I am no kind of gearhead. I don’t know much about cars. Just the basics. But that big V8 was unmistakable.
I grabbed at my pocket. There was the key. The spare key.
My Buick, taken from the restaurant parking lot, was being driven by parties unknown right outside. I slid out from under the blanket, slowly. Controlled. I did not want to wake Mary. And what was I going to do? Run after them barefoot in the snow?
No, fretting uncontrollably would do me no good. Besides, where could they go? Not out of town.
But the real questions were how had they found me? Were the watchers in the woods the ones in my car now? And if so, why had the driver first shown up on foot? And who was his partner?
I imagined Rock and French in a clandestine meeting with the murderer, adding me to the hit list. But that seemed unlikely. I didn’t think they were killers. Just two country boys who never really grew up, stuck in Nowheresville all their lives.
The real killer still had my car key. But how had he tracked me here? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe this was a belated revenge against all of Agnes’s family. He had killed Arlene way back when and then maybe Amy just recently. Now he was coming for Agnes. He might not even know I was still here.
Again I thought back to the tree-line incident. There had definitely been two then, but I was sure no one else had been with the killer when we’d crashed. So someone was helping him. And who had the FBI guy been?
I fetched my flannel shirt and socks from the dryer as quietly as I could. I left the dryer door open because it would have made a sharp sound otherwise. The little light in it burned softly. I took one last look at Mary, and then I padded upstairs and slid my boots on. Looking out the window, I didn’t see headlights. Obviously. This was a nefarious nighttime ride for the car thief. The car stood out plainly, though, against the snow. It looked hulking and sinister in the dark, like a giant wolf stalking prey.
The thief had driven farther down the dirt road and turned around—for a quick getaway, no doubt.
I was lacing up my boots, wishing I knew where Agnes kept her varmint gun. Surely she had one. It’s almost compulsory in Montana. I went to the closet and checked the corners for a shotgun—nothing—and then grabbed the loaned coat.
I heard the car door open. The engine was still running. This was it. He was coming to the house, maybe to break in and shoot Agnes, maybe to torch the whole place. I considered waiting until he tried the door and surprising him, just like he had me, but I decided against that. If he meant to burn the house, I didn’t know where he would start. I couldn’t put out the fire and fight him at once, especially if he had a partner with him, so I settled on immediate action. It is usually the best approach.
I unlocked the door and charged. There was no way for me to engage the deadbolt without a key, so all I could do was close it.
There was the car, at the end of the drive, by the mailbox. The driver was startled when he saw me but recovered quickly, bolting back the way he had come. Clearing the steps in a single bound, I ran for the car, slipped, and kept going, picking each step up high to clear the snow. He was shorter than me, but he had a head start. Expertly, he stepped in his own footprints he had left in his initial approach.
I broke off from his trail to try and cut the distance and head him off before he could get away, slipped again, recovered, and picked up the pace. I was going to catch him. I thought. He slid across the hood and back into the car just as I grabbed the passenger handle. Locked.
He drove. I held on and ran, my feet slipping on the snow and ice. He sped up.
If this had been a movie, I could have punched through the glass and climbed through, but it wasn’t, and I couldn’t. He turned sharply by the church, and I lost my grip. I felt my left elbow crater my own quarter panel as I slipped and fell. I tumbled and rolled and narrowly avoided being run over.
Painful, and expensive for me later on, whenever I got my car back. Again. If I got it back. Of course, that was pretty low on the priority list right then.
I lay in the snow, freezing. It was still snowing. I blinked and blew flakes from my nose and eyelashes. I breathed hoarsely. I stood up slowly; I had gotten scraped and dirty from the fall. So much for having just showered and done laundry.
