Into the Storm (38 page)

Jenk double-checked his knots. “You don’t have to do this, Iz.”

“Yeah, I do,” Izzy said. He took a deep breath and plunged into the icy water.

Sophia found Dave by the store’s Dumpster, sitting on the frozen dirt, his back against the building’s brick wall. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m great. I’m super.”

He’d seen dead bodies plenty of times before. Too many times. And he hadn’t batted an eye at the store owner with his head caved in. So why did he find the sight of one of Tracy’s unmistakable pink mittens so incredibly disturbing? It was on the floor in the ladies’ room, along with mere smatters of what DNA tests would no doubt reveal to be her blood.

The sight had made him sick—because he was the one who’d told Tracy to leave the cabin.

His stomach clenched again, and he had to close his eyes to keep from embarrassing himself even further, this time in front of Sophia.

He’d set the wheels in motion. Clearly Tracy had gotten into a car with a person capable of brutal murder, and he, Dave Malkoff, was at least partly responsible.

Hence his early-morning version of the twist and shout.

He was a total and utter wimp.

“If it’s any consolation,” Sophia told him, her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, “Alyssa says Sam sometimes has a similar…how did she put it? Intense physical reaction. So you’re in good company.”

Yeah. Right. A big, tough-guy former SEAL—especially one with a very sexy wife—could get away with puking his guts up every time he encountered violent death.
He
never would be thought of as a wimp. His weakness would be endearing. People would smile fondly as they thought about his sensitive—yet masculine—nature.

They would snicker, though, when they heard about Dave.

“This, by the way, is what happens when I’m a team leader,” he told Sophia as he pushed himself to his feet. It was freezing out here, and he knew she wouldn’t go back inside until he did, too.

“You weren’t team leader,” she pointed out. “Decker was.”

“Yeah, well, I killed Decker. Intentionally. So that made me team leader.”

She caught his arm, her face serious beneath her ridiculous fuzzy hat. “You’re determined to hold yourself responsible for this, aren’t you? But you’re not, you know.”

He gently pulled himself free. “Take the time to try to convince me
after
we’ve found Tracy, okay?”

“No one could have foreseen this,” she persisted, following him back around to the front of the building, where Decker was deep in discussion with the police chief.

A car was pulling into the now-crowded lot. It parked and Gillman, Lopez, and a SEAL officer nicknamed Big Mac all climbed out.

“Oh, good,” Dave said. “It’s your fan club. Things aren’t exciting enough around here with a mere robbery homicide and kidnapping.”

“They’re not exactly my fan club anymore,” Sophia said. “They’ve been avoiding me. Especially Danny. Ever since…”

The hunting lodge incident. What a jerk. “You want me to kill him for you?”

“Not funny,” she said.

“Hey, Sophia,” the officer—Mac—waved to her with a wide grin.

“This is how people avoid you?” Dave asked, as she gave the SEAL a somewhat pathetic attempt at a smile.

“Mac’s not avoiding me. He’s suddenly been coming on so strong, it gives me the creeps,” Sophia admitted as she turned away. “Why the sudden interest? Unless he’s been talking to Danny and Jay and…” This time her forced smile was for his benefit. “Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder what people think of me.”

“I’m pretty sure most of them think,
Wow, she’s so beautiful,
” Dave said. “And then they meet you and think,
Wow, she’s smart and funny and nice, too.
”

“And then they run and hide,” Sophia said.

“Probably because they think your seven-foot-tall bruiser of a boyfriend is going to come and kill them just for thinking lascivious thoughts about you.”

“Either that, or they see me naked,” she said. She took a deep breath. “I’ve pretty much decided to do the plastic surgery thing.”

Which would subject her to more pain. His stomach lurched again. “I think you should think about it some more,” Dave said evenly. “But if you do decide it’s what you want to do, I’m here to help, with whatever you need. Rides to the doctor’s, pizza delivery…I can even help change bandages. I’m normally not squeamish at all.” Of course, he had to close his eyes as he said it, which discounted his words.

“Are you okay?” Sophia asked. “You look a little green again.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m feeling a little green again, thanks.” Apparently he’d come out from his Dumpster hiding place a little too soon.

