Kitabı oku: «Ice Cold Killer», sayfa 2

Chapter Two

A half mile from the veterinary clinic, Ryder almost turned around and went back. Leaving Darcy Marsh alone hadn’t felt right, despite all her insisting that he go. But what was he going to do for her in her grief? He’d be better off using his time to interview Ed Nichols. Maybe he would call Darcy later and check that she was okay. She was so quiet. So self-contained. He was like that himself, but there was something else going on with her. She hadn’t been afraid of him, but he had sensed her discomfort with him. Something more than her grief was bothering her. Was it because he was law enforcement? Because he was a man? Something else?

He didn’t like unanswered questions. It was one of the things that made him a good investigator. He liked figuring people out—why they acted the way they did. If he hadn’t been a law enforcement officer, he might have gone into psychology, except that sitting in an office all day would have driven him batty. He needed to be active and doing.

Ed Nichols lived in a small, ranch-style home with dark green cedar siding and brick-red trim. Giant blue spruce trees at the corners dwarfed the dwelling, and must have cast it in perpetual shadow. In the winter twilight, lights glowed from every window as if determined to dispel the gloom. Ryder parked his Chevy Tahoe at the curb and strode up the walk. Somewhere inside the house, a dog barked. Before he could ring the bell, the door opened and a man in his midfifties, thick blond hair fading to white, answered the door. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Dr. Nichols?” Ryder asked.

“Yes?” The man frowned.

“I need to speak with you a moment.”

Toenails clicking on the hardwood floors announced the arrival of not one dog, but two—a small white poodle and a large, curly-haired mutt. The mutt stared at Ryder, then let out a loud woof.

“Hush, Murphy,” Dr. Nichols said. He caught the dog by the collar and held him back, the poodle cowering behind, and pushed open the storm door. “You’d better come in.”

A woman emerged from the back of the house—a trim brunette in black yoga pants and a purple sweater. She paled when she saw Ryder. “Is something wrong? Our son?”

“I’m not here about your son,” Ryder said quickly. He turned to Nichols. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Kelly Farrow.”

“Kelly?” Surprise, then suspicion, clouded Nichols’s expression. He lowered himself into the recliner and began stroking the big dog’s head while the little one settled in his lap. “What about her?”

“You might as well sit down,” Mrs. Nichols said. She perched on the edge of an adjacent love seat while Ryder took a seat on the sofa. “When was the last time you saw Kelly Farrow?” he asked.

Nichols frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe—last week? I think I passed her on the street. Why? What is this about? Is she saying I’ve done something?”

“What would she say you’ve done?”

“Nothing! I don’t have anything to do with those two.”

“Those two?”

“Kelly and that other girl, Darcy.”

“I understand you weren’t too happy about them opening a new practice in Eagle Mountain.”

“Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

Nichols focused on the big dog, running his palm from the top of its head to the tip of its tail, over and over. “A town this small only needs one vet. But they’re free to do as they please.”

“Has your own business suffered since they opened their practice?” Ryder asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mrs. Nichols spoke, leaning toward Ryder. “Are you accusing my husband of something?”

“You can’t come into my home and start asking all these questions without telling us why,” Nichols said.

“Kelly Farrow is dead. I’m trying to find out who killed her.”

Nichols stared, his mouth slightly open. “Dead?”

“Ed certainly didn’t kill her,” Mrs. Nichols protested. “Just because he might have criticized the woman doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.”

“Sharon, you’re not helping,” Nichols said.

“Where were you between nine and one today?” Ryder asked.

“I was at my office.” He nodded to his wife. “Sharon can confirm that. She’s my office manager.”

“He saw patients all morning and attended the Rotary Club meeting at lunch,” Sharon said.

“Listen, Kelly wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but I wouldn’t do something like that,” Nichols said. “I couldn’t.”

Ryder wanted to believe the man, who seemed genuinely shaken, but it was too early in the case to make judgments of guilt or innocence. His job now was to gather as many facts as possible. He stood. “I may need to see your appointment book and talk to some of your clients to verify your whereabouts,” he said.

“This is appalling.” Sharon also rose, her cheeks flushed, hands clenched into fists. “How dare you accuse my husband this way.”

“I’m not accusing him of anything,” Ryder said. “It’s standard procedure to check everyone’s alibis.” He nodded to Nichols. “Someone from my office will be in touch.”

Ryder left the Nicholses’ and headed back toward Main. He passed a familiar red-and-white wrecker, and Christy O’Brien tooted her horn and waved. Weather like this always meant plenty of work for Christy and her dad, pulling people out of ditches and jump-starting cars whose batteries had died in the cold.

