P Tracy - Snow Blind

‘I know.’

‘So. You were at the Second when the Snowman bust went down, right?’

That seemed to surprise him, but he recovered quickly. ‘I was.’

‘So you knew all about it.’

Magozzi was watching Bill Warner closely, and saw the skin tighten around his eyes.

‘Along with about a million other people. It hit the papers, the TV news.’

‘But you followed the case closer than most, I’ll bet, because Tommy was a key witness.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Let me tell you how it went, Bill. After Tommy and Toby were killed, we got some information that maybe the Snowman was knocking off some witnesses before his trial next week, putting them in snowmen to scare off the other witnesses. But then we caught wind of a few things that started us thinking in other directions, and the Snowman stopped looking so good for it.’ He paused to give that time to sink in. ‘That’s when we started toying with the idea that maybe there was somebody else out there who wanted Tommy and Toby dead for other reasons, and they used the Snowman as a blind. And, hell, framing a scumbag like the Snowman for murder – who cares? He’s probably going to do life anyway. It was a pretty sweet setup, when you think about it.’

Bill Warner snorted. ‘Pretty damn elaborate setup, especially for the kind of pinheads who usually go around killing people.’

Gino smiled. ‘That’s exactly what we thought. At first we thought the killings were pretty clean – not perfect, mind you – but almost’ – he saw the Warners glance at each other, then quickly away – ‘so you start thinking who knows enough to leave a clean crime scene?’

Bill shrugged. ‘Anybody who reads or watches TV, for starters. CSI is killing us.’

‘Tell me about it. But the field narrows a whole lot when you start asking who would want Tommy and Toby dead.’

Warner had had enough. He leaned over his thighs and drilled Gino with a glare. ‘Stop treating me like some yahoo on the bad side of an interview desk, Detective. I’ve been on your end for too many years, so let’s cut to the chase. Alice and I were home together Friday night. All night.’

Alice nodded, frighteningly calm.

‘That’s good to know, Bill. I’m writing that down. Because the thing is, we just might have whoever murdered Tommy and Toby for a similar murder in Pittsburgh.’

It took him a second too long to respond. ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Pulled some stuff off the Internet, you know, from one of those super-secret chat rooms no one else is supposed to be able to get into? Only it can be done, of course, you just have to have the right people working on it, and we’ve got some good ones. They’re doing a trace on the sources now.’

Warner’s eyes narrowed and his forehead wrinkled as he thought about that for a minute, then he leaned back in the sofa and almost smiled. ‘That’s interesting, Detective, but you know how it is. People say all sorts of things in those chat rooms for all kinds of reasons. Fat people claim to be thin, hustlers claim to be doctors… they lie like crazy, telling strangers they’ve actually done the things they only wish they could do.’

Gino held his eyes. ‘Is that how it works?’

Warner nodded. ‘That’s how it works.’

Smart, Magozzi was thinking. He just set up a reasonable explanation for what he said in the chat room, just in case they traced it back to him. Not that it mattered. Online conversations were clues, not proof, and he probably knew that, too.

‘Anything else, Detectives?’

Iris waited half a second for Gino to say something, then jumped right in with a timid little smile that Magozzi thought was absolutely disarming. ‘I have one question for Mrs Warner, if you don’t mind, ma’am. It’s totally off the subject, more a matter of curiosity than anything else, just because I bought your mother’s house. It’s also very personal, so I completely understand if you’d rather not respond.’

Alice Warner actually smiled back at her, and the smile was genuine. ‘What is it, Sheriff?’

‘Well, I was wondering… we were told that you were raised here at Bitterroot by your grandmother Ruth, and Laura. But your mother lived so close.’

It was the first time Magozzi had seen Alice Warner exhibit any emotion at all. It wasn’t a bit hostile, but it wasn’t pretty, either. She looked down at her lap to hide it, then took a deep breath and met Iris’s eyes. ‘I was sexually abused by my father. My mother sent me away. Here, where she knew I’d be safe.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I’m also very sorry to tell you that we found the remains of what may very well be your father in my barn this morning.’

Magozzi had never seen anyone’s eyes glitter before. Oh, you read about it in books, and people used the expression all the time, but he’d never really seen it on another human face.

‘Oh, my,’ Alice Warner said. ‘That’s very disturbing.’

But she didn’t look disturbed. Not at all.

They went through the village on their way back to the car. The snow was getting too deep to walk anywhere but on the little plowed road, and it was still coming down; big, fat flakes that belonged on a kid’s tongue.

But today there were no kids, and the village was silent. Kurt Weinbeck had done that.

It was a sad thing, Magozzi thought, when you finally learned that the one place you always felt safest wasn’t that safe after all. Any burglary victim had a taste of that when they came home to see their doors or windows shattered, their home trashed, their possessions missing. Here, Magozzi had to multiply that feeling by four hundred souls who’d lived a lot of their lives in fear, and thought they’d finally found sanctuary. He wondered how long they’d stay locked in their houses.

None of them spoke until they got back in the county car, and Sampson had started the heater. ‘I have a problem with this one,’ Gino said. ‘Half of me wants to book those two and toss them in the can for life; the other half wants to turn my back and pretend I don’t know what they did.’

‘Half of you is going to get its wish,’ Magozzi said.

‘Yeah, but which half?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Half of you is still going to end up pissed.’

Iris turned around in the front passenger seat. ‘I don’t understand how you can be so certain they’re guilty. They didn’t actually say anything incriminating in the interview. Even admitting that he threatened his son-in-law doesn’t seem to count for much. Any father would have done the same.’

‘Or brother,’ Sampson added from the driver’s seat. ‘I said it myself a few times. But it isn’t what they said. It’s the way they were.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Faces,’ Magozzi said. ‘You do enough interviews over a long enough time, you learn to read the faces first, and listen to the words second.’

Iris turned back around in her seat and stared out the windshield. ‘I’m not there yet.’

‘Well, jeez, Iris Rikker, you’ve been on the job for almost two days already,’ Gino said. ‘How long is it going to take you to catch on?’

She smiled a little at that, but didn’t let him see it. ‘Do you have enough to get a search warrant for the Warners’ home?’

‘Maybe if we strong-arm a judge and do some fancy stepping with probable cause, but Bill Warner’s a cop. No way he’d leave a crumb behind.’

‘Which leaves us exactly nowhere,’ Magozzi said. ‘We have nothing on them. No forensics, no ballistics, no witnesses, and even if we trace that chat room right back to Bill’s PC, it doesn’t prove a thing. And those two sure as hell aren’t going to give each other up on the alibi.’