Night Sins by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

the end of the booth and straddled it. “I thought you'd want to hear the update on that accident out on Old Cedar Road.”
    “I'm Leo's replacement,” Megan said, offering her hand.
    Dietz ignored the hand. His eyebrows disappeared beneath the black Moe Howard wig that crawled down over his forehead. He looked fifty and intolerant, lean everywhere but his beer belly. “I thought all the field agents were men.”
    “They were,” she said sweetly. “Until me.”
    “So what's the latest?” Mitch asked, forking up a mouthful of potatoes.
    Dietz tore his gaze away from Megan and flipped through a notebook he pulled from his shirt pocket. “Two fatalities. Ethel Koontz was DOA at Hennepin County Medical Center—massive trauma to the head and chest. Ida Bergen passed away at Deer Lake Community—heart attack on her way in for treatment of minor injuries. Mrs. Marvel Steffen is critical but stable—she's at HCMC too. Clara Weghorn was treated and released. Mike Chamberlain—the kid who lost control—he's banged up but he's going to be okay. Pat Stevens took his statement and I've been over the scene.”
    “And?”
    “And it's like the kid said. The road was bare until just after that curve by Jeff Lexvold's place. There's a patch of glare ice about ten feet long, goes across both lanes of the road. This is where it gets odd,” Dietz confided, looking troubled. “I figure there's no reason for ice there, right? The weather's been good. God knows it hasn't been warm enough for anything to melt and run down the hill from Lexvold's. So I go have a look. You know Jeff and Millicent are gone to Corpus Christi for the winter, like always, so there's no one home. But it looks to me like someone snaked a garden hose down the driveway from the faucet on the front side of their house by the garage there.”
    Mitch set his fork down and stared hard at his patrolman. “That's crazy. You're saying someone ran water across the road and made that ice slick on purpose?”
    “Looks like. Kids playing around, I suppose.”
    “They got two people killed.”
    “Could have been worse,” Dietz pointed out. “There's some kind of music recital going on at the college tonight. Seems like more people use that back way onto the campus than the front. We could have had a real pileup.”
    “Have you questioned the neighbors?” Megan asked.
    Dietz looked at her as if she were an eavesdropper butting in from the next booth. “There aren't any close by. Besides, Lexvolds, they've got all them overgrown spruce trees along the front of their place. You'd have to be right there to see anyone screwing around.”
    “Well, Jesus,” Mitch muttered in disgust. “I'll have Natalie write up an appeal for the media tomorrow, asking for anyone with information to call in.”
    Megan trespassed a second time into the conversation. “Was there any sign of a break-in?”
    Dietz looked at her sideways, scowling. “No. Everything was locked up tight.” He turned back to his chief as he rose from his chair. “We got a DOT crew out to scrape and sand the slick spot. Hauled the cars in—one to Mike Finke's and one to Patterson's. That's it.”
    “Good. Thanks, Lonnie.” Mitch watched the officer weave his way back through the tables, what little he'd eaten of his supper sitting like gravel in his stomach. “What the hell do kids think about, pulling shit like that?”
    Megan considered the question rhetorical. The wheels of her brain turning, she stared at the Mickey Mouse figures on Mitch's tie until they started to swim in front of her eyes.
    Mitch's gaze drifted to the restaurant entrance, where people were still coming in from the wide hall of the old warehouse-turned-mini-mall. Half a dozen people from the Snowdaze pageant committee were waiting to be seated. Here for after-practice pie and coffee. Hannah Garrison came in and pushed her way past them. Strange.
    She looked harried. Her coat was open and hanging back off one shoulder. Her blond