Snow Way Out (4 page)

It was faster to tell her than to argue, and giving her the information helped distract me from the awful scene in front of me for ten or fifteen seconds.

“I’ll stay on the line with you until the officer arrives. My name is Betty. Stay with me, okay?” Her tone was sympathetic and she sounded like my mother. I felt my knees start to buckle under me. “Okay.” My own voice was weak and shaky. I heard sirens getting closer and turned to see emergency vehicles come around the lake from the north. There were three of them. I stole a quick glance at the body on the ground. Still facedown. He had to be dead, but my brain had trouble processing the whole thing.

“An off-duty officer is responding also. And I can hear the sirens over your phone so they must be close,” Betty said.

“They’re turning into the park.”

“Oh, good. I’ll leave you in their capable hands, then.”

“Okay, ’bye.” I hit the end button on my phone as the first police car pulled to a stop on the walking/bike path ten or so feet past me. Officer Mark Weston, wearing street clothes, jumped out and jogged toward me. An ambulance stopped behind him, and the second Brooks Landing police car parked behind it. Four people descended on the scene in seconds: Mark, a male EMT, a female EMT, and Clinton Lonsbury, another Brooks Landing High School alumnus. He was a year ahead of us, and Mark had told me he served as the assistant chief of police with the department.

“Cami, what in the heck?” Mark was first to reach the body. He knelt down and checked for a pulse on the man’s neck as the EMTs looked on. He shook his head and looked up at them. “Nothing you guys can do for him. He’s gone.”

The EMTs nodded, but didn’t make any attempt to leave. One did his own quick check of the body, probably a required procedure. They were the medical experts, after all.

Assistant Chief Lonsbury shined a bright flashlight around the ground and on the bench behind it. When he looked at me, his face was partially shadowed and far more handsome than I’d remembered. His large brown eyes studied me. “Mark said you were back in town.” He cleared his throat. “Can you tell us what happened, Cami? When you called it in, you said you didn’t know the victim’s identity.”

“It’s Camryn now,” I corrected him. I’d had my name legally changed to a more professional-sounding one when I lived in Washington. Only my family and oldest friends knew me as Cami. “No, I didn’t get a good look—or any kind of look—at his face. His cap covered it almost completely. Then when he landed, his cap sort of moved, but as you can see, his face is in the grass and shadowed,” I said.

“Go on.”

“I was walking home—”

“Through the park, at this time of night?” Mark interrupted.

Clint shot him a look that said,
Be quiet.

“I didn’t mean to leave the shop so late, and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t forgotten I had walked to work—”

“Any one of us would have given you a ride home,” Mark said.

“Officer Weston, quit interrupting.”

“Sorry, sir.” Sir. Was that how I should be addressing Clinton Lonsbury now?

“Go on.”

I told them every detail of walking through the park and finding the body. I decided to leave out the part about seeing the same scene in the strange snow globe until later. “And I did something I knew right away that I shouldn’t have.”

“What was that?” Clint asked in an official tone.

“I touched the handle of the knife.”

Clint looked from me to Mark then back to me. He let go of a grunting sound and must have counted to twenty before he spoke. “Why in the hell—”

“I panicked. I thought maybe if it was in just a little ways, I could pull it out. I know it was stupid.”

He left that opening alone. “Have you ever been fingerprinted?”

“Yes, for my last employment position.”

Clint nodded, and to his credit did not yell or swear at me. He turned his attention to Mark. “We’ll need the Buffalo County Major Crimes Team to help process the scene.” Clint phoned Dispatch to get the crime team started. He flashed his light on the victim’s jeans. “Doesn’t look like he has a wallet in his back pocket. Mark, get pictures; then we’ll move the body, see if we can make an ID. And we’ll need to tape off a perimeter before anyone else shows up.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised a Buffalo County deputy hasn’t gotten here yet to check things out. Must all be out of the area on their own department calls.” Mark grabbed the camera from his car and snapped photos from every angle.

“Okay, let’s roll him on his side,” Clint instructed.

Mark set his camera down, and the EMTs assisted him with the roll on the count of three. Clint kept his magnum steadied on the body.

