Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (6 page)

She had a point. But they’d also not do the community a service if they pressed another panic button when they weren’t even sure anything had happened to Melissa Simmons. When the sheriff called her parents from the number they’d gotten from her cell phone, they’d told him she frequently spent all day in the woods working on her research project, monitoring her study group of birds.

“We don’t know for sure she’s missing,” he reminded her. “It’s early afternoon. She might just have gone off on foot.”

“Let’s hope she did,” she said grimly. “But if she did, she left a bloody shoe behind and then dropped another in that stream down the ravine and it’s kind of cold to be running around barefoot. I have a bad feeling, and for the record, I hate having a bad feeling.”

The mashed potatoes were good as always, a little lumpy because they were the real deal, and he knew creamery butter when he tasted it. It was early afternoon and the café was empty except for one table where an elderly man and woman sat together in complete silence. A middle-aged waitress wiped off one of the red-checked oilskin tablecloths, glancing at them now and again in ill-disguised curiosity. His uniform was probably a giveaway that he was involved in what was going on just a few miles down the road. Rick had no illusions. It was small here. Small towns, small populations, but the network was pretty good. Radios that monitored police communications weren’t illegal. The community already knew something big was happening. He’d stake his life on it.

The only thing that wasn’t small was the area where someone who knew what he was doing could easily conceal a body. The sheer range of the forested region was one of the problems. He went on. “If we don’t locate her by tonight the shit will hit the fan.”

Ellie sighed, finally ate the peas, and then nodded. “This is getting bigger. We
do
know the area. DCI will help us out if we need it, and it seems like we do, but in our defense, so far there’s been nothing to go on.”

Rick agreed. They both had spent a lot of time on this already. He wasn’t ready to hand it over completely to someone else; not now. “We can’t do anything until we get the report from forensics on the blood we found this morning. We don’t even know it’s human at this point. We’re still swimming in the dark.”

“True.” She arched a brow and pushed her half-finished lunch to the side. Slim fingers ran down the side of her plastic iced tea glass in a deceptively idle gesture. “What about Grantham? What do you think?”

Rick took a last bite of meat loaf, chewed and swallowed, and then rubbed his temple. “If he was faking his reaction this morning, he did a good job. Seemed shook up.”

“He was obviously seen in the bar with Melissa Simmons. Could be an offensive move to pretend to have to return her phone and ‘find’ the evidence.”

It was possible, but there was certainly nothing conclusive enough to point them that direction. “Let’s face it, we’d be hard-pressed to find him if he hadn’t called from just a physical description, and that’s if any of the patrons of the Pit Stop could clearly describe him in the first place. He could have just driven right back to Milwaukee. He didn’t have to call it in.”

“Killers like to play games. Hunting is considered a sport, isn’t it?”

Jesus, what a chilling observation
. But Ellie was like that, he’d learned. On point, riveted on the job, always trying to get into the head of the perpetrator. He’d wondered more than once about her personal life. If she had one, she didn’t talk about it.

Rick mused out loud, “He didn’t strike me like that, but God knows we lose the ability to judge without suspicion doing what we do.”

She studied her napkin, a faint frown between her fine brows. “You don’t think he’s a possibility?”

He picked up his glass. There wasn’t much except ice but he swirled what was left of it around. “Oh, yeah, he is. But … I usually know a scumbag when I meet one. This guy was sort of hard to read. People liked Ted Bundy, so my official position is that I’m not sure. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a serial killer before. From everything I know, the successful ones are a different breed. He could qualify.”

*   *   *

She didn’t like
the ambiguity. Ellie preferred straightforward answers. It could be a personal flaw, but while her imagination was her nemesis, she also had a direct kind of mind—one that took facts and drew logical conclusions. She had to agree that there was a level of implausibility to what Grantham had told them, because what intelligent young woman would get into the car of a strange man when it was well known in the area women were missing? But it was at least equally as possible it was the plain truth. If her car wouldn’t start and a tow wasn’t readily available, maybe she’d just decided to take the chance. It wasn’t as if she could easily call a cab, and walking by herself through the woods was hardly a good idea.

