January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) by Jess Lourey Read Free Book Online

murdered. I surveyed the mental image of his body under the ice. Except for the missing shoe and the fact that he was dead, there were no signs of violence. For all I knew, he could have been out walking on the ice, fallen into the Darwin’s Dunk pre-cut hole, and been too disoriented to save himself. I liked that story a whole lot better than the alternative.
    I exited my car and walked toward the library. Since I didn’t have a computer at home, this was as good a place as any for me to be. I still owed Ron an article on the Winter Wonderland and this week’s recipe column. Maybe writing would help to organize my thoughts.
    I locked the library’s front door behind me and left the lights off, relying on the window-filtered light of the setting sun. How had the day gone so quickly? And horribly? Seated at my desk, though, I felt incrementally more comfortable. This was a spot where I had some control. I fired up the computer, sucking on the end of a pen as I wondered what spin I could possibly put on the Winter Wonderland article. “Plenty of Room on the Skating Rink at this Year’s Winter Festival”? “Darwin’s Dunker Sets the Bar High”?
    I swallowed past the oily lump in my throat. Sarcasm was my defense against any extreme emotion, and I couldn’t move past the sensation that I’d played a part in Maurice’s death. It was guilt that I was trying to bury. What if letting me and Mrs. Berns go had turned the two thugs against him? They could have strangled him and stuck his body in the dunk hole, assuming it wouldn’t be found until spring. Or they could have forced him into the hole while he was still conscious, slammed a chunk of wood over it, and sat on the edges until his desperate cries for help and finger-scratching stopped.
    I slammed my fist on the desktop. I needed to corral my slippery mind. It was sliding toward ugly worst-case scenarios. Time to focus on something else. But I knew better than that. My mind was a hungry, busy thing, and it wouldn’t rest without answers. Who was Maurice? Who were Ray and Hammer? I had little to go on. Well, that is, if “little” actually meant “nothing.”
    I pulled up Firefox and typed Ray and Maurice into Google. I searched ten screens in and found nothing. I added the word ogre and found a couple bizarre baseball stories, but nothing else. Gary had given me blessedly little to go on, except for—
    My fingers flew across the keyboard. I typed, hammerhead stingray tattoo gangs , and hit the Enter key. The first four screens were consumed with tattoo parlor links and ads, and the fifth, as were the sixth, but on the seventh, I found it—an article published the previous year:
    “Sixth Suspect Arrested in Gang Activity”
    CHICAGO, Ill. —Chicago police arrested a sixth suspect on suspicion of gang-related activity that includes gun and drug trafficking.
    The Fugitive Task Force arrested Scott Rayman Monday morning.       
    Local and federal authorities made five arrests Sunday as part of a seven-month investigation called Operation Sea Monster, named after the sea-creature tattoos the gang members are required to have. The operation included undercover officers buying drugs, as well as tips from the public.
    Police still have arrest warrants for three other gang members.
    Chief John Lart said the suspects are some of the high est- ranking leaders in the Sea Monsters, one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs.
    I printed out the article and searched for anything else that fit. Dead ends, all of them. That’s when I realized I hadn’t even toured the Prospect House today, the central feature of the article I was to write. My head fell into my palm. What a waste of a day.
    I felt crazy laughter burbling in my throat. I would have released it if I hadn’t just then caught sight of a neon green child’s super ball that had rolled near my chair. Somebody must have lost it during last Monday’s reading hour. I stooped to retrieve it and remembered the