Cindi Myers - Cold Conspiracy

“I think he’s still in the conference room, talking to Gage,” Jamie said.

“I’ll get him.” Adelaide started to move past Jamie, then said, “You go on up front and stay with the couple who are waiting. I’m thinking this might benefit from a woman’s touch.”

Nate followed Jamie into the small front lobby of the sheriff’s department. A man and a woman in their early thirties huddled together near the door, arms around each other, the man’s head bent close to the woman’s. They both looked up when Jamie and Nate arrived, the woman’s face a mask of sorrow, her eyes puffy and red from crying.

“I’m Deputy Douglas.” Jamie introduced herself. “The sheriff will be here shortly. Can I help you in the meantime?”

“We’re Drew and Sarah Michener.” The man offered his hand. “We came to find out everything we could about…about Michaela Underwood’s death.” He looked down at his wife, who had bowed her head and was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “We just heard the news, from her parents.”

“Michaela is…was…my sister,” the woman—Sarah—said. “We heard she was killed in the woods near here this morning. I want to know if that man—Al—killed her.”

“Who is Al?” Jamie asked.

“The man she was supposed to meet this morning, to go snowshoeing,” Sarah said. “If you found her by herself, and he wasn’t there, he must have been the one to kill her.”

“I’m Sheriff Walker.” Travis joined them in the lobby. “I understand you wanted to talk to me.”

“This is Drew and Sarah Michener.” Jamie made the introductions. “Michaela Underwood’s sister and brother-in-law.”

Travis shook hands with the Micheners. “We’d better talk about this in my office,” he said. Jamie started to turn away, but Travis stopped her. “Deputy Douglas, you come, too.”

Nate moved aside to let them pass, Travis leading the way to his office, Jamie bringing up the rear.

Gage joined him in the lobby. “What’s up?” he asked, watching the couple disappear into Travis’s office.

“Michaela’s sister and her husband think they know who killed her,” Nate said. “Or at least, she was supposed to meet a man—someone named Al—to go snowshoeing this morning.”

“And you didn’t see any sign of him out there with her, did you?” Gage asked.

“No.” He continued to study the closed door, wishing he could hear what was going on in there. “Even if he didn’t kill Michaela, the sheriff is going to want to find him and talk to him.”

Gage put his hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Right now, the sheriff wants me to talk to this ice fisherman, Abel Crutchfield. You up for coming with me?”

“Sure.” He’d planned to finish his report on the condition of elk and deer herds in the area, but that could wait. A murder investigation took precedence over everything.

JAMIE FOLLOWED THE Micheners into Travis’s office, closing the door after her. She stood by the door, while the Micheners occupied the two chairs in front of Travis’s desk. Even if Jamie could have found more seating, there wasn’t room for it in the small room.

Travis settled behind the desk, a neat, uncluttered space with only a laptop and a stack of files visible. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. “Losing a loved one is always hard, but losing them to murder is especially tough. We’re doing everything we can to find who did this, but if you have anything you think can help us, we certainly want to know.”

Sarah looked at her husband, who cleared his throat. “Can you tell us more about what you already know?” he asked. “We got the call this morning from Sarah’s father—Michaela lived with them, so I assume that’s how you knew to contact them. But they’re understandably upset and didn’t have a lot of details.”

“We found Michaela’s body in her vehicle on the side of Forest Service Road 1410,” Travis said. “The medical examiner thinks she was killed earlier this morning. Do you know why she would have been in that area?”

“She had a date to go snowshoeing with a man,” Sarah said. “Someone named Al. I don’t know his last name.” She leaned forward, clenched hands pressed to her chest. “I told her not to go out with someone she didn’t know—especially not to someplace where there weren’t a lot of other people around. Especially not with this…this madman going around killing women. But she wouldn’t listen to me.” Her face crumpled. “If only she had listened.”

Drew rubbed his wife’s back as she struggled to pull herself together. “Michaela was young,” he said. “Only twenty-two. And she trusted people. She still thought she was invincible.”

“How did she meet this man?” Travis asked.

Sarah sniffed, straightening her shoulders. “She met him at the bank. She just started the job on the first of the month. She’s a teller. I guess they flirted, and the next day he came back and asked her out. She said…she said he was really nice and cute, and that she thought the idea of going snowshoeing was fun, and would be a good way to get to know each other without a lot of pressure.”

“When was this—when they met?” Travis asked.

“I think it was Thursday when he first came into the bank.” Sarah nodded. “Yes, Thursday. Because Friday she and I met for lunch and she told me about him—then she called me later that day to tell me he’d come back in and they’d made a date for Monday. She had the day off, and I guess he did, too.”

“Did she say where he worked?” Travis asked. “Or what kind of work he did?”

“No.” Sarah sighed. “I asked her that, too. She said she didn’t know and it didn’t matter, because that was the kind of thing they could get to know about each other on Monday. She told me I was too uptight and I worried too much. But I was right to worry! He must have been the one who killed her.”

“What time were they supposed to meet?” Travis asked. “Or did he arrange to pick her up at your parents’ house?”

“She said they were meeting at eight thirty at the trailhead for the snowshoe trails,” Sarah said. “She told me she was being smart, driving herself, because if the date didn’t go well, it would be easy for her to leave.”

Travis looked to Jamie. “You said you got to the trailhead about nine thirty?”

“Yes,” Jamie said. “There wasn’t anyone else there. And no other cars in the parking area. We didn’t pass any cars on the way in, either.”

“Her parents said she left their house at eight,” Drew volunteered.

“She didn’t tell them she was meeting a man,” Sarah said. “Just that she was going snowshoeing with friends.”

Travis nodded. “Tell me everything your sister said to you about this man—even if you don’t think it’s important. Did she describe what he looked like? Did she say where he lived, or if he gave her his phone number?”

“She just said he was cute. And funny. I guess he made some joke about how nobody could rob the bank with the road closed, because they wouldn’t be able to go very far and she thought that was funny.”

“What was he doing at the bank that day?” Travis asked. “Was he making a deposit or cashing a check?”

“I don’t know. Sorry. I don’t know if she had his number, though I think she said she gave him hers.” She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about this ever since we got the call from my dad, and there really isn’t anything else. She got kind of defensive when I started quizzing her about the guy, and I didn’t want to make her mad, so I changed the subject. I made her promise to call me when she got back to the house and let me know how things went, but I wasn’t worried when I didn’t hear from her by lunch. I just figured they were having a good time and decided to go eat together. But all that time, she was already dead.” She covered her hand with her mouth and took a long, hiccupping breath.