Kitabı oku: «Cold Conspiracy»

Chapter One

“Come on, Donna. We need to head back to the house or I’ll be late for work.” Rayford County Sheriff’s Deputy Jamie Douglas turned to look back at her nineteen-year-old sister, Donna, who was plodding up the forest trail in snowshoes. Short and plump, her brown curls like a halo peeking out from beneath her pink knit cap, cheeks rosy from the cold, Donna reminded Jamie of the Hummel figurines their grandmother had collected. On a Monday morning in mid-January, the two sisters had the forest to themselves, and Jamie had been happy to take advantage of a break in the weather to get outside and enjoy some exercise. But now that she needed to get home, Donna was in no rush, stopping to study a clump of snow on a tree branch alongside the trail, or laughing at the antics of Cheyenne, one of their three dogs. The twenty-pound terrier-Pomeranian mix was the smallest and easiest to handle of the canines, so Donna had charge of him. Jamie had a firm hold on the leashes for the other two—a Siberian husky named Targa, and a blond Lab mix, Cookie. “Donna!” Jamie called again, insistent.

Donna looked up, her knit cap slipping over one eye. “I’m coming!” she called, breaking into a clumsy jog.

“Don’t run. You’ll fall and hurt yourself.” Jamie started back toward her sister, but had taken only a few steps when Donna tripped and went sprawling.

“Oh!” It was Jamie’s turn to run—not an easy feat in snowshoes, though she managed to reach Donna’s side quickly. “Are you okay?”

Donna looked up, tears streaming down her plump cheeks. “I’m all wet,” she sniffed.

“Come on, let’s get you up.” Jamie took her sister’s arm. “It’s not far to the car.” Though Down syndrome had delayed her development, Donna was only a few inches shorter than Jamie and outweighed her by twenty pounds. Getting her to her feet while both women were wearing snowshoes made for a clumsy undertaking. Add in three romping dogs, and by the time Donna was upright, both sisters were tired and damp.

Once she was assured Donna would stay on her feet, Jamie took charge of Cheyenne, adjusting her grip on all three leashes. But just then, something crashed through the undergrowth to their left. Barking and lunging, Targa tore from her grasp, quickly followed by Cookie and Cheyenne. All three dogs took off across the snow, on the trail of the mule deer buck who was bounding through the forest.

“A deer!” Donna clapped her hands. “Did you see him run?”

“Targa! Cookie! Come here!” Jamie called after the dogs, even as the clamor of their barking receded into the woods. Silently cursing her bad luck, she slipped off her pack and dropped it at Donna’s feet. “Stay here,” she ordered. “I’m going after the dogs.”

Running in snowshoes was probably like dancing in clown shoes, Jamie thought as she navigated through the thick undergrowth. She could still hear the dogs—that was good. “Targa, come!” she shouted. She needed to find the dogs soon. Otherwise, she’d be showing up late for the mandatory meeting Sheriff Travis Walker had called, and she hated to think what he would have to say. As the department’s newest deputy, she couldn’t count on him cutting her much slack.

The dogs’ tracks were easy to follow through the snow, which was churned up by their running paws. Here and there she spotted the imprints of the deer, too. She replayed the sight of the big animal crashing out of the woods toward them. What had made the buck run that way—before the dogs had even seen it? Was a mountain lion stalking the animal?

Fighting back a shiver of fear, she scanned the forest surrounding her. She saw nothing, but she couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness—as if she really was being watched.

She crashed through the underbrush and emerged in a small clearing. The dogs were on the other side, all wagging tails and happy grins as they gathered around a man on snowshoes, who scowled at the three of them. Jamie’s heart sank when she recognized the uniform of a wildlife officer—what some people called a game warden. He looked up at her approach. “Are these your dogs?” he asked.

“Yes, Nate. They’re my dogs.” She crossed the clearing to him and gathered up the leashes. Worse even than having her dogs caught in the act of breaking the law by a wildlife officer was being caught by Nate Hall. The big blond outdoorsman managed to look like a conquering Viking, even in his khaki uniform, though Jamie could remember when he had been a gawky boy. The two of them had been pretty successfully avoiding each other since he had moved back to Eagle Mountain four months ago, after an absence of seven years. “My sister fell and I was helping her up when they got away from me,” Jamie said.

“Jamie, you ought to know better,” Nate said. “The deer and elk are already stressed this winter, with the deep snow. Allowing dogs to chase them stresses them further and could even result in their death.”

What made him think he had the right to lecture her? “I didn’t allow the dogs to chase the deer,” she said. “It was an accident.” She glared down at the three dogs, who now sat at her feet, tongues lolling, the pictures of innocence.

