A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series)

by Delany, Vicki

  “Sorry about that, Officer,” he said, giving her a smile so strained it was more of a grimace. The tick in his eye had stopped and his color was recovering. “I don’t care much for enclosed spaces.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night. Thanks for the lift, eh?”

  She waited beside her vehicle until he was inside.

  Strange guy.

  Over the next couple of hours, as she drove up and down the streets, watching for trouble or someone needing assistance, Molly Smith thought about a lot of things. About Cathy Lindsay, gunned down. She probably wondered, if she noticed it at all, why someone had punched her in the back. And then she was dead. Before she hit the ground, they said. Her poor husband, her poor kids. Winters seemed to think Hamilton might have been the shooter. Smith doubted it: the way his hands shook he’d have trouble hitting a barn door unless the barrel of the gun was touching it. Who then?

  They probably never would find out. Smith herself figured it for a fun killing. The perp long gone, heading for another town, another person out for a walk on a nice day.

  God help us all.

  The sign was turned to closed at Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations. Her parents had had a pretty good marriage. They’d been together since their university days, and Andy had learned to let Lucky have her way. Which usually wasn’t a problem as they agreed on most things. Lucky’s relationship with Paul Keller was going to be a darn sight more tumultuous. Smith wondered if the Chief had any idea what he was getting into. He probably did. He’d known Lucky for a long time, and often from the other side of the barricades. Things with the new resort would be heating up come summer when construction crews moved in. When they started chopping down trees and damming the river.

  Molly Smith did not want to ever again see her mom at a riot.

  She found her thoughts drifting to Adam. She hadn’t seen him since he got back on Monday. He’d been busy with a convenience store hold up some distance away, and then a grow-op raid. He’d suggested they go out for dinner tomorrow night, someplace special, said he’d get someone to cover for him so he could relax and enjoy the evening. Special. She wondered if he was going to pop the question. Would he have a ring in a small blue box, would he get down on one knee, would a bottle of expensive Champagne be waiting in the wings? Or would he just be Adam and say something like, “Wanna move into my place? Save on rent.”

  She decided that whatever he said, her answer would be yes.

  She’d risked hurting Adam, or worse, by flirting with Tony. She’d had a narrow, and lucky, escape. Never again.

  If she’d come to realize one thing with this Cathy Lindsay business, it was that life comes with no guarantees. No point in waiting for the right moment, waiting for opportunities to present themselves, or the circumstances to be exactly to your liking. Wait long enough and the right time might well never come. She glanced at the clock. Almost eight. She’d swing by the convenience store and get herself a drink and a bag of almonds. Another quiet night in Trafalgar. As she reminded herself not to say the Q word, the radio snapped to life.

  “All units, all units. Report of an active shooter at 87 Lakeview Drive. Injuries.”

  Smith slapped the console, bringing up lights and sirens. She took the corner into Pine Street on two wheels while startled pedestrians watched her go. The car fishtailed on the road, but the tires gripped, and she raced up the mountain.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  John Winters did not think Mark Hamilton had killed Cathy Lindsay. Unless he was a heck of an exceptional actor.

  Winters had felt about as bad as he could while doing his job. Hamilton was a basket case, no doubt about it. He’d twitched and sweated all through the interview but managed to remain lucid. Cathy Lindsay had bothered him, yes. She clearly liked him and wanted him to pay attention to her. He didn’t have any feelings for her and never encouraged her.

  He had never arranged to meet her outside of school hours. He had never been to her house, didn’t even know where she lived, and she had never been to his.

  “Do you own a long gun?” Winters had asked.

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  “Not even for hunting? There would have been opportunities for hunting at the cabin you went to last week.”

  Hamilton shuddered. “I don’t hunt. I don’t eat meat. I can’t stand the sight of blood. Not after the things I’ve seen. The very idea makes my skin crawl.”

  “What sort of things.”

  “In Afghanistan.”

  Mr. Hamilton, have you sought treatment for PTSD?”

  “I can handle it.” Hamilton lifted his head and fixed his eyes on Winters. “When I’m left alone.”

  “Cathy Lindsay didn’t leave you alone.”

  “Cathy Lindsay was a minor annoyance. If she’d come to my house uninvited, invaded my privacy, I might have struck out at her. But she didn’t. And so I didn’t hurt her.”

  “There’s no disgrace, you know, in needing help to deal with trauma. The police get counseling these days. After a shooting or a killing or any highly stressful incident we’re sent to a psychologist. Have to keep going until the doctor says we’re back to normal. Whatever normal means. It’s the same in the army, isn’t it?”

