Iver looked down at his knuckles. He’d forgotten about the cut. There had been blood on his jeans, too. How the hell had he hurt himself? “Cut it on a piece of metal.”
Davis looked around. “Here?”
“No. At home. Garage,” he added in an attempt to sound more confident. But it was a lie. Why would he lie? Because they were acting like he’d done something. He hadn’t done anything, had he?
The room was still and silent again. Cal rose, shuffled in a circle, and settled back down.
Jack Davis motioned to the picture of the dead woman. “And you’re positive that she doesn’t look familiar to you? To either of you?”
“Nope,” Mike said.
Iver took another look at the woman’s photo. When he shifted the image under his fingers, he noticed a line of fringe stitched along the front of her top. Suddenly hot, he enlarged the photo with two fingers, his eyes watering, until the silver threads came into focus. The pain chose that moment to whip its metal tip against the flesh behind his eye. He pressed on the eye, fighting against the sense that he was about to black out.
Shaking his head, he passed the phone back to Davis. “I’ve never seen her before,” he said, and it felt like the truth.
His vision throbbed in and out as he recalled the thread he’d pulled off his watchband an hour earlier. He’d assumed the sparkly string had come from one of the waitresses.
Only now he wasn’t sure.
Because the thread in his watch looked a whole hell of a lot like the ones that lined the dead woman’s top.
CHAPTER 9
KYLIE
The noon sun cast long shadows as Kylie Milliard walked toward the wooded area beyond Skål bar. It was well past noon but still dark among the trees. The morning had vanished in a series of unending interviews with the bartenders and waitstaff. Kylie had personally spoken to the five waitresses who had worked last night.
A smarter bunch than she’d been expecting, the women had arrived at the police station in jeans and sweatshirts, carrying book bags on their way to or from class. None of them had stepped outside the bar between the start of their shift at four p.m. and closing time at one a.m. They carpooled for safety—three in one car, two in another—so they’d left together as well. None had any complaints about the job, which paid well, or about management. They thought Mike, who managed the bar, was awkward but harmless, and Iver was generous if aloof.
None of the women had ever been assaulted by any of the customers. There were always two or three male employees who kept an eye out for rowdy guests and escorted them from the bar when they drank too much. Although sex was always a consideration in a death investigation, nothing so far indicated that sex had been the primary motive for this particular murder.
None of the bar patrons who’d been interviewed recognized the dead woman. If the victim hadn’t been in that bar, the next logical place she might have been killed was the adjacent woods. Wet, frozen weather and snow would make it tough—maybe impossible—to locate the scene of the killing, and that was if the crime had actually happened outside.
But Kylie wasn’t convinced that the crime hadn’t involved the bar itself. An army brat, Kylie had learned to do two things exceptionally well: lie and know who else was lying. Iver Larson had been lying this morning—maybe not about all of it but about something. And in a murder investigation, something could well be everything.
According to Sheriff Davis, Larson was a responsible citizen—a veteran who’d been handed a raw deal, blown up, sent home, and then abandoned by his wife. Maybe that was all true, but there was something about him that itched a spot Kylie couldn’t scratch.
She wanted a warrant to search that bar, but for now, she had to settle for looking in the neighboring woods. Pausing at the edge of the trees, Kylie cracked her knuckles through her gloves and aimed her flashlight at the snowy ground. The surface of the snow was dimpled—spots where ice had fallen from the trees or small animals had traversed the snow. Or perhaps larger animals.
When she was four or five steps into the woods, the sunlight faded from view. The shadows and snow were grayer; the temperature dropped. It wasn’t much lighter here than it had been at five in the morning.
She scanned left to right, trying to measure the width of the woods. It was a small area, she knew from driving. From inside, it felt larger. No new snow in Hagen in the past twenty-four hours meant it should be easier to spot any evidence the perp might have dropped. Not easy but easier. She crept along, searching for a clue that she had no idea even existed. Still, she made her way, gaze tracking. She found a set of boot prints heading from the bar. She followed them until they seemed to make a circle and go nowhere else.
