In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel

by M. R. Sellars

  “Excuse me? My what?”

  “Position and power, honey. Basic psychology. Right now you’re trying to prove that you can write your name in the snow bigger and better than anyone else because you’re a woman with a badge who has something to prove. On top of that, you’re showing me that you’re the one in charge because you work for the FBI. So look...I get it. You’re a Fed, I’m a small town cop. We’re all one big happy family as long as you’re on top. Fine. But I’m here to tell ya’, you can stop dancin’ because I’ve already done this waltz with every damn one of your predecessors.

  “Now...” He waved his finger at her then thrust it toward the chair. “Since you’re standin’ there in a pair of brand new high heels, and we both know you’re dyin’ to sit down because your feet are killing you, quit tryin’ to prove that you’re the alpha bitch in this pack and just park it.”

  Constance stood her ground and snapped, “I take it you have some sort of problem with women, Sheriff Carmichael?”

  He shook his head and replied in an exasperated huff. “Damn, you’re a piece of work... First off, I said call me Skip. Secondly, hell no, I don’t have a problem with women. I love ‘em. I even married one. Got three daughters too.

  “What I do have a problem with, however, is people wasting my time playing games like you’re doing right now. So either sit your ass down or get the hell out of my office, Special Agent Mandalay. Your choice.”

  Once his diatribe was finished, the sheriff picked up his pencil and returned his attention to the paperwork at hand, as if Constance wasn’t even in the room.

  Well, at least he was paying attention enough to catch my name, she thought to herself while continuing to stare at him long enough for the second hand to make a quarter orbit around the clock face. Personality-wise, Ben—the homicide detective she’d been dating for some time now—was a younger version of the sheriff: gruff, opinionated, and more than willing to speak his mind. He definitely hadn’t been mellowing with age, either. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she was stuck in some sort of Dickens-inspired nightmare and the Ghost of Christmas Future was torturing her with a glimpse of what may come. She gave a small shudder at the thought and then shook it off.

  Finally she conceded. Draping her coat over the uncomfortable-looking straight back of the chair, she let out a small sigh then perched herself in the seat. As it turned out, appearances were not deceiving at all. The chair was just as uncomfortable as it looked.

  “There, I’m sitting,” she announced. “Are you happy now?”

  A full minute passed before the sheriff answered. Without looking up from his work he grunted. “Not my feet that’s hurtin’, young lady. Question is, are you happy now?”

  She regarded him quietly for a moment, then asked, “Okay, I’ll admit it; I’m curious. How did you know my feet were hurting? Lucky guess?”

  “Those shoes would hurt my feet. I figure they gotta hurt yours.”

  “You barely glanced at me when I came in. How did you even know I was wearing heels?”

  “I ain’t deaf yet, honey. I heard ‘em the minute you hit the front door.”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “But that still doesn’t explain how you know I just bought them.”

  The sheriff sighed and tossed his pencil back onto the papers again as he leaned back. He gave her the sort of look a teacher would bestow upon a student who wasn’t grasping the idea that one plus one equals two. “This a test?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean did your other Fed buddies tell you to screw with me?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Sweetheart...” he muttered, then shook his head. “Okay. Fine. Let’s get it over with so we can get some police work done.” Wagging his finger up and down at her, he began to explain, “That blazer you’re wearing is a Charles Gray of London, unless I missed my guess, but I don’t think I did because my youngest daughter has one just like it. Not the highest dollar, but pricey, nice, and it’s current on the style. The one you’re wearing has been custom altered to drape properly because you carry your sidearm in a belt rig—on your right, by the way. That tells me you’re particular about your appearance and like to keep up with fashion, so it stands to reason that the shoes would be important too.” Now directing his index finger at the doorway, he continued, “But, when you walked in here a few minutes ago, you were favoring your left foot, even though based on the way you move it’s obvious you’re no stranger to walking in heels. In fact, I’d say you could even run in them if you were pressed.

  “Anyway, then you stood here in front of my desk and kept shifting your weight from foot to foot, which means your right was bothering you too. That little dance tells me either you’re wearing new shoes that aren’t broken in yet and they hurt your feet, or you really have to pee. Now, I may be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that if you had to pee that bad you would have asked Clovis to point you at the restroom before you had her bring you in here to talk to me.”

  Constance stared at him wordlessly for a moment, then asked, “You picked up all that from a quick glance?”

  “You gonna tell me I’m wrong?” he huffed.

  “Well... No... It was that obvious, huh?”

  “Yeah, it was. To me, anyway. Don’t they teach you kids anything at Quantico these days?”

  Constance ignored the gibe. “I have to say, Sheriff, your powers of observation and deduction border on uncanny.”

  “For a sheriff of Podunk, you mean.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “Were you in law enforcement before–”

  He verbally truncated her question with one of his own. “You mean, ‘was I a hotshot homicide detective on some major metropolitan police force before burning out and retiring to the rural Midwest where I could be an Andy Taylor clone and not even have to carry a gun?’ That’d be kinda cliché, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “You’re right, it is. And, I am. All except the part about Andy Taylor and the fact that I’m not stupid enough to think I can get away without carrying a sidearm in this day and age. Even here in Hulis.”

