08 - December Dread (8 page)

I also didn’t want to go home and help my mom with a sewing project, or pie-making, or house-cleaning, or building her time machine that would take the whole world back to the 1950s with her. Figuring I might as well get some work done to pay Ron back, I pointed the car toward the offices of the
Paynesville Reporter
. The local newspaper had been around since the late 1800s, Ron had informed me, and was doing something right because its circulation kept growing at a time when newspapers in the rest of the country were going the way of the dodo bird.

The offices were unassuming, tucked near the two-screen movie theater in downtown Paynesville. The familiar scents of ink and paper washed over me as I entered, and under that, I caught a whiff of designer coffee or a vanilla air freshener. The layout was similar to the
Battle Lake Recall
. Visitors were tracked immediately to the front desk, where I imagined all business was done and ads sold. Metal filing cabinets ringed the front room. Down a hall, two doors opened across from one another—I guessed one was a bathroom and the other was the editor’s office—and the hallway ended in a spacious room filled with computers, a large table, and likely more filing cabinets out of sight.

“Something I can do for you?”

I didn’t recognize the older woman behind the counter, but she had nice smile lines. “Yes, I’m Mira James, here on behalf of the
Battle Lake Recall
. My editor said he’d call ahead so you’d be expecting me.”

“Ah yes. We weren’t sure when you’d be arriving, but you’re in luck. Jake’s here now, and he’s agreed to give you a tour. You can just have a seat over there.”

“Okay,” I said, choosing the least uncomfortable-looking plastic chair. I picked up the copy of the
Reporter
next to me. The layout was clean, the articles well-written. It reminded me a lot of Battle Lake’s paper, except with more ads in the back. So many, in fact, that it had a separate insert for them.

“Mira?”

I glanced up guiltily, feeling like a spy. Which I was. The man walking toward me was in his late 20s if he was a day, with long, straggly hair pulled back into a ponytail at his neck. “Jake?”

“At your service.” He glanced at his watch.

His body language was impossible to ignore. He had much better things to do. I couldn’t blame him. “Thanks for making time for me.”

He nodded once, abruptly. “This is going to be a short tour. We don’t have a lot here. Mind if I ask why you’re interested?”

“Didn’t Ron tell you?” I asked, stalling for time. I hadn’t formulated a believable lie yet.

“No, but I figured it’s because our circulation numbers just bumped and he wants to know our secret.”

I immediately decided to like this guy. I didn’t need to waste any good fibs on him. “You figured right. Are you one of the reporters?”

“I suppose I am. I’m also the editor and the publisher, just like Ron. I only have two other employees, one you met at the front desk and the other sells ads for us. Keeping the overhead small is the only way to make a newspaper work in a small town.”

I studied him some more as he led the way down the narrow hallway. “You look pretty young to have your own newspaper.”

“My parents owned it before me. Didn’t you graduate from here?”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering if he knew my history. I hoped he didn’t. “I didn’t get out much, though. I grew up eight miles out of town, over by Lake Koronis.”

He nodded in a distracted way. I got the sense he was a habitually busy man. “Well, this is the do-all room,” he said, flicking on the light. “You’ll recognize the layout table, computers, file cabinets. We don’t have all our archives transferred into a computerized form yet, but we’re working on it.”

A fully-extended copy of the front and back pages of the newspaper caught my eye. “Your paper comes out tomorrow?”

“Yep. Deadline is Monday and the paper comes out every Wednesday.”

I pointed at the headline article. “You’re reporting on the River Grove murder.”

He pushed a strand of hair behind his ear, his brow furrowed. “I rearranged what I thought was the final layout to make room for that story. The victim graduated from here.”

“I know.” We both stared at the headline for a couple beats, the atmosphere in the room suddenly heavy. “Did you find out anything that they haven’t aired on the news?”

He shook his head. “Not really. The same FBI crew that covered the case in Chicago and Wisconsin is handling it in Minnesota. The supervisory agent is Walter Briggs. He’s with the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and he’s not big on answering reporters’ questions.”

“So we all just wait.”

“Yeah.” He regarded me thoughtfully. “Some more than others.”

I pushed back my hair. “I wonder if I should dye it.”

He shrugged. “You can’t change your life. If I were you, I’d make sure I wasn’t ever alone, though.”

“Thanks. I’m actually taking a self-defense class. Starts tonight.” I didn’t know that I’d reached that decision, but something melancholy in his gaze made me want to stay positive.

“Good idea,” he said, walking back toward the front of the building. “That’s about it for the tour. Got a bathroom over there, my office across from it, and you already saw the front desk. Not a lot of magic here.”

“But your circulation, it’s going up. Can you tell me the secret?”

He stopped and turned, offering me the first hint of a smile. “No secret. Good writing, clean layout, loyal community. Oh, and the woman we hired two months ago to sell our ads? She looks like Angelina Jolie.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Mystery solved. “I’ll be sure to tell Ron the secret, though I don’t know if it’ll do us any good.”

He led me out and told me his door was open if I had any more questions when I was in town. I thanked him and crunched down the sidewalk, deep in thought. The stores on the street were exactly the same as I remembered—small mom and pop gift shops, a Jack and Jill grocer, a Ben Franklin five and dime. I’d almost reached my car when I spotted something that turned my blood to sludge: a woman who looked like my mom, her jacket pulled tight around her ears, walking into an alleyway a block up, toward the rough part of town.

Twelve

Okay, so Paynesville doesn’t
really have a rough part of town. It’s composed mostly of family-owned businesses, a car dealership or two, some churches, and row upon row of walk-out ramblers and ranch-style houses sprinkled amongst the colonials. There is, however, a section on the edge of the small downtown area that is mostly rentals, and the serial killer scare had me seeing ghosts. “Mom!” She didn’t hear me, so I jogged toward the alley she’d disappeared into. My boots crunched on the salt littering the sidewalk. “Mom?”

