Alaskan Christmas Cold Case

He stuck close to her as they walked inside, into the chaos. The police department was small but adequate for what they usually needed. Today it seemed crowded, the energy building in a way that made the air feel thick. Too tense. They were already playing defense when they should be on the offense.

He stopped, waited for Erynn at one point. She was still in her uniform and right now looked every inch the trooper she was. Any little chinks that might exist in her armor were not part of her reality in here. She was good at pulling herself together, he’d give her that.

“Where is the body?”

“In the cell. The ME is back there now, getting ready to transport her.”

“He can’t do that when we haven’t had a chance to sketch the scene, process it or anything.”

“Officer Hitchcock took care of that. He’s back at his desk now, writing it up.”

At least he knew that had been handled right. Clay Hitchcock had as many years of law enforcement experience as Noah himself, or at least close. He was also Noah’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Summer.

“Let’s go talk to Clay,” he said to Erynn, motioning with his head at the area with the officers’ desks.

Erynn shook her head. “I want to see the crime scene.”

“Erynn...”

There it was again. That ridiculous protective instinct toward her that was all too familiar. He had been fighting it for years. Some women liked it when a man wanted to protect them. At least, that was what Noah had gathered from the movies his sisters used to watch and the way he’d seen several of his siblings fall in love. His own personal experience with love was limited. Besides one or two girlfriends in high school that hadn’t been serious, he hadn’t dated much.

Because the only woman he was interested in dating saw him as a coworker and a friend. Nothing more.

Protective instincts toward her aside, she didn’t needed protecting. At least not from the crime scene. If they were going to catch the serial killer responsible, he’d need every good law enforcement mind in town working on the case. And Erynn was one of the best. He couldn’t just exclude her from the investigation, which he could only if it really was a conflict of interest for her to investigate a case directly tied to her past. But technically there had been no threat directly to Erynn—at least neither she nor Janie had made him aware of that. The fact that her father had been killed did make her involvement dance close to the line of ethics, but this wasn’t a city where police and law enforcement resources were unlimited. She was far enough from the case emotionally to still be involved.

His feelings were going to get in the way of keeping her safe if he wasn’t careful. Surely he could make it a few more weeks, till this guy was behind bars, no longer a threat.

It wasn’t optional. Noah didn’t have a choice. Treating her like any other colleague was the only course of action that was going to work here. So he nodded. “Okay, let’s go to the crime scene.”

They made their way through the halls. Noah was careful to look for anything that seemed out of place, but nothing caught his attention.

“She was still locked in her cell,” one of his officers told him as they walked up to the scene. The man shook his head.

“Do we know how she died yet?”

“Elsie at the front desk mentioned that her lawyer came to see her. I’ll go get Clay, he probably knows the most.”

As he started to walk away, Noah took in the body on the floor of the cell. It never stopped striking him how once a person had died, they didn’t look like they had in life. The body truly ceased to be a person and became a shell, something his law enforcement mentor had taught him when he’d first started.

Janie was pale, her skin lacking the healthy appearance she’d had while alive. Her hair was spread out on the floor behind her, touching the puddle of blood pooled beneath her. She’d been shot in the chest, at very close range.

Noah looked around the cell. The chair was sitting upright. Nothing indicated there had been a struggle.

Was the killer someone she knew? Someone she’d expected to be there to help her?

His mind ran with that thread as he reviewed what the officer had just told him, and he asked, “Janie’s lawyer came?” She hadn’t been arrested long enough for any lawyer to arrive from Anchorage or even Kenai, whichever place she’d been living. While she could have called a local lawyer...Noah didn’t think she had.

The officer nodded.

If his guess was right that the “lawyer” hadn’t been one at all, that explained how the killer had gotten inside. Walking in in plain sight. It spoke of a level of overconfidence that could possibly work to their advantage if they could get a step ahead. At the moment it just scared the stupid out of him. “Thanks. Yes, get Hitchcock, please. And do we have video footage?” The cameras in the jail should tell them something, even if the killer had avoided showing his face.

