Shadow Ridge

by M. E. Browning

  Which meant Quinn had to start thinking like a cat, not a cop. Ms. Snugglebunny hadn’t been the least bit stressed. She’d just waited until the time was right and attacked.

  Quinn inventoried the contents of the bag. Toothbrush, toothpaste, extra underwear, a change of clothes, her wallet, every bit of extra cash she could put her hands on, car keys, and an unopened package of Oreos. All life’s necessities in one bug-out bag.

  Someone knocked softly on the door. The pizza delivery guy must not have stopped for his normal toke this time. She sidestepped the dinette chair shoved under the doorknob and peered through the peephole.

  Alice Walsenberg. And she wasn’t holding pizza. The woman already had two strikes against her, and she hadn’t even spoken.

  “What are you doing here?” Quinn asked through the door.

  “You worked the fund raiser,” she said. “I owe you a paycheck.”

  The promise of money was like hitting a foul ball. It gave Alice another chance before striking out. “Hold up the payment,” Quinn said.

  “What?” The light by the apartment door turned Alice a sickly yellow, and she shivered in the cold.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Quinn asked.

  “Why on earth would I lie about paying you for a job I told you I’d pay you for?”

  It was a good question. But it had to be asked. One, Quinn needed to satisfy herself that Alice was legit, and two, there was a tiny bit of satisfaction in making the woman as uncomfortable in the cold as her dumbass husband had made Quinn feel inside the resort.

  “Show me the check and we’re good.”

  “Jiminy Christmas, just a moment.” Alice dug around in her purse and held up a check made out to Quinn Kirkwood in the amount of two hundred and thirty dollars. “We agreed on twenty dollars an hour, you worked nine hours, and I added fifty dollars as a thank-you for giving it a chance. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  Quinn wouldn’t be able to cash it until tomorrow, but it was more money than she currently had in her bug-out bag.

  Starting at the top of the door, she unhooked the security chain, unlocked the dead bolt, unlatched the door, and dragged the chair out of the way. She turned the knob.

  The door exploded inward. Quinn’s arm crumpled, and her head took the force of the blow. She stumbled backward. Landed on her ass. Tried to blink away the darkness.

  “Oh dear. I forgot how much head wounds bleed.” Alice’s voice echoed, the words slightly out of sync.

  Quinn shook her head. Almost puked. The barrel of a gun came into focus first, then a hand, and finally Alice towering above her.

  Alice?

  The room spun. The heel of Quinn’s foot skidded through a slick of blood as she pressed her back against the wall, struggled to think. Come up with a plan.

  Before Alice pounced.

  49

  “I don’t like it,” Squint said to Jo. “Not one bit.”

  The front door opened, and light from the Christmas tree winked in the foyer. Jo stepped aside while Sergeant Finch walked Zachary Walsenberg to his patrol car.

  “Quinn still isn’t answering her phone. I’m going to run by her apartment to make sure she’s okay.”

  “At least wait until you can take one of the patrol guys with you.”

  “That could be hours and you know it,” she said.

  “Then I’ll run up the hill with you before I go to the station.”

  “Stop.” She put her hand on his arm. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. If I see Alice’s car in the lot, I’ll call out the cavalry. But our guys are busy, and I’d rather have the deputies out looking for Alice instead of tagging along with me. In the meantime, go sweet-talk the DA. You and I both know there’s no way he’s going to speak to me. So work your magic before he changes his mind about the interview.”

  “I still—”

  “Go.” She moved behind him and pushed. “And take the bag with you. I’ve read enough to know it’s Alice we’re looking for. As soon as I’m done yelling at Quinn for not answering her phone, I’ll meet you back at the station.”

  The door opened again, and Olivia stood in the swath of holiday light. She’d tucked her hair behind her ears and appeared far more composed than when she’d been sitting on the steps. “Would you guys like some coffee or something?”

  The Ambrose poise.

