In an attempt to lighten things, she laughed and said, “My feet feel like ice cubes.”
“I want that Zastrow character charged.”
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. Please, Tony. Promise.”
“Fine, fine.” Back to talking about the intruder: “Ski mask. Sounds like he had a plan.”
“Burglary plan? Robbery plan? Scare-the-agent plan?” She didn’t want to verbalize a possible rape plan.
“You’re obviously getting too close to something, and the killer figured eliminating the main agent in the case could slow us down.”
She didn’t like hearing that. “You think they would have gone all the way and killed me?”
“I do,” he said.
She wished he had sugarcoated it a little. “Why didn’t they go through with it?”
“I suppose the asshole thought he’d have an easy time busting into your room and taking you before you could put up a fight.”
“When he realized I was awake and ready for him, he panicked and ran,” she said.
“Think someone tailed you all the way from the cabin?”
“I would have noticed,” she said. At the same time, she wasn’t sure. Her head had been wrapped around the case. Didn’t help that the big truck would make such an easy tail; it was probably visible from Mars. “Besides you and Dupray, who knew I was going to Brule?”
“Haven’t mentioned Brule to anyone,” he said. “Haven’t mentioned Wisconsin to anyone.”
She stopped pacing and peeked outside from behind the drapes. “If I wasn’t followed and no one was told I was going to Brule, that means someone guessed I was coming here.”
“Why would they guess that?”
She resumed her pacing. “They know the two cases are connected. Knew it’d be just a matter of time before we drew a line from one to the other.”
“Why would they pick tonight to look for you in Brule? It’d have to be a lucky guess.”
She looked outside again. Again saw only the lights of the commercial building across the street. “What if the killer lives in Brule? He kills a woman here years ago. No one catches him. Time passes. He goes over to Minnesota. Slices up another pregnant woman on New Year’s Eve. Comes back home. Hopes no one figures it out. Then he hears we’re on the case. Getting too close. Waits and readies himself.”
“I don’t know, Cat. A little far-fetched. I’d have an easier time believing someone followed you, be it from Walker or from the gas station down the street from the motel.”
She sat down on the bed, mustard yellow instead of pea green. “You might be right.”
“You sound absolutely shot,” he said.
“So do you.”
“You should have taken the deputies up on their offer.”
“No one’s coming back tonight,” she said.
“Hey, about that fight we had earlier—”
“My fault, forget it,” she said.
“Get some sleep, and check in regularly tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t take any chances. Please.”
She had no intention of taking any chances. Bernadette slept with her gun by her side and a chair wedged under the doorknob. As wound up as she was, she managed to sleep deeply enough to dream.
This time she isn’t a participant in a dream; she’s a watcher.
Bernadette was in a large, shadowy space, the only illumination coming from a massive stone fireplace. The oversized blaze lent a decidedly satanic quality to the pair occupying the room. Though the fire animated their faces with dancing light, Bernadette’s nightmare didn’t allow her to see their features. They could have been men or women or genderless demons.
The hellish picture was thrown off-kilter by the Charlie Brown Christmas. The top of the mantel was crowded with winter-themed Peanuts figurines and music boxes. A balsam fir weighted down by more Peanuts characters—heavy on Snoopy and Woodstock—sat against the wall to the right of the hearth. From somewhere in this strange hell came the voice of Burl Ives singing “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”
One of the figures walked back and forth in front of the fireplace. The pacing had a practiced rhythm, like that of a zoo animal accustomed to getting exercise by going back and forth across the width of its cage. Again, Bernadette’s dream allowed no details. She couldn’t tell what the pacer was wearing. He or she was a dark blur. The moving figure was speaking, but Bernadette could make out only four words. They were repeated over and over with the rhythm of a drumbeat.
“Should’ve killed the bitch … Should’ve killed the bitch … Should’ve killed the bitch.”
No name was mentioned, but Bernadette knew she was the bitch. She was the one who should have been killed.
The pacer stopped moving, raised a hand, wiped his or her face with a rag, and dropped the cloth on the floor. Bernadette got a flash of an impression. The rag was black and had eyeholes in it. A ski mask.
The pacing resumed.
“Should’ve killed the bitch … Should’ve killed the bitch … Should’ve killed the bitch.”
The other person in the room was seated on a couch parked between the pacer and the fire. He or she offered up a different chant.
“She’s too close … She’s too close … She’s too close.”
The two genderless voices merged into one:
“Should’ve killed the bitch … She’s too close … Should’ve killed the bitch … She’s too close …”
The voice trailed off, and was replaced by Burl Ives. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
The blur on the couch raised an arm toward the fire. Wait. Not an arm. Something else. A tool of some sort. A chain saw?
The pacer followed the pointing tool, went over to a pile next to the hearth, and carried a log over to the fire. As it was set on the glowing embers, Bernadette got a good look at the wood. It wasn’t a log; it was an arm.
The pacer turned around and went over to the figure on the couch. Extended both palms and tipped them. Coins rained down, landing at the seated figure’s feet. The silver turned to blue and green and red and white. Poker chips.
