Winter's Rise

by Mary Stone

  Though he half-expected her to brush off the recollection and ask him to hurry up and get to the point, the impatience dissipated from her pretty face. She now looked incredulous. “Really?”

  “What does that mean?” Despite the pointed question, he felt the start of a smile on his lips.

  “It means I didn’t pick you for a Nine Inch Nails fan,” she answered with a slight shake of her head. “I don’t know what the hell I thought you listened to, but it wasn’t Trent Reznor or Johnny Cash.”

  “First, who doesn’t like Johnny Cash? And second, you didn’t know what you thought I listened to, or you don’t want to tell me?” Now, the touch of amusement had turned into a full-blown smirk.

  “Little of both, honestly.”

  “All right. I’m curious now.” With one last pat on the dog’s head, he rose to his full height. “What did you think I listened to?”

  She shrugged as if the answer should have been obvious. “Shit. Either shit, or some indie stuff I’ve never heard of.”

  “You think I’m a hipster?” he pressed, eyebrows raised as he offered her an expectant look.

  “Your words, not mine.” She shook her head again, but he could see the first trace of amusement in her eyes. “All right. Well, if you’re going to chauffeur me to my doctor’s office, then I guess I’ve got a little time. I’m not going to turn down a chance to ditch the bus. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

  With a nod, he retrieved his phone as he made his way to the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “Jenson Leary,” he said. He watched her expression as he raised the device for her to view the screen. “Do you know him?”

  She squinted and leaned closer, but there was no flicker of recognition on her face.

  “No,” she finally answered, shaking her head. “Sorry. I’ve never seen him. The name doesn’t sound familiar, either.”

  “Here.” He held out the phone for her to take. “There are some older pictures of him there too. Look through them, maybe you knew him when you were younger.”

  “Yeah, all right.” As she accepted the phone, her fingertips brushed against the back of his hand.

  The touch was feathery light, and based on the focused look she wore, the gesture had not been intentional. Now, why that disappointed him, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know.

  What was important, he reminded himself, was that the borderline hostility with which she had greeted him had finally worn away. All it had taken was the mention of a concert from seventeen years ago.

  White light glinted off her eyes as she sighed and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. He doesn’t look familiar. Who is he?”

  “Well, he was born and raised in Minneapolis and Minnetonka.”

  Based on their interaction six weeks earlier, if he wanted to delve into her past, he would have to be careful in his choice of words.

  She shrugged and passed the smartphone back to him. “Minneapolis is a big city, and Minnetonka is decent sized too.”

  “He had a traumatic brain injury when he was twelve years old. He had to have surgery, and his surgeon was Dr. Catherine Schmidt.”

  She stiffened minutely. “And?” she prodded.

  “He was found dead in a fifty-five-gallon drum a little over a month and a half ago.”

  Though the look was fleeting, her eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “We believe that whoever killed him also killed a woman we found about thirteen years ago. We still haven’t identified her, but she had a healed injury on her skull too. We were able to retain a partial list of Dr. Schmidt’s surgical patients from one particular hospital, and we’re getting a court order for a list of patients in other hospitals in which she had surgical privileges. After that, I’m already pretty sure that we’ll find Jane Doe in that list.”

  Autumn crossed her arms over her chest, and Aiden noticed goose bumps raise on her skin. She just stared at him, saying nothing, the blood draining from her pretty face as he spoke.

  “Whoever she was,” he went on, “the medical examiner says that both she and Jenson Leary underwent brain surgery shortly before they were killed. And whoever performed the surgery knew what they were doing, because both of them stayed alive long enough for the surgical wounds to start to heal.”

  “And you think Dr. Schmidt killed them?” Her green eyes flicked back to his, and he saw a hint of anxiety beneath the calm demeanor.

  “We aren’t sure. Dr. Schmidt dropped off the face of the planet fifteen years ago. No death certificate, no obituary, no nothing. One day she was there, and then the next day, she was gone.”

  “But whoever they are, they’re targeting Dr. Schmidt’s patients. Is that what I’m picking up here?”

  “We think so.”

  As they lapsed into silence, she tapped her fingers against the back of the tall chair at her side. “This is going to sound really weird,” she started, shifting her attention to him.

  “I can deal with weird. Try me.”

  “It was just a weird feeling I got when she’d come check up on me after the surgery. After I came out of the coma, it was like, like I was just better at socializing, I guess. I could get a read on people like I hadn’t been able to before. That sort of reaction isn’t unheard of with frontal lobe injuries.”

  Aiden nodded. “That’s the part of the brain that’s essentially responsible for your personality.”

  Autumn nodded in return. “Exactly. I was shy and quiet before, but after.” She sighed and shook her head. “It’s like I wasn’t beholden to any of the doubts that had been holding me back before, and that, being able to read people, that was a big part of it. But like I told you, she just creeped me out. There was something off whenever she talked to me, like she had an ulterior motive for everything she asked. I didn’t know what it was, I still don’t know what it was. But, you want my honest opinion?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “And don’t put too much weight on it. Memory, it’s not as reliable as people like to think it is. We learn new information, and that biases the way we look at our memories. Memories aren’t static, they’re subject to change just like everything else in our brain.”

