Free Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) by Kate Watterson

some ways, he’s just what we’ve been looking for. Someone with access to the area … someone women seem to trust.”
    Rick said nothing, just driving, his expression indecipherable. “I’ve been going over it too. He has no priors, but that doesn’t mean much. Most serial killers don’t look like monsters. They can be good-looking guys with money, intelligent, seem nice enough, but there’s a blip on the screen, you know? Something out of whack, a piston not firing like it should. That’s the kind of guy who kills a girl, and then when we can’t—don’t, whatever—make any progress in finding him, amps up the tension by leading us to her murder scene like a farmer with a pole taking his bull out to the field by the ring in his nose. Maybe our stupidity frustrated him. Like you said, he’s smart.”
    “Jesus, Rick, spare me the bovine comparisons,” Ellie muttered. “And I argue the point we’re stupid, if you don’t mind. The state police detectives we’ve used for assistance are just as empty-handed as we are. We don’t have a fiber, a hair, a witness, or any other bit of tangible evidence. We don’t even have a single suspect unless you count Grantham.”
    “I’m surprised you didn’t ask him about the restraining order his now ex-wife placed against him during their separation.”
    Why hadn’t she asked? Ellie wasn’t sure.
    “One restraining order means very little at this point. If he can’t provide proof he wasn’t in this area on the dates we gave him, then we’ll look into that. Restraining orders are too often a case of he said/she said. Divorce can get pretty ugly.”
    “You’re telling me,” Rick agreed grimly. “My ex gave every stitch of clothes I owned to Goodwill the day we hashed out the fact we both wanted to split. I agreed to go stay in a motel so we could both cool off before we discussed the kids and settlements. When I came back a few days later, I pretty much had no personal possessions. She’d even burned my high school yearbook out of spite.”
    Having never been married, Ellie couldn’t relate exactly, but she’d had a couple of relationships that had bordered on serious and breaking up hadn’t been fun, so she could only imagine. “That’s petty.”
    “I think petty is pretty accurate way to describe Vivian.” He drove with competence, as he did most things. He was a good law enforcement officer, trustworthy and efficient, and his size didn’t hurt either. If she were one of the bad guys, she wouldn’t consider a tangle with Rick Jones. He added, “Let’s not pull punches. Vindictive fucking bitch works too.”
    Ellie laughed.
    He glanced at her and grinned “Feels good to say it now and again, you know?”
    “Thank God, I don’t know,” she said truthfully.
    “Ever come close?”
    “To getting married?”
    He nodded.
    She was surprised. They had worked together on and off for seventeen months now, trying to pick up on anything that might lead them to a break in the disappearances. Ellie had handled other cases as usual, and Rick had his duties with the county, but they met weekly at least to discuss the investigations and rarely did they touch on anything personal. She hesitated and then admitted, “I thought about it once. Right after I graduated from UWM. He was a veterinary student there. Nice guy, but I realized after a while that his commitment was a lot more toward his career than it was to me. Funny thing is, when we talked about it, he said the same thing about me. I think we were both right, actually.”
    They had been. She had known it the minute she was relieved it was over, as if the impending question was an anvil over her head, waiting to fall and crush her. Then Brian had come along, and it had been good for a while. He’d even moved in, but they had been playing at it, not serious, and when he’d left she hadn’t grieved.
    She wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she was sure he hadn’t been it. They’d been treading water