Snowblind Justice Read online

  Travis uncrossed his arms, and the tension around his mouth eased. “Fair enough. I won’t rule out anything that might help us catch Alex Woodruff. Speaking of that, have you had any luck tracking down Lynn Wallace’s car?”

  “Not yet. She drove a white Volvo.” Brodie opened his phone and read the license plate number from his notes. “Nothing flashy. Fairly common. Easy to hide.”

  “Right. I’ll put my deputies on the lookout.” He turned to a map pinned to the wall of his office. Pins showed the locations where each of the Ice Cold Killer’s seven victims had been found. “Alex and Tim working together concentrated the murders in three areas,” he said. “Christy O’Brien and Anita Allbritton were killed within Eagle Mountain town limits. Kelly Farrow and Michaela Underwood were both murdered in the area around Dixon Pass and the national forest service land near there. Fiona Winslow, Lauren Grenado and Lynn Wallace were all killed within a couple of miles of the Walking W ranch.” Travis indicated a third grouping of pins on the map.

  “Does that tell us anything about where Alex might be hiding now?” Brodie asked.

  Travis pointed to a red pin on County Road Five. “We know Tim and Alex were staying at Tim’s aunt’s cabin, here, when the first three murders took place. They spent some time in a vacation home here.” He indicated another pin. “And they may have been at this summer cabin in the national forest, here, for the other murders. Now—who knows?”

  A tapping on the door frame interrupted them. Both men turned to see office manager Adelaide Kinkaid, a sixtysomething woman who wore what looked like red monkeys dangling from her earlobes, and a flowing red-and-purple tunic over black slacks. “We just got word that a fresh slide on Dixon Pass sent one vehicle over the edge and buried two others,” she said. “Fortunately, they were able to dig everyone out pretty quickly, but the road is closed until they can clear up the mess.”

  Brodie groaned. “How many delivery trucks do you suppose got caught on the wrong side of this one?” he asked.

  “Probably about as many as were able to leave town when the road opened,” Adelaide said. “Everyone is just trading places.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Brodie said. “You do seem to know everything.” He leaned toward her. “Are those monkey earrings?”

  “Yes.” She tapped one earring with a red-painted fingernail. “Do you like them?”

  “Only you could pull off a look like that, Adelaide,” Brodie said, grinning.

  She swatted his shoulder. “You’re the kind of man I always warned my daughters about.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “Too smart and good-looking for your own good. The kind of man who’s oblivious to the broken hearts he leaves behind.”

  “Adelaide, Brodie is here as a fellow law enforcement officer,” Travis said. “He deserves our respect.”

  “I’m sure he’s a sterling officer,” Adelaide said. “And a fine man all around. Just not marriage material—which is probably okay with him.” She grinned, then turned to Travis. “And speaking of marriages, don’t you have a tux fitting to see to?”

  Color rose in the sheriff’s cheeks. “I don’t need you to keep track of my schedule, Addie,” he said. “Right now I have a case to work on.”

  “You always have a case to work on,” Adelaide said. “You only have one wedding.” She whirled and stalked away.

  Brodie settled back in his chair once more. “Do you have a tux fitting?” he asked.

  “I canceled it.”

  “Unless you’re going to get married in your uniform, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Travis scowled at Brodie. “They have my measurements. They don’t need me.” His phone rang and he answered it. “Hello?”

  He listened for a moment, then said, “I’ve got Brodie in the office. I’m going to put you on speaker.” He punched the keypad. “All right. Say that again.”

  “I’ve got what looks like another victim of the Ice Cold Killer,” Deputy Dwight Prentice said. “Taped up, throat cut, left in her car near the top of Dixon Pass. Only, she’s still alive. The ambulance is on its way.”

  Travis was already standing. “So are we,” he said.

  Chapter Four

  The woman—a once-pretty brunette, her skin bleached of color and her hair matted with blood—stared up at them, glassy-eyed, her lips moving, but no sound coming out. “You’re safe now,” Brodie said, leaning over her. “We’re going to take care of you.” He stepped back as the EMTs moved in to transfer the woman to a waiting gurney.

  “We’ve already called for a helicopter,” the older of the two paramedics said. “I think this is more than the clinic in Eagle Mountain can handle. They’ve agreed to meet us at the ball fields, where it’s open enough for them to land.”

  Brodie’s gaze shifted to the woman again. She had closed her eyes and her breath came in ragged gasps. He wanted to grab her hand and encourage her to hang on, but he needed to move out of the way and let the paramedics do their job.

  Travis, who had been talking to Dwight and highway patrolman Ryder Stewart, motioned for Brodie to join them. “Her name is Denise Switcher,” Ryder said. “We found her driver’s license in the purse on the passenger floorboard, and the registration on the car matches. Her address is in Fort Collins.”

  “Did she say anything about what happened?” Brodie asked.

  “I don’t think she can talk,” Dwight said. “One of the EMTs said the vocal chords may be damaged.”

