Dead of Winter Read online

  “No problem,” Hurley says. “I’ll wait here in your office. I’ve got a few phone calls to make, and I need to get Richmond over here to see what Arnie has.”

  I leave Hurley and head for Izzy’s office. I find him seated behind his desk buried, as usual, in paperwork.

  “What are you doing here?” Izzy says, peering up at me over the top of his glasses when I knock on his open door.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Chris will be in at noon, and if anything changes before then, I’ll go home. But for now, I’m good. I want to keep working on this case. The thought of Liesel’s sister still being out there . . .” A shudder runs through me. “It haunts me.”

  “I hear you,” Izzy says, nodding solemnly.

  “Besides, my car isn’t exactly drivable yet.”

  “Right,” Izzy says. He then starts scrolling through the Rolodex on his desk, stops at the N tab, and removes a card. “Call these guys. They’ll take care of it for you.” He hands me a Rolodex card with a business card stapled to it for Not a Trace.

  “Thanks. Do you mind if I use your desk phone and call them from here? I don’t have my cell phone.”

  “Have at it.”

  I dial the number and make the necessary arrangements, letting the company know that they can get my car keys from the receptionist. When I’m done, I hand Izzy back the card and he sticks it back in its proper place.

  “Thank you,” I say. “They said they’d be able to get to it within the hour.”

  “Good. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

  “Arnie called while we were in the ER and said he has something that might help. So Hurley, Richmond, and I are going up there to see what he has.”

  “Okay, but don’t overdo it, Mattie.”

  “Pot, kettle,” I say with a smile.

  I leave it at that and go up front to give my car keys to Cass, and explain the situation. With that done, I head back to my office to fetch Hurley.

  * * *

  We opt to take the stairs rather than the elevator up to the second floor, and as we exit the stairwell, we hear the sound of raised voices coming from Arnie’s lab and office area. Everyone’s nerves are on edge after the morning’s events, particularly mine, and I pause in the hallway, listening. Seconds later, I relax a smidge because I recognize the voices as belonging to Arnie and Jonas Kriedeman, the police department’s evidence technician. Arnie and Jonas have a lot of overlapping duties, and they generally work well together, divvying up the various tasks, evidence analysis, and crime scene data between them.

  In addition to their work duties, they’ve also been sharing Laura Kingston for the past two years. Laura joined our staff a couple of years ago, and her position ended up being split between our office and the police department. She spends half of her time working for us, and half of her time working for them. Most of the time, the “us” and “them” in this scenario are Arnie and Jonas. Both men have taken a liking to Laura, and both men have been courting her with varying degrees of success. As I listen to the heated words coming down the hallway, I realize that Laura and the objects of her affections are the subjects at hand.

  “She can go wherever she wants to!” I hear Jonas yell. “She doesn’t need you enticing her with promises you can’t keep.”

  “Oh, I can keep them,” Arnie taunts. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering to try anymore. Laura made her choice, and you’re out, bro.”

  “The hell I am,” Jonas snaps. “I had her over for dinner just the other night,” he says in a so-there tone. “And my daughter adores her.”

  “Oh, sure. Play the cute-kid card,” Arnie scoffs. “You’re using your daughter to get laid. That’s pretty low, dude.”

  “I’m not using my daughter for any such thing,” Jonas says. “You take that back.”

  There is a tightness in Jonas’s voice that makes me look at Hurley in panic. He returns the look and we hurry down the hall toward the lab.

  “Make me,” Arnie taunts.

  We reach the door of the lab in time to see Jonas lunge forward and shove Arnie, forcing him backward several steps. After catching his balance, Arnie charges back at Jonas, one fist raised. Jonas rears back just as Arnie lets his fist fly and it misses its mark. Arnie overbalances and starts to fall to the floor, though he manages to catch himself on a chair back and halt his descent. Jonas, seizing the moment, raises a leg and kicks Arnie in the ass. Arnie yells out, “That’s it!” and charges at Jonas, head down, coming at him like a raging bull.

