HEART OF ICE
Gregg Olsen
Copyright © 2009 Gregg Olsen
All rights reserved.
Highest Praise for Gregg Olsen
HEART OF ICE
“Gregg Olsen will scare you—and you’ll love every moment of it.”
—Lee Child
A COLD DARK PLACE
“A great thriller that grabs you by the throat and takes you into the dark, scary places of the heart and soul.”
—Kay Hooper
“Gregg Olsen is one of the best. You’ll sleep with the lights on after reading Gregg Olsen’s dark, atmospheric, page-turning suspense…if you can sleep at all.
—Allison Brennan
“A stunning thriller—a brutally dark story with a compelling, intricate plot.”
—Alex Kava
“A page-turner…a work of dark, gripping suspense.”
—Anne Frasier
“This stunning thriller is the love child of Thomas Harris and Laura Lippman, with all the thrills and the sheer glued-to-the-page artistry of both.”
—Ken Bruen
“Olsen keeps the tension taut and pages turning.”
—Publishers Weekly
A WICKED SNOW
“Real narrative drive, a great setup, a gruesome crime, fine characters.”
—Lee Child
“A taut thriller.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Wickedly clever! Gregg Olsen delivers a finely crafted, genuinely twisted tale of one mother’s capacity for murder and one daughter’s search for the truth.”
—Lisa Gardner
“A tightly plotted, gripping police procedural. Gregg Olsen’s riveting debut is an outstanding addition to the suspense genre.”
—Allison Brennan
“An irresistible page-turner. A Wicked Snow grabs you on page one and never lets go until the heart-pounding finale.”
—Kevin O’Brien
“Complex mystery, crackling authenticity…lurid, carefully distributed details…will keep fans of crime fiction hooked.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A top-notch thriller. Unpredictable plot twists, realistic characterization, and an authentic portrayal of police procedure make it a powerhouse of a book.”
—Donna Anders
“Vivid, powerful, action-packed…a terrific, tense thriller that grips the reader.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A Wicked Snow keeps the reader guessing and gulping from the very first page…a very nifty brainteaser of a thriller.”
—Jay Bonansinga
“Tight plotting drives the story in an almost hypnotic way. I literally could not stop reading. Nerve-racking suspense and a wonderful climax make this debut a winner.”
—Crimespree magazine
“Wonderful…Olsen has drawn on his extensive true-crime past to create characters that are all too believable, and has put them into a situation that is compelling and horrifyingly real. This one will keep you riveted and guessing, right to the end.”
—Seattle Mystery Bookshop
“Olsen writes a real grabber of a book. If you’re smart, you’ll grab this one!”
—Linda Lael Miller
“A compelling story, tightly woven, that kept me riveted to the final page.”
—Susan R. Sloan
“A Wicked Snow’s plot—about a CSI investigator who’s repressed a horrific crime from her childhood until it comes back to haunt her—moves at a satisfyingly fast clip.”
—Seattle Times
ALSO BY GREGG OLSEN
A Cold Dark Place
A Wicked Snow
The Deep Dark
If Loving You Is Wrong
Abandoned Prayers
Bitter Almonds
Mockingbird (Cruel Deception)
Starvation Heights
Confessions of an American Black Widow
For Derek,
who loves to read
Prologue
Miller’s Marsh Pond, outside of Cherrystone, Washington
Hauling a dead body around isn’t easy. How could it be? There’s always the possibility that something can go wrong. An earnest young cop could flash his heart-racing blue lights, signal the figure behind the wheel to pull over, and step up to the driver’s side window. He sees a hand dangling from the neatly bound package. In such a situation, a handgun on the passenger seat can be the perfect solution.
And then, one body might become two.
A couple of teenagers without a place to go or even the money for a motel might choose the wrong spot to have sex. They select a place for its very seclusion, the same reasoning a body dumper would employ when choosing his locale. They see the man with a corpse but it’s too late to leave. Pulled from their steamed-up car, they scramble, crying and begging for their lives, to a gulley.
Pop. Pop. Skulls are pierced by the bullets from a practiced shot. Sweet.
And then, one body might become three.
The risk is always there, but at least one man knew, just then, that it also had its benefits. It brought a rush. Such jeopardy produced a kind of euphoria that was as real as the high he felt when the life oozed from the woman’s body. It was almost the same kind of charge that came when the light in the victim’s terror-filled eyes went flat and dead like the buttons on an old overcoat.
He looked to the west toward the pond, sheathed in ice. It looked like sheet metal in the light of a cloud-shrouded sky. The wind nipped at his face. If he’d remembered how hard it was to lug a dead body, he’d have moved his vehicle closer to the water’s edge. Dead weight had new meaning, for sure.
A car sped by on the highway. Even though it was a half mile away, he crouched slightly and watched as its beams gashed through wisps of fog. Ghost fog, he imagined, as he caught a glimpse of the swirling motion of heavy, cold air.
He’d packed up the woman’s body in a blue down-filled sleeping bag. A nice one. The killing had been done in haste, which of course was never a good idea. That didn’t bother him just then. He had more pragmatic concerns and they made him wince. He hated that he’d wasted a perfectly good sleeping bag when a ratty old blanket would have been just as serviceable. It had gotten to that point. The whole thing—the murder, the body dump, the return to where it had all played out. All to make sure that nothing, no clues—hair, blood, fibers—could tie him to what he’d done.
It was all about convenience.
It was as if he was that Starbucks barista he’d seen absent-mindedly pushing the buttons to make a latte for some woman who babbled incessantly about her busy life (“I’m not just a mom, I’m a lawyer, too”) and how she needed “a boost” to make it through the day. He no longer had any doubts about what he’d done or why he’d done it.