On the dark horizon lay a dull-orange glow. Civilization beyond the hill. Again, the instinct to run overwhelmed her. Dread collected like sharp stones in her belly.
She would wait for the police and tell them what had happened.
“Don’t forget the rules.” A boisterous laugh. The same green eyes, an older face. “Abby.” The name was swept into the darkness.
Do something. Find your phone. She turned to her purse and took hold of its zipper. The thread was frayed, the pocket on one side torn at the corner. Nothing like Brent’s Louis Vuitton wallet. She emptied the bag’s main compartment. A light-blue zip-up fleece. A makeup bag containing powder, lip gloss, and mascara, the labels worn off. She pulled on the fleece, saw the broken stitching on the blouse she wore. Her jeans were dark but worn thin at the knees. It was all a far cry from Brent’s expensive jacket and wallet. Maybe they didn’t know each other.
At the bottom of the bag she found a pink-and-red polka-dot wallet. It all looked so innocent, so young. She ran her fingers over the inexpensive vinyl, worn at the edges, and waited for some memory, some sense that the wallet belonged to her, or she to it.
None came.
She cracked it open and squinted at a state-issued ID card from Arizona. The name was Lily Baker. The woman didn’t look familiar, but she guessed from the dark hair in her peripheral vision that she was this woman. Lily.
She studied the ID. Born July 2, 1994. But what year was it now? Was she twenty years old? Or thirty? The address on the ID card was Phoenix, Arizona. She looked around the dark, cold night, thought of Brent’s North Dakota address. This was not Phoenix.
“Mr. Nolan, your response team is four minutes out.”
Lily Baker. You are Lily Baker. She drew another breath and sifted through the contents of the wallet. A debit card for the Paradise Valley Credit Union. A frequent-shopper card for Safeway and a couple of other loyalty cards. The billfold held seven dollars—a five and two ones—and a folded photograph. The image was old, the photo finish cracked where it had been folded, the paper softened from wear. Two girls—one blonde, one brunette. The brunette was her, a younger version of the woman in the ID photo. The blonde was older, her face thinner, her expression more a wry twist than an actual smile. Those same green eyes. Abby. Her sister?
She shivered and looked through the rest of the wallet, but it was empty. There were no receipts, no credit cards. A debit card and seven dollars. She returned the wallet to the bag and unzipped the side pocket. She reached in and drew out a hard metal column, four or five inches long. A flashlight? She held it in her hand, squinting at the black object. Through a slit in the center, she eyed the copper circles of primers, one on top of the other. Bullets.
Not a flashlight. She was holding the magazine for a gun. Tentatively, she fingered the cloth bag and felt the outline of a pistol. She drew it out slowly. Her hands came together, the magazine sliding into the gun with a firm click. She drew the slide back, chambered a bullet.
The pale, fat face, surrounded in blood. “You did it,” the girl whispered.
What had she done?
“Mr. Nolan?”
She jumped, the gun slipping from her hand and cracking against the frozen earth. The sound of a bullet echoed in her mind. Had she killed that man?
“The ambulance is two minutes out, Mr. Nolan. Can you hear me?”
Two minutes. And then, in the distance, she heard the muted shriek of a siren.
“Run,” the voice shouted, sharp and angry. “What are you waiting for?”
She could not be here when the police arrived. She touched Brent’s face, whispered, “Don’t die, Brent. Please don’t die.”
She pulled back the slide to release the chambered round. The bullet dropped to the ground and disappeared from view. She scanned the snow-dusted shrubs underfoot but couldn’t locate it.
Forget the bullet, she thought. Two minutes.
She rose quickly, facing the orange light that blinked beyond the hill. Looping the strap of the bag over her left shoulder, she hurried down the train track as the pitch of the sirens grew louder.
A line came to her. Romans 6:23.
For the wages of sin is death.
