Vanessa Gray Bartal - Lacy Steele 07 - Icy Grip of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

Michael’s okay and being taken care of, and
then I’ll be back. This trip is no big deal.”
    “I would feel better if you weren’t
going alone,” her grandmother said.
    So
would I, Lacy thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. Instead she finished
packing and pretended not to notice when her grandmother opened a bag of
Tootsie Rolls and dumped them in her coat pockets.

Chapter 4

 
    Lacy sat on the bed in the dingy
hotel, shivering. Back home the weather had been autumnal. Here it was well
below zero with giant drifts of snow everywhere. The heater in the small motel
room was putting out a lot of air, but she still couldn’t get warm. She
suspected, though, that her shaking had more to do with exhaustion and information
overload than freezing temperatures.
    She had been up since the wee hours
of the morning in order to catch the first flight. By the time she arrived in
Minnesota, she was already travel weary and tired and
the day had just begun. Next she had to rent a car and find a place to stay, no
easy task in a town so remote and tiny. There were two motels—she chose
the best, which wasn’t saying much. At least the heater worked and had the
possibility of eventually making her warm, or so she kept telling herself as
she looked at the yellowed walls and sagging beds.
    When she was finally settled, she
went to the jail where Michael was being held, but she wasn’t allowed to see
him. Instead she was ushered into an interview room with one of the officers
who had come to arrest him. His name was Ted Anderson, one of four Andersons
she had encountered since she arrived in town. She had no idea if they were
related or if the name was that common here. They looked alike, but that could
be due to the Scandinavian ancestry on display. Everywhere she went she was
greeted by tall, solid figures with blue eyes and light hair. Her town wasn’t
incredibly diverse, but it was a melting pot compared to Wetherby, Minnesota.
    “Good afternoon, Miss Steele,”
Officer Anderson had started.
    Was it only the afternoon, Lacy wondered. But then she remembered the time change. “When can
I see Michael?”
    “Soon,” he said, sounding vague. “I
thought it was important for you to have all the information available about
your boyfriend.”
    “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said.
    “Partner then, whatever.”
    She didn’t bother to correct him.
Her friendship with Michael was none of his business. At that point he pulled
out a thick file and set it on the desk between them. “Is that his case
folder?” she asked.
    “This is everything we have on him
going back to his fourteenth birthday.”
    “I thought juvenile records were
sealed,” she said.
    “This isn’t CSI Las Vegas. This is
Wetherby, Minnesota. We’re lucky to have typewriters. There’s no such thing as
‘sealed’ here. Every handwritten note that’s ever been made about Michael Smith
is in this folder.”
    “Smith?” she said. He smiled
knowingly, self-satisfied that the name had surprised her.
    “What’s he been calling himself?”
he asked.
    “Michael O’Donnell,” she said.
    The officer shook his head. “That
sounds about right. He would choose something interesting, something ethnic.
The man’s a profiler’s dream, if only we had the budget for such a thing.
Without said budget, we’ve had to do our best to figure him out on our own, no
easy task, I’ll tell you.”
    “I’m not sure I understand what you
mean,” Lacy said.
    “Maybe it would be easier if you
tell me what you think you know about the man,” he said.
    “I know he came from here, he told
me that much. I know he lived in Ireland until he was five. I know he was accused
of a murder he didn’t commit.”
    “He was adopted and raised here his
entire life until he disappeared and ended up in your community. When he was
five, his adopted parents died in a car accident. Michael somehow survived. He
was a cute kid, and several people wanted to adopt him. But by the time