In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel

by M. R. Sellars

  Skip rocked back in his old, wheeled desk chair and brushed his fingers through his mustache as he looked her over. After a thoughtful pause, he rubbed his chin then nodded in her direction. “Since we’re on the subject of Beelzebub, you look like you drove through hell and stopped too long to admire the view, young lady...” Raising an eyebrow he added, “No offense meant, of course.”

  “None taken,” she replied. “Honestly, that pretty much sums up exactly how I feel at the moment.”

  He tilted forward in the seat and rested his arms on the desk. Peering at her with an expression of fatherly concern, he asked, “You get any sleep at all last night, Constance?”

  “Actually, Skip,” she said, pausing for a second before saying, “Not much. I took a nap this afternoon, but it wasn’t exactly what I’d call restful, either.”

  “Let me guess: about three?”

  “No, let me guess, Sherlock,” she returned, sarcasm thick in her gravelly voice. “The bags under my eyes are just the perfect shade and the creases still in my face from the pillow add up to three or something like that…”

  He shook his head, the concern still in his face. “No, sugar, that one was just a guess. Three in the afternoon was right about the time I took my nap thirty-five years ago. Wasn’t a very restful one for me either, as I recall. Bad nightmares. Just looking at you tells me you’re on the same wavelength I was back then… And still am, I guess.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I guess I’m just…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “It’s Christmas Eve, you’re away from your loved ones, and you’re stuck in the middle of an investigation I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s bound to get to you.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “Not to mention that I’m supposed to remain objective.”

  He shook his head and snorted. “You and I both know that doesn’t always happen. Especially with something like this. When a child is involved it changes everything.”

  “Except the problem is, this is supposed to be about seven brutal homicides over as many years. Not about Merrie and what happened to her in nineteen seventy-five.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “Well... You might want to tell that to the killer when you catch up to him because I don’t think he got the memo.”

  She sighed. “Yeah... I know.”

  Sheriff Carmichael silently regarded the sullen FBI agent for a moment then asked, “You eat yet?”

  “This morning.”

  “I meant dinner.”

  She shook her head. “No. My stomach really isn’t up to it.”

  “Yeah, I get that too,” he replied. “But since you’re dead set on sitting in that house all night waiting for this sonofabitch, you’re probably gonna need something to keep you going.”

  “I’ll eat tomorrow.”

  “Tonight, tomorrow, I don’t care,” he replied. “Either way, my wife fixed you up a care package just in case. It’s not a lot. Just a couple of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, but I have to say, Kathy does make a mean egg salad sandwich.”

  “I appreciate it,” Constance told him. “Please thank her for me.”

  “I’ll do that,” he agreed. “So...you want to just sit for a while, or are you ready to head on over?”

  “Let’s just go. I’d like to have another look at the basement, and the sooner I’m in place the less chance there is to spook our subject.”

  “Your call,” he said with a nod. “Been down this road before. I really doubt it’s going to matter one way or the other. Let me go ahead and put some fresh batteries in a flashlight for you.”

  “I’ve got mine, thanks,” she told him.

  “Okay, good. Then I’ll just grab you a radio that’s got a full charge on it, then I’ll run you on over there.”

  “Oh, just one other thing,” Constance said as he was pushing back from the desk.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to borrow a hammer if you have one handy.”

  CHAPTER 23

  7:57 P.M. – December 24, 2010

  632 Evergreen Lane

  Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

  CONSTANCE listened closely, but all she heard was a metallic clank meshed tightly together with a dull thud.

  She took a sideways step, still holding the tire iron up over her head. Skip didn’t have a hammer as she’d asked, but this would do. She really just needed something she could use to bang on the walls.

  She remained quiet, and focused. Cocking her head slightly, she drew her arm back and brought it forward with a measured amount of force. When the business end of the angled metal struck, it sent a jarring vibration down her arm and straight into her shoulder.

  Again, clank-thud was all she heard.

  She continued working her way downward, tapping slowly but forcefully from the top of the basement wall until she reached the footing. With each strike, the same solid noise filled her ears again and again.

  She had already made the full circuit of the subterranean room twice. Deputy Slozar was close on her heels, beaming a powerful flashlight wherever she requested. As they slowly walked the perimeter, Constance had pressed her leather-gloved hand against the rough concrete walls while systematically hammering the metal tire tool at somewhat evenly spaced points, listening intently for any evidence of a hollow echo on the other side. She had paid particular attention to the bricked up coal chute, but even there, all that ever met her ears was a metal ping married to a dense thump. There was no hidden passage behind these walls, only solid earth.

