Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page

Ice Lake

JOHN A LENAHAN

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Killer Reads

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London SE1 9GF

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © John Lenahan 2017

John Lenahan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008254353

Version: 2018-09-24

For Paul, Vince and Cirb.

Life would have been so dull without you guys.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

Prologue

The people who live around Pocono Township have an expression, a coda they will add to the end of a declarative sentence or when they are replying to one. They will say: “And that’s no lie.” For instance, residents living around Ice Lake, Pennsylvania, or just – the lake – as the locals call it, will tell you that the lake is beautiful and that’s no lie. They will tell you that people around here are simple and pleasant and that too would be no lie. They will also say that folks around here are honest – but if that were entirely true then one has to wonder: why do they so often mention that they’re not lying?

Maybe it’s because around Ice Lake there are just too many secrets.

* * *

Big Bill looked around the woods with dismay. It had been a long time since he had been up here in the daytime and he was disgusted at the amount of trash lying around. This was one of his favourite places in the world but the younger generation wasn’t looking after it as they should. Everywhere there were beer cans and bottles, spent shells and cartridges of all calibres. And those damn red plastic cups. He didn’t mind the kids partying up here as he and his brothers used to but, in his day, at least they picked-up afterwards. ’Course they had to. If they didn’t Grandad tanned their hides when he came up to target practice. Tonight, Bill thought, he’d have a word with the younger set and threaten to chain off the path until they cleaned it up. Or maybe he would sell.

He found a big empty plastic bag that originally contained ice and used it to start picking up bottles and cans. He was determined not to let the fact that this clearing looked like a rubbish dump change his mind but he had to laugh at the thought that it was worth millions now.

Doesn’t matter, he thought. This is Thomson land. Grandad taught me to shoot up here, and I still remember how soft Teresa Shroder’s tit was that night when she finally let me touch it. I’ll not let those bastards ruin it whatever the price.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the other car. When he saw that his appointment was walking with the double-barrel shotgun cocked and not broken like it should be he thought, the first lesson is going to be gun safety.

He didn’t get to give his first lesson.

Some people are prepared to die. The long-term ill and military bomb defusers make peace with their existence long before their demise. There are those that after miraculously surviving a parachute failure speak of calmly accepting their imminent death before they hit the ground. But for most, death is unwelcome and often a surprise.

Big Bill wasn’t ready to die.

When the shotgun blew out the back of his right knee he didn’t even notice the pain. He was more worried about the person behind him being hurt by what he assumed was an accidental discharge. Even when he saw his assailant shoot out his other knee he was confused. He couldn’t understand how the shooter could have been so careless as to have hit him twice. When he saw the spent shells hit the ground next to his face he still couldn’t imagine that the sound above him was the shotgun being reloaded. Even when he felt the barrels against his skull the last thing he thought about wasn’t his mortality. No, the last thing that went through his mind before the buckshot was, How am I going to get to my exam next week?

Chapter 1

New York and Philadelphia are America’s first and fifth largest metropoles, bastions of culture, commerce, art, and architecture. Sure there is squalor within their beltways but the cities strive to fix that – or at least hide it. Not so with the road between. The New Jersey Department of Transportation seems to go out of its way to ensure that the scenery on the NJ Turnpike is as unbecoming as possible. Apparently if you want to build something that could be viewed by a Turnpike motorist, it can only be a warehouse or a chemical refinery.

Harry drove past the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Rest Area. Although he needed a break he refused to stop as a matter of principle: the 28th President of the United States, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and the architect of the League of Nations, deserved better than having a toilet named after him. Harry thought he could hold out until the Thomas Edison Memorial Stop – he had read somewhere that Edison was a bit of a bastard. Harry resolved that if he ever got famous he would stipulate in his will that no one could name a New Jersey crapper after him. On second thought he decided to amend his will as soon as possible, in case his dying act was so heroic that he was awarded with posthumous fame.

“THE GARDEN STATE,” what a joke of a state slogan that is. Harry spent the rest of the journey to New York trying to think up an alternative. The best he could come up with was: “NEW JERSEY – A STATE TO GET THROUGH.”

