The dead of winter, p.1
The Dead of Winter, page 1
THE DEAD OF WINTER
JAMES H LEWIS
CONTENTS
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by James H Lewis
THE DEAD OF WINTER
by James H Lewis
Copyright © 2024 James H Lewis
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 979-8-9902037-0-9
For Mark Smukler, public media guru, who first suggested I incorporate the Pittsburgh Potty in a story.
CHAPTER ONE
Rudy was the product of a mixed marriage, a fact of no concern to his parents since they were too. His face and body seemed composed of spare parts. His hair, a mix of white and brown, was wiry and close-cropped. A pair of deep-set brown eyes overlooked a pointed nose that ceaselessly probed the air, and his ears stuck up like sails. Though he was small and compact, he had powerful legs and could outrun anyone or anything in the neighborhood.
Cindy, who ran behind him as they made their way out of the apartment complex on Old Mill Road, didn’t care. She knew he lacked breeding, but bristled when her girlfriends call him a mutt. She loved this combination of Shetland Sheepdog, Miniature Pinscher, and whatever else had invaded the yards of his forebears over the years.
At the moment, the seven-year-old wasn’t thinking about her companion, who pulled her along at a clip that belied his appearance, but at a sense of anticipation she ascribed to the first scent of spring in the air. The dog pulled her along as he tore down the road from their apartment. The last vestiges of snow lay piled on either side, forcing her to walk in the roadway. This was something her mother had instructed her not to do, but Rudy had a mind of his own this morning. Runoff formed rivulets that gathered into a stream. She tried to dodge the worst of it, but her running shoes kicked up spray that crept up her jeans from her ankles to her knees. Her father would be furious, and Cindy wondered whether she could slip them off and shove them into the washer before he returned from work.
They reached the bottom of the hill, where the road crossed North Branch Creek and joined the busy highway that shared its name. Cars raced along it at fifty miles per hour and more. “C’mon, Rudy,” she said. “Time to turn back.”
The dog stopped in his tracks and went into alert like a pointer, something she’d never seen him do before. “C’mon, boy,” she repeated. She tugged at the leash, but Rudy strained against it with such force she feared he might rip her arm from its socket. She switched the leash from one hand to the other. Sensing a moment of freedom, the dog took off, plunging down the slick embankment toward the culvert that passed beneath the bridge.
“Rudy, come back,” she yelled, but the dog didn’t respond, barking at a snowpack that lay alongside the stream. He looked up at her, then returned his attention to the white mound, which bore a dark crust from the mud thrown up by passing automobiles.
Cindy burst into tears. “Darned dog,” she said. “I’m in trouble now.” She scrambled down the bank after him, losing her balance and sliding down the ice-covered vegetation. Her jeans were soaked; mud caked the back of her legs and her bottom. Reaching the animal, who continued to shift his attention between her and the snowpack, she grabbed his leash and yanked on it.
“Move!” she called. “Now!”
The dog barked, strained at the lead, and scratched at the icy patch. “What is it?” she said, curious to see what had his attention. He dug furiously at the frozen surface, frantic to get at something trapped under a pile of broken wood. A piece of fencing? she wondered.
Something round and pale green jutted out from the icy debris, so light she wouldn’t have noticed it if the snow weren’t so dirty. As she leaned forward to study the object, Rudy relaxed, content now that his human had taken charge. Fishing gloves from her coat pocket, the girl scraped at the snow, clearing a path around the spherical object, then noticed it was attached to what looked like a small branch.
She drew back in terror as she realized she was looking at a bare heel, an ankle, and God only knew what more hidden in the snow.
Ten miles to the east, another dog was out for a walk, being led rather than the other way round. Howie, a white Westie, dawdled, sniffing at every patch of newly exposed grass he could find. The woman who led him was four times Cindy’s age, and unlike the young girl, thought not of the first stirrings of spring but of mud season.
She was of medium height, but her erect posture created an impression she was two inches taller. She concealed tight blond curls beneath a knit cap that bore the emblem of the US women’s national soccer team. Two prominent features dominated her triangular shaped face. One was a prominent nose that would have gained more notice were it not for deep-set cerulean eyes so piercing they arrested the attention of anyone who met her.
Lydia Barnwell had adopted Howie after his owner, a fellow police officer and her former lover, was killed during a domestic disturbance four months earlier. The Westie had gone into depression, and the late officer’s parents had forced him on her. At first she’d resisted, but as she pulled him out of his doldrums, she found an equal measure of comfort. Lydia had grown so attached to him she’d just bought a two-bedroom house halfway up a hill in Carnegie, which she was working to bring into the 21st century.
On most days, she enjoyed these morning walks, for they wiped everything else from her mind. For twenty minutes, she didn’t mull over pending investigations, fret about her testimony in an upcoming court case, or worry about her safety. She and Howie just walked together, enjoying or cursing the weather, depending on what it was doing to them.