  At this point, she was relatively certain that not a single inch of the basement had gone without being fully inspected by sight, sound, and touch. The glass block windows were mortared in, solid and almost fully covered by debris from the outside. The remains of the old furnace were immovable. There was nothing behind them or in them, and the area below the stairs was also free and clear. There was no place to hide, and the only ingress or egress was from the upper floor. The only other thing she could imagine doing was to have a forensics team search the yard around the structure using ground-penetrating radar, but she knew that wasn’t about to happen.

  Constance lowered the tire tool carefully to her side then let loose with a heavy sigh. Her breath formed a jet of cloudy frost in the wide beam of the flashlight.

  Deputy Slozar cleared her throat and then with a bit of trepidation offered, “This has all been checked before, ma’am.”

  Ma’am… Great… Like I don’t already feel old enough at the moment, Constance thought. However, what she said was, “I know it has, Deputy. This is really just to satisfy my own curiosity…”

  Several languid seconds passed before the young woman spoke up again. “So…how do you think he does it, ma’am? Gets in without us ever seeing him, I mean…”

  “That’s one of the things I’m here to find out,” Constance replied, then looked over at the deputy. The uniformed woman’s face was faintly visible in the unfocused residual glow from the flashlight. Not only did she look painfully young, but at the moment she also looked as though she was bordering on terrified. It was hard for Mandalay to blame her though, given what this house seemed to do to people who spent too much time within its walls. There was also the fact that her own stomach was filled with a healthy swarm of butterflies, but she thought it better to keep that fact to herself.

  “How long have you been a deputy for Sheriff Carmichael?” Constance asked.

  “Three years, ma’am.”

  “So then this isn’t the first time you’ve been through this ordeal with him.”

  “No, ma’am, it isn’t.”

  Constance gave her a knowing nod and breathed, “But it just never gets any easier, does it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Constance waited a beat, then clucked her tongue and said, “So how do you think he does it, Deputy?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m asking your
opinion. I’m open to theories if you have one.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” she replied.

  “Then I guess we’re both in the same boat.”

  “I suppose so, ma’am.”

  Do me a favor, Deputy Slozar,” Constance said. “Stop calling me ma’am.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Constance gave her head a small shake but let the slip go without further comment. Were it not for the gravity of the horrors that had occurred here—and were likely to occur again very soon—the young woman’s unconscious habit would have been almost comical.

  Turning, Mandalay began to wander slowly across the basement. The deputy stayed close behind, flashlight aimed forward to illuminate her path. When she reached what she thought was roughly the center, Constance stopped and waited.

  “Turn off the flashlight, please,” she instructed.

  Confusion and fear were both thick in the young officer’s voice when she stammered her reply. “Off, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Deputy. Off,” she said. “And then just stand still if you would.”

  The young woman fumbled with the black, metal cylinder for a moment, then the light finally extinguished. Constance listened intently once again, but this time she wasn’t really sure what she was trying to hear.

  The first thing she noticed was the whooshing sound of her own blood echoing in her ears as her pulse began to race. Behind that came the thin rasping of her shallow breaths. She stared into the darkness, physically seeing nothing, but in her mind, she allowed it to become the tangle of blue, black, and gray from her nightmare.

  While she stood there motionless, the seconds ticked past, turning into a full minute and starting into another. Since there had been no sunshine to speak of over the past two days, the house hadn’t soaked up any warmth. Therefore, even below grade here in the basement, the frostbitten night seeped in with its relentless chill. By all accounts, this was pretty much just how it had been on this same night in nineteen seventy-five. Merrie Callahan had likely spent untold fearful hours down here in the frigid darkness, alone except for that terrible drunken monster who would come down those stairs and brutalize her on his sickening whims. It was a miracle she had survived… A Christmas miracle… As trite as the phrase seemed, Constance couldn’t help but allow it to dominate her thoughts.

  She felt an unnatural chill ripple along her spine and wondered silently if it was merely a physiological reaction to the cliché, or if in some bizarre way, Merrie Frances Callahan was here with her right now.

  “Talk to me, Merrie…” The words came out of her mouth as an almost involuntary whisper.

  Deputy Slozar cleared her throat and muttered an uncomfortable, “Umm, what was that, ma’am?”

  Before Constance could answer, Skip’s voice echoed from the doorway above as a tight shaft of light was aimed down the stairs. “Mel? Constance? You two okay down there?”

  “We’re fine,” Constance called out, breaking out of her sudden melancholy. “I was just checking something.”

  As he descended the top few stairs, the hard sound of the sheriff’s shoe soles against the wooden planks echoed from the basement walls. The noise sent a fresh chill along Mandalay’s backbone and set the swarm of butterflies in her gut to flight.

  How many times had Merrie heard that sound and tried to hide from the pain and horror she knew it was bringing? She wondered silently.

  A moment later she was bathed in a yellowish swath as Skip crouched down with a grunt and shone his light between the uprights of the wobbly handrail.

  “Find something?” he asked.

