Ice Cold Killer Read online

  Emily looked as disappointed as a child who had been told she couldn’t have a puppy. “I was so sorry to hear about Kelly.” She squeezed Darcy’s arm. “If you change your mind, come anyway. The more the merrier.”

  They emerged from the barn and Darcy was startled to see Ryder striding toward them. Dressed in his uniform with the black leather coat, he somehow didn’t look all that out of place in the corral. “Hello, Emily, Darcy.” He nodded to them. “Is everything all right?”

  “It is now,” Emily said. “Darcy has taken very good care of my favorite mare.” She touched Darcy’s arm. “Darcy, do you know Ryder Stewart? He’s one of Travis’s groomsmen.”

  “We know each other,” Ryder said. A little current of heat ran through Darcy as his eyes met hers.

  “If you’re looking for Travis, he went somewhere with Dad,” Emily said. “But they should be back pretty soon for supper. Our cook, Rainey, doesn’t like it if people are late for meals, and Dad doesn’t like to cross her.”

  “I’ll catch him later,” Ryder said. “It’s not that important.”

  “Well, I’m glad you stopped by, anyway,” Emily said. “You’ve saved me a phone call. I’m having a get-together for the wedding party and friends tomorrow afternoon—a snowshoe scavenger hunt.” She turned to Darcy. “I’m trying to talk Darcy into coming, too.”

  “You should come,” Ryder said. “It’ll be good to be around other people.”

  She heard the unspoken message beneath his words: no one is going to bother you with half a dozen law enforcement officers around. And maybe socializing would be a good way to distract herself from worries about everything from the business to her own safety. “All right. I guess I could come.”

  “Wonderful,” Emily said. She looked past Ryder, toward the ranch house. “My mom is waving to me—she probably needs my help with something for the wedding. With most of the wedding party staying here, you wouldn’t believe how much there is to do.” She waved goodbye to both of them and hurried away.

  Ryder fell into step beside Darcy as they headed for the parking area near the stables where she had left the borrowed truck. Ryder laughed when he saw the green and yellow monster. “I saw this outside your office,” he said. “But I had no idea it was yours.”

  “It’s the official loaner vehicle for O’Brien’s Garage,” she said. “A little horrifying, but it runs well. I was glad to get anything at all, since my car will need some pretty major repairs.”

  “I think anyone will have a hard time running you off the road in that,” Ryder said.

  “Good point.” The idea cheered her. She took out the keys and prepared to hoist herself into the cab, then paused. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “You aren’t here to see Travis about a development in the case?”

  He shook his head. “He asked me to help find extra chairs for the wedding guests and I wanted to get a look at the space where the ceremony will be. I have a couple of places that have agreed to loan some chairs, and I wanted to see what would work best.”

  “That’s nice of you,” she said.

  “I’m the backup plan, really,” he said. “They have a wedding planner out of Junction who’s supposed to supply all that stuff, but this is in case the roads don’t open in time.”

  “But the wedding is still over three weeks away,” Darcy said. “Surely, the road will be open by then.”

  “Probably,” he said. “But it’s probably not a bad idea to plan, just in case.”

  “I need to go through our medical supplies and make sure we have enough of everything,” she said. “I can see it will be a good idea to keep extra stock on hand in the winter.” She climbed into the truck.

  Ryder shut the door behind her. “Have a good evening,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. See you tomorrow.” While part of her still longed for that quiet afternoon at home, curled up with a book, she could see the sense in spending her free time around other people. That one of those people would be Ryder made the prospect all the more pleasing.

  * * *

  RYDER HAD JUST turned onto Main Street when his phone rang with a call from Travis. “I was just up at your place, looking at the wedding venue,” Ryder said.

  “I ended up getting detoured to the office,” Travis said. “When you get a chance, swing by here. I’ve got something to show you.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Adelaide Kinkaid, the seventy-something woman whose title Ryder didn’t know, but who kept the sheriff’s department running smoothly, greeted Ryder as he stepped into the station lobby. “Trooper Stewart,” she said. “We’re seeing so much of you lately we should make you an honorary deputy.”

  “Do I get to draw double pay?” Ryder asked.

  Adelaide narrowed her blue eyes behind her violet-rimmed glasses. “I said honorary. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company today?”

  “I need to speak with the sheriff.”

  “Of course you do. You and half the county. Don’t you people know he has a wedding to prepare for?”

  “I thought the bride did most of the work of weddings,” Ryder said.

  Adelaide sniffed. “We live in a new age, haven’t you heard? Men have to pull their weight, too.”

  “I’m more concerned about this case than the wedding right now.” Travis stood in the hallway leading to the offices. “Come on back, Ryder.”

  Instead of stopping at his office, Travis led the way down the hall to a conference room. He unlocked the door and ushered Ryder inside. Items, some of which Ryder recognized as being from the crime scenes, were arrayed on two long folding tables. He followed Travis around the tables. “When we originally towed Kelly’s car, our intention was to secure it and leave it to the state’s forensic team to process,” Travis said. “After Christy’s murder, with the road still closed, we felt we no longer had that luxury, so I put my team on it.”