Dave turned and headed toward the pay phone, pretending to be interested in checking it out. What he really needed was the wall to help hold himself up, along with the privacy shield to hide behind. And yeah, having a clear path back to the Dumpster didn’t hurt.

Sophia, of course, followed him, concern in her eyes. There was amusement there, too—not much, due to the seriousness of the crime scene. But there was definitely a trace. “Can I get you anything?”

Dave nodded a mix of both yes and no. “Please,” he managed. “A little space. Please?”

She backed off, joining the others. Alyssa had come out of the store, too.

As Dave closed his eyes and breathed, he could hear Deck telling the new arrivals that an FBI forensics team was on its way. The local police were more than happy to put their first murder investigation in twenty years into the hands of the feds.

Were they sure that Tracy had really been here?

The consensus was that the mitten on the ladies’ room floor was indeed hers. But until they did a DNA test on the blood, they couldn’t be absolutely positive.

They were certain, however, that the weapon used to murder store owner Stephen Syta had been his very own baseball bat. According to family members, he’d kept it just inside the room where he’d locked up the pharmacy’s prescription drugs. The going theory was that the perp—the perpetrator—had threatened Syta with a weapon—probably a knife—forcing him to unlock the door. At which point, Syta had grabbed that bat. There’d been a struggle, whereupon the perp had gained possession and used it to end the struggle with brutal finality.

Forensics would confirm this, but Alyssa and the police chief were both pretty certain from the amount of damage to the victim’s skull that the killer had landed far more than one blow. Death had been the intended outcome of such viciousness.

Wouldn’t a place like this—a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere—have a security camera?

It did. It had been disabled at 8:30
P.M
.

Dave kept on breathing as the pounding in his head slowly subsided.

All of the prescription drugs locked in that back room had been taken, but the perp hadn’t touched the cash that was in the register. That was an important detail.

Also important was the fact that the killer had both put up a sign and locked the door behind him. He’d been trying to buy himself getaway time.

The body probably wouldn’t have been discovered as quickly as it had if the victim’s own brother-in-law hadn’t stopped to pick up cigarettes and found the store closed. As an employee of the local septic tank pumping company, the b-i-l knew that if the victim were having sewage problems, as it said in that note taped to the door, he would’ve been the first person called.

The consensus was that the killer lived, if not nearby, then at least in this general area.

Dave opened his eyes and found himself staring at the side of the pay phone. He straightened up, testing to see if his legs would hold him. They would.

The phone was an older model that still took coins, although anyone using it would need a double handful.

The FBI would check records, to see if any calls were made from this phone—part of turning over every stone. They’d find nothing of course. It would take time and manpower, and bring them nowhere closer to Tracy, who was in the company of someone who had crushed another man’s skull with a baseball bat.

Still, it had to be done.

“We should get some crime-scene tape over here,” Dave called to Decker. “They’re going to want to fingerprint the phone.”

Deck acknowledged him with a nod.

“We got the order to stand down a few hours ago,” Danny Gillman was telling Deck. “Everyone’s pretty much on their way back here, to help look for Tracy. Although…Have you seen Izzy?”

Lopez wandered over to Dave. “You okay there, Dr. Malkoff?”

Great. So much for assuming he didn’t look quite as terrible. “Yeah.”

“You got a handkerchief, sir?”

“Yes,” Dave said, “I do. But, trust me, you don’t want to borrow it.”

“No, sir, not for me. You got a little…” Lopez pointed to his own chin.

Even better. Dave turned around to try to clean himself up more thoroughly, and found himself face-to-face with a flyer advertising a reward for a lost lab-spaniel mix named Dixie. But it wasn’t the badly photocopied picture of Dixie and her sad brown eyes that caught his attention.

Directly above the photo was a phone number, scribbled in blue pen.

“Hey,” Dave shouted, even as he took out his cell phone. “Over here!” He flipped it open. There was no signal here—they were in one of Tess Bailey’s famous dead zones—but he only needed to access his phone book and…Sure enough. “This must be Tracy’s handwriting, because this is Lindsey’s cell phone number.”

No one else was excited at the news. No one even appeared to have heard him. They were all tuned in to something that the police chief was saying, his voice too low for Dave to hear. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t good news.

