Gwen Meyers slid behind the two police cruisers, parking her Crown Vic just an inch from the back bumper of one of the black-and-whites. Damn, the road was slippery. She had thought, no, had honestly hoped and prayed, that the snow was over for the season after the welcome February thaw. The snowbanks had just melted down to a manageable level when northern Wisconsin got hit hard again with another six inches. Today’s snowstorm was mixed with freezing ice and hail. She left her car running with the window defroster on full blast so she wouldn’t have to chisel ice off her windshield later. She zipped up her parka and stuffed her hands into her gloves as she slid out of the car into the frigid air.
“Morning, Detective.” Officer Jenny O’Neil walked toward her with a grim expression plastered on her face. “It’s a bad one.”
“What have you got so far?” Gwen asked, watching three cops traipsing down the steep incline while red and blue lights bounced off the white landscape like a kaleidoscope. She could smell the distinctive scent of death from up here, even with the stiff northerly wind gusting angrily.
“Looks like she lost control around the bend. Car must have bounced a couple times down the ravine before ending up overturned in old man Kaplan’s cow pasture. He’s the one who called it in.”
“Hey, it’s Kathy Wright!” Scott Richards called up.
Gwen all but reeled from shock.
“Shit!” Gwen managed to exclaim. “The captain’s daughter! Don’t publicize the identity over the police band. When he finds out his only daughter is dead, he’ll be right here on the scene. Let’s get the crime techs down here first. Jenny, call it in on your cell instead of the police band. I’m going down.”
Gwen maintained her tough demeanor, trying desperately not to show how upset she was. She turned away and stomped off, angrily swiping away a tear with her gloved hand, and tried to convince herself the bite of cold wind against her exposed flesh was what was making her eyes teary enough to blur her vision.
Walking carefully so she didn’t lose her footing, Gwen followed the larger footsteps of the men, trying to step into the deep impressions already made in the snow. About twenty-five feet down the hill she lowered herself next to Scott. The tall sergeant was kneeling over the body that had been ejected from the car. With the hood of his parka pulled tight around his face, he looked like an Eskimo who had just pulled out a whopper fish and thrown it from his ice fishing shanty onto the white tundra.
Scott was a veteran detective, having come up the ranks patrolling the streets, and then spent three grueling years in Vice, mainly busting drug dealers. He was the most gentlemanly, unprejudiced man Gwen had ever met, since most men of his experience were hardened by their constant contact with the unsavory elements of society. Nearly six-two in height, he was thin as a rail and wore his blond hair long, sometimes tying it at the nape of his neck in a ponytail. His kindly smile and friendly outlook belied his tough interior, his being able to get many suspects he interrogated to pour out their life stories. Gwen always thought it was his deep blue, penetrating eyes which made people anxious to confess to him. The thirty-two-year-old had a dry sense of humor and unrelenting determination. All of which she needed now.
Kathy was bloated, her face an ugly purple and green, and she was frozen onto the icy snow.
“She didn’t die here,” Scott said grimly.
Gwen nodded. Kathy had been dead awhile, possibly as much as three or four days despite the frozen surroundings. Rigor mortis, the chemical changes in the muscles to make them stiffen, was long gone. But why stage an accident and dump the body, knowing the medical examiner would be able to pinpoint the time of death at a much earlier time?
“Hey, there are footprints over here,” one of the other officers shouted. “They’re moving up the hill away from the scene.”
“Throw a shield down to keep them from filling up with snow. Jenny’s calling the crime scene unit now,” Gwen yelled back.
Kathy Wright was wearing jeans, black, calf-high leather boots, and a tan cable sweater. No coat, hat or gloves. Had she not died from the car accident, she would have surely frozen to death; it wouldn’t take long to succumb to exposure in these frigid elements. Gwen stared at the right sleeve of Kathy’s sweater, remembering a track of needle marks approximately an inch long in the crook of her arm. She wondered if it was still there. She’d heard Kathy was off drugs after six months in rehab, but couldn’t recall if anyone had reported whether she had stayed clean for long. Another tear threatened to fall from Gwen’s eyes as she remembered Kathy’s painful struggles with addiction.
Gwen knew Kathy and her tragic history well. They’d been friends in high school. Gosh, was that only seven years ago? The spoiled, only child of an educated couple could have had it all. She was tall, five-eleven in her stocking feet, with flowing long blond hair, and a build men turned to stare at whenever she walked down the avenue. She was smart, talented and athletic. Her mom had been a college professor at the local extension and Kathy had a full scholarship to go there as well. The family started falling apart after Kathy’s mom had died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Stanley Wright never could quite accept his wife’s death, and had buried himself in his work. He had climbed the ladder quickly in Scarletsville’s police department. That left Kathy unattended at seventeen young years of age to experiment with life’s most dangerous vices. And experiment she did, whether it was skiing down the steepest slopes, beating the boys on the drag strip in her souped-up Chevy, or drinking everyone else under the table at the local beer halls. She eventually turned to drugs for a faster high.
Kathy had moved out to the capital city, Madison, to attend college after graduation from high school. Gwen was already in the police academy when she had gotten a call from Kathy. She seemed to be happy and enjoying life again, and had invited Gwen to come down for Halloween weekend. It was a fascinating three days, touring the city, window-shopping down State Street, and visiting quaint little pubs that catered to the college crowd. Halloween night had been a blast, with everyone dressed in amazing costumes and parading down the streets. Gwen could describe it only as a block party for five or six thousand of the young, hell-raising residents. She and Kathy had dressed up as jail escapees, with broad black stripes painted across old white medical scrubs, with their legs tied together with a black plastic ball and chain.
Her eyes tearing again, Gwen pushed the memory out of her mind. She would find out what had happened to her former friend and bring to justice whoever was responsible for her death.