A Full Cold Moon Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Lissa Marie Redmond

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  Recent titles by Lissa Marie Redmond

  Cold Case Investigations

  A COLD DAY IN HELL

  THE MURDER BOOK

  A MEANS TO AN END

  A FULL COLD MOON *

  * available from Severn House

  A FULL COLD MOON

  Lissa Marie Redmond

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2020 by Lissa Marie Redmond.

  The right of Lissa Marie Redmond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8987-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-683-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0387-8 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Peggy Redmond Hayes

  ONE

  ‘I thought everyone in Iceland was blond.’

  Buffalo Police Detective Lauren Riley raised her eyebrow at her temporary partner as she crouched over the body, but said nothing.

  A young man with dark hair was lying face down in the alley that ran between the Sussex Hotel and the Fordham Center Bank. He’d almost made it to the light at the mouth of the alley, but had gone down less than a foot from where someone on the street might have seen him. Might have saved him. The attack had started halfway down the alley. His leather messenger bag lay intact on the ground thirty feet from the body. A black glove was next, fifteen feet away; its twin still on the victim’s hand, the leather marred as he had tried to defend himself. The victim’s knit hat had come off in the struggle – a vicious struggle – and was lying next to his outstretched arm. The dark stains on his knees and elbows showed Detective Riley he had desperately tried to crawl away, even as his attacker had been pounding his head in.

  The sheer will of this man to survive had been as fierce and ferocious as his attacker’s intent to destroy him. The killer had overwhelmed him after pulling him back again and again, raining vicious blows to his head and face, finally wearing him down. The nails on his exposed hand were bloody and jagged. A knot clenched in Lauren’s gut as she realized this man had been literally inches from safety when he finally succumbed.

  ‘Did you find some ID?’ she asked, done with her initial notes. She flipped her notebook shut, tucking it in her front coat pocket, keeping it close. She’d need it again soon enough.

  ‘It says he’s Gunnar Jonsson from Reykjavik, Iceland.’ Sheehan was holding a bagged Icelandic passport, opened through the plastic, reading off the information to Lauren. ‘The customs stamp says he arrived in Toronto seven days ago. Crossed into the United States on the same date.’ Doug Sheehan was sixty-one years old and waiting for his birthday so he could collect Social Security and his pension at the same time. They’d been paired up only until Reese, her real partner, got back from his medical leave for an on-duty injury, but it was hard for someone like her to work with Doug. Clearly the mandated sensitivity training had been a waste of time. As far as Lauren was concerned, the sooner he blew out the candles on his cake the better.

  Hell, she’d bake the cake herself. And blow out the candles.

  Lauren brushed a strand of her short brown hair out of her eyes. The knit hat she’d worn against the December wind couldn’t even keep her shaggy bangs in line, let alone keep her ears warm. Her self-proclaimed stylist, also known as her neighbor, Dayla, had told her to try something new. So she had cut her long blond hair off and let it grow in naturally darker. I should have gone out for Thai food instead, she thought as she shoved another strand back under her hat. But at least now I don’t look so much like the pictures that ran in the paper.

  ‘We’ll have to check the Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston and Rainbow Bridge records,’ she said, now snapping some quick photos with her work phone. Nothing beat the police photographer’s pictures, but in the beginning stages of an investigation she hated to wait.

  The bridges were the three main crossover points between Toronto and Buffalo. Less than one hundred miles from each other, Toronto was the closest major international airport to Buffalo and its residents flew out of there quite often. While Buffalo Niagara was an international airport, it was only a mid-sized one and had very few direct flights out of the country. Lauren had taken many flights from Toronto that would have been a two-stop layover had she flown from Buffalo Niagara. She made a mental note to call her friend Brendan, who worked customs at the Peace Bridge. Maybe he could help ge
t this man’s crossing records.

  Sheehan had his other hand stuffed way down into his pants pocket, making his jacket ride up, exposing his beer gut. He brought the passport back up to his nose to take another look – he forgot his glasses in his desk back at the office. At least it wasn’t his gun this time. He had walked around a shooting scene two days before with an empty holster on his hip the entire time. When Lauren pointed it out, he got so red in the face she thought he was going to have a heart attack right there next to the crime scene tape.

