Killer Winter

by Kay Bigelow

  “I won’t drink car sludge,” Quinn told them, “but I will have a cup of coffee.”

  Leah wasn’t interested in adding more acid to her stomach than was already there. She went to the bedroom and went into the bathroom and locked the door. Leah pictured Grandini sipping the coffee in her office. She’d been smug and knowing. And it made Leah sick to her stomach to know Quinn was cheating on her and had been perfectly willing to sit beside her wife and across from her lover. Leah burst into tears and cried until she could get herself under control. She took a washcloth from the linen closet and soaked it in cold water for a few minutes. She folded it and laid it across her eyes, hoping to reduce the appearance that she’d been crying. She didn’t want to give Quinn the satisfaction of knowing she’d cried.

  There was a knock on the door. “Go away, Quinn,” Leah said to the person on the other side of the door.

  “It’s Cots.”

  Leah opened the door and let him in. She closed and locked the door behind him.

  “I’m so sorry, Leah.”

  Maybe it was his tone of voice, maybe it was because he was a friend, or maybe it was because her emotions were raw and exposed. Whatever the reason, when he pulled her gently toward him, she didn’t fight him. She let him hold her and burst into tears again. When she was once again in control, she stepped back.

  “You need to understand that Stephanie is a malicious woman. I’d bet everything I own that she sent the note to you because she wanted to hurt you and hurt you badly. She knew there will be no evidence leading to her, so her motivation for sending it was vindictiveness and jealousy.”

  “Thanks, Cots. It doesn’t make Quinn’s betrayal any less painful, but it does explain a lot.”

  “Let’s go get a cup of coffee and get back to work,” he said with a gentle smile.

  Leah was as much surprised at Cots’s behavior as she was of her own. She realized that his gesture of compassion eased her pain just a little, and for that she was grateful, and she’d remember it for the rest of her life.

  Leah got herself a cup of coffee, but instead of joining the others in the secure room, Leah stood in front of the living room windows and watched it snow. Not for the first time, she wished her ancestors and the ancestors of every other human on the planet had listened to their scientists about global warming. While current scientists were reluctant to call what they were experiencing an ice age, people on the street knew enough to call it that. There was nothing normal about nine-month winters with temperatures a bone-chilling minus fifty on the worst days. The Chinese were the first to inadvertently sound a warning about cooling temperatures when the government, in 2010, issued a warning to their elderly not to put on too many coats lest they fall down and not be able to get up again. Smug Westerners had thought the warning so amusing. The New American governments had been issuing the same warning to their own elderly every winter for decades.

  Leah mentally shook her head to get it back into the game and the problem at hand—who had killed the bishop and why? Who were the other people in the field? Was there any connection between the field and the bombings, or was she seeing something that simply wasn’t there? She was becoming frustrated because she wasn’t able to find the answers to a single question. At this point, she’d settle for a solid lead to somewhere other than a dead end.

  Leah went looking for her pad of paper and a pen. Maybe if she wrote down what she knew, she’d see something she’d missed by having everything on the murder boards. She found her paper and pens on her dresser in the bedroom.

  She took the goodies back to her chair in front of the large windows in the living room. Out of habit, she glanced up and down the street to see if she spotted anything or anyone out of place. She didn’t. She sat in her chair and thought about what she wanted to write down—what she knew or what she didn’t know. What she didn’t know would be a much longer list than what she really knew.

  Under the heading of Don’t Know, she wrote:

  1. cause of death of Bishop and the other victims

  2. killer(s)

  3. motive

  4. number of victims and identities

  5. who commissioned bombings of the Forty-fourth and crime lab

  Leah stopped and looked at what she had written. Without the answers to at least one of those five fundamental questions, she’d have no chance to solve anything. What am I missing?

  She decided to start with motive. What could be the possible motives for Bishop Cohane?

  She got up from her chair and went to the secure room.

  “I could use your help. Cots, did we run the financials on the bishop?”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Bring them with you, please.”

  After both Cots and Peony joined Leah in the living room, she said, “I’m trying to figure out what the possible motives might be for killing the bishop. Cots, did anything stand out in his financials? Did he owe anyone money, was he being blackmailed, was he living beyond his means, any indication of an alcohol or drug addiction?”

  “No to all your questions. His financials had no red flags. He was paid a substantial salary. The bishop was unmarried. He lived in the archdiocese’s mansion and he had a vacation home as well, but it doesn’t have a mortgage attached to it. The other research turned up nothing that would motivate someone to kill him.”

  “Then what is the motive for murdering him?” Leah asked.

  There was no answer to her question. Then an idea began forming in Leah’s mind. “This is probably far fetched, but what if there’s no motive because he wasn’t the intended victim?” she asked.

  The others sat thinking about what she’d said.

  “That could make sense,” Cots said.

  “What if he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time?” Leah asked, glad to be brainstorming with her team. This is the way we’ll begin to close in on something that might actually lead us to the killer and the identities of the other victims.

  “Or he happened upon something that he shouldn’t have?” Peony asked.

  “I wouldn’t think that was possible, Peony,” Cots said gently.

  “Why?”

