P. Parrish - Dead of Winter

“Dale,” Louis called out, “Could you run these for me?”

Dale came over to peer at the two numbers Louis had underlined. “Don’t have to,” he said. “The first one’s the weather. The other’s the chief’s house.”

“The chief?” Louis said, frowning. “Lovejoy was retired. Why would he call the chief?”

Dale shrugged. “They were kinda friendly.”

He had forgotten; Jesse had told him the chief and Lovejoy went fishing together occasionally. But any cop knew that the last person a dead man talked to was important. Why hadn’t Gibralter mentioned it?

Louis sat back in his chair. At least the call to the weather made sense. It was more evidence that Lovejoy fished in the morning, not at night. But it still didn’t make sense that Lacey had risked killing him in broad daylight.

Louis sat forward suddenly. Unless…Lovejoy was not put in the water at the same time he was killed.

Louis slipped off his glasses, his mind working on this new possibility. Had Lacey shot Lovejoy at night, like Pryce, then returned the next afternoon to stuff him in the ice hole? That fit Lacey’s M.O. at least. But why did he feel he had to conceal Lovejoy when he had left Pryce’s body in the open?

His eyes went to the Dollar Bay report sitting on his desk, and something Millie Cronk had said nagged at his brain. He got out his notebook and flipped to the notes of their conversation. She had said that Lacey came home after his first visit to Loon Lake, that he seemed upset about something. He had told her that “everything is fucked up.”

What had he meant? Had something gone wrong for Lacey? Had he planned a third hit that didn’t come off? Is that why he hadn’t struck again in the last four weeks?

“Hey, you’re alive.”

Louis turned to see Jesse coming from the locker room. “Barely,” Louis said, closing his notebook. “Chief wants to see us.”

“Before briefing? He say why?”

“Not a clue.” Louis picked up the Dollar Bay report as he rose. Several other men were heading toward the briefing room and eyed Louis as they passed. Jesse saw it.

“Let it go,” he said to Louis quietly.

Jesse knocked on the chief’s door and Gibralter called for them to come in. He was standing at the window, back to the door, and turned.

“Anything new on Lacey?” Gibralter asked Jesse.

“We found the wife,” Jesse said. “She’s in Texas, some berg near Austin. Been there for the last three years. Cops down there questioned her but she said she hasn’t heard from Lacey since ’77.”

“That it?”

“We also found out Lacey checked into a motel down near Rose City on November 30 but the search turned up nothing.”

“And since then?” Gibralter asked.

“No sign of him.”

“He’s trained in wilderness survival skills,” Louis ventured.

“How do you know?” Gibralter asked.

Louis quickly summarized Lacey’s military record and the other information from Dollar Bay. “It’s in my report,” he said, holding it out.

Gibralter took it, scanned it and tossed it on the desk behind him. He went to the wall map, studying it. “Lacey isn’t from here. He doesn’t know this area,” he said. “If he’s holed up somewhere he has help.”

Louis’s eyes went to the county map on the wall behind Gibralter, to the large, amoeba-like blob of green that was the Huron National Forest. Lacey was in there somewhere and they would never find him. To them, it was a foreign and hostile place; to Lacey it was shelter.

“What about his son?” Louis asked. “He’s lived here and Lacey visited him at Red Oak. The kid wrote to him, too.”

“Then that’s where you go next, the kid. I want you two up there today to question him.”

Louis’s eyes flitted to the map again. Even if Cole Lacey did know something, nine small-town police officers didn’t have a prayer of finding Lacey without help.

“Chief, I have a question,” Louis said. “Are you going to request assistance from the state?”

Gibralter gazed at him through the cigarette smoke haze. “We’ll handle this ourselves,” he said. “That’s what good departments do, they take care of their own problems. They don’t need outsiders.”

Louis could feel a faint pounding in his head, the lingering effect of the booze and the beginning of a headache. He resisted the urge to rub his temples and the urge to say what he was thinking, that this was no time for a territorial pissing match between Gibralter and this guy Steele. Unconsciously, he let a sigh slip.

“Do you have a problem with what I just said?” Gibralter asked.

“No, sir.”

Gibralter’s icy stare seemed to drill into his head, hitting the pounding place in his brain.

“There’s something else on your mind, Kincaid. What is it?”

Louis hesitated. “Lovejoy’s phone records came back.”

“And?”

“They show he made a call to your home at ten-thirty p.m. the night before he was killed.”

“So?”

“So,” Louis said carefully, “I was curious about why you didn’t mention it.”

Louis heard Jesse draw in a slow breath.

“I didn’t mention it because I never got the call,” Gibralter said.

Louis hesitated, knowing he was about to get his head chopped off. Shit, at least it would stop the headache. “Someone got the call,” he said. “It was four minutes long.”

Gibralter’s eyes didn’t waver. “I have a wife, Kincaid. Maybe they chatted for a few minutes.”

Louis lowered his eyes.

“So, if we are done discussing Lacey,” Gibralter said, “I have something I want to take up with you, Kincaid.”

Louis tightened. Now what?

Gibralter went to the credenza and took one of the swords off the wall. “This is a samurai sword,” he said. “Do you know why I have it here, Kincaid?”

Louis felt Jesse shift nervously at his side. “No, sir,” Louis said.

“I keep it to remind myself of what honor is. We spoke of honor once, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Louis said.

Gibralter’s hand traveled over the ornate hilt. “The samurai code was a simple one,” he said. “The business of a samurai consisted of reflecting on his station in life, in discharging loyal service to his master and in deepening the trust and fidelity of his fellow warriors.”

Gibralter looked at Louis. “You think maybe a samurai might have something to teach a cop?”

“I’m sure he would,” Louis said. Where the hell was this going?

Gibralter carefully set the sword back in its holder. “I spoke to a man named Bob Roberts today. Name ring a bell?”

The hairs on Louis’s arms came alive and he was suddenly aware of his heartbeat. It was moving up, mixing with the pounding in his head. “Can we discuss this in private?” he said.

“No. I think this is something Officer Harrison should hear.”

“Sir, this — ”

“We are under siege, Kincaid,” Gibralter said. “Any man on this force can take a bullet for you at any time. I think they should know how you plan to repay them.”

Suddenly, Louis knew what was coming, and there was no way he was going to be able to explain it.

“Officer Kincaid spent a couple of interesting days in Mississippi federal court last year, didn’t you?” Gibralter said.

“Yes,” Louis said.

“Officer Kincaid testified against another police officer by the name of Lawrence Cutter. What were the charges, Officer Kincaid?”

“Civil rights violations,” Louis said.

“What’d he do, Officer Kincaid? Call you a jigaboo?” Gibralter asked.

Louis went rigid. “Larry Cutter — ”

“Shut the fuck up when I’m talking to you!” Gibralter shouted.

Louis felt a tremor rush through his body, a signal of the rage building inside. He didn’t want Jesse to hear this without knowing the truth. He turned to him.