Cover of Snow (12 page)

Vern Weathers shoved his chair back and tugged a cloth napkin from the collar of his shirt. “That was some good meal,” he said.

“Nothing I haven't made a thousand times before,” his wife said. She was nibbling at a forkful held aloft.

“Your chili mac is famous,” Vern said, polishing off his glass of water. “You could make it ten thousand times, and I wouldn't complain.”

“Just because folks around here like something doesn't make it famous.”

Vern looked across the table. “Something happened on one of your shows that's got you all upset? Someone got voted off or voted down or voted under?” He smiled at the question, figuring Dorothy would smile back.

But she didn't. “I'm just saying that Wedeskyull isn't the whole world.”

There was silence for a minute or two.

“Will it be a late one tonight?” Dorothy asked.

“Might be.”

Dorothy set down her fork with a trembling hand. “Maybe you should stay home.”

“You telling me how to do my job now?” Vern asked. “Maybe you've been watching the cop shows. You wouldn't be the only person in America thinks watching on TV qualifies him to be on the job.”

“Stay home,” Dorothy said suddenly. “Oh Vernon, stay home. I'll fix coffee, and we can watch a show together. There's one on at eight o'clock. You wouldn't believe what the people get up to—”

Vern dropped his napkin on the table and rose to his feet.

Dorothy stopped speaking.

Squaring his hands on his hips, Vern took a look into the dining room. The kitchen had a pass-through for platters to be handed in. They'd never done much entertaining and the pass-through usually collected mail and other clutter. Tonight it held snakes of Christmas garland and assorted other holiday frippery that hadn't been boxed up yet.

“Take care of this, will you?” Vern asked, gesturing. “I don't want to be looking at bells and ribbon come Easter.” He paused. “It'll give you something to do besides getting all riled up looking at TV.”

“Yes,” his wife murmured, clearing the plates. Hers was still laden. “Of course.”

She walked around him to the kitchen, her movements slow and deliberate. Dorothy walked as if she had an ache somewhere deep inside her, a little hunched over. By the time Vern had finished with his coat and mask, she was busy coiling up a dozen strands of lights, which had gone dim long ago.

Vern got into his Mountaineer and headed out. He'd been looking in on Nora Hamilton at least once a day. Making sure she was all right. Checking through a window if he didn't want to bother with a visit. She'd been out and about a little much for his liking. It didn't do to go running around the North Country when your head wasn't on straight. A person could get into trouble that way. Brendan had found trouble as bad as it got; Vern would be goddamned if the wife had to suffer any more. And what she was looking for could only lead to suffering. So if he had to make a few calls, ask Donny at the pharmacy to take it easy on the wife, not tell her anything about a night best left forgotten, then he would. These were his people, and he knew best.

He'd thought that with Brendan gone, the wife would go, too. Leave for where she came from, go back to
her
people. But that didn't seem to be happening.

Vern drove into the Melvilles' driveway. Nora's next-door neighbors spent part of the winter in Florida. The Mountaineer was dark gray; it would stand out against the snow if he parked on the road. He left the engine running so the interior would stay warm as he backtracked to Jean's place, the one she kept in town.

Any luck, Nora would be sleeping. In addition to parading herself about, she seemed to do a lot of sleeping these days, too.

Vern decided that since he'd already been to one of Jean's houses—dim and quiet the whole time he was there—he might as well go see the other one.

There'd been a second car parked in the drive alongside Nora's little red number. Some pansy-ass German model. Vern had called in the plates, but there hadn't been anything on its owner besides two parking tickets, racking up fines. A Gabriel Deacon. Someone else to keep an eye on.

It wasn't that Vern hated outsiders—that wasn't it at all. It was just that they made things more difficult, harder to manage, with their questions for the real estate agents, their observation of problems once their kids started in school, and the upgrades and new things they wanted for their different forms of fun. Snow-surfing and wind-boarding? Life was recreation to these people. They had grills the size of a pickup truck bed—and the men were the ones who cooked. Hot, bubbling water to soak in, out on their decks in wintertime. One thing Vern knew was that life and sport were two different things.

All Vern had ever wanted to do was maintain the peace in his town, let the men work, have their play come week's end, keep folks safe and warm in a land that was hard on people. Like his daddy had done before Vern took control, and his granddaddy before that.

What civilians didn't understand—and never would—was that a few shortcuts, some corners cut, created
more
safety for the people the police were charged with protecting. All those rules and regs slowed an officer down, kept him from doing what was right, or else they dragged out the trouble in a situation already gone wrong. Civilians didn't get why or when the rules needed to be bent, but they benefited when they were. So sometimes you just had to keep people from seeing.

