Cover of Snow (17 page)

I spent the rest of the afternoon uptown on campus, meandering along the same paths Brendan and I used to walk, grateful for the weather, which was mild. I was thinking about how Brendan had become intent on our returning to his hometown, after deciding against a career in law. Becoming a cop was partially an homage to his father. But I wondered if the motivation might also have been that Brendan of all people knew that before crimes could be tried, they needed to be solved.

The temperature was starting to drop by the time I approached the concrete stoop that flagged Teggie's building, and fumbled for her ring of keys. I wondered what kind of plunge was happening back home.

Teggie and Gabriel met me at the door to the apartment.

“Someone's been trying to reach you,” Gabriel said.

“There were twelve hang-ups,” Teggie added. “From a 518 number.”

I frowned.

Gabriel handed me the phone with the number already set to redial, but before I could press the button, the phone rang in my hand.

“Nora,” Club said, his voice a low rumble. “I'm sorry to have to call with this.”

For one crazy second, I thought of Weekend, left alone with Ada Mitchell, and I asked if his dog was all right.

Club ignored my question. “There's been another fire.”

The firemen must have left something smoldering, ready to ignite. Or had somebody in fact set the fire at Ned's house, and returned to finish the job? Maybe the same person who had warned me off by imprisoning Weekend.

“At your house, I mean,” Club said, as if reading my thoughts. “Jean's house is the one I'm talking about.”

It took me a while to determine that Club was referring to the farmhouse Brendan and I had shared, not Jean's foursquare out by Patchy Hollow.

By that time, Teggie and Gabriel were both standing close by, Teggie mouthing,
What?
and Gabriel silently urging her to wait.

There was a high, hysterical note in my voice when I finally stopped mumbling that I didn't know which house he meant. Then I said, “Ned! Ned's staying at my house! Is he—”

Club cut me off. “He's fine. Wasn't there at the time.”

Something in me seemed to settle.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, then. I know what to do.” I went on, thinking out loud in a way that should've told me all was not well. “I can work on two houses at once, that's all. Things at Jean's were never quite done anyway.” I let out a trilling laugh that made Teggie flinch. “After all, this is what I do, right?”

There was silence over the line or cable, whatever it was that crossed the distance between the sparse and frozen Adirondacks and this crowded, melting city.

“Nora, I don't think you understand,” Club said at last in a grief-clotted voice. “Jean's house didn't just catch fire. There's nothing left to fix up. It burned to the ground.”

My knees bent robotically, and Gabriel was beside me, guiding me over to the sofa, phone still clutched in my hand. “Why didn't you call my cell?” My voice sounded muffled, indistinct. I couldn't think of anything besides this to ask. “How did you find me here?”

When Club's answer came, it contained neither comfort nor threat, just a simple, matter-of-fact reply.

“Your cell's dead. We're the police, Nora, don't worry. We can find you anywhere.”

I had nowhere to go.

But I couldn't remain with Teggie and Gabriel in their tiny apartment. New York City wasn't the right place for me anymore, if it ever had been. And my parents would be the worst people to be around right now, as much as it pained me to think so.

“I'm asking you to stay,” Teggie said for the fiftieth time, crouching gracefully beside me the next morning, while I assembled items in my pack.

“Remember you accused me of wanting to have it both ways?” I said.

Teggie shrugged sharply, then nodded.

“Well, now I think you're the one wanting that,” I said. “For me.”

“Is this the part where I'm supposed to say naïvely,
What do you mean?
” Teggie asked. “And then you startle me with your clarity and insight?”

Gabriel reached down and gave Teggie's shoulder a squeeze. It looked as if it hurt. Muscles rippled beneath his shirtsleeve. “Ow,” Teggie muttered.

I stood up, hoisting my sack. “You want me to face things,” I said. “Deal with the cuts, however deep they are. But now you're encouraging me to run away.”

Teggie followed as I headed out of the room.

“Okay, okay,” she said, giving me a hug at the door. “I guess I was wrong.” She paused to offer a grin. “You did surprise me.”

I managed a smile back. Then I went out to my car and drove away.

It is a strange and terrible thing to head back to a place you've never felt entirely a part of, knowing that now there is nobody there you can trust. Ned, who'd been living in both residences when the fires started, and whose hair color once sent Dugger into a spate of rhymes.
Red head, Red dead
. Or Dugger himself, with his recordings and riddles? And finally Club, whose missing rifle had made me suspicious only two nights ago.

The roads out of the city were clogged with traffic. Cars hitched and halted before me. I avoided the gas pedal, rolling forward through a toll plaza, slowly making my way north.

There were questions I had promised Brendan I would answer, and those answers resided in Wedeskyull. Besides, despite having no sure place to go, somewhere along the line the town had become my home.

There were things that were mine there now. Not only the house I'd inhabited, Jean's house, but also Ned's. He needed me to transform it. Already I could picture the multiple colors of exterior paint that would cast their reflection on the land, and a new, soaring roof. When you change something like that, a small piece of it belongs to you.