Officer Smith shook his head. “Cameras cut out just before he came in. We’ve had so many issues with that old system lately that we thought it was a technological glitch.”

Noah felt anger stir inside. Not toward his officers. Moose Haven didn’t often see crime like this—he understood how they wouldn’t have been immediately suspicious—but he hated that evil had won this battle today.

Hated that it felt personal.

“She was sitting in this chair when she was shot, it looks like,” Erynn was saying as she moved closer to Janie, tilted her head like she did when she was focused. “See where her body is positioned in relation to the chair? And the blood splatter?”

“Is that significant with past cases or are you just walking through what you see?” Noah forced himself to sound professional, though at the moment he felt anything but. He didn’t want Erynn considering victims, blood splatter or anything but keeping herself safe.

But it wasn’t his place to keep her out of this. Not when she was already involved so deep her safety was at risk either way.

A second or two passed before she answered. “I think the second? But I’ll let you know.”

Clay walked into the room just then, his face as sober as Noah felt. They nodded at each other and Noah was as thankful as he had been in the past that Clay had come to Moose Haven. He would need all the help he could get on this one.

“What do we know, Hitchcock?”

The other man shook his head. “I’m trying to go slow, not make assumptions. The fact that someone was able to get into this building and kill someone in our custody... No one even heard a shot.”

“He used a suppressor?”

Clay nodded. “That’s the working theory.”

Noah understood. Hated how Janie’s death made him feel. Like he was powerless.

“Has the body been moved?” Noah hadn’t wanted to disturb the ME from where he knelt beside the body. The man wore a look of perpetual concern on his face, though Noah guessed if he looked at dead people for a living his face might get stuck like that, too.

“Not yet. Wanted to make sure you had a chance to see the scene if possible. I don’t want us to miss anything obvious.” Clay’s eyes moved to Erynn, who usually would have interrupted several times by now to remind them it was her case, too.

“You okay, Trooper Cooper?” Clay asked.

Erynn barely nodded. “Fine.”

Noah spoke at the same time. “She knew the deceased.”

Erynn’s eyes snapped to him and he saw what she’d tried to hide. She was close to broken by this, looked more fragile than he’d ever seen her. But what really surprised him was the expression of betrayal in her eyes. Because Noah had said she knew the victim? He wanted her on this case, but he couldn’t hide anything, couldn’t conceal the facts from his own officers.

Still, the way Erynn looked at him, silently begging for more time...

“How?” Clay asked Erynn, but Noah spoke up again.

“High school.”

Clay looked like he might ask something else, but the ME interrupted. “There’s something underneath her.”

All three of them turned as he slid a piece of paper out from beneath her.

“Same color. Same weight. Probably the same pen,” Erynn muttered under her breath.

Noah hadn’t been expecting the note, but now he remembered Erynn had said that one was always left.

“What does it say? Can you read it?” he asked the ME.

The man read it silently. Frowned. Looked up at them. “It says, ‘One more to go.’”

Erynn’s eyes widened and Noah couldn’t stop himself this time—he reached for her hand. Held it tight.

The man was driven and his goal was Erynn’s death. Something Noah refused to let happen.

FOUR

Erynn did not remember walking from the crime scene to Noah’s office, but there she was. Sitting in a chair across from his desk, blinking.

She had precious little time to get her head back into the game if she was going to make a difference before she was taken off the case. Because as sure as she knew anything else, she knew her days working it were numbered. She had personal connections everywhere, and while she disagreed with protocol suggesting it would make her less effective on the case, it wasn’t worth arguing over.

Instead she just needed to work fast, find as many leads as possible to turn over to whomever was put on the case after she was relieved.

And then work the case on her own time, quietly. Because she owed her dad that.

“You’ve got to stop staring. Blink or something.”

She did, almost without thinking; her eyes were drier than she’d noticed and needed the moisture. She blinked again.

“Erynn...”

