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  Snow Blind

  P J Tracy

  With just three novels to their credit-as well as rave reviews and a shelf full of awards-the duo known as P. J. Tracy are on the fast track to superstardom.

  Already major bestselling authors in the UK, the brilliant creators of the Monkeewrench team and their law-abiding counterparts on the Minneapolis PD are setting a new standard for the modern thriller, combining brilliant plotting, razor-sharp dialogue, and vivid characters into a potent brew. And now, with Snow Blind, this duo gives us their most original and irresistible novel yet.

  Nothing's bleaker than Minneapolis during the winter, the season that, to some longtime residents, lasts eleven months of the year. So what better way to bring a little cheer to the good people of the city than by sponsoring an old-fashioned snowman-building contest? In a matter of hours, a local park is filled with the innocent laughter of children and their frosty creations. But things take an awful turn when the dead bodies of Minneapolis police officers are discovered inside two of the snowmen- sending the MPD and Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth on high alert. The next day, Iris Rikker, the newly minted sheriff of rural Dundas County, comes across another dead cop. Fearing that Rikker's inexperience will hamper the investigation, Magozzi and Rolseth head north-in a blizzard-to hunt for clues. As Grace MacBride and her crack computer jocks at Monkeewrench comb cyber-murder websites for connections, a terrifying link emerges, connecting the dead cops, Magozzi and Rolseth, and Monkeewrench-a link that must be broken, before it's too late.

  P J Tracy

  Snow Blind

  The fourth book in the Monkeewrench series, 2006

  Prologue

  They had to sit for a time after dragging the body so far in this heat – two young women in sleeveless summer dresses, hugging their knees on the hillside while the hot wind danced in their hair and crept up their skirts and a dead man lay behind them. They both looked straight ahead across the rolling fields of prairie grass, and nowhere else.

  ‘We should have tied him to a board or something,’ Ruth said after a few minutes, ‘so he wouldn’t get tangled up in the grass like he did.’

  Laura opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly. She’d almost said they’d know better next time. She closed her eyes and saw big, raw hands dragging through the grass, fingers curled, almost as if he’d been trying to hang on. It was high summer and the grass was long, whipping in the wind and wrapping around the rough fabric of his sleeves.

  ‘Shall we start?’

  Laura felt her heart skip a beat. ‘In a minute.’

  But it was impossible to keep Ruth still for very long. She was like one of those little birds whose wings beat so fast you couldn’t see them, darting here and there like they were always on the edge of panic. She was trying to be still to please Laura, but her hands were busy, almost frantic, shredding one piece of grass and then another. ‘I have a headache.’

  ‘It’s those combs. They always give you a headache.’

  Ruth took the combs from her hair and shook it free, lovely blond curls falling down her back like liquid sunshine. Silly Ruth, as old-fashioned in appearance as the name she’d been saddled with: hair too long and skirts too short; maybe that was what had brought this whole thing to a head. She managed to sit for almost a full minute, and then started to fidget again.

  ‘Stop fussing, Ruth.’

  ‘Don’t yell at me.’

  Laura heard the hurt in her voice, and knew without looking that Ruth’s lower lip was starting to tremble. Soon the tears would spill over. She hadn’t yelled, exactly, but perhaps her tone had been too sharp. That was wrong. Ruth had always been the fragile one, even before her belly had started to swell, and you had to be careful. ‘I’m sorry if it sounded that way. Have you thought of a name for the baby?’

  ‘Stop trying to distract me. We have to dig this hole.’

  ‘I just want you to be still for a bit. Rest.’

  ‘Rest?’ Ruth looked at her as if she’d just uttered a profanity. ‘But we have so much to do.’

  ‘Just this one thing.’

  And then Laura smiled and felt herself relax for the first time in years. It was true. Kill a man, bury him – that was all that was on their list today.

  After a few seconds Ruth said, ‘Emily.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Emily. I’m going to name her Emily.’

