Dead of Winter (12 page)

“Where will they take it?” Louis asked Jesse.

“Cedar Springs. They have a county lab up that way. It’s about twenty miles.”

“Thank God. We might get home by dawn.”

Gibralter came toward them, tossing aside a cigarette. He watched the firemen finish with the final straps, then looked at Louis and Jesse. “Wickshaw will follow you in the cruiser.”

Louis looked at the body, then back at Gibralter, who was walking away. “He expects us to ride with the stiff?” Louis asked Ollie.

Ollie shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Isn’t that what you heard?”

Jesse was already climbing on the flatbed. Louis started to protest again but Jesse cut him off, extending a hand.

“Louis, get up here,” Jesse said.

Shaking his head, Louis climbed onto the flatbed, over the block of ice and sat down next to Jesse, who had settled into a corner against the truck’s cab.

“This is ridiculous,” Louis muttered.

“Look at it this way. We’re protecting the chain of custody.”

The truck kicked into gear and Louis grabbed the edge of the truck. Jesse looked toward the road and watched as the chief climbed into his Bronco. The flatbed pulled slowly up the bank and onto the road. Ollie swung his cruiser in behind.

“Chief seemed kind of tense,” Louis said after a moment.

“He’s just pissed at me,” Jesse said tightly. “I shouldn’t have spouted off to him like that.”

Louis shivered as the wind began to whip around them. “Not a real smart move.”

“He’s never yelled at me like that for just mouthing off.”

“It’s the circumstances, Jess. It’s freezing-ass cold. The chief’s got a dead body that everyone’s making jokes about and all these civilians watching. He was doing a little chest beating, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Louis scooted toward Jesse for warmth. “If I freeze and die out here tonight tell them I died with honor, okay?” he said.

“You’re not going to die. The human body can endure temperatures much colder than this.”

Louis nodded toward the body. “Tell that to him.”

They quickly fell silent in the biting cold of the open highway.

“Louis?” Jesse said, breaking the silence.

Louis grunted.

“Have you ever been, like, suddenly transported back in time? You know, by something that happens to you now?”

“Déjà vu?”

“No, more like you’re a kid again and something that happened to you happens all over again?”

Louis looked at Jesse. In the wind, his voice had sounded small. And his face, caught in the headlight beam of Wickshaw’s cruiser following behind, looked different. The wind whipped his dark hair over his forehead and his eyes were teary from the cold. He looked ten years old.

“My father used to make me ride in the back of his pickup,” Jesse said.

“In the winter?”

“Winter and summer. Rain or shine.”

“Why?”

Jesse blinked. “Said there wasn’t enough room in the front seat for me and my uncle both.”

Louis shivered and pulled his knees closer. “Excuse me for saying this, Jess, but he sounds like a real ass.”

“He was,” Jesse said. “But in a way, he made me what I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he hadn’t kicked me out of the house when I was seventeen, I wouldn’t have become a cop.”

Jesse glanced at Louis and saw he was waiting for more. “I met Gibralter right after that, and man, suddenly it all got clear. I wanted to be a cop. I
had
to be a cop. Know what I mean?”

He didn’t, but Louis nodded anyway.

They were quiet the rest of the way to Cedar Springs. When the truck pulled into the county morgue parking lot, Louis and Jesse went inside to log in the body. A few minutes later, they were walking back to Ollie’s cruiser.

“Let’s get out of here.” Louis opened the passenger door of the cruiser and started to get in. Jesse grabbed his arm.

“Let me ride in front.”

Louis shrugged. “Sure.”

Louis got in back and closed his eyes. “Don’t expect me in ‘til later,” he muttered. “I’m sleeping in.”

Jesse shot him a look over his shoulder through the metal screen that separated the front and backseats. “At least you got a place to sleep.”

“What do you mean?” Louis asked.

Jesse nodded back toward the morgue. “That fucker used
my
bed.”

Louis was awakened by the scratchy sound of his radio going off on the nightstand. It was Florence, who informed him it was after eight and he had missed briefing.

Louis fell back on the pillows. Damn, after last night, he expected to get a few extra hours of sleep.

He was zipping up his pants when he heard the squawk of a siren outside. He pushed back the curtain to see Jesse waiting in the cruiser. They went back on routine patrol without hitting the station. Louis sat slumped in the seat, half listening to Jesse’s patter, refusing his offer to share his thermos of coffee. Julie, Louis had quickly discovered, made terrible coffee. At noon, Louis suggested they go back to the station.

Inside, Louis went straight to the coffeepot then sank into his chair, rubbing his bristly jaw. He hadn’t had time to shave and he wondered if Gibralter counted that as being out of uniform.

The phone rang and he picked it up. It was the medical examiner from Cedar Springs. Louis waved at Jesse. “Hey, they’ve identified the stiff,” he called out.

Jesse looked over and started toward Louis’s desk.

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Got it,” Louis murmured, taking notes. After a couple of minutes, he hung up. “The guy was shot.”

“You’re kidding,” Jesse said. “When?”

“They won’t know until tissue tests are done.”

“I told you he was probably a hunter,” Jesse said. “What kind of gun?”

“Shotgun. Twelve-gauge.”

Jesse’s expression shifted subtly, his brows coming together.

Louis was about to ask him what was the matter when it hit him. “Pryce was killed with a twelve-gauge,” he said.

Jesse nodded.

Louis ripped off a paper from his pad and held it out to Dale. “They found a wallet. Dale, run the guy’s name and see if he’s reported missing. Run it out of state, too, in case he was a tourist.”

Dale took the paper and started back to the computer. He stopped. “Jess,” he said, turning.

Jesse looked up at him. “What?”

