Winter's Child Page 9

  Radcliff explained what had happened and asked Mayhew, “Did you handle the case?”

  “Not this morning,” said Mayhew. “Well, I did lift it by the corner there just to see if it was locked. Which it wasn’t. But I’ve certainly touched it in the past. Not since Christmas, though. I’m almost positive not since Christmas. Is there a way to tell how old fingerprints are?”

  Futrell stooped and cast an experienced eye over the case. “Wouldn’t matter if there was. Looks like it’s been wiped clean.”

  A few minutes later, his brush and powder confirmed that eyeball appraisal.

  “Jonna must have taken them,” said Mayhew. “They’re gone, she’s gone, and she had access to the keys. But why? Unless—oh goodness! She’s been acting oddly lately. You don’t think she took the presentation gun for the same reason her father did?”

  “Whose father?” asked a new voice.

  “Ah, Nathan! Betty! I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Mayhew quickly introduced Nathan Benton and Betty Coates Ramos, chairman and treasurer, respectively, of the Morrow House board of trustees. “The Bentons and the Coateses were two of Shaysville’s earliest families,” he told the lawmen. He hastily described for the new arrivals how he had entered the library to turn on the lights in 9 case there were any visitors today. “I thought I would lay the updated Morrow genealogy on the table—people always want to know the dates of our ghost—and that’s when I saw the empty case.”

  Mrs. Ramos was a tall attractive blonde who appeared to be in her late fifties or early sixties. Her ski pants and leather boots were black and she wore pearls and cashmere beneath a quilted white parka. She had pushed the hood back and her short hair was a windblown tangle of loose but well-styled curls. Diamonds flashed on her fingers as she pulled off her gloves and extended her hand, first to Radcliff, whom she seemed to know already, and then to Dwight.

  “Major Bryant? Are you Jonna’s—?” She hesitated, searching for the tactful term.

  “Her ex?” Dwight said bluntly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And has she really taken the guns?” asked Mr. Benton, who looked to be in his mid-sixties.

  There was something so familiar about the man that Dwight almost felt as if he should salute.

  He was roughly five-nine, but carried himself with the authority of someone taller. Trim of body, with piercing blue eyes, iron gray hair, and a neat gray mustache, he wore brown slacks and a brown leather jacket over a white shirt and tie. The brown clothes only added to his military air, and that was when Dwight pegged his familiar look. Nathan Benton could have stepped out of one of those old war movies that he and Deborah liked to watch, central casting’s idea of a stiff-upper-lip British colonel whose gruff, no-nonsense demeanor would in-spire his men to feats of heroism.

  “We only just arrived ourselves,” said Chief Radcliff.

  “It’s too soon to know who did what. Sounds as if they could have been taken anytime during the last month.”

  “Nonsense,” Benton said crisply. (Dwight wondered if he heard a faint English accent.) “The cleaning man would have noticed. I would have noticed.”

  “Mr. Benton donated the derringer and the World War I Colt,” Mayhew explained for those who had not made a connection between this trustee and the labels beneath two of the indentations. One read, “(L-46.3) Derringer Black-Powder Pistol, ca. 1872. Originally owned by Leti-tia Morrow Carter, daughter of Peter Morrow.” The other was simply described as “(L-46.2) Government Model Colt automatic pistol, ca. 1912.” Both labels carried the line, “Gift of Nathan Benton.”

  “And I distinctly remember seeing all three guns in the case as recently as last week,” Benton told the two lawmen.

  “Wait a minute,” said Dwight as he straightened from reading the label. “Black powder? Did the presentation gun use black powder cartridges, too?”

  “Well . . .” Mayhew deferred to Benton, who said,

  “No, it’s post–Civil War. Used .36-caliber cartridges, I believe, although that gun was never meant to be fired.”

  “And yet it was,” Radcliff said grimly. “At least twice that we know of.”

  “Twice?” asked the puzzled Mrs. Ramos.

  “Jonna’s great-grandfather killed himself with that gun,” Mayhew said in a half-whisper, as if repeating scandalous gossip. “So did Eustace Shay.”

