P Tracy - Snow Blind

Gino bent next to what was left of Kurt Weinbeck, checked the carotid, the huge hole in his chest, then looked up at Magozzi and shook his head.

‘This is Laura.’ Maggie Holland closed the door and gestured toward the woman in the rocking chair.

She was old, but unbelievably spry, and shot up from her seat, extending a bony hand with a lot of years on it. Magozzi was still standing with his knees bent and his weapon out front, and suddenly the posture felt a little foolish. He straightened reluctantly, shifted the nine to his left hand, and felt the old woman’s chilly flesh in his right. ‘Detective Magozzi. Minneapolis Police.’

She had new teeth in a face that looked like his not-permanent-press shirts when they came out of the dryer. Too new. Hollywood white. On a young woman, the smile would have been drop-dead. On her, it just looked weird. ‘I know who you are, Detective. Maggie told me all about you, and of course I see you on the television every now and then.’ She folded her hands under a sagging bosom and looked around, seeming distressed for the first time. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

Magozzi felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. This was an old woman who’d just witnessed a killing. There was a man bleeding on the rug in her living room. She was supposed to be horrified, frightened, trembling, in shock.

‘But you see, he had the gun on Maggie, and I really didn’t have any choice. None at all.’ Her blue eyes moved back to him, and Magozzi noticed that they looked faded, like an old photograph about to disappear. ‘You look upset, Detective. I’ll bet you’ve had a heck of a time. All of you. Perhaps you should sit down by the fire, I’ll have Maggie bring you some tea…’

Maggie Holland tried to talk her out of it; tried to send her off to bed, in fact, which seemed a sensible suggestion for an old woman who’d had such a night; but Laura would have none of it. Up until this point, she seemed remarkably sharp and self-possessed – almost abnormally so, considering the circumstances – but now Magozzi saw the first sign of petulance in her silent, head-shaking refusal. He thought first about shock, then dismissed it. None of the signs were there. More than likely, she’d started to make that slow slide backward into childish behavior that happens to many elderly when the mind starts to falter.

‘I will not be sent to bed like a child!’ she shouted suddenly, startling them all. ‘And I will serve these officers tea, and I will answer their questions!’ The outburst had been fast and unexpected; so was the sweet smile she instantly turned on Iris Rikker, as if there had been no outburst at all. ‘You do have questions for me, don’t you, Sheriff Rikker? I do love company.’

Creepy, Magozzi thought. Around the bend, or at least moving toward it in a big hurry.

Iris smiled right back at her, which Magozzi racked up as a point in her favor. Quick on the uptake, good instincts. ‘It might be nice to chat a bit, if you’re not too tired.’

Laura reached over to pat Iris’s arm. ‘Not at all, child.’

‘She’s very old,’ Maggie Holland whispered to Gino when he followed her into the kitchen. She busied herself with boiling water and porcelain cups on a tray. They rattled when she set them down because her hands were trembling. ‘And her memory is going. She gets confused. Remembers things the way she wished they had happened, instead of the way they actually did.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

Gino pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Pretty quick on the trigger for a confused old lady.’

Maggie shot him a cold glare. ‘It wasn’t the first time I had a gun pressed to my head, Detective, and I think I’m pretty much of an expert on whether the man holding that gun is prepared to use it. She probably saved my life.’

Gino had the decency to feel bad, which didn’t mean he had the motivation to show it. Something wasn’t right, and it was eating at a part of his brain like a termite.

‘She tells some tall tales sometimes, but she’s a dear woman. Founded Bitterroot with her sister, over half a century ago. This was their land; this is her town.’

‘Gotcha. So she shot Weinbeck?’

Maggie Holland’s lips were pressed tightly together, bleeding all the color out. ‘She thought he was going to kill me. And he would have. He was crazed when he broke in. Crazed.’

‘Uh-huh. You want me to carry that in?’

‘Please.’ She hurried to follow him, and moved immediately to stand behind Laura’s chair. Her posture was rigid, protective, almost like that of a bodyguard, which Gino thought was pretty strange, considering the old lady had just saved her life.

Iris and Magozzi were sitting on a sofa opposite the rocker, both with notebooks propped on their knees, when Gino carried in the tray like a college waiter. He set it down on the coffee table between them and listened.

‘So he broke in, grabbed Maggie, pointed a gun at her head, and asked where he could find Julie, is that about right?’

Laura was nodding emphatically. ‘Exactly right. So I did my little-old-lady act, told him I’d get a map, and toddled out to the kitchen.’ She looked at Iris and smiled. ‘I don’t usually toddle, you know. I do stretching exercises every morning to keep myself limber. That was just an act.’

Iris smiled back. ‘That was very clever.’

‘I thought so. And I do have a map of the village in the kitchen drawer. But that’s also where I keep the gun.’

‘Ah.’ Iris nodded. ‘The.357 on the table over there.’

Gino sat down in an armchair and actually started pouring tea. Christ, this was weird.

‘Yes, indeed. Maggie said I couldn’t put it back in the drawer, although that’s where it belongs. She said I had to put it down and leave it so you people could check it. For what, I just don’t know.’

‘It’s just procedure, Miss Laura.’

Funny how she knew to call her that, Gino thought.

‘So you came back into the living room, what? Holding the gun under the map?’

Laura beamed at her. ‘Now, you’re the clever one, because that’s exactly what I did. Toddled back in, pretending to study the map, then when he reached for it, I shot him.’ She looked over at Kurt Weinbeck’s body and shook her head. ‘I just hate doing that.’

Magozzi felt a chill run up his spine. ‘You hate to shoot people?’ he asked conversationally.

‘Well, of course I do, Detective. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then you understand. It’s dreadfully distasteful, but… we do what we have to do. We take care of our own. Not that I’ve shot that many, of course. Not personally.’

Not that many? Not personally? Whoa.

He glanced at Maggie Holland, whose features suddenly looked paralyzed. When she caught him looking, she rolled her eyes and actually tapped a forefinger on the side of her head.

Iris was still bent over her little notebook, continuing to write, as if Laura hadn’t said anything unusual. Magozzi had to bite his tongue to keep from firing questions. Batty or not, you couldn’t just let a statement like that hang there without a token follow-up, at least.

Iris stopped writing and looked up a second later, her expression blandly pleasant. ‘How many, do you think?’ she asked Laura.

Way to go, Iris Rikker.

The old woman blinked, then her eyes wandered to follow her brain. ‘Oh, my. All together?’

‘Yes, if you please.’

‘Goodness. I guess… I’m not quite sure…’ She was blinking faster now, and her eyes were starting to water. ‘Well… I guess we could look in the lake. Is it important?’

Maggie Holland closed her eyes.

‘Not really,’ Iris said. ‘Is that Lake Kittering?’

‘That’s the one. You live on Lake Kittering, don’t you, dear?’