Rick said, “It won’t hurt to look into him, like you said before.”

“I think we need to.” She added slowly, “You know what my one big fear has been all along once this started? Once we started to get a glimmer it might a serial case?”

Her partner cocked a brow.

“That this guy might be smart.” She spread her hands on the table as if laying it out. “I don’t mean just psychotic and canny, that goes without saying, for most of them are or they wouldn’t go undetected long enough to kill a string of people. I meant
really
smart. Grantham can design software programs and the background check we just got says he also has a Ph.D. It sounds to me like he qualifies.”

He does. I saw it just from those few minutes in the car during our interview.

She’d found him interesting, and that was interesting of itself. Rick was right. Dr. Grantham had been hard to read.

“You can’t suspect the guy just because he has a couple of letters after his name.”

“No,” she agreed, turning to pick her purse up off the floor. She laid several bills on top of the little green ticket by her plate. “But I can see if he happens to have an alibi for when our first three victims disappeared, can’t I?”

She could and probably should, so Rick didn’t disagree, but Grantham wasn’t the only candidate. “What about Walters? Should we talk to him again?” Reginald Walters was a convicted felon and had done time down in Illinois for manslaughter. A string of smaller crimes had preceded the fatal brawl with a neighbor that landed him in the penitentiary, but he must have gotten a lenient judge or maybe one who didn’t like his own neighbor much either, because he only served six years. Rick had told her he’d stopped him once for speeding and looking into the man’s eyes did something interesting to your soul. All he’d seen was a flat landscape of inhumanity mixed in with a good dose of rage. The traffic stop had been routine because Walters wasn’t interested in getting in trouble again probably and there was no faster way than hassling a police officer, but Rick had no problem admitting he’d been relieved when the man pulled away in his pickup truck.

Ellie tucked a loose lock of hair that had freed itself from her ponytail behind her ear. “He’s not exactly an upstanding citizen but we don’t have anything to connect him to the victims. There’s no probable cause to keep bothering him except his record.”

“His ex-girlfriend filed charges against him,” Rick argued, reaching for his wallet. “That at least proves a disposition of violence toward women.”

“She dropped them. And battery doesn’t necessarily nominate you for sainthood but it isn’t murder. Besides, he’s got an unbreakable alibi for the first disappearance. He was still in Joliet, remember?”

Rick dropped his money on the table and stood as Ellie shrugged back into her coat. “I’ve never been one hundred percent convinced the first disappearance is connected to the other two. The others were clear abductions. It’s the only one that’s different. She went missing from a state recreation area while camping. It’s possible she got up after her friends left and went for a swim and drowned in the lake. There are undercurrents there. I know divers looked, but we don’t always find the bodies.”

Ellie gazed at him, thinking about it. “It’s possible. But neither of us believe that’s what happened, do we? It was the same person responsible, and I
so
want to catch this son of a bitch.”

*   *   *

At the end
of the day she was always tired, especially after a day like this one. Ellie pulled up the winding lane to the circle drive and parked by the shed. She really needed to clean the garage one of these days—it was still full of boxes of things she’d inherited when her father had passed away. It got dark early and she’d worked late, and the motion light went on, illuminating the neat log exterior of her house, the steps leading down a small hill, terraced in with flagstone. In the winter they could be on the treacherous side if it got icy, but in the summer she put pots of petunias and coleus on each step for color, and the effect was very pretty. It was also the closest thing to gardening she ever did. However, set as it was in the woods, her yard was mostly delicate wild ferns anyway, and they took care of themselves.

She fumbled for keys and let herself in. The small foyer was dark and warm compared to the bite of the outside October temperature. She hung up her coat and went into the kitchen, deftly uncorked a bottle of a German Riesling she took from the refrigerator, and foraged for a wineglass in the cupboard above the sink.