  ‘What if it’s a boy?’

  Ruth smiled. ‘It isn’t.’

  This was the story Emily was remembering on her last day, and it amazed her that she could remember it at all. She’d heard it only twice in her life – once from her aunt Laura, who’d told her on the sly when Emily had turned thirteen, as if it were a strange and secret birthday present; and again from her mother on the day Emily had left the home farm to marry Lars and make her own life. Her mother had giggled during the telling, which her aunt had never done, and that had frightened her a little. And then she told her to remember the tale, that it wasn’t really so funny, in case a day should come when she would need it.

  Today she needed it, Emily thought, wondering if she could finally do it, after all these years. And if she did, what would all those wasted years have been for?

  It was the last day; the last day of secrets. She lay on her back in bed, right hand pressed against her flat stomach; pushing, pushing the pain back inside; holding the evil, growing mass that writhed inside with hungry tentacles reaching for open nerves. God, it hurt.

  A perfect, thin line of light pushed up the black curtain on the horizon outside her bedroom window, and the quality of dark inside the room began to change. This room, where love and hell had happened, all in the same lifetime.

  Emily’s feet were on the floor before the first chirp of the earliest-rising bird had sounded, and the rush of agonizing pain pushed her head to her knees. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and saw rolling, sparking pinwheels of light.

  Old, ravaged huddle; tiny woman; folded into a small package of gray hair and sharpened knees, alone in a chamber of agony where, inexplicably, birds welcomed the morning in gay, sporadic disharmony.

  She did things that seemed odd, considering her chore list for the morning. Prepared and ate her oatmeal; drank her precious single cup of coffee; carefully washed the bowl and cup and saucer with their faded rose patterns, knowing those patterns had always been there, amazed at her years of indifference. Everything seemed sharper, clearer, as if she had seen the world for years through a lens just barely out of focus.

  And then she walked to the old gun cabinet in the dining room.

  The pistol lay in her right palm, and she folded arthritic fingers around it. It felt good. It felt right. She hadn’t used it for years. Five? Six? Since she had shot the squirrel that the oil truck had left, panting and mangled, eyes glazing in the driveway.

  Emily was an excellent shot. Lars had seen to that, back when fox and bear still wandered freely in and out of the chicken coops and the isolated barnyards of rural Minnesota. ‘You will learn to shoot, Emily; and you will shoot if you have to,’ he had answered her shudder when he first lay the new pistol in her palm; and she had. How impossibly far from her mind then was the final use to which she would put this gun. How inconceivable it would have been. To kill, with careful thought and planning; with only cold, dismal dread, as for any other unpleasant task.

  Appalling, evil woman, she thought as she stepped out onto the back porch. To feel no remorse, no guilt. How hideous. How deeply sinful.

  The sun had not yet topped the cottonwoods when she walked out from the house toward the looming barn, and the path through the tall grass was still dim with early morning.

  She saw in her mind an image of how she must have looked at that moment, and laughed aloud at the sight: a crazy old woman,
hustling in a faded dress and orthopedic shoes, gun in hand, out to kill quickly, out to finish the job before it was too late.

  She stopped when she rounded the turn at the bushy hydrangea, just as the enormous, ancient barn sprang into view, tractor door gaping like a bottomless black mouth.

  Suddenly the pain in her belly moved. Now it was a bright piercing in her head, and then without warning, a deadness spread down her arms.

  It didn’t get the gun, she thought senselessly. It didn’t get the gun. I can still feel it. It’s heavy, hanging so heavy from my hand.

  But the pistol was on the ground, winking sunlight off the long, polished barrel, mocking her as Emily fell beside it. Her lips wouldn’t move, and the scream stayed inside her head.

  No, God, please no. Not yet. I have to kill him first.

  1

  Minneapolis hadn’t had much of a winter. Every promised storm had veered far to the south, dumping Minnesota’s fair share of snow on states that neither wanted nor deserved it, like Iowa.