  “No,” Constance replied, shaking her head and squinting against the light. “It’s all clear.”

  “Same thing up on the main floor,” he replied, quickly shifting the beam so that it was no longer aimed into their faces. “Johnson’s checking the attic like you asked.”

  “Go ahead and turn your flashlight back on,” Constance said to the deputy next to her.

  The business end of the cylinder in the woman’s hand blazed to life before the last syllable had tumbled from the FBI agent’s mouth. Slozar’s thumb had probably been pressed tightly against the button the entire time.

  “Done down here?” Skip asked.

  “Yeah, we’re coming up,” Constance replied.

  He swung his own flashlight’s beam toward the bottom of the staircase. “Watch that first one.”

  Constance felt a sharp twinge in her bruised shin and said, “Yeah. I remember…”

  CONSTANCE aimed her gaze down the hallway, staring along the flashlight’s yellow beam to check the scope of her view. The corridor emptied into a room at the far end of the structure, and the light splashed an amoeba-like puddle on the moderately distant wall. Even through the streaked, multi-year patina of dirt, the glass panes of the old wooden sash window bloomed with shiny glare points as the light struck them. On just the other side of the glass she could make out the wide grain of age-grayed plywood boarding it over from the outside, just like every other window in the house.

  Sheriff Carmichael panned the beam back along the hallway. There were two doors on the right side and one on the left. The latter was the one that most concerned Constance, because it opened onto the stairs that took you down into the basement where everything was supposed to happen.

  As the sheriff turned his hand, dragging the shaft of light along the wall, an archway was revealed on the right hand side as well. It was much closer to them and led into the front room. The only other way into the house was through the back door, which was here in the kitchen with them.

  Unless the killer was a certified genius that had figured out the secret to matter teleportation, he—or she—had no way in or out of the basement without crossing through Constance’s line of sight. That was exactly how she wanted it.

  Skip shone the beam around the kitchen then held it so that its glow dimly illuminated them both. With a shake of his head he harrumphed. “Best seat in the house, I guess.”

  “Seems to be,” Constance replied.

  “You sure you don’t want company? I’m happy to stay, or I can pull Slozar back in with you.”

  Constance replied. “No offense, but I don’t think Deputy Slozar has the constitution for this.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “She’s a good kid, but you’re right. Like I said though, I can stay.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she told him.

  “You’re sure?” He pressed.

  Constance wondered why he seemed so intent on her not being alone in the house but decided not to ask. She had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t get a straight answer even if she did pose the question.

  “Positive,” she expressed, adding a bit of sternness to her voice. “I’d really prefer you and your deputies keep everything covered from the outside.”

  He waited a beat before saying anything, as if he were calculating a different approach. But when he finally spoke—though reluctance was still apparent in his tone—he stopped pushing.

  “We always do,” he said. “And we always see the same thing, which is a whole lot of nothing.”

  “The killer has to get in here somehow, Skip. So does the victim for that matter.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But I’ve said it before, I’ll be damned if I know how.”

  “Hopefully I can figure that out,” she replied.

  “Good luck with that,” he grunted. “No offense, but you aren’t the first Fed to say that to me.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll be the last.”

  He let out a patronizing half-chuckle. “Heard that one before too.”

  “You have a better idea?” she snipped.

  Skip shook his head. “No, Constance, I don’t. And don’t take what I said personally. I’m just not getting my hopes up. I’ve been let down too many times.”

  She softened a bit. “Okay… Well then, it looks like I’m all set. I suppose everyone should get into position.”

  “You realize it’s probably no
t even nine o’clock yet, right?”

  Constance pushed back her coat sleeve and checked her watch. “You’re correct, it’s eight thirty-two.”

  He snorted. “Okay, have it your way, sugar. But I’ll tell you the same thing I told all the other G-men. You’ve got a long damn night ahead of you. I speak from experience.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “I’m trying to tell you that this is gonna happen whether you sit here all night, or you walk in ten minutes before. Whether you’re quiet as a church mouse, or having a party. It always does.”

  “I understood what you meant, Skip.”

  He looked at her and absently combed his mustache before giving his head a shake. “Yep. Stubborn as all hell, just like my oldest.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Yeah… I kind of meant it that way…” he replied. “Okay… So, you’ve got your radio?”

  “Yes,” she said, holding the device up in the light between them. “Already tested. We’ll do an hourly check-in unless something crops up in between. Sound good?”

  “Yeah, it might keep you from getting too bored,” he said with a nod. Tilting his hand, he aimed the flashlight beam at the counter beside them and dipped his head toward it. The shaft of illumination fell across a brown paper bag and a gray metal thermos. “It’s not exactly catfish, Nehi, and RC, but there you go.”

  “Excuse me… Not exactly what?”

  “Yeah, I guess Brother Dave was a little before your time wasn’t he…” Skip said.