  “Jonna’s father?”

  Mayhew nodded.

  “But that’s awful!” Betty Ramos looked distressed.

  “How can Jonna stand its being here?”

  “In the first place, she was only a baby when it happened,” said Mayhew as he repositioned his glasses. “In the second place, does she even know?”

  His question was directed at Dwight, who said, “I never heard about the first death, only that her father had shot himself accidentally. She never described the gun, though.”

  Benton raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Surely she must know. Someone in the Historical Society told me the gun’s history when I decided to give the derringer. It doesn’t seem to be a huge secret.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t know,” said Mrs. Ramos. “Of course, I’ve only been on the board since Thanksgiving.”

  “Mrs. Ramos and her husband donated our new heating and cooling system,” Mayhew said in a parenthetical murmur. “And she’s been a supportive Friend of the Morrow House for years.”

  “But it wasn’t until the children grew up and moved away that I’ve had time to become more involved. I can see that I still have a lot to learn.”

  “The guns were unloaded, right?” asked Dwight, trying to get them back on track. “And there are no bullets for them?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Mayhew said.

  “That’s what you were talking about when Betty and I came in, wasn’t it?” said Benton. “You’re afraid she’s going to follow the family tradition.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Mrs. Ramos. “I’ve been helping her take inventory this past month and there is nothing—absolutely nothing!—like that on her mind.”

  Radcliff’s pager buzzed and he excused himself to walk out into the hall.

  “When was the last time you talked to Jonna?” Dwight asked Mrs. Ramos.

  “Day before yesterday.”

  “Thursday?”

  “Today’s Saturday?” The treasurer for the board of trustees counted back on her fingers. “Yes, Thursday morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Around nine-thirty. We had both planned to come in and work on the inventory while it was quiet.” She cast a brief apologetic glance at Mayhew, who stiffened slightly at the implication that he was a distraction of any sort.

  “But I had to go out of town for an emergency and I came by to say I’d be in on Friday—yesterday—to help get ready for Sunday . . . tomorrow.”

  “Oh my God!” Mayhew moaned. “Tomorrow! The SHGS!”

  “What happens tomorrow?” asked Dwight.

  “The Shaysville Historical and Genealogical Society is supposed to meet. It’s our gala reception for the installation of officers. Jonna was going to become the new president. We even have a guest speaker coming from the Smithsonian.”

  “We’ll have to call him and cancel it,” Benton said firmly. “We cannot go on now.”

  Mayhew looked shocked at the suggestion. “We can’t do that without consulting with the other officers. We have to—”

  He broke off as Paul Radcliff returned. He moved with purpose and spoke decisively. “I’m afraid we’re going to 10 have to put this room off-limits for the time being, Mr.

  Mayhew. Do you have a key for it?”

  “I’m not sure, Chief.”

  “There’s one in the key cupboard,” said Mrs. Ramos.

  “Shall I fetch it?”

  “Here,” said Mayhew, fumbling with his keyring.

  “You’ll need the cupboard key.”

  “That’s okay,” said the woman, already moving through the doorway. “I’ll use the one in th
e vase.”

  Mayhew looked at her in consternation and Dwight threw an amused glance at his friend. She had only joined the board at Thanksgiving? So much for the director thinking no one knew about that spare key.

  But Radcliff did not return his grin. He gave one of the uniformed officers orders to lock the room and bring him both keys and told Futrell to pack up his bag and follow his car.

  “What’s up?” asked Dwight as they stepped out into a wind that seemed to be blowing straight out of the Arc-tic.

  “Jonna’s car’s been found,” he answered tersely, moving rapidly toward his patrol car.

  “Is she okay? What about Cal?”

  “Sorry, pal. No sign of him. Just her.”

  He got into the car and Dwight followed.

  “Well, what does she say? What’s she done with him?”

  “I’m sorry, Dwight,” Radcliff said again. “She’s dead.”

  C H A P T E R

  11

  Let us consider the fatal effects of excessive cold.

