Ice Maiden

by Dale Mayer

  “She was thrown off a cliff?”

  He nodded. “A whole group of them were up on a mountain, doing a big helicopter ski trip,” he said, “and somehow, according to reports from the scene, they said she was basically thrown off.”

  “So it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Well, according to everybody who was there, she was thrown. But nobody saw anything or did anything about it, so it became this big mess. The coroner said that she died from blunt force trauma as she landed. And a lot of possible witnesses were around, like fifty or sixty of them, and yet nobody saw anything.”

  Damon stopped and stared. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously.”

  “Wow. Surely somebody saw something.”

  “Well, it was before cell phones took over the world,” he said. “A few people were taking pictures with the cameras of that day, but they were all around the mountain. Nobody was keeping track of Jerry’s wife. She was a little bit off to the side, and another major group was there around her, but still nobody saw anything.”

  “Where was the husband?”

  “Jerry was getting coffee,” he said, “so he was definitely cleared. When he came back out, she was gone. She was found at the bottom of the cliff.”

  “But how do we know she was thrown?”

  “Because she screamed all the way down,” he said.

  “And again, how do we know that she was thrown and that it wasn’t just an accident.”

  “Nobody else was close to her,” he said, “at least as far as we could tell. We had all kinds of suspects to look at, but we couldn’t put anything together.”

  Damon stopped and stared. “Hang on. Let me just get this clear. A woman dies after falling from a height, lots of people around, nobody saw anything, and yet you guys determined that she was pushed?”

  “Well, somebody else was at the top of the mountain that day, who said that she had been pushed too, but her husband managed to grab on and save her. She was pretty hung up about it, when she saw this other woman go over the edge. She said it looked like she was pushed.”

  “So, you had one witness who was already traumatized because of what she went through, and she said this other woman was pushed.”

  “As I said,” he said, “the whole thing was crazy. Everybody says it was murder. Officially it was left as ‘unknown cause of death,’ which was pretty unsatisfying for all concerned.”

  “Wow. How often does something like that happen around here?”

  “Not often at all, believe me. It was a mess, and people were pretty damn upset about it.”

  “Well, I can see why,” he said, “but that’s pretty bizarre.”

  “What can I say? It was like thirty years ago or something.”

  “Were you one of the ones who looked into the potential of Jerry being a part of it?”

  “Well, we all had to look at him, but everybody said that he was in the restaurant at the time, so he was cleared.”

  “Unless he had somebody else push her.”

  “And we looked at that,” he said. “Believe me. We did know how to do our jobs, even back then. But, in the end, we had nothing to move forward with. No proof of anything.”

  “Was she suicidal at all?”

  “Not as far as any of us could tell. According to everything that we found, her marriage was happy, and her husband was good to her.”

  The captain gave him a one-arm shrug. “It’s been decades. Not sure even Jerry remembers accurately.”

  Damon frowned. “Did his wife work?”

  “Yes. She worked in the bookstore, and she was into occult studies or some weird thing.”

  At that, Damon felt ripples going up and down his back. “Occult studies?”

  “Yeah, and that didn’t help at all. Everybody was bringing up all kinds of woo-woo stuff. Believe me,” he said. “It’s all garbage.”

  “Have you ever met Stefan Kronos?”

  He snorted. “Do you know how many cops have asked me about that guy? I’ve never met him, never worked with him, don’t want to,” he said. “The world is black-and-white. There isn’t room for all that weird stuff he keeps bringing up.”

  “You don’t think he’s ever helped any cops?”

  “I think they would have gotten to the same point on their own in time.”

  “Interesting. I know a lot of cops believe in him,” Damon said.

  “I didn’t think you believed in any of this stuff.”

  “I’m not sure I do,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll dismiss it out of hand.”

  “Well, you better, if you work for me,” he said.

  “Were you up on the mountain that day Jerry’s wife went over?”

  “I was. I was on ski patrol. A lot of us did ski patrol back then,” he said, with a shake of his head. “A whole pile of us was around at the time.”

  “And you didn’t see what happened?”

  “I saw her go ass over teakettle over the edge. But I saw no sign that she had done anything but literally get picked up and chucked off the mountain. Her footsteps were back about four feet from the edge. No snow crumbled over the edge with her. It was just really weird.”

  Weird didn’t even begin to fit what Damon was starting to think. “Interesting,” he muttered. He wasn’t sure what to say or how to get more information from his captain.

  “Nothing interesting about it.”

  “Sounds like maybe she took a run and a jump.”

  “That was definitely a theory at the time too,” he said, “but the evidence on the ground didn’t support it.” Again he shrugged. “So, in the end, it’s one of those things that you just walk away from.”

  “Those kinds of cases drive me batty,” Damon said with feeling.

  Captain Meyer laughed. “Yep. But, after the amount of time we’ve had to deal with it,” he said, “there’s really nothing more you can do but let it go.”