  Brodie winced. “How is it she’s still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Travis said. “But I hope she stays that way.” He nodded to Dwight. “You must have come along right after it happened. Did you see anything or anyone who might have been Alex?”

  “No.” Dwight hooked his thumbs over his utility belt and stared toward the EMTs bent over the woman. “A trucker who was pulled over taking off his tire chains flagged me down and said he spotted a car on the side of the road near the top of the pass. He didn’t see anyone in it, but thought maybe I’d want to check.” Dwight pulled a notebook from inside his leather coat. “Gary Ellicott. He was delivering groceries to Eagle Mountain and somehow missed that the road had been closed again. When he got to the barricades, he had to back down a ways before he could turn around. He thinks about fifteen minutes had passed between the time he spotted the car and when he talked to me.”

  “I don’t think she was lying there very long,” Brodie said. “A wound like that bleeds fast.” If much more time had passed, she would have bled to death.

  “The road closed seventy-five minutes ago,” Ryder said. “There was a lot of traffic up here and it took maybe half an hour to clear out. If the killer was cutting her throat then, someone would have seen.”

  “So this most likely happened between thirty and forty-five minutes ago,” Brodie said.

  “But he would have had to have stopped the car before the road closed,” Travis said. “The car is on the southbound side of the road, headed toward town. That seems to indicate she was arriving, not leaving.”

  “We’ll need to find out if she was staying in town,” Brodie said. “Maybe she has family in Eagle Mountain, was leaving and, like the truck driver, had to turn around because of the barricade.”

  “If this is Alex’s work and not a copycat, that means he didn’t leave town,” Travis said.

  The paramedics shut the door of the ambulance and hurried to the cab. Siren wailing, they pulled away, headed back toward town. “Let’s take a look,” Travis said, and led the way to the car, a gray Nissan sedan with Colorado plates. It was parked up against a six-foot berm of plowed snow, so close it was impossible to open the passenger side door. The snow around the vehicle had been churned by the footsteps of the paramedics and cops, to the point that no one shoe impression was discernable. “I took photographs of the scene before I approached,” Dwight said.
“But I can tell you there weren’t any footprints. If I had to guess, I’d say the killer used a rake or shovel to literally cover his tracks.”

  Brodie continued to study the roadside. “I don’t see any other tire impressions,” he said.

  “He could have parked on the pavement,” Ryder said.

  “Or he could have been on foot,” Travis said.

  “It’s four miles from town up a half-dozen switchbacks,” Ryder said. “That’s a long way to walk. Someone would have noticed.”

  “Not if he stayed behind the snow.” Travis kicked steps into the snowbank and scrambled to the top and looked down. “There’s a kind of path stomped out over here.”

  Brodie climbed up beside him and stared down at the narrow trail. “It might be an animal trail.”

  “It might be. Or it could be how Alex made his way up to this point without being seen. Then he stepped out in the road and flagged down Denise and pretended to be a stranded motorist.”

  “How did he know the driver was a woman by herself?” Brodie asked.

  “He could have studied approaching traffic with binoculars.”

  The two men descended once more to the others beside the car. “Why would any woman stop for him, knowing there’s a killer on the loose?” Dwight asked.

  “She was from Fort Collins,” Travis said. “I don’t know how much press these murders have been getting over there. It wouldn’t be front-page news or the top story on a newscast.”

  “He’s right,” Brodie said. “I’ve seen a few articles in the Denver papers, but not much. It would be easy to miss.”

  “Alex is a good-looking young man,” Travis said. “Clean-cut, well dressed. If he presented himself as a stranded motorist, stuck in the cold far from town, most people would be sympathetic.”

  “Maybe he dressed as a woman, the way Tim did when they were working together,” Dwight said. “People would be even more likely to stop for a woman.”

  “Alex and Tim were both amateur actors, right?” Brodie asked, trying to recall information from the reports he had read.

  “Yeah,” Ryder said. “And we know that, at least a few times, Tim dressed as a woman who was trying to escape an abusive boyfriend or husband. He flagged down another woman and asked for help, then Alex moved in to attack. One woman was able to escape and described the scenario for us.”

  Travis pulled on a pair of gloves, then opened the driver’s-side door. He leaned in and came out with a woman’s purse—black leather with a gold clasp. He pulled out the wallet and scanned the ID, then flipped through the credit cards until he came to a slim white card with an embossed photograph of a smiling brunette—Denise Switcher. “Looks like she worked at Colorado State University,” he said.

  The hair rose on the back of Brodie’s neck. “Emily’s school,” he said. He didn’t like another connection to Emily in this case.

  “Alex’s school.” Travis slid the card back into the wallet. “I wonder if he chose her because he recognized her.”

  “That might have made her more likely to stop to help him out,” Dwight said.

  Travis returned the wallet to the purse and rifled through the rest of the contents. Expression grim, he pulled out a white business card, the words ICE COLD in black ink printed on one side.

  The card taunted them—a reminder that, yes, they knew who attacked Denise Switcher, but they weren’t any closer to catching him than they had ever been.