  —Theophrastus

  Saturday noon, 22 January

  Jonna Bryant’s blue Honda was parked in a crowded junkyard at the edge of town. It had been found by two teenage brothers who were searching the lot for a door to match the one they’d smashed to hell and gone when they slid their Mustang into a waist-high concrete gatepost during Wednesday night’s snowfall.

  When they finally located a Mustang with a viable door, it was jammed in between a 1972 Pinto and a late-model Accord. Both the Pinto and the Mustang were clearly banged and scarred, but the Accord looked pristine under its sheet of ice.

  “We saw the shape of something weird in the front seat, but we couldn’t tell what it was,” said one of the brothers, “so we used a screwdriver to pry loose part of the ice on the driver’s side and oh, man! We ’bout near died ourselves.”

  Beneath the red of their wind-chapped cheeks, both 10 boys were pale and shaky, but nervously excited, too, as they told it over and over again to anyone who would listen.

  The owner of the junkyard was wary and belligerent, afraid he was going to be blamed for this. He claimed total ignorance as to how or when the Accord had been added to his inventory. And he certainly knew nothing about the dead woman slumped stiffly over the steering wheel, her left hand dangling free, a silver-plated antique gun on the floor as if it had slipped from her lifeless hand after she put the barrel to her head and pulled the trigger.

  Dwight took one look and it was like a sucker punch to the heart.

  “She’s wearing a red jacket,” he said.

  Paul Radcliff nodded grimly and thumbed his radio.

  “Jack? Start a Code Amber on Cal Bryant. Here’s his dad. He’ll give you the details and a description of the woman who took him.” Then, much as he hated to have to turn this over to the Virginia state police, he added,

  “And when you’ve finished with that, call Captain Petrie and tell him I’m officially requesting their assistance to process a crime scene.”

  Dwight looked up in protest, but Radcliff shook his head. “You know I’ve got to, pal. They have the re-sources. We don’t.”

  Bone-chilling winds swept down from the snow-covered hills, straight through the open lot, and those lawmen too macho to wear gloves or hats jammed their hands into their pockets and hunched deeper into their heavy jackets.

  While they stamped their feet on the frozen, dirty snow in an effort to stay warm until the crime scene van ar- rived, Futrell took pictures of the car from all angles, documenting what Dwight already knew. This car had not moved and its doors had not been opened since last night’s freezing rain cemented them in place. It was unlikely that Jonna was the woman in a blue parka who took Cal yesterday. Nor could she have been the one who was in the house last night, not with ice this thick all around the door.

  His own brain felt cased in ice. How would Cal handle her death? Was the woman he went off with Jonna’s killer? If not, what was their connection? There had to be one. Otherwise, it would be one hell of a coincidence that his son was taken the same day his ex-wife was murdered. But why take the boy if they were going to kill the mother? Had Cal inadvertently seen something the killer was afraid he would tell?

  He bent down again to peer through the hole that the teenagers had made. Half of the window’s ice had broken away in one sheet so that the interior could be clearly seen even on this dull gray morning.

  His first thoughts were of the woman who lay there on the other side of the glass, stiff and frozen and beyond the warming touch of any human hand; the woman who had been his wife, who had given birth to their son, who had walked away from their marriage. And yeah, maybe that was because she knew he did not love her or maybe it was because she had never really loved him. The reason did not matter, had not mattered for years. The mutual lack of passion had made their divorce feel like the polite dissolution of a business arrangement that no longer paid dividends. She had cared too much about appearances for Dwight’s liking, but she was not a bad or stupid woman.

  He had felt guilty for not trying harder to save their marriage for the sake of their son; yet, at the same time, he had been so grateful that she wanted out that he had not fought her over the terms of the settlement. And despite their growing struggle over Cal these last few years, he was filled with deep sorrow that she had ended like this.

  Then his training took over. As he read the blood-spattered note that lay in her lap, his fears and regrets were displaced by a cold rage.

  “See the note?” Radcliff asked in his ear.

  “Yeah.”

  The spiky letters wavered, but they were in Jonna’s handwriting: He won’t divorce her and I don’t want to goon living.

