Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  I closed my eyes. “If he’s out there, he’ll be dead by morning.”

  Mason looked at me, and I read his thoughts clearly. If he’s the killer, then let him freeze. And if he’s not, then he’s probably already dead.

  The Security Shack door opened and Cait walked in.

  “You want to tell me why you shut down the lifts in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “The storm—”

  “Is bad. Terrible. Far worse than predicted. But it wasn’t when you made the call. We’ve left them open through far worse than what was happening at that point.”

  Finn looked at Mason. So did Cait.

  “Spit it out, then,” she said. “What’s going on with this missing guest? And why is there a detective involved?”

  Finnegan gestured to Mason as if to give him the floor. Mason took a deep breath, looked at me. I nodded. It had to come out. It was serving nobody to keep this thing secret, not now.

  So he told them a version of the truth, just the bare basics. That the man he’d been tracking was a killer. That he’d taken precautions not to tell anyone where he was going for his vacation, because that was his habit due to the nature of his job, and that now he was afraid the killer might have found out and followed him here. Nothing else. By the time he finished, Cait had sunk down into a chair as if her bones had melted.

  “It seems odd to me,” Cait said, “that the killer might be chasing the cop instead of the other way around.” She shifted her intelligent green eyes from Mason to Finn and back again. “Are you sure there’s not more to this?”

  “Nothing I’m at liberty to divulge. I’m sorry, Ms. Cole.”

  She gave him a steely-eyed stare. “This lodge is my life, Detective Brown. If it wasn’t for the weather, I’d throw you out. ”

  “I wouldn’t blame you,” I said. “I’d do the same.”

  That seemed to take the edge off her fury just a bit. She said, “You’ll want to leave your Jeep in the parking lot for the night. You’ll never make it back to the cabin in this storm. Take a pair of snowmobiles back with you in case you need them.” Then she left the shack to tend to her guests, while I hoped like hell we didn’t end up ruining her business.

  * * *

  Finnegan fired up a large vehicle that ran on tracks like a tank, which he called the Abominable, to transport the rest of the family back to our cabin, and Mason and I took snowmobiles, as Cait had instructed. Rosie and Finn himself both rode along in the Abominable with Marie, Jeremy, Josh and Misty, to keep them safe.

  Mason and I rode on either side of the road, just like we had before, headlights on, searching through the falling snow for signs of Alan Douglas. But just like before, we didn’t find anything. Truthfully, in the full darkness and snowfall, I didn’t think we would have seen him unless we ran over him. Rosie said good-night at the front door, started to turn to go, then turned back again, pulling a familiar zipper bag from his coat pocket and handing it to Mason. “You may as well hold on to this, pal. FedEx never made it this morning, due to the storm.”

  The eyeless angel, in her little white box, lay inside that bag. Just seeing it there gave me a chill.

  Mason pocketed it with a worried look my way. Then Rosie got back aboard the Abominable and it started back to the lodge.

  Sighing, I walked up the front steps to open the door, switched on the lights and was promptly bashed in the shins by the hard head of a little blind bulldog. I yelped. She backed up and hit me again.

  “All right, all right. I know, you’ve been neglected all day. Let me get your leash—”

  But there was no keeping her. She weaved and dodged and bounced between incoming feet and down the steps while I swore, yanked the leash from the hook on the wall and went charging back outside after her.

  “Rachel!” Mason shouted.

  “She’s gotta go bad to be this speedy in a strange place! I don’t have a choice here!” I slammed the door behind me.

  “I know you must be about bursting, Myrt. But dammit, wait up!”

  She was bounding around the cabin at a dead run, her short legs throwing snow behind her and her broad chest acting like a plow. You would have thought she could see where she was going, for God’s sake. I darted after her, leash in hand, wishing I had a flashlight. “I said I was sorry. It was an emergency.” I’d made it to the back of the house, but Myrt wasn’t there. Her trail led into the woods behind the cabin. The very dark woods behind the cabin.

  I didn’t miss a beat going after her, even though my brain was finally blasting warnings into my ears. It’s dark, you’re alone, there’s a killer on the loose who wants to gouge out your eyes and you’re a dumb shit if you take another step, Rachel de Luca.

  I stopped walking for one brief second. Because there was less snow in the woods her trail was no longer obvious. It was also darker than a dungeon, and I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

  And then my heart, normally the strong, silent type, urged me on. She’s your dog, she trusts you implicitly and she’s fucking blind, you coldhearted bitch. Move your ass and find her before something awful happens. Besides, you have a gun stuffed in your coat pocket if you need it. And Mason will come chasing us down the minute he makes sure everyone in the house is safe and sound.

  I started moving my ass, whisper-shouting, “Myrtle! Where the fuck are you, you little shithead?” I knew it was stupid, because if you’re going to whisper, it shouldn’t be at the loudest volume you can manage. I doubted any serial killer would have a lick of trouble hearing me in the deep, silent pines. “Myrtle!”

  “Snarf!” said Myrtle.