“Hello!” They both turned to see Donna tromping toward them. She towed Jamie’s pack behind her, dragging it through the snow by its strap.

“Donna, you were supposed to wait for me,” Jamie said.

“I wanted to see what you were doing.” Donna stopped, dropped the pack and turned to Nate. “Hello. I’m Donna. I’m Jamie’s sister.”

“Hello, Donna,” Nate said. His gaze swept over Donna, assessing her. “Your sister said you fell. Are you okay?”

“Just wet.” Donna looked down at the damp knees of her snow pants.

“We really need to be going.” Jamie picked up her pack with one hand, while holding all three leashes in the other. “I have to get to work.”

“Let me take the dogs.” Not waiting for her reply, Nate stepped forward and took the leashes. She started to argue, then thought better of it. If the dogs got away from him, maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to blame her.

“Nice day for snowshoeing,” he said as he fell into step beside Jamie, Donna close behind.

She didn’t really want to make small talk with him. The last real conversation they had had—seven years ago—had not been a pleasant one. Though she didn’t remember much of anything either of them had said, she remembered the pain behind their words. The hurt had faded, leaving an unsettled feeling in its place.

The dogs trotted along like obedience school protégés. When Targa tried to pull on the leash, Nate reined her in with a firm “No!” and she meekly obeyed—something she never did for Jamie. Apparently, muscles and a deep, velvety voice worked to impress female canines, too.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Donna said. “It’s supposed to be Jamie’s day off, but now she has to go to work.”

“Something come up?” he asked. His gray eyes met hers, clearly telegraphing the question he didn’t want to voice in front of Donna—Any more murders? Over the past three weeks, a serial killer had taken the lives of five local women. Dubbed the Ice Cold Killer, because of the calling cards he left behind with the words Ice Cold printed on them, the serial murderer had eluded all attempts by local law enforcement to track him down. Heavy snow and avalanches that closed the only road out of town for weeks at a time had further hampered the investigation.

“Nothing new,” Jamie said. “The sheriff has called a meeting to go over everything we know so far.”

Nate nodded and faced forward again. “When I moved back to town I was surprised to find out you were a sheriff’s deputy,” he said. “I never knew you were interested in law enforcement.”

“There’s a lot you never knew about me.” She hadn’t meant the words to come out so sharply and hurried to smooth them over. Otherwise, Nate might think she was still carrying a torch for him. “I stopped by the department one day to get an application to become a 911 dispatcher,” she said. “I found out they were recruiting officers. They especially wanted women and would pay for my training, as long as I agreed to stay with the department three years. The starting salary was a lot more than I could make as a dispatcher, and I thought the work sounded interesting.” She shrugged. “And it is.”

“A little too interesting, sometimes, I imagine,” Nate said.

“Well, yeah. Lately, at least.” She had been one of the first on the scene when the killer’s third victim, Fiona Winslow, had been found. Before then, she had never seen the body of someone who had died violently. Then she had responded to the call about a body in a car in the high school parking lot and found the killer’s most recent victim, teacher Anita Allbritton. The deaths had shocked her, but they had also made her more determined than ever to do what she could to stop this killer.

“The sheriff is getting married soon,” Donna said.

“Yes, he is.” Nate looked back at her. “I’m going to be in the wedding.”

“You are?” Donna sounded awed, as if Nate had announced that he was going to fly to the moon.

“I’m one of the groomsmen,” Nate said.

“I didn’t know you knew Travis that well,” Jamie said.

“We ended up rooming together in college for a while,” Nate said. “He’s really the one who talked me into coming back to Eagle Mountain, when an opening came up in my department.”

So Nate had returned to his hometown because of Travis—not because of anyone else he had left behind.

They reached the trailhead, where Jamie’s SUV was parked. Nate helped her get the dogs into the vehicle. “Where is your car?” Donna asked, looking around the empty parking area.

“I hiked over from the base of Mount Wilson,” Nate said. “I’m checking on the condition of the local deer and elk herds. The department is thinking of setting up some feeding stations, to help with survival rates this winter. All this snow is making it tough for even the elk to dig down and get enough food.”

“I could help feed deer!” Donna’s face lit up.

“I appreciate the offer,” Nate said. “But they’re too wild to come to people. We put out pelleted food and hay in areas where the animals congregate, and monitor them with remote cameras.”

Nate had intended to study wildlife biology in college, Jamie remembered. He was in his element out here in the snowy woods. That his job involved carrying a gun and arresting poachers would only make the work more interesting to him. He had always had a strong sense of wrong and right. Some people might even call him idealistic.