  “But you were, as you put it, a hotshot homicide detective.” Her words were a statement and not a question.

  “I cleared a few cases in my day,” he grunted while looking around his desk, lifting papers and shifting file folders in the process. “I take it none of this information was in the file you read?”

  “The file was on the case, not you.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he replied absently, still searching for something in the clutter. “Heard that one before. All I have to say is that’s some piss-poor police work for a bunch of Feds. If your research is that bad, my opinion of you G-men just ratcheted down another couple of notches.”

  “Well, hopefully I can change that.”

  “Yeah, I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Seven murders in seven years, all on the same damn day; we’re still at square one, and I’ve got my fifth new Fed to babysit. No offense, but from where I am, you’ve got your work cut out for you changin’ my mind.”

  Constance ignored the negative commentary and pressed forward. “So, speaking of the murders, has the card arrived yet?”

  “Yeah, it was waitin’ for me when I got here this morning, just like clockwork... Hang on a sec...” Sheriff Carmichael gave up his apparently futile search and pressed the side of his hand on the talk button of an intercom box that looked only slightly newer than the chair and desk, then called out, “Hey, Clovis?”

  A handful of seconds later the speaker crackled, “What do you need, Skip?”

  “Have you seen my coffee cup?”

  “It’s out here on top of the filing cabinet where you left it an hour ago.”

  “Dammit...” he muttered.

  There was a short hiss, and then Clovis’s voice rattled from the tinny box again. “Want me to bring it in to you?”

>   “What time is it?” he asked, a mildly absent quality to his voice as he circumvented the original question.

  “Eleven-thirty,” she replied. “I swear, Skip, you need a watch.”

  “Why? You’ve got one.”

  “Skip...”

  The sheriff sighed, then smoothed his bushy mustache before turning his attention back to Constance. “You have lunch yet, Special Agent Mandalay?”

  “No, actually... And you can call me Constance, by the way.”

  “Skip? You want me to bring you your cup?” Clovis’s voice came over the speaker again.

  He depressed the button. “No, hon... Thanks anyway. I think I’m gonna take the Fed over to That Place. You want me to bring you back anything?”

  The intercom crackled. “I brought lunch today, but I sure could go for a piece of pie... Oh...but I really shouldn’t.”

  “Coconut cream like usual?” he asked.

  “I really shouldn’t,” she replied.

  “Coconut cream it is,” he grunted.

  “That Place?” Constance asked when he was finished.

  “It’s the diner across the street,” he replied as he rolled back, then pushed up from his chair and ambled over to a bentwood coat rack in the corner, stopping for a moment to hitch up his belt before pulling down his jacket.

  “Does it have a name?” she asked as she stood.

  “Yeah, That Place.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch and see if I can get you up to speed on all this.”

  “What about the card?”

  “What about it?”

  “May I see it?”

  The sheriff hefted his jacket back onto a hook then walked back to the desk. “Exactly the same as all the others,” he grunted, shuffling through the papers and extracting a manila envelope labeled EVIDENCE, along with a few scribbles of information such as the date and time. Handing it to her he added, “Got it bagged for you; not that you’ll find anything. Your lab geeks never do.”

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Eventually the killer will slip up.” She added a paraphrased retort, “They always do.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that.”

  “You seem a little jaded,” Constance said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a pair of surgical gloves.

  “Like I said, seven murders, seven years, five Feds, square one,” he replied. “And now I’m staring at number eight in about three days time. You’ll have to excuse me if I sound less than hopeful regarding an outcome at this point.”

  “I understand,” she replied, unwrapping the string closure and then carefully emptying the contents out into her gloved hand.

  The Christmas card was nothing particularly unique. Printed on inexpensive stock, the front of it was a detailed color rendering of a serene, somewhat darkened living room. A fireplace dominated the center of the picture, with a bulging, bright red, gift-laden stocking hanging from the mantle. A pair of black boots attached to telltale red-suited legs were dangling down from the flue and into the dormant fireplace.

  In the foreground was a small plate, upon it resting a half-eaten cookie and what appeared to have once been a full glass of milk, now mostly empty. Adjacent to it was a note written in a child’s hand that said, “For Santa, Marry Crismis. Luv Susie.”

  Above it all, gracing the top of the scene, were the words ‘Twas The Night Before... printed in an embossed, bold script.

  Inside the card was blank. On the back was only the simple logo of a generic greeting card manufacturer that had long since gone out of business according to the case file.

  Constance turned the card over in her hands, looking at the back, at the blank inside, and finally lingering over the artistically depicted tableau on the front. Sheriff Carmichael watched her silently for several minutes.