Back to the fireplace. The pacer stared hard at the mantel, and the Peanuts characters came into focus for Bernadette. Charlie Brown carrying the sad tree bereft of needles. Schroeder seated at his piano with a sheet of Christmas music. Peppermint Patty armed with a peppermint stick. Long fingers plucked a music box out of the collection. Snoopy resting atop his doghouse, the roofline strung with tiny lights. When the hinged roof was opened, the tune “Christmas Time Is Here” tinkled delicately. The top of the doghouse was closed and the music box set back on the mantel.
Suddenly a hand swept across the mantel.
“No! No! No!” yelled the figure on the couch while statues and music boxes tumbled onto the wood floor, making a racket like shattering dishes. Amid the rubble, “Christmas Time Is Here” resumed its tinkle for a few seconds and then stopped.
Bernadette followed the destructive pacer as he or she left the living room and went into the kitchen. It had a fireplace, and a dog curled up on a rug in front of the hearth. The blur bent over the animal and scratched it on the head.
“Good boy … Good boy … Good boy.”
The dog’s tail thumped on the rug.
The figure went over to a basket set alongside the hearth. Did it contain more limb logs? The top was covered with a pink blanket. A blurry hand reached down and peeled back one corner of the cover.
“Good girl… Good girl… Good girl.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dupray woke her up the next morning with his phone call. “I got a jingle from one of the guys. What the hell happened last night? Who tried to break in?”
“Could have been random,” she said, not really believing it but not wanting to dwell on it, either.
“Boyd Zastrow, I know him. Didn’t think he’d ever haul off and—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. “I was on his property and I must have looked like a nut. Didn’t have boots or
a jacket. Had a big gun in my hand. Middle of the night.”
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said, though she felt groggy and a little confused after an evening of weird happenings followed by a night of weird dreams.
Instead of meeting her at the café in town, he gave her directions to his place. He lived just outside Brule.
“I make good coffee,” he said.
• • •
It was terrible coffee.
They sat in his kitchen and sipped the watery stuff, with parts of the file spread out on the table in front of them. It was a small, square kitchen in a small, square house, and seemed a tight fit for such a big guy. Dupray was well over six feet tall and had an impressive gut. His ash-brown hair brushed the collar of his flannel shirt, and his bushy mustache needed a trim. Though he was about her age, he was already twice divorced and had three young sons from the two wives.
He’d just started with Douglas County when the body turned up in the woods, and as a young deputy hadn’t had anything to do with the initial investigation. Now it was his, however, and he’d obviously been over the file many times.
She took notes and asked questions as she read. Campers had discovered the corpse. “Campers? In January?”
“Calling them campers was being generous,” said Dupray. “I knew those slackers and they were looking for a place to drink and screw, pardon my French. Otherwise, that time of year and with no snow, those woods would have been deader than a doornail. She could have been out there until spring thaw. Was dumb fucking luck they found her.”
She continued reading. “Says here the kids didn’t hear or see anything.”
“They’d just pulled into the campground when they found her.” He took a sip of coffee. “Parked their party van and were taking a hike after lunch. My guess is the menu was Bud Light and reefer.”
An autopsy determined that the woman had bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound from a sharp object. It was believed she was knocked unconscious before she was sliced open. Because of the brutality of the attack, the baby was assumed injured or dead. The cut had been vertical, right through the navel. When she read that, Bernadette frowned. “My victim was sliced vertically through the navel, too.”
He shrugged. “Not sure that means anything. How else would you do it if you were an amateur?”
She took a sip of coffee. “No chance the baby survived?”
“The hospitals were checked. No newborn was brought in. The thinking at the time was that without medical attention, well…”
“No sign of the baby’s remains anywhere?”
“My feeling has always been that it was dumped in the woods, too, probably around the same time as the mother. The forest contains the entire forty-four miles of the Bois Brule River, eight miles of frontage on Lake Superior. Could have been disposed of in the water, though a search turned up zip. It’s also quite likely some critters got it.” He cleared his throat. “Being a father myself, I do my best to avoid thinking about that particular likelihood.”
Crime-scene investigators found no fingerprints, and thought the perpetrator had worn gloves. With the lack of snow and the rock-hard ground, there were no shoe prints or tire marks. She didn’t see anything that indicated they had a particular suspect in mind. “Jerry, was there anybody liked for the crime? A village sociopath? Someone who isn’t mentioned in the official records?”
He nodded at the mess on the table. “It’s all there. No suspects. No motive. No nothing. Nobody came out of the woodwork to claim the woman, either. She’s resting in a cheap pine crate under a Jane Doe marker.”
She fingered the handle of her coffee mug. “A sad way to be buried.”
“Worse way to die. Who would do that to a woman and her little baby? Why?”
“We’re asking those very same questions, Jerry.”
“That star stuff, I don’t know. Your deal sounds more like a cult thing. A different animal altogether.”
He was right. The similarities between the two cases weren’t all that compelling. The attempted break-in could have been truly random. She eyed the mess on the table to see if there was anything else of interest and held up a morgue photo of the woman. It wasn’t very clear. There was an evidence bag, the only thing inside it a length of yarn with the ends knotted together. “What’s this?”
