Read Murder on Ice for Free Online Page B

ignore me, so I turned away and stooped to pat Sam and give him a quiet little hiss, one of his signals to give tongue. He bounced to his feet and barked at her, his big head almost at face level. She shrieked and stood up. I told Sam "Easy," and he fell silent. The woman came with us then, walking quietly between Val and me to the cloakroom for her coat and to the door. I told the Legionnaire: "Anybody wants to leave, tell them I said not to. It's a killer out there."
    He was working on another Export. It must have been his eighth, and he waved a tipsy hand. "No sweat, Chief, I'll keep the bastards here."
    I put the girl in the back seat of the Blazer. Val sat next to her and I walked around, swooping off the snow that had collected on the vehicle while I was inside. When I got behind the wheel with Sam in the passenger seat, I started up and turned to the prisoner. "Your friend at the highway was murdered." She said nothing, although I could see her mouth working. Then I gave her the rest of it. It was brutal but I had to crack her pose some way. I needed information and quickly. "Somebody hit her in the throat, then hung her from the shower rail."
    She screamed, low and anguished, then covered her face and sobbed. Val put one hand on her shoulder but said nothing. I was glad she was there.
    The station was in darkness. I don't bother lighting it at night, especially in winter. I don't live there. I have a house on the north edge of town. The station stays closed up except when I'm inside. The best way to reach the department is to phone. The operator will call on the radio in the scout car if we have an emergency. Only tonight the scout car was sitting on flat tires in front of the Legion.
    Snow had drifted seven feet deep against the side door where I normally admit prisoners, so I parked in front and went in the way citizens come in under their own steam. I put the lights on and they buzzed and flickered a moment or two. The room was cool—I keep the thermostat down low. I lifted the flap in the counter and led the women through to the back.
    There isn't much to see in the station. The front office has a couple of desks and an old manual typewriter, a stationery cupboard and file cabinets, a gun rack with rifle and shotgun, and the teletype machine. That's it. A few months previously, on a slow fall day, I had painted the walls. I thought yellow would be a change from the standard dull green. Under the blue-green of the lights it just looked bilious.
    The woman was still crying. I let her sob. Maybe it would lubricate her tongue, and she would give me something more than her number, rank, and name. If she didn't, I was all out of things to do to trace Nancy Carmichael.
    The back of the station is a narrow hallway. On one side is a white wall—I had, thank God, run out of yellow by then—with a table and chair. On the other side are our cells, both of them empty.
    I sat the girl in the chair and picked up the clipboard that lay on the table. The girl went on sobbing helplessly and I said to Val, "Would you get the young lady some water and a Kleenex, please?"
    The girl took the enamel mug as if it were a chalice, holding it in both hands, sipping between sobs. I crouched down until I was at her eye level. "I'm sorry about your friend. She looked as if she was an attractive and intelligent young woman."
    "She was," the girl said, and sobbed quickly one last time. She repeated, "She was."
    "Now you know she's dead, you must understand that whoever got you into this affair is not playing games. They're wicked people."
    Wicked was the right word. It made everything sound like a fairy story. It might even make me a knight on a white horse. The girl looked at me, then glanced away. "I didn't think anything bad would happen."
    "It happened," Val said. "She's dead." Her voice was harsh, and I realized it was the first time she had spoken since leaving the motel. She was badly shaken.
    "What's her name?" I asked the girl.
    She