Alaskan Christmas Cold Case. Sarah Varland

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       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.”