CHAPTER 3
KYLIE
At the first vibration of her mobile phone, Detective Kylie Milliard was wide awake. Her father used to say she slept like a cat, one eye open. She’d given Santa Claus a run for his money, but it was a useful skill in her line of work. As she sat up in bed, her fingers found the phone, which spent nights at the edge of her mattress. The main department number showed on the screen. She answered at the second buzz. “Milliard.”
“Hey, there, Kylie, it’s Steve.”
Good humored and easygoing, Steve Cannon had the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted physique of a swimmer. Not that bad to look at. On occasion, when the cuff of his dress shirt had slipped too high, she had spotted a tattoo. In her opinion, most tattoos were men’s attempts to look tougher than they were, and she suspected Cannon’s was no different. He had started in the department a few months before Kylie, the only other outsider. Everyone else had been born and raised in Hagen. Steve had joined as the department’s mechanic, but the small size of the police fleet meant he did a little of everything. Still, middle-of-the-night Dispatch wasn’t usually in his list of responsibilities. “What are you doing at Dispatch?”
“Marjorie’s out. Called me a couple of hours ago. Her back again. Sorry to bug you.”
The clock on the bedside table said 5:27. “No worries. What’s going on?”
“Dead woman in a dumpster.” That was something she liked about Steve. Hagen was full of people who liked to talk. Steve got to the point.
“Who’s the victim?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet. Late twenties, no ID.”
“Where?”
“Skål,” Steve said. “The bar.”
“I know it.” She stood from the bed and stepped out of her flannel pajama pants, the wood floor icy on her bare feet. She grabbed the tan Carhartt pants she’d tossed over her chair last night and pulled them on, phone tucked under her chin. “You call Sheriff Davis?”
“Patrol called him direct. Ambulance, too.”
She zipped her pants quickly and put the phone on speaker. “When was that?”
“Maybe thirty minutes ago.”
She eyed the clock again. Patrol should have contacted her, too. Now she was a half hour behind them. What good was being the town’s only detective if no one called her to the damn scene? Such small-town BS.
This wouldn’t happen in Fargo. She’d be respected there. She just had to get there.
“Sheriff wanted to make sure you got word,” Steve added.
She’d gotten word of it, all right—the last word. “I’ll be there in fifteen.” She could make it in twelve.
“I’ll let them know. Stay safe,” he added, something he always said. It had seemed odd at first, but it had sort of grown on her. Or maybe he had grown on her. Not that she would admit that. Never. Plus, in this tiny town, safety wasn’t supposed to be an issue.
Kylie pulled a blue button-down over the T-shirt she’d been sleeping in, put on a blazer, and zipped her canvas department jacket over it. She was out the door in three minutes.
As Kylie had suspected, the full response team was at the bar when she arrived. The sky was pitch black, sunrise still hours away. Two patrol cars, a fire engine, an ambulance, and the sheriff’s personal car—an old Ram truck—were parked in the lot. Three construction lights, mounted on tripods six or seven feet above the ground, illuminated the rusty dumpster as though it were at the center of a movie set.
Kylie drove to the far side of the gravel lot. There had been no new snow in the past twenty-four hours, but the winds were strong. Any tire tracks from the night before had been blown clean. The ones that remained led directly to the vehicles in the lot now—parked a little too close to the dumpster, considering it was the scene of a crime.
Ke
ep your opinions to yourself, she thought.
Eleven bodies—all men—huddled around the rusty dumpster, and a ladder was propped against the outside, but otherwise, no one seemed to be doing anything.
The bar was maybe ten yards from the dumpster, to the north. To the south was a gap for access and, beyond that, parking. To the dumpster’s east, maybe fifteen yards, a patch of thick woods began. She’d been called out to Skål before—or rather she’d joined Patrol on a few of the drunk-and-disorderly calls. There were very few real crimes in Hagen—a few accidental shootings, mostly hunting related, but no murder in almost a decade. With the low crime rate, Kylie spent a fair amount of her time helping Patrol and getting to know the town. So she’d been to Skål.
