by Jeff Carson
“Yeah, I was the first responder.”
“Jesus,” she breathed into the phone.
“Yeah, we’ve got the funeral this afternoon, and a huge storm hit last night, so not the easiest of days ahead.”
“I saw that about the storm. And hey, listen, on that note, I’m horny now, and it’s all your fault.”
Wolf raised his eyebrows. He could always count on FBI Special Agent Kristen Luke saying the unexpected.
“I…don’t know what to say to that. Thank you?”
She laughed. “I just saw your interview on television. Nice work. If you’re ever out of a job, you know what field to enter next.”
“Really? Thanks. Television, though? I couldn’t wear all that makeup.”
“I was thinking cameraman,” she said.
Wolf smiled and sensed Luke smiling on the other end, probably drawing longing eyes in a room full of male FBI agents. “How are you?”
“You already asked that,” her voice dropped in volume and her tone went soft.
“Give me the real answer,” Wolf said.
“Well, I do miss you, if that’s what you’re fishing for. But, really, it’s good. I like the people I’m working with. There are a lot of women in the Denver F.O., which is nice for my sanity, and a lot more opportunities for advancement than in Glenwood Springs, that’s for sure.”
“And how about living down in the big city?”
She blew into the phone. “Chicago was a big city. Denver’s manageable. I like it, lots to do. I’ve gone out a few times for drinks with a few agents. Otherwise, I eat, sleep, and then get up and do it all over again. I’ve also had to go up a couple times to see my mom.”
Wolf nodded and let the silence settle for a second. He could have said something like You drove all the way up to Glenwood Springs and didn’t drop me a line? I could have met you for dinner. But Kristen Luke and David Wolf had had a good few months, and the call of duty, and their commitment to their respective jobs, was stronger than their ability to hold a relationship together, and they both knew trying to force anything was pointless.
As a couple they hadn’t exactly been doomed from the get go; instead their relationship had been destined to become something else besides what other people considered normal. Even when they had been going steady (as steady as it could get), being separated by fifty miles of mountainous terrain had meant they never slept in each other’s beds more than a few times a month, and neither of them was going to push for more from the other person. Each already had enough pushing from their jobs, and then from what waited for them off the job.
They had enjoyed each other’s company for six months, and when federal budget cuts shut down the Glenwood Springs FBI field office, Luke was given a choice between Salt Lake City and Denver. In the end, proximity to Wolf, or any consideration for Wolf and his feelings, was never a part of her decision to transfer to Denver. She was there to be closer to her ailing mother, just a two-and-a-half hour drive away on I-70, and just as importantly, the Denver assignment gave her the best opportunity for advancement in the Bureau.
“So, you seeing anyone?” she asked.
“Nah, you?”
“Mmm,” she said. “Nobody yet. I think you raised my standards to unattainable heights.”
“Yeah well, television star, sheriff, incredible buttocks… good luck topping that.”
She laughed. “What about Sarah?”
Wolf paused. “What about her?”
He gazed across the street at Margaret Hitchens’s real estate office, where Sarah Muller had hung her newly acquired real estate license and was already proving to be a huge asset to the company.
“I heard she broke up with her boyfriend,” Luke said in a nonchalant tone, “and he skipped town to Vail.”
Wolf shook his head. “How are you getting this information?”
She kept silent.
“Are you talking to my mom down there?” He was dead serious for a second, and then puzzled out the truth. “Oh, yeah. Your new buddy. Patterson.”
One night, when Luke had come into town to visit him, they’d gone down to Beer Goggles to join some deputies in the department for a beer. That night Luke and Patterson had formed a close bond at what he considered unnatural speed. It was like Luke suddenly had the little sister she’d always wanted, and Patterson the big one. Apparently, they still kept in touch and Wolf’s love prospects were a topic of discussion.
“So?” Luke asked.
“So, what?” Wolf answered. “Look, I gotta get going, we’ve got a lot of snow on the ground, and—“
“All right, all right. Relax, I’m just looking out for you. I think you two still have a future together.”
