by James Carol
‘Maybe you should reserve judgement until you’ve had a chance to look for yourself.’
‘I’ll look, but I’m telling you now, you’re wrong.’
Mendoza gave Birch directions to the bomb shelter and watched him waddle off towards the side of the house. Peterson was hurrying along behind him, looking more like a puppy than ever. Winter walked over to the porch and sat on the bottom step. He took out his cigarettes and lit one. He reckoned Griffin should be here in fifteen minutes or so, probably fewer if she found it as ‘unhealthily interesting’ as Mendoza had made out.
He was contemplating a second cigarette when he heard the distant sound of a car moving through the trees. Thirty seconds later a black SUV with County Medical Examiner markings on the hood and doors drove out from between the trees and parked beside their BMW. Griffin got out of the passenger side and stood for a moment gazing over at the dilapidated farmhouse. Winter didn’t recognise the man who’d climbed out of the driver seat. He was in his early forties. Short black hair that was greying at the sides and a pair of John Lennon spectacles. The guy started pulling bags from the rear seat of the SUV.
Griffin came over, a smile on her face. Today’s eyepatch had a five-pointed star picked out in white diamante. Her laden-down assistant came over to join them and she introduced him as Barney. He was almost as tall as Griffin, well over six feet. Handshakes and ‘Hellos’, then it was down to business. Mendoza got the ball rolling by signing over the evidence she’d collected to Barney. The hotel key, the Bible page, the clump of hair. He put everything into one of his bags for safekeeping, then it was Griffin’s turn.
‘So, you’ve found Eugene Price,’ she said, her voice as slow and lazy as ever.
Mendoza nodded.
‘How bad?’
‘That’s a matter of perspective. If you’re talking about the condition of the body, then it’s not bad at all. In fact for someone who’s supposed to have been dead for six years, the body is in surprisingly good condition. But that’s because he hasn’t been dead for six years. If we’re talking about injuries to Eugene Price, then I guess you could say it’s pretty bad. We think he burned his eyes out with a cigarette.’
Griffin just stared at her for a moment. ‘Do you have any idea how many questions I’ve got going around in my head right now?’
‘My guess would be a hell of a lot more than Chief Birch but a damn sight less than me.’
‘Birch is here already?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Griffin groaned.
‘Not a fan, then?’
‘The official line is that Chief Birch is an upstanding citizen and a shining example of everything that a good law enforcement officer should be. The unofficial line is that the man’s an idiot.’
Mendoza laughed. ‘That’s pretty much the same conclusion we’ve come to.’
‘You know, the original investigation would have gone so much smoother if he’d been on vacation that week. He viewed the whole thing as though Jeremiah Lowe and the sheriff’s department had some sort of vendetta against him. It was completely counterproductive.’
‘Clearly there was no vendetta,’ Winter said. ‘We met Lowe. The impression I got was that he’s competent and professional. He knows his stuff.’
‘Of course there wasn’t, and yes he does. Birch is just a little man who desperately wants to believe that he’s a bigger fish than he actually is.’
‘Not so little,’ Winter added. He pointed to the side of the house. ‘The crime scene is that way.’
‘Lead on.’
They arrived at the clearing just as Birch was hauling himself from the ground. Peterson was already at the top, offering his hand to help his boss. Birch batted the hand away and climbed the last couple of steps. He stopped at the top to catch his breath, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, then dipped his head towards the medical examiner.
‘Dr Griffin.’
‘Chief Birch.’
He shook his head slowly, profoundly. ‘That’s a hell of a thing down there. A hell of a thing.’ He turned to Winter. ‘Okay, Mr Bigshot Profiler. How about you tell us what we’re looking at here?’
Winter met Birch’s eye. ‘You know, I can’t help wondering how you didn’t find Eugene six years ago. How did that happen? I mean, he’s right there under your nose, and he’s been here all this time.’
