Cold Lake by Jeff Carson Page B

picked us up.” She took a sip of her coffee and seemed to steel her thoughts. “I remember he was so sullen on the trip back. And then when we got in the house, he went crazy.”
    “Meaning?” Wolf asked.
    “He was screaming and throwing things. Calling me a whore. Yelling at me about how I was disgracing the family.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “Did he hurt you?”
    She shook her head.
    “And then what did he do?”
    “He locked me in the room. That was it. I went to sleep.” She shrugged again.
    “The next day my father came to visit you asking about Nick Pollard’s disappearance.”
    She looked at him and nodded. “Yeah. He was a nice guy, your dad. He was real concerned for us.”
    “But that day, the day after the Fourth of July, you guys told him that your dad had been with you guys the whole time at the marina. The entire fireworks show.”
    She frowned and shook her head. “I didn’t tell your father anything. I didn’t speak that day when your father came over. I talked to your father the next day, after my dad left. When we went into the station and did the interviews.”
    “Okay.” Wolf nodded. “Were you concerned for your safety when my father came asking about Nick Pollard that next day? On the evening of the fifth?”
    “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Because my father had a bag of bloody clothes lying next to the house. I saw it the next day. Then I thought about how my father was yelling all those things the night before, and … I put two and two together.”
    “So you saw the bag of bloody clothes, too?”
    Kimber nodded.
    Wolf frowned. “So, he left it outside all night? The bag?”
    She frowned for an instant and then nodded. “Yes. It was up against the house. It was there the whole time your father and the other deputy were talking to us, actually.”
    “Why didn’t you tell my father about the bag? About your suspicions?”
    “I hadn’t seen what was in the bag yet. I checked it later. After your father left.”
    Wolf leaned back and took a breath. “My father came the next evening. The evening of the fifth. So you saw the bag of clothes the next evening.”
    She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t see what—”
    “You said you saw the bag of clothes on the next day. Now you’re saying you actually saw it the next evening.”
    She snorted a laugh. “I saw it the next day, then I looked in it the next evening.”
    “Yelling what things exactly?” Wolf asked, changing tack. “Do you remember what made you think he’d done it?”
    She narrowed and widened her eyes a few times and then looked at Wolf. “I don’t know. The whore thing. He kept telling me I was a whore. Like I had been going out on the town and screwing every guy or something.” She looked at Wolf. “Which I hadn’t been, by the way. Then all of a sudden the guy I went on a couple of dates with goes missing? And then the clothing with blood on it?”
    Wolf nodded and sipped his coffee. “Do you have those bloody clothes?”
    She snorted again. “No. Like we told your father, my dad left with those clothes. Your father never found any blood traces of Nick’s. You guys scoured the place.” She looked into her cup. “What? Are you testing me or something?”
    Wolf sipped his coffee. “Like I said, I haven’t watched your interview yet. Do you know who called your father that night? At the marina?”
    “No. They say it was a woman. I still don’t know who it could have been.”
    “It was the number to a gas station down the valley, right at the junction of highway 734,” Wolf said. “That didn’t ring any bells with you back then?”
    She shook her head.
    “And it still doesn’t after all these years?”
    She shook her head.
    “And did you or your mother suspect he was seeing someone else? Cheating on her?”
    She frowned and then shook her head.
    Wolf stood up and walked to the kitchen doorway. So far he’d seen the entryway to the house, which was a cramped