Chill Factor by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

own.
    Mr. Gunn was a rotund man who looked even larger in his
red-and-black checked wool coat, the kind Dutch associated with
lumberjacks. Gunn did, in fact, work with wood. His carpenter's hands,
roughened by decades of manual labor and chapped by the cold, looked
like sugar-cured hams.
    He was threading his hat between his scarred fingers, staring
vacantly at the stained brown felt. At an elbow nudge from his wife, he
looked up and followed her hollow-eyed gaze toward Dutch.
    He stood. "Dutch."
    "Ernie. Mrs. Gunn." Dutch nodded at them in turn. "It's
getting bad
out there. You ought to be at home."
    "We just came by to ask was there anything new."
    Dutch knew the reason for this ambush. He'd received several
telephone messages from them today but hadn't responded. He wished one
of his men had warned him
that
they were in the
office so he
could have delayed his return until they gave up and went home. But he
was here, and so were they. He might just as well get the meeting over
with.
    "Come on back. We'll talk in my office. Did somebody offer you
coffee? It's thick as road tar, but it's usually hot."
    "No thanks," Ernie Gunn said, speaking for both of them.
    Once they were seated across the desk from him in his private
office, Dutch frowned with regret. "Unfortunately I don't have anything
new to report. I had to call off the search today for obvious reasons,"
he said, motioning toward the window.
    "Before this storm hit, we towed Millicent's car to the county
pound. We'll be gathering all the trace evidence we can from it, but
there are no obvious signs of a struggle."
    "Like what?"
    Dutch squirmed in his seat and shot a glance at Mrs. Gunn
before
answering her husband. "Broken fingernails, clumps of hair, blood."
    Mrs. Gunn's head wobbled on her skinny neck.
    "That's actually good news," Dutch said. "My men and I are
still
trying to reconstruct Millicent's movements her last evening at work.
Talking to everybody who saw her in and out of the store. But we had to
suspend the canvassing this afternoon, again on account of the storm.
    "I haven't heard anything more from Special Agent Wise,
either," he
said, heading off what he figured would be their next question. "He was
called back to Charlotte a few days ago, you know. He had another case
there that needed his attention. Before he left, though, he told me he
was still actively working on Millicent's disappearance and wanted to
use the computers there in the bureau office to check out some things."
    "Did he say what?"
    Dutch hated admitting to them that Wise—in fact all
those FBI sons
of bitches—was stingy with information. They were especially
tight-lipped around cops they considered to be inferior, incompetent
burnouts. Like yours truly, for instance.
    "I believe you gave Wise access to Millicent's journal," he
said.
    "That's right." Mr. Gunn turned to his wife and clasped her
hand for
encouragement. "Maybe Mr. Wise willcome
across
something in it that'll lead them to her."
    Dutch pounced on that point. "That's a very real possibility.
Millicent might have left of her own accord." He held up his hand to
stave off their protests. "I know that's the first thing I asked you
when you reported her missing. You dismissed it out of hand. But hear
me out."
    He divided his best serious-cop look between them. "It's
entirely
possible that Millicent needed some time away. Maybe she's not
connected to the other missing women at all." He knew the chances of
that were highly remote, but it was something to say that would give
them hope.
    "But her car," Mrs. Gunn said in a voice so reedy Dutch could
barely
hear her. "It was still in the parking lot behind the store. How could
she have left without her car?"
    "Maybe a friend took her somewhere," Dutch said. "Because of
the
widespread panic her disappearance has caused, that friend is afraid to
come forward now and 'fess up, afraid that he or she will get into
trouble along with Millicent for scaring us out of our wits."
    Mr. Gunn