  “The coroner believes that the murders happened between midnight and two in the morning. What would an old religious man be doing out at that hour and in that part of town? He didn’t live anywhere near the killing field. He was there because he’d been invited, told to be there, or taken there,” Cots said.

  “Well, then he couldn’t have been an unintended victim either,” Peony said.

  “Explain,” Leah said.

  “If he wasn’t the intended victim and he wasn’t there by accident, then he was there on purpose. We just have to figure out why.”

  “Are there possibilities for why he was there on purpose?” Leah asked.

  The others were silent.

  “I can come up with several scenarios, but none of them make any sense when I think them through,” Cots said.

  “What are the possibilities for what was happening in that field that would get an elderly religious man out of his bed and in that field at midnight?” Leah asked.

  “On a frigidly cold and snowy night,” Peony added.

  “Does the date have any significance?” Leah asked.

  “Oh! Wow! Wait a second,” Peony said. “Give me a minute.”

  Peony left them sitting there while she ran back to the secure room. She returned with her computer in hand and began rapidly typing.

  “Peony?” Leah asked.

  “A moment more,” Peony said.

  Leah and Cots waited.

  Finally, Peony nodded. And then nodded again.

  “Tell us.” Cots leaned forward, unable to wait any longer.

  Peony looked up from her computer. Indecision was written all over her face.

  “It’s all right,” Leah said. “At this stage, anything will help.”

  “Well,” Peony began tentatively, “on the night in question, there was a full moon. We
couldn’t see it because of the snow clouds, but it was there.” Peony paused.

  “Go on.” Leah was amused at how tentative Peony was being after having spent three days acting like a tough cop.

  “On Xing, there is a growing movement, or reemergence, of Wicca.”

  “Wicca?” Leah and Cots asked in unison.

  “Covens, if you will,” Peony said, looking at them. When Leah shrugged and Cots just shook his head, she nodded. “All right, let me start at a more basic level.” Peony sat back and thought for a moment, and then began again. “A coven is the name used to describe a gathering of witches. In popular culture, these people are called Wiccans and they are followers of a neo-pagan religion called Wicca. The practitioners believe in witches and witchcraft. Most covens have thirteen members who all call themselves witches. The coven is led by a high priestess. Often, their meetings are held out of doors when there is a full moon, usually in open fields or groves. As an aside, the first recorded use of the word ‘coven’ being applied to witches was in 1662 during a trial of a witch named Isobel Gowdie.”

  “I have to ask,” Cots said when Peony paused, “how do you know so much about this subject?”

  “As I said, there’s a huge resurgence of the Wicca religion on my home world.”

  “And? That doesn’t mean you’d know so much,” Cots said.

  Peony blushed slightly. “And my older sister, Isobel, joined a coven two years before I came here. She shared what she was learning with me.”

  “So your theory is that the, what did you call them?” Leah paused.

  “Coven of witches.” Peony smiled.

  “A coven of witches was meeting in the killing field. The bishop shows up. Then the killer, or killers, descend on them, kill all fourteen people, and chop them up. And they inadvertently leave behind a piece of a hand to be identified. That’s your theory?”

  “In a nutshell,” Peony said.

  “Not bad, Detective, not bad. So far that makes more sense than anything else we’ve come up with.”

  Peony beamed at Leah’s praise.

  “Now, tell me why the bishop showed up in that field.” The concept was incredibly far fetched, but with nothing else to go on, she was willing to run with it.

  “And why the bishop’s hand was found, but nothing of the others,” Cots added.

  “Someone wanted the bishop to be found there.” Quinn leaned against the doorway.

  Leah ignored her.

  Quinn looked like she wanted to say something to Leah but instead said, “They wanted people to believe he wasn’t as holy as he seemed?”

  “The reason we were given the hand is what we need to figure out. In the meantime, we’ll use Peony’s coven theory as our working theory without stopping our search for other plausible theories.” Leah paused. “Try this on for size, too. The hand wasn’t left behind on purpose at all. Maybe leaving it behind was an accident and the killers simply didn’t notice it.”

  Leah knew they wouldn’t find any more plausible theory now that they’d debunked their theories that Grandini was somehow involved and / or the bishop was somehow crooked. She would keep looking at any alternative theory that came their way, but this one seemed like a good one.

  “Let’s call it a night, but don’t stop thinking about Peony’s theory. It’s a good one,” Leah said.

  Peony grinned broadly at Leah’s praise.

  As she was picking up her stuff, Leah said, “I’m off to bed. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Everyone sleep in. I’ll see you at eight,” Leah said with a straight face.

  “You call that sleeping in?” Cots groaned and slumped in his seat.

  “Oh, okay. We’ll get started when we get started.”

  In their bedroom, Quinn said, “We need to talk to clear the air.”

  “No, we don’t. I think the air is clear enough to see that you’re a lying, cheating bitch.”

  “Leah, please. Let’s talk this through.” Her voice had a pleading tone. Almost.

  “Tell me the truth. Right now, Quinn. How long have you and Grandini been fucking this time?” Leah wanted to hear Quinn admit she was cheating.

  Quinn stared at her for a few seconds before she finally answered. “Two years.”

