The Cold Winter

By Claudio Hernández

The author keeps the suspense from the beginning. A unique skill to describe and get the reader to move to crime scenes. The cold winter did not reach Boad Hill alone, with him came the murders. Sheriff Burt does not know what to do with the first victim buried under the snow, but soon it will be a habit to find bodies of young girls from New Academy High School. The killer soon gets the nickname Jack Feather Feather as it leaves no trace. In a town where nothing has ever happened, all are now suspects. Peter, a man who at thirty years of age still lives with his father, has a secret. Peter's gift for reading minds will allow you one day to casually discover the killer. Everyone knew him. But only Peter knew who he was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Oct 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507192573

Book preview

The Cold Winter

Claudio Hernández

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Translated by Nestora M. Salcedo 

The Cold Winter

Written By Claudio Hernández

Copyright © 2017 Claudio Hernández

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Nestora M. Salcedo

Cover Design © 2017 DNY59

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

The Cold Winter

Claudio Hernández

First edition eBook: July 2017.

Title: The Cold Winter.

©2017 Claudio Hernández.

©2017 Cover Design: DNY59  Getty images

©2017 Cover Design: Arman Zhenikeyev  shutterstock

©2017 Correction: Tamara López

©2017 Translated : Nestora Salcedo

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Not part of this publication including the cover design can be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means, and by any media, either electronically, chemical, mechanic, optical, recording, in the internet or photocopy, without previous permission of the editor or the author. All rights reserved.

I dedicate this book to my wife, Mary, who has to put up with childishness like this every day, and I hope she never stops doing it. This time, I have involved myself in another adventure that started in my childhood and, with support and determination, I have finished it. Another dream come true. She said that I sometimes shine... sometimes.

Beginning

He was called Jack Feather because he never left a fucking mark on the snow. Perhaps the thick snow that was falling that winter in Boad Hill, one of the whitest of the last ten years, had erased all the tracks with its flakes crashing to the ground while the wind had finished smoothing them.

They all appeared with their panties at their ankles and their eyes open and glassy, ​​showing pain and cruelty, staring at the dark sky. The snowflakes covered them to form a brilliant sculpture while the horror was still there.

In that cold winter of 2017, Peter had fallen in love for the first time of his impossible love.

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1

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Sir, what do we do?  Lloyd Chambers's eyes were stony and did not emit any brightness, quite the opposite: darkness and uncertainty.

Sheriff Burt Duchamp glanced sideways at him for a moment and shook his head under his felt hat, now covered with a thick layer of snow, falling heavily.

Lloyd was one of his men. It was the new one, the fellow. In a city like Boad Hill, everyone knew each other, and one could guess from which foot each limped and from which family came. But Lloyd had come from far off Michigan to face the sheriff Burt's men.

Jack Hodge, the fatty, one of the Sheriff’s agents of Boad Hill, was always sticking his nose into his business, laughing in his face. He glanced at him, later spat a green phlegm that glued on the ground as a mint gum. But that was inside the offices if one could call it that to the Burt’s hovel. Four tables and one study, with a broken glass door. Everybody thought,  Meh! Last name!

Lloyd Chambers was an emaciated guy who begins to have the belly beer. In a few years, he would be with a deformed body, with his stomach on his eggs and his back curved by the weight. Now he would weigh, with the snow on top of the hat, about sixty kilograms. He was dark skinned and had slightly long hair, something that annoyed Burt. His eyes were green and his nose quite pointed. His closed lips drew a thin line, like a closed zipper. Now he wore the official uniform, but when he was on leave, he used to wear jeans to mark the package. A non existent package. He did not smoke or drink alcohol. He never stepped into Moll's bar. What a name, he thought with a rictus on his lips. Prostitute, that's what I wanted to say and, in fact, you found them in there seducing to their possible clients, like ticks about to suck all the blood. He was 47 and had the longest and thinnest cock in the world, but he was proud of it. He had used it only twice. One with Charlize, a mentally retarded woman, but with bright ideas, and again with Elizabeth, how well that name sounded ... But she was never the mother of his children.

I was alone. He was one meter seventy five high and had the boniest hands in the world. His pulse often shaken. He was addicted to coffee.

It's frozen, sir.  His voice was deep and growly. His long neck served as a musical instrument, in this case, to modulate the voice. Why did the frail guys always have a serious voice? Burt wondered.

And how do you want me to be under the snow? Sheriff Burt scolded him as he crouched down to the girl's corpse, which now looked like a dune in the snow.

Burt Duchamp was a hunky man, weighing a hundred kilos, shaved head with grey hair, and a moustache of the same colour that covered his upper lip. His eyes were dark, and his countenance was always serious. It was as if life would piss him off every second. He was one meter and eighty, and he always wore his uniform, even on days when he was free, which he never had. His revolver, the 9 millimeter Glock 19, was always at his fingertips, despite that in Boad Hill, a seemingly quiet town where only strange things happen from time to time, everything else was normal. Fights between drunkards, mistreatment of couples, who went no further than a black eye, and a few hooliganisms of the children and their fucking firecrackers.

But now they were faced with something new. Such new that they had no experience in this type of case, since what was learned in the academy had been thrown into the toilet. But Burt was a resource man and knew what to do. Disconcerted, although he disguised it quite well.

I want you to dig up this poor girl and identify her. I want prints. I want the killer.  And he was so calm. The snow was falling heavily, and his moustache was white, and his nose was red, and it was running at times. They had never had such a cold winter in Boad Hill either.

"Sir, this is Rachel Geller, Tom's daughter.  The voice of one of the officers who had dug it up earlier, informed him with bewilderment about who was.

Well, there's not much to figure out here,  Burt said, turning to face him.  And why the hell did not you tell me before?  Tom was a childhood friend who now lived in a library full of books like blocks of a writer of terror and fantasy.

Do you want to know the cause of death?  Asked Martin, the agent who had told him the name.

I suppose so,  said Burt, almost in a whisper that carried the wind through the surrounding trees, so tall and white that they looked like snowy snowmen who threatened to fall to the ground.

The blue lights of the two patrol cars gleamed in the snow and were reflected between the branches of the trees and their faces as if it were a merry go round. The ambulance arrived in silence, had not set the siren. Red and white, it barely stood out against the glistening white of the snow, which enveloped everything like a large woollen blanket.

The woman, well ... the girl,  Martín said, was torn apart ...

Stripped?  Burt cut him off as two men got out of the ambulance with a red stretcher.

Yes, on both sides,  the officer continued in a murmur, his face a little flushed, even though the snow was clinging to his skin like a suction cup.

The wind, literally ate the noise of the bustle of the men in the hat, while the snow fell with such intensity that they had to blink continuously to remove their flakes from the eyebrows.

And how did you find out if she's buried in the snow?  Burt wanted to know, with his back to the victim, who covered her with moments of new snowflakes.

We proceeded to unearth it this morning because we thought we saw that ...  The agent shrugged and blushed.