  Jonas, in classic matador style, deftly steps to one side after grabbing both sides of Arnie’s head between his palms and steering him off to the side. So far, Jonas seems to be winning this battle, but that changes in the next few seconds as Arnie lunges across the floor at Jonas’s feet, wrapping his arms around Jonas’s ankles, and then logrolling.

  Jonas goes down hard. Unfortunately for Arnie, he lands on Arnie’s legs, forcing a string of colorful curses from Arnie. Both men roll apart, taking a moment to catch their breath and assess their respective injuries.

  Arnie’s hair, which is again in a man bun, is hanging in threads around his red, sweaty face.

  Jonas, who probably outweighs Arnie by a good fifty pounds—though most of that weight is flab—is looking equally exhausted and is breathing hard. He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out an inhaler, and gives himself a quick squirt.

  I take advantage of this momentary lull in the action to say, “You know, there is a lot of very expensive equipment in this room.”

  “Mattie’s right,” Arnie says, watching Jonas get to his feet and take another blast from his inhaler. “This equipment is too delicate and expensive to risk damaging any of it.”

  I’m mentally patting myself on the back for making these two come to their senses when Arnie ruins it for me. “Let’s take it out in the hallway,” he says.

  Jonas nods, stuffs his inhaler in his pocket, and starts to head that way. Arnie picks himself up from the floor to follow. They push past us, and once they reach the hallway, they face off about six feet apart and start circling, both of them hunkered down like wrestlers.

  “I’m willing to fight for my woman,” Jonas says in his best caveman voice.

  “Don’t call her your woman,” Arnie says irritably, shoving his hair back off his face. “She doesn’t belong to you.”

  “You guys,” I say in a chastising tone, shaking my head. But I might as well be talking to the walls.

  “You talk big, now let’s see if you can back it up,” Jonas says.

  “Bring it on,” Arnie says with a sneering curl of his lip and a come-on motion of his hands.

  With a look of fatalistic determination, Jonas takes a step toward Arnie. Arnie does the same, and then they start circling again.

  I give Hurley a pleading look. “Are you going to stop this?”

  “Do I have to? It’s kind of entertaining. Besides, I’m not sure I should. This ritual is as old as time itself.” He shrugs. “Let them fight it out.”

  I stare at him in disbelief as he smiles and leans back against the door frame, folding his arms over his chest.

  In the hallway, the men keep circling, mirroring pugilistic postures and expressions.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You two are both idiots.” I step into the center of their circle and stand there, looking from one to the other.

  A chime announcing the arrival of the elevator distracts everyone momentarily. We all look down the hallway and watch as Richmond steps out of the elevator. He starts to walk toward us, but then stops, staring at the weird tableau before him: the two men with their fists raised and me in between them.

  I take advantage of the distraction. “If you two idiots really want to beat one another up, I’d suggest you go to a boxing ring somewhere and do it sensibly—though, to me, that’s an oxymoron. But before you decide one way or the other, there is something you should probably know.”

  I’m whipping m
y head from one side to the other in order to look at both men, and it dawns on me that I tower over and outweigh both of them. If I wanted to put an end to this, I probably could. Then again, little guys can be scrappy and tough, and I only have one good arm. I decide discretion is the better part of valor and continue with my verbal attempts instead. I take a deep breath, and spill: “Laura is dating Patrick Devonshire behind your backs.”

  Both men’s faces instantly change from their angry, pugilistic expressions to looks of confusion at first, then skepticism.

  “I don’t believe you,” Arnie says.

  “Believe her,” Hurley says. “She’s been out with Devo at least a half-dozen times in the past month.”

  The two men look at Hurley and then, in unison, shift their gazes toward Richmond, who simply nods and shrugs.

  Jonas drops his hands to his sides. “I thought it was weird when she told me she couldn’t come over for dinner the other night because her tummy was upset, and then she came into work the next day looking fine and ordering spicy beef from Peking Palace for her dinner.”

