Cold Conspiracy

“We’re Drew and Sarah Michener.” The man offered his hand. “We came to find out everything we could about…about Michaela Underwood’s death.” He looked down at his wife, who had bowed her head and was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “We just heard the news, from her parents.”

“Michaela is…was…my sister,” the woman—Sarah—said. “We heard she was killed in the woods near here this morning. I want to know if that man—Al—killed her.”

“Who is Al?” Jamie asked.

“The man she was supposed to meet this morning, to go snowshoeing,” Sarah said. “If you found her by herself, and he wasn’t there, he must have been the one to kill her.”

“I’m Sheriff Walker.” Travis joined them in the lobby. “I understand you wanted to talk to me.”

“This is Drew and Sarah Michener.” Jamie made the introductions. “Michaela Underwood’s sister and brother-in-law.”

Travis shook hands with the Micheners. “We’d better talk about this in my office,” he said. Jamie started to turn away, but Travis stopped her. “Deputy Douglas, you come, too.”

Nate moved aside to let them pass, Travis leading the way to his office, Jamie bringing up the rear.

Gage joined him in the lobby. “What’s up?” he asked, watching the couple disappear into Travis’s office.

“Michaela’s sister and her husband think they know who killed her,” Nate said. “Or at least, she was supposed to meet a man—someone named Al—to go snowshoeing this morning.”

“And you didn’t see any sign of him out there with her, did you?” Gage asked.

“No.” He continued to study the closed door, wishing he could hear what was going on in there. “Even if he didn’t kill Michaela, the sheriff is going to want to find him and talk to him.”

Gage put his hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Right now, the sheriff wants me to talk to this ice fisherman, Abel Crutchfield. You up for coming with me?”

“Sure.” He’d planned to finish his report on the condition of elk and deer herds in the area, but that could wait. A murder investigation took precedence over everything.

JAMIE FOLLOWED THE Micheners into Travis’s office, closing the door after her. She stood by the door, while the Micheners occupied the two chairs in front of Travis’s desk. Even if Jamie could have found more seating, there wasn’t room for it in the small room.

Travis settled behind the desk, a neat, uncluttered space with only a laptop and a stack of files visible. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. “Losing a loved one is always hard, but losing them to murder is especially tough. We’re doing everything we can to find who did this, but if you have anything you think can help us, we certainly want to know.”

Sarah looked at her husband, who cleared his throat. “Can you tell us more about what you already know?” he asked. “We got the call this morning from Sarah’s father—Michaela lived with them, so I assume that’s how you knew to contact them. But they’re understandably upset and didn’t have a lot of details.”

“We found Michaela’s body in her vehicle on the side of Forest Service Road 1410,” Travis said. “The medical examiner thinks she was killed earlier this morning. Do you know why she would have been in that area?”

“She had a date to go snowshoeing with a man,” Sarah said. “Someone named Al. I don’t know his last name.” She leaned forward, clenched hands pressed to her chest. “I told her not to go out with someone she didn’t know—especially not to someplace where there weren’t a lot of other people around. Especially not with this…this madman going around killing women. But she wouldn’t listen to me.” Her face crumpled. “If only she had listened.”

Drew rubbed his wife’s back as she struggled to pull herself together. “Michaela was young,” he said. “Only twenty-two. And she trusted people. She still thought she was invincible.”

“How did she meet this man?” Travis asked.

Sarah sniffed, straightening her shoulders. “She met him at the bank. She just started the job on the first of the month. She’s a teller. I guess they flirted, and the next day he came back and asked her out. She said…she said he was really nice and cute, and that she thought the idea of going snowshoeing was fun, and would be a good way to get to know each other without a lot of pressure.”

“When was this—when they met?” Travis asked.

“I think it was Thursday when he first came into the bank.” Sarah nodded. “Yes, Thursday. Because Friday she and I met for lunch and she told me about him—then she called me later that day to tell me he’d come back in and they’d made a date for Monday. She had the day off, and I guess he did, too.”

“Did she say where he worked?” Travis asked. “Or what kind of work he did?”

“No.” Sarah sighed. “I asked her that, too. She said she didn’t know and it didn’t matter, because that was the kind of thing they could get to know about each other on Monday. She told me I was too uptight and I worried too much. But I was right to worry! He must have been the one who killed her.”

“What time were they supposed to meet?” Travis asked. “Or did he arrange to pick her up at your parents’ house?”

“She said they were meeting at eight thirty at the trailhead for the snowshoe trails,” Sarah said. “She told me she was being smart, driving herself, because if the date didn’t go well, it would be easy for her to leave.”

Travis looked to Jamie. “You said you got to the trailhead about nine thirty?”

