Heart of Ice

by Gregg Olsen

  Such murders were about rage fueled by envy.

  She looked down at the paper with the stats from the coroner.

  Name: Amanda Lynn Crawford

  Height: 5'2"

  Weight: 100 lbs

  Age: 29

  Hair: Blond

  Eyes: Brown

  Marks/Tattoos: A pink rose on lower back.

  External evidence of injury: Postmortem ligature on wrists and ankles. Markings correspond with chains recovered from the scene.

  Cause of Death: Asphyxiation.

  Special note: The victim carried a full-term fetus, a female.

  Emily had seen the body at the coroner’s in Spokane, so she held the horrific visual whenever she went anywhere. Not just Mandy’s case. But the others, too. Emily sometimes saw blood spatter in pizza sauce. The sound of a chopping knife against a wooden cutting board often conjured up images of extreme brutality. One time, when she had the misfortune of running over an opossum, she felt the wheels crunch and she thought of a little boy that had been run over by his older brother.

  “You have that look on your face,” her daughter Jenna had said one time when they were making stir-fry.

  “What look?”

  “Mom, the look. You know. The look that means you’re thinking about those celery sticks as something disgusting. Something dead. Bones or something.”

  Emily tried to shake it off, protesting to Jenna that she couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “Honey, I did have my mind on work, but not that. Something boring. No bones.”

  But it was a lie.

  In time, Emily improved upon masking the look. There was only one thing that troubled her more than the pictures and the thoughts of what sick men do to the weak and frightened. She loathed how a vital young woman like Mandy—after being brutally murdered—could face the further indignity of being nothing more than a few words on a report.

  Name, height, weight, age, hair, eyes…cause of death.

  She studied the pristine pages of the report. In time, they’d be covered with the oily spots of someone’s lunch, they’d be folded, maybe torn, as the days and the weeks of the investigation passed. Cherrystone was going to a computerized system in the new year, and no doubt Mandy Crawford’s murder would be the last of the old-school folders in the archive of a county that had seen only twenty-one murders in its entire history.

  Emily looked at the photo of the body. There was a black swipe against Mandy’s wrists, ligature marks had been determined by the coroner to be postmortem. The killer had tied her to some chains in order to sink the corpse into the icy water.

  Hoping, of course, that she’d stay put.

  But Mandy didn’t. She literally rose from the dead.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Lewiston, Idaho

  Nothing much ever happened in that remote patch of Idaho. But that day was to be different.

  Every morning for the past decade or so, Leroy Evans pulled a cowboy hat over a stocking cap and saddled up his old bay mare, named Screamin’ Demon, to survey the security of the fence that ran the boundary of his eighty-two-acre ranch just east of Lewiston, Idaho. Neighbors four miles away had crossed their German shepherds with wolves for some goddamn stupid reason. Ever since then, a pack ran free in the fields looking to wreak havoc and make a meal out of someone’s livestock.

  Leroy had raised sheep and cattle to great success, and had even dabbled in ostriches and emus. The mammoth birds were a complete bust—their low-fat meat and supple leather never really caught on with butchers or mass-market shoe manufacturers. He had kept only about fifty of the birds, and gathered their eggs for a fellow who etched them with tribal designs that didn’t mean a darn thing but were hot sellers at craft shows.

  It was cold that morning. Icy. Most mornings that time of year were. Leroy went east first, so he could catch the slight warmth of the rising sun on his face as it tripped over the Sawtooth Range. About ten minutes into his ride, at the point where his property hit the main highway, he stopped Screamin’ Demon.

  Strange place for an O egg, he thought, as he dismounted, then bent down to pick it up. Something wasn’t quite right. He pushed back some bunched-up dead ryegrass with the toe of his range-scarred boots.

  “Hey!” he said, loud enough to echo.

  It wasn’t an ostrich egg. At least, none that he’d ever seen had long strands of dark hair attached.

  “Come on, SD,” he said as he jumped back on her. “We got a call to make.”

  Leroy Evans didn’t know it, but he’d found the skull of Tiffany Anne Jacobs.

  The Idaho state crime lab in Boise made a quick study of the teeth and the dental work of two missing persons from that region. Tiffany Jacobs had lost a back molar when she cracked a tooth on a corn nut when she was fourteen. She had a dental implant to replace the tooth. The silver post gleamed under the lights of the lab.

  Crime scene tape flapped in the wind as the sun went down on the day of the discovery of Tiffany Jacobs’s skull, two ribs and a femur. Cops and crime scene investigators from Lewiston PD and the Idaho State Police canvassed the area, hoping to find more.

  “Body must have been dragged around by coyotes or a pack of those ornery wolf-dog hybrids,” one of the investigators said as he returned to his car. “She might have been dumped out here. Or she could have been dumped a mile from here and dragged. Damn coyotes are pretty strong.”

  From a vantage point on the highway, a TV camera focused its lens on the ongoing investigation. News reports had already leaked the discovery of the missing young woman.

  A sorority sister still at Cascade called Jenna with the news. It hit her like a hard swung sap to the stomach. The truth of what happened to Tiffany had finally come; it was ugly and final. She was still processing the information when her mother came home.