  “No thank you,” Jo answered. “We need to take care of some things. Officer Dickinson is going to hang out here for a bit. Make sure you’re okay until your dad comes back.”

  “Aren’t I a bit old to need a babysitter?”

  “It’s not you I was worried about. I was hoping you could keep an eye on Dickinson for me.”

  Olivia’s eyes shone when she rolled them, but she smiled. “Sure.”

  “I’ll check in on you tomorrow, if that’s okay?” Jo asked.

  “I’ll make coffee.” She closed the door.

  Jo handed Squint the bag and descended the steps. “Be back in a flash.”

  * * *

  The first signs of the impending storm had arrived with the freshening wind and intermittent snowflakes, and Jo turned her collar up against the cold. The wind had worn down the drifts around Quinn’s apartment complex and was sowing the snow across the lot, filling in her tracks as quickly as she moved.

  She found Quinn’s car parked in the shadow of a dumpster. With the exception of a dark Dodge muscle car, the tiny parking lot was empty. Still, Jo didn’t want to assume anything. After all, her own car wasn’t in the lot either, but here she was skulking around in her raid jacket.

  On the first floor, music with far too much bass thumped from the apartment below Quinn’s. The rest of the complex was eerily quiet.

  Stepping away from the building opened up her view to the second floor. An anemic exterior light cast a yellowed glow across Quinn’s front door. The area behind the window was dark. Jo rounded the corner to the back of the complex and climbed the snowy hill. Light fought its way through the drawn drapes of Quinn’s bedroom, but no shadows moved to indicate that anyone was inside.

  Completing the loop around the building, Jo paused at the bottom of the stairs. The landing had been blown clean. But in the lee of the staircase, she found footprints overlaid with blood spots. Two distinctive treads. She trained her flashlight on the red blotches. The cold, wet surface kept the blood from darkening, and the hue struck her as too bright. Too festive.

  She swept the beam upward. More spots speckled the stairs. She drew her gun and stayed to the edge of the treads. At the top of the stairs, she assessed the scene. A sugar-fine layer of undisturbed snow had blown from the railing onto the walkway in front of Quinn’s apartment. The door was cracked open. More blood—too much blood—painted the threshold.

  Tucking her flashlight under her arm, she keyed the mic and requested a cover unit. The dispatcher’s response came through her earpiece.

  “Unit to clear to assist David-three on suspicious circs, welfare check at College View Apartments.”

  The dispatcher paused. When no one answered, the dispatcher repeated the request. More silence.

  Jo had to go now. Even if it wasn’t Quinn who was hurt, someone needed medical attention.

  “Echo, David-three, I’m making entry.”

  The bass line of the music below her reverberated through her body, but there was no noise coming from Quinn’s apartment. That silence was ominous.

  She rapped her flashlight against the door and announced herself. The force of the knock pushed the door open farther and she toed it the rest of the way, her gun and flashlight eye level, sweeping the front room. Light from the bedroom spilled into the living room and shimmered on a dark puddle. Jo entered and swept the dinette. Without slowing her movements, she quickly cleared the remaining two rooms. Nobody. More importantly, no body.

  She holstered her gun and took a deep breath. Quinn wasn’t lying in the apartment dead, but that didn’t mean she was safe. Not by a long shot.r />
  “Echo, David-three. I’m code four. The apartment is empty.”

  She returned to the living room and tried to reconstruct what had happened. The puddle inside the door told part of the story, but it was the smear of blood on the edge of the door at Quinn’s head height that told the most important part of the tale.

  The go-bag Jo had insisted Quinn pack was still on the dinette table, along with her messenger bag and cell phone. Wherever Quinn had gone, she hadn’t gone voluntarily.

  The apartment was a crime scene, but processing it could wait. She had to find Quinn. Fast.

  Barreling down the stairs, she pounded on the apartment with the music. A lanky male opened the door, holding a bong. He saw her badge and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “It’s legal. I bought it at the dispensary.”