Birch huffed and puffed like the answer was on the tip of his tongue. In the end he didn’t say a word, he just turned and stomped out of the clearing, Peterson trailing a few steps behind.
Mendoza lifted her sunglasses and stared at Winter. ‘What happened to playing nice with the other children?’
Winter looked back along the path, back the way they’d just come. In his mind, he was retracing his steps all the way to Hartwood. He saw the BMW pulling away from the house and driving along the pitted dirt track that cut through the trees. He saw them turn on to the winding two-lane road that led into town.
‘Jeremiah Lowe would have been thorough. He would have turned this place upside down. So why wasn’t Eugene found during the initial investigation?’
Nobody answered. Winter went over the interview with Lowe in his head. The detective had said that there had been a snowstorm, and that it was one of the worst he’d ever seen. He retraced the route from Hartwood to the Price house, the roads blocked with snow, the bumpy track leading to the house as good as impassable. The ground would have been covered by snow, the path to the clearing hidden beneath a blanket of white. And they were looking for Nelson at this point, not Eugene.
He turned to Griffin. ‘Lowe said that the investigation was hampered by a snowstorm. Do you remember how long the snow stayed on the ground?’
‘At least a week, maybe longer.’
‘And did the storm block the roads in and out of Hartwood?’
Griffin nodded.
‘As for this place, I’m guessing that you couldn’t even get in here with a snow plough. Does that sound about right?’
‘I managed to escape after four days, but that was still four days too long.’ She laughed. ‘That’s not something I’m hoping to repeat any time soon.’
All of this fitted his theory. After four days stranded in Hartwood, Lowe and his people would have been itching to get back to Rochester, leaving Birch to clean up. Would Birch have bothered coming back here to search the woods? Not a chance. That would have been way too much like hard work. Which meant that this place would have only got a perfunctory onceover right at the start of the investigation. After all, the main crime scene was at the Reeds’ house. That’s where everyone would have congregated.
‘What’s on your mind?’ Griffin asked him.
‘I’m just wondering how long Amelia had been hanging around waiting for the perfect storm to hit.’
45
‘Alive or dead, hiding someone isn’t easy,’ Winter continued. ‘With a dead body you’ve got all that hassle of dragging them out into the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and digging a shallow grave, and you’ve got to do all that without anyone seeing you. And if they’re alive, well, that’s even tougher. You then need to keep your victim fed and watered, and you need a hiding place, somewhere well out the way so no one can find them.’
He looked over towards the trees, saw the sun playing on the leaves. No one else spoke. They just stood in a ragged circle, the light wind and bird calls breaking the silence. He glanced down at the open trapdoor.
‘Okay, so what if you’re trying to hide a live body and you’ve got cops crawling all over your house? That’s going to be even tougher, right? And you’d better believe that they’re going to be crawling all over the place, because your brother has just committed one of the worst murders that this town has ever seen. So if you’re Amelia Price what are you going to do?’
‘You’re going to muddy the waters as much as you can,’ said Griffin.
‘Exactly. Most people would like you to believe they’re happy to go that extra mile, but that’s bullshit.
The truth is that most people are looking for an easy life. They’re searching for the path of least resistance.’ Winter turned his attention back to the hole and for a split second it was six years ago. Scenarios span through his mind, possibilities and hypotheses and almost-certainties. ‘Amelia’s timing was perfect. She waited until she knew the storm was going to hit then went to the Reeds’ house with Nelson. Then she stood and watched while he murdered them.’
‘Woah,’ said Griffin. ‘Back up there a minute, cowboy. There’s no evidence Amelia was in the house while the Reeds were murdered.’
‘That’s because nobody was looking for that evidence. In this case everyone was happy to accept that there was only one gunman up on the grassy knoll. Of course, the fundamental problem with evidence is that it’s open to interpretation. One set of facts can lead to more than one story.’
Griffin studied him, sunlight bouncing off the diamante stars on her eyepatch. ‘At this point I’ll just have to take your word that she was there.’