“Yes,” Jamie said. “There wasn’t anyone else there. And no other cars in the parking area. We didn’t pass any cars on the way in, either.”

“Her parents said she left their house at eight,” Drew volunteered.

“She didn’t tell them she was meeting a man,” Sarah said. “Just that she was going snowshoeing with friends.”

Travis nodded. “Tell me everything your sister said to you about this man—even if you don’t think it’s important. Did she describe what he looked like? Did she say where he lived, or if he gave her his phone number?”

“She just said he was cute. And funny. I guess he made some joke about how nobody could rob the bank with the road closed, because they wouldn’t be able to go very far and she thought that was funny.”

“What was he doing at the bank that day?” Travis asked. “Was he making a deposit or cashing a check?”

“I don’t know. Sorry. I don’t know if she had his number, though I think she said she gave him hers.” She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about this ever since we got the call from my dad, and there really isn’t anything else. She got kind of defensive when I started quizzing her about the guy, and I didn’t want to make her mad, so I changed the subject. I made her promise to call me when she got back to the house and let me know how things went, but I wasn’t worried when I didn’t hear from her by lunch. I just figured they were having a good time and decided to go eat together. But all that time, she was already dead.” She covered her hand with her mouth and took a long, hiccupping breath.

Travis took a box of tissues from a drawer of his desk and slid it over to her. “Thank you for coming to talk to us,” he said. “We’ll follow up with the bank, see if anyone there remembers this man. If we’re lucky, he’ll be on the security footage. And we may want to talk to you and to your parents again.”

“Of course,” Drew said. He stood and helped his wife to her feet, also. “Please keep us posted on how things are going.”

“We will.” Travis came around the desk to escort the Micheners to the lobby. Jamie stepped aside, then followed them into the hall. She was still standing there, reviewing everything the Micheners had said, when Travis returned.

“I’ve got Dwight checking Michaela’s phone records for a call or text that might be from Al,” he said. “Meanwhile, I want you to come to the bank with me. I’ll call Tom Babcock and ask him to meet us there. We need to get those security tapes and see what this guy looks like. Maybe we’ll recognize him.”

“Do you really think he’s the Ice Cold Killer?” Jamie quickened her steps to keep up with the sheriff’s long strides.

“He’s the best lead we’ve had so far,” Travis said. “I’m not going to let him get away.”

Chapter Four

Abel Crutchfield lived in a mobile home on the west side of town that backed up to the river. His truck sat beneath a steel carport next to the trailer home, which was painted a cheerful turquoise and white. A trio of garden gnomes poked out of the snow around the bottom of the front steps, and a Christmas wreath with a drooping red ribbon still adorned the door.

Abel answered Gage’s knock and his eyes widened at the sight of the two officers on his doorstep. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Gage handed him a business card.

Abel read it, then looked past Gage to Nate. “You’re the game warden I talked to this morning, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Nate gave him a reassuring smile. “This isn’t about that. We’re hoping you can help us with something else.”

“You’d better come in.” Abel pushed open the screened door. “No sense standing out in the cold.”

The front room of the trailer was neat but packed with furniture—a sofa and two recliners, a large entertainment unit with a television and a stereo system, and two tall bookshelves filled with paperback books and ceramic figurines of dogs, bears, more gnomes, angels and others Nate couldn’t make out. Abel threaded his way through the clutter and sat in one of the recliners and motioned to the sofa. “It’s my wife’s afternoon for her knitting club,” he said. “So I’m here by myself. What can I help you with?”

“Did you see anyone else while you were fishing this morning?” Gage asked.

“Nope. I had the lake to myself.”

“What about on the way to and from the lake?” Nate asked. “Did you see anyone on the road, or in the parking area?”

“What’s this about?” Abel asked. “Not that it makes any difference in my answers, but I’d like to know.”

“Another young woman was killed in that area this morning,” Gage said.

Abel sat back, clearly shocked. “You don’t think I killed her, do you?” he asked. “I was just out there fishing. I go fishing every Monday. Usually I bring home something for supper.”

“We’re not accusing you,” Gage said. “But we’re hoping you might have seen or heard something that could help us find the killer. Where were you between eight and ten this morning?”

“I was at the lake. I always try to get there by eight, and I leave about eleven to come home for lunch.” He turned to Nate. “You saw me there. It must have been about nine or so when we talked.”

Nate nodded. “That’s about right. And you didn’t see anyone else while you were at the lake?”

“Not a soul. I passed a couple of cars on the highway on my way out there, but once I turned onto the Forest Service Road, I didn’t see any other cars, and none in the parking lot. I saw a woman out walking, but that was all.”

Gage tensed. “A woman out walking? Where? What did she look like?”

“She was on the forest road, about a mile before the turnoff to the lake. She was tall and thin, with long blond hair—a lot of it.”