I peered down the alleyway that ran between the old creamery and the turn-of-the-century Paynesville hospital, both of which had been converted into apartments in the ’60s. The alley led to a webbed series of stairs attached to the three-story brick building on each side. The stairs led up to apartment doors. Just a glance was all it took to ignite the memory. A summer night smelling of blooming peonies and fireworks. Me, Patsy, and another girl here on a dare. Instructions to walk to the farthest set of stairs, go up to the third floor, and knock on the blue door. A Ziploc bag of Minnesota ditchweed exchanged for a hot ten-dollar bill. I remembered getting more headache than high, but we did a lot of laughing that night nonetheless. I half-smiled at the memory. Where had I been storing all these positive recollections?

I pulled myself back into the moment, counting eight separate balconies and doors, four on each side of the alleyway. Mom could have gone into any one of them. Was it possible the town dealer was still living here? Unlikely, and even if he was, he’d be the last person my mom would visit. Right? I replayed the image of her in my head. Had she looked scared, or in a hurry? That’s when I realized I hadn’t been able to make out her face, and come to think of it, the black down jacket she’d been wearing was a generic design that everybody seemed to sport nowadays. I’d assumed it was my mom because of her height and build and something essentially mom-like about her, but maybe it hadn’t been her after all.

Still uneasy but lacking an alternative, I returned to my car. The decision that followed—to drive west—wasn’t a conscious one, but I found my Toyota pointing that direction and soon, I passed the green sign trimmed in white letting me know that I was entering River Grove, population 767. The town’s streetlight poles were swathed in plastic green garlands and topped with Santa heads that I’m sure lit up at night. The layout was similar to Paynesville’s, with two main streets that intersected at the downtown area. The town consisted of churches, grocery stores, and assorted offices surrounded by neat houses. A sprinkling of people walked the streets, but they all appeared to be in a hurry. Everyone’s head was down.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, so I crisscrossed the streets. Not one snowman existed in a single yard, even though today’s sticky snow conditions would be perfect. Three large globes of snow scattered in front of a blue rambler near the town park suggested that any existing snowpeople had been destroyed after the murder. Many front yard fir trees were still trimmed with lights, and one house had a giant balloon Santa tethered to its roof.

I took a right, away from downtown, and made my way to Oak Street, which ran parallel to the town park. The houses here were more lavishly decorated, with elves frolicking in the snow, deer silhouettes in various stages of surprise and bristling with twinkle lights, walks lined with huge colored bulbs in red, green, and blue. The effort at good cheer relaxed me marginally, and I stayed that way until I reached the end of the block and spotted it: a white bungalow, its entire lawn thick with candy canes. There were red-and-white striped canes rimming the yard, a gingerbread playhouse covered in candy canes erected in the center, and candy cane lights trimming the roof, porch, and windows. It made my stomach cramp to look at them. Who lived there, and why hadn’t they taken down their decorations when the Candy Cane Killer struck their town?

It was a crazy, unfairly judgmental thought, one I quickly dismissed. Maybe an elderly couple lived here and they had no way of removing the decorations without help. Why should they have to change something that obviously brought them happiness just because of one twisted human? It certainly wouldn’t bring anyone back. Still, I couldn’t flee this street fast enough and took the first right I could. I found myself in a sea of official-looking cars. Behind the row of sedans sat the house from last night’s news, Natalie Garcia’s sweet little black-shuttered home, one unassuming home in a block of many. Only this one was criss-crossed with yellow and black crime scene tape, a local news crew shuffling from foot to foot as they stood a respectful distance from the crime scene.

I drove to the end of the street and parked. I suppose this is what I’d come for, to see her house, to feel a connection with her, to pay her back for the kindness she had shown me 15 years earlier. And maybe a part of me had even come for some reassurance that I or somebody I loved wouldn’t be next. It was a fool’s errand, for sure. In my rearview window, I saw men in too-thin dress coats standing in her yard, their red cheeks and breath plumes revealing their discomfort. A pair in head-to-toe white traveled from a van in the driveway to Natalie’s house, their face masks and full gowns rendering them genderless. This was the FBI, and they needed a small-town, aspiring PI around like they needed a toothpick in their eye.

“Hello?”

The voice was muffled, but still, I jumped. I’d been so intent on watching the scene play out in my rearview mirror that I hadn’t noticed the man walk up to my driver’s side door. I rolled down the window. “Hi.”

He was about 5'10", and the way he carried himself suggested he was lean and rangy under his over-stuffed blue jacket. His eyes were a friendly brown, and he didn’t appear to be upset. “Hi. Sorry to startle you.” He glanced over at the cluster of FBI agents. “Did you know Natalie?”

“Are you with the FBI?”

His mouth curved into a smile. “Nope. They don’t get to wear the puffy jackets. They have an image to uphold, you know.” He yanked off his glove and offered me a handshake. He was a lefty with no
wedding ring. “Adam De Luca. I’m a reporter for the
Chicago Daily News
. Did you know her?”

I immediately felt protective of my history with Natalie and avoided answering his question. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

A pained look crossed his face. He pulled his glove back on and stuffed his hands into his coat pockets, standing fully upright. I had to lean out to see him. “This is my beat, I’m afraid.”

“Minnesota?”

He shook his head. “Crime, generally, and right now, the Candy Cane Killer specifically. He started in Chicago. That’s where I started, too. Assigned to him almost since day one.”

I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “That’s a pretty gruesome beat.”

“I agree. It’s not all I do, but come December for the last three years,
it becomes the focus of my life. Nobody’ll be happier than me when this case is solved.” He glanced to his right, a rueful smile on his face. “The FBI will probably be happy to never see me again, too.”