Page 71 of Cold as Hell

“I do not think so.”

“That’s not exactly heartening.”

He folds one leg up over his knee. “The papers are very secure, and I see no sign they have been touched.”

“But someone did enter your apartment—possibly twice—to steal from Sebastian’s room, which he didn’t notice. Neither of you realized anyone broke in, right?”

“Non.”

“Then I think I’d like to see where you keep those papers.”

“I am going to need to relocate them now,” Mathias complains as I return the locked box under the floorboard.

“You should anyway,” I say. “Have you never read a single mystery novel? Watched a single mystery film?” I shake myhead. “I suppose I should be glad you didn’t shove them under the mattress.”

“I tried, but the box made a terrible lump, and I could not sleep.”

I put the floorboard down. “I agree there’s no sign it was tampered with. Even if someone found it in that ridiculously obvious spot, the contents are about as secure as you can get.” There’s a key lock on the outer box and a combination on the inner one.

“Merci.”

“However…” I give him a look. “Someone determined to get into it could just take the whole box and figure out how to pry it open. We have a safe in the town hall. I would suggest you store it there.”

I take some time struggling back to my feet, noting no offer of help from Mathias. “I will consider the possibility that Sebastian was targeted because someone found out about his past, and I’ll pass on the tip to Will.”

“Do you expect William to solve this case? He is a fine police officer, but he is not a detective.”

“I’ll be continuing to work on it remotely, through him. Now, as for my question…” I wave him back into the living room so I can sit. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about Lynn’s death.”

“That she was apparently left in the forest during the storm, where she became lost and perished of hypothermia. Sebastian also heard a rumor that she was not simply lost, but tied up and left there.”

I tell him the full story. When I finish, he’s quiet. Very quiet. I can’t read his reaction. He seems to just sit there and consider what I’ve said.

I continue, “I’d like to ask a bit about the psychology of that. It’s sadistic, obviously.”

“Isthat obvious?” He gives me a sidelong look. “It would depend on whether the killer believed Lynn had done something for which this was a fitting punishment.”

From what I understand of Mathias’s past, this was his own modus operandi. Horrible deaths that he considered justice for the crimes committed.

I shake my head. “No resident gets in without a full background check, and no one gets in who’s running from crimes they committed. I know why Lynn was here and I’ve confirmed it with Émilie. No one is going to punish her for that. Of course it’s possible there’s something else in her past that someone might punish her for. Something involving hypothermia? Maybe she got lost with a friend and left that friend to freeze to death?”

“That would not be justification for killing her in such a manner.”

I’d say nothing is justification for what was done to Lynn, but I keep my mouth shut and let him continue.

“In order for her to deserve such a fate, she would need to have done something such as abandon her friend, taking all the supplies and not telling rescuers where to find her companion. Which, yes, is a highly manufactured scenario. Another possibility might be if, as a teenager, Lynn had a baby and abandoned it to die. Now, that is certainly not justifiable cause to punish her—she would have been panicked and acting irrationally—but someone could…”

He sees my expression, and that my hands have instinctively moved to my belly.

“That was inconsiderate of me,” he says. “I apologize. Thereis little point in guessing at what Lynn might have done to make someone think she deserved to die in such a manner. But yes, she might have done something and her killer might have decided it deserved such a death. The stronger possibility is, as you say, sadism, which is the real reason you are here and not to ask why someone might consider that a justifiable fate.”

His gaze rests on me, his piercing look suggesting he knows there was some of that in my question, too.

He continues, “Such a murder suggests extreme sadism. They did not simply abandon her. They did not simply tie her up. They did not even simply strip her down and tie her up. They watched. That was the point. The watching.”

“Watching her slowly die, freezing to death, screaming for help that wouldn’t come.”

“Yes. So who does such a thing? We can talk of psychopaths and sociopaths and the difference ad nauseam, but as you doubtless realize, this is not sociopathy as we see with Sebastian, who might kill to achieve an end.”

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