Cold as Hell (Haven’s Rock #3)

Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I ask April to check one more thing before she begins the autopsy. Then I wait for her answer before Dalton and I head into April’s office. I sit there, thinking, for at least fifteen minutes. Then I turn to Dalton, and even then, I only say, “I don’t understand.”

He nods, saying nothing, just waiting for me to continue.

“I’m afraid to speculate,” I say. “The obvious answer is that the abrasions and the hypothermia are connected. Whoever tried to take Kendra succeeded with Lynn. He could have drugged her, but he wouldn’t even need to. There’s a storm, and he offers to help her get home, and instead he leads her into the forest, and by the time she realizes it, she’s too far away for anyone to hear her scream. The storm would have made that easy. He binds her and rapes her and then lets her go, but she dies before she can make it back.”

Dalton grunts. He knows there’s more coming, after what I just asked April to check.

“But that’s not what happened, is it?” I say. “There are no signs of forced penetration. No signs of semen. Consensual sex wouldn’t show, but is anyone going to do that outside during a blizzard?”

I pick up one of April’s pens. “I can’t say that would never happen. Or that it’s impossible for rape to occur without physical evidence. But what am I saying then? That Lynn had consensual sex in a blizzard, with temperatures below freezing, while totally naked, and then got separated from her partner and died of hypothermia? Or that she was assaulted but shows no signs of trauma and just lay down afterward and froze to death?”

“Could the wrist abrasions still be connected to sex, but not to whatever happened out there?”

I consider that. “They could come from light bondage. Very light, with soft materials. That could have happened earlier in the day, unconnected to her death.”

I spin the chair to face him. “The abrasions make it look as if we’re back to the kidnapping scenario, but my brain keeps wanting to make that mistake because that’s where it started. If Lynn went missing, then the same fate that almost befell Kendra must have befallen her. If we found her naked and dead in the forest, that must be murder, probably following rape. When the cause of death seems to be hypothermia, it could still be that scenario—she froze to death afterward. Now we find abrasions on her wrists and ankles? Clearly her killer tied her up. Except there’s no sign of rape so…”

I roll my shoulders. “This doesn’t need to be connected to Kendra. Yes, Kendra was drugged and dragged into the forest and, yes, a day later, Lynn died out there, but that doesn’t mean it was the same situation.”

I pick up my pad and jot notes. “Abrasions on the wrists and ankles. Very light, almost invisible. Found on a woman who was known to be seeking sex outside marriage.” I pause and shake my head. “Which doesn’t mean she had sex outside marriage.”

“The bondage could be with Grant.”

“So the sex and marks happen earlier in the day. Later, when the storm hits, she tries going home during the storm and gets lost.” I press the pen tip to the paper. “But we still have a second- hand report that Thierry was seen leading her home, which he denies. I need to find out who said that.”

Dalton rocks back on his heels.

I look up at him. “We can’t fly out today anyway. I can answer this question first.”

“Not arguing. I was just going to ask if you’d let Will and me handle making the rounds. When we find the person who hailed Grant, we’ll bring them in to speak to you.”

I glance at the closed door. “If you want Will, I’ll need to take over assisting in the autopsy.”

“Can you do that while sitting down?”

I manage a faint smile. “I can try.”

April hasn’t found anything new in the autopsy. There’s no sign of liver disease, which would argue against alcoholism as the cause of those spots. Nor is there anything that argues against hypothermia as the cause of death. In short, if we’d found Lynn fully dressed in her apartment, we’d have been stumped. Hypothermia is a stealthy killer, leaving few traces behind, and none we’d normally look for.

April is stitching Lynn up when a knock comes at the door. Then a voice follows.

“Casey? Eric said you needed to speak to me.”

The heavy door muffles the voice, and my first thought is that it’s Grant, and I hop off my stool and move quickly to the door. Then I replay the words. Grant doesn’t call me Casey.

“Hold on,” I say.

I quickly wash up, and hurry back to the door and ease it open just enough to slip out, which isn’t easy while eight months pregnant. Luckily, the person waiting is considerate enough to back up and give me room. That lets me get the door closed before he can look inside.

The waiting-room light is off, the shutters still closed, so I need to light the lantern to see who’s there.

“Marlon,” I say with a smile. “How are you holding up?”

“Good. Eric says you’re looking for the person who called out to Grant last night, saying they saw Lynn.”

“I am.”

“Well, that’d be me.”

I wave him to one of the waiting-room chairs. Then I lower myself into the other.

“You hailed Grant?” I say.

“I did, and I only just discovered that Lynn was missing or I’d have spoken up sooner. After we got the shutters open this morning, Phil put me on inventory duty. I didn’t know anything was wrong until Will asked me to help find the guy who hailed Grant… which was me.”

