Ice Shear (3 page)

Norm watched the techs demarcate the line of broken ice that arced out from the body, doing weapons analysis on a stalagmite. He didn't look up.

“No. Ask June,” he said.

I explained that we had no wallet or purse and, so far, no other way to identify the body.

“So'd those fibbies teach you anything of value when you were on their payroll?” Jerry asked.

Every time I seemed a little too uppity, Jerry would bring up my time in the FBI. As far as he was concerned, I was an overtrained snob who was a gross incompetent—really the best of all possible worlds. Too furious to do the smart thing, I argued.

“Well, they did teach me not to let myself be prejudiced in any way when approaching a case.”

I was going to pay for the comment, and I didn't care. Jerry was a small man, who tried to make sure I felt smaller. He pursed his lips, ready to spew forth misery.

“You know,” Dave said, not looking up from his notebook, “radios are for shit out here. Lyons, why don't you head up and brief everyone.”

Dave was backing me up, in his way. Jerry couldn't abuse me if I wasn't there, so problem solved, right? But in being nice, he got the same results as Jerry did being cruel.

I skidded along the ice toward the river's edge. Above I could see Pete marking a path, orange flags flickering in the wind. At the bank, a tangle of roots from a tree washed away by the river jutted out at the river's edge, a perfect toehold. I heaved myself up.

The cold air stabbed my lungs, and I drew the air in hard to get the oxygen I needed, another reminder that I was no longer in peak condition. My ponytail caught in a branch. I yanked my head forward and wrenched free, leaving behind three long blond hairs. I heaved up until I was level with Pete, who hauled me up the last few steps, both of us panting.

I considered the tableau before me. The men down on the ice continued to investigate the case, while I stood above, useless. Their voices wafted up, indistinct. Dave and Norm huddled over the woman and seemed to be ignoring Jerry.
Good,
I thought meanly.

“Who's the girl?” Pete asked.

“I was going to ask you. Jackie didn't say?”

“Jackie didn't say much of anything. Mostly she cried. She cried a lot.” Pete shook his head. Someone as low key as Pete might not understand hysterics, even if they came from a teenage girl who'd found a dead body. “I ended up calling her dad, and he came down. She calmed down some once we told her there was only one body down there. Dave had someone run them both to the station, let 'em warm up.”

Not my case,
I reminded myself. I pointed up along the path he'd marked. “I should go.”

Pete viewed the rest of the trip down with skepticism. “Geez, I don't know why I'm doing this. You know we're going to have to airlift Jerry out of there.”

“Don't worry. He'll blame it on the body. Or me. We've already ruined his day.”

I crested the hill. Two techs stood at the edge of the cliff taking pictures of the footprints, confetti-colored tape marking different tracks. Traffic control was going to be
fun:
the main artery to Albany was down to one lane, turning everyone's fifteen-minute commute into an hour. A yellow bus drove past on the way to Holy Trinity, and I could see small faces pressed against every window.

Lucy!
I hustled to my cruiser and pulled out the cell. Zero calls. Knowing my father, he'd probably called the station first, expecting Lorraine to have a handle on what I was doing now and what I would be doing next. He wasn't wrong. I gave a brief update to everyone and radioed Dave. No response. He'd claim he couldn't get reception, but really he was avoiding me. To be
nice
.

I slogged along the side of the road, pressing face-first against the fence every time a vehicle passed, the cold metal a relief against my anger-red cheeks. A flash popped down on the ice as the techs recorded every distorted angle of the woman's body, and then another flash at the edge of the road. Onlookers had gathered and were peering over the edge, some with camera phones. I scanned the crowd. A couple of teenage girls with toddlers perched on their slim hips pointed at the scene, and the ladies coming back from early Mass had their heads together, talking. Then there were the boys, scaling the fence and dropping, or getting pulled off by their friends, showing off. They didn't respect the dead because they had no fear of death.

Below, Norm was zipping the victim into the black body bag. The girl disappeared except for a few strands of gold hair that were caught in the zipper, blowing in the wind.

