Cold Conspiracy

by Cindi Myers

  Jamie wanted to reassure the woman that she would be fine—that there was nothing to worry about. But with six women dead and the department no closer to finding the killer, the words would be empty and meaningless. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m not sure how late I’ll be. If it will be later than nine, I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Mrs. Simmons said. “Donna is welcome to spend the night if she needs to. She’s good company.”

  Ten minutes later, Jamie parked her SUV in the lot behind the sheriff’s department. She stowed her purse in her locker and made her way down the hall to the conference room. Dwight and Travis’s brother, Deputy Gage Walker, were already there, along with Ryder Stewart from Colorado State Patrol, and US Marshal Cody Rankin, his arm in a sling.

  “How’s the arm?” Jamie asked as she took a seat at the table across from Cody.

  “The arm’s fine. The shoulder hurts where they took the bullet out, but I’ll live.” He had been shot by an ex-con who had been pursuing him and the woman who was catering Travis’s upcoming wedding. “I’m not officially on duty,” Cody added. “But Travis asked me to sit in and contribute what I could.”

  The sheriff entered and everyone moved to seats around the table. Though newspaper reports almost always included at least one reference to the sheriff’s “boyish good looks,” today he looked much older, like a combat veteran who has seen too many battles. He walked to the bulletin board in the center of the wall facing the conference table and pinned up an eight-by-ten glossy photo of a smiling, dark-haired woman. The image joined five others of similarly smiling, pretty females. The victims of the Ice Cold Killer.

  “Her name is Michaela Underwood,” Travis said. “Twenty-two years old, she moved to Eagle Mountain to live near her parents. She recently started a new job at the bank.” He turned to face them. “These killings have got to stop,” he said. “And they have to stop now.”

  Chapter Three

  The meeting at the sheriff’s department had already begun when Nate arrived. He slipped into the empty seat next to Jamie. She glanced at him, her expression unreadable, then turned her attention back to the sheriff, who was speaking.

  “We’re putting every resource we’ve got behind this case,” Travis said. “We’re going to look at every bit of evidence again. We’re going to reinterview everyone even remotely connected with the women who died, everyone in the areas where they were killed—anyone who might have possibly seen or heard anything.”

  “What about suspects?” Nate asked. He indicated a board on the far left side of the room, where photos of several men were pinned.

  “Where we can, we’ll talk to them again.” Travis said. “We’ve ruled them out as the murderers, but they may know something.” He rested his pointer on photos of a pair of young men at the top of the chart. “Alex Woodruff and Tim Dawson drew our attention because they were at the Walking W Ranch the day the third victim, Fiona Winslow, was killed. They didn’t have an alibi for the previous two murders, of Kelly Farrow and Christy O’Brien. Once the road reopened, they disappeared. I’m still trying to confirm that they returned to Fort Collins, where they’re supposedly attending Colorado State University.”

  He shifted the pointer to a photo of a handsome, dark-haired man. “Ken Rutledge came to our attention because he lived next door to Kelly Farrow and had dated her business partner, Darcy Marsh. When he attacked Darcy several times and eventually kidnapped her, we thought we had found our killer. But since his arrest, there have been three more murders.”

  Quickly, Travis summarized the case against the remaining suspects—three high school students who had been seen the night Christy O’Brien was murdered, and a veterinarian who resented Kelly Farrow and Darcy Marsh setting up a competing veterinary practice. “They all have solid alibis for most of the murders, so we had to rule them out,” he concluded.

  He moved back to the head of the conference table. “We’re putting together profiles of all the victims, to see if we can find any common ground, and we’re constructing a detailed timeline. If you’re not out on a call, then I want you studying the evidence, looking for clues and trying to anticipate this killer’s next move.”

  They all murmured agreement.

  “Some of this we’ve already done,” Travis said. “But we’re going to do it again. The person who did this left clues that tell us who he is. It’s up to us to find them. Colorado Bureau of Investigation has agreed to send an investigator to work with us when the road opens again, but we don’t know when that will be. Until then, we’re on our own. I want to start by considering some questions.”

  He picked up a marker and wrote on a whiteboard to the left of the women’s pictures, speaking as he wrote. “Why is this killer—or killers—here?”

  “Because he lives here,” Gage said.

  “Because he was visiting here and got caught by the snow,” Dwight added.

  “Because he came here to kill someone specific and found out he liked it,” Jamie said. She flushed as the others turned to look at her. “It would be one way to confuse authorities about one specific murder,” she said. “By committing a bunch of unrelated ones.”

  Travis nodded and added this to their list of reasons.

  “Are we talking about one man working alone, or two men working together?” Ryder asked.

  “That was my next question.” Travis wrote it on the whiteboard.

  “I think it has to be two,” Gage said. “The timing of some of the killings—Christy O’Brien, Fiona Winslow and Anita Allbritton, in particular—required everything to be carried out very quickly. The woman had to be subdued, bound, killed and put into her vehicle. One man would have a hard time doing that.”

  “Maybe he’s a really big guy,” Cody said. “Really powerful—powerful enough to overwhelm and subdue the women.”