  Eventually, he cleared his throat and muttered, “Exact same damn card every year, stuffed right through the mail slot... Always on December twenty-second. No envelope, no prints, no DNA, no hair, no fiber, no nothing... Didn’t make the connection until the second year.” He paused for a second then spat, “Anyway... Every Christmas we find a man’s body...or I guess I should say pieces of one. They pretty much add up to a whole, except for...”

  As the sheriff’s voice trailed off, Constance verbally filled in the blank. “The external genitalia.”

  Out of reflex he nodded assent while he spoke. “Yeah. Always missing.”

  “Just like John Horace Colson,” she breathed.

  “Except Colson happened thirty-five years ago, and there’s no question who killed him...and why.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah. You read the file,” he replied. “Then you also know we find the victim in the exact same spot Colson was found.”

  “I do.”

  “After number two, we started watchin’ the place. Full on, around the clock, starting the week before Christmas every damn year. This year’ll be the fourth where I’ve sat out there myself. Nobody in, nobody out, but on Christmas morning, the body is always there.”

  “That was in the file too.”

  “Good. Then maybe you can explain that one, because I sure as hell can’t.” He paused, then brought the present thread of the conversation back full circle. “You know, right around Thanksgiving every year I start wondering if the sonofabitch has finally run out of cards so that maybe this nightmare can stop. Then one shows up. Maybe this will be the last one...but I really doubt it.”

  “Do you just wonder, or is that one of your uncanny observations?” she asked, turning to look at him.

  He shook his head. “More like a Christmas wish. It’s the same one everybody in Hulis makes. Been a lot of wishbones snapped on it, believe me.”

  Looking back to the card in her hands, she dropped her voice to just above a whisper. “Everybody in Hulis except for one, apparently.”

  “No,” he told her. “This isn’t someone from around here. This is an outsider.”

  “That’s just one theory.”

  “Yeah, but it’s the theory I’m sticking with.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes me too damn sick to think otherwise.”

  Constance slid the card back into the evidence envelope and secured the flap shut with the closure string.

  As she peeled off the surgical gloves, in a matter-of-fact tone she remarked, “You know I have to talk to her.”

  “I assume you mean...” he allowed the name to go unspoken.

  “Merrie Callahan, yes.”

  The sheriff sighed heavily, then reached up beneath the rim of his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as he hung his head and shook it slightly. “Do you really think that’s necessary? You said you read the file.”

  “Yes, it is, and yes, I did.”

  “Well? There should have been interviews in there from the other four Feds.”

  “There were, but they didn’t...”

  “...say anything of any consequence.” He finished the sentence for her. “My point exactly. Believe me, this ain’t my first rodeo with you folks. What makes you think you’ll get anything different this time?”

  “I won’t know unless I try.”

  “Well,” Sheriff Carmichael sighed again. “I think you’re just wasting your time and mine too. I’ll take you to see her if you insist, but let’s go across the street and have lunch first.”

  “Honestly, I’m not really all that hungry,” she objected.

  “Maybe you aren’t, but I am,” he explained. “Besides, we need to talk about this first.”

  Constance shook her head to punctuate her hard response. “You aren’t going to change my mind about this, Sheriff.”

  “Not gonna try,” he replied. “I’m just gonna give you the facts so you don’t go in unarmed. Decision’s still yours. And I’m pretty sure I told you to call me Skip.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “THANKS, Stella,” Sheriff Carmichael said, looking u
p with a slight grin at the young woman who was refilling his coffee.

  She smiled back. The expression was strained and thin, but still noticeable. “Your meatloaf should be up in just a minute or two, Skip.” She leaned a bit closer and adopted a conspiratorial tone. “I told Max to put a couple of double thick slices on there for you.”

  “You’re too good to me, Stella.”

  That Place was more of a U-shaped lunch counter than anything else. It was crammed tightly into a narrow storefront across from the sheriff’s department and kitty corner from the town hall. The décor was typical small-town diner of the late 50’s or early 60’s—chrome and Formica counters with vinyl-topped stools bolted to the floor at evenly spaced intervals. Just as the sheriff’s office looked like a throwback to the 40’s, so did the small diner look as if it had been frozen in its own particular era for the rest of time.

  The establishment was surprisingly slow for lunchtime, especially during the week. Besides the sheriff and Constance, there was only one other patron, and he was at the far end of the U. She took passing notice that he appeared lost in his own little world, his hands folded in front of him on the counter as he quietly contemplated his coffee cup.

  However, there was something else about the diner that struck Constance as even odder still. It was December 22nd, and with the exception of a poinsettia on the counter, the restaurant was devoid of holiday decorations, Christmas or otherwise. Just like the sheriff’s office had been.

  The waitress glanced over at Constance and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she replied with a shallow nod.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be back out in just a minute or two.”

  As she started away toward the kitchen at the back, Sheriff Carmichael called after her, “Oh, hey, Stella, I almost forgot. Clovis wants a piece of your mom’s coconut cream pie. Think you could box up a slice for me to take over to her? Just put it on my tab.”