A Cold Dark Place (17 page)

She looked around her office. A poster of Mt. Baker hovered above her desk, its white conical form silhouetted against
a fiery sunrise. The bookcase behind her was overstuffed
with training manuals, some photos of her cats, and two
notebooks that kept cold cases always within the swivel of
her office chair. Her credenza was set up as a mini hot beverage bar, with an electric teakettle, a wicker basket of dried
noodle soups, hot chocolate, instant coffee, and teas. She
eyed the teakettle and its electrical cord, but thought better
of it.

What can I use?

Olga ran her fingers through her short hair, pondering the
scenario she was about to employ. She could go down to
Property and get a spool of twine, but that was a hassle and
she was the type of woman who wanted to do what she
wanted, when she wanted to do it. The answer was on her
desk. The telephone. She unhooked the wire from the jack
and disconnected the phone. Just then Stacy Monroe appeared in the doorway.

"Phone problems?" Stacey, a patrolwoman with a husky
voice and warm demeanor, poked her head inside Olga's office. "That happened to me last week"

Olga smiled. "No. No problem. But you're just in time to
lend me a hand-literally-with a little experiment. You
game?"

Stacey's eyes moved over the photos and files on Olga's
desk. Clearly she was intrigued.

"Warner and Smith?" she asked.

The detective nodded, and stepped around from behind
her desk, the phone wire now coiled in her hand. "I'm just
playing around," she said. "I'm glad you're willing. Why don't
you sit here?" She pointed to the edge of the desk. "I'm
going to tie you up ""

Stacey let out a nervous laugh and sat down. "Not like I
haven't done that before"

Olga gave the officer a slight wink. "Oh really?"

"Kidding! God, you know my life. You know my husband."

"Yes, I've met Frank" She smiled. "Just how did we get
on this topic, anyway?"

"I don't know. You were about tie me up ""

"That I was. Put out your arms" Keeping the end of the
length in her left hand, Olga started wrapping the beige wire
around Stacey's outstretched wrists. Once. Twice. Three times.
She stopped and craned her neck to better view the photograph of Shelley Smith's disfigured and decomposed wrists.
"Looks like he wrapped around five or six times," she said,
almost to herself. "I expect pretty tight, too, but I won't do
that to you"

"Good," Stacey said, suppressing a smile. "Something to
look forward to later."

Olga played along. "Aren't you just full of surprises?"

The women laughed, cutting the tension of what they
were really doing. Olga was mimicking the actions of an unknown killer while poor Stacey who'd just wandered onto
her shift had made the mistake of coming by to say hello.

Olga stepped back and admired her technique before unspooling the cording. Stacey stood up and rubbed her wrists. As gentle as Olga had been, the wire still hurt a little. Her
wrists were red.

Olga fished a ruler from the top drawer of her desk.

"Almost twenty-four inches," she said.

"Good? Bad?"

By then, Olga had started for the door, scooping up her
black saddlebag purse, detective's shield, and a tan Gore-Tex
coat that was all about function rather than fashion. It was
raining outside.

"Bad, I'd say. Bad for someone who works at Builders'
Center."

"Huh?"

"You'll see. Thanks, Stacey." With that, her coat swung
over one arm, Olga Morris was gone.

The sky was a colander. Olga Morris scanned the parking
lot of the Builders' Center off Railroad Avenue as she sought
a vacant spot close to the door. Her coat, while waterproof,
lacked a hood. Her short hair guaranteed a chilly splash on
her scalp. She maneuvered her dark blue Chevy into a reserved parking spot. She did so somewhat reluctantly, but
the thought of getting drenched won out over the prospect of
being caught taking advantage of the silver and gold shield
she carried in her purse.

Inside, she rushed past the contractor's help booth, and a
swarm of shoppers filling their carts with caulking, lumber,
and the miscellaneous provisions of home repair. The detective was grateful that she was an apartment dweller and hadn't
been forced into the nest-building trap so many homeowners
had embraced unwittingly.

Forget a caulking gun; I d rather carry a Glock.