Wolf sighed. “Okay, thanks for calling, Mom.”
Luke chuckled into Wolf’s ear, and then Wolf heard a man call her name in the background. “I’ve gotta go. Later.”
“Later.”
Wolf set down the phone and stood up. He’d dicked around enough for the type of morning it was outside. There were probably people out there in need of help, and he was playing footsie on the phone with girls. He slipped on his jacket, grabbed his hat and gloves, and walked out into the squad room.
“I’m heading out,” Wolf said to Wilson.
Wilson looked up from his computer screen with watery eyes and a clenched jaw that was hiding a yawn. “Okay, boss. I’ll be here.”
The door flew open, and a puff of heat hit Wolf. Tammy’s imposing figure stood in the doorway to her reception office. “Rachette and Patterson just called in a 10-79 on County 15.”
“Get your stuff on,” Wolf said to Wilson. “You’re coming with me.”
Chapter 6
Wolf stood in the cold air on County Road 15, watching the ambulance crawl up the road past the line of police SUVs.
He cursed as he dug his fingers into his five-day beard. Again. Every winter he grew it, despite remembering the hell his face had to endure the year before. But, it was something men in the mountains did in the winter; men everywhere did. As he pulled off his glove for a better tool to dig into his fur-covered jawbone, he wondered if the insulation from the bitter temperatures was worth it, and decided no.
Wolf put his glove back on and looked at Rachette. “You ever talk to her?”
Wolf stood with deputies Rachette, Yates, Patterson and Wilson near the fluttering crime tape sectioning off a large area around Stephanie Lang’s body.
“No, not really. I’ve just seen her around. She’s out at the bars most weekends.”
“Yeah, same here,” Yates said.
Rachette and Yates were two of the more social deputies in the department, and that meant spending time off like many young men do – in bars, drinking and chasing women. When they’d produced the driver’s license from her wallet and ID’d her as Stephanie Lang, Rachette and Yates came forward as knowing her. Wolf, on the other hand, thought she looked familiar but couldn’t place her.
“Who’d she hang out with?” Wolf asked.
Yates smirked and nodded, “Guys.”
Wolf frowned. “What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “She’s always with a different guy, like every night I’ve seen her. I’ve heard she gets around. Sorry, got around.”
“Yeah, that she did,” Rachette said.
Wolf closed his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses and willed his skin to pull as much warmth from the blaring sun as possible. It was mid-morning, and the temperature was as high as it was going to get. And according to his dashboard computer when he drove up here, that was negative one degree. Somehow talking to Rachette and Yates about this dead woman wasn’t helping any.
“And I take it you guys had personal experience with her?” Patterson asked in a serious tone.
Rachette sniffed. “I might have cuddled with her—“
“Let’s just remember this is someone’s daughter lying dead in the snow and shut the hell up about it for a few minutes, okay?”
Rachette looke
d at Wolf and swallowed. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, Sheriff.”
The sound of crunching tires coming to a halt, and the diesel engine going quiet signaled the Sluice County Medical Examiner had officially arrived.
Wolf walked away from the others and down the road.
The passenger door of the ambulance squeaked open. Dr. Lorber, the Sluice County Deputy Medical Examiner, stepped out and stretched his lanky arms overhead.
He left the door open and leaned back inside, and then pulled a Russian-style fur hat with earflaps over his lengthy pony-tailed hair and straightened his glasses. “Oh, man! It’s freezing!” He said zipping up his jacket and slamming the door.
Wolf stalked closer, watching Lorber go to the back hatch doors of the vehicle that Lorber cleverly called The Meatwagon. An assistant Wolf recognized as Dr. Joe Blank from the other day, was at the rear, waiting to hand Lorber a black canvass bag.
“Dr. Lorber,” Wolf said, “Dr. Blank.”