But not today. Days after the new year, she’d joined the Allegheny County Police Department as a detective. It was a lateral move from the small police force she’d served in Boyleston, but the pay and benefits were better and, more important to her, provided the opportunity to work on tougher cases.
Or so she’d hoped, but it wasn’t working out that way. In the two months since making the change, she’d been assigned to work under other detectives, handle small robberies, or, as one of the few bilingual officers on the force, question Spanish-speaking victims and suspects. Rather than advancing her career, she’d taken a step backward. This morning, resentment burned within her, upending her one carefree moment of the day.
As Howie buried his muzzle in the soil at the base of a fire hydrant, her cellphone rang. She answered it with her last name.
“Sorry to disturb you on your day off,” detective sergeant Glen Carpenter said, “but a child has discovered a body in a culvert in North Fayette. The locals have secured the site, and the crime scene investigators are on the way, but we need you to take charge of the investigation.”
“Any sign of foul play?” she said.
“We won’t know that until the medical examiner has examined the body. It may be nothing more than the victim stumbling on an icy patch and falling off the road.” He said he’d text the location to her phone and rang off without apologizing for ruining a day on which she’d intended to start redoing the upstairs bathroom.
Thanks a lot, she thought. Another routine assignment.
At the moment, Lydia Barnwell wished she’d never left the Boylston force, but although the position she’d vacated remained open, returning was out of the question. She had mixed business with pleasure, and her role there would never be the same.
Lydia took her personal car, since returning to headquarters off Greentree Road would have taken her in the wrong direction. She also carried what equipment she’d need in her trunk. She wound north on Chartiers Avenue, joined I-376 at Campbell’s Run Road, and exited on Route 30 toward Weirton, West Virginia. Within minutes, she’d left behind the blight of malls and big box stores: Home Depot competing with Lowe’s; Costco vying with Sam’s Club; Target versus Walmart; an Ikea, Macy’s, and a T.J. Maxx; banks seeking deposits and hawking loans; hotels, car rental agencies, and long-term parking lots surrounding Pittsburgh International Airport; and a slew of restaurants dishing up every cuisine from China to Mexico, Italy to Japan, Tex-Mex to country cooking, and ubiquitous fast-food drive-ins serving burgers, pizza, and tacos.
Turning off the highway was like entering another world, a pastoral panorama of rolling hills and verdant valleys, brooks flowing into streams lining the road. Even on a day when gray clouds boiled and frothed on the horizon, Barnwell was captivated by the bucolic scene and vowed to return once the weather changed. Only later would she discover that area homes faced frequent subsidence caused by abandoned coal mines and that behind the hills, energy companies had drilled into a former strip mine to extract natural gas through hydraulic fracking, injecting thousands of gallons of fresh water into the Marcellus Shale, its foul rivulets flowing into the streams she found so inviting.
Orange cones narrowed North Branch Road to a single lane. Patrol officers from North Fayette Township directed traffic, allowing one lane through at a time. Lydia wished she’d returned to Greentree for a cruiser, for her unmarked vehicle was indistinguishable from every other car on the road. Turning on the warning blinkers only annoyed other drivers.
She sat in traffic for seven minutes, enduring three stoppages, until she reached the officer directing traffic. After studyin
Barnwell flashed her ID at the county patrol officer, whose name on the aluminum clip on his pocket identified him as Patrolman J. Mullins. He leaned forward to get a close view of her badge, then raised his eyes to her face. “You’re the new one,” he said.
“Detective Barnwell,” she said. “What do we have here?”
“A body in the culvert,” he said, pointing toward the bridge that crossed the creek. “Been there for some time, from the looks of it. The CSI team has just started.” They’d traveled farther to reach the scene, but in their well-marked van hadn’t been forced to sit in traffic.
She asked who’d discovered the body. “A young girl,” Mullins said. “Her mother called it in. Name’s Thorson.”
“Where is she?” Barnwell asked.
“We took her information and sent her home. She lives in one of the apartment buildings up the hill.” Barnwell looked around, spotting a row of townhomes to the west of the bridge and three apartment buildings overlooking the scene from above. She took down the information and posed a few questions about how the youngster had found the body, but Mullins had told her everything he knew.
“Who was first on the scene?” she asked.
Mullins pointed to a female officer from North Fayette who stood inside a guardrail observing the technicians. “Name’s Foster,” he said. “She’d climbed down to examine the body. I hope she didn’t screw things up.”
“Why would you say that?” the detective asked.
“Being local and all.”
Barnwell bristled. “North Fayette is a professional force. Twenty well-trained officers let by an experienced chief. I’m sure she knew what she was doing.”
Did the officer know Barnwell had joined the county from one of the smaller forces that dotted the area? Some were staffed by amateurs and part-timers, but not North Fayette. Barnwell didn’t care whether his disdain was directed at the township’s police force or because the first to arrive was a woman. She was having none of it.
