“It’ll wait. I’m the only one who likes them,” Bowie said with a wistful look on his face. The transplant from Vermont may as well have had a bottle of syrup branded on his arm.
“Sure about that?” Eden arched a brow.
“You like maple?”
“I like doughnuts. Save me from myself, will you?” She glanced at Agent Simmons, who was watching the exchange with more interest than she thought necessary. “I’ll be in the break room.” Being interrogated by a federal agent. This day was shaping up to be great.
As she and Simmons sauntered inside, the few detectives and officers parted like the Red Sea, giving Simmons a wide berth while murmuring words of welcome and relief to her as they passed. Somehow the break room had been neglected in the recent remodel of the station. With its mismatched chairs, chipped tabletops and crooked blinds covering the windows, the space reminded Eden of an out-of-date coffee shop. The air was saturated with the smell of overpopped popcorn and continuously brewing coffee. Funny how the familiarity relaxed her.
“Odd,” Agent Simmons said as she handed him a chipped mug. He motioned to the officers who had just left. “They like you.”
“Odd because I’m a reporter?” She added a good dash of cinnamon to her cup before taking a seat by the window. “Or because I’m me?”
“In my experience reporters and cops don’t tend to get along.”
“It’s my charm.” Her friendship with Cole went a long way to bridging those professional gaps. “They know I want the same things they do. Doesn’t mean I’m their favorite person.” She’d spent plenty of time being frozen out of investigations. Eden cringed and added more sugar to her coffee. Great choice of words. Personally, she accepted their trepidation as a badge of honor.
“They circled the wagons for you.” Agent Simmons took a seat across from her, cupping his hands around the mug. “That tells me a lot about them. And you. It’s funny. I was led to believe Detective Delaney was keeping me away from you because you were...”
Eden sipped, looked at him over the rim of her cup and silently dared him to finish his thought.
The strained smile that stretched his lips caught her by surprise. “Not important.”
“Cole can be a bit—”
“Overprotective?”
“Determined.” And yes, overprotective, thanks to that oath he’d sworn to her brother. An oath she felt certain hadn’t included kissing. She shifted on her chair and veered off that track with a ferocity that could leave skid marks. “Cole’s radar goes up if he thinks I’m in trouble, which I often am, according to him. He also gets testy when he thinks someone’s trying to home in on his case.”
“I’m here to advise, that’s all.”
“Why? I didn’t think the Iceman case was even on the Feds’ radar.”
“On the contrary, it’s a case we’ve been following for some time.” He drew his gaze around the room. “As I told the lieutenant and Detective Delaney, I’m here to lend any assistance you might need.”
“So that wasn’t you raising a ruckus when you thought he’d— What was the phrase he used?” Eden kept her eyes on his face. She found Agent Simmons difficult to read. He didn’t give much away, barely a twitch or a flicker of his dark eyes. This was a man who was used to being in control. And getting what he wanted. If what he wanted was to steal this case from Cole—from her—she certainly wasn’t going to help him do it.
“I don’t like being lied to. And I don’t like the idea that this case might have stalled thanks to your—” he paused and inclined his head “—excessive interest.”
“This department’s had its fair share of disappointing interactions with your agency,” Eden felt compelled to explain, or maybe defend. “And the last thing a case does with me is stall.”
“I’m not the agency,” Simmons said. “But I took the lieutenant’s advice and did a little research while I was waiting. On Detective Delaney’s record with this case. And on you.”
Here we go. “Find anything interesting?”
“Aside from a couple of misdemeanor arrests—”
“A girl has to have a hobby.” She’d learned the most important lesson when it came to breaking and entering a good decade ago: don’t get caught.
“You’ve done good work, Ms. St. Claire. You’ve helped reopen at least three cold cases both here and in Oregon, all murders, in the last few years. Cases law enforcement had given up on.” His temper didn’t catch, not even with her baiting him. Interesting. “Worthy of a badge, some might say.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“Not a fan?”
“Of them?” She glanced through the blinds and chose her words carefully. “Absolutely. I admire them. I just prefer not having the...restrictions they do.” Cole needed those boundaries to stay sane. Eden fought them for the exact same reason.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t need some. Calling out a killer the way you did has consequences. Which brings us to last night. Did you see him? The Iceman?”
Ah. There it was. Put the witness at ease with small talk before you hit her with what you really want to know. “I did not.” Anger bubbled in her blood, not at Agent Simmons’s curiosity but at her own carelessness. Not checking her surroundings, not parking under a light. “One second I was getting out of my car and the next...” She rubbed a hand over her bandaged wrist where the pain had subsided to a dull ache as ghostly footsteps echoed in her memory. “I woke up in an air-conditioned igloo with a third of my blood missing.” Her ears buzzed as the fear crawled back into her throat.
“So there’s no hope of a description.”
Fragmented images flashed through her mind. Like jagged puzzle pieces with no way to fit together. “Not from me.” And didn’t that just burn. “Maybe the lab will have some luck with my phone.”
“Strange, don’t you think? That he broke pattern like that? Potentially exposed himself by calling a police detective and telling him where to find you. You’ve been on his trail long enough. Why do you think he did that?”
Strange? Strange was the tip of the iceberg, wasn’t it? “Killers like this aren’t exactly known for their grasp on reality.” Personally, she didn’t appreciate the increased level of anxiety she had to adjust to thanks to his changeup, but she didn’t have anybody but herself to blame after that last blog post she’d run. “The Iceman has spent three years being invisible. No one’s come forward with any information of having seen him, let alone a description. There’s been no indication as to how he targets his victims, how he transports them—only that he seems to have an unhealthy fascination with vivisection and deep freezers. Now we can add blood to that list.” Her palms itched to get to her files and notes. “Aside from the missing persons’ reports, there’s been nothing to track. His abduction pattern has always been erratic and meticulous, and we’ve never found a common thread among the victims. At least not the first three victims.”
“More victims give us more data to work with.”
“But that’s the sad thing. Like Cole’s superiors, I wanted to believe he’d stopped, but that’s not the norm with these types of killers, is it? The Iceman is confident. Smart. Organized. Until...” She cleared her throat and drank her coffee, the warm spice of the cinnamon bathing her tongue. “We still don’t understand how he’s choosing his victims, and if he isn’t, if they’re completely random, we might never catch him.” That was what she needed to figure out: the connection between the victims. “Somehow he was aware enough to know their routines.”