  He picked up a clear plastic envelope. “They found this in Kelly’s car, in the pocket on the driver’s side door.”

  Ryder took the envelope and studied the small rectangle of white inside. A business card, with black letters: Ice Cold. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Is it supposed to be the name of a business?”

  “We don’t know. We didn’t turn up anything in our online searches. It’s not a business that we can find.”

  Ryder turned the packet with the card over. The back was blank, but on closer inspection, he could see that the edges of the card were slightly uneven, as if from perforations. “It looks like those blanks you can buy at office supply stores,” he said. “To print your own cards at home.”

  “That’s what we think, too,” Travis said. “We think it was printed on a laser printer. The card stock is pretty common, available at a lot of places, including the office supply store here in town, though the owner doesn’t show having sold any in the past month. But it could have been purchased before then.”

  Ryder laid the envelope back on the table. “We don’t know how old it is, either,” he said. “Kelly could have dropped it months ago.”

  “Except we found another card just like this in Christy’s wrecker.” Travis moved a few feet down the table and picked up a second envelope.

  The card inside was identical to the one in the first envelope. A brief tremor raced up Ryder’s spine. “We found it wedged between the cushions of the driver’s seat,” Travis said.

  “Whoever left it there had to know we’d find it,” Ryder said.

  “I don’t think he’s going to stop with two murders,” Travis said. “He’s going to want to keep playing the game.”

  Ryder thought of Darcy, her car run off the road, and felt a chill. “Darcy could have been the third.”

  “Maybe,” Travis said. “But Christy’s murder, at least, feels more like a crime of opportunity. She was one of the few people out t
hat night. The killer saw her and decided to make her his next victim.”

  “How do we stop him?” Ryder asked.

  “I’m putting every man I can on the streets, and I’m asking the newspaper to run a story, warning everyone to be careful about stopping for strangers, suggesting they travel in pairs, things like that. I don’t want to alarm people, but I don’t want another victim.”

  “That may not be enough,” Ryder said. “Some people think they’re invincible—that a place like Eagle Mountain has to be safe.”

  “I’m trying to make it safe,” Travis said. “We’ll do everything we can, but we’re at a disadvantage. The killer knows us and that we’re looking for him.” He picked up the business card again. “We’ll keep trying to track down the meaning of Ice Cold.”

  “I’ll get folks at state patrol working on it, too. We can transmit the images electronically. At least we’ve still got that. Did you find anything else in the vehicles that we can use?”

  “Nothing. No fingerprints, no hair. Of course, with the weather, he was probably bundled up—cap, gloves, maybe even a face mask.”

  “Which makes it even more certain the business card was left deliberately.” Anger tightened Ryder’s throat. “He’s treating this like some kind of game—taunting us.”

  “It’s a game I don’t intend to lose,” Travis said.

  Ryder nodded. But the cold knot in his stomach didn’t loosen. If whoever did this killed again, someone would lose. Someone—probably a woman—would lose her life. And the awful reality was that he and Travis and the other officers might not be able to stop it from happening.

  * * *

  A LATE CANCELLATION allowed Darcy to keep her pledge to take an inventory of veterinary supplies at her office Friday afternoon. To her relief, she was well stocked on most items, though her stockpile of some bandages and Elizabethan collars were running low. Fortunately, Kelly kept overflow supplies in her garage and Darcy was sure she could find what she needed there.

  After closing up that evening, she drove to Kelly’s duplex. She parked the truck in the driveway, then let herself in with her key and switched on the living room light. Already, the house looked vacant and neglected. Kelly’s furniture and belongings were still there, of course, but dust had settled on the furniture, and the air smelled stale. She swallowed back a knot of tears and forced herself to walk straight through to the connecting door to the garage. She would get what she needed and get out, avoiding the temptation to linger and mourn her missing friend.

  Darcy flipped the switch for the garage light, but only one bulb lit, providing barely enough illumination to make out the boxes stacked along the far wall. Without Kelly’s car parked inside, the space looked a lot bigger. Darcy wondered what would happen to the duplex now. The rent was presumably paid up through the end of the month. Once the road opened, she assumed Kelly’s parents would clean the place out.

  The boxes of supplies on the back wall contained everything from paper towels and toilet paper for the veterinary office restrooms to surgical drapes and puppy pads. The friends had found a supplier who offered big discounts for buying in bulk, and had stocked up on anything nonperishable.

  The bandages and plastic cones she needed were in two separate boxes on the bottom of the pile, the contents of each box noted on the outside in Kelly’s neat handwriting. Darcy set her purse on the floor and started moving the top layer of boxes out of the way. At least all this activity would warm her up a little. The temperature had hovered just above freezing all day, plunging quickly as the sun set. The concrete floor of the garage might as well have been a slab of ice, radiating cold up through Darcy’s feet and throughout her body.

  She shifted a heavy carton labeled surgical supplies and set it on the floor with a rattling thud. The noise echoed around her and she hurried to pull out the box of bandages. She’d carry the whole thing out to the truck, then come back for the collars. She only needed a few of them, in small and medium sizes.

