Cold Case

It’s the kind of case that stays with you. It’s always there, lurking at the edges of your consciousness, waiting for the next triggering thought to send you down the rabbit hole.

I was one of the first to arrive after the patrol officer had responded to the 911 call and radioed back with a Code 92. It was a particularly cold night, and another uniform cop had handed me a steaming cup of Dunkin as I donned latex gloves at the edge of the police tape.

“Merry Christmas,” he said with a healthy layer of bitterness.

Whatever warmth the parboiled coffee had leant deserted me at the sight in the middle of the road.

Sandra Buchanan, elderly woman, age 73. She was lying face down on the pavement, her torso misshapen from blunt force trauma. Several marks remained in her jacket at the apparent impact sites, and the indentations all resembled horseshoes.

After several moments trying to think through what the scene was telling me, I turned to the assistant detective. “Hooves?”

“Appears so. Run down by a horse?”

Something made me look up. I watched the stars gazing down at us as I replied, “Some kind of animal.”

We interviewed every horse owner and rancher in a fifty-mile radius but found no suspects or motive. Sandra’s background came back clean, no strife with family and friends combined with no massive inheritance or financial debts that might persuade bad actors to hasten her demise.

The only clue came from the forensic pathologist weeks after the body was found. The source of the strange prints in her jacket was one or more deer.

That seemed to satisfy everyone else. The death was ruled an accident, a chance encounter with a wild animal gone bad. Sandra’s family and the department each moved on with their lives.

But I kept thinking back to that life, to a theory that I couldn’t shake.

Sandra’s death was no accident; it was a deliberate hit and run. I’ve scoured the national crime database and stumbled on a pattern. A pattern of elderly folks being run down by deer. I might have shrugged that off—people die in stranger ways—if not for the fact that around forty percent of these deaths occur on two days of the calendar year:

December 24th and 25th.

I had pulled on the thread, and now the holiday sweater covering my eyes had started unraveling. A serial killer had been operating beneath our noses, operating with the impunity provided by living far off the beaten path. His crimes extended as far back as the early 80’s when the national crime database was first established, but who knows how much earlier this spree might have started.

Eventually I had run out of favors to call in, and my off-the-clock investigation came to the attention of the chief. I knew she wouldn’t believe me, but I was forced to describe my findings to justify this misuse of department resources or lose my job.

Turns out my “crackpot theory” lost me my job anyway.

But it doesn’t matter. This monster lives outside the law, and I don’t need a badge to see justice is done.

Now I’m waiting to confront the man responsible as I crouch behind my couch, Glock trained on the fireplace at the opposite end of the living room. The arbiter of naughty has been ignoring the sinner at the top of the list for too long. He won’t get away with it this year.

Then a floorboard groans in the hall behind me.

No way… I locked the chimney flue in the guest bedroom. I triple checked it!

But it’s too late. As I spin in the direction of the noise, gun still in hand, I catch sight of a figure in my periphery. He bulls into me, moving impossibly fast for his bulk.

I fire in panic. The bullet buries itself in the ceiling as my back smacks into the floor.

Dazed, I can only look up as the bag slips over my head, my rapid breaths only amplifying the overwhelming scent of peppermint and cinnamon flooding my nostrils. Then the darkness deepens as something crashes into my head.

***

I wake up, daylight filtering through the windows. The first thing I notice is a pounding headache. I place my hand on my forehead and feel liquid on my fingers. Blood. The thickest candy cane I’ve ever seen lays discarded beside me, sporting a crimson stain similar to the hue running down my fingertips.

The second thing I notice is a piece of paper lying atop my chest, kept in place by a massive black rock. It’s a note.

Dear Detective Frost,

Better luck next year!

Yours,

Nick