Shelf Ice (29 page)

“How’s the patient?” he asked, lightly grasping her left elbow to indicate his presence.

As she turned and smiled, he could feel her exhaustion. “Things are under control. He’s in the medical ICU, he’ll have round-the-clock security. His name is not on the patient roster. No one will know that he’s here.”

“The prognosis?”

“Excellent. With treatment and proper nutrition, he’ll be through the medical part quickly. Then there’s the whole psychological side. He seems to need a minder.”

“Brenda Manton, the first victim in this bizarre case, played that role in Tristan’s life. I don’t know who will do that now. I’ve heard that he has family somewhere out east. We’ll try to contact them.” Ray paused for a moment. “Will I be able to talk to Tristan anytime soon?”

“In a day or two, no problem. I know you will be attentive to his psychological state.”

Ray nodded to show his comprehension of her statement. “I’ve got your car here.”

“How about Simone?” Hannah asked.

“I forgot about her. She’s probably okay. I hope.”

“I better get you home fast. I hate seeing a sister in distress.”

• • •

Ray led the way to the parking lot, tossing Hannah the keys across the hood of her car. They rode in silence most of the way. Finally she said, “It all happened so fast. I’m just starting to comprehend the enormity…” Her voice faded off. After several minutes of silence she continued, “And I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’m just numb. It’s a flashback to Iraq. I’ve walled myself in an emotional bunker.”

After several minutes she asked, “I killed someone, didn’t I?”

“You shot someone, fired in self defense. They may have died in the ensuing events. I didn’t see any of it. What happened?”

Hannah’s answer was slow in coming. “By the time we were back on the water, the wind had picked up and the boats were moving a lot with the waves coming off the lake and the rebounding water from the shelf ice. I was really worried about losing my hold on Tristan’s boat. I was leaning over the back of his cockpit trying to keep our bows in line so we wouldn’t be too difficult to tow. At first I didn’t see anything. I just heard the pop. Then I glanced up at this dark form holding a pistol. I pulled out that little flare gun and took a wild shot. I can’t believe I hit anything. And then there was the fire, the person toppling into the lake. It’s all surreal… a dream… a nightmare. It’s not like I haven’t been around violence and death. But I’ve never….”

“The flare didn’t inflict a mortal wound.”

“But the fire. I started the chain of…”

“No, you just responded. You were protecting your patient. You were doing the only thing that could be done in that situation.”

“Have you ever…?” Hanna left the opening of her question hang.

“Yes, similar situation. I was badly wounded, barely conscious of my actions. It was a desperate act of self-defense. I had one shot at him with my rescue knife. My assailant wandered off and died a week or more later from an infection.” Ray paused and reflected on the incident that had taken place only a few months before. “That was a very difficult time. I’m still dealing with the psychological fallout, probably always will be. But before now, I never thought about the part I played in that young man’s death. There was no other choice.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way. On reaching the house, Simone came dashing out the instant Ray pushed the front door open. After absorbing her enthusiastic greeting of barks and wags and wet kisses as they passed her back and forth, they walked down his drive and then continued through the near neighborhood. The wind had dropped and the temperature was mild for early March. They strolled under streetlights and along the quiet streets of the village, both aware of the special gift of sharing tranquil moments with a friend and a dog.

49.

Simone’s sharp bark pulled Ray’s attention from the nearly completed
Incident Report
he had been working on since arriving at the office. He had made an early morning stop at the hospital’s morgue to ID Elise Lovell’s body, his mood shaken by the lifeless visage of the once vibrant woman that he remembered so clearly from his brief encounters.

Sue settled in a chair near him, Simone wiggling excitedly in her arms.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Tired. Plane was real late. They told us weather-related, but it was a clear, beautiful flight. I wasn’t on the ground until after midnight. Close to 2:00 when I finally made it to bed. I didn’t figure you’d be too pleased having me stop by to pick her up at that hour. How was my girl? A good guest?”

Ray smiled.

“You look a bit worse for wear,” observed Sue. “Anything happen in my absence?”

Ray added a few more words to the
Incident Report
and hit the print command. He retrieved the hardcopy from the tray and handed it to her. “Here’s something to read while I get some coffee. Want some?”

“Sure,” she responded, grasping the pages in her right hand.

When Ray returned to the room, Sue was sitting at the conference table, the pages of the report laid out in front of her. Ray set two clean mugs, a carafe of coffee, and a can of Diet Coke on the table.

She took the Coke, popped the opener, and looked over at Ray. “My God,” slipped from her lips, her eyes returning to the print.

They sat in silence until she had completed the last page. When her eyes met his, Ray asked, “What did you learn yesterday? Help me understand how this all happened.”

Sue retrieved a laptop from her backpack. “I started pulling notes together last night at O’Hare while I was waiting for the flight. It’s just a rough draft, more of an outline, really.” She looked over at Ray then back at the screen, as she opened a document. “Nice town, about ten or twelve thousand. Flat country out there. I met with Detective Sergeant Jeanette Walters; she looks like she’s in her late 40s. Once I showed my identification and proved to her that I was who I said I was, she was very cordial. She’s a real character.”

“How so?” probed Ray.

“She was the first woman in the department and the first one with a college degree. She said she had a lot of challenges early on, she didn’t elaborate. She just seemed to assume that I would understand.

