Dead of Winter

Find what? A monster who had murdered two men. A deviant who might kill again. A phantom who was as ephemeral as the fog. Louis tossed the legal pad aside, his feeling of impotence growing. He didn’t know what he was doing, where to start with this investigation.

Louis reached for his glass of brandy but it was empty. He pushed himself off the sofa to get a refill. As he trudged back from the kitchen, he spotted the box of books in the corner. He stared at it, something pricking his memory.

Setting the glass down, he knelt and started rummaging through the books, pulling out the blue paperback had had been looking for. The title was The Criminal Mind by Dean Franklin.

Picking up his brandy, Louis returned to the sofa and turned the book over to the back cover. Franklin’s penetrating eyes stared back at him, transporting Louis immediately back to the lecture hall at University of Michigan. The elective class was called “Investigative Analysis,” taught by Franklin, a retired FBI agent who believed that killers could be apprehended by understanding their psychological makeup.

Louis had taken it because he couldn’t get the elective he wanted, and he remembered thinking, like all the other students, that it was all hocus-pocus bullshit and that Franklin was a washed-up desk jockey put out to academic pasture. He had only half-listened to the craggy old agent who droned on about the brave new world of “criminal profiling.”

Louis stopped at a chapter called “Inside the Mind of the Monster.” He skim-read it, digesting its point that a profile of a killer could be constructed from evidence and tendencies like an abusive childhood.

Louis closed the book. Shit, so all he had to do was find some poor, mistreated dirtbag who had mutated into a cop killer.

He tossed the book aside, and his eyes drifted to the television screen. The eleven o’clock news was on, a feed from a station down in Lansing. It flashed a photo of Fred Lovejoy in the corner. Louis jumped up to turn up the sound but was too late. Great, Loon Lake had made the big time.

He watched listlessly through a series of other news stories, until a familiar graphic caught his attention. It was a blue-and-gold shield, the badge worn by Detroit police officers. Over it were the words “Drug Bust Gone Bad?”

The talking head blabbed on about cops and then cut to film footage of a tall man in a suit emerging from a building. He was stone-faced but strikingly handsome with reptilian eyes. The type under his face identified him as MARK STEELE, CHIEF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR FOR THE STATE POLICE.

Louis leaned forward. He vaguely remembered hearing about Steele during his days in Ann Arbor. Steele had headed an internal affairs case involving Detroit cops accused of brutalizing an innocent couple during a drug raid. The cops had been suspended; the couple settled out of court. But the episode had made Mark Steele’s career. The combination of his telegenic looks and the anti-police sentiment in Detroit was too potent for the media and politicians to resist. It was no secret the Steele wanted to be state attorney general, and he was paving his path to the capital with the crushed careers of cops.

Louis stared at the man’s flickering face. He suddenly remembered something he had seen in the locker room of the Ann Arbor station. Someone had cut a photo of Steele from the newspaper, smeared it with excrement and hung it on the bulletin board.

Steele’s face disappeared. The talking head moved on to a story about a puppy rescued from a drainpipe.

Louis turned off the television and sank back into the sofa. He reached for the glass of Christian Brothers, raised it to his lips and drained it.

A soft sound behind him made him freeze.

It had come from somewhere outside. He tensed, his ears alert. Nothing. Wind stirring the pines. Man, he was jumpy.

A thump. Out on the porch.

Louis set down the glass and with one quick move jumped up and flattened himself against the wall near the door. His eyes darted to his gun, visible on the dresser in the bedroom beyond. His heart hammered as he tried to put the image out of his head of Thomas Pryce opening the door to face his murderer.

A knock on the door. “Louis?” The voice was soft, female.

He exhaled and opened the door. She was standing there in the dark, her slender form encased in a parka, her round face framed in fur. Her eyes searched his face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He hadn’t realized it, but his body had been tensed, and now it trembled in relief. “Come in,” he said.

Zoe entered in the same wary manner as the first time. Her eyes darted around the room and back to him. “I knew you were here. I saw the smoke from the chimney.”

“It’s late. You shouldn’t be out alone,” Louis said.

“It’s safe.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not safe, Zoe.”

“He’s not killing women, Louis, he’s killing cops.”