Killer Winter

by Kay Bigelow

  “Do it. Excluding the bishop from our thinking for a moment, and with thirteen women killed, assuming that was the coven number and Scotty’s numbers are wrong, you would have thought that someone’s family would have come forward to report their loved one missing, wouldn’t you?” Leah hated the amount of assumption in play. “You did say the covens are made up of thirteen women, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, for the most part covens are women. There may be an occasional male, but they don’t stay around. Maybe loved ones did report them missing. They would have, in all probability, gone to the precinct closest to their homes. And since Taconic Park where the, uh, bodies were found is practically in the center of the Forty-fourth’s precinct, it stands to reason that at least some, if not all, of the women lived within the precinct. So any reports of missing persons might have been lost in the bombing, particularly if the receiving officer didn’t input the information into the computer fast enough.” Peony was on a roll. “Certainly not all of them would have gone to the Forty-fourth. Some may have chosen to deal with their local cops, if they didn’t know their family member was in a coven at all, for instance. Their missing persons reports could be spread over several precincts with no way of tying them together because there is no known common denominator.”

  “Cots, can you check that out? See if there were any missing persons reports on the main computers. We wouldn’t have accepted any reports for forty-eight hours, so start there. Also, compile a list of women reported missing the night of the murders at any precinct.”

  “Right,” Cots said as he left the living room to go to the secure room.

  “Did anyone talk to the bishop’s family?” Leah asked Peony.

  “The bishop was unmarried but has a sister. I talked to her on the phone, and she told me when she’d last heard from him. I didn’t ask a lot of questions because we’d planned on seeing her in person. We never got a chance to do that, though,” Peony said. “So the family doesn’t know for sure he’s dead.”

  “Neither do we,” Leah told her.

  “Didn’t Scotty identify the bishop through DNA from the partial hand?” Peony asked.

  “He identified a partial hand as belonging to the bishop,” Leah said. “And he wasn’t ready to say for sure it was the bishop.”

  “Since everyone in the field was chopped up, we might not have declared them dead even if we were still at the precinct house, right?” Peony asked.

  “Right. Aside from a partial hand, we don’t have any conclusive evidence the bishop was in the field and was killed there. He might be out there, alive, and missing a piece of his hand. So we’d hold off telling the family he’s dead until we can unequivocally say he died and how. Yes, we think he’s dead and his body was in that field, among the others. But we can’t say it for certain.”

  “Do you have a name of anyone in the bishop’s office?” Leah asked Peony.

  “His housekeeper mentioned his personal assistant.”

  “Call the bishop’s office and see if you can get me an appointment to meet with her. Somewhere away from his office.”

  “A secret meet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn, I love this clandestine stuff,” Peony said with a smile.

  “Set up the meet.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Peony left the living room for the electronics room, leaving Leah alone. We may be on to something. It still feels a little far fetched, but at least we’re not sitting around with nothing to do but wait. And my mind doesn’t have to be focused on Quinn every second.

  Cots returned with his computer in hand.

  “I’ve found one hundred sixteen women who were reported missing two days after the killings.”

  “Can we eliminate any of them?” Leah asked.

  “We can’t do it by age, since age isn’t a requisite for being a witch. I concentrated on the women so we can narrow our field,” Cots said.

  “I spoke to a couple of Wiccans and they told me there were at least three meetings scheduled for that night, including a Dianic coven made up entirely of women. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell me where they were meeting,” Peony said.

  “Good. What about location? On that particular night, would women from the outskirts of the city come through a blizzard to attend a coven meeting out of doors?” Leah asked.

  “Maybe not,” Peony said. “If we search for lists of local covens, we might be able to cross-check the missing persons list with the coven lists.”

  “Let me narrow it using that criteria.” He typed furiously and then looked up. “We dropped thirty-six women, leaving us with seventy possible victims,” Cots said.

  “Delete any women staying at hotels or motels. Let’s assume people didn’t come from out of town,” Leah said.

  “We’re down to fifty.”

  “Let’s drop any women over the age of sixty, since they would be less likely to go out in the middle of a blizzard,” Leah said. “How many does that leave us?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Drop any female under the age of fifteen. It’s not likely their families would allow them to attend a meeting of any kind in the middle of the night,” Leah said.

  “Right. We’re down to twenty-five,” Cots told them.

  “Okay, drop any girl between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. With a blizzard going on, their parents, too, would be unlikely to allow them out.”

  “We’ve got eleven left.”

  “Great! At last, something we can work with,” Leah said.

  Cots put the list onto the murder board and sent it to Peony’s computer. Several minutes later, she said, “I’ve got the addresses on those eleven.”

  “Bring up a map of the city and pinpoint those addresses,” Leah said.

  It only took a minute for the computer to do as she requested. The map showed the killing field in the center of eleven red dots. It was a clear, undeniable lead, and Leah let it sink in.

  “So covens are organized by neighborhoods?” Leah asked Peony.

  “It depends on whether the witches live in a rural or city environment. A city might have dozens of covens, whereas a more remote area might only have one but draw on a wider area.”