Vern radioed for a plow as he drove down Patchy Hollow. He couldn't stand the way this road narrowed over the winter months till it was no better than a single-laner come April. Lurcquer could take care of it, or better yet, the rookie, back less than a year from Coronado. Gilbert Landry. His mother was from away, her folks had moved up when she was a baby. And Paula Landry was raising her son on her own, another count against her, no matter what Vern had to pretend for modern minds. He'd been glad when Gilbert had come back home, though. Boy with his training knew more than a lifetime on the job could teach.

Vern pulled up in Jean's drive, tires flattening the recent coating of snow.

“A visit from the Chief,” she said, once he rapped on the door. “This is an occasion.”

“Take a walk with me, Jeannie,” Vern said, and waited while she went for her boots.

They crossed the road, giving Eileen's dimly lit house a wide berth, as if by silent consent. Vern had carried on a brief but heated affair with Jean back when he was first married, and just beginning to feel the crush of Dorothy's shortcomings. It had been more than just physical relations, despite the short duration of their time together. He and Jean understood each other, always had. Vern harbored more than a few
could've beens
where Jean Hamilton was concerned.

They never referred to it, though, their shared past. One day, decades ago, Vern stopped coming to see her for stolen wedges of time. He realized that a scandal—or worse, a divorce—would make what he had to do as Chief impossible. How could you father a land when you couldn't even father your own—well, of course he and Dorothy had never had any kids.

She'd never been able to, the cavity of her womb vacant for some reason, nothing for a baby to latch onto, as the doc put it. It was a failing Vern hadn't signed on for, but which duty compelled him to accept.

Their childlessness made it even more important that he serve as a good role model for the wider group of people he oversaw. And once Vern understood that, he never allowed himself to meet Jean privately again, although there were times when they ran into each other, many times, this town being what it was, and a powerful storm of regret always surged through him.

He and Jean neared the lake, hardly distinguishable from the snowy fields around it. No one cleared this lake anymore because no one ever used it. They stuck to other smaller and inferior bodies of water for wintertime sport, though in summer it was like people forgot, and Patchy Hollow would again sport bright figures and shouts of laughter.

“So many of us are gone now,” Jean said, each word so heavy it seemed to be pulled by gravity to the ground. “Burt … Bill … Brendan.” She raised her eyes. “It's bled into the next generation, hasn't it?”

Vern gazed out over the expanse before them. A falcon sat in a high-up branch, tawny against all the white, hunting. Vern watched the bird find something and dive, its beak an arrow aimed at a spot Vern couldn't detect on the ground. He looked away before the bird could seize its small, unsuspecting prey.

“I don't know about that, Jeannie,” Vern said. “You might see it that way. But I look around, and I'm glad for how many of us are left.”

Jean's hand hung limply at her side. Vern allowed his to drop, brush Jean's glove for just a moment. Even thick padding couldn't muffle the charge that ignited. Vern's heart started pounding, although he suspected the conversation was as responsible for that as the touch.

Jean pretended not to notice what he'd done. “Sometimes I wish we'd sold the houses after everything happened.”

Vern kept silent.

“I tried,” Jean went on. “I bought the place in town, moved in for a while. But it didn't matter. Eileen was never going to leave this spot.”

“That's what I admire about you, Jeannie,” Vern said at last.

She raised her face toward his, but Vern looked away.

“You were always willing to put the past behind you,” he continued. “Not like your brother or his wife. For them it just went on and on. It never stopped. But you were always ready to be done.”

Jean lifted her tired eyes again. Vern wondered when they had come to look that way, the valleys beneath them so creviced and deep, and whether his own appeared anywhere near the same.

“Yes,” she agreed. “That's right, Chief. I'm ready to be done.”

The twin ways Jean's words could be taken occurred to Vern as he was climbing back into the Mountaineer, accompanied by an uneven thunk in his chest that made him realize he wouldn't be around forever, overseeing this land. Dave was younger by only a few years, and in worse shape than Vern. Who would the job fall to, now that Brendan was gone? Gilbert had the strength, the brains, and the conviction, but Vern would be goddamned if anybody whose family had barely lived up here two generations was going to step in as Chief.

He let his heart rate slow, then got out and stamped back up the walk to Jean's.

“Been a while since Burt Mitchell's name came up,” Vern said when Jean opened the door. He gave her a smile that crinkled his eyes. “Takes me back to old times.”

Jean didn't smile back.

“There's not much left of those times, is there?” Vern went on. When Jean didn't reply, he forced another statement out. “It's probably safe to say there's nothing left.”

Jean wrapped her arms around herself, and Vern saw her, many years younger and many pounds thinner. What a looker she had been. But tonight she was even more beautiful.

“That's right, Chief.”

Vern took off his hat, holding it down by his gut. “You're sure now?”

Jean looked up at him.