I
EXPECTED A QUIET KISS-OFF
at the station. That was fine. I had done good work, the best I could, but it seemed that Dave was now fired up for me to type up my report and pulled me off traffic duty. Still, I appreciated it when Lesley put a caller on hold so she could yell, “Good job.” Lesley handled dispatch and the desk during the day. Lorraine's twin, she had her sister's nasal, flat tone. The two provided a certain reassuring continuity on the other end of the radio.

The squad room was uncomfortably crowded. This was hard to accomplish. The station was built when the population was closer to fifty thousand than fifteen, and now half the room was cordoned off with paste-colored dividers to store unused desks. With high ceilings, no windows, and few warm bodies, the remaining space was usually more than enough for our shoe-leather-and-gum operation. It sometimes echoed. Today, the crowd forced me to hug one wall, avoiding the day shift guys as well as the county and state law enforcement folks who occupied most of the desks, including my own.

In the corner, Chief Donnelly briefed a couple of local reporters. He avoided giving chairs to what he affectionately called “the vultures,” lest they stay too long. I caught his eye over a reporter's shoulder and he arched a formidable eyebrow at me. His version of a smile.

Halfway to the women's locker room, I ran smack into Jackie DeGroot, her hood pulled low, almost to her nose. Her father escorted her, rubbing her back gently, his calloused hand swishing softly against the nylon of her jacket.

“I need it!” she said, flouncing out of her father's reach. The swishing stopped.

“I'll buy you another one, sweetheart. A better one,” he said.

“But Ray won't have my number! What if he needs me?!”

Chuck DeGroot smiled apologetically at me. I knew that smile well. I would give it to people in restaurants when Lucy was a toddler and, having dropped a French fry, mourned its loss for a long time, at top volume.

Chuck held himself close to the wall so I could slide past. This didn't leave much room. I had slim hips and no breasts to speak of, but Chuck was almost as wide as he was tall, and the buttons on his Carhartt jacket snagged on my radio. By the time we had disentangled ourselves, Jackie was already at the door.

“Dad!”

Chuck's apologies echoed down the hall, following him out of the building. I had taken two steps when I felt a sharp tug on my arm, Dave yanking me into the chief's office and slamming the door behind us. Propelled forward, I crossed the room in five steps, using the momentum to put the desk between us. Facing off with Dave, I tried to match the ferocious expression and crossed arms of the first police chief, whose portrait hung behind me. I thought I did a pretty good job, even without the muttonchops.

Dave tried to smooth down his hair, but his wiry black curls defied his efforts, sticking up in odd directions. Finally he gave up.

“Look, I need your help,” Dave said.

“Really? More traffic control?”

“Lyons, you know I wasn't pushing you out. Jerry needs to be managed.”

“By managing me.”

“C'mon, Lyons. Things go faster when he thinks he's calling the shots.”

Good intentions counted for a lot with Dave, but not with me. “He
was
calling the shots. I was out.”

“No. You were first on scene, so you're in no matter what. You stay with me on this, solve this case, and you will be
made
.”

“Oh, really.”

Dave took a step toward me. “I got the dead girl's name.”

I wasn't surprised. Dave often charmed information out of people, presenting himself as just one of the guys, and criminals often confessed much more than was good for them. People he'd jailed had invited him out for beers on more than one occasion, and he sometimes accepted with a shrug: “They paid their debt to society, and hey, who am I to turn down free beer?”

“This case, it's about to get big,” Dave said. “Bigger than me. Bigger than us.” He leaned forward on the desk. In the gentle light of the milk-glass pendant lamp, the circles under his eyes, always there thanks to his Ukrainian heritage, looked cavernous.

“It's Danielle Brouillette,” he said finally.

“Brouillette?” Fingers of fear ran down my spine. “Like Amanda—”

“Yup. The dead girl was the daughter of our representative to Congress, Amanda Brouillette. Jerry's working with some local party bigwigs to pass the word on to higher-ups in Washington, who will be on hand when DC Metropolitan breaks the news to the congresswoman.”

God, I loved Albany politics, where even a death notification was a chance to schmooze.

“And our friends in the press know something's up,” Dave continued. “The Schenectady and Troy papers had someone over here before I got back, and the
Times Union
guy will be here shortly. As a bonus, the FBI will be arriving in an hour to explain to us how to do our jobs, since obviously we can't be trusted to investigate the murder of a federal official's daughter. Cluster. Fuck. We need to interview the husband fast.”