  “No disgrace, no, not usually. For me, though, no forgiveness.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a filthy coward. Because I hid under a truck afraid to move while a man lay in the dust and died.” Hamilton began to cry, soundlessly. Tears dripped down his face. His voice was so low, Winters had to lean forward to hear. “An IED, a street on the outskirts of Kabul. Our truck hit it. Flames, smoke, people screaming, guns firing. Corporal Fred Worthing got the worst of it. He was under my command, and I failed him. I groveled in the dust, covering my head, crying like a baby. Fred had been thrown into the street, out in the open. Blood everywhere, most of his legs nothing but red mist. He screamed and screamed. Calling my name, screaming for help, but I couldn’t move. I heard a shot and the screaming stopped. Then more of our guys arrived and the crowd scattered. I stood up, pretended I’d been under fire myself. Fred lay in the road, not moving. A single shot in the forehead. Killed where he lay by some cowardly piece of shit, unable to defend himself.”

  “You can’t keep blaming yourself,” Winters said, knowing how feeble his words must sound. “If you’d gone to your buddy’s aid, they would have shot you too.”

  Hamilton’s eyes were streaks of red. “I only wish they had.”

  The guy was a mess. Winters knew he was largely to blame, at this moment at least.

  Still, a murder investigation was a murder investigation. He had a job to do, never mind how many innocents got hurt in the process.

  Hamilton had been pretty much his only suspect. Back to square one. Almost two weeks had passed since the shooting. The trail was getting cold fast. Time to head home, and hope something new came to light tomorrow. He told Hamilton he was free to go.

  John Winters watched Molly Smith lead Mark Hamilton to her car, his head down, his steps fumbling. He slipped on a patch of ice and her arm shot out to catch him. He recoiled as if she’d struck him.

  Winters had begun to turn when out of the corner of his eye he saw another man hurrying toward the station, head down, collar pulled up against the icy rain.

  Perhaps John Winters wouldn’t be going home quite yet.

  He opened the door. “Mr. Lindsay, what brings you here?”

  “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Moorehouse. You know her, right?”

  Winters nodded. “We’ve met.”

  “She killed my wife. She murdered Cathy.”

  “That’s a serious accusation, Mr. Lindsay. Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. Elizabeth’s gone back to Victoria. That is, she told me she was going home. You’ll send someone around to arrest her, won’t you?”

  “Why don’t we talk this over first?”

  Winters escorted the man to an interview room. The nice one with a pain
ting on the wall, comfortable furniture, good lighting, plastic flowers in a plastic vase. Rather than to the suspects’ interview room, stark and bare, intended to be intimidating, which was the room where he’d brought Hamilton. Probably another mistake. “If you’ll wait here a moment, I want to ask my colleague to join us.”

  Winters went to his office. He still had the services of one IHIT guy, still working the phones. Ray Lopez had been taken off the Lindsay case. Crime didn’t stop just because they had a murder to investigate.

  “Ray, Gord Lindsay’s here. He’s accusing his girlfriend, Elizabeth Moorehouse, of the murder of his wife.”

  Lopez swiveled in his chair. “Wonder what brought that on?”

  “You think he’s got a point?” IHIT said.

  “Check with VicPD on Moorehouse’s whereabouts, will you. Tell them I might need them to pick her up. Ray, I want you in on this.”

  “You got it.”

  Gord Lindsay was perched on the edge of his chair when Winters and Lopez came in. His eyes darted between the men. Winters introduced them.

  “Can I get you something, Gord? A coffee? Water?”

  “No. Thanks. I want to get this over with.”

  The police took seats and waited for Lindsay to begin.

  “This isn’t easy for me. I spent most of last night tossing and turning, thinking about it. Didn’t get a darned bit of work done today. I don’t know what else I can do. Elizabeth came to my home on Monday, after the funeral.”

  “I saw her in church.”

  “She’s played me for a right jackass all along. I guess that’s why it’s taken me this long to come and talk to you. I feel like a stupid teenage boy. I thought she, well I thought she cared for me. Turns out all she wanted was my money.”

  Winters kept his face impassive. How many times had he heard that before?

  “We had a nice thing going. I had…company when I was in Victoria, she had a man around the house some of the time. When Cathy died, I was afraid Elizabeth would want to move in with me. Get married.” He laughed, the sound bitter, self-mocking. “Hardly. What she wants is money, and never to see me again.”

  “How much money?” Lopez asked.

  “Twenty thou.”

  Not, Winters thought, a heck of a lot. “Be that as it may, I don’t see how that leads to murder.”

  “She’s a crack shot, raised in the wilderness in northern B.C. Her dad hunted for food and taught Elizabeth to hunt alongside him.”

  “Does she own a firearm?” Winters asked.

  “Not that I’ve seen. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t go out and get one, does it?”

  “Have you ever been shooting with her? To a range, hunting?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know she’s a crack shot?”

  “She told me so.”

  “Let’s go back a few steps. About this money. Did you tell her you’d pay?”

  Gord Lindsay told them about the blackmail threat. He talked about his in-laws, always disapproving of him, about his mother, who pretty much put him on a pedestal. His shame, his regrets.

