Zero-Degree Murder (A Search and Rescue Mystery) (22 page)

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
jerked awake and stared out into the absolute darkness of the snow cave.

Had she heard something outside?

She lay without moving and listened.

A full minute passed. Then another. She heard nothing but Rob’s soft breathing.

It was probably nothing she decided and checked her watch. She had slept for more than four hours.

Feeling creaky, but rested in spite of her fitful sleep, she slipped out of the sleeping bag, whispering, “Go back to sleep,” when Rob mumbled, “What are you doing?”

She pulled on her parka and boots in the dark, grabbed up a trekking pole, and pulled the pack from the doorway. Crouching down, she pawed away the heavy snow that had piled up over the entrance and peered through the hole into the darkness outside.

She could see nothing.

She wormed out of the cave, pulled the pack into place behind her, and stood up in the knee-deep snow.

For five full minutes, Gracie stood just outside the entrance of the shelter and listened.

There was no sound. The wind had died completely. There was no movement, but ethereal snowflakes floated down to land softly on her upturned face and cling to her eyelashes. Overhead, a single star, steady and bright, peeked out through an opening in the clouds.

The storm was passing.

CHAPTER

“I
’M
thinking about quitting,” Rob said.

He and Gracie sat on their respective benches, drinking scalding brown water brewed with the last of the fuel from the last tea bag. The little lantern flashlight filled the cave with a muted, golden light.

Upon waking, Rob had declared himself “aces up” (“I can’t help it. It just comes out.”). Gracie noted with relief that he did in fact resemble a human being and not the walking zombie of a few hours earlier.

Gracie and Rob were engaged in comfortable and consciously distracting mundane banter when he had tossed out that thunderbolt.

Gracie blinked at him. “Quitting what? Smoking?”

“Acting.”

“Acting.”

“Sometimes I despise it.”

“You’re an actor,” she said, reminding herself to breathe.

“I’m aware of that,” Rob said, head bowed. “But I feel like I’ve sold my soul to the devil. I’ve gotten caught up in the trappings.” The pain in his voice was palpable and Gracie felt her insides wrench. “I’ve lost touch with what really matters. Sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore. Bloody hell, even that sounds like a line of dialogue.”

“Why do you do it if you don’t like it that much?”

“But I do! Love it even. I love the process. The audience. It’s the accompanying baggage I’ve had my fill of. The frenzy. The . . . the clutching. The suffocating loss of privacy. The lack of integrity.”

“The money?”

He smiled with irony. “That’s the trade-off, isn’t it? If you don’t take the good with the bad, if you complain at all, you’re a spoiled, ungrateful sod. Some days I would trade it all for a moment’s peace. For the ability to trust a friend.” He stared down at his hands. “Some days I feel the whole bloody profession is irrelevant in today’s world. Wars are being fought. Millions of people live in poverty. Die of starvation. What’s my contribution to solving the mess? Reciting a couple of lines and getting paid obscene amounts of money?”

Myriad responses flooded Gracie’s mind, then she said, “I read an article once about an artist who couldn’t paint for a long time after 9/11. In light of all that happened, she felt it was irrelevant. But after a lot of soul searching, she finally decided that not only was it not irrelevant, it was imperative. The world needed the positive and the beautiful to balance out the killing and the evil and the hatred.” She looked over at Rob to confirm that he was even mildly interested.

His eyes were laser-focused on her. “I’m with you.”

“This woman also decided,” Gracie said, “that what she painted from then on had to count for something and that she needed to identify exactly what it was she wanted to accomplish. Did she want her paintings to heal? Help people escape? Stir them to action? Enlighten?” She clenched her hands together to hide their trembling. “Maybe if your acting were the means to an end, a . . . a springboard to a loftier goal . . . like save the rain forest. Teach at-risk kids responsibility. Build wells in the Sudan.”

Rob nodded slowly. He glanced up, caught her watching him, and winked at her.

Gracie let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and smiled back at him.

They sat in silence again until Rob said, “Tell me something nobody else knows.” Gracie stared at him for several seconds, then, letting the sleeping bag fall from her shoulders, she pulled up the shirts on her left side and turned so that he could see her ribs.

Rob leaned forward and squinted at the small round scar just above the waistband of her pants. “What is that?”

Gracie pulled her shirts back down. “Burn scar.”

Rob’s eyes shot up to hers. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Gracie cleared her throat. “Morris’s . . . my stepfather’s cigar. He used to hit us . . . Lenora, Harold, and me. Usually with a belt. Always on our backs so no one would know. When he came at us, I always ran way out behind the house, climbed up to the top branches of this big old apple tree, and stayed there. Sometimes for hours. I felt safe there. He caught me once when I was nine. Guess he wanted to make it count.”

“Jesus, Gracie,” Rob whispered. “No one ever . . . he never went to jail?”

Gracie shook her head. “Mother wouldn’t allow it.”

