Read Online In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel by M. R. Sellars - Free Book Online Page B

cardboard
fireplace. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t off by much. No
more than a few inches, really. In fact, the average onlooker might
not have even noticed anything wrong about it at all, but the
disruption to its positioning was more than enough to grab Skip’s
attention. The fake logs with their orange cellophane embers were
still pretending to burn, most likely exactly where they’d been
placed originally. The fireplace façade itself, however, was askew
by more than enough to fully expose the motorized workings of the
flickering light behind the glowing hearth. Moreover, it was
resting at an angle that suggested it had been struck by someone or
something that was headed for the nearby storeroom door, and in a
bit of a hurry. Under everyday circumstances, while the disruption
to the scenery was certainly something he would notice, it wasn’t
something that he would consider all that important, because there
could easily be any number of mundane explanations for the
issue.
    In truth, those innocuous reasons could still
apply, and he knew better than to discount them. However, the way
things had been shaping up, the mundane didn’t seem very
likely.
    On that instinct, he followed what he
perceived to be a trail, entering the storeroom and continuing to
call out for the young girl as he searched. Eventually, he came to
the back door of the building and opened it. And that is where he
now stood, gazing out into the night.
    “Merrie?” he called. “Merrie, it’s Deputy
Skip from the sheriff’s office…”
    Again, no answer came other than the rising
and falling sigh of the frigid wind. His call had ridden out on a
cloud of steam caused by his moist breath. A cloud that immediately
leapt onto the back of the swirling air and was dragged away,
taking each dying syllable of the words along as well.
    Carmichael stepped through the opening and
was instantly pelted with the blowing snow. He squinted his eyes
and pivoted his gaze from left to right as he quickly scanned the
lot, looking for both the missing girl and for Carter’s four-door
sedan. Stark puddles of light similar to the one in which he now
stood fell from fixtures mounted above the rear entrances of the
flower shop and pharmacy. Two more sets of flood lamps were also
positioned at the corners of the building. Still, the darkness of
night, aided by blizzard conditions, was winning the battle for
dominance over the lot. Were it not for the near whiteout, with the
exception of the trash dumpster to his right he would have had a
fairly unobstructed view of the parking area. Of course, as the old
saying goes, “woulda, shoulda, coulda.”
    Skip held his hands up with his fingers
parallel to the brim of his hat and palms hooked at a ninety-degree
angle, trying to shield his eyes from the blowing flakes as he
concentrated on each individual car before moving his gaze to the
next. Unfortunately, of the few vehicles present, the sedan Missus
Babbs had described was nowhere to be seen, at least not that he
could tell. On top of that, they were all currently excelling at
the task of collecting their own blankets of white, which made them
even harder to make out. However, that also meant that it was
unlikely that any of them had been running recently enough to be
warm.
    He repeated the scan just to be sure. Not
only was Carter’s vehicle not on the lot, there were no tire tracks
or footprints readily visible in the freshly fallen snow either.
This could simply mean that nobody had gone out this door since it
had started snowing. When you combined that observation with the
lack of a warm vehicle, it might also indicate that Carter wasn’t
as conscientious about his job as Missus Babbs wanted to believe
and that he was late returning from his dinner break.
    Or, it could mean that Carter had indeed
taken Merrie and had done so before the snow had really begun to
fall, which fit the timeline. In Skip’s mind, as horrifying a
thought as that was, thus far