‘But how did she get her father into the cellar? asked Barney, breaking into the conversation. ‘The cops would have searched this place. They would have seen a line of footprints leading through the backyard, and they would have gone to investigate, and they would have found this place. Except that obviously didn’t happen.’
‘Amelia must have hidden her father somewhere else,’ Griffin suggested.
‘Why?’ asked Winter. ‘There’s a perfectly good hiding place right here, so why go to the trouble of finding somewhere else? She just wouldn’t. Remember, she would have been looking for the path of least resistance.’
‘And she couldn’t have brushed over the footprints,’ Mendoza cut in. ‘That would have left a trail that was just as obvious.’
‘Exactly. So how did she do it?’ Winter pulled out another cigarette and played with it while he spoke. ‘I think Eugene was right here all along, under the ground and out of the way. He was here on the night the Reeds were murdered. He was still here when the snow cleared enough for the cops to be able to get out here, and he was still here long after they’d gone.’
Mendoza shook her head. ‘Except that doesn’t work. We’re back to the fact that they would have seen the footprints leading out to the woods.’ She went to say something else and stopped at the last moment. ‘Shit. Amelia brought him here before the snow hit, and she didn’t come back until she was certain as she could be that the cops weren’t coming back.’
Winter nodded. ‘That’s the way I see it.’
‘How long did she leave him for?’
‘It took four days for the snow to clear enough for people to escape from Hartwood, so at least that long. But she would have wanted to give it a few days longer to allow for the police turning up unexpectedly. You’re looking at a minimum of a week, but probably longer.’
‘What about food and water?’ asked Griffin.
‘Amelia would have left water, bottles of the stuff. Crates of it. As for food, there were shelves full of cans back in the cellar. I’m sure she could have worked something out. And even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. The way I see it, it comes down to the rule of threes. In an extreme situation you can’t survive for more than three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Eugene was okay for air and shelter, so as long as he had water, he’d be good for three weeks without food.’
‘You think she left him there for three weeks?’ Griffin asked.
‘If she’d needed to, then yes, that’s exactly what she would have done.’
‘What if he’d died?’
‘We know that she’s clever, and careful. She also has patience and can plan. She would have been confident that that wasn’t going to happen.’
‘But she couldn’t have been a hundred per cent certain.’
‘And that was the gamble. She needed to stop her father. At that point, that was the most important thing to her. If he had died, then I guess she would have waited until the ground thawed, and then she would have gone deep into the woods and buried him, and then she would have probably packed up and quietly left town. With her father dead, there would be nothing to keep her here.’
Griffin stared down into the hole, down into the dark. ‘I’ve seen some things, but this has got to be the coldest thing I’ve ever come across. It’s the length of time she held him for that I find incredible. Six years. How can someone do something like this?’
‘That’s the wrong question.’
‘So what’s the right question?’
‘There are two actually. Where is she? And why involve me at all?’
46
Winter watched Griffin and Barney disappear into the ground. He took out his Zippo, clicked the lid open, flicked up a flame. For a moment he just stood there watching the fire dance, then he clicked the lid shut. Click, flick, click.
‘You’re doing that thing with your lighter again,’ Mendoza told him. ‘The thing you do when you’ve got something on your mind.’
‘I was just thinking about the question I asked Griffin. Why involve me?’
‘Yeah, that one again. Still no thoughts?’
Winter frowned. ‘Not really.’
‘Maybe that’s because you’re too close to see things clearly. Okay, here’s an idea. She’s read on the internet that you’re the best there is when it comes to hunting serial criminals and she wanted to prove you wrong.’
‘I guess, that’s one possibility.’
‘Okay, I’m sensing you’re not convinced, so try this on for size: could you be looking for reasons that don’t really exist? Overcomplicating for the sake of overcomplicating? You know, chasing shadows?’