Ryder pulled into the grocery store lot and parked. He could see a few people moving around inside the lit store—employees who had to be there, he guessed. People who didn’t have to be out in this weather stayed home. The automatic doors at the store entrance opened and a trio of teenage boys emerged, bare-headed and laughing, their letter jackets identifying them as students at the local high school. Apparently, youth was immune to the weather. They sauntered across the lot to a dark gray SUV and piled in.

Ryder contacted his office in Grand Junction to update them on his progress with the case. Since state patrol personnel couldn’t reach him because of the closed road, he had called on the sheriff’s department to process the crime scene. After the medical examiner had arrived at the scene and the ambulance had transported the body to the funeral home that would serve as a temporary morgue, he had had Kelly’s car towed to the sheriff’s department impound lot. But none of the forensic evidence—blood and hair samples, fingerprints and DNA—could be processed until the roads opened again. Eagle Mountain didn’t have the facilities to handle such evidence.

“The highway department is saying the road won’t open until day after tomorrow at the earliest,” the duty officer told Ryder. “It could be longer, depending on the weather.”

“Meanwhile, the trail gets colder,” Ryder said. “And if the killer is on the other side of the pass, he has plenty of time to get away while I sit here waiting for the weather to clear.”

“Do what you can. We’ll run a background check on this Ed Nichols and let you know what we find. We’re also doing a search for similar crimes.”

“I’m going to talk to the sheriff, see if he has any suspects I haven’t uncovered.”

He ended the call and sat, staring out across the snowy lot and contemplating his next move. He could call it a night and go home, but he doubted he would get any rest. In a murder investigation it was important to move quickly, while the evidence was still fresh. But the weather had him stymied. Still, there must be more he could do.

A late-model Toyota 4Runner cruised slowly through the parking lot, a young man behind the wheel. He passed Ryder’s Tahoe, his face a blur behind snow-flecked glass, then turned back out of the lot. Was he a tourist, lost and using the lot to turn around? Or a bored local, out cruising the town? Ryder hadn’t recognized the vehicle, and after two years in Eagle Mountain, he knew most people. But new folks moved in all the time, many of them second homeowners who weren’t around enough to get to know. And even this time of year there were tourists, drawn to backcountry skiing and ice climbing.

Any one of them might be a murderer. Was Kelly Farrow the killer’s only victim, or merely the first? The thought would keep Ryder awake until he had answers.

* * *

DARCY PARKED IN front of Kelly’s half of the duplex off Fifth Street. Kelly had liked the place because it was within walking distance of the clinic, with easy access to the hiking trails along the river. Darcy let herself in with her key and when she flicked on the light, an orange tabby stared at her from the hall table, tail flicking. Meow!

“Hello, Pumpkin.” Darcy scratched behind the cat’s ears, and Pumpkin pressed his head into her palm.

Mroww! This more insistent cry came from a sleek, cream-colored feline, seal-point ears attesting to a Siamese heritage.

“Hello, Spice.” Darcy knelt, one hand extended. Spice deigned to let her pet her.

Darcy stood and looked around at the evidence that someone else—Ryder, she guessed—had been here. Mail was spread out in a messy array on the hall table, and powdery residue—fingerprint powder?—covered the door frame and other surfaces. Darcy moved farther into the house, noting the afghan crumpled at the bottom of the sofa, a paperback romance novel splayed, spine up, on the table beside it. A rectangle outlined by dust on the desk in the corner of the room indicated where Kelly’s laptop had sat. Ryder had probably taken it. From television crime dramas she had watched, she guessed he would look at her emails and other correspondence, searching for threats or any indication that someone had wanted to harm Kelly.

But Kelly would have said something to Darcy if anyone had threatened her. Unlike Darcy, Kelly never held back her feelings. Darcy blinked back stinging tears and hurried to the kitchen, to the cat carriers stacked in the corner. Both cats watched from the doorway, tails twitching, suspicious.

She set the open carriers in the middle of the kitchen floor, then filled two dishes with the gourmet salmon Pumpkin and Spice favored, and slid the dishes into the carrier. Pumpkin took the bait immediately, scarcely looking up from devouring the food when Darcy fastened the door of the carrier. Spice was more wary, tail twitching furiously as she prowled around the open carrier. But hunger won over caution and soon she, too, darted inside, and Darcy fastened the door.

She was loading the second crate into the back of her Subaru when the door to the other half of the duplex opened. A man’s figure filled the doorway. “Darcy, is that you?”

“Hello, Ken.” She tried to relax some of the stiffness from her face as she turned to greet Kelly’s neighbor. Ken Rutledge was a trim, athletic man who taught math and coached boys’ track and Junior Varsity basketball at Eagle Mountain High School.