Lorber twisted and looked at Wolf. Wolf knew there were gray, intelligent eyes hidden underneath the painful squint. Lorber’s eyesight wasn’t the best, and for some reason, Lorber connected that sunglasses were out of the question for him, something Wolf didn’t envy of Lorber at this altitude, and especially on a bright day like today.
Lorber ripped off his glove off and stepped toward Wolf with a wide brown-toothed smile, the product of too many cigarettes washed down with coffee.
“Fancy seeing you again,” he said, tucking a strand of long hair back into his fur hat. “Good God, man, Rocky Points is producing some dead bodies lately.”
Wolf took off his glove and shook Lorber’s long, thin hand. Lorber was one of the taller men Wolf had ever met, and had Lorber stood straight, he would have been around six-foot-seven. However, because of his posture, Wolf didn’t have to look up to meet his eyes. Whether caused by a spinal defect or the result of being self-conscious of his towering height, or something else, Wolf didn’t know, but the effect was that he was greeting a large stoop-necked bird, like a condor or a vulture.
Lorber pulled his glove back on and nodded. “Right. Show me what you’ve got.”
Wolf turned and walked and Lorber loped next to him.
“Lucky we got here at all. That slide on the pass looks like it was something else. The CDOT guys had a little canyon dug through, and we barely fit. Were you there to see it?”
“I was,” Wolf said.
Lorber looked over at the upturned pickup truck with the plow and gave a soft whistle. “The driver okay?”
“Yeah, just shaken up.”
The driver of the plow truck was already gone, having already been interviewed in a warm vehicle, and then driven to town.
“Deputy Patterson!” Lorber shouted, like he always did when he saw her.
Patterson looked down with a blushed smile and kicked her feet.
Lorber had worked with the department a few months ago to improve their forensics lab at the station, and in doing so had worked closely with Patterson. From the first hour they worked together, Lorber had loved her, and now couldn’t shut up about her or stop himself from embarrassing her with praise whenever they saw one another in public.
“Hope you’re keeping these bastard men in line,” Lorber added.
Patterson chuckled without smiling and turned to lift the crime scene tape.
Lorber looked around at the somber faced deputies and then gave Wolf a sideways glance.
Wolf was keenly aware he’d just vanquished any morale that may have built up among everyone with his tongue-lashing. But then again, he wasn’t sure this was a situation for chipper morale, anyway.
Wolf followed Lorber under the tape.
“Ah, there she is,” Lorber said as the body came into view.
It had taken almost two hours for Lorber to get here from County hospital on bad roads. During that time, Wolf had studied the girl’s body several times, but frequency wasn’t making it any easier for Wolf to see.
Wolf had never gotten too disturbed or squeamish by corpses, but this one was particularly gruesome. The woman’s face was pale gray, almost white, and her eyes were open and frozen solid, obscuring the true eye color, but there seemed to be a hint of blue faintly visible through the iced-over corneas. Only a few streaks of black were visible under the otherwise white-encrusted head of hair. Her lips were glacier blue and her mouth was open, tongue protruding and frozen solid.
Then there was the red X marked on her forehead, giving Wolf the feeling her death had been part of a satanic ritual or something. Shivers ran through Wolf every time he looked at the body, and not because of the arctic temperatures.
Tracking his eyes down only led to more disturbing sights. She wore torn up black slacks, revealing frozen and shredded meat underneath the fabric. One of her feet was next to her head, which said less about the woman’s flexibility and more about how much of a number the plow had done on her. Her white blouse was also torn to shreds, revealing a snow-white waist and belly that was twisted, striped with red openings in her flesh. Her head had been wrenched around one hundred eighty degrees, like an owl. The final thing that kept attracting Wolf’s attention was a green tattoo of a bird and a one-word caption on her exposed lower back. Happy.
Lorber bent down close next to the corpse. Craning his neck this way and that, he studied the head and neck, and then leaned toward the dead woman’s crotch, and then ran his eyes up and down her contorted legs, and then finally he stood back up.
“Strangled,” he announced. “At least it looks like it.”
