P. Parrish - Dead of Winter

“I told you, we looked. We went through every file in his desk.”

“Did you ask Mrs. Pryce if he kept any files at home?”

Jesse’s face colored slightly. “No. We’re not supposed to take files out of here.”

Louis leaned against the locker, folding his arms, looking at Jesse.

“You think Pryce might’ve taken stuff home?” Jesse asked.

“It’s possible, given what you’ve told me about him.”

Jesse let out a long sigh. “I guess we’re going to have to go to Flint.”

“I’ll drive,” Louis said.

“No fucking way.”

They started out of the locker room. Jesse stopped and turned. He patted his pins. “Straight?”

“Damn straight,” Louis said.

After shift was over, they made the three-hour drive down to Flint. Stephanie Pryce had moved back to her mother’s home, a simple shingled house on the outskirts of the city. When Jesse pulled the Loon Lake cruiser into the drive, the front door opened and a woman came out. She rubbed her hands on her apron as she watched the two officers get out of the car. Louis assumed she was the mother. A small child burst from the door and wrapped chubby arms around the woman’s legs. Louis recognized him from the photo. Louis put his cap on and walked to the door, Jesse behind him.

“Mrs. Reanardo?” Louis asked, hoping he had pronounced it properly.

The woman nodded. “Officers. You made good time. Stephanie is in the kitchen. Come on in.”

The house was warm and filled with the smell of chocolate chip cookies. The child hopped off to the kitchen and Mrs. Reanardo motioned for them to sit. Both men politely declined as she disappeared into the kitchen.

Louis wandered to the bookshelf. His eyes locked on a frame that encased Pryce’s badge against blue velvet. There was a plate with an inscription from Winston Churchill: “The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. With this shield, however fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”

Jesse saw him looking at it. “The chief gave that to Mrs. Pryce at the funeral,” he said.

Next to the framed badge was a large piece of lavender quartz sitting on a tripod. Louis picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

“I’m sorry I — ” someone said.

Louis turned, the quartz still in his hand. Stephanie Pryce was staring at him, her hand at her throat. The expression on her pale face was so strange Louis couldn’t immediately speak.

Jesse spoke for him. “Mrs. Pryce, I’m Officer Harrison. This is Louis Kincaid, my partner.”

Louis came forward and she held out her hand. “Is there something wrong?” Louis asked.

She shook her head. “No. It was just…just the uniform. From the back…”

Her eyes went to the crystal in Louis’s hand.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, holding it out.

She hesitated then took the quartz from Louis, carefully placing it back on its tripod. She walked back to the sofa and sat down. Louis was sure that in better times she was quite lovely. But today she wore an oversize shirt that probably had belonged to her husband. Her straw-colored hair was pulled back in a haphazard ponytail and there were dark circles under her blue eyes. She started chewing on her already bitten-down nails.

“You drove a long way to see me,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Do you feel up to talking with us about your husband, ma’am?” Louis asked.

“I don’t know what I can tell you.” She ran a hand over her hair. “Please, sit down.”

Louis waited until after Stephanie Pryce’s mother brought coffee. He cleared his throat, edging forward on the sofa.

“Mrs. Pryce, we’re looking for some files,” he began. “Did your husband ever bring work home from the office?”

“Occasionally,” Stephanie Pryce said.

Louis glanced at Jesse.

“Did he ever mention anything specific he was working on?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t talk to me about what went on at work.”

“Do you ever remember seeing any files like this around the house?” Louis held out a manila file with a case number printed on the front.

She looked at it then shook her head. Louis handed the file to Jesse. He wasn’t sure where to go now; he had been banking on Stephanie Pryce simply handing over a batch of files. He glanced at Jesse, who seemed equally perplexed. Louis thought suddenly of the bits of paper in Pryce’s desk and Jesse’s comment about his doodles.

“Mrs. Pryce,” he said finally, “was your husband the type to keep things — papers, documents and the like?”

She smiled slightly, nodding. “He kept everything. He had one of those minds, you know, always moving. He was always writing notes to himself, stuffing them in drawers, his pockets, then forgetting them. I used to put these little baskets all over the house, trying to get him to throw his stuff in them. It didn’t really work.”

If there were any missing files, Louis thought, they could be sitting in the county landfill by now.

“What is this about?” she asked, her face clouding.

“Some of your husband’s case files might be missing,” Louis said. “We were hoping he might have brought them home.”

“Did he have a place at home, you know, like a private drawer maybe or cabinet?” Jesse asked.

“Well, there was a file cabinet but I don’t think he used it for work things.”

When she did not offer to show it to them, Louis knew he would just have to ask. “May we see it?”

She sighed. Her mother was hovering nearby, and Stephanie looked up at her and then out the window. “What difference can it make now?” she whispered.

Louis knew what she was thinking. What’s the difference? He’s dead and nothing can bring him back.

“Mrs. Pryce,” he said. “There is a possibility that something your husband might have been working on could have played a part in his death. We need to check all leads, no matter how small.”

She kept gazing out the window. For a moment, Louis was afraid she was going to cry.

“We were very happy in Loon Lake,” she said softly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Louis said, not knowing what else to say.

Stephanie’s mother moved around to sit next to her daughter, a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll find the man who killed him, Mrs. Pryce, I promise,” Louis said. He had no right to say that but he knew she needed to hear it.

“Show them the cabinet, Stephanie,” the mother said gently.

Stephanie wiped at her eyes. She took a deep breath and stood up. “All right. Come with me.”

They followed her to a back bedroom cluttered with boxes. She moved a box and exposed a beige two-drawer file cabinet. Louis stepped over a carton and reached for a handle. It was locked.

“Do you have a key?” he asked.

“Somewhere,” she said absently, glancing around.

They could easily break it open, but he couldn’t do that here in her home. They could take the whole damn cabinet back to Loon Lake but he wasn’t sure how she would take that suggestion.

Although she seemed detached, he knew better. She was hurting and her indifference was her only defense. If she had hated her husband’s job before he had been killed she surely had little interest in their motivation now, even if it was to find his killer.

Jesse was the one who asked, “Mrs. Pryce, would it be possible for us to take the cabinet with us? We will return it to you later.”

Stephanie sighed and brushed back her hair. “I don’t know.”

“Mrs. Pryce, I understand what you’re feeling,” Louis said. “I understand that some stranger took away everything, changing your life in second. I understand how you want to try to forget it and get on with things. And now we come into your home, bringing it all back again. I’m sorry for that.”