Miles passed in a meaningless blur. An hour later, I noticed an abrupt change from washed-out color to nothing but white, and the temperature gauge suddenly dropped on my dashboard. But little else registered. I rode with the window cracked to keep me sentient. When I became chilled enough and hunger grew pressing, I stopped for some tea in a Styrofoam cup, and a tasteless egg sandwich.

I had changed my ring tone after charging my cell last night, so as to be more alert to its intrusion now that I was utterly dependent on it for contact with the outside world. The strategy worked, and I jumped in my seat when the first cacophonous lyrics blared. As I snatched the phone out of my sack, which lay across from me on the passenger side, the car wove. Someone honked, loud and long.

I straightened out, sailing past an exit. Then I glanced down at the screen, expecting Teggie, or possibly my mom, if she'd heard what had happened. It wouldn't be like her to initiate a call about it, though. Club again, with more news?

Instead I saw the phantom number that had appeared several times before. Impatiently, I hit the green icon and said hello. A silent exchange while driving seemed pointless, if not risky.

Only this time somebody spoke.

Ned wore Zamberlan boots with snowshoes, and a coat that was rated at twenty below. His only exposed skin was a millimeter circumference around his eyes and mouth. The hand-forged map he carried was almost impossible to grip in his gloves, and worse, hard to follow.

“They're patrolling this spot,” his contact had said. “Frequently. You'll have to come around from the other side. If you get to a big, granite boulder, stop immediately and go back half a mile. You could be seen.”

Ned climbed the sheer white wall of a hill, puffs of snow rising up every time he took an awkward, lunging step. He'd never been good in these things.

The sky was the same color as the hill. No color at all. Ned blinked a few times, disoriented, which he knew could happen out here. He shielded his face with one arm and took a look around. The hill was a clean, bare slope, completely free of trees, and he had an unobstructed view into the woods below. He was looking for the loud, synthetic colors that would signal a person, out of his true habitat and dressed to fight the elements, but he didn't spot any such flash. Ned began to suspect a trap, or at least another wild-goose chase. The battering in his chest pointed to the former, and Ned unclenched his gloved fists, breathing hard.

Two houses had caught fire, but because he hadn't been in either one at the time, Ned had to conclude that hurting or killing him wasn't the goal.

What was, then? The simple burning of his notes, when he'd obviously have computer backups? Not that there was very much to destroy. Any savvy member of the public should've been able to learn what Ned had. He was still collecting background, although he hoped that would change today.

A report of an industrial accident at Paulson's, the concrete plant in town, had come over the police channel, but was later revealed to have been a mistake. And suddenly an idea of Ned's for a story, the flouting of OSHA regulations, had snowballed into something potentially much larger, which Ned didn't yet have a handle on at all.

Snowballed,
he thought. Appropriate out here.

Cold radiated off the whiteness all around, so that the snow seemed to emit cool, white breaths. Ned felt uncomfortable prickles descend beneath his coat.

He fought an impulse to turn, difficult in the snowshoes. Instead he launched out on another succession of slow, clumsy steps, making progress up the hill.

The map said he should come to a cave. His contact had described it as more of a rock overhang, piled so thickly with snow that walls had been formed. Ned squinted, shuffling ahead, and making a visor of his arm again. He thought he saw something and lurched toward it. The toe of one snowshoe got caught in a drift, and he went down.

Ned did an immediate push-up, lifting his torso from the snow. On his knees, he rested a moment, searching for that cave. If he had even seen one. It was impossible to make out detail amidst all the white.

A streak of color appeared. Something blue rose up from the spot where he'd imagined the cave to be.

Ned got to his broad, webbed feet again and resumed the arduous climb.

Now that he was nearing the top of the rise, he could see a road snaking up, maybe a hundred yards off. If you could call that white plateau a road—his Subaru wouldn't have been able to handle it. The road ran parallel to the woods barricading this immense sweep of white.

He arrived at the entrance to the cave, and somebody ducked out.

His contact.

“You made it,” he said.

“What do you have for me, Lurcquer?” Ned asked.

Ned had encountered the cop a half dozen or so times before, at car accidents, or other orders of business relevant both to local reporter and cop. On each of those occasions, Lurcquer's face had been smooth, so expressionless that it looked painted. Now, however, he was frowning. Even the mask couldn't hide it.

“I hear you've been looking into conditions at Paulson's,” he said.

“Who told you that?”

“Doesn't matter.”

Ned took out an audio recorder, but Lurcquer reached down and folded his fist over Ned's. “Nothing with my voice.”

Ned glanced at him. “Little hard to take notes in this weather,” he said. “But okay.” He used his teeth to remove one glove, then substituted a notepad for the recorder.

“Things there are worse than you've heard,” Lurcquer continued.

Ned nodded.

“You want to look for a Melanie Cooper,” Lurcquer went on.

