P. Parrish - Dead of Winter

It was something more visceral. Flickering images on the Zenith. Black smoke, black faces. Orange fires, blue uniforms. Had his eight-year-old mind understood the rioting going on so many miles away in downtown Detroit? Probably not. But something about those uniforms had stuck.

A phone rang outside and he heard Edna’s nasal voice answering. The wall clock ticked off the seconds. A twig beat against the window. The silence lengthened. Louis focused on the window, watching a droplet weave a slow pattern through the condensation.

“I want that cocksucker caught,” Gibralter said softly.

Louis looked back at Gibralter.

“I want him caught. I want him put behind bars,” Gibralter said. “This state doesn’t have capital punishment but I’d like to see him strapped in a chair, hear him scream and see him shit in his pants when the smoke pours off his head.. I want him to pay.”

Louis was locked by pull of the chief’s icy eyes. Finally, Gibralter blinked and looked away. “I’m putting you on the case,” he said.

Louis nodded. “I’ll give it my best.”

Gibralter stood up slowly. “You’re still green, Kincaid. Two years total as a working officer. And I don’t want you neglecting regular duties. You’ll still pull patrol like everyone else.”

Gibralter’s expression had shifted slightly. His eyes burned like gas-blue flames but there was something slack, almost weary around his mouth. “When one cop dies, we all die,” he said.

Louis nodded once, sensing Gibralter expected no reply.

Gibralter opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag sealed with a wide band of orange evidence tape. “You’ll need this,” he said. Gibralter also picked up the photograph of Pryce’s child and handed both items to Louis.

“You’re dismissed, Kincaid,” Gibralter said. He turned his back, looking out the dark window.

Louis slipped the photograph and the evidence bag in his jacket and started to the door.

“Kincaid.”

He turned back. Gibralter was still facing the window. “That other feeling you had when you saw the picture?” Gibralter said. “It was fear.”

Louis paused, hand on the doorknob. “‘If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live,’” he said.

Gilbralter looked up. “Churchill?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Louis said. “Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Gibraltar gave him a long look, then looked down at his paperwork. “Dismissed, Kincaid,” he said softly.

There was something eerie about sitting at Thomas Pryce’s desk. The contour of his body was still molded into the worn brown vinyl of the chair. The drawers of the desk he had shared with Ollie Wickshaw were still cluttered with little things that had meaning only to Pryce: paper clips twisted into squares and triangles, a worn tube of Chapstick, gnawed swizzle sticks from endless cups of coffee, and several half-rolls of Tums.

Louis plucked a pen from the plastic holder and chewed on the end as he stared at the ace of spades in the plastic evidence bag. It had already been scrutinized by the experts for prints. There had been none of any use.

Louis turned over the card. It was a Bee card, in the familiar blue-and-white pattern with the slightly drunken looking insect. It was from a case mass produced by the U.S. Playing Card Company in Cincinnati and sold everywhere. What made this card different, however, were the black marks on it. The lab had determined the ink was not from an ordinary felt-tip pen; the writer had used a laundry marker. Louis wondered if it had been a conscious choice, to use an indelible pen rather than one that would have easily smeared. He studied the odd black scrawl. It looked as if it had been done hastily, almost like a graffiti. There was a badly drawn skull and crossbones and below it: 1 2 3.

Louis checked his watch. He had been here since 6 a.m., unable to sleep once his mind had begun to churn on the investigation. Now it was almost seven-thirty, briefing was in a half hour and he would have to put the Pryce case aside for the day.

The door opened and Dale came in. His boyish face was flushed from the cold. He wiggled out of his coat and walked to the fireplace, stooping to toss logs into the hearth.

“Good morning,” he called out cheerfully.

“Morning, Dale,” Louis said. He could feel Dale’s eyes on him and he looked up. Dale was staring at the evidence bag.

“What are you doing with that?” he asked.

“Chief gave it to me last night,” Louis said. He saw the slight look of distress on Dale’s face. “Is there a problem?”

“Dale blinked rapidly. “No, I just didn’t know he had it.”

“What? The card?”

Dale nodded. “I’m in charge of the evidence room.” He jangled the ring on his belt. “Only me and the chief have keys.”

Louis nodded.

“I mean, it’s not that you can’t go in,” Dale went on. “It’s just that I keep things straight around here, and if you don’t log in and out, things get lost.”

Louis nodded again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m kind of the administrative assistant here,” Dale said. “The chief never got it officially approved by the city council, so technically I’m a patrolman but I don’t pull street duty.”

Louis looked up at Dale again. “Well, every well-run office needs a manager.”

Dale smiled. “You aren’t kidding. You should’ve seen this place before I got ahold of things. Now I do it all, run the computer for the numb-nuts who’re too lazy to learn, make the coffee and do all the filing. By the way, Louis, you need anything from the files let me get it for you, okay? You guys really mess up my system. No offense.”

“None taken.” Louis turned back to the card, hoping Dale was finished. No such luck.

“Chief likes things organized, you know,” Dale went on.

“I got that impression.”

“By the way, he wants all reports typed. Did he tell you that?”

“No. Thanks for the warning.”

“Even your daily log should be typed, if you have time. You can type, can’t you?”

“Yeah, pretty well.”

“Of course, that doesn’t apply to Jess,” Dale said with a wry smile. “Jess can barely write let alone type. But then again, not too many rules here apply to Jess.”

Well, every department has a golden boy, Louis thought. To his relief, Dale busied himself behind the computer, allowing Louis to turn his attention back to the playing card. Dale switched on a radio, tuning it to an easy-listening station out of Alpena. He began to hum along to Perry Como warbling the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Louis suppressed a sigh but kept quiet.

“Hey, Dale?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the other Pryce evidence?”

“There isn’t much really.”

“I’d like to see it anyway. And the case file, too.”

Dale went to the evidence room, signed the log, unlocked the padlock and went inside the grating. He emerged with a manila file and another plastic bag bound with an orange evidence tape. He handed both to Louis and returned to Windexing his computer.

The bag contained a photograph of the boot print. Nothing special. Louis turned to the report, skimming through it. He stopped at a second photograph. It showed Pryce’s body lying on the bottom stairs of his foyer. Louis stared at the gruesome photo, with its tagline date and the photographer’s initials, an ironic “O.W.” he stuffed the photo back in the file and turned to the witness statements.

The first was from Pryce’s next-door neighbor, Leonard Moss, who heard the shots and called the police. The second statement was from a man named Moe Cohick, who lived in the house directly behind Pryce’s. He reported seeing a shadowy man running across his yard at 3:15. Louis turned to the last witness statement. It was from Stephanie Pryce. It was handwritten, in bold, sharply slanted strokes that he had a hard time reading.