  “Has it ever happened again? Anything else weird like that around here?”

  “Well, we had another husband who supposedly knocked his wife off the mountain. He protested and said he never did it, but we’ve got others who said he did. So, we went with the eyewitnesses, and he was charged with manslaughter.”

  “Wow,” Damon said. “When was this? What’s his status now?”

  “He was supposedly writing a book about the case at one point,” he said thoughtfully, “but I never did figure out what happened to him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I heard the rumors about him writing this book, but then I never heard any more about it.”

  “Is he even alive?”

  “Why wouldn’t he be?” his captain asked, looking at him.

  He realized just how clueless Captain Meyer was when it came to this kind of stuff or just how closed-minded he was about these stranger cases. “Just a bad joke,” Damon said. “Seems like a lot of people are dying around here.”

  “Our death rate’s actually fairly low,” he said breezily. “And we want to keep it that way. I don’t like unsolved cases.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “None,” he said, which stopped Damon in his tracks.

  He looked up at him and said, “How is that possible? You just said that Jerry’s wife was murdered, but it wasn’t solved.”

  “Sure, but we put down Indeterminate on the books because there was no way to solve it.”

  “Couldn’t you have just said it was accidental?”

  “Maybe, but it didn’t feel right. I felt like somebody was behind it.”

  “So it’s an unsolved case then.”

  “Nope, we changed the paperwork to Indeterminate. Case closed.” And, with that, he turned and walked out.

  Damon looked around at the other detectives nearby. One, another young guy, looked at him and shrugged. “Did he just say that?” Damon asked with a frown.

  “Yeah, I think he did.”

  “I remember the case he’s talking about,” Dave said fr
om farther back in a room. He was another grizzled old-timer. “It wasn’t so much that it was a murder but just that nobody understood what happened. Some people thought she took a running jump and went over the edge, but the marks on the ground definitely looked like she’d been picked up and chucked over the edge.”

  “Interesting,” Damon muttered once more.

  “Not very,” he said. “We didn’t have any explanation and weren’t about to ruin the guy’s life over it. It was obvious that Jerry wasn’t at fault, so what are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know,” Damon said, “but you’d think there would be something.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  He shook his head at that. “I guess, but it doesn’t make any sense. Are there any other ‘unsolved’ murders that are now solved because of a change in paperwork designation?”

  Dave gave him a hard look. “Don’t make it sound like we doctored the books to give us a good rep,” he said, “but, if there’s any doubt in our investigative findings, you know we can’t press any charges.”

  “Why wouldn’t we keep them marked open, in case any new evidence came in?”

  “What’s the point of that?” he asked. “These are all old, old cases.”

  “So wouldn’t it be nice to solve some of these old, old cases?” Damon asked.

  “You find a way to solve them, good for you,” he said, “but we’ve got current cases to deal with, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I get that,” he said quietly. “But it doesn’t sit well to just change the paperwork.”

  “It’s not that we just changed the paperwork to suit what we wanted it to say,” Dave said, losing patience. “But we had the coroner relook at the files to see what was going on, and, if he couldn’t tell us anything new, then it was put down as unknown causes.”

  “But then it’s not a murder.”

  “Exactly. The captain shouldn’t have said it that way, but he’s always felt in the back of his mind that foul play was involved, and it’s always bugged him that nothing could be done about it.”

  “Well, we all get cases like that,” Damon said.

  “Exactly, so don’t get hung up on terminology.”

  He watched as Dave got up and walked out of the room. Damon understood, but, at the same time, he didn’t know what Captain Meyer’s problem was. As Damon got up to refill his coffee cup, he heard his captain and Dave talking.

  “Why the hell did you go stirring that shit up for?” Dave asked.

  “Because it’s a little too close to the kind of shit that’s happening right now, and you damn well know it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a murder back then, and it isn’t a murder now,” Dave said.

  “Back then we didn’t know what the hell we heard or saw,” he said. “But just trying to ignore it all doesn’t fit either.”

  “Why not? Ignoring it worked well for the last thirty years. Why the hell do you want to stir that up now?” he repeated.

  “Because something’s wrong out there, Dave. Has been for years.”

  “Maybe, but we can’t fix it now if we didn’t do it back then.”

  “Dammit, I don’t know. Just something about this case’s bugging me.”

  “Well, we got two murdered young women. Why don’t we focus on that?” Dave snapped.

  “We are,” his captain said. “We are.”

  “We don’t need to bring Damon in on all those old cases. No good can come from it. Hell, your own nephew got all spun up, digging into that mess, and drove himself into a solid rock wall over it. Your brother near drank himself to death after that.”

  At that, Damon stopped. All those old cases. How many were they talking about? And what was the deal with the captain’s nephew? Damon slowly walked back so he wasn’t seen by the two still conversing in the captain’s office and looked at Jake. “All those old cases?”