  “I agree with Gage that I think we’re probably looking at two men,” Travis said. “But that should make it easier to catch them. And if we find one, that will probably lead us to the second one.” He turned to write on the board again. “What do we know for certain about these murders?”

  “The victims are all women,” Dwight said. “Young women—all of them under forty, most under thirty.”

  “They’re all killed out of doors,” Nate said. “Away from other people.”

  “Except for Fiona,” Jamie said. “There were a lot of people around when she was killed.”

  “They were all left in vehicles, except Fiona,” Ryder said. “And they were alone in their vehicles.”

  “The killer uses the weather to his advantage,” Gage said. “The snow makes travel difficult and covers up his tracks.”

  “I think he likes to taunt law enforcement,” Ryder said. “He leaves those cards, knowing we’ll find them.”

  “He wants us to know he’s committing the murders, but is that really taunting?” Dwight asked.

  “He killed Fiona at the Walker Ranch,” Gage said. “When the place was crawling with cops.” He shifted to look at Jamie and Nate. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew the two of you were nearby when he killed Michaela this morning.”

  Jamie gasped. “That deer!”

  Nate touched her arm. “What deer?”

  “When my sister and I were on the trail this morning, a buck burst out of the underbrush suddenly, as if something had startled it,” she said. “That’s what my dogs were chasing. I wondered at the time if a mountain lion was after it. And when I was trying to catch the dogs I felt...unsettled.” Her eyes met his, tinged with fear. “As if someone was watching me.”

  “That could be a good thing, if he thinks he’s taunting us,” Travis said. “We might be able to draw him out into the open.”

  “So far he’s been very good at evading us,” Gage said.

  “He has, but from now on, we’re going to be better.” Travis pointed to Nate. “Did
you see anyone else when you were in the area near the murder this morning?”

  “I talked to an ice fisherman—checked his fishing license. A local guy.” He searched his memory. “Abel Crutchfield.”

  “Gage, find him and interview him,” Travis said.

  Gage nodded.

  “Anyone else?” Travis asked.

  Nate shook his head. “Nobody else—except Jamie—Deputy Douglas—and her sister.”

  “Jamie, did you see anyone while you and your sister were out there?”

  “No one,” she admitted. “We didn’t even pass any cars once we turned off the main highway.”

  “You start with the women,” Travis told her. “See if you can find any commonalities—or any one woman who had a reason someone might want to kill her. Enough that he would kill others to cover up the crime.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Travis gave the others their assignments—Nate was going to work with Gage on re-canvassing people who might have been in the vicinity of the two murders that occurred on forest service land.

  The meeting ended and they filed out of the conference room, unsmiling and mostly silent. Nate stayed close to Jamie. “Is Donna upset about all this?” he asked.

  “A little.” She shook her head. “Not too much. She does a good job of living in the moment, and I try to keep things low-key—not bring the job home or act upset around her.”

  “These killings have everyone on edge,” he said.

  “It’s frustrating, having him do this right under our noses. I realize it might be more than one person, but it’s awkward to keep saying ‘killer or killers.’”

  “I get that,” Nate said. “We all say ‘he,’ even though we suspect more than one person is involved.”

  “This is a small community,” Jamie said. “We ought to be able to spot someone like this.”

  “He knows how to blend in,” Nate said. “Or to hide.”

  She rolled her shoulders, as if shrugging off some burden. “I was surprised to see you here this afternoon,” she said.

  “The sheriff asked me to sit in. I’ve been one of the first on the scene for three of the murders. I spend a lot of time in the backcountry, where several of the women were found. He’s trying to pull in every resource that might help. And I want to help. There’s not a law enforcement officer in the county who doesn’t want to catch this guy.”

  “Of course. Well, I’d better get to work. I’m going to start reviewing all the information we have about the victims.” She started to turn away, but Nate touched her arm, stopping her.

  “Now that I’m back in Eagle Mountain, I’d really like us to be friends again,” he said.

  The look she leveled at him held a decided chill. “I don’t have a lot of time for hanging out and reminiscing about the old days,” she said.

  She shrugged out of his grasp and started down the hall but was stopped by Adelaide Kinkaid. The seventy-something office manager alternately nagged and nurtured the sheriff and his deputies, and kept her finger on the pulse of the town. She peered over the tops of her purple bifocals at Jamie. “Where’s the sheriff?” she asked. “There’s someone here to see him.”

  “I think he’s still in the conference room, talking to Gage,” Jamie said.

  “I’ll get him.” Adelaide started to move past Jamie, then said, “You go on up front and stay with the couple who are waiting. I’m thinking this might benefit from a woman’s touch.”

  Nate followed Jamie into the small front lobby of the sheriff’s department. A man and a woman in their early thirties huddled together near the door, arms around each other, the man’s head bent close to the woman’s. They both looked up when Jamie and Nate arrived, the woman’s face a mask of sorrow, her eyes puffy and red from crying.

  “I’m Deputy Douglas.” Jamie introduced herself. “The sheriff will be here shortly. Can I help you in the meantime?”