“Jesus,” Rob whispered again. He leaned over and encircled her wrist with his fingers.

Gracie stiffened. “What?”

“Sit next to me.”

She allowed him to draw her across the aisle and sat next to him.

He tucked her sleeping bag around her. “Keep talking.”

Gracie cleared her throat again. “We never knew what would set Morris off. A-minus on a test. Wet towel on the floor. Didn’t take me long to grow into a turtle. Fly below the radar. I got straight A’s. Went to U of M. Dated the moronic sons of his friends. Took the job he wanted me to when what I really wanted to do was go off somewhere and study wolves. One day after work, I stopped by the house to see how my mother was doing. Her arm was in a cast. Morris had broken it.”

“Bastard.”

Gracie stared straight ahead. “It’s like watching it on tape. Not like me doing it at all. Morris was watching the news. I took a shotgun from the gun cabinet, grabbed a handful of shells, loaded two, walked into the den and blew two huge holes in the wall right above his head. Two right in a row. Boom. Boom.”

“Gracie!”

“It didn’t hurt him. Well, not really. He got hit with a couple of pellets.” She stifled a giggle. “I told him if he ever laid another hand on my mother or anyone else again, I’d aim lower.”

Rob gaped at her.

“It blew the toupee right off his head.” She barked a laugh. “He sat there in his chair, drink in his hand, big bald head covered with plaster dust, pictures all crooked, and his toupee sitting on the back of the chair like a furry little rat. It looked so funny, I laughed. I swear he was more pissed off about me laughing at him than anything else. But he had to sit there and do nothing because I still had the shotgun and I’d already reloaded.”

“Bloody . . . !” Rob rubbed his hands down his face and chuckled. “So nobody called the police? Even then?”

“Are you kidding? What would the neighbors think? Evelyn picked the pellets out herself. They plastered up the wall and no one ever found out. As far as I know, Morris never hit her again.”

“Bloody bully.”

“If not for him, I might still be living in Detroit. . . .” Gracie said. “Evelyn sided with him. Even then. She screamed at me to get out and leave them alone. So I—” Gracie sat up and rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand. “Sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Rob said. “So you what?”

Gracie relaxed again. “Quit my job. Sold my house. Drove out here. Worked jobs that they considered beneath my station. Pizza delivery, waitress, cashier, um, pizza delivery.”

“That’ll show them.”

“I know, right? He sent me a certified letter telling me he’d written me out of his will. I’m persona non grata, mentioned as little as possible within the family. Outside the family, never at all. Next to Jimmy Hoffa, I’m the best-kept secret of southern Michigan.”

“How long ago did all this happen?”

“Eight years? Nine? I can’t seem to get back on track.” She looked over at Rob. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I’ve never told anyone. Not even Ra . . . not even my best friend.”

“Nine years is a long time.”

“I know.”

Rob grinned at her and shook his head.

“What?”

“You’re something else.” He leaned toward her, lifted her chin and kissed her. His lips were soft and warm.

Gracie shrank back, trying to read his eyes in the dim light.

What was she doing? She had just met Rob. She knew almost nothing about him. When was she ever going to learn?

She smiled and leaned toward him.

Rob pressed his lips to hers again, a long lingering kiss, mouth open, tongue touching hers.

Feelings that had lain dormant for years reignited and roared to the surface, blasting to tiny bits any semblance of self-control and spreading a warm glow throughout her entire body.

Gracie pulled away.

Rob looked into her face. “What is it?” His voice was almost a caress. “Too fast?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“I can’t compete.”

“With what, love?”

“Those perfect Hollywood starlets.”

He snorted. “Give me a . . .” He stopped when he saw her face. “Gracie, love, it’s all surface crud anyway. Like that addition to my vocabulary? Thanks to one Grace Kinkaid.”

“Terrific.”

He dipped his head to look into her eyes. “Besides, I think you’re beautiful.”

A blush crept up her cheeks that she hoped he couldn’t see. “No, you don’t. No, I’m not.”

“Why can’t you just accept the compliment? You are. Very beautiful.” His voice changed. “In a highly appealing, grimy, slightly gamey sort of way.”

She sat up straight in indignation. “I told you I wanted a bath.”

He lifted her hand, drew off her glove and kissed the bare palm.

A shiver ran up Gracie’s neck that she knew wasn’t from the cold.

“You don’t have to compete.” He leaned closer to kiss her neck. “And, I reiterate . . .” He lifted the flap of her hat and kissed her ear lobe. “You are beautiful.”

“This is that rescuer complex thingee.”

“Eloquently put. You’ll sweep me off my feet.”

“You’re hurt.” Grace’s protests sounded wimpy-assed even in her own ears.

“Be quiet,” he said, tracing the length of her body with his fingertips, his feather touch raising the hair along her arms and other places.

“You’re seducing me.”

“Will you shut up?”