I considered going back, but I was closer now than ever to solving this, and I didn’t want to give up so soon. I was responsible for the crash, which initially I had felt bad about but not anymore. I had stopped the escape of a dangerous fugitive. But I wondered why he hadn’t finished me off at the crash site. Maybe he had been too spooked or too weak from the
ordeal. Maybe he’d just wanted to get away. I was supremely confident in my ability to handle him face to face. In all my fights, I have never been knocked out—not even knocked down—so it was a blow to my ego that he had managed to render me unconscious.
I brushed the snow off as well as I could. If I had thought it was cold during the day, I didn’t know the word for it now, in the middle of the night. I heard my breath crackling, felt my cheeks freezing. I set off in what I thought was the approximate direction the thief had taken. I jogged a little, a shuffling, loping stride to keep from slipping and to conserve energy. I shadowboxed, too, throwing punch combinations, bobbing, and weaving, all to keep warm. The trick is to not be too active in the cold. If you move too fast and too hard, you’ll sweat. And when you eventually stop, all that sweat will freeze, and you’ll be worse off than if you had never moved at all.
All the houses I passed were dark. I might have gone back to Agnes’s and called the police, but this was my mission, and the police were questionable at best. Stubborn and foolish as it may seem, I figured I knew what I was doing. I had survived this long, right?
My breath steamed in front of me, and each intake burned the back of my throat. If I had to stay out all night, I would probably die; it was that cold. The snow kept falling, like silent, incessant airstrikes.
I saw no sign of my quarry. I began to get closer to the heart of town and kept going, looking for the freshest ruts in the snow. I was panting doggedly.
The roads were familiar but didn’t look quite the same as before. Maybe because I was on foot this time.
I continued on until I got back to where I had started yesterday: the police station, center of town, like a spider’s web. It was lit up bright. There was some kind of operation going on. A van was parked outside, and I saw two people going back and forth from the building, carrying large items.
I looked again to be sure I was seeing the right place, but I had no idea what I was looking at. Standing still wasn’t doing me any good. My teeth were chattering like a jackhammer. So I continued forward with an almost-audible groan from my frozen joints, like the creaking of a wooden ship lost in the North Pole.
Obviously the operation couldn’t be any sort of criminal activity. The people carrying the stuff were right out there in the open, plain as day, except, of course, that it was the middle of the night.
Drawing nearer, I could make out writing on the side of the van. Cobalt Cleaning.
The two people looked to be a married Hispanic couple. They were middle-aged and looked cheerful enough about the work.
“Good evening,” I said in Spanish. Chivalrous is an easy thing to be when all you have to do is carry stuff, so I offered to help. With a little bit of surprise, the woman consented. I hefted a big vacuum-looking thing. It wasn’t heavy for me but probably would have been for her. I was worried I would drop it, though, on account of my feelingless fingers. But I made it inside okay. It was warm, even though the fire was long-extinguished. The station probably had a central heating unit and the fire was mostly for show.
The husband grabbed the last boxes of cleaning supplies—shampoo, maybe. I don’t know much about building maintenance. I do know I sure missed American edifice floor covering while I was a missionary. Every floor I saw in Peru was either tile, cement, or dirt.
“Thank you,” the man said as I set down the thing. He seemed just as eager to practice his second language as I was to prac-
tice mine.
I nodded and smiled. They set about cleaning, paying me no more mind. I was where I probably shouldn’t have been, but they didn’t know that, which was fine with me. I needed to thaw anyway. I was close to the coldest I had ever been.
I went through the door Strawn had first emerged from when we had met and found myself back among the police desks, not really knowing what I expected to find. Counting Lang’s station out front, there were only three occupied workspaces. French’s was pretty obvious, with candy wrappers and an unwashed mug. Rock’s screen saver was a picture of Mary and him. I bumped the mouse with my knuckle to make it go away, and a blue screen appeared in its place, asking me for a password. I tried typing Mary.
Password incorrect.
It was worth a shot.
I was not worried about fingerprints at that point. If my prior offenses weren’t enough to land me in jail, then a little computer hacking was not likely to be enough to tip the scales against me.