“You saw her with Thierry?”

“Thierry?” His brow furrows. “Is that who she was with?”

“Isn’t that what you told—?” I wave it off. “Let’s back up. Yesterday, when the storm hit, Grant figured Lynn was waiting it out at the store. As soon as it died down a little, he went to check on her. He was outside the store when someone passing by shouted that they’d seen Thierry helping Lynn home during the storm. Was that you?”

“I was out doing a quick patrol. I saw Grant peering in the store window and so I called that I saw someone helping Lynn home during the storm. Someone, not Thierry.”

“So who did you see with her?”

Marlon shrugs. “I don’t know. The storm was going strong. I’d just gotten back to my residence after helping Will and others close the shutters. I saw what looked like Yolanda going past, alone, so I headed back out. I was worried she might be lost in the whiteout—she seemed to be heading the wrong way.”

I’ve suspected Marlon has an eye for Yolanda. It’s not reciprocated… yet. But he would definitely have braved the storm if he thought she could use help.

“Anyway, if it was Yolanda,” he says, “I never caught up with her. That’s when I saw Lynn. Someone was helping her through the whiteout. I considered going over to them, but I really wanted to be sure Yolanda was okay, and whoever was with Lynn seemed to have it under control. I did a circuit of the town, and I noticed Yolanda’s light on, which meant she got home fine. I finished my circuit, and got myself inside.”

“And then you went out later.”

“Just when the storm was dying down. Maybe seven o’clock? I came out and did another patrol. After thinking I saw Yolanda and then seeing Lynn, it made me realize someone should go out every now and then and do a quick circuit. That’s when I saw Grant peeking in the store window, and I figured he was looking for his wife. I called out that I had seen someone taking her home during the storm.”

“The person you saw being helped. Are you sure it was Lynn?”

Marlon nods. “She has a multicolored scarf. That’s a giveaway. I’ve seen it before, and it made me think we should all have different scarves. Like you and Eric do.” He smiles. “It’d be easier to tell people apart in winter, when they’re all bundled up.”

“And the person with her?”

“No distinctive scarf, or anything else.” He leans back in his seat. “When Eric said you wanted to talk about that, I thought back to what I could tell you. Not much, I’m afraid. With the whiteout, I really needed something distinctive—like that scarf—to tell people apart. The person with Lynn was maybe four or five inches taller than her. Average build. Slender, though it’s hard to tell with the parkas. My impression was that it could be a man slightly under average height or a tall woman.”

“The person seemed to be leading her back to her apartment?”

He nods. “That was my impression. I know she’s in the family residence with Grant, and they were headed in that direction.”

“Can you hold on for a second?”

“Sure.”

I slip into the exam room, where April is still finishing her post-autopsy cleaning. I take my tablet from the counter and return to the waiting room.

I tap the tablet and bring up a map of Haven’s Rock. “Can you show me where you saw Lynn?”

He pulls off his glove and points. “Right here. And I was over here.” Another point.

I mark the spots. “And which direction were they heading?”

He indicates, and I put an arrow on the map.

Then I look at it, and my heart drops. Yes, they were heading toward the family residence… but if I extend that arrow further? It goes straight to the lake.

“You said this person was helping Lynn?” I say, as I realize why that’s significant. “Not walking with her? Not Lynn helping this other person find their way?”

He frowns. “I presumed Lynn was being helped, and now I’m not sure why. Because she seems like someone who might need help, and I jumped to conclusions?” He drums his fingers on the chair arm and then snaps them. “No. It was the posture. Whoever was with Lynn had her by the arm, as if helping her walk.”

“Show me.”

I stand, and he does the same, moving in beside me. He takes my arm closest to him, holding it by the upper arm. Then he reaches the other hand over to hold my lower arm.

“Like she needed to be steadied?” I say.

“Exactly.”

Marlon steps back out of my personal space. “I really don’t like where this is going, Casey. You’re saying Lynn is missing, and I’m probably the last person to see her. Except I didn’t see her alone. I saw her being led by someone with a good grip on her.” His voice drops. “I know what happened to Kendra. Please tell me I didn’t make a very bad mistake here.”

What do I say to that? If he mistook Lynn’s killer for a helper, that wasn’t his fault. It was a blizzard and the person seemed to be helping her. But that won’t make things easier, will it?

“I’m still checking things out,” I say. “Thank you for all this.”

“Is there going to be a search party? The storm’s died down. I can help Will or Kenny arrange one.”

I squeeze his arm. “I’ll let you know. Thank you, again.”

When he’s gone, I hurry into the exam room. April looks up from her note-taking.

“We definitely need that tox screen,” I say.