“Jerrell Powers, in the flesh. Or in the spirit, as it were.”

Jerrell Powers. I’d seen the newspaper clipping with pictures of him after his crime against Erin two years before, but this would be my first, last, and only encounter with him in person. Or spirit, as Clint had said.

“He was the topic of many conversations today,” I said.

“Any of them positive ones?” Clint asked.

“Um, no.”

Mark agreed with me by shaking his head.

“Any suspects, Mark?” Clint asked.

“A lot of ’em, I guess. Potential suspects. Real suspects with real motives? Not sure about that.”

“Well, the supervisor at the halfway house phoned before Powers was released to tell us his enemy number one at the house had been released a week ago. He’d be a good one to track down and question. And we’ll gather the evidence and interview everyone who knew him.”

“That’s right. I kinda forgot about that call from the halfway house. What’s that guy’s name again?” Mark asked.

Clint stuck his flashlight in his armpit and pulled a memo pad from his breast pocket. He flipped through the first few pages then stopped. He turned it toward the moon so he could read it. I was struck for the second time since he’d arrived how Clint had miraculously matured into an actual hunk. Maybe it was the uniform. “Benjamin Arnold, age forty-two.”

“Not Benedict?” I asked. My nerves had brought out the smart aleck in me.

Clint lifted his eyebrows in place of an answer, and Mark said, “Very funny, Cami.” I didn’t remind my longtime friend about my name change.

The Buffalo County Major Crimes van pulled into the park about ten minutes later. I didn’t know either deputy who got out of the vehicle. They were both males; one was around thirty-five, the other, late twenties. At age thirty-six, I was starting to think of anyone younger than thirty as a kid. The deputies asked me some questions and then told me I was free to leave. At that moment, I felt like I had nowhere to go. The EMTs got into their rig and drove off. As the city officers and county deputies went about their business—looking for evidence along the pathway, taping off the perimeter, looking at the body—I walked over to a bench ten or twelve feet away and sat down while I tried to comprehend the unbelievable situation I had gotten caught up in.

The air had cooled and I zipped up my hooded jacket to seal in the warmth around my middle then checked the time on my phone: 10:44. Too late to call Erin or Pinky, even though I knew both would be upset with me for not phoning, no matter what the hour. I mentally went through the day’s events, from when we first heard of Jerrell Powers’s release to that minute in the park. I thought of at least four people who would be glad Jerrell Powers was gone. But dead? Gone and dead were two completely different things.

A white unmarked van pulled in and parked behind the line of vehicles. A woman of perhaps forty, looking sleepy and tousled, got out. I often wondered what people on call in various professions might be in the middle of doing when they got called in. She’d apparently been in bed.

The group addressed her as Doctor, and I realized she was the county coroner. She did a brief exam and asked a number of questions. Then the crime lab guys got a gurney from her van, and in minutes Jerrell Powers was strapped on, on his side, and loaded into the vehicle. I heard the doctor say she would transport him to the Buffalo County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. Before she left, she joined me at the bench I was sitting on.

The doctor’s kind demeanor was evident when she reached over and put her hand on my shoulder for a moment. “The officers said you were the one who found the victim, and that you didn’t know him. Is that correct?”

“Correct. I only knew of him.”

“It’s quite a shock, I know.” She moved her hand from my shoulder to her pocket, pulled out a card, and gave it to me. “Go home, drink some warm milk, or a hot brandy toddy with some honey, if you have any. Just one, mind you. And don’t hesitate to give our office a call if you need to talk to someone about this. We have a number of good referrals.”

Oh. She thought I might need psychological help to deal with what happened. And maybe I would. “Okay, thanks.”

After Powers’s body was taken away, the crime lab deputies resumed their work. One of them pointed at me. “Someone should give her a ride home.”

Mark and Clint both looked at me like they’d forgotten I was there. Clint came over. “Let’s get you home,” he said.

I’d had a lot of time to think while I waited. “There’s something I should tell you first.”

“Like what?” His internal antennae seemed to sprout from the top of his head.