Dale’s face had drained of color. His eyes went from the paper in his hand to Louis and finally back to Jesse. Jesse came forward and took the paper from Dale.

When he looked up, his eyes were glazed.

“Dale, go get the chief,” he said quietly.

The dead man’s cabin was located on the west side of the lake in a neighborhood of small bungalows and trailers, about an eight of a mile north of where the body had been found. It was, Louis guessed, where Loon Lake’s less well-heeled lived, the gas station attendants, fishing guides and most of the women who waited tables and changed the motel sheets for the tourists.

His name was Fred Lovejoy. He had been sixty-one years old, single, childless and a former Loon Lake cop.

Now there were two. One old, one young. One white, one black. One with a family, one who lived alone. One active, one retired. But both had worn Loon Lake uniforms.

Jesse hadn’t said much on the way over. Louis wanted to question him about local history, possible suspects and anything else Jesse could tell him. But the look on Jesse’s face and the subtle shaking in his hands stopped him. Jesse had lost two coworkers in less than a month. The questions could wait.

Jesse swung the cruiser to the side of the plowed road. Louis got out and paused, looking at the cabin. Lovejoy’s place looked like the others, a small, dark-green box with a few scraggly evergreens out front. Jesse started up the snowy walk.

“Jess, just a minute,” Louis called out. He opened the large metal mailbox. It was crammed with papers. Louis dug it all out and sifted through it. The pile appeared to be nothing but bills, junk mail and one copy each of
Field and Stream
and
Hustler.
There were also three thick newspapers, stuffed in blue plastic bags emblazoned with the
New York Times
logo.

Next to the mailbox was a bright green plastic mail tube with the
Oscoda County Argus
logo on the side but there were no papers inside. Louis stuffed the newspapers and mail into a bag, tossed it on the seat of the cruiser and followed Jesse to the front door. He noticed a late-model Buick parked in the narrow driveway, covered with a foot-deep layer of snow.

Jesse saw Louis looking at it. “Fred loved his Buicks,” he said. “Bought a new one every other year.”

“Not bad for a retired cop living on a pension,” Louis said.

“He drew some big bucks when he retired. Worker’s comp settlement to the tune of thirty grand.”

“For what?” Louis asked as he shoved gently on the door. He was surprised to find the door unlocked. He had to remind himself that unlocked doors were the norm in Loon Lake.

“Shattered disc or something. Got it taking down a drunk.” Jesse’s voice trailed off as they surveyed the inside of the cabin.

It was apparent that, other than the Buick, Lovejoy did not spend his money on any other comforts. The place was a dump.

“Jesus, what’s that smell?” Jesse said, recoiling slightly in the doorway.

“Garbage, I think. I hope,” Louis said. “Just be thankful it’s so cold.”

He took two steps into the tiny living room. The old yellowed shades were pulled down on the windows, casting the room in a murky gold light. The ancient sofa was half covered with a cheap chenille bedspread. The mismatched end tables were heaped with yellowed newspapers, magazines, dirty dishes and Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles. An old Danish-modern Zenith console TV sat in the corner, its top heaped with more papers and trash. Three-foot stacks of newspapers lined the walls, some spilling onto the floor. The green shag carpeting was littered with empty pizza boxes, open tin cans, and what looked to be bones.

Jesse’s eyes widened as he noticed the bones. Louis pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and slipped them on as he squatted down. He picked up one bone then tossed it down. “Chicken,” he said.

Jesse let out a breath and followed Louis into the kitchen.

“Damn, it’s cold in here,” Louis said.

Jesse stopped at the black potbellied stove. It was dark and cold. “This must be the only heat Fred had.”

They made their way to the kitchen. A large plastic trash can lay overturned in the middle of the linoleum floor, garbage strewn everywhere. A box of Cheerios lay on the counter, most of the cereal shaken out. A set of metal canisters had also been overturned, leaving a blanket of sugar and flour over the counter and floor. All the bottom cupboards had been opened, with the pots and pans thrown across the floor.

“Someone was looking for something,” Jesse said.

“Doesn’t look like he had anything worth a damn,” Louis said.

Jesse headed down the hall. Louis continued to search the kitchen, squatting to peer into the cabinets, then standing up. Strange, the upper cabinets were untouched.

“Oh, shit...”

“What it is?” Louis called out.

“You’d better come back here.”

Louis hurried back to the bedroom. Jesse was staring at something in a corner. Louis went around the rumpled bed and drew up short. It was a dog, a large brown-speckled one, a spaniel of some kind. It was dead, lying on its side, stiff from the cold.

“I forgot Fred had a dog,” Jesse said. He ran a hand over his face. “That explains the smell. There’s dog shit all over the place.”

“It might explain the mess, too,” Louis said. “Maybe the dog was looking for something to eat.”

Jesse grimaced. “You think it starved to death?”

“Maybe.”

Jesse reached down and pulled a blanket off the bed. He carefully laid it over the dog. Without looking at Louis, he hurried out of the room.

Louis looked around the dingy bedroom but it offered no clues about Fred Lovejoy’s death. It was simply a sad testament to a lonely life. He had heard that retired cops sometimes went off the deep end like this. Without the regimen of station or family to give their lives shape, ex-cops drifted into a netherworld of solitary idleness. Louis’s eyes drifted over the piles of unwashed clothes. Something on the dresser caught his eye and he moved to it.

It was a holstered gun. Louis slowly pulled it out and turned it over in his hand. It smelled of fresh Hoppes gun cleaner and the oil left spots on his latex gloves. Even the leather was cared for, like a beloved baseball glove. Louis slipped the gun back in its holster and put it back on the dresser.