“The congresswoman's husband?”

He walked around the desk, bumping shoulders with me. “You are going to love this: Danielle was married to the brother of Jackie's boyfriend.”

“Ray?” I asked.

“Yeah, he has a brother, Marty. . . .” Dave's shoulders sagged, and even his mustache drooped. “Wait, how'd you know?”

“Jackie mentioned him in the hall.”

Dave grimaced. “Great. Hope the papers heard it, too. What else did she say?”

“She didn't say it to me. More like
near
me. She was saying Ray wouldn't be able to contact her.”

“Oh, wait till you see what Chuck gave me.” He opened the phone that sat on the desk. Over his shoulder, I watched him flip through the texts. The four most recent were from Ray. The message at 6:38
A.M.
read, “cnt mAk it. wiL caL l8r.” At 7:37, another text: “CaL me xoxoxo,” followed at 7:48 with “whr R u? CaL me.” A final message at 8:45 read, “DIS shit iz feckD ^ CaL me,” which Dave translated as “This shit is fucked up. Call me.”

Ray sounded delightful, and I wondered if his brother was equally charming. I knew I hadn't seen Danielle's wedding notice, which I assumed would make the front page, and I had to wonder if the Brouillettes weren't thrilled with their new in-laws.

“What's the husband's name?” I asked. “Family name?”

“Jelickson.” Dave spelled it out. Not one of the local family names, and generally people moved away from, not to, Hopewell Falls. “Guy from California she married when she was doing the college girl thing out in L.A. From what Jackie says, Danielle washed up and dragged the husband back with her. I got the address of the guy, and since you are on this—”

“Until Jerry wants me off.”

Dave sniffed in the air. “Aww . . . do I smell a martyr burning? I'm sorry I tried to be nice to you. I promise not to do it ever again. But you are on this, which I know would make you happy if you would stop bitching long enough to appreciate me and all I do for you.”

He had a point.

I
WAS GREETED BY TWO FISTS.

While Dave drove, I downloaded the Facebook app and searched for Danielle and the Jelickson brothers. Danielle was easy to find. Her page was “friends only,” but I could see her picture. The girl on the screen barely resembled the victim I'd found this morning. She was driving, the blond hair caught midflight in the draft of an open car window, more straw than gold. She seemed to be suppressing a smile, and her lips quirked up on the left. Most striking were her eyes: blue green, meeting the photographer's gaze, not watching the road. I showed the picture to Dave at a stop sign.

“She's a knockout,” he said.

“How professional,” I said, hunting for the Jelicksons.

“It's not like I asked her out for an ice cream soda, although to be fair, she doesn't look much like a soda kind of girl.”

Marty had opted out of Facebook—I liked him already. Ray had been hard to ID at first. His user picture was two fists, with
THUG LIFE
Sharpied on the fingers, the black block letters uneven. Thankfully, unlike Danielle, he didn't protect his page. His updates were an endless string of getting ready to party, partying hard, and recovering from partying, but in his photo album I hit pay dirt. There were several pictures of him shirtless, baggy jeans belted low with boxers peeking out, his scowl and crossed-arm pose undermined by his skinny arms and concave chest. There were also pictures of Harley motorcycles; colossal men, bandanaed and bearded; a hand-drawn marijuana leaf; and a string of photos of Ray with Danielle. Danielle wore a white A-line dress with draping at the neckline, the loose fabric creating a deep V, the round globes of Danielle's breasts emphasized with glitter. The shots were from a phone, the angles all from arm's length and above, the two of them flashing Vs at the camera and taking swigs out of a flask, and laughing lots.

Dave pulled up in front of a row house that looked like it belonged in Belfast, not upstate New York. One of several hundred hastily thrown up in the last century for garment workers, Danielle's house was without adornment, reflecting the grudging spirit in which it was built. Block upon block of the brick boxes listed to the left, as if trying, and failing, to escape the shadow of the mill. The random tacked-on wooden porch added to the haphazard quality of the neighborhood, and made me feel disoriented.