“We walked from the public safety building to the library, just a couple of blocks. Along the way she explained that all the records on Elise had been sealed by order of the court. Elise was a juvenile at the time. When we got to the library, she introduced me to the research librarian, a Robert Kampy—tall, skeletal, smelling of pipe tobacco. I would guess that he’s in his late 60s. It soon became apparent that Jeanette had prepared Robert for my visit. He took me in a back room and, behind closed doors, he led me through a series of microfilms from the local paper, a publication that no longer exists. There were reports of vandalism and arson, with the suggestion that teens were suspected.”

“What are we taking about?” asked Ray.

“The surrounding country there is quite rural. The early articles referred to vacant houses being vandalized, interiors being badly damaged. The things left at the scenes, beer cans, lots of car tracks suggested the places had been the sites for a large party, probably by teens. Then there were several articles on vacant homes being destroyed by fire, with the suggestion these were probably related to the earlier vandalism and that this was a very dangerous development. The last article he showed me was about a high school senior being killed in a fiery accident early on a Sunday morning. The boy who was killed was hit from behind while sitting at a stop sign. He was hit by a large dump truck, his gas tank exploded, and he died in the fire. Other than noting that the driver of the other vehicle was a minor, there was no identification.”

“So what’s all that about?”

“That’s what I asked Kampy. He said the person at the wheel of the truck was Elise Brickston. The boy driving the car had been her steady. While Jeanette Walters had done her best to be a bit elusive, Kampy was not. He told me that she was the daughter of one of the wealthy members of the community. Her father had made millions running a large road-building company. He said that Elise was willful and wild and that the accident was no accident, it was murder with premeditation committed by a minor.”

“So what happened?” asked Ray.

“That was his point, nothing happened. Elise was whisked out of town to some expensive treatment facility to help her recover from the horrible trauma of the accident and her overwhelming feelings of guilt and remorse.

“Kampy was bitingly sarcastic. He said he thought that Elise was probably pregnant and her parents wanted to get her out of town and get things taken care of. She was never charged. She was later sent to a pricy prep school, he said he heard it was in suburban Chicago. Kampy told me that some of the kids from town ran into Elise in college. She went to Northern Illinois. And he said he always wondered what might lay in her future. As far as he was concerned, she was a killer.”

“So how does Kampy fit into this whole story?” asked Ray.

“It was his son, Eric, the boy who was killed in the accident. Kampy said that at that time he had figured out that his son was involved in the spree of vandalism and arson. He had confronted Eric just hours before he died. Eric had confessed to Kampy his involvement, but he told his father that Elise was at the center of it all. It was her idea, and he was going to break up with Elise because he was afraid that she would ruin his life. The night of the accident he was going out to meet her, to tell her that the relationship was over. Kampy isn’t sure what happened, the order of events. But he is sure that his son was murdered and that Elise got away with it.”

 
They sat in silence for several minutes. “That’s a really good piece of work on your part. Reaching back twenty years, making the connections.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “But after the fact, too late to protect anyone or bring Elise to justice. We end with questions rather than answers.”

50.

Ray and Sue did not have long to contemplate Sue’s last remark. Their attention was pulled to a voice at the open door asking if she could come in. They turned to find Molly Birchard, looking tired and disheveled, standing just outside the doorway in the hall.

Ray came to his feet and escorted her into his office, shutting the door behind her. When she was seated at the conference table, he retrieved a digital recorder from his desk, turned it on, pressed the record function, and set it on the table between Sue, Molly, and himself.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“I was staying with a friend. She lives outside Mt. Pleasant. It’s a rural area. I thought it would be safe there. But after a couple of days I knew I had to come back, come home. As soon as I got to my mother’s, she insisted that I come here. In fact, she drove me.”

Molly sat in silence for several minutes, head down, staring at the desk in front of her. Finally Ray asked, “You have something you want to tell us?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I just don’t know where to begin.”

“Begin at the beginning. Sue and I will ask you questions along the way to help us get your whole story,” counseled Ray.

“There’s just so much stuff,” said Molly. “It’s difficult. It’s embarrassing. Some of it has to do with things about me that I’ve never told anyone. Maybe that I don’t even want to admit to myself.”

“You need to tell us everything,” said Sue. “You’ve never done that. You’ve always just skirted along the surface. We need to hear it all. That’s the only way we can help you.” Sue’s voice was low and soothing. Her eyes were locked on Molly’s. “Understand?”

“Yes,” Molly responded. She went silent again as she considered where to start. “Well, there is a history and then there is what happened in the last few weeks. And a lot of it is about me, things that I’m not comfortable with. Things I can’t imagine telling anyone else.

“You know Brenda and me and Tristan go back a long way, back to Leiston School starting when we were in the tenth grade. It has to do with sex and drugs, and the three of us, and sometimes Richard Kinver, who was providing the grass in exchange for sex. There was another person, too.”

“Who was that?” asked Sue.

“It was Elise. She was only at Leiston our senior year. And we didn’t let her in the group until sometime in the winter. She was wilder than the rest of us. I didn’t know what “kinky” was until I met Elise. Our little gatherings went on right through graduation and then we went off to college.

“Eventually Brenda and I found our way back up here and our friendship resumed. And then Tristan came back too. He was totally wigged out by then. As I think I told you, his brain had been scrambled in a climbing accident, and Brenda and I became sort of his keepers, Brenda more than me. She had really good organizational skills, knew how to look after him.” Her voice dropped, “Sometimes I can barely look after myself.

“And then Elise was back in the area, too. Grown-up and sophisticated, the picture of a perfect mother and wife. And life went on. We were fairly normal functioning adults and what had happened at Leiston was a distant memory. And then everything changed and our world started to spin out of control.”