Winter gave a wry laugh. ‘Mendoza, I spend most of my life chasing shadows. It’s what I do.’
‘Even so, my question stands. You know, more often than not the simple explanation is the correct one.’
‘And what if this is one of those occasions where the complicated explanation is the correct one?’
‘So what does that look like?’
Winter sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘In which case, we go with the simple explanation. She wants to go toe-to-toe with the monster catcher.’
Winter kicked at the earth and said nothing.
‘You’re still not convinced, are you? You know what this is like? It’s like the Ryan McCarthy case all over again. Even when we had that asshole in custody you were still tugging at the threads. It’s like you go out of your way to make life difficult for yourself.’
‘That’s not it. I just don’t trust things when they look too neat. Reducing this down to some sort of competition smacks of convenience.’ He switched to the voice of a WWE announcer. ‘And fighting on the side of evil we have Amelia Price. And marshalling the forces of good we have Jefferson Winter.’ He switched back to his real voice. ‘Nothing’s that clear cut. Nobody’s a hundred per cent good, and nobody’s a hundred per cent bad. It’s like yin and yang again.’
‘Your father has a lot to answer for.’
‘And what the hell has my father got to do with this?’
Mendoza met his eye. ‘He’s the reason you’re so damn suspicious of everything. You thought he was one thing and he turned out to be something else entirely. Even now, all these years later, you still haven’t forgiven yourself for calling that one wrong, have you?’
Winter didn’t respond for a while. Mendoza was right about one thing. He had gotten too close to this case. He was too emotionally involved. Amelia had made sure of that by killing Omar.
‘My relationship with my father was a sham from start to finish. You think you know someone, but you don’t really. Nobody does.’
‘Is that your way of saying that I’m right.’
‘No, it’s my way of saying it’s complicated.’
‘No, Winter it’s actually quite simple. You hate being wrong and I’m guessing you’ve been that way since birth. What’s more, the f
act you were wrong about your father kills you. That’s what this double guessing is all about. Admit it.’
Winter kept his mouth shut.
‘Newsflash: sometimes you actually get things right. Like you did with Ryan McCarthy. But sometimes you won’t know all the answers. It’s called being human. I know you like to think you’re better than us mere mortals, but the truth is that you’re flesh and blood, too. If I cut you, you will bleed.’
They drifted into a long, deep silence. The only distractions were the chirping of the birds and the gentle shushing of the wind blowing through the branches. Winter wanted to know what Amelia was up to right now. He wanted to know where she was. Who she was.
One thing was for sure, she wouldn’t be using last night’s disguise. Right now she’d be trying to merge into the background. That meant dull hair and dull eyes and boring conservative clothing that no one would look twice at. But not too boring. Go too far in that direction and people might take notice.
As for where she was, that one was tougher to call. At a rough estimate, six to eight hours had passed since she broke into his room back at the guesthouse. If she’d run, she’d be using the interstates to get as far away from Hartwood as quickly as possible, and she’d be careful to stick to the state speed limit of fifty-five miles an hour because she wouldn’t want to get pulled over.
In eight hours she could easily have covered more than four hundred miles. By now she could be in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or two-thirds of the way to Chicago, which was as good as saying that she could be anywhere. And the bad news was that with every passing minute that area was getting bigger. Then again, maybe she was still in Monroe County. Not that that helped. Not really. Monroe County might be out in the middle of nowhere but there were still plenty of places to hide.
Wherever she was, and whatever she was doing, she’d be planning her next move. He was sure of that. Yes, she might decide to disappear completely, but he didn’t think so. Not quite yet. She was clearly intending for their paths to cross again, and he figured that would happen sooner rather than later. The longer she waited, the more time there was for him to regroup. As for where their next encounter might happen, he didn’t know. What he needed was to engineer a scenario where they crossed on his terms. Right now, she was calling the shots and he was playing catch up. So how could he turn the tables? It was something to think about.