  The corner of his mouth turned up in the start of a smirk. “I know.”

  She flushed a little. “Right, master’s in social cognitive, my bad.”

  “You remembered.”

  “Of course I remembered.” She rolled her eyes, but the amusement in her tone was unmistakable. “Meeting the dude who runs the behavioral analysis section of the FBI is a pretty memorable experience to us plebeians, Mr. Parrish.”

  “Oh, okay. The woman who’ll have a Ph.D. and a Juris Doctorate by the end of the month calls herself a plebeian. Whatever you say, Doctor Trent.”

  With a matter-of-fact smile, she held up an index finger. “Not Dr. Trent yet. I’ve still got to defend my dissertation, and that’s all provided I don’t keel over between now and then. Or I guess now it’s all provided I don’t get nabbed by a serial killer and murdered into an oil drum, huh?”

  “It’s a very real concern for all of us.” He offered her a shrug and a knowing smile.

  “Okay.” The word was a cross between a snort and a laugh. “Well, thanks for the moment of levity. That’s probably the best way to tell someone you think they might be the target of a mad scientist murderer.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “You’re doing a great job.”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” he chuckled. “What was it you were saying about memory?”

  As the mirth behind her eyes gave way to unease, he was taken aback by a rush of disappointment.

  “Right. Sorry. Memories, they’re unreliable, even flashbulb memories. But in my honest opinion,” she shivered again, “based on my interactions with Dr. Schmidt and the knowledge I’ve got now, I think she was a sociopath.”

  26

  By the time he saw Winter stride into the cluster of cubicles reserved for the violent crimes divisi
on, Noah had unearthed just about every imaginable piece of information about Jenson Leary

  And, as best as he could tell, Jenson was a regular guy who had lived a regular life before he was kidnapped and murdered by a deranged killer.

  “Hey,” he greeted, pushing himself out of the office chair to stand. “How was the drive?”

  “Slow.” The word was practically a groan as she readjusted the aviator sunglasses atop her head. “Any luck? What did you find about our victim?”

  With a sigh, he dropped down to sit. “Pull up a chair.”

  “That good, huh?” She nodded as she shoved the other office chair to rest beside his. “What did you find?” As she sat, her blue eyes flicked over to take in the spread of pictures and documents on top of his desk.

  “Jenson Leary was a normal dude. He was thirty-one, married, no kids, no record. Former military with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Old Dominion. He was working on his master’s when he disappeared. His wife, Faith Leary, is a supervisor in a call center for a cell phone carrier. She’s got a degree, too, but hers is in chemistry. It’s from Old Dominion as well, which was how they met.”

  Winter picked up a picture, studying the man’s face. “Sad.”

  Noah had to agree. “A month or two before he disappeared, the local cops in Fayetteville were looking for a serial rapist around the neighborhood where Jenson and Faith lived. Jenson gave them a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect, but they found their man before it was entered into the database, and no one thought to enter the info after the fact. A new chief came onboard and began whipping the department into shape. Had them update records, and the DNA was finally entered.”

  “Way to go, chief,” Winter muttered, thinking of how much time that could have been saved had the information been available weeks ago.

  “Since learning of Jenson’s identification, we also learned that his head injury occurred when he was twelve. He was riding a bike without a helmet, and he wrecked it. Nothing suspicious, no foul play, just a legitimate accident.”

  “But?”

  “But he lived in Sioux City, Iowa at the time, and they life flighted him to a hospital in Minneapolis. The same hospital where Autumn had her surgery, and I’ll give you one guess who his surgeon was.”

  “Catherine Schmidt,” Winter breathed. “What about Ladwig? Did this guy have any connection to him?”

  “He saw a psychiatrist while he was at Old Dominion, something to do with recurring migraines. He went to a shrink because he thought it might’ve had to do with stress. At least that’s what his wife said, so that’s what he told her. It wasn’t Ladwig, but…” he paused to hold up an index finger, “I looked them up, and surprise, surprise. Guess who was at the same conference as them?”

  “Ladwig.”

  “Right. Now, conferences about psychiatric topics don’t necessarily mean that everyone there knows one another, but I think it’s enough.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Enough for what?”

  “Enough to go have a chat with our favorite psychiatrist,” he answered, closing the folder with a slap. “See what he knows about Catherine Schmidt and Jenson Leary.”

  “What about Jane Doe?” she wondered after a brief moment of quiet.

  “Nothing yet, but Bree just finished getting a court order from a judge. We should have a list of all Dr. Schmidt’s patients by the end of the day. Then, it’s just a matter of matching up the one who fits the forensic anthropologist’s picture of Jane Doe. We match that, plus the type of head injury and the approximate time she went missing, and we should have a tentative ID. Enough to dig around some more to find a connection between her and Ladwig too.”

  Propping an elbow atop the desk, she met his gaze as she leaned in closer. “What if it’s not Ladwig? I didn’t see him, so what if he’s not who we’re looking for?”

  “You saw his name, though. When you were looking for information about Catherine Schmidt. That’s something, right?”

  “I suppose,” she sighed.

