jowls seemed to have dropped a couple of inches since the press conference, as if he’d been dragging his hands down his face all night. He barely looked up from the papers on his desk when Magozzi and Gino walked into his office. ‘Good morning, Detectives. Please have a seat.’
Even Gino, who rarely missed an opportunity to comment on the Chief’s sartorial savvy, was subdued and respectful and got straight to the point. ‘Morning, Chief. You did an excellent job with the press conference last night. That couldn’t have been easy, just standing there looking composed while all those reporters kept busting your balls.’
Malcherson ignored him. If he ever thought too hard about Detective Rolseth’s compliments, he would probably have to fire him.
‘We need to move very quickly on this case, Detectives. The press has its teeth in the serial-killer scenario, and we are going to have to address that, and hopefully eliminate it as a possibility. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything in your reports last night that would do that.’
‘Neither did we, Chief,’ Gino said. ‘But it could have been the ex-con with a grudge, like you said, or some nut- bag out of the asylum or who knows what. Serial killers aren’t the only sickos out there. The press just gloms onto them ’cause they’re ratings grabbers. And that’s the difference between us and the press. They jump to conclusions; we have to wait for the facts.’
Malcherson nodded, closed the folder containing last night’s reports, and filed it in a drawer. He never cluttered his pristine desk with anything he wasn’t using at the moment, including photos of his family, which were neatly arranged in their own cubbyhole in a bookcase. ‘Do you have anything new for me this morning?’
Magozzi nodded and laid a fat manila folder on his desk, feeling almost guilty for messing it up. ‘Copies of the ME’s and the BCA’s preliminary reports.’
Malcherson looked wearily at the volume of paperwork. ‘Can you summarize the new information for me?’
Magozzi opened his own folder and started ticking off points. ‘All the slugs from the scene were.22s, and ballistics is working on them now. We should hear something by noon. There’s some trace, but both scenes were so contaminated, Jimmy Grimm isn’t optimistic it will yield anything. Also, the BCA found a blood trail after we left the scene yesterday that matched Toby Myerson’s blood type, along with one of his gloves.’
‘So we’re thinking this is how it went down,’ Gino continued. ‘Tommy Deaton was ahead of Myerson on the trail, and the killer was waiting for him under the cover of trees and surprised him point-blank just as he was skiing out of the woods. Myerson sees his friend get shot, takes off a glove and goes for his gun. But the killer either gets lucky or is a dead-eye dick and hits him in his shooting arm, which explains the blood trail. Myerson skis all the way to the other side of the field, which is no mean feat, considering the arm shot shattered the radius, then he caught one in the back of the neck, probably real close to where the snowman was built around him, because that slug most likely paralyzed him instantly.’
Malcherson took a moment to process the scene Gino had just laid out, his mask of Scandanavian ice still intact. ‘Unfortunately, what bothers me most about this scene does absolutely nothing to dispel the serial-killer notion. In fact, it may support it.’
Magozzi asked, ‘What’s that, Chief?’
‘The carrots.’
Magozzi smiled at him. Underneath the great suits and polished personna of the Chief, there was still an investigator, alive and well and still thinking like a cop. ‘Good call, sir. A lot of people carry rope in their cars for emergencies, but the carrot’s a dead giveaway. Whoever it was came prepared to build a snowman.’
Malcherson’s phone lit up. ‘Please excuse me a moment, gentlemen.’
Magozzi smiled a little at the Chief’s pervasive politeness, then watched Malcherson answer the phone and reach for a fresh tablet. For what seemed like a long time he took fast and furious notes without saying much to the person on the other end. ‘I’ll call that up immediately, Sheriff,’ he said at last. ‘As it happens, Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth are in my office right now. If you’d stay on the line for just a moment, I’ll put this on speaker.’ He pushed hold, and Magozzi noticed the Chief was three shades paler than he’d been a few minutes earlier.
‘This is Sheriff Iris Rikker from Dundas County.’
Gino nodded, recognizing the name from the papers a few months back. ‘The green-as-grass deputy who skunked the sitting sheriff.’
‘Correct. She may have a snowman of her own. You need to listen to what she has to say.’ He pushed SPEAKER and nodded at Magozzi, who inched closer to the phone.
‘Leo Magozzi here, Sheriff Rikker. The Chief tells us you’ve got another one of our snowmen up there.’
‘As I told your chief, I’m not entirely certain, Detective. From what I saw on the news last night, it doesn’t look precisely like the ones you discovered in Theodore Wirth Park yesterday, although it may have originally. It’s difficult to assess that at this point.’ Magozzi frowned, trying to sort the relevant from all the words she’d spewed out. It was like talking to an FBI agent. ‘Explain, please.’
‘Your snowmen looked very carefully crafted; almost artistic, in fact.’
‘And yours?’
‘Well, we’ve had freezing rain here this morning, then sleet, and now snow…’
‘Same here.’
‘… so even if this had started as a recognizable duplicate, the weather conditions would have altered it considerably. I’ve sent a photograph to your chief so you can make an assessment for yourself.’
Magozzi saw Chief Malcherson at his computer on the credenza behind the desk, downloading a file from online.
‘In the meantime,’ Sheriff Rikker went on, ‘we are preserving the scene as well as we can under the circumstances, which of course means we haven’t begun to dismantle the snowman yet, and without at least rudimentary examination of the deceased, we haven’t yet determined with any degree of certainty that this was a homicide.’
Gino yawned noisily, and even Magozzi was getting a little impatient. ‘You are sure there’s a body in there, right?’
He could almost hear a backstep in the pause that followed, and then a snippiness in her speech. ‘I’m very sure, Detective. His hands were exposed. You’ll see that in the photograph.’
‘Any chance it could just be someone who got caught out in the storm and then covered with snow?’
Another long pause, and Magozzi sensed a little temper in there somewhere. That was the trouble with a lot of woman cops, in his experience, especially women in power spots. They couldn’t take a little good-natured ribbing like a man could. ‘There is a very definite structure to this form, Detective. Whether or not it was perfectly executed, and in spite of the weather damage, it was obvious to all of us that someone constructed a snowman around this body. Whether or not it relates to your case remains to be seen. From our perspective at least, this was a courtesy call. After you’ve examined the photograph, you may be able to better determine the necessity of sending your people up here in these weather conditions.’
… better determine the necessity…? Who the hell talked like that? Magozzi rubbed at his temple and saw Gino doing the same thing, a pained expression on his face. The woman was giving them both a headache.
‘Fine, Sheriff Rikker. I see the Chief has your photo loaded now. Can you hold a moment while we take a look?’
‘Certainly.’
Malcherson pushed the hold button, then stepped aside so Gino and Magozzi could see the computer screen.
‘Jeez, she’s touchy,’ Gino grumbled. ‘Like talking to a porcupine.’ Then both he and Magozzi stared at the digital image for a long moment.
‘Oh, man,’ Gino said. ‘We got another one.’
Magozzi leaned over and punched the speaker button on the Chief’s phone. ‘Sheriff Rikker? Sorry to keep you waiting. Detective Rolseth and I will be up there as soon as we can. You have any problem with BCA handling the scene?’
‘The BCA was my next call.’
‘Let us do that. I’d like the same guys who worked the park snowmen.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
Magozzi raised his brows. First she was snippy, now she was calling him ‘sir,’ and then she made nice by giving them detailed driving directions and closed with thanks to all of them – at least that was what Magozzi thought she