  She sounded far away, but the pines probably muffled sound, right? “Myrt!” I didn’t bother whispering this time. “Myrtle, come on, girl!” As I moved in the direction I thought her bark had come from, I had a brainstorm, yanked my cell phone from the depths of my pants pocket and opened the flashlight app, sighing in relief at the pathetic steam of light it emitted and aiming it ahead of me. It wasn’t the app’s fault it didn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good. It was made for finding your keys on the floor of your car, not maneuvering through a pine forest in a blizzard on the darkest night since the moment before the Big Bang.

  “Myrtle?”

  I heard a series of barks that were so deep and menacing that I thought she’d started up a range war with some other dog. But as I followed my cell phone beam closer, I knew that was her bark. I’d just never heard it that way before.

  Something was wrong. I stuffed the leash into my pocket and pulled out the gun.

  I heard Mason calling my name, and he sounded so far away that I got a cold chill up my spine. I couldn’t have walked that far. I told myself it was the snow and the pines making him sound so distant.

  But then I pushed through some interlocking pine tree boughs and saw my dog crouched as low as she could crouch and barking up a storm at a lump in the snow.

  “Oh, shit.”

  I aimed the light at the lump that wasn’t a lump at all. It was a body. It was Alan Douglas’s body, lying beneath the sheltering arms of the pines. The snow around it was stained dark with his blood, and I knew without checking that it was probably missing a liver.

  I tucked the cell phone back into my pocket, but kept the gun in one hand as I ran to Myrtle and wrapped both arms around her, picking her up as she wriggled and fought me. She was agitated. She couldn’t see, but she could smell. Death. Blood. Human liver. I’m sure she smelled every bit of it, and probably the stench of the killer, as well.

  Is he still out here?

  I backed away from the body and the blood, and, turning, started moving as fast as humanly possible back through the pines toward the cabin. I didn’t know how I would make use of the damn gun while carrying the dog. I wasn’t even 100 percent sure I was actually going toward the cabin.

/>   “Rachel?”

  “Mason! Out here! Hurry!” My breath was making steam clouds in front of my face, and I could only see them because they were a lighter shade than the darkness. Then I heard him, his footsteps strong and fast, his body brushing against the needled limbs, releasing their scent even more strongly. Finally I saw a light bobbing closer. “Over here,” I said.

  And then he was right there.

  “You okay? What happened? What were you thinking, coming out here alone?”

  “Myrt ran off,” I said. “I followed her before I thought better of it. And then what was I gonna do, abandon her?”

  He sighed, and rubbed the little dog’s face. “She okay?”

  “She’s in much better shape than Marie’s new boyfriend is.”

  He looked at me. His flashlight was pointed away, but it threw enough light that I could see his face, and the expression it wore was saying, Don’t tell me what you’re about to tell me.

  “You found him, didn’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “Myrtle did.”

  * * *

  I remembered—somewhat belatedly, I know—that I had a leash in my coat pocket. So I put Myrtle down and snapped it on. Then she and I led Mason back to the spot where Myrt had found the body. I stood back while he went closer, flashlight in hand. I tried not to follow the beam of light as he aimed it at the dead man. But I followed it anyway. I saw the way the new snow had fallen over the pool of blood, so the deep black-cherry color glistened and sparkled. I saw the layer of snow coating the pale face and gaping mouth and wide-open eyes, sort of shrunken now. I saw that his clothes were mostly snow-covered, but where they weren’t, they were so bloody you couldn’t tell what color they were. They’d been cut open up the front, coat, shirt and all. There was a big dark gash under his rib cage, where his liver had probably been once. Other parts were spilling through the chasm someone had left in the poor man.

  “He’s been here a while,” Mason said. “Probably killed last night. Lay here all day while we were out searching everywhere else.” He aimed the beam at the area around the body, making ever-widening sweeps. He found a glove a few feet away. And something else, something that caught the light and gleamed. It was partially covered in snow, but I thought it was a pocket knife. And near it, a syringe in the snow.

  “Son of a bitch, he was alive, just like the others,” I said softly. “This sick bastard.”

  Mason nodded, crouching near the syringe. “Why didn’t you have a vision this time?” he asked me.

  “I’ve been wondering about that since he went missing. I think it’s because I didn’t sleep. This time I’m only getting them as dreams. And I never slept last night. You and I were… And then Marie came in and—”

  He rose to his feet and came toward me, and I frowned, because the pocket knife that had been in the snow was no longer there.

  “What are you doing, Mason?”

  He got to where I was, took my arm and headed back the way we’d come, Myrt hustling along beside us, eager to be done with this disturbing walk. “Taking you back to the cabin. It’s not safe out here.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  “No?” He kept walking.

  “Mason.” I jerked free of his grip and planted my feet. “What did you just pick up out of the snow?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “The hell you don’t. I saw it. What is it, Mason?” I reached for his coat pocket, and he jerked away hard, then stood staring at me.

  “You’re gonna lie to me now? You’re gonna start keeping secrets now, Mason? When it’s my fucking eyes he’s after? What do you have in your pocket? Tell me right now, or I swear to God I’m going back to that cabin, packing my shit and heading home, storm or no storm.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Okay. Okay.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a jackknife with a handle that was apparently made of real antler, what kind I couldn’t have said. There were initials engraved into the bone. I frowned, reached for my phone, and aimed the flashlight app at it. J.B.

