P. Parrish - Dead of Winter

Louis shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Angela Lacey had no prior record involving guns; none of the kids was on drugs, according to toxicology reports. Why did she overreact? Why didn’t she just surrender?

He knew there was no point in reading the other reports, they were duplicates of Gibralter’s. But maybe there was something different in Pryce’s. He fished it out, scanning it:

I heard Officer Harrison request assistance in a foot pursuit. I heard a female screaming and a shotgun discharged. I offered assistance, but was directed to remain in my position. At exactly 16:35, I heard a handgun discharged. Exactly five seconds later, I heard a second shot.

Because Pryce had been ordered to stay out front, his perspective was limited, but he had heard Angela scream. Louis looked back at the Eden girl in the window upstairs. He couldn’t prove it but he was certain now that Gibralter had lied about Angela in his report. She had been standing at the door when her brother was killed and she had fired that gun because she was afraid they would kill her too.

Why had they let her get out of the cabin in the first place? And why hadn’t they shot to wound not kill? He stared at the sliding glass door, trying to imagine Angela standing there, pointing the gun. He tried to imagine what was running through her head.

Nothing. No feelings, no vibrations. It had been five years, and the trail was cold. It wasn’t like the Pryce house. No one spoke to him here. No one was alive.

Reluctantly, he opened the raid file again, looking for something, anything, that would trigger his brain. He stopped on the photograph of Angela’s body. He held it up, comparing it to the cabin itself. The photo showed Angela slumped near the right side of the sliding glass door. He could tell her exact position because part of an electrical box was visible in the upper corner of the photograph. Nothing…

He pulled out a second photograph, this one the close-up of Angela’s hand. He stared at the odd, scythe-shaped bruise across the back of her hand. What the hell had caused it?

Something made him look up.

It was the girl at the window. She was still standing there, watching him, twisting her silver bracelets.

Bracelets…

His hand crept back under his parka to the small of his back. He pulled out his handcuffs.

He stared at them for a moment then his eyes went back to the cabin, scanning the back and finally finding what he was looking for. The conduit snaked up, out of the electrical box, just a few feet from the sliding glass door.

They had handcuffed her. She could not have fired the gun. They had handcuffed her to the conduit.

Something in his memory stirred and he quickly pulled out Pryce’s report. It hadn’t registered a moment ago but he knew the way Pryce’s mercurial mind worked, knew the kind of details it recorded. He drew in a breath. There it was.

At exactly 16:35, I heard a handgun discharged. Exactly five seconds later, I heard a second shot.

Pryce heard two shots in five seconds. Not one shot and what should have been the instantaneous return fire of an officer acting in self-defense. But five full seconds. That was the way Pryce’s mind worked, not in “approximately” or “about” but “exactly.” If Thomas Pryce said five seconds, it was the truth.

Five seconds…

Nothing in the normal duration of everyday life. But it was everything in the split-second time span of a crime.

Five seconds…

Just long enough for someone to react, to plan, to create a new reality.

Louis stared at the electrical conduit, seeing Angela Lacey, seeing everything, with a horrible clarity. Closing the folder, he went up onto the deck. There was a gap between the cabin and the conduit large enough to slip a cuff through.

Angela was about five feet tall, which meant they had to raise her arm over her head to cuff her. The bruise on her wrist, he knew now, would not have been made from the cuff alone. It was caused by an extreme restriction of blood flow.

Louis stared at the conduit. He could see her now. He could see her, hanging there by one arm, the weight of her body pulling her down, constricting her wrist against the metal cuff. Weight…dead weight.

Angela Lacey had appeared at the back door, just as the reports said. She saw Jesse beat her brother and saw them blow off his face. They used the cuffs to control her while they dealt with Jesse’s mess. She never had a gun.

Someone, one of the four, shot her. It was Ollie, if the report was to be believed. She fell, still chained to the conduit. Five seconds later, a second gun was fired. It was a “throw-down,” one of the oldest tricks in the book. They had fired it into the air to simulate returned fire then they planted it in Angela’s hand to make it look as though she shot first.

They had erased her, just as they had erased the evidence of her brother’s bludgeoned face.

Louis pulled in a deep breath. There was no way to prove any of it. It was still just a theory, and he could be wrong, his imagination running wild. Ollie and Lovejoy couldn’t talk; they were dead. Gibralter would never admit to anything. And Jesse…

Louis felt his stomach turn. Ollie and Lovejoy were conspirators, each guilty in his own way. But Jesse was the catalyst, the reason it happened. He had let his rage take over and then had let Gibralter cover it up.

Clutching the folders, Louis stepped off the deck. He looked up at the window. The girl was gone.

As he stared at the cabin, a wave of sadness came over him, surprising him as it flowed in to mix with the other emotions. He was angry at them; he felt betrayed by them. They were cops and they were monsters.

But now what? What could he do about it? Go to Steele and tell what he knew? No, what he suspected? All he really had were pieces and gut instinct. He couldn’t go to Steele with that.

He went quickly back to the Mustang, got in and started the car. He needed some hard evidence. He needed to get the throw-down.

Louis scanned the shelves beyond the grating. Somewhere in the evidence room was the throw-down but there was no way he was going to get it without Dale’s key.

He turned to face the chaos of the station. Ringing phones, anxious radio voices, the muted bark of dogs outside. Cords snaking over the floors, maps hanging on the walls. Suits, lots of suits. The smell of sweat, cigarettes and burnt coffee.

It was worse outside, the lot filled with state sedans and television vans, two from Detroit and one from Chicago. That morning, Louis had to fight his way through the knot of shivering reporters and cameramen. No one bothered to stick a mike in his face; they knew every Loon Lake cop was under a gag order. And they were waiting for Steele anyway.

Louis surveyed the room. No sign of him.

“Louis,” Edna called out.

He looked over to see her holding out the phone. “It’s the Lansing State Journal. She wants a quote.”

As Louis pointed to one of Steele’s aids, he saw Dale hurry in the front door. He was wearing his police parka, his face red from the cold. He spotted Louis as he pushed through the crowd to the locker room and quickly looked away. But not before Louis saw the distress in his eyes. The kid never even frowned; something was up. Louis followed him.

Dale was sitting on a bench, still in his coat, head in his hands.

“Dale?”

His head jerked up. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“What’s wrong?” Louis asked.

Dale ran a shaky hand over his face. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop him.”

“Who?”

When Dale didn’t answer, Louis sat down next to him. “Who?” he pressed.