  “Did you hear the news?” Jenna said, not waiting a split second for Emily to shed her heavy woolen coat and set her purse down on the foyer table.

  Emily wondered if Mitch Crawford had made another plea for the cops to back off. “What news?”

  Jenna started to cry. “Oh, Mom! They found Tiff’s body in Lewiston. Mom, she’s dead.”

  Emily knew about Tiffany’s disappearance, of course. But she’d almost half believed that she’d run off with someone. It was the story given by an old boyfriend, one usually not believed. Emily knew that Jenna and Tiffany were not particularly close. Even so, the information was devastating.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. I hadn’t heard,” she said, wrapping her daughter in her arms. “That’s forty miles from the university.”

  Jenna gulped a breath. “I know. She’d been there all the while.”

  Emily could feel Jenna relax a little, comforted by her touch, as always. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “Mom, I sort of hoped…You know, I hoped that she’d just come back. That she’d played a trick on us or maybe was just being a flake.”

  Emily, still holding Jenna, stepped back and looked in her daughter’s eyes. “Is there anything I can do for you? I don’t really know Mrs. Jacobs, but I could call her.”

  “No, that’s OK, Mom. I’ll do that. I’ll find out when the funeral is. Can you keep an eye on the investigation? I don’t want to be the last to know if the killer is one of the boys we know from the frats.”

  “I’ll phone the Lewiston PD now,” Emily said.

  This was a friend of her daughter’s, and while they were not close, it was a tragic outcome. She piled her coat on the sofa and started for the bedroom. There were few secrets between mother and daughter, but such a call warranted some privacy. She dialed Lewiston PD, explained who she was and that her daughter knew the girl. A young woman working in investigations said she’d let her know if anything broke with the case.

  “We’re still figuring out jurisdiction issues. Not sure if we’re the crime scene or the police on the other side of the river in Washington should handle.”

  “Thanks.”

 
“Sheriff Kenyon, I will tell you that it’ll probably take one of those TV forensic docs to give us the cause of death on this one. I’m told not much was left of her. Lots of animal activity.”

  Emily hung up, feeling the discouragement of the young woman’s words take over. Cause of death was crucial to determining the who of a murder case. If she’d been shot, it might have been random, a stranger. If she’d been stabbed, it more than likely could have been someone she knew. Same with strangulation. Murders of the close kind were almost always personal.

  Done by someone who knew the victim or selected them for a purpose.

  A bag of bones would tell few tales.

  More than a thousand miles away, a man logged on to his computer and typed into a search engine the words TIFFANY + JACOBS. The quest was a nightly ritual, one he’d undertaken since he dumped her body in a ditch in Idaho.

  For the past weeks, there had been nothing new. Just the forty-some news accounts about the missing sorority sister from Cascade University. There were some photos showing the beautiful young woman, some of her parents, some shots of the campus. Until that particular night, the man wondered if she’d ever be found.

  And I didn’t even try very hard to hide the bitch, he thought.

  On that particular evening, there was some news. The number of articles about Tiffany Jacobs had suddenly doubled.

  Missing Coed’s Body Found

  A Lewiston rancher found the remains of what police have confirmed as the body of Tiffany Anne Jacobs, 21, in a field near his home yesterday morning, Idaho State Police reported.

  Exact cause of death has yet to be determined, although the manner of death has been classified as a homicide.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to bring bad news to the young girl’s family. I wish I hadn’t found her,” said rancher Leroy Evans, 66. “I sure hope they catch the guy who did this.”

  The Idaho State Police crime lab in Boise has processed the evidence. Identification was made with dental records.

  A person of interest—a 25-year-old man from Washington State—had been questioned, and then released. CSIs at his apartment produced five plastic bags of evidence.

  “We still need the public to help us,” said a spokesperson for the ISP. “If you have any information on Tiffany’s case, please give us a call.”

  A woman’s voice called from another part of the house. “Dinner’s ready! Everybody wash up and come to the table.”

  The man at the computer shut down the computer and grinned. He had information on Tiffany’s murder, all right, but he wasn’t going to give any of it to the police. He hoped that the twenty-five-year-old nameless man would be named soon—as a suspect. It was always nice when the police found someone to blame. They’d done it before and, he hoped, they’d do it again.

  “Coming, honey!” he called out. A nice dinner sounded so good.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Cherrystone

  Hillary Layton plopped herself down in the visitor’s chair facing Emily Kenyon’s desk.

  “I left my husband in the car,” she said.

  The last time the mother of the murder victim and her baby and the sheriff who had vowed to catch the killer had met was at the church vigil more than a month before. Mrs. Layton wore charcoal pants and a heavy red wool coat. Peeking out from the triangle of fabric by her neck was a silver sweater with flecks of metallic yarn. It had probably been a Christmas sweater meant for an occasion far different than the one she was observing at that moment. She brought with her a small Monarch Vodka box, its top cut off on three sides and flapping at its hinge as she took a seat.

  “Tell him to get in here,” Emily said. “It’s so cold outside.”