  “The bastard made her write her own phony suicide note,” Dwight said as he straightened up. “What did he say to her? Threaten to kill Cal? Where the hell is he, Paul?”

  “We’ll find him,” Radcliff said. “I promise you we’ll find him.”

  Yesterday’s canvassers had returned the pictures of Cal, so Dwight handed one of them back and Paul signaled for an officer to take it to the station and get it out on the Internet.

  “I’ll ride along with him,” Dwight said. “Pick up my truck.”

  “You don’t want to wait for the van?”

  “What for? To watch your BCI techs try to find trace evidence that’ll take days to analyze?” He jerked his head toward the car. “You’re reading this phony setup same way I am, right? A shot to the left temple when she was right-handed? No blowback blood spatter on either hand and none on the interior window glass?”

  Radcliff was right there with him. “The shooter probably held the gun on her through the window while she wrote the note, then shot her, put the gun in her hand so it’ll have her prints, rolled up the window, and was on his way.”

  “Or her way,” said Dwight.

  “Or her way,” Radcliff agreed. “I have to wait for the state guys, but there’s no reason you can’t go talk with Jonna’s neighbor again, see if you can get a better description of the woman.”

  Leonard Carlton was dismayed to hear that Jonna was dead and indignant to think that Dwight felt he’d misled them by saying it was she who took Cal the day before.

  “I told you. She had on those big wraparound sunglasses and her hood was up, so it never occurred to me that it was anybody else. Same build, same looks. You sure it wasn’t her?” He gestured to the side door clearly visible through his large window. “She came out of that door right behind the boy and he went off with her like I’ve seen them do a hundred times.”

  “I don’t suppose you happened to glance over last night about the time someone let themselves into the house?”

  “I don’t mind other people’s business,” said Carlton in frosty denial. Then curiosity cut the high ground out from under him. “A burglar? I thought you stayed over there last night.”

  “I did. Somebody slipped in while I was asleep.”

  “And you call yourself a poli
ce officer?”

  “Hell of a note, isn’t it?” Dwight said wearily.

  Carlton shook his white head and, to Dwight’s surprise, pulled a Palm Pilot out of the pocket of his impec-cably tailored trousers. “Perhaps it’s time I did start taking notice.” With stylus held firmly in his wrinkled hand, he looked at Dwight expectantly. “Give me your cell number. If I see your boy or that woman or anybody else going in, I’ll call you.”

  After thanking the man, Dwight walked back to the front of Jonna’s house, unlocked the door, and walked through to see if last night’s intruder had returned. The light was blinking on the answering machine by the kitchen door, and he pushed the play button to listen to the new messages.

  First came Mrs. Shay’s voice: “Jonna, sweetie, where are you? Why haven’t you called? You’re not still mad at me, are you? I need a few things from the grocery store and it’s too icy for me to go out. Besides, I think I’m catching a cold. Call me right back. You hear?”

  That message was followed by an unfamiliar woman’s voice. She sounded slightly annoyed: “Hey, Jonna, it’s Lou. Did you forget that Cal and Jason had a playdate this morning? Call me.”

  In the utility room, Bandit was whining to be let out.

  Dwight knelt and petted the little dog, who seemed hungry for attention, then he turned the dog into the yard for a brief run. While he waited for Bandit to return, Dwight began to have second thoughts. Until an ME

  gave them the time of death, it was theoretically possible that the woman in the blue parka had indeed been Jonna; that she had taken Cal somewhere yesterday afternoon, changed into her red jacket, then driven to meet her killer.

  But where would she have taken him?

  There was only one place that seemed logical. He called Paul Radcliff. “I’m going around to Jonna’s mother again. See if she’s got Cal. You got a problem with me telling her about Jonna?”

  “I don’t,” came his friend’s guarded reply, “but the state guys might. They’ve officially bumped me off the case and they want to talk to you.”

  “Me? Hell, Paul, I’ve been chasing my own tail since I got to town yesterday. I don’t know what was going on in her life or who— Oh,” he said, finally thinking like a cop instead of a distracted and apprehensive father.