  “Do you know Quinn Kirkwood?”

  “The chick upstairs. If you’re looking for her, she went to the hospital about twenty minutes ago.”

  Relief flooded through Jo, and some of the tension that accompanied a solo search dissipated. Quinn might be hurt, but at least she was in a safe place. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Her mom said she fell. I don’t know. She was pretty out of it.”

  The relief dissolved. “Thin woman, gray hair?” Jo asked.

  “I guess. I was too busy looking at the cut on Quinn’s head. I’m betting at least a dozen stitches. Nasty.” He shuddered. “Hey, do you like Mountain Dew?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I ordered a monster cup of it for Quinn to go with tonight’s pizza. It’s going flat. You want it?”

  “No. Did you see the woman’s car?”

  “Oh, yeah. I helped load Quinn up. She must have been hurt pretty bad. She actually remembered my name.”

  “What was it?”

  “Stan.”

  Jesus. How much had he smoked? “The car,” she said. “What kind of car was it?”

  “Oh. A sweet silver Audi SUV.”

  Alice.

  50

  The blue and red strobes of Jo’s detective car pulsed against the falling snow, each flake dragging the color to the pavement to be run over. Jo pressed the speed dial for Squint on her way down the hill and put the call on speaker.

  “I need your help.” She gave him the rundown regarding what she’d found at Quinn’s apartment and her conversation with Stan. “Can you call the hospital? It’s a long shot, but I need to confirm Alice didn’t have a change of heart and take Quinn to the ER.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “En route Tye’s place to check for Alice’s SUV,” she said. “Ask the DA if any of their other rental properties are vacant. We’ll have to check them all, but might as well start with the most likely places to hide. As soon as you’ve got the info, we can rally. I’ll call dispatch and ask them to send deputies to the Walsenbergs’ ranch, plus have them alert Dickinson that if Alice comes home, she might be bringing company. What am I missing?”

  “I’ll brief Sergeant Finch. Ask him to call in the graveyard guys early. We’re going to need more people.”

  “Thanks. I’m on the air. Raise me when you’ve got info.”

  “Be careful,” Squint said.

  “Always.”

  A twenty-minute head start meant Alice could be anywhere. The clock on Jo’s dashboard read 7:42, but on a Sunday, the sidewalks had rolled up hours ago and the streets were deserted. Three blocks from Tye’s place, she shut down her lights. A block away, she turned off the headlights and coasted into a red zone and parked.

  The car door closed with the slightest snick, and Jo walked the full block in search of the SUV. Nothing.

  By the time she retraced her steps to the front of the rental house, the falling snow had erased her trail. The house was dark, and the front drapes were drawn. From prior visits, she knew the side yard stretched the full length of the property from street to alley. A wrought-iron gate yielded to her touch, and she crept down the path. In springtime, the landscape would be lush, but in winter the skeletal boughs and branches clawed at her jacket and snatched at her hair.

  Ahead, a weak light filtered through the rear window of the converted garage, casting ghostly shadows of dead rosebushes against the snow.

  Although the yard continued past the converted garage, the path made a ninety-degree turn between the two buildings and ended at the top of the driveway by the rear porch.

  The lack of voices concerned her. Alice might not be in a talkative mood, but if Quinn were conscious, Jo was pretty sure she’d have something to say.

  She remained on the path, the main house to her left and the solid wall of Tye’s place on her right—so close she could touch it. Step by step, the driveway came into view. The hair on the back of her neck lifted, and she dropped her hand to her holster. Careful to stay behind the plane of the garage, she edged closer to the house to widen her view of the driveway.

  Empty.

  She retraced her steps. It was possible the light inside Tye’s home had been left on, forgotten after his property was packed or removed. It was also possible, although less probable without Alice’s car present, that someone was inside. Jo circled around to the back of the garage. Off the path, the snow was deeper, and she slowed her pace to maintain her stealth through the knee-high drifts. At the window, she tried to peer inside, but curtains blocked her view. Still no sound to indicate anyone else was present. Continuing to the alley, she checked for the Audi. No cars. No trucks. Not even an abandoned bicycle in the deepening snow.