Ned jotted down the name.

“She's going to tell you something people have other explanations for. But hers is probably closest to the truth.”

Ned stopped scribbling. His hand had gone numb and he tugged his glove back on, putting the pad away for the moment. “Mind being a little less cryptic?”

Lurcquer looked at him. His bland stare had come back. “I gave you a name. Isn't that a good enough start? Look, you think I'm in the business of talking to reporters?”

Ned knew when he had pushed a source far enough. “I appreciate your talking to me.”

“You've got plenty,” Lurcquer said shortly. “You've got maybe more than you think.”

Ned stared at the cop. He was out of practice, and had to remind himself that sources sometimes required cultivation, like rare plants. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Ned took a look around. “What's the cave like?”

Lurcquer glanced away briefly, then extended an arm. “It's a free country. Especially out here.”

Ned ducked down to enter. Inside the roof was low, and he had to hunch over nearly in half. But the cave was at least ten feet in depth. And plenty light.

“Big place,” he called out.

His voice, eerily displaced, echoed back off the walls of snow.

When he emerged, Lurcquer was already clomping off, a faraway streak of color against all the white.

The granite boulder Ned had been supposed to avoid was only a half mile away, according to Lurcquer. There must be something important there. Otherwise, why would the cops be patrolling so frequently? Why would his being spotted nearby be so bad?

Lurcquer had all but dared him to find out more. Deep in his reporter's gut, Ned knew he'd been given the biggest lead of all by being left out here alone.

Disparate pieces, requiring links. The fires. Paulson's. Lurcquer's potential source.

Ned decided to head for the road that led up here—the one Lurcquer hadn't wanted him to take—and thus hopefully the rock. A landmark like that might be possible to locate. If it wasn't, Ned would simply retrace his steps back to his car.

He checked his compass from time to time, noting that he was walking roughly north/northeast, and keeping his eyes peeled. His head started to ache from the glare, and he had to fight to operate in the snowshoes. The road was icy and actually harder to traverse with the apparatus on his feet. Plus, Ned was trying to peer into the woods on either side, looking for a large rock. He decided to head for deeper snow.

There was a rock several yards off, between two trees, but when Ned clopped over to it, the thing was too small to be of much note. And there was nothing unusual here so far as he could detect—just winter-brown trees sticking out of drifts of snow.

Ned pulled up the cuff of his coat with his teeth and looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed. More than enough time to cover half a mile, even given his decelerated pace. He glanced to the right, deciding to return to the road so he could double back to the cave. He still had the walk to his car, and overdoing it out here could be dangerous in fifty different ways.

Except that he didn't see the road.

Stupid, idiot, city-slicker mistake. One Ned never would've made if he weren't on the hunt for a story. Out here every expanse of white blended into another. You went snow blind, thinking you were seeing one stretch of land, when really it was something different altogether.

Ned got out the compass again. He would walk roughly south now, although he knew it wasn't as easy that. Topography was a lot less linear than the grid on a map.

He continued to curse himself to dispel a mounting charge of panic. From the moment he'd moved up here, Ned hadn't underestimated the north woods, especially not in winter.

A gray police cruiser cut like a shark through the shadows. Lurcquer coming back for him? Right about now, Ned would be grateful to see any of the cops. He clomped in the direction he thought the car had gone. But he came to no road, nor did he see any tire tracks, and Ned blamed his snow-fooled eyes for an illusion created out of the dim light in the woods.

At least the snow was shallower here. Ned reached down to unclip his snowshoes. They were slowing him down, and he couldn't afford that. Ned considered leaving the snowshoes behind altogether, but told himself he'd give it another fifteen minutes.

Then he struck off again.

He passed only identical, snow-clotted trees. If the compass hadn't assured him he was walking straight, Ned would've been sure he was going in circles. His cell wouldn't pick up a signal. Sweat lathered his body, which posed the biggest danger of all. He could build a snow cave of his own, and given his gear, probably last out the night, if it came to that. Although nothing would be very different tomorrow, except that he'd be hungry, and tired.

He would miss his group this afternoon. Ned always tried to get to a weekend meeting. Would any of the members report him missing? Did they even know where he lived?

Ned forced himself to calm down.

And then he dropped his snowshoes and began to run.

What was the saying? God favored the young and foolish? It was sheer, dumb luck when Ned spotted the hill he'd mounted what felt like days before. The hump of the snow cave drew his eye. Keeping his gaze focused, Ned headed toward the edge of the woods, wishing he hadn't lost his snowshoes in such a foolish, impetuous move. But it was easy to regret that now, with panic already ebbing away.

He might make it to his meeting after all.

As he hooked left toward the final barrier of trees, Ned spotted another set of boot prints. They wound back as far as the eye could see, in the direction he had come from. They were recently made, freshly sunk into the snow. The entire time he'd been out here in the woods, someone had been following soundlessly and invisibly alongside.