the holiday known
as Yule? I guess that means the natives will be restless tonight,
huh?” The announcer chuckled at his own joke before continuing.
“And here’s something about this particular Solstice: Depending on
the year, they can occur either on…”

“The twenty-first or the twenty-second,” Skip
announced a bit louder, and then let out a sigh. His moist breath
turned into the barest hint of steam that dissipated as quickly as
it formed. With more than noticeable exasperation, were anyone
there to see it, he said aloud, “Will you just give the damn
weather forecast, you turkey…”

Even though he was early and had plenty of
time on his hands, Carmichael was quickly growing tired of the
drone. He had little patience for unnecessary prattling, most
especially if it was coming from Ron “Rockin’ Ronnie” Connelly. The
only reason he even listened to K-I-M-O was that it was the only
station that came in worth a damn, especially if the weather was
rough. The other three on-air personalities he could handle, but
this guy made him want to punch something.

Of course, part of his annoyance certainly
stemmed from the fact that “Ronnie” and he had gone to high school
together and hadn’t exactly been what you would call friends.
Actually, that was putting it mildly. They had been more along the
lines of archrivals, all for the affections of a particular
cheerleader.

Of course, that was then, and this is now, as
they say. High school was almost seven years behind them, and the
competition should be a distant memory. However, it had carried on
well past graduation, and though it had been moot for a good while
now, time had done little to change his adversarial opinion of the
man behind the drive time voice of the hometown radio station.

At the thought, Skip once again stuffed his
hand into his jacket pocket and wrapped his fingers around a small
box. He’d already checked a dozen times since leaving the store,
just to make sure it was still there, but so far it hadn’t escaped.
Even so, it made his heart thump a bit faster each time he repeated
the motion and felt the container clutched tight in his grasp. He
wasn’t exactly sure if that was because he was afraid it might be
gone, because of what it meant, or a combination of the two.

“…
st what we need, right? More of the
white stuff. It’s four-oh-eight P.M. and time for some more holiday
music to help you get into the spirit. In fact, here’s one to go
with that forecast. You’re listening to Rockin’ Ronnie on K-I-M-O
FM.” Following immediately behind the announcer’s voice, the first
notes of
Let It Snow
rang from the car radio’s
speakers.

“Damn,” Skip muttered aloud then shook his
head. He clicked the ignition to off and pulled out the key.