She sighed and turned in her seat to face him. ‘The only alternative to that tent would have been to drive stakes into the ice to support a tarp, but with the ice in such poor condition, we didn’t want to risk it.’
Gino frowned at her. ‘What do you mean the ice is in poor condition? It’s the middle of January.’
‘You might recall that we had a very mild winter until just last week, and the lakes around here are all spring fed, so there’s still some open water and weak spots. Be careful.’
‘Are you telling me this ice isn’t safe?’
‘Well, they told me it was. By the way, if you hear the ice cracking under you, don’t panic. That happened a lot when I went out there earlier, but they said not to worry.’
When he reached the landing’s edge, Gino stopped dead, his eyes wide and busy as he examined the ice. ‘There’s a crack – a big, zigzaggy crack right there.’ He pointed it out to Iris. ‘What’s that mean?’
Iris looked at it worriedly. ‘I didn’t see that before. Try not to step on it.’
They watched her walk gingerly out onto the ice, careful to skirt the crack. ‘Let’s go,’ Magozzi said.
‘Just a minute. I want to see if she falls in.’
‘Come on, Gino, look at all the fish shacks out there. If the ice can hold them, it can hold us.’
‘So says you. When was the last time you were tromping around on a spring-fed lake after a warm snap?’
Magozzi shrugged. ‘Never.’
‘Goddamnit,’ Gino muttered.
By the time they caught up with Iris, she was talking to the two deputies stationed in front of the tent’s entrance. Both of them were starting to look like snowmen themselves as the heavy precipitation accumulated on their hats and parkas, and they didn’t look particularly happy to be there, or to be talking to Sheriff Rikker, for that matter.
As they drew closer, Magozzi heard Sheriff Rikker ask one of deputies if he was keeping a sign-in sheet for everyone who entered the crime-scene area. ‘What do you think?’ the deputy snapped back, and then remarkably, unbelievably, Iris apologized to the man for asking the question in the first place.
Magozzi and Gino exchanged a look. Any sheriff they’d ever met would have had that man on the ground first, and in the unemployment line second.
So there was a little attitude flying around Dundas County, Magozzi thought, obviously directed at the new sheriff. How Iris Rikker posed a threat was beyond him – maybe it was just pure Neanderthal stuff and men up here didn’t like women in charge. But more likely, it was because she seemed like the kind of woman who’d gone through life with doormat stamped across her forehead. Nobody liked or trusted an authority figure who couldn’t command respect; in fact, most people resented it, as if it were a betrayal of some kind. Her students probably threw spitballs at her, and that deputy was doing the adult equivalent right now. So how in the hell had she gotten elected?
Jimmy Grimm was standing inside, near the door of the crowded tent, when they walked in, giving space to the techs who were swarming around a snow-encrusted figure, shooting photos and video. Magozzi noticed Iris taking a quick step backward, looking a little shell-shocked by all the lights and activity.
‘Jimmy. How goes it?’
‘Well, I almost died five times on the drive up here, all so I could freeze my balls off in a circus tent, but other than that, I’m just peaches. But if it keeps snowing like this, we’re all going to end up checking into the Bates Motel. You notice that place on the drive into town?’
‘Yeah. The Dew Drop Inn or something like that. Put it this way – I wasn’t surprised by the vacancy sign. Have you met Sheriff Rikker?’ Magozzi gestured her closer.
Jimmy was all smiles as he took her hand. He was almost as good at assessing people as he was a crime scene, and he pegged the sheriff as a greenhorn the minute she walked into the tent. She had a lost, little-girl look about her, as much as she tried to hide it. Probably her first body; certainly her first murder investigation, if it turned out that way.
Jimmy was a nice guy in general, but he was especially kind to kids, animals, lost souls, and the uninitiated – he didn’t have to know her history to figure out that she was out of her element and stumbling up a sharp learning curve, and he made the effort to put her at ease. ‘If you have any questions, Sheriff, come to me – these two don’t know anything – they’re just a couple of pretty faces. We let ’em hang around so they can schmooze the media.’
Iris smiled, shaking his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Grimm, and thank you so much for coming.’
Jesus, Magozzi thought. She’s standing in a tent with a dead body and a bunch of crime-scene techs and she sounds like a hostess at a cocktail party. ‘So what have you got so far, Jimmy?’ he said, interrupting the nice-fest.
‘Take a look for yourselves. Make a hole, boys,’ Jimmy directed the techs with cameras, and they cleared a space for Gino and Magozzi to step in closer.
Gino looked at the thing, then his face crunched up like it did that time he took a bite of McLaren’s anchovy pizza. Rikker had been right. If it had started out like one of the storybook snowmen in the park, the weather had made a mess of it. The big head was sleet-pitted and misshapen, with icy rivulets frozen on the fat cheeks, as if the damn thing had been crying. But the snowman shape was absolutely there, and the guy attached to those blue-white hands sure as hell hadn’t built it around himself.
‘Could be number three,’ Magozzi said, standing next to him, and Gino nodded.
Iris stood rock-still a few paces back, feet, hands, and nose already numbed by the cold, trying to look somber and professional, although what she really wanted to do was jump up and down and clap her hands. Number three meant it was the Minneapolis killer, and that meant it was their case, and they’d snatch the investigation right away from her. Oh, darn. She kept her smile deep inside.
‘Or it could be a copycat,’ Magozzi said.
Iris’s inside smile faltered.
‘I don’t like the posing thing,’ Detective Rolseth was saying. ‘Damn fishing pole freaks me out as much as the skis did. Almost worse if it is a copycat – that means there might be more than one out there this sick.’
‘Maybe it’s not posed,’ someone said from behind them, introducing himself as Lieutenant Sampson when they turned around. ‘Seems I heard the two you found in the park were skiing when they caught it. Maybe this guy was ice-fishing.’
‘No way anybody’s going fishing in this kind of weather,’ Gino said.
Sampson shrugged. ‘It’s winter. It snows. Weather doesn’t bother the fish, and it sure doesn’t bother the fishermen. Every one of those shacks out there is pumping smoke right now.’
‘Pumping smoke?’
‘From the heaters.’
‘They got heaters in those things?’ Gino asked.
‘Heaters, TVs, beer coolers. Standard equipment. But those are the players. The die-hards still sit outside in the weather, like this guy. Easier to move yourself than a shack when it’s time to auger a new hole.’
‘This is the damnedest way to have a good time I ever heard of.’
Sampson smiled at him. ‘You ought to give it a try sometime.’
‘No way. God made ice for hockey and scotch, and that’s about it. But either way, posed or not, we’ve moved on to another winter sport here…’
‘And another killing field,’ Magozzi added. ‘If it isn’t a copycat, we got a traveler.’
Gino looked down at his boots. ‘Shit.’
‘All yours.’ A tech carrying all the cameras passed Jimmy on his way out of the tent. ‘I’m going to get these back in the van.’