  They were still silently contemplating the card when Travis’s phone rang. He listened for a moment, then ended the call. “That was one of the paramedics,” he said. “Denise Switcher coded before Flight for Life arrived. She’s dead.”

  Brodie silently cursed the waste of a young woman’s life, as well as their best chance to learn more about Alex’s methods and motives. He turned to walk back toward the sheriff’s department vehicle, but drew up short as a red Jeep skidded to a stop inches in front of him. The driver’s door flew open and Emily stumbled out. “Is it true? Did the killer really get Denise?” she demanded, looking wildly around.

  Brodie hurried to her. She wore only leggings and a thin sweater and tennis shoes, and was already shivering in the biting cold. He shrugged out of his jacket. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She waved off his attempts to put his jacket around her. “You have to tell me. That ambulance I passed—was it Denise? Does that mean she’s still alive?”

  Travis joined them. “Emily, you shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “I was in the Cake Walk Café, waiting. Then Tammy Patterson came in and said she heard from a source at the sheriff’s department that the Ice Cold Killer had attacked another woman. I had the most awful feeling it was Denise.” She bit her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on Travis, her expression pleading.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “It was Denise Switcher,” he said. “But how did you know?”

  “Tammy said the woman was from Fort Collins. I was hoping that was just a coincidence, but...” She buried her face against Travis’s shoulder.

  “Emily?” Brodie approached, his voice gentle. “What was Denise doing in Eagle Mountain?”

  She raised her head and wiped away tears. “I’m sorry. I thought I said. She was coming to see me.”

  * * *

  BRODIE WORE WHAT Emily thought of as his cop face—grim determination and what felt like censure, as if he suspected her of withholding important information. She refused to give in to the temptation to cower against Travis, so she straightened and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  Brodie, still scowling, thrust his jacket at her once more. “Put this on. You’re freezing.”

  She would have liked nothing better than to refuse the offer, but the truth was, she was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. She’d been so upset she had left her own coat behind at the café. She mutely accepted his jacket and slipped into it, his warmth enveloping her, along with the scent of him, clean and masculine.

  “Why was Denise coming to see you?” Travis asked.

  “The lead on the research project I’m involved in had some files he wanted me to review,” she said. “Denise volunteered to deliver them to me.”

  “She drove six hours to deliver files?” Brodie asked. “Why didn’t they transmit them electronically? Or ask you to make the trip?”

  “These are paper surveys students filled out,” she said. “And the professor had already agreed I should stay here in Eagle Mountain until after the wedding.” She hugged the coat more tightly around her. “Honestly, I don’t think he would have bothered, except Denise wanted to come. She said it was a great excuse to get out of the office and spend at least one night in the mountains.”

  “The two of you were friends?” Travis asked.

  She nodded, and bit the inside of her cheek to stave off the fresh wave of tears that threatened with that one change of verb tense—were. “She’s the administrative assistant in the economics department and she and I really hit it off. I’d told her so much about Eagle Mountain and the ranch that she was anxious to see it.” She swallowed hard. If Denise had stayed in Fort Collins, she’d be alive now.

  “When did you talk to her last?” Travis asked.

  “She called me when she stopped for gas in Gunnison, and we agreed to meet at the Cake Walk for lunch.”

  “What time was that?” Brodie asked.

  “About ten thirty.”

  “Did Alex Woodruff know her?” Brodie asked.

  Had Denise known her killer? Emily shuddered at the thought, then forced herself to focus on the question. “Maybe,” she said. “Students can register online to participate in various research studies, but they can also come into the office and fill out the paperwork there. If Alex did that, he would have met Denise. And a couple of times she’s helped check people in for studies.”

  “So there’s a good chance he did know
her,” Brodie said.

  “Yes.” She glanced toward the gray Nissan. “What happened to her? I mean, I know she was killed, but why up here?”

  “It’s possible Alex posed as a stranded motorist in need of a ride,” Travis said. “If your friend recognized him from school, do you think she would have stopped?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes. Denise was always pitching in to help with fund-raisers or any extra work that needed to be done. She would have stopped to help someone, especially someone she knew.” Again, she struggled for composure. “I’m sure she has family in Denver. Someone will have to tell them.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Travis said.

  She wanted to hug her brother. He had had to break the awful news to too many parents and spouses and siblings since the killings had begun. “Why is Alex doing this?” she asked.

  “We’re hoping you can give us some insight into that,” Brodie said. “You might talk to some of the professors who knew him. We could call them, but they might be more inclined to open up to you. You’re one of them.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “You’re an academic,” he said. “You speak their language. I’m just a dumb cop.”

  Under other circumstances, she might have laughed. Brodie was anything but dumb. But there was nothing funny about what had happened here today. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “But I’m not promising I can help you.”

  “We’d appreciate it if you’d try.” Travis patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend, but I think you’d better go home now. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  She nodded, and slipped off the jacket and held it out to Brodie. “You keep it,” he said. “I can get it tonight.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’m getting back in my warm car, so I don’t need it.” And she didn’t want to give him an excuse for looking her up again later.