Loe raamatut: «Storm Warning»

Chapter One

Jason Cash squeezed the throttle on the snowmobile he handled as if a professional racer. The five-hundred-pound sled took to the air for six bliss-filled seconds. Snow sprays kissed Jason’s cheeks. Sun glinted in the airborne crystals. The machine landed on the ground, skis gliding smoothly onto the trail. With an irrepressible grin on his face, he raced down an incline toward the outer limits of Frost Falls, the small Minnesota town where he served as chief of police.

Thanks to his helmet’s audio feed, a country tune twanged in his ears. His morning ride through the pristine birch forest that cupped the town on the north side had been interrupted by a call from his secretary/dispatcher through that same feed. He couldn’t complain about the missed winter thrills when a much-needed mystery waited ahead.

Maneuvering the snowmobile through a choppy field with shifts of his weight, he steered toward a roadside ditch, above which were parked the city patrol car and a white SUV he recognized as a county vehicle. Sighting a thick undisturbed wedge of snow that had drifted from the gravel road to form an inviting ridge, Jason aimed for the sparkling payload, accelerated and pierced the ridge. An exhilarated shout spilled free.

Gunning the engine, he traveled the last fifty feet, then braked and spun out the back of the machine in a spectacular snow cloud that swirled about him. He parked and turned off the machine.

Flipping up the visor and peeling off his helmet, he glanced to the woman and young man who stood twenty yards away staring at him. At least one jaw dropped open in awe.

A cocky wink was necessary. Jason would never miss a chance to stir up the powder. And every day was a good day when it involved gripping it and ripping it.

Setting his helmet emblazoned with neon-green fire on the snowmobile seat, he tugged down the thermal face mask from his nose and mouth to hook under his chin. The thermostat read a nippy ten degrees. Already ice crystals formed on the sweat that had collected near his eyebrows. He did love the brisk, clean air.

It wasn’t so brutally cold today as it had been last week when temps had dipped below zero. But the warm-up forecast a blizzard within forty-eight hours. He looked forward to snowmobiling through the initial onset, but once the storm hit full force, he’d hole up and wait for the pristine powder that would blanket the perimeter of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where he liked to blaze his own trails.

Clapping his gloved hands together, he strode over to his crack team of homicide investigators. Well, today they earned that title. It was rare Frost Falls got such interesting work. Rare? The correct term was nonexistent. Jason was pleased to have something more challenging on his docket than arresting Ole Svendson after a good drunk had compelled him to strip to his birthday suit and wander down Main Street. A man shouldn’t have to see such things. And so frequently.

He almost hated to share the case with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but Marjorie had already put in a call to them. Someone from the BCA would arrive soon. Standard procedure when a homicide occurred within city limits.

“Cash.” Alex Larson, who had just graduated from the police academy and headed north from the Twin Cities to find work, with hopes of eventually getting placed on search and rescue, nodded as Jason walked nearer. The tall, gangly man was twenty-four and had an eye for safety and a curiosity for all things female. Unfortunately, most of the women in Frost Falls were over forty. Not many of the younger ones stuck around after high school. Smart move in a dying town. The Red Band iron mine had closed four years ago. That closure had sent the migrant workers—and far too many locals—packing in search of a reliable paycheck.

Alex was the only officer Jason needed in the little town of Frost Falls, population 627.

Though, from the looks of things, the population was now 626.

A middle-aged woman, wearing a black goose-down coat that fell to her knees and bright red cap, scarf and mittens, stood beside Alex. Elaine Hester was a forensic pathologist with the St. Louis County medical examiner’s office. She traveled the seven-hundred-square-mile area so often she joked about selling her property in Duluth and getting herself an RV. She gestured toward the snowy ditch that yet sported the dried brown heads of fall’s bushy cattails. The forthcoming blizzard would clip that punky crop down to nothing.

“What have you got, Elaine?” Jason asked, even though his dispatcher, Marjorie, had already told him about the body.

Jason led the team toward the ditch and saw the sprawled female body dressed in jeans and a sweater—no coat, gloves or hat—long black hair, lying facedown. The snow might have initially melted due to her body heat, so she was sunk in to her ears, and as death had forfeited her natural heat, the warmed slush had iced up around her and now crusted in the fibers of her red sweater.

“Female, mid-to late-twenties. Time of death could be last evening,” Elaine reported in her usual detached manner. She held a camera and had likely already snapped a few shots. “Didn’t want to move the body for closer inspection until you arrived, Cash. You call in the BCA?”

“On their way. We can continue processing the crime scene. The BCA will help, if necessary. Last night, eh?”

“I suspect she was dumped here around midnightish.”

Jason met Alex’s gaze, above which the officer’s brow quirked. They both tended to share a silent snicker at Elaine’s frequent use of ish tacked to the end of words when she couldn’t be exact.

“How do you know she was—” Jason drew his gaze from the body and up the slight ditch incline to the gravel road. The marks from a body sliding over the snow were obvious. “Right. Dumped.”

Jason studied the ground, noting the footprints, which were obviously from Elaine’s and Alex’s boots, as they’d remained only on this side of the body. They hadn’t contaminated the crime scene. That was Elaine’s forte: meticulous forensics.

Jason walked a wide circle around the victim’s head and up the ditch to the road. As he did so, Elaine snapped away, documenting every detail of the scene with photographs. Though they were still within city limits, this was not a main road. Rather, it was one of four that left the town and either dead-ended or led deeper north into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a million-plus-acre natural reserve within the Superior National Forest that hugged the Canadian border. The only people who used this road were two families who both lived about ten miles out of Frost Falls. The gravel road showed no deep tracks in the mix of snow, ice and pebble, like if a vehicle were to take off quickly after disposing of evidence. But there were boot prints where the gravel segued into dead grass long packed down by snow.