* * *

There was a typical half hour traffic build-up at the Holland Tunnel and Harry used the free time, as he usually did, by searching the FBI missing children database. He didn’t get far before his phone rang.

“Harry Cull, can I help you?”

“Harry, this is Edward Cirba.”

“Trooper Cirba,” Harry said with glee, “the last time I saw you was… let me think, it was a Buddhist temple, wasn’t it—?”

“You promised,” interrupted the caller, “not to ever mention that again.”

Harry laughed. He had met Pennsylvania State Trooper Edward Cirba at a national state police conference in Las Vegas. Harry had been speaking on interrogation techniques – specifically on how to spot lying. In the hotel bar that night Trooper Ed had told Harry “with all due respect,” that he was full of shit. Harry had ordered two shots of Patron and proposed a bet. He would ask a handful of questions in pairs. The cop would have to lie to one question and tell the truth to the other. If Harry could figure out which was the truth and which was a lie, he would pay for the twenty-dollar tequila shots. If he got it wrong, Trooper Ed would pay. Harry drank free all night and they ended up in a strip club called Nirvana. That was the thing that Ed Cirba asked Harry never to mention again.

“What can I do you for, trooper?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to spend a couple of days on a lake in the Poconos?”

“If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes the effect that lap dancer had on you I would wonder if your proposal was homoerotic.”

“There you go mentioning that supposedly unmentionable thing again – but no, Harry, I’m not suggesting a dirty weekend. I’ve got an honest-to-goodness murder up here and I could use some help interrogating people without them thinking they’re being interrogated, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“I have a budget for it; it’s not your corporate rate but you did say you work cheap if it’s real. This is real real.”

“Murder, you say?”

“Yeah, gangland style, shot in the back of the head.”

“Suspects?”

“All of north-eastern Pennsylvania.”

“Well at least that rules me out.”

“Now that I think of it, where were you yesterday morning?”

“What if I said I was murdering somebody in the Poconos?”

“It would make my life easier.”

“Sorry, trooper, I only kill locally.”

“Worth a try; I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“I didn’t say I was coming.”

“I know the mayor. He’s a real estate guy and I got you a house lakeside – on the Commonwealth’s tab.”

“I gotta a job today in Manhattan. How long will it take me to get there?”

“Two hours – two and a half if you stop to buy a bathing suit.”

“If I can finish this corporate thing by closing time today, I’ll be there tomorrow by ten. I’ll call you tonight. Should I really buy a bathing suit?”

“Oh yeah. It’s a little corner of paradise. I’ll text you directions.”

* * *

The corporate thing in New York was the usual. Harry would show up with his oversize polygraph machine, which he would use to intimidate whoever had embezzled the cyber-millions that had vanished from some cyber-account somewhere. It was the kind of gig that Harry could usually stretch out for two or three glorious New York expense-filled days and it annoyed him that he would have to do a rush job. Not that his rush job would be any less thorough than his usual job, it’s just that if he did it quick this time, they might be suspicious when next time it took a week.

Harry dragged his equipment into the downtown offices of Harcom, Eckart, and McCarty. They were an overseas investment firm that made sure rich Americans didn’t get their savings diluted by that pesky Internal Revenue Service.

He spotted the guilty guy within the first five minutes. A youngish junior exec with foppish hair popped his head over a cubicle divider. To Harry’s trained eyes it was almost as if he’d jumped up and down and shouted, “It was me!” He was so highly strung that Harry was amazed they had even bothered to call him. But experience had taught Harry that signals he could see as easily as a dog could smell a buried bone were invisible to the general population. Normally Harry would have spent the morning setting up his polygraph, going for a leisurely lunch, and then the rest of the day interviewing all of the office staff. But Trooper Cirba’s phone call made it hard to concentrate on or, to be honest, even care about this job.

Harry waved off the office formalities and niceties and asked where he could set up his equipment without being disturbed. He was ushered into a conference room where he laid his flight case on the table and then asked for directions to the washroom.

Walking back while still drying his hands on a paper towel, Harry stuck his head into suspect number one’s cubicle and said: “Mr?”

The young man stared at Harry like a rabbit caught in headlights.

“Your name?” Harry asked again.

“Ah… Toliph.”

“Do you have a first name, Mr Toliph?”

