Constable Molly Smith 01 - In the Shadow of the Glacier

this place is like. Small town, family-owned businesses. Footage of you in front of it will locate you, Meredith, in this place at this time.”
    “The bridge is usually used as a backdrop for Trafalgar,” she said. “It’s quite distinctive.”
    “Usually. That’s exactly the word, Meredith. I’m not here to do what’s usually done. But if you’re….”
    “Hey,” she said, “let’s go.”

Chapter Nineteen
    Winters waited in the car while Smith went to the door. Her friend’s apartment was in an old house divided into two apartments. In this town of transients, there were a lot of houses broken up to be rented out.
    It was a nice street though. Some of the homes were well maintained, restored back to their heyday of Victorian gentility. Unlike the suburbs, the street was busy with people walking or gardening, and children played on neatly maintained front lawns in the shade of large and aged trees.
    He missed Eliza. This case was proving to be more difficult than he’d expected, and the political angle was throwing him off. Eliza was an astute observer of human nature, and he’d sometimes done his best thinking while bouncing ideas off her. If she hadn’t been in Florida for six weeks last year, helping her parents out because her mother had broken her leg, he might not have screwed up the Blakely case so badly.
    Someday he might come to trust Smith enough to throw his more outlandish ideas at her and see if they’d stick. But she had a lot of growing up to do first.
    A brown bag lay on the front steps. Smith paused, touched it with her foot, picked it up, and looked inside. The frown on her face deepened. She knocked on the door a few times, before pulling out her truncheon and banging at it. A woman stuck her head out of a downstairs window, all ready to give her hell. But she stopped at the sight of the uniform, and Smith walked over to her. The woman shook her head. Smith took out her phone and dialed, listened for the length of time it took the phone to ring four times, and hung up with a grimace of disgust. Tonight, he’d phone Eliza in Toronto. They’d been married for twenty-five years, and he still couldn’t manage a couple of nights without hearing the purr of her voice.
    Smith went back to the door and leaned up against it, standing on tiptoes and holding her hands in front of her face to peer in the high, dirty window at the top of the door. Her body jerked back with such shock that before she could turn and call for help, Winters was moving.
    “What?”
    “I see someone.” Her face was white, her blue eyes wide, breath short and choppy. “On the floor. She’s not moving. Chris!” Smith banged at the door. “Chris, it’s me. Open up.”
    “Ask the lady next door if she has a key.”
    Smith ran, yelling, and Winters took her place at the window, stuffing his sunglasses into the front of his shirt. He could see a woman’s legs, bare, the feet wrapped in sturdy sandals. The upper half of her body disappeared into darkness. He studied the door. It was old, made of thick, solid wood. It wouldn’t be easy to kick down.
    “Got it.” Smith waved the key. The neighbor followed her, trailed by two sticky-faced children.
    Smith moved to push him out of the way. He held out his hand. “I’ll take that.” For a moment he thought she was going to refuse. But she passed the key over.
    “Call this in. Get an ambulance. Keep that woman and particularly those children out of the way. Half the street’ll be here in a minute. Constable Smith, I gave you an order. Do it!”
    She blinked, took a deep breath, and he could almost see the cop flooding back into her, the way that in old horror movies you could see the demon taking possession of the body of the white-limbed maiden.
    She straightened her shoulders and fingered the radio at her collar. “I need you to take your children inside the house ma’am,” she said. “There’s nothing to see here. Dispatch, this is Smith, I need….”
    The hallway was very small and very dark. The woman on the floor took up most of the space. “Bring me a flashlight,” Winters yelled. The legs were curled across the floor, in a semi-fetal position, but her head and shoulders were draped across the stairs, face down. The step was wet. The small, enclosed space smelled of released bladder, blood, and fear.
    Winters dropped to his haunches and touched the exposed neck. Warm skin moved. His fingers came away wet and he looked at them. Definitely