She introduced herself to the patrol officer, noticing as she approached she was a light-skinned Black woman. Was this another reason Officer Mullins had been so contemptuous? She identified herself as Nadine Foster and proved to be more forthcoming than Mullins had been. She described how Cindy Thorson’s mother had called 911 in near hysteria.
“Her daughter told her she’d found a body, but Cathy—that’s the woman’s name—didn’t believe her, so she came down the hill to look for herself. I don’t know how she made it down the bank. It’s overgrown with weeds, and the runoff makes it slippery. But somehow she did, found a foot sticking out from beneath some leaves, and called dispatch as she stood there.”
The officer arrived minutes after the call. “Our headquarters is just up the road, so I got here before Mrs. Thorson was even out of the culvert,” she said.
“Did you examine the body?” Barnwell asked.
“No. I only got close enough to confirm what the mother said and radioed you folks. I didn’t want to disturb the scene.”
“You did well, Officer,” she said, feeling a smug sense of satisfaction that Foster had, indeed, followed procedure. Barnwell returned to her car and opened a packet of white paper protective gear, knowing that the booties, bottom of the suit, and gloves would become muddy messes by the time she reached the body.
As she started down the bank, her feet slid out from beneath her. Only by crouching and extending her arms did she regain her balance. She crept the rest of the way by walking crablike, maintaining purchase with the sides of her boots. Barnwell approached the medical examiner’s investigative team and introduced herself to the white-coated figure bent over the body. “Is there anything you can tell me?” she asked.
The investigator peered over her shoulder and smiled. “Brandy Timmons,” she said. Barnwell recalled her from the case in which David Kimrey, her former lover, had been slain, but with her head enveloped in the white bonnet, hadn’t recognized her. “The photographer just finished, so I’m just getting underway.” Timmons wiped a sleeve of the white gown across her forehead. “It’s a white male, approximately 5-10. That’s all I can tell you now, except he was nude. Not a stitch of clothing.”
“Strange,” Barnwell said. “Any wounds or other signs of trauma?”
“I can’t tell yet because he’s lying face down, but nothing on his back, at least.”
“How long has his body been here?”
“We won’t know until the autopsy, but I’d say weeks rather than days. Give me half-an-hour, and I may have more.”
Barnwell thanked her, made her way up the bank, and approached Mullins, the county officer. “I want you to head up the hill, cross the road, and go to the first residence you find. Ask whether they’ve seen or noticed any strange activity here over the last few weeks.”
“Do you have anything more to go on?” he asked.
“Not yet, but residents will have seen all this commotion, so let’s question them before they start telling themselves stories.” She had seen memories fade over time, and embellishments overtake facts.
Mullins wasn’t happy, but walked toward his patrol car to do as he was told. Barnwell turned toward the North Fayette officer. “I’m heading up the hill to talk to the mother,” she said. “While I’m gone, you’re in charge.”
“Understood,” Officer Foster answered, puffing out her chest.
The apartment where the child lived was in the topmost of the three recently constructed buildings. Barnwell rode the elevator to the third floor and pushed the doorbell. Seconds later, a man answered. He appeared to be in his early thirties, had brown hair and eyes, and delicate features that were almost feminine. His trousers appeared to be part of a uniform, but he wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Tennessee Titans. “Mr. Thorson?” Barnwell said.
“Ben,” he answered. “And you are…?”
“Detective Lydia Barnwell, Allegheny County Police Department. May I come in?”
“I guess,” he said and drew back from the doorway, “but my wife says she’s told you everything we know.”
Through the hallway, Barnwell saw a woman standing with her back to the window, observing the conversation. The furnishings were by Ikea, and the walls were bare, creating an impression of impermanence. “Mrs. Thorson,” she said, striding into the room and extending her hand.
“I’ve already told your officers how she found the body. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I’ve told her not to go that far. I was doing laundry, and she promised she was just walking the dog.” She kneaded her hands and cast an inquiring look at her husband. Barnwell wondered if the explanation was meant for her or for him.
“I’d like to speak with your daughter. Cindy, is it?”
The pair exchanged glances, some private conversation passing between them. “Is it necessary?” the husband said.
“She found the body. I need to know how she came to discover it, if she saw anything else at the site, how close she came…”
“We don’t want to involve her any more than she already has,” Ben Thorson said. “There’s nothing she can tell you.”
Before Barnwell could respond, his wife said, “We don’t want her name in the paper or her picture on television. These are dangerous times.”
“We won’t release her name, and news media never identity minors,” Barnwell said. “I have to ask her a few questions for the record. That’s all.”
“She found a body,” he said. “Cathy reported it. What more can we tell you?”
Barnwell trained her gaze on him, and he looked away. “What do you do for a living?” she asked in a calm voice.
