Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page. John Lenahan A
broke the plastic tape, rolled it up and, for the want of a better place to put it, stuffed it into his pocket. The forest of scrub oaks in this part of Pennsylvania didn’t seem that dark from the road, Harry thought, but once you were in them it was hard to see more than a short way ahead. Together they walked up a dark path that opened into a glen. In the centre was a ring of stones surrounding a firepit that looked like it had been used recently. Scattered around were broken and unbroken beer bottles and empty rifle shells. A bit further up the hill was a mound of earth that looked as if it had been made by the push of a bulldozer. In front of the mound were pulverized cardboard boxes with silhouettes of deer and men, as well as years of broken bottles and perforated rusted beer cans. One of the target practice silhouettes on the ground portrayed a man in a turban.
“The vic, Bill Thomson,” Cirba said, pointing just downhill of the firepit, “was found here. He had shotgun wounds to both knees and a double-barrelled shot to the back of the head.”
“Ouch,” Harry said without trying to be funny.
“Yeah, nasty stuff. The leg wounds were pretty – close range – we found some stray shot in the dirt but not much. My theory is that the shooter was behind the vic and put a shot in the back of the knee to drop him. But instead the vic turned on him so he emptied the second barrel into his other knee from the front. The vic went down here,” Cirba said pointing to a patch of dirt just downhill of the firepit that still had dark stains on it, “then the perp reloaded and put both barrels in the back of his head.”
“Cold,” Harry said, “a pro hit?”
“It doesn’t feel like it. There were no bruises on the guy so I’m inclined to say that he knew the shooter and was walking in front of him without a care in the world. Also pros don’t usually use shotguns.”
“Effective though, wouldn’t you say? You can’t get ballistics from a shotgun, and I don’t suppose the shooter left any empty shells with his fingerprints on them?”
“This place was littered with shotgun shells when we first got here. This is the local shooting range. But there weren’t any around where the shooter must have been standing. We picked up all the empties but we won’t get anything out of them.
“Any forensics – footprints, tyre tracks?”
“This is also the big teenage party spot. The vic seemed to have been cleaning it up. We found a plastic bag of bottles and cans with his prints on ’em. Word has it that there was a shindig up here three nights ago. So there are zillions of tyre treads. The local boy that found the vic came up to target practice. He drove over any tracks that would have been there, as did the local cops when they got here.”
“When was he shot?”
“Two days ago, just before midday. He was still a little warm when the boy found him.”
“Anybody hear anything?”
“Nobody around to hear. The only building close enough is the strip club but nobody would be there before noon.”
“A strip club you say? I think we need to investigate. Wouldn’t be called Nirvana by any chance?”
Cirba shook his head, walked over to a tree and removed the last remaining bit of crowd control tape. “There will be no investigating in any strip clubs. When you see the place, you’ll see that this is not Vegas – and that’s no lie. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you mentioned Nirvana again.”
“Oops. So who was the vic?”
Cirba sat down at one of the makeshift benches by the firepit. “He was a local guy named William Thomson – everybody called him Big Bill. Just turned thirty, been in trouble all his younger years, almost flunked out of high school, got busted for selling pot and for some graffiti stuff when he was a minor. I arrested him myself for joyriding, but his dad knew the man whose car he stole, so he got off. I knew his father, he was a really good guy. I’m glad he’s gone – this would’a killed him. Actually, Bill was a good kid. He got in trouble but he had that bad kid charm that made it so you couldn’t get mad at him. You know the type?”
Harry nodded. “The mayor said he worked for him.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. Bill hadn’t been in trouble for years. His brother, Frank, inherited his dad’s old construction company. In the summer he worked for him, and in the winter he helped out as the handyman/super at the mayor’s ski condos where he had a basement apartment. We searched the place but there wasn’t much in it – a real bachelor pad. There were a lot of the mayor’s real estate books, weights for lifting, and a laptop. The laptop and the no-contract phone he was wearing when he got shot were both password-protected. They’re with the crime lab now.” The trooper took off his hat and wiped his brow.
“So who wanted him dead?”
“Don’t know but they tell me it’s my job to find out. In his younger days he used to hang out with a character that Narco’ thinks is cooking most of the crystal meth in the area. Feel like meeting the local freelance pharmacist?”
“Sure,” Harry said. “Then can we go to the strip club?”
* * *
There is a winding stretch on the Five Mile Road that has a series of banked s-turns. Legend has it that the road was originally an Algonquin hunting path – this bunch of turns is known locally as the Drunken Indians. People from all over, especially ones with new sports cars, make a trip here to speed through the racetrack-like bends. It’s not unusual to find Dom Barowski, the local Oaktree cop, sitting in a hidden spot at the end of the Drunken Indians with his speed camera. Two hours a day there pretty much funds Dom’s full salary.
Cirba took the Drunken Indians at high speed as Harry held on to the handle above his head. He honked and waved at Dom as he shot out of the last turn.
“I see the local constabulary doesn’t mind you busting up their speed limits,” Harry said as he straightened back up in his seat.
“Professional courtesy,” Cirba said.
“Are there any other turns like that between here and Oaktree or can I throw up now?”
“Throw up in my squad car and I’ll arrest you, Harry.”
“For what?”
“For throwing up in my squad car.”
“The taxi driver in Vegas was cool when you threw up out his—”
“Seriously, will you stop talking about that night?”
They turned onto a back road before entering town and ended up in a section that wasn’t in the brochure produced by the Oaktree Chamber of Commerce. Ed slowed to a crawl while negotiating the potholes. The sides of the road were strewn with litter, bottles, and the occasional roadkill. They passed white wooden houses, one after another, all desperately needing paint jobs and lawn mowing. Behind chain-link fences in almost every yard, a large dog barked so loud that Harry had to raise his voice a bit.
“They don’t seem to like you.”
“I used to be a dog lover before I took this job,” Cirba said. “I think some of these hillbillies have actually trained their dogs to attack anyone in a state police uniform.”
“How would they do that?”
“I don’t know but listen to them.”
Cirba slowed past another house, this one in better shape than the rest. The grass was still high and there was a bumperless body of an old Chevy Impala on the lawn but the house was newly painted, with modern windows behind metal security grates. Cirba drove by and said: “How about some lunch?”
“We’re not buying crack?”
“His car’s not there. Come on, I’ll treat you to the finest potato pancakes in north-east Pennsylvania.”
They exited pothole city and swung onto Main Street. Trooper Cirba drove slowly as