M. Sellars - In the bleak midwinter

“Anyway, then you stood here in front of my desk and kept shifting your weight from foot to foot, which means your right was bothering you too. That little dance tells me either you’re wearing new shoes that aren’t broken in yet and they hurt your feet, or you really have to pee. Now, I may be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that if you had to pee that bad you would have asked Clovis to point you at the restroom before you had her bring you in here to talk to me.”

Constance stared at him wordlessly for a moment, then asked, “You picked up all that from a quick glance?”

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?” he huffed.

“Well… No… It was that obvious, huh?”

“Yeah, it was. To me, anyway. Don’t they teach you kids anything at Quantico these days?”

Constance ignored the gibe. “I have to say, Sheriff, your powers of observation and deduction border on uncanny.”

“For a sheriff of Podunk, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Were you in law enforcement before-”

He verbally truncated her question with one of his own. “You mean, ‘was I a hotshot homicide detective on some major metropolitan police force before burning out and retiring to the rural Midwest where I could be an Andy Taylor clone and not even have to carry a gun?’ That’d be kinda cliche, don’t you think?”

“Yes, actually.”

“You’re right, it is. And, I am. All except the part about Andy Taylor and the fact that I’m not stupid enough to think I can get away without carrying a sidearm in this day and age. Even here in Hulis.”

“But you were, as you put it, a hotshot homicide detective.” Her words were a statement and not a question.

“I cleared a few cases in my day,” he grunted while looking around his desk, lifting papers and shifting file folders in the process. “I take it none of this information was in the file you read?”

“The file was on the case, not you.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he replied absently, still searching for something in the clutter. “Heard that one before. All I have to say is that’s some piss-poor police work for a bunch of Feds. If your research is that bad, my opinion of you G-men just ratcheted down another couple of notches.”

“Well, hopefully I can change that.”

“Yeah, I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Seven murders in seven years, all on the same damn day; we’re still at square one, and I’ve got my fifth new Fed to babysit. No offense, but from where I am, you’ve got your work cut out for you changin’ my mind.”

Constance ignored the negative commentary and pressed forward. “So, speaking of the murders, has the card arrived yet?”

“Yeah, it was waitin’ for me when I got here this morning, just like clockwork… Hang on a sec…” Sheriff Carmichael gave up his apparently futile search and pressed the side of his hand on the talk button of an intercom box that looked only slightly newer than the chair and desk, then called out, “Hey, Clovis?”

A handful of seconds later the speaker crackled, “What do you need, Skip?”

“Have you seen my coffee cup?”

“It’s out here on top of the filing cabinet where you left it an hour ago.”

“Dammit…” he muttered.

There was a short hiss, and then Clovis’s voice rattled from the tinny box again. “Want me to bring it in to you?”

“What time is it?” he asked, a mildly absent quality to his voice as he circumvented the original question.

“Eleven-thirty,” she replied. “I swear, Skip, you need a watch.”

“Why? You’ve got one.”

“Skip…”

The sheriff sighed, then smoothed his bushy mustache before turning his attention back to Constance. “You have lunch yet, Special Agent Mandalay?”

“No, actually… And you can call me Constance, by the way.”

“Skip? You want me to bring you your cup?” Clovis’s voice came over the speaker again.

He depressed the button. “No, hon… Thanks anyway. I think I’m gonna take the Fed over to That Place. You want me to bring you back anything?”

The intercom crackled. “I brought lunch today, but I sure could go for a piece of pie… Oh…but I really shouldn’t.”

“Coconut cream like usual?” he asked.

“I really shouldn’t,” she replied.

“Coconut cream it is,” he grunted.

“That Place?” Constance asked when he was finished.

“It’s the diner across the street,” he replied as he rolled back, then pushed up from his chair and ambled over to a bentwood coat rack in the corner, stopping for a moment to hitch up his belt before pulling down his jacket.

“Does it have a name?” she asked as she stood.

“Yeah, That Place.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch and see if I can get you up to speed on all this.”

“What about the card?”

“What about it?”

“May I see it?”

The sheriff hefted his jacket back onto a hook then walked back to the desk. “Exactly the same as all the others,” he grunted, shuffling through the papers and extracting a manila envelope labeled EVIDENCE, along with a few scribbles of information such as the date and time. Handing it to her he added, “Got it bagged for you; not that you’ll find anything. Your lab geeks never do.”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Eventually the killer will slip up.” She added a paraphrased retort, “ They always do.”

“Yeah. Good luck with that.”

“You seem a little jaded,” Constance said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a pair of surgical gloves.

“Like I said, seven murders, seven years, five Feds, square one,” he replied. “And now I’m staring at number eight in about three days time. You’ll have to excuse me if I sound less than hopeful regarding an outcome at this point.”

“I understand,” she replied, unwrapping the string closure and then carefully emptying the contents out into her gloved hand.

The Christmas card was nothing particularly unique. Printed on inexpensive stock, the front of it was a detailed color rendering of a serene, somewhat darkened living room. A fireplace dominated the center of the picture, with a bulging, bright red, gift-laden stocking hanging from the mantle. A pair of black boots attached to telltale red-suited legs were dangling down from the flue and into the dormant fireplace.

In the foreground was a small plate, upon it resting a half-eaten cookie and what appeared to have once been a full glass of milk, now mostly empty. Adjacent to it was a note written in a child’s hand that said, “For Santa, Marry Crismis. Luv Susie.”

Above it all, gracing the top of the scene, were the words ‘Twas The Night Before… printed in an embossed, bold script.

Inside the card was blank. On the back was only the simple logo of a generic greeting card manufacturer that had long since gone out of business according to the case file.

Constance turned the card over in her hands, looking at the back, at the blank inside, and finally lingering over the artistically depicted tableau on the front. Sheriff Carmichael watched her silently for several minutes.

Eventually, he cleared his throat and muttered, “Exact same damn card every year, stuffed right through the mail slot… Always on December twenty-second. No envelope, no prints, no DNA, no hair, no fiber, no nothing… Didn’t make the connection until the second year.” He paused for a second then spat, “Anyway… Every Christmas we find a man’s body…or I guess I should say pieces of one. They pretty much add up to a whole, except for…”

As the sheriff’s voice trailed off, Constance verbally filled in the blank. “The external genitalia.”