“Found in the general vicinity of the body. Park trash.”
She opened her mouth to ask if they’d run a DNA test and instead said, “Hate to trouble you, but I’d love another cup for the road.”
“Let me make another pot.” He got up and turned his back to fuss with the coffee.
“I’ll pull this stuff together.” She stood to gather the papers and quickly took the evidence bag and tucked it into her jacket pocket. She sat back down, squaring the pile of materials.
“There you go.” He refilled her mug and returned to his chair, pouring himself another cup. As he set the pot down, he looked pointedly at her gloved hands.
“I’m always cold,” she explained.
“My ex—uh, one of them—was the same way. Kept a heating pad on her feet all winter.” He took a sip. “What else do you need?”
She turned her notebook to a clean page and slid it across the table. “Could you give me a layout of the woods, a rough sketch?”
“I can do one better.” He got up and went to a kitchen drawer, rummaged around, and came back with a park map. He sat down next to her and pointed, explaining that the forest was a vertical swatch, thirty miles north to south, with U.S. Highway 2 slicing it in half. There were two campgrounds: the Boise Brule, just south of Highway 2, and the Copper Range, four miles north of the highway.
“The goofs who discovered the body were at the second campground, but they’d gone a ways into the woods before finding her,” said Dupray marking an X on the map. “In the fall, these trails would be walked by hunters, but in January there’d be nobody. I figure whoever did it parked at the campground and carried the body into the woods via one of those trails. Dumped her and hightailed it out of there.”
Bernadette shuffled through the papers. “How long did the ME say she’d been out there?”
“Killed the day before she was found, and dumped shortly after death. Could have been in the woods a full twenty-four hours.”
“Would you have to know those woods well?”
“To dump her where she was dumped?” He shrugged. “It’s a popular recreation area. The bastard who did her could have hunted there. Snowmobilers would know the area. Campers. Real campers, not the morons.”
She thought about asking him to take her to the spot but decided she’d rather go it alone.
As he accompanied her to the door, she showed him the photo of her victim. “Poor kid,” he said. “Hope you get the fucker, pardon my French.”
They shook hands. “Thanks for everything, Jerry.”
“Keep me posted. Wish I could have been more help.”
She slipped her hand inside her jacket pocket and felt the evidence bag. “Actually you were a lot of help.”
There’d be nothing to see after all these years. All she wanted to do was get a feel for the place.
The main roads through the forest had been plowed. With the snow, there’d be cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and snow-shoeing. She parked at one of the campsites and hopped out of the truck. She took her Glock out of the holster tucked into her waist, checked it, and put it back. Hiked into the woods. According to the map, she was on Casey-Percival Creek, a fourteen-mile trail.
There was no wind or snowfall, and the sun was out. The temperature was in the teens below zero, but the sunshine made it bearable. In the distance, she heard engines. Snowmobiles. She came to a clearing and looked down at the map. This appeared to be the location. She stood in the middle and did a complete turn, scoping it out. It was well hidden from any road.
She heard a rustling and put her hand inside her jacket, over her gun. Two deer stepped into the clearin
g, twenty yards from where she stood. They stared at her for a few seconds and disappeared into the trees.
“Paranoid,” she said under her breath.
Still, as she returned to the truck she kept her hand over the gun.
Driving back to Brule, she remembered the Presbyterian Church in town. That’s where she would try her sight.
The church—white clapboard with a single steeple topped by a simple cross—had services posted outside. Worship was at nine in the morning on Sundays, followed by fellowship. The front was locked, so she went around and tried a side door. Open.
She went inside the small church and took a seat in the back pew. With tall windows on each side of her, it wasn’t as dark as she normally preferred. The quiet made up for it, however. Bernadette unzipped her jacket and peeled off her hat and gloves. Took out the bag and opened it. She closed her eyes tight. Breathing deeply, she took in the scents of the church. Old wood and lemon furniture polish. She opened her hand and tipped the bag. Wrapped her hand around the length of yarn.
“Lord,” she whispered. “Help me see clearly.”
Slowly, she opened her eyes. All she saw was the inside of the country church.
Bernadette returned the yarn to the bag, pulled her gloves back on, and got up. She’d never been inside a Presbyterian Church before and wasn’t sure of protocol, but on her way out she genuflected and made the sign of the cross.
Burying her hands in her jacket pockets as she walked, she felt the bag and told herself she’d give it one more chance later.
Jerry’s wimpy brew wasn’t going to get her through the day. She spotted a pair of storefronts across the street and prayed that one of them was a coffee shop.
One was a sporting-goods dealer, and the other was a secondhand store. That reminded her that Lydia must have been selling her parents’ things during her travels, and she made a mental note to look for a similar shop in Walker. As she glanced inside the window of the store, something told her to check the place out.
She pushed open the door, and a set of Christmas bells hanging from the knob announced her presence. A woman a decade or so younger than Bernadette, with a tight Fender-guitar T-shirt stretched over massive breasts, came out of the back room. She greeted her only customer with a big smile. “Spending some of that Christmas money?”
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