  Hillary brushed off the suggestion as she unzipped her coat. Sparkly drops of water fell to the floor. The snow on her coat had melted. “He’ll lose it if he comes in here.”

  “Lose it?”

  “You know, he loses his temper. He’s got a pretty mean one.”

  Emily tried not to let her worry betray her. Nothing hurt more than attacks from a victim’s family. She tried to keep a reassuring countenance on her face, but she could feel the knife being inserted.

  The knife cut.

  “I see,” was all she could say.

  Hillary Layton was a kind woman. Everything about her said so. She’d taught school. She’d volunteered for the state Democratic Party when they pushed for health care for children who weren’t covered. She had six cats and a bird.

  But she no longer had her only child. Mandy was gone.

  “Look,” Hillary said. “I know you are doing your best. But tomorrow we bury Amanda and Chrissy.”

  Emily hadn’t heard that a name had been picked out by either Mitch or Mandy. She wondered if Hillary had taken it upon herself to name the dead baby. She said nothing, though. She let the woman talk.

  “I know Mitch killed them. I know that you know he did. What I don’t get,” she said, her voice cracking, despite her attempts to hold it together, “is why you aren’t doing more to nail the bastard.”

  “Mrs. Layton,” Emily said, using as calm a voice as she could, “You certainly know better than that.”

  Hillary fidgeted with the box. “I know you’ve tried. But that smug ass is running around acting as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. By the looks of it, I’d say he’s right.” Her gaze narrowed on Emily.

  The knife was cutting.

  “I know you want details, but we’re not there. I know you are frustrated. I get that. We all do.”

  “You know something, Sheriff Kenyon?”

  “What?”

  “I really expected more than this from you. I remember reading about your daughter’s disappearance and how you went after the killer with everything you had. You got him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m asking for the same here. I…I…I know we can’t bring Mandy or Chrissy back from the dead. I know that with every fiber of my being. But I still hear my daughter’s voice when I pick up the phone.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emily said.

  “When I hear a baby cry, I wonder what Chrissy’s cry might sound like. Would it be like her mother’s? Mandy had a wail that could crack plates when she was a baby.”

  The tears rolled down, but Mrs. Layton ignored them.

  Emily handed her a tissue, but she refused it.

  “I want your officers, your staff, here to see my tears. I want people to know that my heart is broken.”

  “We all know it. We all are devastated by your loss.”

  “Can I say something to you, mother to mother?” Mandy’s mother asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you let it pass through your mind even once when your daughter was missing that she might be dead?”

  Emily’s response was immediate. “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you ever imagine that you might never see her again?”

  “It was my darkest thought, yes.”

  “Hold on to that. Take that deep inside, Sheriff. That’s how I feel right now. I know that there is no end to it. Luke and I will never, ever hold our daughter again. We will never know what kind of joy a little girl like Chrissy might have brought to our lives. To the lives of others.”

  “We will not rest until justice has been brought in your daughter’s case,” Emily said, wishing she could reel back the words. The phrase sounded so cold and impersonal. “I will not rest,” she said as if the echo of her own sentiments would resonate with the grieving mother.

  “My husband thinks that you will do your best. He also thinks that Mitch is probably smarter than you. I don’t know about any of that. All I know is that I need you to fully understand that I will be a thorn in your side for the rest of your life.” Hillary looked down at the contents of the box, then looked back at Emily.

  Emily locked her eyes on Mandy’s mother. “Mrs. Layton, I am good at my job. I will do my best.”

  “I know. I know. We had to m
ake an appointment to come to the house to pick up some photos and things for the funeral tomorrow. We wanted to set up a memorial board and table at the front of the church so people could pass by and see the little pieces of our daughter’s life. Small stuff. But the fragments of her life cut short.”

  Emily wanted to do more than just offer words to comfort the grieving woman sitting across from her, peering into a box of all she had left of her daughter. But protocol, laws, and common sense made it clear that boundaries were more important that being human. She hated that part of her job. Words were the only salve.

  “That must have been so very hard,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “He—I hate saying his name—put what he thought we wanted to collect in this box and set it outside the front door.” She reached inside the liquor box and pulled out a few photos of her daughter. “She was seven in this photo,” she said, pointing to a vacation shot taken on a gray, windswept beach. “You can tell we’re in Washington because she’s wearing a coat with her bathing suit,” she said. A faint smile crossed her lips, and then faded.

  Next she pulled out a Beanie Baby, a red bull. The smile returned, this time more pronounced.

  “This is Tabasco. She got him after she was injured so badly in a car wreck when she was twenty. My husband bought it from the hospital gift shop. Told her not to put up with anyone’s BS about her injuries.”

  Emily took the red plush toy from her hand.

  “She had four cracked ribs and a shattered pelvis. They said she might never have kids, but she proved them…almost proved them wrong, didn’t she?”

  “She did. She really did.”

  The unspoken part of the conversation was the fact that the baby that she’d so wanted had been killed, too.

  “He abused her in life. He abused her in death. You know what he did, don’t you?”

  The cremation was troubling. Emily knew that the family had been extremely upset by what Mitch Crawford had authorized when the ME released the bodies.