  Jake shrugged. “I ain’t been here that long. Got no clue what he’s talking about, but I did get the word to not talk about certain cases. These seem to be the ones to avoid,” he said. “And, if you don’t wanna rock the boat, you probably should forget you heard anything.”

  “Maybe. Not sure that’s gonna sit very well either.”

  “If it doesn’t pertain to these two young women …”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Later that afternoon, Gabby pulled out the notebook once again and took a picture of the name in the back. As she put it away, her boss stepped up and asked, “What is that?”

  “It’s that little notebook you brought out this morning,” she said. “A name’s written in the back.”

  He looked at her in surprise and said, “I didn’t see that.”

  “It’s just on the one page and not the last one either,” she said. “Still, it’s obviously not something that we could sell.”

  “I must have figured it belonged to somebody and was left in the store,” he said, “but I don’t know.”

  “Maybe,” she said cheerfully.

  “What’s the name?”

  “Andrea,” she said, looking up at him. When his face turned completely white, she raced toward him. “Jerry, are you okay?”

  While he stared at her, his breathing became heavy and labored.

  “Jeez, sit down,” she pleaded. “Please, take it easy.”

  He slowly sagged into the chair that she pushed up behind him. She had him bend over, so his head was down, and had him focus on his breathing.

  “I don’t know what just happened,” she said, “but you are terrifying me.”

  He took another long deep breath and then another. Finally his color returned, and he looked like he would make it.

  “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  He slowly shook his head, but he looked old, as if the last few minutes had aged him terribly. He stared at the notebook, like it was a viper about to strike him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, crouching in front of him.

  He looked at her, terrified. He shook his head. “There’s no way else to explain it.”

  “Well, it would help if you would at least try,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

  He gave a broken laugh. “You need to be scared,” he said, “because it’s happening all over again.”

  “What is? What’s happening?” she asked.

  “The deaths,” he whispered. “The deaths are happening all over again.”

  She took a long breath and searched his eyes. His cheeks were pink, but he still looked shaken, as if something major had rocked his world. “Which deaths?” she asked quietly.

  He continued to stare at her wordlessly.

  “Come on, Jerry. You need to tell me,” she said quietly.

  “No. It could put you in danger,” he said.

  “It can’t be any more danger than I’m already in now.”

  He shook his head and reached out to grip her hand. “Promise me that you’ll have nothing more to do with those things,” he said, his hand motioning to the tarot cards and the notebook.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” she said. “Do you know who they belong to?”

  “If it says Andrea,” he said, “that was my wife.”

  She stared up at him. “Your wife? What happened to her?”

  He stared at her, his gaze haunted. “She died,” he said quietly, “on the mountain.”

  “How?” she asked.

  He raised his shoulders in a shrug. “She went over the edge. The speculation at the time was that I might have pushed her or that somebody else might have thrown her off. Even worse was the suspicion that she took a running leap and went off on her own,” he said.

  “Oh, gosh, she was suicidal?”

  Tears filled his eyes. “I didn’t think so,” he murmured. “I’d have given anything for a chance to have found out what was so wrong that she would do something like that,” he said, “because I loved her to death.” And then he winced at the phrase.

  “Maybe somebody else pushed her?” she asked quiet
ly.

  “The police looked into it for months, but nobody saw anything. So many people were out there with cameras, taking pictures, yet nobody saw anything,” he said in a teary voice.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Thirty years,” he said in a broken whisper.

  She turned to look back at the notebook. “And do you think that notebook was hers?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She often had little notebooks like that.”

  “How long has it been since you cleaned out underneath that counter?”

  He stared at the shelf in question and then said, “I have no idea. But surely not thirty years.”

  “Maybe you missed these. They were in the back,” she said. “I’m not sure how you found the tarot cards.”

  He looked at her and said, “You found them.”

  “No, you gave them to me,” she said. “At least I thought that’s why you put them on the counter and told me to try them.”

  “No, they were already on the counter,” he said. “I figured you found them somewhere.”

  “Well, they were underneath, you said.”

  He stopped, pondered, and then shrugged. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I don’t remember anything about them.”

  “Okay,” she said, hating how similar what he just said was to her dancing around in the cold yesterday and not remembering anything about it afterward. “Did you recover your wife’s body?”

  He nodded. “A friend of mine with a helicopter took on the extremely dangerous task of going down after her,” he said. “He and a team from the local search and rescue group.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been a very difficult time for you.”

  “It was awful,” he said. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. I just went in to get coffee for the two of us,” he said, “and, when I came back out, she was already gone.”

  Such a lost and faraway look was on his face that she realized, in many ways, Jerry hadn’t moved on from Andrea’s death. “That must have been incredibly hard,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded slowly. “It was just such a sudden shock.”

  “And you’ve been staying here ever since?”