Instinctively, she looked up and studied the trees overhead. “Right. Like the killer just up and flew away,” she muttered to herself.
She moved on, discovering another set of boot tracks, then a large area where something might have bedded down—likely deer, but there were some larger animals in the area, too.
She took a step, and her boot struck something hard. Feeling a rush of excitement, she reached down and pulled out a clear beer bottle, the label long since disintegrated. She set it upright beside a tree and kept moving, searching the snow for anything that didn’t belong.
Halfway across the patch of woods, she found a trail that had been used by more than one person. This deep in the woods, she wasn’t sure how long it took the snow to filter to the ground. Overhead it was still thick in the trees, making it impossible to say if snow from the last storm had touched the ground here. There were other businesses on the far side of the woods and houses on the streets a mile or so beyond. It was conceivable that some of the bar’s patrons walked home this way, though from what she’d seen, Hagen residents didn’t worry much about driving under the influence. Hagen’s motto was more “Why walk when you can drive?”
The woods grew darker as she walked. Her eyes were getting tired when the flashlight beam struck something. She blinked, and it seemed to vanish. Then she saw it again. She studied the shadow. In one area, the snow was packed down and tinged a pinkish shade. But what would tint the snow that way? Blood? She looked around. Way out here?
Kylie bent down, aiming the flashlight. It could definitely be blood. She leaned over to take a picture with her phone, but the image was too dark to see the pinkish shade. Using the flash made everything white. She shoved the phone back into her pocket and freed her hands to collect some of the snow. She needed a way to mark the spot in case it was the scene of the killing.
As she reached to retrieve an evidence bag from her pocket, something rustled nearby. A shadow crossed her vision. She twisted around, but there was nothing. She turned back, and the light from her flashlight blinked twice and went dark. She slapped it against her palm. Tried flipping it on and off. No luck. Loosening the bulb section and screwing it tight again didn’t help either. These flashlights never just died.
Returning her attention to the ground, she tried to find the pinkish tint again. Still squatting, she whacked the flashlight on a nearby tree, tried the on/off switch again. Not even a flicker. “Damn it.”
She closed her eyes and opened them, as though rebooting her vision. It was too dim. She pulled out her phone again to use the flashlight, but the device caught on the edge of her pocket and flew from her hand.
Another crackle of shifting branches made her scan the woods, but the shadows of the trees made the forest feel like dusk rather than noon. A shadow darted from her left. Gasping, she went to duck when a large white-tailed deer leaped between the trees, then slowed to a trot.
“Damn,” Kylie whispered, trying to catch her breath. She patted the ground in front of her. Where the hell was her phone?
Her pulse began to beat a haunting drum.
You’re just in the woods. Thirty feet from your cruiser, from backup. If she had to, she could go back and get another flashlight. She patted the snow, everything hard and indistinct under her gloves. She pulle
d them off and patted again, feeling the cold crunch of snow.
She thought she saw the black phone when a light shone full in her face.
She cried out and covered her eyes with her hand. “What the hell?”
“There you are.” The light shifted, and Carl Gilbert’s face appeared in the beam of the flashlight. “You drop your phone?”
She scanned his face, her heart still racing. “Yeah.”
“It’s there,” he said, stepping past her and reaching into the snow right where she swore she’d been searching.
She picked it up and put it back in her pocket. Pulling her gloves back on, she was still fighting to calm her racing heart.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“Some blood, I think.” She waved him over. “Shine your light right here.”
The two of them located the pinkish spot. “I think we’ll want to collect some snow,” she said.
“I can do it,” Gilbert said. “Vogel was trying to reach you on the radio.”
She hesitated.
“I got this,” Gilbert said again, pulling a small plastic container from one pocket. Almost like he’d known he’d need it. She’d brought an evidence bag, she reminded herself. But he had a container.