  Meanwhile bitter Minnesotans watched their lawns green up in the occasional rain, and their snowmobiles gather dust in the garage. A few diehard riders made the short trek to Iowa to try out new machines, but they never talked about it at the water cooler on Monday morning. It was simply too humiliating.

  Today was going to change all that, and the whole state was giddy with anticipation.

  The snow started at ten o’clock in the morning, falling with a gentle vengeance, as if to apologize for its late arrival. Within an hour there wasn’t a blade of grass visible in the whole city, the surface streets were slick with new snow hiding the black ice beneath it, and the average freeway speed had dropped to seven miles per hour. Reporters’ mini-cams picked up shots of lunchtime drivers behind the wheels of cars barely inching along in the kind of stop-and-go traffic that normally fosters road rage, but all the drivers were smiling.

  In City Hall, Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth were totally oblivious to the little surprise nature was cooking up outside. They sat at their facing desks in the back corner, grinning at each other. It wasn’t the kind of picture you saw often in Minneapolis Homicide, but this was a banner day.

  Gino propped his feet on the desktop and laced his hands behind his head. ‘We are never going to have another day this good. Not on the job, anyway.’

  Magozzi pondered that. ‘Maybe we should retire right now. Go out in a blaze of glory, get jobs as golf pros on some course in Hawaii.’

  ‘Golf pros never get a high like this.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘And neither one of us knows how to golf.’

  ‘How hard can it be? You hit a little ball into a little hole. Pinball on grass, is what it is.’

  Gino’s grin widened. ‘We are probably the only homicide detectives in history where the homicide victim lived.’

  ‘Nah. Must have happened a hundred times before.’

  Gino made a face. ‘Yeah. I suppose. But not in this department. And she could just as well have died, if it weren’t for the two greatest detectives on the planet.’ He shook his head in happy disbelief. ‘Man, this is almost better than sex.’

  Magozzi thought that was a load of crap, but he was feeling too good to take issue with it.

  They’d been called out on a probable homicide four days ago. Bloody bedroom, drunken ex-husband with a history of abuse and assault, and a missing woman who’d had a restraining order against the dirtbag ever since the divorce. Magozzi and Gino had found her early this morning, locked in the trunk of a car in the long-term lot at the airport, barely breathing. The docs at Hennepin General said she was going to make it, and they’d been floating ever since.

  Gino rolled his chair around to face the window, and his silly grin turned upside down. ‘Oh, crap. That stuff’s still coming down.’

  ‘Good. People hardly ever kill each other when it’s snowing.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Homicides were up six percent last quarter.’

  ‘Because there was no snow. It’ll get better now. Man, look at it come down.’ Magozzi walked over to the window and looked down at the mess the storm was making of the street.

  Gino joined him, shaking his head. ‘Those homicide stats never made sense to me. Should be the other way around. Winter in this state is enough to make anyone homicidal. Boy, this better stop soon.’

  Magozzi shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled. ‘We’re supposed to get at least a foot.’

  ‘Aw, jeez, come on, don’t tell me that.’

  ‘Sorry, buddy. Looks like there’s going to be a Winter Fest after all. Baby’s got snow.’

  ‘Goddamnit.’ Gino’s happy-camper mood was officially deceased. ‘So I’m going to end up spending one of my two days off building a stupid snowman for a stupid kids’ festival in the freezing cold. Those so-called computer wizards at Monkeewrench ever get a lead on who the hell is doing this to me?’

  Gino was the very reluctant fall guy for every charity gig the MPD sponsored, thanks to some anonymous donor who kept doubling the proceeds on the condition that Gino had to participate.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Gino narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, that’s pretty interesting, if you ask me. We’ve got four geniuses who developed the most sophisticated crime-solving software in the world, can hack into the NSA database with their brains tied behind their backs, and yet they can’t put a name to a bank routing number. That smells, and you know it. Monkeewrench is behind this. Specifically, Miss Grace MacBride herself.’