  He talked about Cathy, about what a great woman she was and how much he loved her. Winters let the man talk. He’d never entirely written Lindsay off as the killer of his wife. His alibi was only his young daughter, easy enough to put ideas in her mind of where her dad had been and when. He was sad now, remembering all the good times they’d had, the love they’d shared.

  Regret?

  Had Gord Lindsay set Elizabeth Moorehouse—the crack shot—up to kill Cathy?

  Was her blackmail attempt over more than illicit sex? Was Gord threatening to back out of their deal?

  No. Not if Gord was here, at the police station, telling them about it, pointing the police in the direction of his lover. The man wasn’t that devious, or that clever. Or that stupid.

  A soft knock and the door opened a crack. Ingrid’s head popped in. “Sergeant Winters, can I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Excuse me.” He got to his feet, followed Ingrid into the hallway, and closed the door. He could hear sirens as vehicles pulled out of the parking lot behind the station. A uniformed officer ran past, pulling on his jacket.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We have a report of an active shooter. A woman shot on the street. No sign of the perp.”

  A small-town cop’s worst nightmare. For a brief moment Winters thought of Elizabeth Moorehouse. Had the woman stayed in town, not gone home as she’d told Gord Lindsay?

  He dismissed that idea as quickly as it had come. He’d pursue Lindsay’s accusation of Moorehouse for Cathy’s murder, but for the life of him Winters couldn’t think of any reason she’d start shooting up the streets.

  Mark Hamilton. Winters groaned. He’d let the man, broken, depressed, highly trained, go.

  “Get rid of Mr. Lindsay, will you, Ingrid.” Winters threw the door open. “Ray, you’re with me. Now.”

  Recriminations would have to wait.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Molly Smith reached the scene in minutes. People had gathered in nervous clusters in the middle of the road. They turned to wave at her, and a woman shouted, in a voice high with panic, “Over here, over here.” Smith could see more people kneeling around an object on the sidewalk. Others were coming out of houses, standing on porches, or hurrying toward the excitement. Rain, mixed with snow and ice, continued to fall, but the onlookers paid no attention to their physical comfort.

  She pulled her car to a stop in the middle of the road, heart beating rapidly. She hesitated for a fraction of a moment. Ingrid had said an active shooter. Somewhere, out there, in the night, was a person with a gun. It was not unheard of for a cop hater to create a scene, to deliberately draw the police out into the open.

  Then—bang.

  A child ran past her vehicle, heading for the group on the sidewalk. A boy, running flat out, his unbuttoned jacket billowing behind him. Smith slapped a control on her console, killing the piercing noise of the siren, and then she leapt out of the car. “You. Go home, get out of here, now.”

  The boy whirled around, eyes wide. He did as she’d ordered.

  Sirens, lots of them, heading her way. Her radio squawked with commands, and she shouted into it to tell them she was at the scene.

  The streetlights cast puddles of yellow light into the rain and through naked branches. Some house lights were on, some shrouded in darkness. More houses loomed over them as the hill rose sharply up. The shooter could be absolutely anywhere.

  “Did anyone see what happened?” she yelled, pushing her way into the crowd. “Did anyone see who did this?”

  “I heard a noise,” a woman said. “A bang. Very loud. She was only a few yards in front of me. I saw her fall. I thought she’d tripped. Then I saw the blood.” She began to wail, “Oh my god. Oh, my god.”

  “Anyone else see anything?”

  Heads shook. Arms reached out to comfort the sobbing woman.

  “I heard the shot. I didn’t know what it was, but then the screaming started, so I came over,” a man said. “I was going to do what I could to help, but the doctor arrived.”

  “Get off the street,” Smith told them. “Go home. An officer will be around to talk to you shortly.”

  A woman lay on her back on the pavement, face white, coat soaked with blood. Two people squatted beside her. A woman with her hands pressed against the wound, blood up to her wrists. A man next to her, coat off, bare chested, ripping up what looked to be his own shirt. “I’m a doctor,” the woman said. “Got to stop the bleeding.”

  “Ambulance is coming.”

  Smith turned back to the onlookers. “All of you people, get away from here. Go home.” She considered telling them the shooter might still be out there. Not worth the panic, she decided. People began to break away from the pack. Some left, some stepped back a few feet.

  To her infinite relief, she saw Staff Sergeant Peterson pull up. Not her responsibility any more.

 
More vehicles were arriving, screeching to a stop in the street. City police, Mounties, an ambulance. Headlights broke the night, and sirens and men’s voices broke the quiet of the neighborhood.

  “Smith, you’re with Evans,” Peterson shouted. “Check out these houses. Backyards, alleyways, sheds. You,” he directed a Mountie, stuffing uniform shirt into jeans as he approached, “get these people off the street.”

  Smith glanced behind her as she moved to do as she’d been ordered. The eyes of the woman on the ground were closed, her face drained of color. Blood continued to pump through the fingers of the Good Samaritan, and that meant she was still alive. A man stood over the group, holding an umbrella up in a feeble attempt to provide some protection to the wounded woman and her helpers against the freezing rain.