“What was she doing?” Gage asked.

“Just walking along, talking on the phone. She didn’t even look up when I passed.”

“What else can you tell me about her?” Gage asked. “Did you recognize her?”

“She was wearing jeans and hiking boots and a black parka. I didn’t get that good a look at her. She had her head bent, with that phone pressed to her ear and her hair falling all in her face.”

“Had you ever seen her out there before?” Nate asked.

“No. I usually don’t see anybody—not in the winter, anyway,” Abel said. “I don’t think there are any houses out that way.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd she was walking out there by herself?” Gage asked.

Abel shrugged. “People like to walk. It’s none of my business. She didn’t look like she was in trouble or anything. Just walking along, talking on the phone.”

“What time was this that you saw her?” Gage asked.

“Well, it was before eight. Maybe seven fifty.”

“Which direction was she walking?” Nate asked.

“North. Same direction I was headed.”

They talked to him a few more minutes, but he couldn’t tell them anything further. They said goodbye and returned to Gage’s cruiser. Neither man spoke until they were headed back to the sheriff’s department.

“The woman he saw wasn’t Michaela,” Gage said. “She has short, dark hair. And what was a woman doing out there by herself at that time of morning, anyway?”

“Something else really strange about that whole story,” Nate said.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Gage said. “What was she doing on the phone?”

“Right. Jamie had to drive a ways to call in when she found Michaela. There’s no phone signal out that way. None at all.”

BANK PRESIDENT TOM BABCOCK met Travis and Jamie at the Mountain States Bank, a worried expression on his face. “I hope we can help you,” he said as he led them past the teller windows to the back of the building. “It’s unnerving to think a murderer is one of our customers.”

“If he is a customer, it will make it easier for us to find him,” Travis said.

“You said on the phone you wanted to see footage from our security cameras,” Babcock said. “I’ve asked our IT specialist, Susan Whitmore, to meet with us. She knows her way around the system much better than I do.” He opened the door to a small office filled with computer equipment. “While we wait for her, can you tell me a little more about this? You said our teller, Michaela Underwood, was murdered? And this man she met at the bank might be her killer?”

“We don’t know that he killed her,” Travis said. “But he was supposed to meet her this morning. It may be he knows something about what happened. Were you here on Thursday?”

“Yes. Michaela worked eight to five that day. She took lunch from eleven thirty to twelve thirty, and was the only teller on duty from twelve thirty to three.”

“Do you remember her talking to a young man?” Travis asked. “Flirting with him?”

“I can’t say that I noticed anything like that.” He frowned. “Michaela was always very friendly. Customers liked her. We’re going to really miss her. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her…”

His voice trailed away as a chime sounded. “That will be Susan now.” He leaned out of the open door. “We’re back here, Susan,” he called.

Susan Whitmore was a trim woman with very short platinum hair and piercing blue eyes. “Tom filled me in on the phone,” she said after introductions were made. “Just tell me what you need, Sheriff, and I’ll do my best to help.”

“Michaela Underwood made a date to go snowshoeing this morning with a man she told her sister she met here at the bank Thursday,” Travis explained. “He returned Friday and asked her out. We need to find this guy and talk to him. All we have is a first name—Al. If we can spot him talking to her on your security footage, we’re hoping that will help us locate him.”

“If you find him, we can look at the time stamp on the image and I can link him to a particular transaction,” Tom said. “That should give you a name if he was cashing a check or making a deposit, or a payment on an account with us.”

“Do you have a particular time you want to look at?” Susan asked. “Or the whole day?”

“Let’s start with twelve thirty to three,” Travis said. “When Michaela was the only teller working.”

“All right.” Susan inputted information into a computer and pulled up a black-and-white image showing four screens—ATM, front door, back door and a wider shot that took in most of the lobby. She clicked on the lobby view and enlarged it. “We’ll start here, since this gives us a good view of Michaela. I’ll scroll forward and stop on any male customers.”

Jamie and Travis leaned in as Susan began to forward the film. Michaela waited on an older couple, a young woman with a child and two middle-aged women. Then a single man approached the counter. “Stop,” Travis ordered.

Susan stilled the film. Jamie studied the image of a slender man, maybe six feet tall or just under. He wore a dark knit hat pulled down on his head, the collar of his dark coat turned up.

“Can you zoom in?” Travis asked.

Susan enlarged the image until it began to blur. Travis furrowed his brow. “Is there another camera, focused on the teller, which would give us a view of his face?” he asked.

“No,” Susan said.

Travis sighed and stepped back. “The way he’s standing, we can’t tell anything about his face. We can’t even tell whether his hair is light or dark.”

“Do you think that’s deliberate?” Jamie asked.

