The Storm Murders by John Farrow

policemen and the woman of the house met their fate. He could tell which represented the officers as the artist had carefully drawn the pistols found in each man’s hand. “Ask the SQ to bring in their canine squad, Bill.”
    “The trail’s shit-cold, É mile. You know that.”
    “The animals, Bill. You’ll find them dead in the snow somewhere nearby. If they were in the house, we’d be smelling them by now. I’m not counting on it, but their collars might relinquish a thumb print. Or something. Maybe they managed to get in a bite of flesh. Maybe a nail scratched our killer.”
    “How do you know for sure they’re out there?”
    “Where else would they be? The killer didn’t dig them cute little graves in the frozen ground. If he tried he’d still be digging. He just dropped them in the snow. He doesn’t expect them to be found until it melts. By then, Mother Nature will deal with the carcasses before anyone finds them in the tall spring grass. Whoever does, the assumption will be that wild animals did them in, or exposure. Nobody will care or think twice, and anyway there might be nothing left. Thinking that way, maybe our guy allowed himself to be careless. So, canine squad, Bill. Worth a shot.”
    “Okay, but if he dropped them in the snow,” Mathers argued, “why can’t we just follow his steps right to them? Oh. Right. His footprints are invisible somehow.”
    “He killed the animals first, Bill. That tells us that he was here a while. Perhaps waiting for his victims to show up. He killed them during, or perhaps before, the storm.”
    Dreher was nodding. He finally seemed impressed. “What does this bedroom tell you?” he asked, and Mathers noticed that the man’s tone now conveyed a smidgen of respect rather than mere guarded judgment.
    Cinq-Mars was looking around the space. The silence, even with the heating system engaged, kept getting to him, speaking to him, in a way. As below, the floor was stained by the mopped-up blood of the victims.
    “One man was shot through the back of his head,” Mathers offered. “The other, straight through the top of his forehead.”
    “The woman,” Cinq-Mars inquired. “Adele. Any signs of sexual assault?”
    “Both victims had the ring fingers of their left hands severed,” Dreher replied. “Both the rings and the fingers are missing. That’s always true south of the border as well. The women, here and in the States, are found naked, but their ordeals do not include rape or any apparent sign of sexual transgression. Except, I guess, for the nudity.”
    The very strangeness of all that kept the three men quiet awhile and studying the floor. Then Cinq-Mars asked, “Any surprises with the autopsies?”
    No one said anything so he looked up.
    Mathers seemed to be hesitating about something.
    “What?” Cinq-Mars encouraged him.
    “A discrepancy,” Mathers said. “At least, it felt like that to me.” By the way Dreher’s head elevated, the senior cop assumed that this was coming as news to him also, which meant that the pair had not thoroughly debriefed one another.
    “Go on.”
    “Something weird. The officers, the ones who got shot, they phoned in that the woman was still alive. They requested an ambulance. Yet the autopsy showed that the female victim had two gunshot wounds. Both to the head. One entered under the chin and exited out the top of her skull, which, the pathologist stated, did so much damage it could only have killed her instantly. If that is so, why did the cops call-in to say that she was still breathing?”
    The three men surrounded the lines on the floor in the shape of the woman’s form. Dreher at her head, Mathers at the base of her spine, with Cinq-Mars on the opposite side of the body’s outline standing by her knees and thighs. The retired cop was the first to do so, but then each man followed suit, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his trousers and dwelling on all this.
    Cinq-Mars answered, “Because she was