I told him about the class we’d had at the shop earlier and shared some of the details of the showdown over Jerrell Powers and how I’d stayed to relax before heading for home. “Then, right before I left, I saw a new snow globe on a shelf by the front door. It was snowing.”

He cleared his throat. “Snowing as if someone had given it a shake?”

“Yes.”

“Who else was in the store with you?”

“Just me.”

“And Casper the Friendly Ghost?”

I shrugged.

His eyebrows came together. “It’s an interesting story, I’ll give you that. And there has to be a logical explanation. My question is, why are you telling me about it now?”

“Because it was the same scene I found here at the park. A man was sleeping on a bench with trees and a streetlamp”—I pointed to each—“there, there, and there. There was even a moon at the top of one of the trees.” I pointed again. “But now the moon has moved to over there.” I pointed for the last time.

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You’re alone in your store and a snow globe that matches this scene, one you’ve never seen before, suddenly appears on your shelf and it is snowing—”

“It was made of the same materials we used in our class tonight, or at least something very like them. I know it sounds crazy—”

“And the doors were locked?”

“Actually, I didn’t know if I’d locked the front door or not, but it was locked when I checked it. Before I left the store.”

He crossed his arms on his chest. “When you’re alone in your store late like that you should always—”

“I know, I know.”

“I don’t remember you being much of a risk taker back in high school, Cami.”

“Camryn. That’s my name now.”

“So you fancied up your name in the big city, our nation’s capital, and you got hooked on risky behavior at the same time.”

“I did no such thing.” My face reddened and I was glad for the partial cloak of night but wished that bright moon wasn’t ready to betray me. My mind traveled back to that awful time. . . . The senator’s office had tried to keep the scandal quiet, but there were leaks. Plenty of them. Everyone with access to the Internet could have read the false version of the story that I had tried to seduce a married man, and my boss’s husband, no less. What Clint classified as risky behavior, I guess I would, too.

He turned toward the concrete path. “We’ll swing by your store first. You won’t be able to sleep tonight anyway.”

Good thing he hadn’t gone into medicine; he’d get a zero in bedside manner. “That’s reassuring.”

Clint pointed to his police car. I stood and realized I was still wearing the backpack. I had forgotten all about it. “Anything dangerous in there?” he asked, nodding at my pack.

“Ah, no. You’re welcome to look, though.”

“Nah. Just don’t try anything funny.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or act contrite. “Yes, sir,” was my middle-of-the-road answer.

I had never been in a police car before and had no idea there were so many buttons and blinking lights. How did officers keep them all straight and manage to drive at high speeds besides? Clint typed a message on the laptop computer mounted on his dashboard:
Clear the scene for now. En route with one to 18 Central Avenue on follow-up.

I wondered why he’d sent a written message instead of giving the information on the radio, but there must be a reason. I knew a lot of people had police scanners they often tuned into, and it was fine with me that they didn’t know the assistant chief of police was on his way to Curio Finds.

We were at the shop in less than two minutes, and I was overcome by a reluctance to go in search of the evil snow globe. “Something wrong?” Clint asked when he opened his car door and I didn’t move.

“Do you have to ask?” I didn’t want him to know I was afraid. Afraid of too many things to name at that moment. Especially since a mysterious snow globe was at the top of the current list. Something that would not begin to frighten a police officer. I grabbed the door handle, used my waning energy to open it, and stepped onto the sidewalk. I slid my backpack off. “My keys are in here.”

He patted his gun and nodded solemnly. Was he actually planning to shoot me if I accidentally pulled something else out instead? Could he really be this much of a jerk all the time, or was he making the extra effort for my benefit?

I fumbled through the inside pocket where I always put the keys. Not there. I searched the other pocket. Not there, either. “I don’t need this right now,” I muttered under my breath.

Clint whipped out his flashlight and turned it on. “Let me put a little light on the subject for you.” One more minute with the man would be a minute too long. “Here.” We both bent over at the same time and ended up cheek to cheek with our eyes peering into the pack. His face was smooth and warm, and if he’d been anyone but Clinton Lonsbury, I would have been tempted to ask for a comforting hug. I felt his jaw move slightly.