Then he kissed her again, deeply, his tongue seeking hers, his hands entwined in her hair, pulling her down on the bench and dragging the sleeping bags over the top of both of them.

Gracie closed her eyes, refusing to think, refusing to face what would come after, shutting out the rest of the world. In the sanctuary of the cave, no one but the two of them existed. She immersed herself in the moment, submitting herself wholly to his touch, his scent, knowing nothing but the taste of his lips and the feel of his body on top of hers.

CHAPTER

M
ILOCEK
groaned in pain as he drew his cotton sock, saturated and stiff with half-frozen blood, from his injured foot.

He sat on a prickly mat of evergreen boughs at the base of a massive fir tree; the bottom branches drooped low, keeping the ground beneath dry and virtually clear of snow. The little tipi fire he had built of broken twigs and fir needles snapped and popped and cast a halo of orange light throughout the tiny enclosure.

Milocek’s nose and cheeks were numb. His fingers burned with cold. He snugged the wool blanket up tighter around his shoulders and bent to examine his foot.

The spikes the woman searcher wore on her boots had sliced through the tendons and ligaments of the instep and broken at least one, maybe more, of the small metatarsal bones. The skin was mottled red and purple with bruising. Blood dripped from the wound onto the hard-packed dirt.

Milocek had followed the woman down the side of the mountain. Boiling with rage, he wanted to kill her, needed to kill her. But he managed only fifty feet when the ferocious pain in his foot had forced him to stop.

Now huddled in the shelter of the giant fir, he dragged Rob’s knapsack toward him, unclipped the buckle of the top flap and pulled out the remnants of the gourmet brunch prepared for the hikers by the hotel.

Pushing up his pant leg, he dabbed clean the twin punctures on his shin with a salmon-colored cloth napkin. With his knife, he slit a second napkin into a single long strip and, with the gentle care of a mother, used it to bind his foot.

He wolfed down the discarded crusts of a shrimp-salad sandwich and finished off a bag of kettle chips in between swigs of water.

Then he added several more twigs to the tiny fire and lay down with his head on the empty knapsack. He drew his knees up to his chest to preserve his core heat and dragged long, heavy evergreen boughs up over himself.

His eyes closed.

• • •

SCREAMS INSIDE MILOCEK’S
head snapped him awake. His mother’s. Those of girls and women dragged away by his men. Diana’s—muffled by his hand, cut short by his blade.

He threw back the blanket of evergreen boughs and sat up. Digging into a jacket pocket, he pulled out a crumpled pack of Camels, shook one loose, grabbed it with cracked and peeling lips, and lit it with his lighter. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled it through his nostrils in two thin streams.

The little fire had died to glowing embers. He snapped off dead branches from the tree trunk behind him and added them, with a handful of needles to the fire, watching as the flames devoured the dry fuel.

Milocek had started young. At the age of eight he had killed a squirrel in a fit of rage after watching helplessly as his drunken father beat his mother unconscious and smashed his little sister’s eye socket, leaving the girl partially blind and permanently disfigured. As the young Radovan gutted the squirrel, he anticipated the satisfaction he would feel when he plunged a kitchen knife deep into his father’s neck.

As the boy grew, he sharpened his skills on larger animals—a stray dog, a wild pig—until each evisceration was accomplished with precision. He learned to savor the sound and feel of the blade slicing through tissue and bone, the rich smell of the open cavity, the brilliant blood still pumping freely until he stopped it with a flick of his blade.

The day he watched his father smash his mother’s skull with a shovel, splashing her brains across the gray wood of the barn, Radovan slit the throat of his mother’s killer, nearly severing his head from his body with the finely honed knife he kept hidden beneath his shirt. The boy field-dressed the carcass and hung it from a meat hook in the barn. He set fire to the tinder-dry straw in an empty stall, then walked away forever, the smell of woodsmoke and burning flesh filling his nostrils.

He was fourteen.

As an adult, Milocek had killed countless men, taking great pleasure in the slow blade. He had allowed his men to take women, young and old, to do with as they pleased. But he had never participated, operating within the confines of his own strict code of conduct.

Dispatching the man rescuer had been too easy, as effortless as snapping his fingers, robbing him of much of the thrill that accompanied the kill. Diana had been weak, submissive. There had been no challenge in taking her life. No joy.

But the woman searcher was strong. A fighter. A worthy adversary. He had underestimated her. But he never made the same mistake twice. He would find her and he would kill her. He shivered with the thought of drawing his blade across that long, slender throat and watching the life sparkle die in her eyes.

Milocek looked down at his foot. The blood had already soaked through the cloth bandage.

He needed to stop the bleeding.

He unwound the damp binding from his foot, then drew out his knife and held it to the fire. He pinched the edges of the wound together and, growling like an animal, pressed the flat of the steel blade against the skin.

His dry lips cracked and bled as he smiled and breathed in the scent of sizzling flesh.