There was an unopened bottle of mineral water that I helped myself to. Breaking the seal, I drank the whole thing at once and replaced it, empty, onto his desk. When it is cold outside, you don’t realize how thirsty you can get.
On top of a pencil sharpener was an unframed photograph of Mary, a studio shot, professional, not just from a disposable camera. I turned it over to see if there was anything written. It said, Love, Mary, in blue ink. She had very nice penmanship. Penwomanship?
Pocketing the picture, I looked around for any unclaimed edibles.
I was hungry as well as thirsty.
I went back to French’s desk. Nothing to eat there that was untouched. There was no personalized screen saver. I tried typing password for the password. It was worth a shot.
Password incorrect.
I typed French. Nothing doing.
Some people are pros at deciphering passwords and cracking codes. I am not one of them. You ask me to kick down a door or beat some thug up, no problem, but for anything technical I’d be the last pick.
Strawn’s office was locked, which was to be expected. Maybe the cleaning crew had a key, but I did not want to ask. I was pushing my luck as it was.
If this had been back before the digital age, I might have been able to open up some old files, cold cases, maybe some clue about Amy, if she had any kind of record.
But computers have advantages, too, because they can access a lot more information than what you can fit into a filing cabinet. I needed some deep background. I needed to know if this was in any way connected to Amy and her mom, needed to know more about the circumstances surrounding Arlene’s demise, awful as it surely was, if I was going to be able to prevent further death and destruction.
But I didn’t have a password.
French had told Strawn earlier that Doc was on the phone. Strawn had said the doctor pulled double-duty as medical examiner for the police department. The doctor, not a doctor. There was just one in town, maybe an old guy who still made house calls but without the leeches. I figured he would be a good first point of contact.
I looked around for a phone book, the most unused book ever produced. They show up all the time in people’s mailboxes only to collect dust in a cupboard or drawer or on top of the fridge. This is the digital age—no need for print. I found a phone book on a shelf next to Grey’s Anatomy and Webster’s Dictionary—maybe they were for the cops to look up words for their report writing—but neither of the volumes looked to have ever been opened. Their spines were seamless.
I flipped through the phone book, looking for anything doctor-related, and found a couple of listings. One was a DDS, a doctor of dental surgery. His name was Pocock. He wasn’t the guy I was looking for. My teeth were fine. I brushed three times a day, usually. The second was an E. Pike, MD, for Medicinae Doctor. I was a little dismayed to see no mental health specialists. What about all the people suffering from seasonal affective disorder?
I tore the page out of the book. I didn’t think it would be missed.
Returning to French’s desk, I began looking for something useful. I didn’t want to disturb too much. Rock might miss his picture, but he would figure it had slipped between a crevice or something. Probably.
I sat down in French’s well-worn desk chair, picking my feet up and giving it a little spin before pulling up like I was ready to work. There was a long thin drawer running the length of the desk right above my legs and three bigger drawers on the right-hand side.
I opened the long one. There were a pad and pen and some sticky notes, gum wrappers, and salt packets. Next I tried the top of the three bigger drawers. There was a stack of old business cards with the Cluff PD logo and the number for Officer Carter French, and there were packaged treats and bags of chips. More office supplies in the next drawer. The bottom drawer was the biggest. We often expect the biggest and the last to be the best. But it wasn’t. There were a box of tissues, envelopes, a six-pack of soda pop, and little plastic baggies, maybe for the most miniscule pieces of evidence, like strands of hair or something.
I kept digging. Most people not technology-inclined have a bit more trouble with it, and French did not strike me as a particularly gifted individual. And government computer systems often require frequent password updates. Maybe French had to write his down. But he wasn’t careless enough to leave it lying around.
That is when I got creative—creativity is next to godliness, after all—or rather, I reverted to my youth, where the best creativity comes from. Maybe it is the childlike innocence that makes it so.