The way Noah’s voice trailed off was almost too much for her. Years, she had tried to stay on the edges of the tight-knit community of people who made up Moose Haven. Years, he’d fought her on it, pulled her not just into the town, but into the inner circle his family and friends occupied. She’d told herself it couldn’t hurt and yet here, at this moment, it seemed it could hurt a lot.

“Don’t, Noah.” It was enough to get her to look up, focus. “You can’t talk to me like that, okay?” Like she was a victim. Which she was, or might be at any moment, but right now she was still a law enforcement officer, wasn’t going to give up the responsibility that came with that until someone forcefully benched her.

“You’ve been through a lot.”

Yeah, the story of her life. She’d tired of the pity early on in her “career” as a foster kid, especially because that didn’t give her a home of her own, didn’t give her the stability that so many kids her age had and took for granted. Though she knew Noah didn’t mean it that way, he didn’t know what the words made her think of.

“We’re both about to go through a lot more and people in Moose Haven could suffer if we don’t get this case under control.”

“This case meaning the Ice Maiden case?”

Erynn shivered. She’d always hated that name, too, as much as she’d hated the “Foster Kid Killer” nickname for the serial killer who had terrorized and marked her teen years. Why did departments, the media, whoever did it, name killers, name cases? Criminals didn’t deserve the notoriety, and she disliked the way it glamorized them.

Still, she understood; how else were they going to refer to cases? So she just nodded, fought to get her emotions under control. “Yes, the Ice Maiden case. We need to go back and rework it. Because Janie coming out of hiding, telling us about that...”

“There was nothing there.”

“Clearly there was. Because the woman we thought had died hadn’t, but now has, and we don’t know who is up in that glacier crevasse. That could present another lead.”

He didn’t say anything, to his credit. But she heard the things he wasn’t saying. They’d had a team of people working with them when the case had been hot initially, and they still hadn’t been able to find many leads on who it could be.

Was it someone who was now local to Moose Haven? Someone who had tracked her here and decided to terrorize her more? Erynn knew from her profiling classes the way a serial killer’s mind worked. It wasn’t impossible to suggest that the killer had become fixated on her years ago.

Still, it was all just conjecture. She was tired of that. She needed facts.

“Okay. So you’re telling me you’re convinced that the Ice Maiden death wasn’t an accident, wasn’t a disappearance, but is instead connected to...” Noah trailed off, his voice fading away and giving Erynn the opportunity to explain out loud the suspicions she’d always had.

“The Foster Kid Killer.”

“And you believe this because Janie was in the foster system?”

“Yes, and so was Michelle.”

“Michelle is the woman who warned Janie to be careful, right before Janie disappeared and we discovered the body in the glacier.”

Erynn nodded. Waited a minute. “We have to get to her, Noah. We have to know for sure if it’s Michelle or if chasing leads on the body in the glacier will just be pulling our attention away from an active serial killer.”

Noah’s brow furrowed, his face serious in consideration. “It’s December, Erynn. Accessing the body we left on the glacier is going to be even more impossible now. It’s buried under who knows how many layers of snow and the wind on the glacier at this time of year...”

“We have to try, Noah. Every single angle.”

She was right. She knew it and he did, too, but that didn’t make this any easier. That case had almost cost them so much, years ago. He hadn’t been sure either one of them would make it through, and now it was back, had never gone away.

If he was a runner, he’d leave town, build a career somewhere else, do something else. He had hated the Ice Maiden case with every fiber of his being because it was a nightmare come true—a woman went into the Alaskan wilderness and turned up dead. The news had overpublicized it, used it as a cautionary tale against backcountry hiking alone even once law enforcement had declared the death accidental, but doubts had niggled at Noah’s mind even then, and an oppressive heaviness had been present during the entire time they worked the case. Now that he knew it involved Erynn personally, he hated it more.

He glanced over at her again. What he should do was call her superiors at the trooper post, get her moved out of town and off this case. Protocol probably dictated it. But to what end? She’d be farther from him, where he had no choice but to let someone else try to keep her safe. And the idea of someone else failing...