“I’m sorry,” the chief said. That much Dave heard.

“What happened? I missed that,” Dave said, moving toward them.

Sophia looked up, tears in her eyes.

“What just happened?” he asked again.

“Tom just called the police chief,” she told him. “Izzy, Jenk, and Lindsey found a body. They think it’s Tracy’s.”

“Think?” he repeated.

Sophia nodded. “They’re unable to identify her—she’s been too badly mutilated.”

“Is Izzy okay?” Lindsey asked.

Jenk looked up at her from his perch on a fallen log. He was sitting near their car, its engine running. Izzy was in the front seat, heat blasting, recovering from his hellish swim.

Hellish in more ways than one. The body Lindsey had helped pull out of the quarry pond was…Awful.

Scalped. Eyeless, earless, a hole where the nose had once been. Mouth sewed shut with thick black thread. The rest of the body had been equally horrifyingly mutilated, with Frankenstein stitches suturing shut a slit throat, like someone’s sick art project.

“I don’t know,” Jenk admitted. “Are you okay, because I’m sure as hell not.” He couldn’t hold her gaze. His eyes were red—it was clear he’d been crying.

Lindsey sat down next to him, all those hours without sleep making her legs as heavy as her heart. “We don’t know for sure that it’s Tracy.”

“Izzy thinks it is.”

“I understand that. But until we check dental records or DNA—”

“The alternative is that she’s with this guy. Right now,” Jenk said, his head in his hands. “Jesus, in some ways that’s worse.”

“Mark.” She put her arms around him.

“What am I going to tell her parents?” he whispered as he clung to her.

“The truth,” Lindsey said, her heart aching.

“The truth?” He pulled back to look into her eyes.

“That we’re going to find whoever did this,” she promised him. “That we’re not going let him do this ever again, not to anyone else.”

“Do I also tell them the truth about what I thought, what I felt when Izzy pushed Tracy out of the water?”

It had been awful. All of it.

Waiting, fearful for Izzy’s safety, while he swam down into that freezing water, deeper and deeper. Watching that rope sliding between Jenk’s fingers as he fed Izzy slack.

Lindsey had been certain that if Tracy were in there, she was dead. There was no hope of resuscitation. As soon as she’d seen that hole in the ice, she knew their mission had changed from one of rescue to recovery.

And when Izzy yanked twice on the rope—their predetermined signal to start hauling him up—Lindsey prayed not that they’d be able to revive her, but for a different sort of miracle. That Izzy would find only Tracy’s jacket, wrapped around something that needed discarding. Someone’s collection of Duran Duran records. A pillowcase filled with porn. A weapon used in a crime.

Instead, Izzy’d surfaced with a splash, with an enormous gasp for air, and with what was quite obviously a body—much smaller than he was, slighter. A woman. And she was definitely wearing Tracy’s jacket.

Jenk leaped to help him.

Tracy’s hood was up around her head as Jenk grabbed her beneath the arms. He didn’t have time to do more than haul her onto the ice before turning back to help Lindsey with Izzy.

“Start CPR,” Izzy was roaring, and God, it seemed so unlikely that anyone could save her, but Lindsey scrambled over to the awkwardly sprawled form, turning her onto her back and…

At first she thought it was some kind of mask, left over from Halloween. And then she knew that it wasn’t.

“What are you waiting for?” Izzy shouted. He knocked her aside.

“Aw, Jesus,” Jenk breathed as he, too, saw what was left of that face.

Izzy lost it. He either didn’t see, or he couldn’t. Maybe his brain had started to freeze. He was shaking from the cold, his own lips blue, as he pushed the body more completely onto her back, as he actually started trying to pound life back into her heart.

Jenk pulled him off her. He’d held Izzy back. “She’s dead,” he’d said over and over. “You can’t help her, man. She’s dead.”

Somehow they’d gotten Izzy into the car, heat turned high. Then Tom and his team had arrived.

It was only now that they had the luxury of time to react to this nightmare.

And as Lindsey watched, emotion welled in Jenk’s eyes. “When I saw her, when I saw she was dead, I thanked God it wasn’t you. I thanked Christ, Lindsey, that you weren’t playing the hostage last night,” he whispered, and then, oh God, he kissed her.