In the summer months, couples disappeared into the woods here for privacy. Patrons regularly used the trees to piss if the bar was full and the weather warm. But with the temps below freezing, she wasn’t sure they’d find much traffic now. They’d have to take a look around.
Stepping out of her car, she pulled down the flaps of her hat to cover her ears from the bitter wind and adjusted the fingers on her heavy work gloves. The men were surprisingly still and quiet in the cold air as she grew close, their faces turned to hers. The artificial lighting cast them in strange shadows, hollowing their eye sockets and cutting across their cheekbones. For one short moment, she was staring at almost a dozen skeletons.
A hand touched her back, and she whipped around, swallowing the sound that rose in her throat.
It was Sheriff Davis, phone to his ear. Though it had been fifteen years since he’d been on a team, Davis’s appearance screamed football star. The broad shoulders, the thick neck and sandy-blond hair, plus that easy, charming smile. Even the way he walked was like he was coming off the field. Not her type. But that was as far as it went for Davis. He didn’t have the asshole jock personality or the bravado. Though she had expected to have to work around a big ego, Davis was surprisingly humble.
“Of course,” Davis said. “I understand, sir.”
The mayor, she guessed. This would not be happy news for the mayor, who was already battling unfavorable press over his girlfriend, about whom his wife was none too happy. Davis covered the phone with one palm and said, “We’re waiting for the crime scene team.”
Hagen’s “crime scene team” was two patrol officers who had completed a twenty-hour training course on evidence collection in Bismarck, training Kylie herself was halfway through. Hardly a mighty forensic team. She greeted the group and noticed that everyone wore gloves. It was bitter cold, but the layer also meant they were preserving the evidence.
Carl Gilbert, the patrol officer she worked with most, approached. A couple of years older than her, Gilbert was lanky and a little awkward, like there was too much limb to control. He always jangled—a full ring of keys on his belt that rang like wind chimes when he moved and the change in his pocket he constantly worked with one hand. And he had a habit of sucking on hard candies—one after another. He didn’t gain a pound, but she did wonder about his teeth.
Gilbert had been a patrol officer for only a few years, having taken some detours outside Hagen after high school before getting his degree. She wondered if he aspired to detective and whether her appointment had stepped on his toes. If so, he never let on. “Victim’s mid- to late twenties, Caucasian,” he said, his gaze drifting toward the dumpster without quite reaching it. “That’s all we know right now.”
This was Hagen, where everyone knew everyone. “Who is she?” Kylie asked. As she surveyed the men, her pulse galloped under her heavy coat. What weren’t they saying?
Kylie reached her thumb across her index finger and pulled it down, popping the knuckle in a rush of pain and release. The action was like a reset, and she was herself again. She was a professional. “Hold the ladder. I’m going up.”
“Are you—” Gilbert started.
“Hold it, please.”
Gilbert gripped the ladder as she climbed. She pounded her feet into each rung, willing them to hold her up, keep her strong. By the fourth step, the inside of the dumpster was visible, more than halfway filled with black trash bags, stray beer bottles, and plastic cups. And the woman.
Kylie flinched at the blue-white skin, her gloved hands clenching the hard metal edge. She had imagined the dead woman lying peacefully on a bed of trash bags. As though she might have been asleep.
Instead, her body was splayed with violence. Her limbs struck unnatural poses, her head too far back, chin too far to the right, the right arm too far to the left. Kylie’s gaze traveled up her arm until it met with a bony shoulder cocked so strangely that it had to be detached.
She noticed the broken angle of the opposite arm. The woman wore black jeans, a spaghetti strap blouse, and no shoes. Her only jewelry was a wide red leather bracelet, its color dingy from wear. A generic puffy coat hung off one arm, worn shiny in places and dotted with little strips of black duct tape to cover the holes. The victim was oddly beautiful in her violent death. Her eyes were open, and the skin around them had the same soft green tint as her irises. Petechiae were visible in the whites of her eyes—small red blood vessels that had burst, often caused by strangulation. Kylie tried to think of them as clues, of the dead woman as a puzzle.
