Dead of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page A

“A little thin at the top.”
    “Chief likes it that way, lean and mean. Alpha units all the way. Gilbralter says if we needed partners he’ll get us dogs. After the chief thinks you’re broken in you’ll be on your own.”
    “What about that thin guy I saw last night? He was wearing a sergeant stripe.”
    “Ollie Wickshaw. Yeah, he’s a sergeant but he pulls a shift with the rest of us. He’s okay, a little strange. Into that occult shit. Supervision isn’t his strong suit. If it were up to him he’d rather be with his damn homing pigeons than human beings.”
    Jesse swung the cruiser off Main Street and into a residential area.
    “Anyone else have rank?” Louis asked.
    Jesse shook his head. “There’s only nine guys total on the force, including you now. And we’re all on the street, equal in the eyes of the chief.”
    “And God,” Louis added.
    “One and the same, my friend.”
    They drove on in silence for several blocks. Louis gazed out at the neat bungalows with their snowy yards. The sky was a brilliant blue and cloudless. He sank back into the seat, lulled by the heat.
    What an odd department structure, he thought. A dictatorship, union-free to boot. But Gibralter seemed to be well liked by his men. Hell, maybe having one man at the top was better than the twenty layers of gold-plated bullshit most departments had.
    The photograph on the wall of Thomas Pryce floated into his mind and he wondered if the man had died in the line of duty. But what could get a cop killed in a place like this? Walking into a bad domestic? That could happen anywhere.
    “Thomas Pryce,” Louis said. “How did he die?”
    Jesse didn’t look over at him. “He was shot.”
    “On duty.”
    Jesse’s jaw moved. “No, in his own house. Someone walked up and just blew him away with a shotgun.”
    “Jesus,” Louis said. He wanted to know more but he sensed Jesse didn’t want to talk about it. Pryce’s death had been only a few weeks ago and he knew how long it took for a wound to scar over in a small department when a cop was killed. He had been to only one cop funeral, right after he started his fist job in Ann Arbor. He hadn’t known the man but he had felt the current of pain and anger that ran like some subterranean river below the smooth daily workings of the department.
    “You get the guy who did it?” Louis asked.
    “No,” Jesse said.
    “So the case is still open?”
    “Technically.”
    “Who’s running it?”
    “Nobody right now,” Jesse said. “We don’t have an investigator. That was Pryce’s job.”
    “He was the investigator?”
    Jesse didn’t look at him. “Yeah, Pryce was the investigator. Not that we ever have much to investigate around here.”
    Louis thought he heard an edge in Jesse’s voice. They rode slowly down the freshly plowed street for several minutes.
    “So who worked the case?” Louis asked.
    “Chief gave all of us bits and pieces.”
    “You got any suspects?”
    “No.”
    “Any theories?”
    “Chief hasn’t really asked us for our theories. We sit around and speculate sometimes. The other guys think it’s probably a prior bust, some perp Pryce put away.”
    “But?” Louis prodded.
    “Pryce didn’t have any big cases. Just little shit. Nothing worth getting shot for.”
    The dispatcher broke in with a vandalism call. Jesse keyed the mike and answered that they were on their way.
    “Christ, I get tired of this Mickey Mouse shit,” he said, swinging the cruiser into a driveway to turn around.
    The drove several blocks and stopped in front of a two-story colonial. An old woman was out front, shivering in a pink sweater. As Louis and Jesse got out, she pointed to a life-sized plastic reindeer lying on the snow.
    “Look what they did! Just look!” she said.
    Louis looked down at the deer. Someone had knocked the head off and spray painted FUCK YOU on it.
    “What are you going to do about it?” the woman demanded, her voice shaking as she clutched her sweater