An hour later, Dalton and I are back where we found Lynn. We don’t have the toxicology report from April, and we won’t until tonight. That takes time. But the storm has died, with no sign of returning soon. We have another couple of hours before it’s too dark to check that crime scene, and if I can do it tonight I must or I fear waking to find it covered in fresh snow.

Dalton doesn’t argue. It’s hardly a mile trek into the forest. It’s literally steps past the town border to the lake, with the site maybe a hundred and fifty feet away.

A hundred and fifty feet from Haven’s Rock. That’s the equivalent of being on the other side of a four-lane highway. Lynn died of exposure so close to town that, in good weather, she’d be able to smell smoke from our chimneys. She’d be able to see it too, spiraling over Haven’s Rock.

She’d died so close that we’d have been able to hear her screams.

Had she screamed? She might have. But we wouldn’t have heard them last night, over the wind, and she wouldn’t have seen or even smelled that smoke.

The storm meant that we couldn’t have heard her and she couldn’t have seen Haven’s Rock. She might have died never knowing how close she’d been to safety.

Having been out here earlier helps ease my conscience, because I saw what those conditions were like. It seems ridiculous, how much we’d struggled to cross the distance between her body and town. I remember the relief of finally seeing Haven’s Rock ahead. It really had felt like trudging a mile in a blizzard.

The fact that we took such pains to mark the spot proves how far away we’d felt. Returning, we don’t need that hanging wolverine corpse or Storm’s nose. We know right where to go, and we head directly there. Dalton pulls down the wolverine—now that we can see how close it is to town, we really don’t want to attract scavengers.

With the wind having died so soon after we left, the hollow where we’d found Lynn’s body is still there, an impression in the snow.

As Dalton holds Storm back, I accept his help and lower myself to my knees. Then I feel around in the snow. My touch is light, looking for something in particular. I find it easily. Beneath the thinnest blanket of snow, there’s a frozen layer. When I brush it off, the shape comes clear. The shape of Lynn’s body.

She’d died here, her body still warm when it melted snow that then froze under her as she cooled. I find the divots of her head and hands. The wolverine had done little to disturb her. She’d died on her back, looking up.

There is, however, something wrong with the shape. There are narrow protuberances from where her shoulders had been. Those look like marks of her arms, but when I found her, they’d been at her sides.

I check where her legs would have been. I found her flat on her back with her legs straight down, but that ice suggests they were parted. She’d died with her arms wide and her feet nearly a meter apart.

My breath catches, and I look up at Dalton. I don’t say anything. I’m just making contact, grounding myself and slowing my racing heart.

Then I put out my hand. He wordlessly helps me to my feet, and I survey the site.

“Can you do me a favor?” I say.

“Name it.”

I tell him what I need him to check for, and he does it while I stand with Storm. He picks his way carefully over the ice and bends in two spots. He clears away snow. Then his gaze lifts to mine in a grim nod.

I head out, and I see what he found—what he’d been able to bend easily and search for.

Two small holes in the ice, where something had been driven deep. Two spots the size of bolt holes, now empty.

Dalton leaves them and moves to two trees I’d indicated. He digs into the snow, checks one and shakes his head, but at the second, he nods. I walk over and bend as well as I can. There, where he’s cleared away snow, there’s a rub mark on the bark.

“So… yes?” I say.

Another grim nod, and I stand in that spot and look out at the scene now coming to life before me. Faint abrasions on Lynn’s wrists and ankles. Holes where bolts had been driven into the ice, about six inches from where her feet would have been. At least one mark on a tree, about the same distance from her extended arm.

She’d been staked out. Tied on the snow, presumably naked, and left to die.

“There’s something else,” Dalton says.

When I look over, he’s rubbing a bare hand over his beard as he looks at something to our left. I only see a fallen tree, stretching along the side. He walks over, circling wide as if to avoid contaminating a scene. Then he bends at the fallen log, leaning right over it to point at the snow.

“That’s been moved,” he says. “Someone filled in snow. Probably covering footprints.”

I ease back for a better look. I can see it now. There are obvious disturbances in the snow all around. There’d have to be—whoever did this would have left footprints and wouldn’t have relied on the blowing snow to cover them.

But that wouldn’t be cause for concern. It’s expected behavior.

Dalton points again. “They missed a spot here. It’s lightly covered, but I can still see impressions.”

“Boot prints?” I ask, and then I see what he means, which is far too high on the snow to be boots. It’s two impressions in the snow, less than a foot wide, just over a foot long, almost forming a V before they reach the log.

I scan the log. Then I reach out and pull a trapped fiber from the bark, and I know for certain what I’m seeing.

Those impressions are from thighs. From someone sitting on this fallen tree.

Sitting here… and watching Lynn staked out on her back and naked, as she slowly died of exposure.