Their eyes held.

The weight of all that wasn't said—all that never could be said—hung between them.

“My God,” Jean said. “Do you ever think back? Seems like in my memory all we did was laugh. Everything was cause for fun. Remember us then?”

Vern nodded. For just a second, he did remember.

“How could there be anything of that left?” Jean asked.

Then she rose on tiptoes, overcoming her height and the added girth, until she was almost as tall as Vern. His chest cramped again as Jean brushed her lips, so much softer and more lush than his wife's, across the corners of his mouth.

Vern hadn't wanted me to know about Red's death, and he didn't want me to know what happened on the sixteenth either. What had he done as soon as I told him I was going to the pharmacy to ask about the medicine? Sent me off to replace a taillight. Giving him time to call—what was his name, Donald Brannigan—and instruct him to play dumb.

Talk about conspiracy theories. And even if I was in the neighborhood of right, what could I possibly do about it?

The next day, I took Teggie and Gabriel out to breakfast at the diner in town, then accompanied them both to the Northway, following Gabriel's BMW in my Honda. We stopped at the entrance and I climbed out to see them off.

The ground was uneven, humped with snow, and drifts were getting stirred up by a fast wind, cat-high and screechy.

I screened my face, leaning down to the driver's-side window. Gabriel lowered the glass. “I'm really glad we met,” I said, and he reached up to squeeze my gloved hand.

Teggie opened her door and got out.

“I'm sorry I was such a bitch yesterday.” My sister lowered her head to mine so that her burnished curls could mingle with my unattended strands. I couldn't remember washing my hair lately, let alone having it cut. “It makes me crazy when I think you're fooling yourself.”

I leaned in for a hug. Despite Teggie's puffy coat, my arms still fit all the way around her, but she was gaining weight, I could tell. For some reason, I said as much.

My sister laughed. “I think you might be, too.”

“Me?” I tried to get a look at myself through my layers of outerwear. “Bereavement. It's a real appetite enhancer.”

Teggie cackled. “Hungry, and suddenly snide, too.”

My smile waned. “I love you, Teg.”

“Oh, Nor. Me, too.”

“And I'm happy for you,” I whispered, and she held on until something made her turn toward Gabriel in the car. He was looking significantly at the clock on the dashboard, and she gave him a quick nod, me a final squeeze, then ran lightly over the rutted ice before jumping inside so they could drive away.

When I started my car and wheeled around on the empty road to get going back north, an engine light came on. It was wild and flashing, orange with an unintelligible black symbol in the middle of that glowing eye. I switched my gaze between it and the road, making sure no cars were coming just in case mine decided to do something unpredictable. The light continued to blink on and off at a pace rapid enough to induce seizures.

Some kind of glitch in the electrical system?

I had gone a few more miles when the engine stopped altogether. I heard everything go off. It was as discreet as a jet airline powering down at the gate.

“Oh, damn,” I spoke aloud.

This wasn't a glitch; it was massive, catastrophic failure. And my car had been driving just fine. For years.

With the remaining momentum, I steered—heaving, effortful; the power gone from the wheel—to the snowbanked shoulder and let my car coast to a stop. I gave an automatic twist of the key, but there was nothing to turn off.

I looked around. No cars on the road.

I reached for my pack, praying my cell had held its charge. Too cold to be out here for long in this situation. I was about to dial AAA when I spotted a white rectangle of paper lying beside the phone. I drew it out, hitting keys in rapid succession, suddenly aware that there was no one I would rather have help with my car.

When Dugger drove up in the tow truck, it was clear he hadn't understood who I was by my greeting on the phone, nor did he recognize me now. I tried to mount a smile, but it trembled on my lips. Dugger off-kilter was a startling—if not scary—sight.

“It's me, Nora,” I said, then forced myself to add two words that still caused pain. “Mrs. Hamilton? I was at the garage last week—”

Dugger was lowering himself from the cab, a wild expression in his bright eyes. Only when he reached the ground did his breathing finally start to slow. “Missus?”

The nod I gave was a bit frantic itself.

“Something wrong with your car?”

I barked a short laugh. “You could say that.”

He lifted the hood and took a look underneath, coming up with his forehead furrowed, his brows drawn down. “I'll have to hitch it,” he said.

The announcement seemed to be as much for his benefit as mine.

I waited in the truck while Dugger got to work, slow and patient, the wind yowling around him.

At the garage, he put my car up on a lift, and took out a device that looked something like extra-long pliers, only computerized, trailing wires. The tools of his trade had gone digital. Refinishing wood or walls still required caustic chemicals and the repetitive motion of your own hand, and I was taken aback by a fierce wave of longing.

“Missus?”

I lifted my head from my reverie.

“Engine's working fine.”