Jason bent and decided they were a woman’s boot prints for the narrowness.

“Marjorie said a woman called in the sighting?” Jason asked Alex.

“Yes, sir,” Alex offered. “Call came from Susan Olson, who works at The Moose in the, er—ahem—back.” If Alex hadn’t been wearing a face mask, Jason felt sure he’d see him blush. The back of The Moose offered a low-class strip show on Saturday nights—basically, Susan and a few corny Halloween costumes that had fit her better back in high school. “Miss Olson was driving out to her aunt’s place to check in on her when she saw something glint in the ditch.”

Jason shuffled down into the ditch, avoiding Elaine as she stepped around the woman’s head. “Evidence?” he asked Alex.

“Just the body and the clothing on it. No phone or glasses or personal items that may have fallen out from a pocket. I’ll bag the hands and head soon as Elaine gives me the go-ahead. Any tracks up there?”

“They’re from the caller, I’m sure. But take pictures of the tracks, will you, Elaine? We’ll have to see if Susan’s fashion lends to size-eight Sorels, if my guess is correct.”

“Of course. Nice thing about snow—it holds a good impression of boot tracks. I hope it’s Ryan Bay with the BCA.”

Jason cast her a look that didn’t disguise his dislike for the guy for reasons he couldn’t quite place. He’d only met him twice, but there was something about him.

Elaine noticed his crimped smirk and shrugged. “Guy’s a looker. And he’s easygoing. I can do what I need to do without him wanting to take charge.”

“A looker, eh?”

There it was. She’d nailed his dislike in a word. A looker. What the hell did that mean? Wasn’t as if handsome held any weight in this small town. Least not when a man was in the market to hook up. Again, no eligible women as far as a man’s eye could see.

“You’re still the sexiest police chief in St. Louis County, Cash.” Elaine adjusted the lens on her camera. “But if you won’t let me fix you up with my niece...”

The niece. She mentioned her every time they had occasion to work together. Blind dates gave Jason the creeps. His brother Joe had once gone on one. That woman had literally stalked him for weeks following. Yikes.

“Didn’t you mention she was shortish?” Jason asked with a wink to Alex.

“Short girls need love, too, Jason.” The five-foot-two-inch woman laughed. “Don’t worry. I know she’s not your type.”

Jason squatted before the body, thinking that if Elaine actually did know his type—What was he thinking? Of course, she did. Along with everyone else in the county. The gossip in these parts spread as if it had its own high-speed internet service.

Focusing on the body, with a gloved hand he lifted the long black hair that had been covering the woman’s face. Her skin was pale and blue. Her lips purple. Closed eyelids harbored frost on the lashes. No visible signs of struggle or blood. She was young. Pretty. He’d not seen her in Frost Falls before. And he had a good mental collection of all the faces in town. A visitor? She could have been murdered anywhere. The assailant may have driven from another town to place her here.

In the distance, the flash of headlights alerted all three at the same time.

“BCA,” Elaine said. “We’ll review the evidence with them and then bag the body.”

“You’ll transport the body to Duluth?” Jason asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You going to follow me in for the autopsy?”

“You going to process it this morning?” Duluth was about an hour’s drive to the east.

Elaine shook her head. “Probably not. But I will get to it after lunch. If you can meet me around oneish, that would work.”

“Will do.”

The white SUV bearing the BCA logo on the side door pulled up twenty feet from Alex’s patrol car and idled. Looked like the driver was talking on the phone. Jason squinted. Couldn’t make out who the driver was. A looker, eh? Why did that weird comment bother him?

It didn’t. Really. He had a lot on his plate now. And he wasn’t the type for jealously or even envy.

He glanced over the body of the unfamiliar woman. Pretty. And so young. It was a shame. “Any ID on her?”

“No, but she’s probably Canadian,” Elaine said.

Jason raised a brow at that surprising assessment.

Elaine bent and pushed aside the woman’s hair with the tip of her penlight to reveal a tiny red tattoo of a maple leaf at the base of the victim’s ear.

“Right.” Jason frowned. “Are those ligature marks on her neck?”

“Yes.” Elaine snapped a few close-up shots of the bruising now revealed on the woman’s neck. “There’s your signs of struggle right there. Poor thing.” She replaced the victim’s hair in the exact manner it had been lying and stood. “Looks like you just might have a murder case on your hands.”

He’d suspected as much. Even though the weather could be treacherous and oftentimes deadly in the winter, the evidence screamed foul play.

“We’ll get the BCA up to speed here, then I’m heading in to talk to Susan Olson,” Jason said.

Jason had seen a lot, and he wasn’t going to allow some psychopath to think he could get away with murder. As well, this was his first big case since his humiliating demotion from the CIA. The timing was either laughable or fortuitous, depending on how he looked at it. Because he’d just received notice that the police station had been marked for budget cuts. In all likelihood, it would close in March and Frost Falls would send all their dispatch calls through the county. The tiny town couldn’t afford to pay Jason’s meager salary anymore. But the notice had also mentioned it wasn’t necessary to employ someone who was merely a town babysitter and not involved in real criminal procedures.

That one had cut deep. He was not a babysitter. Sure, he’d taken this job out of desperation. Getting ousted from the CIA was not a man’s finest moment. Yet he had made this job his own. And he did have a lot on his plate, what with the domestic abuse calls, the poaching and—the public nudity.

Time to prove he wasn’t incompetent to all those who were watching and taking notes. And with any luck? He might earn back his pride and a second chance.