  Suddenly, Leah really didn’t give a shit how long Quinn had been betraying her with Grandini. It didn’t matter. The damage was done; there was no way Quinn could ever undo that.

  There were questions, things she wanted to know, yes. But she couldn’t handle the answers right now. “Quinn, there’s really nothing to talk about. I think you should sleep elsewhere.”

  “What does that mean? You want me to leave?”

  “Either you leave or I’ll move my investigation somewhere else.”

  “I want to explain why I started seeing Stephanie again. I thought I could get valuable information for you. Like an uncover cop.”

  “For two years? On cases I wasn’t working? Come on, Quinn, spin your story any way you want. We’re through. I told you in the beginning, one of the two things I would not tolerate was infidelity. Now leave.”

  “I’ll give you a few days to come to your senses. Then we’ll have a nice dinner out and talk through this.”

  Leah turned her back on Quinn, went into the bathroom, and slammed the bathroom door so hard it probably awoke residents across the street from them. That was childish, but it sure as hell felt good. Anyway, it was better than punching her.

  When she exited the bathroom later, Quinn wasn’t in the bedroom, much to her relief. Just the thought of “talking it out” with Quinn made Leah nauseous. In a rage, she picked up the photograph of her and Quinn on their wedding day that Quinn kept on her bedside table. She threw it across the room at the door. Well, that felt good. She picked up the photo and tried to straighten the frame but could do nothing about the broken glass. She dropped it down the recycling chute in the bathroom. She lay on the bed, still fully clothed, and eventually fell into a troubled, anxious sleep, full of dreams of being chased and falling.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, Leah awoke at six. Instead of leaping out of bed, though, she lay snuggled beneath the warmth of the electric blanket Quinn had brought from their apartment and added to their bed the night before. She missed Quinn being tucked against her back with her arm holding her tight. Leah loved those moments when her world felt bright and new and full of possibilities before the ugliness of her day-to-day world intruded. She was both pissed off and devastated by Quinn’s behavior. What else don’t I know about Quinn? And does any of it really matter? She knew she’d miss living with Quinn. It had been easy, perhaps too easy, but easy nevertheless. How could it not be easy when they only spent a few hours of every day together because of their insane working lives? Maybe if she’d looked closer at Quinn, she might have seen her for what she now knew she was—untrustworthy, manipulative, and cheating. Maybe somewhere down the line, they could be friends. But if Quinn was colluding with mobsters as she now knew she was, she wouldn’t want to be friends with a cop. Nor would this cop want to be friends with a possible felon.

  She turned her mind to the case. She wondered whether the case would have been solved by now if she weren’t holed up in this condo. No, she decided, if anything, she would be further away from resolution. She had better equipment here, she didn’t have a captain breathing down her neck to solve the controversial case, and she didn’t have a team of people trying to ensure their pet theory won the day. Granted, it might have helped to have more bodies doing the scut work of canvasing the neighborhood around the park to see if anyone had seen or heard anything. What had helped, she had to admit, was that the bombings had dominated the news cycles for as long as they had, and that those cases had undoubtedly been assigned to other detectives. And the media had moved on to topics that didn’t have as much mystery surrounding them and upon which they could pontificate. She wondered whether she should tell the new commissioner she was alive and well. Not today. She also wondered if anyone had bee
n assigned the killing field case when it had been presumed she was dead, or if all attention had been turned to the bombings. Where are they with the cases? What if they have information I don’t, and I’m just spinning my wheels out here alone? The questions were unsettling.

  Leah heard someone in the kitchen. She slid out of bed and headed to the shower. After she dressed, she went to the kitchen, where someone, probably Cots, had made a pot of coffee. Cots had apparently accepted coffee duty, which was fine with her. She automatically fixed two mugs of coffee, one with cream and three teaspoons of sugar for Quinn, and one black for her. When she realized what she had done, she poured Quinn’s coffee down the drain. I wish I didn’t know about what Quinn did with Grandini. I need some time to wrap my mind around what she’s done, time I won’t have until the killing field murders are solved.

  Leah took her mug into the living room and activated the murder board. As she sat staring at the various pieces of information on the board, she sipped her coffee. I wonder why I never liked Cots before now. I really like the guy. He’s kind, gentle, funny every once in a while, a wizard at searching out the details of people’s lives, and he occasionally breaks the law. I still don’t think he’s only Quinn’s bodyguard, and if he is, he’s underemployed. But they’re connected somehow, I just don’t know how. Yet again, she had to bring her mind to bear on the case and not wander down another dead-end lane.

  After they’d had breakfast, and with mugs of coffee in hand, they gathered in the living room to return to the investigation. Everyone looked rested and a little brighter.

  “We’re working on the theory Peony brought up about Wicca, and on the possibility that it has spread from Xing to here, both of which are totally unsupported, but we’re going to see where it takes us anyway. Can we be sure there was a coven meeting in the field that night?” Leah asked.

  “Boss, I know there are covens here. Several, in fact. When I arrived, I was contacted by three of them to join thanks to my sister. I don’t know if there was a coven meeting that night, but I can find out,” Peony said. “I’ll call one of the Wiccans who contacted me.”