  She kicked the snow berm that had formed in the gutter. Where the hell had Alice gone?

  Around the front, a sliver of light escaped Tye’s door. Jo crept up the driveway and listened at the threshold. A faint scratching noise competed with the wind. She didn’t have a warrant, but she wasn’t looking for evidence; she was searching for Quinn. She drew her gun. With her other hand she turned the knob and burst into the unlocked garage.

  The room was empty save for the gaming chair; even the dorm fridge was gone. Outside, the wind blew the dead rosebush branches across the window.

  “Shit.”

  Out of habit, Jo double-checked the bathroom to make sure it was empty. She caught her reflection. Two days ago she’d stared at Quinn’s face in this mirror and learned the puzzle piece that had broken the case wide open. Now that same woman was injured, in need of medical attention, and had last been seen getting into the car of a person who had murdered two other people. Jo’s reflection rebuked her.

  “Echo, David-three. I’m code four. No sign of suspect or her vehicle.”

  If Jo had to guess, moving Quinn hadn’t been part of Alice’s impromptu plan and Stan’s pizza date had necessitated the change of venue. For a woman already unhinged, new obstacles would only ratchet up her desperation. Alice was a smart woman, but her world was imploding.

  When trying to hide, most people sought a familiar place. Jo had bet that Alice would return here. For the past several months Tye’s place had been intimately tied to her plans.

  But Jo had been wrong. Now it was time to be more methodical.

  As soon as Stan provided the information, Jo had broadcasted an alert confirming Alice’s car. Dispatch had already sent teletypes to the neighboring agencies that an arrest warrant would be pending. Now she needed to rendezvous with Squint at the station. Together they’d notify the chief, set up a command post, call in reinforcements, and orchestrate the hunt.

  There was no doubt Alice Walsenberg would be apprehended. But Jo needed to make sure it happened before any further harm befell Quinn. She owed her that.

  In the center of the room, Jo spun one last time, hoping something in the space would indicate where to look next. Nothing.

  She rested her hand on the doorknob. Outside an approaching car neared, its tires chewed through the slushed snow in the alley. She waited to leave until it passed. Instead, the vehicle slowed, and tires bumped across the gutter with a double splash as it pulled into the driveway.


  There was no way to verify whether the car was Alice’s Audi without opening the door. If Jo charged outside and it was Alice, all the woman would have to do was throw the car in reverse. By the time Jo ran to her own car, Alice would be gone. Any chance of saving Quinn would disappear with her.

  Think.

  The empty room didn’t provide cover or concealment, and holing up in the bathroom would limit her maneuverability and trap her. The only other place to hide was behind the door. She could use it as a weapon and hit Alice as she walked into the room. Exploit the element of surprise. Take her down at gunpoint. Prepare for a close-quarters fight.

  There was only one problem. Quinn.

  Factor in a hostage, and all Jo’s options sucked.

  51

  Using a voice barely above a whisper, Jo called for another unit. The guys would make her pay for it later if she was wrong, but pinned down in a converted garage and unable to see who was coming? Worth the risk.

  A second later, Squint put himself en route to her location. His voice had never sounded so reassuring.

  Outside, a car door opened.

  Gun drawn, Jo plastered herself against the wall and tried to think small. Her heart threatened to jump out of her chest, and she was certain whoever was on the other side of the building could hear her.

  Footsteps stomped unevenly through the snow. Closer. A voice. She strained to hear the words, but the wind snatched them away.

  She drew a breath and held it for a four count. The plan: Save Quinn. She exhaled slowly. Arrest Alice. Simple.

  The voice stopped. Had someone noticed her footprints?

  She drew another breath. Readjusted her grip on the Glock.