Besides, much as he’d sparred with her over case-working strategies the last few years, as many times as they’d ribbed each other, they’d worked well as a team, and he needed her. Did not want to tackle this case again at all, much less without Erynn.

“Okay, you’re right.”

Her face was the brightest he’d seen it tonight, that look she got when he admitted she had a point. Still, she was too pale. Someone had threatened to kill her tonight, someone who might have been after her for well over a decade.

“I do like hearing you say that.” Her voice was lighter, like she was trying to make the best of a bad situation. While he appreciated her optimism, wanted her to relax a little, he wasn’t planning to follow suit.

Noah couldn’t relax anytime soon. Not if he wanted to keep Erynn alive.

“Most of the files for the Ice Maiden case were digitized, so it shouldn’t be too hard to pull up everything we had on it. The evidence is still in cold storage.” He opened his computer, glanced up when he saw movement, and watched as Erynn dragged a chair to the back of his desk. She paused just as she was about to sit. “May I? Sit here, I mean?”

He nodded. On all the cases they’d worked together, either he or Erynn had pursued a lead and it had been clear “whose” case it was. This was the first time they had sat on the same side of any desk. He nodded again, hoping she understood it was fine, but unable to say anything. Was this the closest he’d been to her physically? They’d ridden in patrol cars together, hers, his. But she was scooting her chair closer now, close enough he could sense her shampoo, which smelled like the beach. Coconut or something like it.

Years. He’d ignored this crush for years. Worked around it, denied it even to himself. He had to hang on for however long it took to put this guy behind bars. He owed it to Erynn.

“So where should we start? I’m assuming you have an opinion.”

Her behavior was almost back to normal and he was panicked at the idea that he could have lost her tonight.

He had to shake this insecurity, needed to be the man he usually was in this office. Capable. Confident.

“We need to start at square one. It’s going to give us more than if we just try to figure out where our mistakes were.”

“Of course. Because if those had been obvious, we’d have seen them the first time.”

The program loaded and Noah pulled up the files they needed. Decided to read out loud, not because Erynn couldn’t see over his shoulder, but they both were the type who talked things out.

“‘Jane Doe, discovered by hikers on the glacier three and a half years ago, on July 3. Initially it was assumed a hiker had misstepped and died as a result of her injuries, but the lack of gear observed near the hiker eventually turned it into a missing persons investigation with a suspicion she’d been murdered.’”

He stopped reading, looked over at Erynn, who was still closer than she’d ever been. But just as out of his reach. “That whole time, did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That she was a victim of the person...”

Erynn shook her head. “No, the body was reported. I knew only what you did, assumed the same things.”

“At what point did you suspect there was more to it than the rest of us knew?”

“Keep reading.”

“‘Trooper Erynn Cooper and Moose Haven Police Chief Noah Dawson investigated the scene and put out a missing persons report. Janie Davis, reported missing in the Kenai Peninsula area on July 1, was last seen in Seward, which also has a glacier that flows out of Harding Icefield, where the body was discovered—’”

“There.” Erynn broke in. “As soon as Janie’s name came up, I knew.”

“Did you assume the body was hers?”

“Yes.” She said it without hesitation and he believed her. She’d never given him a reason not to. It was becoming clearer to him that she hadn’t been generous in her details about her past. He understood now it had been intentional on her part. She had kept it from him, from all of them. To protect herself from a killer? From being ashamed of where she’d been?

Noah didn’t know and, if he didn’t know, he couldn’t fix it. He hated not being able to fix things.

“Do you want coffee?” He was exhausted. His mind felt fuzzy around the edges; hers had to, also. Bringing coffee was something he could do, and a quick trip to the break room would let him check in with some of his officers on anything they had discovered from the crime scene in the cell.

“Right now?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s past ten.”

“And you’re too young to have rules about when you drink caffeine.” He stood and walked to the door but stopped. “Unless you wanted to try to get some sleep? I can keep pulling up old details and you could catch a nap in the chairs, or maybe on the sofa.”