Behind the victim’s head was a dark shadow, maybe something or maybe a trick of the bright lights. Kylie shifted on the ladder, noticing for the first time that the back of the victim’s hair was dark and matted.
Blood.
She took a moment, not sure she trusted her voice, then said, “Has anyone checked the woods?”
“I did a cursory look, but it’s too dark to see much,” Gilbert said. “I’ll go back when it’s light.” He took her hand to help her back down, and the touch gave her chills. On the ground again, she shook out her arms to get the blood moving and searched for the sheriff.
Sheriff Davis was ending his call when Kylie approached. “We have any idea who she is?” Kylie asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her before.” His eyes flashed back to the street, and she caught in them something unusual. Fear. “We’ve all looked. She’s not familiar to any of us.”
Someone had to know her. Kylie glanced around the parking lot. “Any sign of her car?”
“None. Nothing in a four-block radius—it’s all warehouses out here.”
Hagen was not an easy place to get around without a car. Someone had brought her there. “No one knows her,” she repeated.
Davis met her gaze but said nothing.
Over in Fargo, it wouldn’t be so strange if a dozen people didn’t recognize someone. But in Hagen, even with the influx of oil workers, an unfamiliar face was rare. There was no main highway within twenty miles of Hagen. People who drove the 1804 were either coming to Hagen or leaving it. They didn’t just happen through.
Another pair of headlights turned into the parking lot. Kylie recognized the squared shape of the department car’s lights. The evidence tech. Now at least they could move the body. Maybe that would help them figure out who the mystery woman was.
And how she’d ended up murdered in Hagen.
CHAPTER 4
IVER
A slant of bright light cut across Iver’s face, and he opened his eyes. As he scanned the familiar living room, his heart drilled a violent beat into his ribs. He blinked a single time, and a bomb exploded in his head. Pitching forward off the couch, he vomited. Puke splashed across the hardwood floor. Cal stood, the dog’s hind legs trembling as he moved away from his owner. Iver wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and caught sight of the Jack bottle on the floor.
It was empty. Iver groaned.
“The alcohol messes with the medications,” his ex-wife’s voice shouted in his head. “You have got to get smart, Iver.”
The familiar pressure weighed on his chest. All the fighting. He’d hated how angry she always was. He exhaled, trying to relieve the pressure. She was his ex-wife now. No more fighting. He saw the fla
sh of an angry face. Had Debbie been in the bar last night? Had they fought? Damn, his head hurt.
Iver closed his eyes and breathed past the steady drill of his pulse in his eyeballs, swallowing carefully as though he could lure his stomach into calmness. The saliva met with a lurch in his gut, and another wave rose in his throat. Cupping a hand over his mouth, he sprinted to the bathroom. Hands gripped the porcelain as bile and brown liquor splashed into the bowl.
He imagined the scene from Debbie’s perspective. How hard it must have been for her. Every time he’d woken up hungover. Every time she’d had to come get him at the bar when one of his friends had called to tell her that he couldn’t drive. Every time she’d woken up to him coming home drunk. “I can’t live like this,” she had said. “You have to quit the drinking.”
He had tried. He really had. Like that was so easy.
That bar was his business. Now that Debbie had left him, the bar was also his life.
He splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth, then found his way back to the couch, a damp towel pressed to his cheeks. He should clean the vomit. At least it was on the hardwood floor this time. He’d clean it. Soon. He just needed a little more rest. The morning light was so damn bright. With the towel across his face, he closed his eyes, tried to find his way back to the empty bliss.
No more Jack. The Jack always made the pain worse. He could quit the Jack. Promise, he thought, as though he could barter away the pain in his head. But it wouldn’t let up. The agony built, like a vise clamping his optic nerve. Squeezing his eyes closed against the ache, he palmed the table for his meds and noticed a sharp pain radiating from his hand. A long red scratch stretched across his knuckles, oozing blood. He shook it as though it might loosen the sting.
White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller) Page 2