  ‘Gunnar was hit from behind.’ Lauren pointed a gloved finger at the deep laceration that cut through the back of his head, tracing its path as it parted his jet-black hair in a wide bloody grin.

  ‘No signs of a robbery.’ Now Sheehan was crouched next to the body, still clutching the passport the evidence techs had taken out of the messenger bag. Sheehan motioned to the gold watch on the victim’s wrist. Gunnar’s wallet had been untouched as well, with three hundred in cash and an ATM receipt still tucked inside. The address on the ATM slip was just on the other side of the alley, and the time on it put his withdrawal within minutes of his murder. Hell, it was still within minutes of his murder. Not quite an hour had passed since Gunnar had taken the cash from the machine.

  Lauren stood up, hands on her hips, stretching out her back. It sucked being over forty. Seemed like hitting that milestone meant overnight everything was either stiff or aching. Looking down at the young man’s body before her she immediately felt guilty. Aches and pains were definitely better than the alternative. She moved out of the way of the Buffalo Police photographer, Andy Knowles, as he adjusted his lens to get a long angle on the body from the mouth of the alley.

  The victim was wearing jeans and a green sweater under his brown parka, which was soaked in blood. He’d been repeatedly struck in the head and face with a blunt object. Patrol officers had recovered a bloody brick two streets away and were now standing guard over it until evidence could come and collect it. Lauren could picture two young cops standing in the cold staring down at a blood-and-hair-encrusted brick that had probably been plucked from one of the numerous construction projects going on all over downtown. There seemed to be more scaffolding some days than skyline.

  Lauren silently regarded the body before her. The skull looked crushed. The face practically erased. That was a lot of rage.

  His clothes were intact. His heavy black boots were still laced and tied on his feet. This Icelandic man had been surprised and struck repeatedly, fought for his life, and left for dead. For nothing.

  It didn’t make sense.

  The wind was blowing sideways off Lake Erie. An hour earlier it had been a calm, clear bright night. The weather changed by the minute in Buffalo. The alley was perfectly sheltered from the snow blowing across the sidewalk just a few feet away. Lauren scanned the narrow passage. It was more of a walkway between the two multistory buildings than a typical city alley. There were no dumpsters, no garbage bags, no homeless stretched out over grates. During the day, business people would use it to cut through to the eateries and dry cleaners and office supply stores on the next street. At night, the only illumination was from windows high up on either side. She looked for cameras mounted above the few exit doors that opened into the alley but didn’t see any. She would double check with the building managers. Sometimes they got lucky.

  The pavement was icy, and devoid of any usable shoe prints. Had a delivery driver not needed to take a piss in a hurry, Gunnar’s body could have laid there for hours unnoticed. After six in the evening on a Thursday in December this part of downtown Buffalo grew pretty desolate.

  ‘He has a key card to the Sussex Hotel,’ Lauren said to her partner. The new medical examiner and her assistant had arrived, and were waiting off to the side for her and Sheehan to give the OK to move the body. ‘We’ll stop at the front desk once the ME is finished.’

  ‘Are you done with the initial scene?’ Sheehan asked the photographer as he motioned toward the medical examiner and her assistant with the evidence bag. ‘I want them to turn the body over.’

  The fifty-ish, curly-haired police photographer raised his monster of a camera, so unusual in this age of the cellphone picture, and snapped a couple quick photos. ‘All set, detective,’ he told Sheehan, backing up to make room and avoiding the large pool of blood outlining the upper body.

  ‘You’re good to go, doctor,’ Sheehan called, giving a thumbs up in case the howl of the wind outside the alley drowned out his words.

  The ME walked over and gave Lauren a firm handshake, which was not all that easy to do with gloves on, then pulled latex gloves over the top of leather ones. Most people shed one for the other, but Doctor Heartly did things her own way. She was the third medical examiner Erie County had had in three years. The job, obviously, wasn’t that attractive. ‘How are you, Lauren?’

  ‘I’d be better if I had the bastard that did this in cuffs,’ she replied, eyes returning to the dead man’s body. Snow had started to accumulate on the back of his coat and in his hair. Older than Lauren’s daughters but younger than her, this man had been snuffed out and left in the alley like trash.