  “We’re Drew and Sarah Michener.” The man offered his hand. “We came to find out everything we could about...about Michaela Underwood’s death.” He looked down at his wife, who had bowed her head and was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “We just heard the news, from her parents.”

  “Michaela is...was...my sister,” the woman—Sarah—said. “We heard she was killed in the woods near here this morning. I want to know if that man—Al—killed her.”

  “Who is Al?” Jamie asked.

  “The man she was supposed to meet this morning, to go snowshoeing,” Sarah said. “If you found her by herself, and he wasn’t there, he must have been the one to kill her.”

  “I’m Sheriff Walker.” Travis joined them in the lobby. “I understand you wanted to talk to me.”

  “This is Drew and Sarah Michener.” Jamie made the introductions. “Michaela Underwood’s sister and brother-in-law.”

  Travis shook hands with the Micheners. “We’d better talk about this in my office,” he said. Jamie started to turn away, but Travis stopped her. “Deputy Douglas, you come, too.”

  Nate moved aside to let them pass, Travis leading the way to his office, Jamie bringing up the rear.

  Gage joined him in the lobby. “What’s up?” he asked, watching the couple disappear into Travis’s office.

  “Michaela’s sister and her husband think they know who killed her,” Nate said. “Or at least, she was supposed to meet a man—someone named Al—to go snowshoeing this morning.”

  “And you didn’t see any sign of him out there with her, did you?” Gage asked.

  “No.” He continued to study the closed door, wishing he could hear what was going on in there. “Even if he didn’t kill Michaela, the sheriff is going to want to find him and talk to him.”

  Gage put his hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Right now, the sheriff wants me to talk to this ice fisherman, Abel Crutchfield. You up for coming with me?”

  “Sure.” He’d planned to finish his report on the condition of elk and deer herds in the area, but that could wait. A murder investigation took precedence over everything.

  * * *

  JAMIE FOLLOWED THE Micheners into Travis’s office, closing the door after her. She stood by the door, while the Micheners occupied the two chairs in front of Travis’s desk. Even if Jamie could have found more seating, there wasn’t room for it in the small room.

  Travis settled behind the desk, a neat, uncluttered space with only a laptop and a stack of files visible. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. “Losing a loved one is always hard, but losing them to murder is especially tough. We’re doing everything we can to find who did this, but if you have anything you think can help us, we certainly want to know.”

  Sarah looked at her husband, who cleared his throat. “Can you tell us more about what you already know?” he asked. “We got the call this morning from Sarah’s father—Michaela lived with them, so I assume that’s how you knew to contact them. But they’re understandably upset and didn’t have a lot of details.”

  “We found Michaela’s body in her vehicle on the side of Forest Service Road 1410,” Travis said. “The medical examiner thinks she was killed earlier this morning. Do you know why she would have been in that area?”

  “She had a date to go snowshoeing with a man,” Sarah said. “Someone named Al. I don’t know his last name.” She leaned forward, clenched hands pressed to her chest. “I told her not to go out with someone she didn’t know—especially not to someplace where there weren’t a lot of other people around. Especially not with this...this madman going around killing women. But she wouldn’t listen to me.” Her face crumpled. “If only she had listened.”

  Drew rubbed his wife’s back as she struggled to pull herself together. “Michaela was young,” he said. “Only twenty-two. And she trusted people. She still thought she was invincible.”

  “How did she meet this man?” Travis asked.

 
; Sarah sniffed, straightening her shoulders. “She met him at the bank. She just started the job on the first of the month. She’s a teller. I guess they flirted, and the next day he came back and asked her out. She said...she said he was really nice and cute, and that she thought the idea of going snowshoeing was fun, and would be a good way to get to know each other without a lot of pressure.”

  “When was this—when they met?” Travis asked.

  “I think it was Thursday when he first came into the bank.” Sarah nodded. “Yes, Thursday. Because Friday she and I met for lunch and she told me about him—then she called me later that day to tell me he’d come back in and they’d made a date for Monday. She had the day off, and I guess he did, too.”

  “Did she say where he worked?” Travis asked. “Or what kind of work he did?”

  “No.” Sarah sighed. “I asked her that, too. She said she didn’t know and it didn’t matter, because that was the kind of thing they could get to know about each other on Monday. She told me I was too uptight and I worried too much. But I was right to worry! He must have been the one who killed her.”

  “What time were they supposed to meet?” Travis asked. “Or did he arrange to pick her up at your parents’ house?”

  “She said they were meeting at eight thirty at the trailhead for the snowshoe trails,” Sarah said. “She told me she was being smart, driving herself, because if the date didn’t go well, it would be easy for her to leave.”

  Travis looked to Jamie. “You said you got to the trailhead about nine thirty?”

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “There wasn’t anyone else there. And no other cars in the parking area. We didn’t pass any cars on the way in, either.”

  “Her parents said she left their house at eight,” Drew volunteered.

  “She didn’t tell them she was meeting a man,” Sarah said. “Just that she was going snowshoeing with friends.”

  Travis nodded. “Tell me everything your sister said to you about this man—even if you don’t think it’s important. Did she describe what he looked like? Did she say where he lived, or if he gave her his phone number?”