“Of course I do,” Toliph said with nervous laughter. “Doesn’t everybody?”

Harry laughed dutifully and said: “Could you help me set up my stuff?”

“Oh… ah, no,” he said pointing to his computer screen. “I have to monitor the Asian markets.”

“It will only take a moment; your boss said you would help me.”

“Which boss?”

“The one that hired me to…” Harry lowered his voice. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“I uh… you’re investigating the Isle of Man account?”

“That’s right,” Harry said even though he hadn’t yet been told what he was investigating. “So you know how important this is. I just need a hand setting up; my assistant isn’t here today.”

* * *

In the conference room Toliph stood on the other side of the table while Harry opened the flight case that held his polygraph. It was a standard Dermograph 793, top of the range as far as polygraphs go, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it. A standard 793 simply has a couple of ribbon-like wires coming out of a leatherette black box but Harry didn’t like his machine looking so innocuous. He had removed the leatherette box cover so that all of the internal wires were visible. In fact he had added phoney wires to make the device look even more daunting. The sleek flat cables that normally attach to the blood-pressure cuff, the respiratory band, and the dermal-response pads, had been replaced with the kind of wiring you would associate with an electric chair. Harry liked his subjects feeling ill at ease, and the more his machinery resembled something out of a Frankenstein movie, the better he liked it. He called his polygraph – “The Beast”.

“It’s Walter, right?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your first name,” Harry said, “it’s Walter.”

“No,” Toliph said, “it’s James.”

Harry looked James Toliph directly in the eyes. “Is James a family name?”

“Yes. It was my grandfather’s name.”

“Good. And what did your grandfather do?”

“What?”

“Your grandfather, what was his job?”

“He was a grocer. Why would you want to know that?”

“No reason. Now James, who do you think stole the Isle of Man money?”

The junior executive stood thinking for a moment and said: “It could be anybody.”

“OK Jim, before I unpack all of this crap, let me ask you one more question. Is the money gone?”

“How would I know?”

“’Cause you took it, James.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. An innocent man would have just said, ‘No, I didn’t’. Guilty people, or to use the common term, liars, normally respond with an equivocation, like, ‘That is ridiculous’. And liars tend to not use abbreviations. Saying, ‘That is,’ instead of ‘that’s’ makes you a liar.”

“This is nonsense.”

“It isn’t, it’s neuroscience. Admittedly it only works for the mean of the general population but I have a feeling, James, you are about right in the middle of the Great American Bell Curve.”

“I don’t have to stand for this,” Toliph said as he made a move towards the door.

“I wouldn’t go out there, Jim. Out there is jail but I think I can get you out of this.”

“This is bullshit. I won’t go to jail because your bunion throbs.”

“It’s more than that. When I asked you about your grandfather you told the truth, right?”

“Of course.”

“Of course you did. Why would you lie about that? But you had to think about your grandfather’s occupation. Since long-term memories are stored in the left hemisphere of the brain, most people look to the left when accessing them. When you retrieved your grandfather’s job your eyes shifted left but when I asked you who might have stolen the money, your eyes shifted right. Now the right hemisphere is the creative side; it’s the side that you use when you want to make stuff up. Like when you contemplated who you could frame for your crime.”

“So let me get this straight: you say I’m going to go to jail because I have shifty eyes?”

“It’s not just the eyes,” Harry went on, “it’s also the stupid joke you made about everybody having a first name. You said that to avoid my question. And then there is the fact that you unconsciously put this table between us when you entered the room, and the observation that your hands have been in your pockets ever since I met you, like you think they’re dirty.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“No, and neither will the results of this machine when I hook you up to it but it will give those big shots out there enough cause to go over every one of your transactions with a fine-tooth comb, and when they find something – you go to jail.”

“I still think you are full of shit.”

“Don’t, James. I am very very good at my job. Now, the money that you stole: is it spent or is it recoverable?”

“Again, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Now, is it gone or can you get most of it back? ’Cause,” Harry pointed to the door, “I know these guys. Actually, I don’t know these guys but I know the type. All they want is their money back. They don’t want to arrest you ’cause arrests mean trials and trials mean their clients get to see how easy it is for a guy like you to steal their money. If you give it back you only lose your job and the ability to ever work in the financial sector again – which is a good thing because you seem to have a tendency… how shall I say… to give in to temptation.”

