Silence for a second, then, ‘Dundas County? Where they found the other snowman?’
‘Right. The guy responsible for that snowman was just greased by an old lady up here at Bitterroot. One of your clients, right, Grace?’
‘That’s right. We did some corporate security software for them last fall. How did you know?’
‘We saw your logo on one of the programs. Did you know what that place was?’
‘Some kind of mail-order business, why?’
‘You didn’t get the tour?’
‘We were there to work, Magozzi, and only on weekends, when the place was closed. We saw a couple people and the inside of the computer room. That’s it.’
‘There’s a whole town behind the corporate building, Grace, and what it is, is one giant safe house for abused women.’
‘Oh, Lord.’ Her voice was a mere whisper, and she covered the phone for a moment and said something, probably to the rest of the Monkeewrench crew. When she came back, her voice sounded tense. ‘Magozzi. Bitterroot was the subject line on that chat thread. We didn’t know what it meant at the time, but it’s starting to make a sick kind of sense. I think they’re killing abusers.’
Gino forgot about dying under the blade of a snowplow and leaned forward. ‘Who’s killing abusers?’ he demanded.
‘We don’t know that. Yet.’
Magozzi closed his eyes. ‘Read us what you’ve got, Grace.’
She took a breath that sounded fractured. ‘Okay. This came off a private chat room within a very private site we haven’t cracked yet, but the conversation is what we wanted anyway. The thread goes back for months – these two people have been talking for a long time about the legal system not being able to protect their daughters from the men who were abusing them. Frustrated blather, mostly… no, not blather, really, because it’s true and it’s sad, but what you need to hear are some of the last entries. Like this… “Do it exactly the way I told you, then put the body in a snowman. We did it here, you can do it. They’ll look for a serial.”’
Gino and Magozzi looked at each other.
‘Are you there, Magozzi? Did you get that?’
‘We got it, I’m just not sure where it’s going…’
Grace just blustered on. ‘One of the correspondents is here, in Minneapolis, and the handle is just a bunch of numbers, but the one responding calls himself “Pittsburgh.”’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Gino murmured. ‘The Pittsburgh snowman.’
‘So we pulled up the Pittsburgh police reports…’
‘You pulled them?’
Grace sighed, exasperated now. ‘They’re computerized, Magozzi, and they keep pretty current, which is a good thing. But someone out there was sure asleep at the switch, because they never ran the victim, or if they did, they left it out of their reports. The guy had a sheet, and every one of them was for domestic assault. He kept trying to kill his wife.’
‘Anything else on that website you want to read to us?’
‘There’s only one more entry after the one I just read to you. All it says is: “We do what we have to do. We take care of our own.”’
Magozzi and Gino exchanged a troubled look as they remembered Laura saying those exact words not an hour ago. It was starting to sound like a motto.
Magozzi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, almost afraid to keep prodding, although he didn’t know why. Just a feeling. One of those bad feelings he hated. ‘Keep trying to trace that thing, will you, Grace? We need a name, we need an address.’
‘We’re working on it. I’ll call if we get something.’
‘Call Iris Rikker,’ he told Gino as he pulled the car off the shoulder and started moving again. ‘Get directions to her place.’
‘Whoa, buddy, hold on just a second. Think this through. Grace finds a few spooky connections and all of a sudden you decide what? That Bitterroot’s an enclave of secret assassins that run around greasing abusers?’
‘Goddamnit, Gino, don’t make it sound stupid and simple. It isn’t either of those things, but we’ve had nothing but big fingers wagging in our faces pointing up at Bitterroot all along, and we just keep trying to get out of here. This time we’re staying until we get some real answers.’
Gino made a face. He didn’t like the sound of that. I mean, shit, there wasn’t even a decent motel up here.
He got out his cell as Magozzi braked hard, spun the wheel, and did a one-eighty right there in the middle of the road.
31
A long, long time ago, before there were bodies in snowmen and living rooms and maybe even in lakes, Iris had made chicken soup and tucked it in the freezer. She nuked it for five minutes while she was cutting fresh vegetables and getting out the noodles, then put it on the stove and let it rip.
She could hear Sampson’s heavy tread as he paced around the downstairs like a man trying to walk off a problem. He’d volunteered to make all the calls they had to make, and that had suited Iris just fine. She was starving.
He came back into the kitchen carrying Puck, who seemed delighted with the situation.
‘You like cats?’
‘Not really.’ Sampson slumped at the kitchen table and settled the purring mass of black fur in his lap. ‘She kept winding between my legs every time I took a step, damn near put me on my ass a dozen times. Seemed safer to pick her up and haul her along.’
Iris smiled as she ladled out two bowls. ‘We’re having soup for breakfast.’
‘Thanks. It smells great.’ He spooned with one hand and stroked Puck with the other. ‘The hospital agreed to put Weinbeck’s remains in the cooler for the day. Neville posted a man there, so we’re okay. BCA says they won’t make it out here till noon, at the earliest. They’ll process your barn first, then pick up Weinbeck on their way back into town.’
‘What about the scene?’
‘They’re still collecting and printing. Neville’s staying there until they’re finished.’
‘So we have time.’
‘More than we’ve had in a while.’
They were both into their second bowl when Gino called Iris to ask for directions.
‘They’re coming back?’ Sampson asked her.
‘Apparently. He didn’t say why, just that they’d be here in a few minutes, and could we wait for them.’
‘Huh. Wonder what that’s about.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked down at the cat in his lap, wondering why it felt so good to pat the dumb old useless thing. He’d never liked cats; never liked chicken soup much, either, but for some reason one of them felt pretty damn good on the inside of his stomach right now, and the other one didn’t feel all that bad curled up on the outside. It was the stuff going on inside his head that was eating at him. ‘You should shit-can me, you know.’
‘Excuse me?’
Sampson pressed his lips together and looked around the kitchen. ‘I like this room.’
‘Thank you. I do, too. Why should I “shit-can” you?’
‘I bailed on you back there. Just took off, and left you to handle everything.’
Iris sighed and pushed her bowl away. ‘You went to protect your sister, Sampson. I would have done exactly the same thing in your position.’
Sampson looked straight at her. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t ever make excuses for a cop walking out on his partner. Ever. One of them does it, you fire their ass. That’s your job, now.’
Iris put their empty bowls in the sink and leaned back against the counter, arms folded across her chest. ‘A lot