  Magozzi smiled a little at the mention of Grace. ‘Now, why would she want to do that? She likes you.’

  ‘Well, gee, let me think. Maybe because in the past I’ve been a little negative about you two trying to have a relationship. She’s still mad about that.’

  ‘Grace doesn’t get mad.’

  ‘Tell me about it. She gets even.’

  By noon there were five inches on the ground, most of the city schools had started bussing the kids home, and people were cross-country skiing on side streets the plows hadn’t hit yet. By mid-afternoon four more inches had fallen, along with the mercury, and the freeways were at a dead standstill, clogged with remorseful commuters who’d made the bad decision not to leave work early.

  By nightfall the storm was still dumping its load of white at the rate of an inch an hour. The streets were a mess, and most of the city had locked itself down for the night. Tommy thought of all the fools sitting in front of their fireplaces sipping hot toddies or whatever it was such people drank, missing the first real snow of the season and the sights and silence of a big metropolis that had ground to a halt.

  It was spooky, in a way, to be in the park when it was this empty. As far as he could tell, the only people around were over on the lighted sledding hill, all the way across the big field. They looked like colorful ants from this distance, and he could barely hear them. Even though it was the first time in this long, snow-free winter that the city had opened the cross-country ski trails, all but the die-hards would wait for daylight and perfectly groomed trails before snapping on the skids. Tomorrow the trails would be jammed, but tonight they were his.

  Even in perfect conditions, not many skiers used the higher, wooded trails in the park, especially after dark, which was why Tommy liked them. No shuffling kids, no pokey old-timers to block the narrow passageways through the big trees, break his rhythm, and slow him down.

  The groomers had hit the trails once today after the first six inches, but since then another several inches had fallen, and he liked the challenge of muscling the long skis through it, making his marks the first in the new snow.

  The big hill up to the woods had been a bitch, though, and Tommy could already feel the strain in his thighs and shoulders, and they’d only been skiing for an hour. His daily workouts at the gym kept him tight and strong, but there was no way those stationary ski machines could prepare you for the real thing, no matter how high you set the resistance. They couldn’t duplicate t
he jittering bumps of a rough trail, or a skid on a slick spot that tugged your legs sideways instead of forward, using a whole different group of muscles. Maybe he’d invent one, make a million dollars.

  He stopped for a breath, shook out his legs and hands, then went still for a moment, listening for the shushing sound of Toby’s skis behind him. He was back there somewhere, probably struggling on the incline up into the woods, which was pretty much the story of Toby’s whole life. He’d always been a little slower, a little weaker, and some kind of bull’s-eye for just about every bad shake that can hit a guy. Best thing that ever happened to him was hooking up with Tommy way back in the fourth grade, when every other kid wanted to beat the crap out of him just because they could. Tommy fought off the bullies, Toby idolized him, and it was still that way, all these years later. The bullies were bigger and meaner, but Tommy was still fighting Toby’s battles for him, whether they were with guys on the street or their superiors at work, and that was just fine with him. He liked being the hero, and most of all, he liked the hero worship that went along with it. He supposed it didn’t matter if your battles were on a playground, in a war, or on the street, they made a bond between men that couldn’t be broken. Women just didn’t get that.

  He’d been still for too long, and the cold was starting to seep in through his Gore-Tex suit. He was just opening his mouth to holler back at Toby when he finally heard the shush of skis heading toward him. He listened for a second, frowning, because the sound wasn’t coming from the trail behind; it was moving toward him sideways, through the woods. And then he saw the little beams from skier headlamps, jittering through the big tree trunks.

  He snorted out a plume of frost, irritated that he’d have company on the trail in a few seconds, and unreasonably angry that he was no longer the best, strongest, and fastest skier in the park. Skiing off the trail through unmarked woods with nearly a foot of new snow took a lot of strength and endurance – more than he had – and nothing pissed off Tommy more than being second best.