This was it. They don’t call it the moment of truth for nothing. The young exec squared his shoulders but then thought better of it. He fell back against the wall and slid down, hanging his head between his knees, his foppish hair flopping into his face.

“How could they have spotted it this fast?”

“It has been my experience, James, that people with a lot of money tend to know how not to have it stolen. Is the money get-back-able?”

“Yes. Of course. When would I have had time to spend it?”

Harry reached down and helped James to his feet. He looked like a middle schooler on the way to the principal’s office. “Come on, Jimmy, let’s keep you out of jail.”

* * *

Harry assembled the senior partners and sat back with a smug self-satisfied look on his face, until he heard James confess that he had only executed his dubious transaction “yesterday afternoon”. James’s Isle of Man scam wasn’t why Harry had been called.

After security had escorted Jimmy away, Harry found out that his employers hadn’t even known about that one. They thanked him – then briefed him on why he was really there.

* * *

Harry unpacked The Beast and proceeded with his usual routine of polygraphing everybody, starting with the senior management. This was one of the conditions companies had to agree to before Harry would accept a job. He explained to the executives that it caused fewer objections from junior staff if their bosses agreed to be hooked up first. But the real reason was that, half the time, Harry found the culprit was one of the bigwigs.

He was no closer to finding out who had pocketed the loose twenty-four million out of the Dubai fund and had resolved himself to the fact that this was going to take a couple of days, when his 4.30 appointment did a runner.

“My work here is done, gentlemen,” Harry said as he looked up from a surveillance video of Mr Patel getting into his car in the employee car park and hightailing it out of there. Even a child could see he looked guilty and scared as hell.

* * *

In the elevator down to the car park, Harry sent a message to Trooper Cirba.

“NYC gig done. See you in the morning.”

Trooper Cirba replied with directions to Ice Lake.

“Take Rt 80 to exit 46. Take Rt 307 south. Turn right after the purple hitch-hiker. Ice Lake 5 miles. You can’t miss it.”

Chapter 2

Not a lot is known about St Elizabeth other than she was the mother of John the Baptist and her husband was struck dumb when he doubted her pregnancy. (That’ll teach ’im). The bible makes no mention of her having a penchant for purple robes but that is how the artist who painted the statue saw her. Outside of St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church on Route 307 stands a double life-sized cement statue of the saint wearing a purple robe, with both hands out to her sides, palms facing out. It’s a common position for saintly statues that somehow depicts piety, but if a real human were to adopt the same pose he or she would probably look like they were saying, “I guess,” with a shrug.

Years ago a young teenager started his drinking career by stealing a bottle of altar wine from St Elizabeth’s sacristy. His drinking career never slowed, and a decade later, neither did his car as it careened off Route 307 and ploughed into one of Pennsylvania’s hardy scrub oaks. The statue’s left arm seemed to have tried to stop the poor lad from merging with the local flora but only managed to get itself pulverized.

The driver fared worse. The ambulance service could have spared the county the expense of a trip to the hospital and morgue because he was back at St Elizabeth’s just a week later for his funeral.

Harry had texted back to Trooper Cirba, asking him to explain what he meant by “purple hitchhiker”.

Cirba replied: “You’ll know it when you see it.”

Harry laughed out loud when he crested the hill on Route 307 and saw the statue of the purple-robed saint with one hand at her side, palm out, looking all the world like a hippie seeking a lift to Woodstock.

Ice Lake isn’t very big. Carved out of the Pocono Mountain’s ubiquitous forest of conifers and scrub oaks, it’s short of two miles around and is circled with a line of lakeside properties, a road, and another ring of roadside properties. It is spectacularly peaceful. The Ice Lake Association allows no motorized boats on the lake – only rowboats, canoes, and sailboats. They won’t even allow those tiny five horsepower electric trolling motors that the old fishermen use on other lakes. As Leo Carter said years ago at a meeting of the Ice Lake Rod & Gun Club, “If you’re too old to row 300 yards you shouldn’t be out on the lake by yourself.”