“Not happening.”

“Sleep might be good.” He could only manage a half-hearted attempt to convince her. He couldn’t imagine her sleeping anytime in the next few hours, at least not well. If he were her, he wouldn’t want to try.

Erynn bit her lip, a frown clouding her features. “You know exactly what I’ll see if I close my eyes. And you’d want me to try?”

“No.” This time he didn’t hesitate. “You need coffee.”

Noah opened the door, saw Tyler walking by. His brother had a job at the family’s lodge, running the place, but he’d humored Noah and gone to the trooper academy to become law enforcement certified so he could help out at the department when there were special circumstances. Tonight qualified.

“Tyler.” Noah nodded at his office. “Can you stay with Erynn while I get us some coffee?”

“Of course.” Tyler stepped up to the door, stopped to look at Noah and let the door shut between them and Erynn. “How is she?” He’d lowered his voice, which Noah appreciated, but he still wasn’t comfortable talking about Erynn like she wasn’t there, or worse, like she was some random victim who needed to be treated with kid gloves. Yeah, Erynn wouldn’t appreciate it at all.

“She’s fine. Considering. She’ll be better when I get her some coffee.” Noah blew out a breath, turned back to his brother. “Look, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I get it. It’s hard.”

Noah raised his eyebrows. “You get it?”

“Does Emma showing up in town with someone after her ring a bell? I understand. I’ll make sure Erynn’s okay while you’re gone.” Tyler was implying...

“You aren’t saying I have the kind of feelings for Erynn that you have—”

“Just get the coffee. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

But it wasn’t like everyone with eyes didn’t know. Noah heard what Tyler wasn’t saying. His feelings for Erynn had been obvious to everyone but her for years. He’d never acted on them because Erynn was...she was too special to lose if she didn’t feel the same way. And he’d always felt her hesitation, the way she held people at arm’s length, and he had not wanted to make her uncomfortable by trying to get closer to her if that was not what she wanted. Now he wondered if he’d lost his chance with her altogether, if he should have been honest with her. But it was too late to change anything now, or to hide his feelings from the town. Noah did not bother to defend himself this time, did not bother to play dumb, just nodded and headed for the break room.

“So, what did you learn while you were gone?”

Erynn tried not to sound too interested, but every cell in her body was on high alert, ready to charge forward into battle against the killer. If only she had a face, a name, something to make him more substance than just a terror who haunted her dreams, killed her friends, her family.

She wanted a fair fight. She couldn’t have that if she didn’t know who he was.

“I got you coffee. That’s why I was gone.” He handed it to her and she took a sip. Strong, with just a tiny bit of half-and-half. She didn’t deserve to have a friend who knew her so well—especially when she usually drank it black. It was healthier that way, for one. For another, proving herself as a woman in a male-dominated profession dictated that she take every opportunity to show herself capable. Strong. She felt like black coffee made a statement, and had drunk it that way since she’d graduated from the trooper academy. But half-and-half was a guilty pleasure, one that felt like a treat.

And Noah always remembered. She was starting to realize he remembered everything about her, and that knowledge made her feel seen. It was either exhilarating or terrifying: Erynn didn’t know which. She had spent too much time hoping she’d blend in, just be normal. Average. She hadn’t even dated much because she hadn’t wanted to take the risk that being close to her would put someone else in danger. She’d never felt fully free from the threat that the Foster Kid Killer would return.

She wished her instincts had been wrong this time.

“We both know you didn’t just get coffee.” She took another sip. “Though thank you, this is really good.”

“I did talk to some of the other officers who were here, but I didn’t learn much. Everything they know is what we know.”

“He didn’t leave any evidence here, either.” She heard the flatness in her voice, couldn’t quite fix it. She’d wondered for years if the killer was law enforcement himself, but her dad hadn’t believed he was, hadn’t believed anyone he worked with in Anchorage would have done the things he’d done. Still, the murderer knew more than an average person about how the crime scene process worked. He was smart. Otherwise they’d have caught him by now.