I hadn't even heard it come to life, but I registered the steady rush now. I started to frown. “You mean … it wasn't broken?”

Dugger's face split into a grin. “It was broken. Just wasn't hard to fix.” He held up a battered metal box. The piece of equipment he'd started with lay abandoned on a stool. “Had to get out my old tools.”

He slammed the hood down.

I felt a frown building; my habitual state when accompanied by Dugger seemed to be one of confusion. “Your old tools? How come?”

From the expression on Dugger's face, I could tell he wouldn't be able to explain it to me, whatever had gone wrong, the machinations of which he was capable. And I guessed it didn't really matter, so long as my car was in working order.

Plus, he looked like he was getting upset, and I didn't want that. So I hurried to change the subject. “You were right, you know,” I said. “About Brendan skating.”

Dugger gave me a beatific, gleaming smile as he climbed into my car and rode it, door open, one leg hanging out, through the bay to the lot. Then he came back inside, circling over to me. “I know I was, Missus.”

“You used to go with him?” I picked up the thread as if there hadn't been any interruption. Hungry now, on a hunt for the past, I felt almost as crazed as Dugger had looked when we met by the side of the road.

“Not me, Missus,” Dugger said calmly. “Told you already, I wasn't allowed out on the ice. But I watched. I always like to watch.”

“Were you there …” My voice trailed off. How far could I push him?

He was watching me with those vivid eyes, no hint of his earlier trouble or distress.

“Were you there the day Red died?” I asked at last. Someone had to have been there, not running or helping or doing much of anything. Someone had taken that horrid picture of Bill.

“Red dead,” he answered in a casual tone. “Red head.”

“He had red hair, you mean?” I said, thinking of the rusty shock topping the little boy in those pictures. “That's how he got his nickname.”

Dugger lowered his face toward mine, and I had never seen his gaze more limpid, or his voice so clear. “It probably would've darkened,” he said. “If he had lived. Most folks do, time they get older, especially when they start out such carrot-tops.”

“Right … “ I said pointlessly.

“Not everyone, though,” Dugger went on. “Some folks stay redheads.”

This had been a bad idea. Dugger's eyes were still placid pools, but I didn't know what potential lay in their depths. And we weren't getting anywhere. I couldn't make sense of his circles. “I'm sorry,” I said. What did it matter if Dugger had been there when Red died? I already knew what had happened. And knowing more about that long-ago day wouldn't provide any information about the other January twenty-third, the most recent one.

“Red hurts,” Dugger said suddenly, and I looked up. “
Lynn lurks
—no! That doesn't work!” He punched himself swiftly in the chest, a hollow, rapping sound.

“Dugger, stop that!” I cried. Then I paused. Who was Lynn? “We don't have to talk about Red anymore—”

He was fidgeting with something beneath the counter. Then I heard the sound of my own voice, urgent and driven. “Were you there the day Red died?” And Dugger's airy, disconnected response:
Red dead. Red head
.

“What is that?” I asked. “Dugger? What are you doing?”

He lifted his hand. In it was clasped a slim silver rectangle, part of its front speckled with dots. An audio recording device. I frowned again.

“You recorded us talking?” I asked. “Dugger? You record people?”

“Be quiet, Missus!” he said, not threateningly. “Talking, walking, balking—”

The crash of a glass door startled me as much as the onset of Dugger's rhymes.

“Mackenzie!” Al Meter barked. “I can't figure this thing out.” He seemed to be muttering half to himself. “Can't fix an engine now without a goddamned computer. It's lucky I got you to—” Then he broke off, taking a good look at Dugger.

His voice was still rising beside me.

Al peered through rheumy eyes at us both. “Miz Hamilton?”

“Caulking, mocking—no!” Dugger struck the counter with one balled hand. The other still held the recorder. “Stalking—”

“Aw,” Al said. “He's gone and gotten all upset.”

Al thrust a thick, oil-smeared hand against my chest. I stumbled backward, not sure if I'd just been assaulted or simply shunted aside. Al was scrabbling around in a cabinet that stood near the counter. He came out with an amber medicine bottle. No red dot on that one, I'd bet; Al was used to what he was doing.

As if in confirmation Al grumbled, “Now he'll be tired out the whole rest of the day.”

“Why?” I said in a whisper. “What's wrong with him?”

Al hardly looked up. “Don't matter what fancy name you put on it. But his ma says he's artistic. He takes one of these when he gets excited and it sets him right.”

Autistic, my brain corrected. That must be what Al meant.

Al got the lid open and shook two tablets out. He held them up to Dugger's mouth and he gobbled them right out of his boss' grease-blackened palm, like a beast who'd learned to love his master. I backed away toward the door, letting in a freezing column of air. Neither man seemed to notice when I left.