I rifled through Rock’s stuff until I found a pencil and ran it through the electric sharpener Mary’s photo had rested on. It buzzed loudly and made me jump a little. Then I took the pencil and pulled the sticky notepad from French’s drawer. Like a kid, I rubbed the pencil lightly at a shallow angle all along the top of the pad. When you write on a stack of papers, the pressure from the pen will often indent the underlying page or pages. And if you rub a crayon or a pencil across the indents, like kids do with coins, the shapes will show up.
It worked, which surprised me a little. I felt just like James Bond, except I didn’t need a Q. And I lacked the suaveness and the women and the fancy gadgets and the gun. But besides that, I felt pretty cool.
I typed in @mYs4098.
It loaded. I was in.
@mY.
Amy.
Interesting.
The numbers and the symbol suggested French had tweaked and changed a similar password slightly each update cycle. I wondered what interest he had in Amy, if it was the same Amy, or if the password even stood for Amy. But I don’t like coincidences.
I tore off the page with the password and put it in my pocket. Leave no trace.
The screen faded then came back, this time blue with various windows. I didn’t really know what I had accomplished. I did not know how to run any of the programs besides the word processor. There was an Internet browser, though, so I double-clicked with the mouse and a new window popped up.
I searched for Arlene Kirk. A number of different things popped up. There was a movie star with the same name, and a musician. The browser even made suggestions like Did you mean James Tiberius Kirk? as if I didn’t know what I wanted.
Maybe most people on the Internet need the extra help. I wouldn’t know. I try to avoid computer use as much as possible, hence my incompetence. If I had known how to open the police files on the computer, it would have been easier. So I narrowed the search by adding Seattle and murder to the search bar.
A number of different links showed up. I clicked the top, which sounded the most relevant. It was old news—very old, from before Google had been created—so I didn’t expect a lot. It probably hadn’t merited national attention, which was too bad because maybe with more publicity it could have been solved.
I guess there are just too many murders to keep up with. Many wind up unsolved.
The link looked to be a digitized copy of a sidebar written in the Seattle Times back in the day. There used to be a time when a newspaper was the lifeblood of any city. Now hardly anyone subscribes to it. They get real-time updates on their phones and tablets instead. All newspaper is good for anymore is wrapping fish, lining kennels, or kindling fires.
The article was short and pragmatic. It said Arlene Kirk had been found on the side of the road in a ditch by a passing trucker. She had been incoherent and bloodied and very pregnant. An ambulance had brought her to the hospital, where the baby was saved but Arlene was not. There had been no clues, no suspects. Police determined she had been attacked somewhere else and driven away from the scene and dumped into the ditch. The article did not reference family members, lifetime achievements, or anything else about Arlene as a person.
There was reference to the potential but unsubstantiated kidnapping from Montana, and the FBI was listed as having no leads.
They had used dogs to sniff out the area. I like dogs a lot. If I ever have a house of my own, I figure I’ll have two or three.
I read in a science magazine in a waiting room somewhere that studies show dogs to have developed compassion from centuries of interaction with humans. I believe it is the other way around.
But the police dogs had found nothing. No scent, no sign, no trail. County sheriffs and the state patrol had quickly and quietly filed the event away with the countless other cold cases. The Green River killer was active at that time and mentioned. No solid suspects were listed, though the article hinted at a number of drifters of “dubious character” in the area, which seemed accurate for the greater Seattle area.
The article did not include any photographs or any detail beyond that. I still had so many questions. Where was Amy? Was her disappearance a coincidence? What had the FBI guy been doing with the killer, and why had the agent not advised the Cluff Police of his presence if he had been there in any sort of official capacity? Federal and local law enforcement tended to work in tandem.
The door that led to the lobby opened, and I looked up from a police officer’s computer screen, surprised.
It was just the Cobalt crew, the husband and wife, coming to clean the bullpen. I smiled and waved casually, like I was supposed to be there. They went about their work. I was done with mine.