It wasn’t that she considered the discovery of those splatters of blood and discarded shoes a cause for a celebration, but she wanted to sleep tonight. A couple of glasses might help her relax. She sipped as she put together an impromptu meal for one, broiling some tilapia with a sprinkling of herbs, and was grabbing greens for a salad from one of those convenient bags she kept in the refrigerator when she caught a call from Pearson, the sheriff.

“Just wanted to let you know I’m going to do a press interview after all.”

“Sir.” She stopped in the act of taking out the blue cheese dressing. “We have nothing. And I don’t mean like nothing we can prove, I’m talking literally
nothing
.”

He was quiet and she almost thought the call had dropped until he said, “I have to do
something
. I think, you think, and everyone else who knows about it pretty much thinks we have another missing young woman.”

It was true, but as they had nothing else in particular to say, it was going to be a short speech.

“Whatever you decide is best, sir.”

“What I think would be best would be to be sitting on my couch drinking a beer.” His laugh was a short expulsion of breath. “But the media is going to get a hold of this anyway and it’s my job to make sure they don’t interfere with the case. An ounce of prevention is the way to go.”

He was right to a certain extent, but they had no idea still if Melissa Simmons was another victim and an announcement felt premature. After she hung up, she sat there for a moment until she caught a hint of burned fish, swore in colorful language her mother would not approve of, and rescued her dinner just before it crossed the threshold to inedible. She ate, listening to Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor for strings and organ.

The whole time she deliberately kept herself from thinking about the case.

After she was done she washed the dishes, poured a second glass of wine, settled into the overstuffed chair she loved, put her feet on the ottoman, and flicked on the television.

Sure enough, it was on the ten o’clock news.

Pearson was true to his word. Maybe it was pressure from the girl’s parents, but there he was in front of a microphone. It wasn’t often this quiet part of the state made the news.

Suitably serious and composed, he gave a brief press announcement on the local station about how an as-yet-unnamed woman had been reported missing that morning. He couldn’t speculate if it was connected to any of the other three open cases or not, but he assured the public that state forces and his local officers were doing all they could to find her.

Short and sweet and thoroughly unsatisfactory.

That was accurate. All they could do to find her. Ellie thought she was observant and had shown a knack for investigation from the beginning, making detective at twenty-seven. She’d given everything to the initial disappearance of Julia Becraft, the entire department had, but the investigation had stretched on without any success.

A mere fifteen-mile range between the abductions, so you’d think we could catch this asshole. If he isn’t local, he’s someone like Grantham. There is a link, if we can just find it
.

She just knew infuriatingly nothing about their quarry. No motive, no eyewitness glimpses, no physical evidence left behind … just nothing. He was a ghost, a phantom, an evil presence in a beautiful place. As ephemeral as a delicate spider’s web dusted with dew in the morning. Touch it and the whole thing disappeared.

The victims so far had no ties either, except they were female and pretty.

How did he hunt them? How did he make the selection? Like any other predatory animal? No. In the wild, it was usually because an animal was young or weakened by injury or age. Not so in these cases. They were healthy, intelligent women with no connection that she could see.

The activity was escalating. The first disappearance had been seventeen months ago. And then another about year later. And Margaret Wilson only eleven days before this one …

If this
was
another one. Introspective, she cupped her chin in one hand and let her thoughts flow. She did her best work that way, when she really wasn’t on the job, everyone watching, conflicting personalities at work even if they had the same goal. It had been the same in college. She’d been the quintessential sorority girl that first year, social, rudderless in some ways, until Brenda, one of her classmates, had been killed in a hit-and-run accident right on campus.

It had been rather like this investigation. No witnesses, no evidence, and whoever had killed Brenda had never been caught. The sheer unfairness of it had caused Ellie to rethink her major in English and switch to criminal justice.