Wolf had seen the bruising on the woman’s neck, and how the tongue protruded, but he’d also seen its unnatural twist, and the body was so mangled, he had to admit the cause of death wasn’t as obvious to him. “She’s pretty chewed up. Are you sure?”
“The plow chewed her up. Probably she was originally back there”—Lorber pointed at the line of department SUV’s—“and then she was pushed up the road by the plow this morning and deposited here. Who knows how far she tumbled against that steel.” He turned and pointed at the upturned plow truck. “None of these flesh injuries happened before she died. She was frozen stiff when these happened, and long dead.”
Wolf nodded.
Lorber looked down at the truck, teetering on its side, then up the road, then back to Wolf. “I take it this guy plowed her and didn’t notice, then noticed on the way back down the road and crashed?”
Wolf nodded, “You’ve solved the traffic accident. Now what about her?”
Lorber smiled and looked back down. “I’ll get her back to the hospital, thaw her out, and do an autopsy. On this leg, it looks like her fabric is frozen straight to the skin. I think that’s urine. Along with the ligature bruising, that’s why I’d put my money on strangulation. I’ll check what the hell that is on her forehead. And you’re right, though. She’s torn up, and I could be wrong about the strangling. I’ve got myself a puzzle here.”
Wolf looked at him and narrowed his eyes, swearing he heard a hint of excitement in his voice.
“You ID her?” Lorber asked.
“We found her coat with her wallet in her pocket right there”—Wolf pointed at the jacket half dug out of the snow bank with a yellow evidence marker next to it—“ID inside. A local girl.”
“You get a cell phone?” Lorber asked.
“Yeah, dead and damaged though. We’re working on it.”
Rachette walked up behind Wolf and cleared his throat. “Sir, we found the current address for our vic.”
“Yeah?” Wolf asked.
“What,” Lorber said, “The license not current?”
Wolf shook his head.
“She lives right up the road”—Rachette pointed—“a half mile up on the right. Tammy just called me with the address. Says she’s been renting with two other roommates.”
Wolf turned back to Lorber.
“Go,” Lorber said, bending down to study the body again. “Joe and I have this.”
Wolf nodded an
d followed Rachette underneath the tape.
“Patterson, Rachette, with me,” Wolf said. “Baine, secure the scene with Yates. Wilson, you can head back to the station. And, I’m sorry I snapped earlier. There’s a lot of death lately, and it’s…”
“No problem, sir,” Rachette said. “I was out of line and I apologize.”
Wolf nodded and walked away, certain that in his twenty years in the department under Burton, Wolf had never once heard him apologize like that. Burton would have disapproved if he were here. But he wasn’t here. He was at home, undoubtedly in bed, waiting for the scotch to metabolize out of his system while he watched fishing shows on TV.
Chapter 7
Wolf pulled up to the address for Stephanie Lang and got out of his SUV. Rachette and Patterson pulled up behind him and did the same.
The house was a one-story ranch amid a row of identical one-story ranches. Thirty years ago, a man named Walt Wiggit built six houses, all in a row, and to this day still owned and rented them out. This house in front of them, sitting at the end of a long, narrow, shoveled walk, was the first of them.
It was painted dark brown and featured a front-facing large picture window, through which Wolf and his deputies had an unobstructed view into the living room. Inside there were a few young people shuffling around, looking outside with wide-eyed glares as they urgently talked with one another.
“Anything on that cell phone?” Wolf asked Patterson.
“No, sir. It’s damaged. Tammy is getting records from the phone company, but as far as looking at the phone itself, it’s toast. Must have been the snow.”
“The plow didn’t help.” Wolf looked at Rachette. “You know her roommates?”
Rachette shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Wolf, with Rachette and Patterson in tow, proceeded down the walk toward the porch. The cold froze his nostrils for the hundredth time that day. He pinched the zipper on his jacket with his gloved fingers and pulled it all the way up.
They stepped up on the porch, and Wolf pushed the bell.