He came toward her and she forced herself not to pull away when he took her arm. “What’s going on?” he asked. “When I got home from practice two cop cars were pulling away from Kelly’s half of the house.” He looked past her to the back of her Forester. “And you’re taking Kelly’s cats? Has something happened to her?”

“Kelly’s dead. Someone killed her.” Her voice broke, and she let him pull her into his arms.

“Kelly’s dead?” he asked, smoothing his hand down her back as she sobbed. “How? Who?”

She hated that she had to fight so hard to pull herself together. She tried to shove out of his arms, but he held her tight. She reminded herself that this was just Ken—Kelly’s neighbor, and a man Darcy herself had dated a few times. He thought he was being helpful, holding her this way. She forced herself to relax and wait for her tears to subside. When his hold on her loosened, she eased back. “I don’t know any details,” she said. “A state patrolman told me they found her up on Dixon Pass—murdered.”

“That’s horrible.” Ken’s eyes were bright with the shock of the news—and fascination. “Who would want to hurt Kelly?”

“The cops didn’t stop to talk to you?” she asked.

“When I saw the sheriff’s department vehicles I didn’t pull in,” he said. “I drove past and waited until they were gone before I came back.”

“Why would you do that?” She stared at him.

He shrugged. “I have a couple of traffic tickets I haven’t paid. I didn’t want any hassle if they looked me up and saw them.”

She took a step back. “Ken, they’re going to want to talk to you,” she said. “You may know something. You might have seen someone hanging around here, watching Kelly.”

“I haven’t seen anything like that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And I’ll talk to them. I just didn’t feel like dealing with them tonight. I mean, I didn’t know Kelly was dead.”

She closed the hatch of the car. “I have to go,” she said.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” he said. “You’re welcome to stay with me.”

“No. Thank you.” She took out her keys and clutched them, automatically lacing them through her fingers to use as a weapon, the way the self-defense instructor in Fort Collins had shown her.

His expression clouded. “If it was someone else, you’d accept help, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Because it’s me, you’re refusing. Just because we have a romantic history, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

She closed her eyes, then opened them to find him glaring at her. Were they ever going to stop having this conversation? They had only gone out together three times. To her, that didn’t constitute a romantic history, though he insisted on seeing things differently. “Ken, I don’t want to talk about this now,” she said. “I’m tired and I’m upset and I just want to go home.”

“I’m here for you, Darcy,” he said.

“I know.” She got into the driver’s seat, forcing herself not to hurry, and drove away. When she glanced in the rearview mirror, Ken was still standing in the drive, frowning after her, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Dating him had been a bad idea—Darcy had known it from the first date—but Kelly had pressured her to give him a chance. “He’s a nice man,” she had said. “And the two of you have a lot in common.”

They did have a lot in common—a shared love of books and animals and hiking. But Ken pushed too hard. He wanted too much. After only two dates, he had asked her to move in with him. He had talked about them taking a vacation together next summer, and had wanted her to come home to Wisconsin to meet his parents for Christmas. She had broken off with him then, telling him she wasn’t ready to get serious with anyone. He had pretended not to understand, telling her coming home to meet his family was just friendly, not serious. But she couldn’t see things that way.

He had been upset at first—angry even. He called her some horrible names and told her she would regret losing a guy like him. But after he had returned from visiting his folks last week, he had been more cordial. They had exchanged greetings when she stopped by to see Kelly, and the three of them spent a couple of hours one afternoon shoveling the driveway together. Darcy had been willing to be friends with him, as long as he didn’t want more.

She turned onto the gravel county road that led to the horse ranch that belonged to one of their first clients. Robbie Lusk had built the tiny house on wheels parked by the creek as an experiment, he said, and was happy to rent it out to Darcy. His hope was to add more tiny homes and form a little community, and he had a second home under construction.

Darcy slowed to pull into her drive, her cozy home visible beneath the golden glow of the security light one hundred yards ahead. But she was startled to see a dark SUV moving down the drive toward her. Heart in her throat, she braked hard, eliciting complaints from the cats in their carriers behind her. The SUV barreled out past her, a rooster tail of wet snow in its wake. It turned sharply, scarcely inches from her front bumper, and she tried to see the driver, but could make out nothing in the darkness and swirling snow.

She stared at the taillights of the SUV in her rearview mirror as it raced back toward town. Then, hands shaking, she pulled out her phone and found the card Ryder had given her. She punched in his number and waited for it to ring. “Ryder Stewart,” he answered.

“This is Darcy Marsh. Can you come out to my house? A strange car was here and just left. I didn’t recognize it and I... I’m afraid.” Her knuckles ached from gripping the phone so hard, and her throat hurt from admitting her fear.

“Stay in your car. I’ll be right there,” Ryder said, his voice strong and commanding, and very reassuring.