  Arnie drops his hands as well. “She told me she had a migraine last night, but when I drove past her house, I heard loud music coming from inside. I figured maybe her headaches were different from most and responded to that sort of thing.” He narrows his eyes in thought. “She has been hanging out at the police station a lot lately.” He looks over at Jonas. “I assumed it was because she was spending more time with you.”

  Jonas shakes his head. “Haven’t seen much of her for the past few weeks, except for during shift change, when she’s coming in and I’m getting ready to leave, and the one dinner. She was in a hurry to leave after we ate, claiming she was tired. And now that I think about it, Devonshire was down there in the lab with her on two mornings that I know of. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just assumed he was inquiring about some evidence on a case or something.”

  “She’s been playing you guys off one another for a long time now,” I say. “I think it’s time you two wised up, made up, and moved on.”

  I watch as the expressions on their faces change from determination to hurt anger, then to disappointment. They finally settle on a sad, resigned expression that I suspect will be a precursor to loneliness. Neither guy has much experience with women, other than Laura, and I know it won’t be easy for them to let go of their hopes for their respective relationships with her.

  “There are plenty of other fish in the sea,” Hurley tosses out nonchalantly.

  I wince, knowing that his words, while meant to be encouraging, will likely rankle the two men. Hurley, with his tall good looks, killer blue eyes, and hot body, has women fawning over him all the time. I doubt the man has ever had a problem getting a girl in his entire life. Arnie and Jonas, on the other hand, are more in a class with Richmond and me: not butt-ugly by any means, but certainly not members of the beautiful elite. Neither man is handsome in the classic sense. They are both short; Jonas is pudgy, and Arnie is skinny. Arnie is balding and trying to make up for it by wearing his hair long, and Jonas has an angry mop of hair, which I suspect he cuts himself. Arnie is a bit out-there, personalitywise, with his conspiracy theory tendencies; Jonas, while certainly more down-to-earth, has the extra baggage of being a single parent to an adorable little girl who is seven years old. While I don’t think his daughter will scare a lot of women away, it will deter some of them, and his need to care for her and to hold down a full-time job makes his available dating time difficult to come by.

  Sure enough, as soon as Hurley utters his platitude, the two men look at one another and roll their eyes. I feel bad for both of them, and start thinking I might need to put out some inquiries and start to play matchmaker.

  “Can we get back to work?” I say to no one in particular. “We have a very pressing case to solve, and I, for one, would like to do so as soon as possible.” I look over at Arnie. “You said you had something for us?”

  “I do,” he says, making another effort to smooth back his escaped strands of hair.

  * * *

  Arnie walks into his office and heads straight for his computer. He pulls out his chair, plops down into it, and grabs his mouse. The rest of us filter into the room and form a semicircle behind him, looking over his shoulders. Richmond nudges me and then hands me my cell phone.

  “That was quick,” I say in a low voice.

  “There are some advantages to working for a small-town police department,” he says. “We have a little less bureaucracy to deal with.”

  I check the phone for missed calls and see that there was one from Hurley, right around the time that Ernie and I were facing off in the autopsy suite. After making a mental note to tell Hurley how timely his call was, I slip the phone into the pocket of my scrub pants.

  “One of my online buddies hooked into something in a gaming chat room he visited,” Arnie begins, tapping away at his keyboard. A moment later, he has a personal e-mail account up on the screen.

  “Gaming chat rooms are rife with pedophiles looking to dupe some young boy or girl into meeting them somewhere. My buddy has befriended a couple of these skanks, and he monitors who it is they’re chatting with, though they change usernames all the time so it’s hard to keep up with them. He’s spent enough time observing their chat behavior, syntax, and lingo that he can usually mark them when they change names. If he suspects some kid might be getting suckered in, he warns them.

  “I told him I was interested in finding someone who might be involved with human trafficking in this area, and he gave me the name of a gaming chat room he knows is trolled all the time by someone from this general area, someone who is either a pedophile or a scout for one.