  “‘I suppose is just about as good as we’ve got right now, darlin’. We’ve had someone following Ladwig every day for the last month and a half, but he hasn’t given us anything. We don’t have probable cause to arrest him, but now that we’ve got a victim’s name, we can ask him what he knows and get a feel for whether or not we’re headed in the right direction.”

  Winter rubbed her temple but didn’t seem in any distress as she answered, “True.”

  “If not, if we still think Catherine Schmidt is our primary suspect, we can get ahold of someone in white collar crimes and see if they can help us track down something that’ll tell us where in the hell she went.” As he offered her a reassuring smile, he hoped the look was convincing.

  Victim identification or not, they were grasping at straws, and they all knew it. Unless Ladwig gave them something, their trail would go cold again.

  It would go cold until they found the next man or woman dissolving in a fifty-five-gallon drum.

  Lips pursed, Winter finally nodded her agreement. “All right. Yeah. We should go talk to Ladwig.”

  “Let’s do a little more digging around in Jenson’s history first. Find out everything we can about him, and then see what we can find out about the conference Ladwig and Catherine Schmidt attended. The more we know, the more likely we are to get something out of him.”

  “Right, yeah. He’s a weird guy, but he’s smart. We need to make sure we’ve got all our bases covered.”

  His smile felt a little more genuine as Winter’s skepticism gave way to cool determination. “The more we know about Jenson, the harder it will be for Ladwig to pull the wool over our eyes.”

  27

  Hands folded in her lap, Autumn sat at the edge of an exam chair as she stared absently at a poster affixed to the back of the closed door. The infographic gave a rundown of the benefits of vaccines, and at the bottom-right corner was a list of sources used for the data.

  After an ultrasound of her abdomen had revealed a foreign object pressing on the side of her stomach, the doctor had ordered an x-ray. If the images still didn’t reveal specifics about the anomaly, then she would send Autumn to a different part of the hospital for a CT scan.

  The whole process was familiar, but the familiarity was as much the reason for her unease as anything.

  As the door creaked open, Autumn pulled herself from the moment of contemplation to offer a slight smile to the woman who stepped into the room. Her thoughts threatened to spiral into a mass of anxiety, but she pushed past the rush of worry.

  “Well, I’ve got some good news,” the doctor announced as she tucked a translucent, black and white print into a lighted fixture on the wall. Her blue eyes flicked over to Autumn as she tapped the circular shape of the unknown object. “It’s not any sort of cancer or infection or anything of that nature. Now, you said you had surgery when you were younger, could you elaborate on that? Is there any way some piece of a medical tool could have broken off and lodged itself somewhere in your body?”

  Autumn was already shaking her head before the woman finished. “No.” She blinked rapidly. Was that a possibility? “Surely not.”

  “Have you ever had any other surgery? Anything even close to the abdominal area?” There was skepticism in her visage, and the adrenaline that hit her system made her muscles feel like they had turned to stone.

  “No.” Her response was flat, her stare unwavering.

  “I only ask because, as best as I can tell, this isn’t organic.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning someone had to put it there.”

  “Beg pardon?” Autumn found herself continuing to blink repeatedly as if the gesture would change the doctor’s assessment.

  “There’s no other way it could have gotten there. Interestingly enough, I don’t believe it’s the source of your stomach pain. That’s something we’ll have to wait on a few test results for.”

  Autumn opened and closed her mouth, but
all she could do was shake her head. What the hell did that even mean, someone had put it there?

  If the discussion with Aiden Parrish wasn’t so fresh in her mind, she doubted she would have made the sudden connection.

  After all, it was the stuff of fiction. Real neurosurgeons didn’t implant strange medical devices in their young patients, but real neurosurgeons also didn’t perform brain surgery on unwilling victims before they killed them and disposed of their bodies in an oil drum.

  “Shit,” she spat. She could feel the color drain from her cheeks. “Shit, shit.”

  “Autumn,” the doctor said, a shadow of concern in her pale eyes, “what is it?”

  “I don’t know.” She paused to take in a deep breath. “I don’t know what it is, but I think I know who might’ve put it there, and when. We’re in a wing of a hospital, right?” She held up a hand, hating how her fingers trembled. “Don’t answer that, I know we are, sorry. How soon can I get scheduled for someone to take this thing out of me?”

  “I’m not sure.” Brows furrowed, the woman tapped a finger against the clipboard in her arms. “If you think it might be dangerous, we can get you over to the ER.”

  “Yeah,” Autumn replied without hesitation. “Yeah, the ER. Let’s do it.”

  As the haze of unconsciousness slipped away, the air smelled…sterile.

  The scent of bleach was faint, but it was enough to tell Autumn that the room in which she lay was clean. But what room was she in? Was she at home?

  No, Autumn told herself. She wasn’t at home. With a groan, she raised a hand to rub her eyes as she yawned. There was a light tug against the inside of her elbow at the motion, and suddenly, the cobwebs in her brain made sense.

  Though it was minimally invasive, laparoscopic surgery still required anesthesia, and the first few minutes of consciousness afterward were always fuzzy. Details drifted back one by one as she blinked to clear the film of sleep from her vision.