  J.B.

  And then it hit me and my eyes must have gone as big as the humongous snowflakes falling between us.

  “Fuck, Mason, is this Jeremy’s? Tell me this isn’t Jeremy’s knife.”

  He lowered his head. “Eric bought it for him last Christmas. I helped him pick it out.”

  “But…but…” I shook my head. “No, this doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be Jeremy.”

  He swallowed hard, pocketed the knife and resumed walking.

  “Mason, what are you going to do?” I said, hurrying to keep up. “Are you going to cover this up?”

  “I don’t know yet. I need time. I need to process—”

  “Process, my ass. You’re a fucking cop. Are you going to make a habit out of hiding evidence to protect your family and the hell with the rest of the world?”

  He spun around so fast I actually ducked, like I thought he’d deck me. Or maybe I thought I’d have decked me, if I’d been him. I don’t know. But I do know that when I ducked, he looked like he wanted to throw up. He shook his head, reached for me, cupped my face in his palm. “I won’t cover it up. I just need to figure out what it means. Just give me a little time, Rachel. We’ll watch him every minute, we’ll make sure he’s not out of our sight until we get to the bottom of this. Just give me some time.”

  I went soft inside. “Hell, it’s not like I wanted you to turn him in. I just… There has to be another answer, an explanation.” I said it as if I believed it. But inside, I was feeling pretty sick at the idea of how much time Jeremy had been spending with my niece. Often alone. And how it would feel to find her bloody body dead in the fucking snow. And how I would manage to look my sister in the eye and tell her that I’d taken her daughter up into the mountains with a serial killer and let him murder her.

  But then again, it wasn’t Misty who had Jeremy’s father’s eyes in her head. It was me. And I was having a helluva time working up a healthy fear of a seventeen-year-old, no matter how morose and troubled.

  We were almost back. I could see the cabin’s lights gleaming in the distance. “I think you’re right,” I said. “I think we need some time to process this.”

  “I’ll contact Finnegan as soon as we’re inside. Have him get the police up here. I imagine they’ll move faster knowing it’s a homicide, not a missing person. And I need to let Rosie know what’s going on.”

  I nodded. “I’m so tired, Mason. But I’m scared shitless to let myself sleep.”

  “We’ll sleep in shifts. I’ll watch him while you catch a nap, then you can return the favor.”

  “Are you gonna talk to Jeremy?”

  He looked up briefly, and I could tell he didn’t know the answer to that. We got back to the cabin, Myrt huffing and puffing as if she was about to pass out at any moment. As we went in the front door, everyone looked at us expectantly, and it was only as Misty’s eyes widened that I realized I was still holding the gun.

  I handed it to Mason like it was burning me, stomped the snow off my boots and crouched down to remove Myrtle’s leash.

  “There’s no easy way to say this,” Mason said softly. “We found Alan Douglas. He’s…dead.”

  Marie clapped a hand to her mouth, but the yelp came out anyway, like a dog getting hit by a car. Brief, pain-wracked. Tears filled her eyes. Misty went to stand beside her, put a hand on her shoulder. Josh gasped, his innocent eyes widening. Jeremy went wide-eyed with shock, then turned to his mother. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “The hell you are,” she whispered. “I hope you’re happy now, Jeremy.” Then she turned and fled up the stairs. I heard her bedroom door slam.

  Jeremy looked at the floor. He was dead silent.
No tears in his eyes, but I felt the sting of the slap his mother had just delivered.

  “What happened to him?” Joshua asked. “Did he fall skiing or something?”

  “That can’t be it,” Misty said. She moved closer to Jeremy, sliding her hand into his. I saw his close around it, and I wondered just how close the two of them had become. “He’s near here, isn’t he? You found him just now, didn’t you?” I nodded at her. “He must have had a heart attack or something on his way to visit your mom,” she told Jeremy. “You saw the way he was eating the other day. He had steak and chicken.”

  So had I, but I wasn’t going to point that out.

  “What happened to him, Uncle Mason?” Jeremy asked again.

  Mason stared at his nephew, and I saw his eyes brimming. “I don’t know, Jer. But I promise you, I’m going to find out.”

  If the words had the suggestion of a threat, it seemed to be lost on the kid.

  I closed my eyes and tried to feel Jeremy, the way I so often could with people.

  I was still crouching, petting my dog calm again, scratching the spot right in front of her ears and keeping my face downturned, eyes closed. “Your mom didn’t mean what she said, Jer,” I told him, because I needed him to talk. I needed to hear every warble in his voice, every pause, every syllable. “She’s just upset.”

  “She meant it.” I could feel him shrug. “I don’t care. She’s right, anyway. I’m glad he’s out of the way. No matter how much of an asshole my father was, it was wrong for her to be seeing somebody this soon.” He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  I got a chill right down my spine, because my extra senses told me the kid meant every word of it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Thursday, December 21

  Mason had made the calls. Rosie, Cait and Finnegan had shown up an hour later in the Abominable, which was pulling its twin behind it. I had been wondering why it took them so long to arrive, but when Mason opened the front door to go outside and join them, I knew why. The storm had worsened.