  “So, I created an e-mail account just for this purpose and a username of Luv2game247. And just so you know, my persona under that username is that of an eleven-year-old boy. I wasn’t in that chat room more than ten minutes when I was contacted by someone claiming to be an eleven-year-old boy also, though I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”

  “How can you tell?” I ask.

  “My buddy gave me some key things to look for,” Arnie explains. “And he’s been monitoring this particular username for about two weeks now. I think when you see the e-mails he sent me, you’ll understand. They’ll make your radar go off.”

  Arnie opens the first in a series of e-mails from someone going by the name Games4ever2018. We read it over his shoulder. It’s a basic, getting-to-know-you kind of e-mail with nothing salacious or suspicious in it. Arnie clicks on four more e-mails that follow, all of them of a similar nature where the two “boys” share some facts about their lives, discuss what games they like to play, and ask a few personal questions. Games4ever2018 asks more questions than Arnie does, and by the time they’ve exchanged four e-mails apiece, Arnie has revealed that he is an eleven-year-old male, latchkey kid with blond hair and a slight build who lives in central Wisconsin.

  I’m stunned, but also impressed, by how Games4ever2018 gets this information out of Arnie with seemingly innocuous conversational threads about how tedious parents can be, how bullying some kids at school can be—particularly the big kids—and complaints about how all the girls Games4ever2018 likes are bigger than he is.

  In the fifth e-mail, Games4ever2018 starts complaining about how expensive the games are to buy. Arnie agrees in his reply, bemoaning the fact that he can’t afford to buy any new games because his old ones are getting boring. Games4ever2018 then asks Arnie if he’s a good player, and Arnie replies with some boasts about his scores. Games4ever2018 then asks Arnie if he’d like to learn of a way to play some new games, and not have to pay for them. Arnie’s reply follows that, of course, he would.

  Arnie turns around at this point and looks at all of us. “There are more of these to read, but it should be noted that another online friend of mine is also in communication with Games4ever2018,” he explains. “There are several people involved, and they’re coordinating the effort from different venues. Anyway,
this particular friend has visited several different chat rooms over the past year or so that are often used to shop for, um, human companionship. And he has let it be known that he functions as a broker or middleman for others who want to find a certain type of companion.”

  “You mean pedophiles,” I say with disgust.

  “Some, but not all,” Arnie says. “Some of the people in these rooms are adults who are into kinky-sex stuff and want to find someone else who shares their interests. Anyway, this guy traces the ISP addresses of the people who respond to him, which is how we know that Games4ever2018 is also known by another username elsewhere in this other chat room. And when Games4ever2018 posted in the companion chat room, using some online code words that he might have a young, prepubescent boy to be had, my friend jumped on it.”

  “Online code words?” Richmond says, scratching his head. I imagine he’s having trouble following all of this, given that he’s something of a Luddite when it comes to technology. He still struggles with basic e-mail applications.

  “Yep,” Arnie says. “There are certain terms, certain words, that when used in the right context can be interpreted to mean someone who is looking for young boys, young girls, or either. There are certain symbols that are used as well.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Hurley says. “When I was working in Chicago, there was a guy from the FBI who came and did a presentation on human trafficking and pedophiles. If I remember right, the symbol for someone looking for young boys is a triangle inside another triangle. For girls, it was a heart inside of a larger heart.”

  “Correct,” Arnie says. “And some of the words that are used are seemingly innocuous, everyday words, like ‘pasta’ or ‘lollipops.’ I don’t want to go into the details, but if you want to go wading in the muck, do some online research. It will give you nightmares and make you want to lock your kids in the house forever.”

  I feel a shudder build and try to suppress it, but it races down my spine anyway. Hurley, standing next to me, feels it and reaches over to wrap an arm around my waist, pulling me closer. This sort of stuff is distasteful and hard for a parent to face, but I also know that ignorance isn’t necessarily bliss. As disgusting and frightening as it all is, it’s all too real a danger, one that I, as a parent, need to be cognizant of.