  ‘Detective Lauren Riley: avenging angel.’ That was as close to making a joke as Dr Heartly got.

  Inwardly cringing at the nickname the media had bestowed upon her less than a year ago, Lauren told her, ‘That’s one part of my past I’d like to forget.’

  ‘I think I may have said that same thing once or twice.’ The medical examiner gave her a knowing half-smile, which Lauren managed to return. Lauren had been national news for a few months, hence the new hair. People knew her as a tall, long-haired blond, not a bespectacled, short-haired brunette.

  But people see what they want to see, Lauren thought as she watched the doctor become all business. Heartly’s face settled into a neutral mask, ready for the task at hand.

  Doctor Brenda Heartly drifted forward in that strange way she had of walking, a sort of glide combined with a limp. Headquarters speculation was that she was in a car accident when she was younger, but no one knew for sure, and no one knew her well enough to ask. She’d only been with Erie County for the last six months. Lauren felt bad for her on cold nights like this one because the limp definitely became more pronounced.

  ‘Help me, Kent,’ she told her assistant, and together they gently rolled Gunnar onto his side. Kent held the victim in place so that the medical examiner could do her thing. Heartly regarded the body for a moment, then pulled a digital recorder from her heavy wool coat’s pocket. She clicked it on and spoke into it. ‘Doctor Brenda Heartly, Erie County Medical Examiner. It is Thursday, December twelve; approximately’ – she glanced at the digital watch on her wrist – ‘8:03 p.m. The temperature is currently twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit.’

  Lauren retrieved her notebook and scribbled the details so she could write up the scene later. The doctor continued with her examination. ‘Cursory on-scene impressions: the victim is a white male, approximately thirty years of age. Visual inspection notes numerous blunt force trauma wounds to the head and face. Livor mortis is not yet apparent in the extremities.’ She leaned forward over Gunnar as Kent steadied the body, trying to take in as much as possible before they took him back to the morgue. ‘Note that there is at least one wound to the victim’s skull where bone is exposed.’ She stood up and waved the ambulance crew in, as the photographer snapped a few pictures with the victim’s face visible.

  ‘Are you all set?’ Lauren asked the medical examiner.

  She nodded. ‘I won’t be able to determine anything else until I can get him undressed and on the table. I’ll see you first thing in the morning at the post, Detectives.’

  ‘You’ll see one of us,’ Lauren told her. She hoped Sheehan would volunteer for the post. The post-mortems, or autopsies for the lay person, were always done at six in the morning. Lauren knew Sheehan was trying to build up his pension with overtime and he’d sacrifice a good night’s sleep for the extra money. The medic
al examiners worked on a straight salary, but Lauren doubted Dr Heartly ever got more than two or three hours of sleep a night. It seemed she always answered her cell on the first ring, no matter what time it was.

  ‘One detective is all I need,’ Dr Heartly responded and moved out of the way.

  Kent helped the two ambulance attendants place the body on a stretcher. He looks so small, Lauren thought as they loaded the victim up. So small and broken.

  Lauren hovered nearby as they prepared to wheel the body away. Gunnar, with his Viking name, came all the way here to Buffalo from Iceland to get run down in an alley and bludgeoned to death. Welcome to America.

  ‘You ready to go talk to the hotel manager?’ Sheehan’s nasally voice cut through Lauren’s thoughts.

  ‘Yeah.’ She watched as they trundled the body to the waiting ambulance at the end of the alley. The lights were off, the siren silent. There was no rush to get this poor man to the morgue – dead is dead.

  Three patrol cars were parked on the street blocking the front of the alley. Behind them the ambulance attendants prepared to leave. Now that the city had gone to one-man cars, you got three patrol vehicles showing up to a scene instead of just one with two people in it. How that saved money Lauren wasn’t sure, but that was why she’d turned down supervisor jobs in the past. She didn’t want to be in charge of anyone but herself.

  Thankfully, detectives still worked in pairs, but Lauren was known for going off on investigations on her own. It had gotten her in a lot of trouble and had almost cost both her and her partner, Reese, their lives this past year. She’d vowed to do better, try to work well with others, with mixed results so far.