She made her way to Arnold Davis's office, a small room
behind a ten-foot-wide two-way mirror that allowed the fifty ish manager with gorilla-haired knuckles and a tuft of trolldoll hair protruding from his open collar to keep an eye on
the selling floor.

"I'm back, Arnie. Miss me?"

She took off her coat and shook it slightly. Rain puddled
the linoleum tile floor. "And I'm soaked!"

Davis looked up from his Tupperware bowl of macaroni
salad. Mayonnaise collected at one corner of his tight mouth,
and Olga's gaze zeroed in on it in such an obvious manner
that he scrambled for a napkin. The room smelled of garlic.

"I assume you're back to talk about Lorrie and Shelley,"
he said. "We're having a memorial after hours, now that ...
now that we know."

"May I?" Not waiting for an invitation to sit, she pulled
up a visitor's chair. "I hadn't heard about the memorial.
That's nice. When is it?"

"Saturday at nine."

"Okay, I'll be here"

"If you didn't come about the memorial, then what's up?"

"We're looking into the manner of death," she said, her
tone shifting from warmth and concern, to cool and dead serious. "This is very important. I want to talk to you about
some of the products you sell."

"What do you mean?" Davis leaned closer and looked toward the open door. Several customers standing in line were
looking inside. "Let's shut the door," he said.

Olga nodded and reached over to the knob, teetering on
the cheap plastic molded chair, and pulled it in tight. The air
was sucked out of the room. Behind the two-way glass the
people who'd been staring turned away. There was nothing for
them to see, just a silver void and their own gawking images.

She noticed a couple of flyers, slightly balled up in the
trash. She knew what they were. Anyone in town would have.
Since the girls went missing more than four thousand hand bills had been stuck on telephone poles, Laundromat bulletin
boards, and anyplace where college students congregated.
Across the top of each page was the word MISSING. Underneath those big block letters were Lorrie and Shelley's photos. Both had been employed part-time at Builders' Center.

"None of this has been in the media," Olga said, "and I
expect it to stay that way."

"I understand," he said. His eyes looked watery and she
wasn't sure if the store manager was tearful or overdosed on
garlic, which, judging by the overpowering smell in the room,
was Mrs. Davis's chief ingredient in that macaroni salad
she'd packed for her husband's lunch.

"Two things turned up by forensics indicate the killer
might have had access to a special kind of wire and a clear
plastic tarp of a fairly large size. Of course I thought of your
store"

"I see" The color drained from his face. "You don't seriously think the killer shopped here?"

Olga shook her head, but it was halfhearted. "No, I'm not
saying that"

"Good" Relief washed over his Davis's face, but it was
only momentary.

Olga Morris dropped the bomb.

"I think he might have worked here," she said.

"Look, Detective," Davis said, rising and suddenly turning his salutation into something formal. "You and your people have talked to everyone here. There isn't an employee
here who didn't love those girls."

"I'm sure, but this is a crime of sexual brutality, Arnie
and sometimes there is a fine line between love and brutality.
In some people, it's a hair trigger between the two"

Davis's face was now red. "You know what I mean. We're
like a family here. No one here would ever hurt Lorrie and
Shelley."

"Let's hope so. Now I'm going to show you something
that might be upsetting. I've cropped out the girls, but I want
you to look at two pieces of evidence."

"Oh God," Arnie Davis said, slumping back down, the
crimson draining from his face. "What is it?"

"Two pictures. That's all." From her purse, Olga removed
two color photographs. She had used strips of copier paper
to mask off any bits of human flesh. With her eyes riveted to
Davis's she put them on the desk, scooting the Tupperware
bowl to one side with her other hand. Davis dropped his gaze
to the desktop, a perplexed look on his face.

"What is it?" he asked. "May I?" He indicated the desire
to turn the first photograph at another angle. The exposed
photographic image was narrow on that one, with the other
being broader. Still unsure, he looked up at Olga.

"It's Shelly's wrist," she said.

Davis gasped. It was an involuntary response, one he
wished he'd felt coming. The color of Shelly's skin looked so
gray for human flesh it almost seemed as if it had been taken
with black-and-white film, yet there was a hint of color in
the form of thin bands that marked her wrist. He peered
closer and felt the macaroni rise slightly in his stomach.