“Maybe,” Travis said. “If he is the killer, he wouldn’t want to be seen on video. The hat and coat do a good job of obscuring his face. He’s wearing jeans and hiking boots.”

“Maybe the brand of the boots will tell us something,” Jamie said.

“We’ll try,” Travis said. He nodded to Susan. “Advance the tape again. Let’s see what he does.”

They had a clear view of Michaela, smiling and at one point even laughing, as the man stood in front of her. Then he left. But instead of turning to face the camera, he took a few steps back, still talking to Michaela. When he was almost out of reach of the camera, he whirled, head down, and hurried out of the frame.

“I’m willing to bet he knew about the security camera and didn’t want to be seen,” Travis said. “Let’s see the footage for Friday.”

But the footage from Friday yielded no sign of the man. They spent almost an hour running through everything and saw no images of him. “Maybe she met him outside the bank,” Jamie said. “On her lunch break or something.”

“Maybe,” Travis said. “It would be easy enough for him to wait for her in the parking lot or on the sidewalk and stop her before she went into the bank.” He turned to Tom. “Did anything about him look familiar to you—like someone who had come into the bank before?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”

“What about the name Al? Does that make you think of anyone in particular?”

“I know an Allen and an Alvin, but both of them are in their fifties or sixties. And that wasn’t them we saw on the video just now.”

“I’m going to need all your security footage from the past week, including what we looked at today. It’s possible this guy came in earlier, checking things out.”

“Of course. Susan will get it for you.”

“Can you tell us what kind of transaction he was making here Thursday?” Travis asked. “The time stamp on the security footage showed he walked up to the teller window at two sixteen.”

Tom walked to a computer farther down the counter and began typing. A few moments later, he groaned. “Looks like it was a cash transaction.”

“Such as?” Jamie asked.

“Breaking a large bill or cashing in rolled coins,” Tom said.

“Here are the security discs for the time period you wanted.” Susan handed Travis an envelope. Travis wrote out a receipt for her, then he and Jamie left.

“I got chills when Tom said it was a cash transaction,” Jamie said when they were in Travis’s cruiser. “Al had to know we couldn’t trace that.”

“Or maybe he was using the transaction as an excuse to hit on the cute teller,” Travis said. He rubbed his hands along the steering wheel. “Not that I really believe that. I think we’re on to something.”

“This might be the killer.” A shiver ran through Jamie as she said the words.

“Maybe.” He shifted the cruiser into gear and began backing out of the parking spot. “In any case, this feels like the closest we’ve gotten.”

NATE AND GAGE returned to the sheriff’s department and waylaid Travis and Jamie as soon as they returned. “We got something from Abel Crutchfield that might be useful,” Gage said as they followed Travis into his office. Jamie hung back, then followed, too, squeezing in to stand next to Nate. The soft, herbal scent of her hair made his heart race with a sudden memory of the two of them making out in the old Ford pickup he had driven at the time. Hastily, he shoved the memory away and focused on the conversation between the sheriff and his brother.

“Abel says he saw a woman—tall, thin, blonde—walking along Forest Service Road 1410 this morning,” Gage said. “She was alone, no car around. He said he didn’t get a real good look at her, because she had her head bent, talking on her phone.”

“Except there isn’t a phone signal out there,” Nate said. “For any carrier.”

“That does seem suspicious,” Travis said.

Beside Nate, Jamie shifted. “Maybe it isn’t really suspicious,” she said.

She flushed when all three men turned to look at her but continued, her voice even. “Maybe she was nervous, being out there alone. She heard the guy’s truck and pulled out her phone and pretended to be talking to someone so whoever was driving past would get the idea she could summon help if she needed to.”

“Do women really do things like that?” Nate asked and wished he could take the words back as soon as he said them.

“Yeah, they do,” she said, the expression in her eyes making him feel about three feet tall. “Because you know—men.”

None of them had a good response to this. The silence stretched. Finally, Travis said, “Let’s see if we can find anyone else who saw this woman. I also have a list of bank employees. Let’s talk to them and see if any of them remember ‘Al.’ Jamie, I want you to help with that. Most of the employees are young women—they might be more willing to open up to you.” He clicked a few keys on his laptop. “I just forwarded the list to you.”

“I’ll get right on it,” she said, then slipped out the door.

“I’ll see if I can find any campers or snowshoers or skiers or fishermen who might have seen a woman who fits the description Abel gave us,” Nate said.

“Let’s not drop the ball on his,” Travis said.

“Right,” Nate said. He wasn’t going to drop the ball on Jamie, either. He’d do whatever it took to make her see he wasn’t the boy who had hurt her seven years ago. She might never feel close to him again, but at least they could be friends.

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