  “After we meet with the bishop’s personal assistant, we’ll go visit some of these families and see if we can figure out if their daughters were in a coven.”

  “Does that mean a road trip?” Peony asked hopefully.

  “Indeed it does,” she said.

  “For all of us?” Cots asked.

  Leah knew she was feeling a bit claustrophobic from having been stuck inside for so long. The others must be feeling the same way.

  Peony dug her phone out of her pocket and thumbed it on. “Yes?”

  Leah and Cots sat listening to a one-sided conversation. When Peony broke the connection, she said, “I got you the meet this afternoon at noon.”

  “Where? Somewhere indoors, I hope,” Leah said.

  “Yeah, there’s a bookstore right outside the bishop’s neighborhood with a decent coffee shop. We’ll meet there.”

  “Thanks for arranging the meet,” Leah said.

  “That’s our road trip?” Cots asked, clearly disappointed.

  “Not all of it. We’re also going to interview some families of missing women from the neighborhoods surrounding the park. We probably won’t get to all of them today, but we’ll have a good start and might get some more information to add to our almost nonexistent murder book.”

  Every cop kept a murder book on every case she caught. It contained transcriptions of interviews, photos, reports from others, like the ME, the cop’s notes on the case, including speculations, guesses, and anyone they suspected but couldn’t implicate in the murder. Some of the information was put on the electronic murder board, but not the personal stuff, like the cop’s assessment of an interviewee, his speculations, and his gut feelings.

  Thus far, Leah’s murder book consisted of the crime lab’s preliminary reports, the transcription
s of the telephone interviews with the bishop’s family, photos of the bishop, and precious little more. After this afternoon’s interviews, it would be fattened by a lot more information, she hoped. Or this could be a wild-goose chase and they’d still have nothing.

  As they prepared for their mini road trip, Leah got out a second heavy winter coat, gloves, scarf, and an unattractive but warm hat. When Peony came to the door so layered up that she looked like a second-grader in her school play about large vegetables, Leah pointed at the pile of clothing she had removed from the coat closet.

  “I’m fine,” Peony told her.

  “You’re not fine. Show me your weapon.”

  By the time Peony took off her gloves and dug through her layers of clothing to reach her gun, Leah had put her harness on, removed her weapon, and pointed it at Peony.

  “Point taken. But—” Peony said.

  “You can either wear this stuff,” Leah said, interrupting Peony and motioning at the pile of clothes, “or stay here.”

  “I’ll wear the warm stuff.” Peony began peeling clothes off one layer at a time.

  They decided only Peony and Leah would be pounding the pavement from house to house. Cots would stay in the van and monitor them. Before leaving the condo, Leah checked the weather report. It was going to be a sunny morning with a high for the day of minus twenty-six. Positively balmy. The afternoon would turn ugly, though. Another blizzard was expected to descend on the city by midafternoon.

  “Change of plans. We’ll get in as many interviews as we can this morning, before the meeting with the bishop’s assistant, and we’ll do a couple after if we have time. We’ll need to be back before three this afternoon. I don’t want to be out when the blizzard storms into town,” Leah said.

  As Cots got them under way, Peony’s phone rang. Her conversation consisted of one “I see” and one “I understand.” She ended it by saying, “I’ll call later today to reschedule.” After keying off her phone, Peony said, “The meet with the bishop’s assistant is postponed. Something came up at the archdiocese.”

  “Okay,” Leah said, only slightly disappointed. She really wanted to interview the parents of the missing young women. “Cots, take us to the first house on the list.”

  Cots drove past the house and parked the van. Leah and Peony got out and walked up to the house. It was a well-kept home that looked similar to every other house in the neighborhood. Leah bet that in the summer, the owners had a nicely manicured lawn and maybe even a few flowers in a bed by the porch, and allowed herself to feel a little envious of the people living here.

  Leah rang the doorbell and waited. She could hear noises inside, but no one came to the door, so she rang the doorbell a second time.

  The woman who opened the door wore a well-worn robe and slippers. Her hair was lank and greasy looking. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. There were dark circles covering the bags beneath her eyes.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  “Mrs. Gabrielle?” Leah asked.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re with the police. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your missing daughter.”

  “It’s about time,” the woman murmured as she stepped aside to let them enter.

  The living room, unlike its owner, was neat and clean. Leah glanced around and knew this was a woman who liked order in her life. There didn’t seem to be anything askew. Like Leah’s mother, this woman knew the “there is a place for everything and everything in its place” rule of housekeeping. Leah noticed a row of photographs on the mantel over the fireplace. She moved to the fireplace to look at the photographs.

  “Is this your daughter?”

  “Yes, that’s my Marian.” Her voice was raspy, like she’d been crying nonstop for a very long time.

  “Pretty name,” Peony said gently.

  “Thank you. When I was ten, I read about a scoundrel named Robin Hood and the love of his life, Marian. I fell in love with the name and promised myself to name my oldest child Marian,” the woman said with a small smile.