Hesitant to leave, she watched him scoop snow into the container. He held it out to her, the pinkish tint visible through the clear plastic under the bright beam of his flashlight. What did the DA want? Glen Vogel was mostly a pain in her ass. A big man in his late fifties, he was an old-fashioned misogynist. The only redeeming thing about Vogel was his wife, who liked to show up at the station with baked goods, her demeanor cheery and kind. But Kylie had to admit the thing that endeared her most was Mrs. Vogel’s raspberry–white chocolate scones.
“We should mark the spot, too,” she said. “So we can find it again.”
“Good idea,” Gilbert said. He looked around for a second, then pulled a large pocketknife from his pocket. He thumbed a button, and the blade released. On the nearest tree, he carved an X into the bark. Then he did the same to another tree. “If you want to wait a minute, I can walk you back out,” he said. “It’s kind of dark.” He reached for a third tree, and Kylie turned to leave.
“I’m fine,” she told him and started walking before he could argue.
At her car, she climbed inside and brought out her phone to call Vogel. She felt light headed and winded, as though she’d run a long distance. Gilbert had startled her, was all. She stared down at the worthless flashlight, tossed it on the passenger seat, and turned on the engine.
The first thing DA Vogel said when her call was patched through was, “We’re going to hold off on searching the bar.”
Kylie clenched her phone with an iron grip and forced herself to use her nice-lady voice. “Sir, it’s urgent that we search the premises as soon as possible if we want to avoid losing potential evidence. We found blood in the woods.”
“Blood?”
“Yes. In the snow.”
As soon as the words were out, she recalled the white-tailed deer. Surely animals died in those woods all the time. But then where were the bones?
“We’re collecting a sample for the lab,” she told him.
“Good,” DA Vogel said, and she could hear the squeal of his big leather desk chair. Every time he leaned back in that thing, it shrieked like a pig about to be slaughtered. With all 230 pounds of him on the worn-out springs, the chair would surely fail. How she wished it would happen while she was watching. “We’re still going to wait on the bar,” he said. “There’s nothing to indicate the crime happened there.”
Hagen had a murder—an actual murder—and the first real crime since she’d arrived from Fargo eight months ago. As the town’s only detective, if she solved this one, she had a chance at a spot in Fargo. And damn if eight months in this place wasn’t seven months and twenty-nine days too long. “Sir—” she began, formulating a plea in her mind.
“You interviewed how many people who were in the bar?” Vogel interrupted.
Kylie gritted her teeth. A bunch of drunkards being wooed by women in short skirts. Not a reliable source.
“Miss Milliard?”
Miss Milliard. He always called her Miss Milliard. It was Detective Milliard. She was a detective, not a four-year-old. She spoke carefully, calmly. “Nineteen, including staff,” she answered.
“And not one of them remembered Ms. Jensen from the bar?”
Kylie halted. “Wait. Jensen is her name?”
“Yes,” Vogel said. “Abigail Jensen. We were able to ID her with prints.”
Prints meant a record. “She had a record?”
“Not exactly,” Vogel said.
“What do you mean? Who is she?”
Vogel sighed. “Miss Milliard, can you confirm that no one in the bar saw the victim last night?”
Kylie tried not to scream. “That is correct.”
The DA let out a long breath that sounded, in her head, like flatulence. “You understand that this isn’t just any case, Miss Milliard,” he said after a moment’s pause. In her mind, his fat hands rested on his fat belly, stubby fingers interlaced.
“No, sir. It’s a murder case.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vogel said, his voice dropping. For a moment, the pause made her wonder if he was considering a warrant.
“What do you mean, then, sir?”
“You remember Derek Hudson?” Vogel asked.
Even the name gave her chills. Images flooded her mind of the torsos of thin little girls, ribs showing from starvation, the strange cuts that covered their backs. “Of course.” But Hudson was dead, shot twice in the chest and once in the face. She recalled the case from a criminalistics course in college—Hudson lying in a pool of blood, left where one of his prisoners had shot him. Served the bastard right.