He tapped the photo. "What are those?"

"Ligature marks. Look closely. Do you have anything for
sale that might leave that kind of indentation?"

Davis pulled reading glasses from his breast pocket. "It
looks like a double line, each mark"

"That's correct. The wire or tubing used to bind the girls'
wrists and feet, we think, though I admit it has been difficult
determining just where they were bound because of the decomposition of the bodies."

"It could be 45V9, electrical," he said. "It's dual wire and
is about that thick." He tapped the photo once more. "Pretty
flexible, too."

Olga wrote down the stock number. "You sell it here?"

Davis looked up, queasy, but emotionless. "Yes. Not often,
but we keep it on spools."

Spools, good. The killer needed lengths of it to tie them
up.

"All right," she continued. "Before you take me to it, look
at the other photo. I'm concerned with the plastic tarp"

"Is that a leg?" he asked, looking closer at the larger of
the two images on his desk.

Olga didn't answer him directly. "Focus on the plastic,"
she said. "Anything like that around here?"

Davis shook his head and rapped his hairy knuckles on
his desk. Nerves were kicking in and beads of sweat had collected and started to roll from his temples. "No, I mean ... I
mean it is just clear plastic. That can come from anywhere. It
could be Saran wrap for God's sake. Maybe the Safeway
people next door can help you"

Olga stood, picked up a Builders' Center pen and directed
him back to the photo.

"I realize that," she said. "But look here. Look at the edge
of the material. It is as plain as day and I don't need to blow
it up to prove to you that there's something distinguishing
about this tarp"

Davis narrowed his gaze back to the unpleasant business
at hand. Just past where the form of the human leg ended, he
could make out some whitish cross-hatching. The tarp was
at least three millimeters thick, and the edge of it had been
embossed with three rows of Ys. They ran the full length of
the seam, and then disappeared under, what Davis, now apparently allowed himself to accept, was one of his part-time
cashiers' dead bodies.

"I think I know what that is," he said. He lifted the photo
and brought his gooseneck desk lamp closer. He turned the
fixture to better illuminate the image. "Looks like Cross beam's Triple D painter's tarp. The edge is embossed to stop
tears"

Olga wrote that down, too. "DDD?"

"Dense, durable, and defect-free. And yes, we sell it here.
Not much. It's expensive. Top of the line, but we do sell it.
Oh God, no. . " His voice trailed to a soft whimper as the
realization of what it meant set in. "You don't think the killer
got his supplies here?"

Olga gathered up the photos and tucked them back inside
her oversized purse. "As I said, I don't think he shopped
here. But I'd bet my life he works here" She reached for her
coat and started for the door. "I want to see Dylan Walker. Is
he working today?"

If there was a more handsome man working at the Builders'
Center-in all of Meridian, for that matter-Olga Morris
would have been hard pressed to give up a name. Everything
about Dylan Walker was perfect. His teeth were whiter than
plaster of paris. His eyes were dark and sparkly. At thirtythree, he had a thick mane of dark brown hair that any
woman would have killed for. His body was that perfect V:
broad shoulders that were square without being too angular
and honest-to-goodness six-pack abdominal muscles that revealed themselves whenever he reached for a can of paint on
a higher shelf. More than one Meridian woman asked for the
eggshell tint base, when she really wanted a flat paint because, well, Dylan Walker had to move that body to reach it.

Olga moved past the plumbing supply section, sinks and
toilets displayed with pencil-point lighting that made them
look like objets d'art. The smell of gardenias from a shipment of plants in the nursery hung in the soggy air of the
rainy day. As she rounded the corner at the end of the aisle,
she could hear a woman twittering about something.

". . . Oh really? I thought it would be so much harder to
do""

"Depends on how hard you want things."

Olga interrupted Dylan Walker and the now red-faced
suburban mom who'd been caught flirting over a stack of
travertine tiles.

"Dylan, I could use some help, too," Olga said.

Even though he knew why she was there, he flashed his
blazing white smile.

"That's what I'm here for," he said.