Tess Gerritsen - Ice Cold

Jane looked at the modest house across the road. Great mounds of snow had piled up on either side of the plowed driveway, and the building seemed to be in hiding, its windows peeking over the snow as though to catch a furtive glimpse of passersby. There were no nearby homes, no neighbors easily available for her to interview.

“He lived alone?” asked Jane.

“As far as I know. Doesn’t look like anyone’s at home.”

Jane zipped up her jacket and stepped out of the car. Heard the rattle of wind in the trees, and felt its sting on her cheeks. Was that why she suddenly felt a chill sweep through her? Or was it this house, the house of a dead man, its windows peering darkly above the snowbank? Cathy was already walking toward the front porch, boots crunching over compacted snow, but Jane paused by the car. They had no search warrant. They had no reason to be here, except that Deputy Martineau was a puzzle to her, and any good homicide investigation included a victimology analysis. Why was this particular man attacked? What actions did he take that led to his death in the windswept driveway on Doyle Mountain? So far, all the attention had been focused on the alleged shooter, Julian Perkins. It was time to focus on Bobby Martineau.

She followed Cathy up the driveway, her boots finding traction on the gritty sand scattered across the ice. Cathy was already knocking on the front door.

As expected, no one answered.

Jane noted the rotten windowsills, the peeling paint. Firewood had been carelessly piled up at one end of the porch, against a railing that looked dangerously close to collapse. Peering through the front window, she saw a sparsely furnished living room. A pizza box and two beer cans were on the coffee table. She saw nothing that surprised her, nothing she wouldn’t expect to see in the home of a bachelor living alone on a deputy’s salary.

“Boy, this is a dump,” said Cathy, looking at the detached garage, which seemed to sag under the weight of snow on its roof.

“Do you know about any of his friends? Anyone who might know him well?”

“Probably in the sheriff’s office, but good luck getting them to say anything negative. Like I said, a dead cop is always a hero.”

“Depending on how the cop ended up dead.” Jane tried the doorknob and found it locked. She turned her focus to the detached garage. The driveway leading to the bay door was plowed clear, and she spotted tire tracks-wide ones, from a truck. Gingerly she made her way down the slippery porch steps. At the garage bay door she hesitated, knowing that, by opening that door, she was about to cross an ethical line. She had no warrant, and this wasn’t even her own jurisdiction. But Bobby Martineau was dead so he could hardly complain about it. And in the end, this was all about justice, wasn’t it? Justice for Bobby himself, as well as for the boy accused of killing him.

She reached down for the bay door handle, but the tracks had iced over and she couldn’t make it budge. Cathy pitched in and together they strained to lift the door. Suddenly it jerked free, and they slid it up. They stood, staring in astonishment.

A massive black behemoth gleamed inside.

“Will you look at that,” murmured Cathy. “It’s so new, it’s still got the dealer plates on it.”

Admiringly, Jane stroked the flawless finish as she walked around the truck. It was a Ford F-450 XLT. “This baby’s gotta cost at least fifty thousand bucks,” she said.

“How could Bobby afford this?”

Jane circled to the front bumper and halted. “An even better question is, how could he afford that?”

“What is it?”

Jane pointed at the Harley. It was a black V-Rod Muscle model, and like the truck, it looked brand new. She didn’t know how much a bike like this cost, but it certainly didn’t come cheap. “Looks like Deputy Martineau recently came into some money,” she said softly. She turned to Cathy, who stared openmouthed at the Harley. “He didn’t have a rich uncle somewhere, did he?”

Cathy gave a baffled shake of the head. “From what I heard, he couldn’t even keep up with his alimony payments.”

“Then how did he pay for this bike? For the truck?” Jane looked around at the shabby garage with its sagging timbers. “Obviously, we have a disconnect here. It makes you question everything we’ve been told about Martineau.”

“He was a cop. Maybe someone was paying him to look the other way.”

Jane again focused on the Harley, trying to understand how it connected with Martineau’s death. It was clear to her now that he had purposefully shut off his dash camera to hide his actions. Dispatch had just told him that Maura Isles was waiting there, a lone woman, in need of rescue. After taking the call, Martineau had shut off the camera and proceeded to drive up Doyle Mountain.

Then what happened? Where did the boy come in? Maybe it all comes down to the boy.

She looked at Cathy. “How far is Kingdom Come?”

“It’s about thirty, forty miles from here. Middle of nowhere.”

“Maybe we should drive out there and talk to Julian’s mother.”

“I don’t think anyone’s living there right now. I heard the residents have left for the winter.”

“You do remember who reported that piece of information? The same deputy who visited Kingdom Come again and again. And never saw anything wrong there.”

Cathy said, softly: “Bobby Martineau.”

Jane nodded at the Harley. “Based on what we’ve found here, I don’t think we can trust anything Martineau said. Someone’s been paying him off. Someone who has plenty of money to do it.”

Neither one of them had to say the name aloud. Jeremiah Goode.

“Let’s pay a visit to Kingdom Come,” said Jane. “I’d like to find out what we’re not supposed to see.”

THROUGH THE CAR WINDOW, JANE SPOTTED BROWN HUMPS DOTTING a vast field of white. They were bison, huddled together against the wind, their great shaggy coats dusted with snow. Wild animals, belonging to no one. That was a novelty for a girl from the big city, where all pets were leashed and tagged and registered. But pets were fed and sheltered, not left to fend for themselves in the brutal elements. Here is the consequence of freedom, she thought, staring at the bison, a consequence that Julian Perkins had accepted when he fled his foster home with only a backpack of food. How could a sixteen-year-old boy survive in that unforgiving world?

How could Maura?

As if reading her thoughts, Cathy said: “If anyone can keep her alive out there, it’d be Julian. He grew up with a grandfather who knew every trick of living off the land. Absolem Perkins is a legend around here. Built his own cabin by hand, up in the Bridger-Teton Mountains.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s that mountain range over there.” Cathy pointed.

Through the swirling dust of snow kicked up by the tires, Jane saw impossibly rugged peaks. “That’s where Julian grew up?”

“It’s national forest now. But if you go hiking up there, you’ll come across a few old homesteads just like Absolem’s. Most of them are down to nothing but foundations, but they remind you how hard it was just to stay alive back then. I can’t imagine going a day without flush toilets and a hot shower.”

“Hell. I can’t imagine a day without cable.”

They were climbing into foothills now, through terrain where the trees grew thicker and buildings vanished. They passed Grubb’s General Store, and Jane spotted the ominous sign: LAST CHANCE FOR FUEL. She couldn’t help an anxious glance at Cathy’s fuel gauge, and was relieved to see that they had three-quarters of a tank.

It was almost a mile farther down the road before that name suddenly struck her as familiar. Grubb’s General Store. She remembered what Queenan had told her about the many sightings of Maura. That people had reported seeing her all over the state, at the Dinosaur Museum in Thermopolis, in the Irma Hotel in Cody. And at Grubb’s General Store in Sublette County.