She didn’t have much room for idealism in her life these days—she had to focus on being practical. “We have to go,” she said, tossing her pack in after the dogs and shutting the hatch. “Buckle up, Donna.”

She started around the side of the car to the driver’s seat, but Nate blocked her way. “I’m glad I ran into you this afternoon,” he said. “We didn’t have much chance to visit at the scavenger hunt at the Walker Ranch.”

She shook her head. Fiona Winslow had died that day—no one had been in a visiting mood. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other from time to time,” she said. Eagle Mountain was a small town in a remote area—she saw a lot of the same people over and over again, whether she wanted to or not. “But don’t get any ideas about picking up where we left off.” She shoved past him and opened the car door.

After she made sure Donna was buckled in, she backed the SUV out of the lot. Donna waved to Nate, who returned the wave, though the look on his face wasn’t an especially friendly one.

Donna sat back in her seat. “He was cuuuute!” she said.

“Don’t you remember Nate?” Jamie asked. “He used to come over to the house sometimes, when he and I were in middle school and high school.”

“I remember boys,” Donna said. “He’s a man. You should go out with him.”

“I’m not going out with anybody,” Jamie said. She wasn’t going to deny that Nate was good-looking. He had been handsome in high school, but time and working out, or maybe the demands of his job, had filled out and hardened his physique. Though the bulky parka and pack he had on today didn’t reveal much, the jeans and sweater he had worn to the party at the ranch had showed off his broad shoulders and narrow waist in a way that had garnered second and third looks from most of the women present.

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” Donna asked. It wasn’t a new question. Donna seemed determined to pair up her sister with any number of men in town.

“I’m too busy to have a boyfriend,” Jamie said. “I work and I take care of you, and I don’t need anyone else.”

“But I want you to have a boyfriend,” Donna said.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I have a boyfriend!” Donna grinned and hugged herself.

“Oh?” This was the first Jamie had heard that Donna was interested in anyone in particular. “Who is your boyfriend?”

“Henry. He works in produce.”

Donna worked part-time bagging groceries at Eagle Mountain Grocery. Jamie made a note to stop by the store and check out Henry. Was he another special-needs young adult like Donna, or the local teen heartthrob—or even an adult who might have unknowingly attracted her? It was an easy mistake for people to think of Donna as a perpetual child, but she was a young woman, and it was up to Jamie to see to it that no one took advantage of her.

She slowed to pass a blue Chevy parked half off the road. The car hadn’t been there when they had come this way earlier. If she had more time, she would stop and check it out, but a glance at the clock on the dash showed she was cutting it close if she was going to drop Donna off at Mrs. Simmons’s house and change into her sheriff’s department uniform before the meeting.

“What is wrong with that car?” Donna looked back over her shoulder. “We should stop and see.”

“I’ll let the sheriff’s office know about it,” Jamie said. “They’ll send someone out to check.”

“I really think we should stop.” Donna’s expressive face was twisted with genuine concern. “Someone might be hurt.”

“I didn’t see anyone with the car,” Jamie said.

“You didn’t stop and look!” Donna leaned toward her, pleading. “We need to go back. Please? What if the car broke and someone is there, all cold and freezing?”

Her sister’s compassion touched Jamie. The world would be a better place if there were more people like Donna in it. She slowed and pulled to the shoulder, preparing to make a U-turn. “All right. We’ll go back.” Maybe the sheriff would accept stopping to check on a disabled vehicle as an excuse for her tardiness.

She drove past the car, then turned back and pulled in behind it, angling her vehicle slightly, just as if she had been in a department cruiser instead of her personal vehicle. “Stay in the car,” she said to Donna, who was reaching for the buckle on her seat belt.

Donna’s hand stilled. “Okay,” she said.

Cautiously, Jamie approached the vehicle. Though she didn’t usually walk around armed, since the appearance of the Ice Cold Killer, she wore a gun in a holster on her belt at all times. Its presence eased some of her nervousness now. The late-model blue Chevrolet Malibu sat parked crookedly, nose toward the snowbank on the side of the road, the snow around it churned by footsteps, as if a bunch of people had hastily parked it and piled out.

She leaned forward, craning to see into the back seat, but nothing appeared out of order there. But something wasn’t right. The hair rose up on the back of her neck and she put a hand on the gun, ready to draw it if necessary.

But she didn’t need a gun to defend herself from the person in the car. The woman lay on her back across the front seat, eyes staring at nothing, the blood already dried from the wound on her throat.