  Leah nodded at Peony to keep going while she inanely wondered what the woman would have done if her eldest child had been a boy. Named him Marion, perhaps?

  “Mrs. Gabrielle, how old is your daughter?” Peony asked.

  “She’s only twenty,” she told them with tears in her voice.

  “Does she live at home?”

  “Yes. And attends City University. She wants to be a pediatrician.”

  “You must be proud.”

  Marian’s mother could only nod.

  “Mrs. Gabrielle, what can you tell us about the night your daughter went missing?”

  “Well, she told me she had to attend a meeting that night. I didn’t want her to go out. It was a freezing night. I had a really bad feeling, so I asked her to stay home. She told me she couldn’t. It was important she be at the meeting.”

  “Did she say why?” Peony asked.

  “No. I don’t think I asked her why, though.”

  “What time did she leave the house, do you remember?”

  “About ten. I think the ten o’clock news on Channel 245 had just come on.”

  “Did she say anything about where the meeting was going to be held?”

  Mrs. Gabrielle paused as she thought back to that awful night. “No.”

  “Was that unusual?” Peony asked.

  “She almost always told me where she was going and when she thought she’d be home. Then, if she was going to be late, she’d always call.”

  “You said ‘almost always.’ Were there other times she didn’t tell you where she’d be?”

  Again, Mrs. Gabrielle paused to think. “About a year ago, for the first time ever, she forgot to tell me where she was going. I think it became a once-a-month thing to forget to tell me.”

  “Was it always on the same day of the month?” Peony asked.

  “Now that you mention it, no. It seemed to vary from month to month.”

  “Do you remember when last month’s meeting was?”

  Mrs. Gabrielle had to think about it for a minute. “No, I don’t. Is it important?”

  “Not really. I just need to know if she had a routine.”

  Leah was surprised and pleased that Peony knew they needed to verify their theory that the women had been at a coven meeting the night they died. One way of doing that was to confirm the meetings the parents could remember were always on the night of a full moon.

  “Did your daughter belong to any clubs, organizations, or groups?”

  “She belonged to two or three campus groups, if that’s what you mean. She was a member of our church even though she seldom attended once she started at the university.”

  “What church do you attend?”

  “We attend the archdiocese church over on Church Street.”

  “You can’t think of any other groups she belonged to?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Did she ever mention the word ‘coven’ to you?” Leah asked.

  “As in witch’s coven?” Mrs. Gabrielle asked, her expression bemused.

  “Yes.”

  “No. She would have known we’d be opposed to such a thing.” She drew her robe tighter around her, as though to protect herself. “Why do you ask about covens? I know we, or any other parent, wouldn’t allow their child to join such a thing.”

  “We?” Peony asked, thus avoiding answering the question about covens.

  “Her father and I.”

  “Where is her father?” Leah asked, still looking at the photos.

  “He’s at work. He stayed home the first day our Marian went missing, but he had to return to work or lose his job.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “At Allied Manufacturing.”

  “Only another question or two. Do you know if any of her friends went out with her the night she went missing?”

  “No. I called her best friend’s parents the next morning, but her father said that his daughter had had a
sleepover with another friend that night.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gabrielle, you’ve been quite helpful. Is there a photo I can take with me to help in the investigation of your daughter’s disappearance?” Leah asked. “I’ll make sure you get it back,” she added when she saw the woman frown.

  “You can have one of those as long as you promise to return it,” Mrs. Gabrielle said, pointing at the photographs on the mantel.

  Leah took a photograph where Marian was alone. She was smiling into the camera. She was a pretty young woman with black hair and laughing blue eyes.

  Out on the sidewalk in front of the Gabrielle house, Leah said, “Nice work in there. You’re a natural. I want you to take the lead on all the interviews.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” Peony said with a grin. “Who’s next?”

  “Sophie Quincey’s parents.”

  Leah led them past the parked van and across the street to the Quincey house. The interview there went much like the one at the Gabrielle’s house. Like Mrs. Gabrielle, Mrs. Quincey didn’t know exactly where her daughter had gone the night she went missing, and she said their daughter didn’t know Marian.

  Afterward, they went farther up the block to Lucia Martinelli’s home. The Martinellis’ interview didn’t give them any new information about the coven or what their daughter was doing the night of the murders. However, they did learn that Marian and Lucia had been friends since kindergarten.

  “We’ll do two more and then call it a day. I don’t like the looks of those clouds rolling in. And the temperature is dropping,” Leah said, rubbing her gloved hands together to ward off the cold.

  The next house they went to belonged to the family of Grace Potter. The house, like all the others in this neighborhood, was well cared for, although the Potters’ front yard looked like it had many flower beds beneath the snow. The house had an eerie stillness about it.

  “Be alert, Peony,” Leah said as they climbed the five steps to the porch.

  Leah rang the bell. At first, she thought no one was home. Then, she heard footsteps slowly approaching the door. The woman who opened the door was elderly, in her seventies at least. She wore her steel gray hair tied into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She had on a shapeless dress, socks, and a pair of slippers.