Dead of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

he with the department?”
    “About three years.”
    “Three years on a force with only nine men and he didn’t talk to the rest of you?” Louis said.
    Jesse was looking at him but Louis couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Pryce wasn’t exactly your basic party animal.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means he kept to himself. That’s all it means.”
    Louis stared at him. “What about you? Did you like him?”
    Jesse shrugged.
    “What about the chief? Did Pryce get along with him okay?”
    “You’ll have to ask the chief that.”
    Louis turned away, looking again at the porch. “Where’d you find the boot print?”
    Jesse came up the steps. “Right here, where the overhang kept the snow off. We lost anything out there in the yard because it was snowing like a motherfucker that night.”
    “You try to trace it?”
    “Yeah, I did. It was from some company called Warden’s. Cheap work boot, thousands of them sold around the state.”
    Louis reached for the knob but Jesse caught his arm. “It’s locked. Hold on.” He disappeared around the back of the house. Minutes later, Louis heard sounds inside the house and the door opened. “Went through the basement window,” Jesse said.
    The white tile foyer was wallpapered in faded pink roses. The bottom four stairs, carpeted in pale pink, were splattered with dried brown blood. There was a brown stain the size of a dinner plate on the bottom stair.
    Louis looked left into the living room. It was empty of furniture, but little things — small plastic toys, dust bunnies and books — were scattered across the rug.
    “They left in a hurry,” Louis said.
    Jesse came up behind him. “Mrs. Pryce took the kids and went back to Flint the next day. A week later, she came back for the body.”
    Louis started up the stairs, Jesse trailing behind. He paused at the door of a blue bedroom. There was a wallpaper border of ducks and some toys on the floor.
    “How many kids did they have?” Louis asked.
    “Two. One was just a baby.”
    Louis went down the hall to the master bedroom. The walls were painted a mint green. There were depressions in the carpet where the king-sized bed had been. On the floor were bits of papers, some beads from a broken necklace and several magazines.
    Louis went to the center of the room. He thought he could still smell the scent of aftershave, hear the kids giggling. He closed his eyes and imagined the sound as the blast ripped through the door below. He saw Stephanie Pryce bolting upright in her bed. He turned and saw Jesse staring at him.
    “You take this kind of personal, don’t you, Kincaid?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I was watching you. It’s like you could see it in your head.”
    “Sometimes it helps to try and get a feel for things,” Louis said. He saw something in the closet and went to it. Hanging there were two Loon Lake uniforms, still in their plastic dry cleaning wrappers.
    “Damn, she just left them hanging here,” he said quietly.
    Jesse came up behind him. “I should take these, I guess. Chief asked me to come get them two weeks ago.”
    Louis moved to let Jesse gather up the uniforms, turning to survey the empty room again. He saw a curled photograph on the floor and reached down for it. It was of a small child, light-skinned with a tumble of black curls.
    “Is this one of his kids?” Louis asked.
    Jesse peered over Louis’s shoulder. “Yeah.”
    Louis stared at the picture. “Is Mrs. Pryce white?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you guys consider that could be a motive?”
    “Sure. The wife had an ex-husband that we thought was weird but the chief didn’t agree.”
    “How long were the Pryces married?”
    “Seven years.”
    “Long time for an ex to stew about something,” Louis said, slipping the photograph in his pocket. He walked to the window and looked out at the street. There was a little girl making snow angels on the lawn across the street.
    “What