  She picked up the bandage carton—who knew all that elastic and cloth could be so heavy?—and headed back toward the door to the kitchen. She had her foot on the bottom step when the door to the kitchen opened and the shadowy figure of a man loomed large. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. A flashlight blinded her, then someone knocked the box from her hand and she was falling backward, a scream caught in her throat.

  Chapter Eight

  Darcy tried to fight back, but the man’s arms squeezed her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. She kicked out and clawed at his face, screaming and cursing. Then, as suddenly as he had grabbed her, the man let go. “Darcy! Darcy, are you okay? I had no idea it was you.”

  Eyes clouded with angry tears, she stared at Ken, who stood at the bottom of the steps leading into the house, a flashlight in one hand, the other held up, palm open. Darcy swiped at her eyes and straightened her clothes. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “And why did you attack me?”

  “I didn’t know it was you.” He looked truly flustered. “I saw the truck in the driveway and didn’t recognize it. Then I heard a noise in the garage—I thought someone was trying to rob the place.”

  She gathered up the scattered contents of the carton of bandages, trying to gather up a little of her dignity, as well. “Let me help you with that,” Ken said, bounding down the stairs to join her. “Why are you driving that old truck?”

  “My car is in the shop,” she said. “Someone ran me off the road the other night.”

  “Oh, Darcy.” He put a hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “You need to be careful. Do you think it was the serial killer?”

  “Serial killer?” The word struck fear into her. Could he be a serial killer if he’d only killed two people? Or had Ryder and the sheriff discovered others?

  “That’s what the paper is saying,” Ken said. “They even printed a statement from the sheriff, telling everyone to be careful around people they don’t know, and suggesting people not go out alone.”

  She clutched the box to her chest, pushing down the flutters of panic in her stomach. “I’m being careful,” she said. So careful she was beginning to feel paranoid, scrutinizing the driver in every car she passed, looking on every new male client with suspicion.

  “You shouldn’t be out at your place alone,” Ken said. “The offer is still open to stay with me.”

  “I’m fine by myself,” she said. “And I couldn’t leave the cats.”

  She pushed past him and he let her pass, but followed her into the living room. “I talked to that cop,” he said. “That state trooper.”

  She set the box down and pulled on her gloves. “Oh?”

  “He thinks I had something to do with Kelly and Christy’s deaths—that I killed them, even.”

  She looked up, startled. “Did Ryder say that? Did he accuse you of killing them?” He had told her that Ken’s alibis for the times of the murders checked out, but maybe he had only been shielding her. Or maybe he even thought she might share information with Ken.

  “He didn’t have to. He grilled me—asking where was I and what was I doing when the women were killed. And he wanted to know all about my relationship with Kelly.”

  “He just asked you the same questions he asked everyone who knew Kelly,” she said. “He wasn’t accusing you of anything. And you haven’t done anything wrong, so why be upset?”

  “Cops can frame people for crimes, you know,” he said. “Especially people they don’t like, or who they want to get out of the way.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She regretted the words as anger flashed in his eyes. “I mean, why would he do that?” she hastened to add. “Ryder doesn’t even know you.”

  “He wanted to know about my relationship with you, too,” Ken said. “I think he’s jealous that we’re friends. That we used to date.”

  Darcy didn’t think three dates amounted to
a relationship, but she wasn’t going to argue the point now. “I think he’s just doing his job,” she said.

  “I think that cop is interested in you,” Ken said. “You should be careful. What if he’s the serial killer?”

  “Ryder?” She almost laughed, but the look on Ken’s face stole away any idea that he was joking.

  “It’s not so far-fetched,” he said. “Crooked cops do all kinds of things. And he was the one who found Kelly’s body.”

  “Ryder was with me when Christy was killed,” she said.

  Ken’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What was he doing with you?” He took a step closer and she forced herself not to move away, though her heart pounded so hard it hurt.

  “Someone tried to break into my house,” she said. “He came to investigate.”

  Ken’s big hand wrapped around her upper arm. “I told you it’s not safe for you out there,” he said, squeezing hard.

  She cried out and wrenched away. She searched for her car keys and realized she had left her purse in the garage. She could do without the collars if she had to, but she couldn’t go anywhere without her keys. “You can go home now,” she said. “I’ll let myself out.”

  Not waiting for an answer, she pushed past him and all but ran to the garage where she retrieved her purse, threaded half a dozen plastic, cone-shaped collars over one arm and returned to the living room. Ken had picked up the box of bandages. “I’ll carry these for you,” he said.

  At the truck, he slid the box onto the passenger seat. She dropped the collars onto the floorboard and slammed the door, then hurried around to the driver’s side. “You look ridiculous in this big old wreck,” he said, coming around to the driver’s side as she hoisted herself up into the seat.

  “I’ve got more important things to worry about.” She turned the key and the engine roared to life.

  “Be careful,” he said. “And be careful of that cop. I don’t trust him.”