“This victim,” Vogel said, “Abigail Jensen—she was one of his.”
Detective Kylie Milliard’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
CHAPTER 10
LILY
Doing her best not to limp noticeably, Lily Baker entered the hospital through the main entrance. The hallways were painted a deep purple the color of boiled eggplant. If the choice was meant to be soothing, it had failed on her. It felt dark and unusual for a hospital. Then it occurred to her that she might not know what a hospital should look like.
Framed drawings of wildflowers lined the wall to her left, black-and-white photographs of old men on the right. In one corner was a fake tree. She recognized it as a ficus. How odd that she could recall the name of a plant but had no memory of her own life—not her sister or her parents.
Making her way toward the desk on her tender ankle, she experienced a sense of déjà vu, and yet nothing was familiar.
Behind the information desk, a receptionist typed on a keyboard, her fingers slow, her head down as she hunted for letters on the keyboard. The hair was a little too red to be natural, cropped in a straight line at her chin and parted in the center. A pair of reading glasses dangled from her neck by a long line of purple stones, as though she’d made an effort to match the decor of the hospital. She looked to be in her late fifties.
When the receptionist looked up, her eyes went wide. She rose from the chair, and Lily stepped back instinctively, pain searing her ankle.
“My God, are you all right?” The woman rushed around the desk. Sandra, her name tag read, the word blurred through the tears that filled Lily’s eyes.
“Lily, sit down. What happened?” Sandra tried to take her bag and lead her to a chair, but Lily clasped the strap in a clenched fist.
Before Lily could answer, Sandra was shouting down the hallway. “Tim! Beth! Lily has been in an accident.”
Two nurses ran down the hall, their uniforms the same blackish purple as the walls.
“I’m fine,” she argued as Sandra pressed her into a chair.
Then there were three faces staring down at her. The man pushed her hair off her face to look at her temple as the
woman palpated her ankle. All of them talked at once.
“Were you in an accident?” the woman asked.
“Bike,” she whispered, the first thing that came to mind.
“What were you doing biking in this weather?” the woman asked.
“Christ,” the man muttered. Tim. His name tag read Tim Bailey. “What does the bike look like?”
She studied his face as he watched her, his mouth cracking into a smile that was a little too wide. He raised his brow. “Get it? What does the other guy look like?”
Lily couldn’t think of what to say.
The two nurses exchanged a worried look. “You think she’s concussed?”
Tim pulled out a cell phone and shone its flashlight in her eyes, his fingers pulling her lids open. “Doesn’t look like a concussion.”
Beth stood. “I’ll get some alcohol and gauze. We can clean her up. This ankle’s going to need an x-ray.”
“I’ll call down to radiology,” Sandra said.
After the others left, Tim studied her with concern in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She hesitated, wondering how well she knew him. Well enough to tell him the truth? Never talk about yourself. She noticed the wedding ring on his finger. He was married. Did she know his wife?
“Lily?” he pressed.
“I’m okay,” she lied, swallowing the dry knot in her throat, along with the thoughts of the car accident, the cash, the gun.
“It seems like—” He was cut off by the unmistakable shriek of an alarm. “Code CPR,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “Code CPR.”
Tim ran for the doors. Beth dropped a bin of supplies at Lily’s feet and followed. As though by an instinct she didn’t recognize, Lily rose and went after them.
Two doctors from the code team passed, moving into the emergency room, and Lily followed.
Behind the doors was a giant room with a circular island at the center, where nurses in purple scrubs buzzed around a small cluster of desks. Yellow curtains divided the outer ring into individual rooms. A doctor ripped open one curtain to reveal Brent Nolan on a gurney. Quickly, he was surrounded by the doctors and Beth and Tim. Beth placed the bag valve mask while Tim started compressions, counting out loud. “Two, three, four . . .”
White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller) Page 5
