Cover of Snow (6 page)

Teggie left for her audition the next day. I took her to the bus station amidst the swirl of another winter storm, this one heavier and more lasting. The snow must've begun hours ago, for everything was buried by the time we woke up.

I had to lean close to the dash as I drove, squinting between flakes on the windshield.

The station appeared behind a curtain of snow, a long, low-lit building, nearly invisible in the blizzard. I rotated the wheel, and my back tires skidded before I gained control.

The bus was heaving in the lot, billows of exhaust combining with the clouds of snow.

Teggie got out of the car and went around to the trunk, picking her way carefully over the ice. She didn't have boots equal to the climate; the ones she wore were fashionable but flimsy.

“Bus is about to leave,” I murmured, hefting the duffel out for her.

“Teggie standard time,” she said, and I smiled rotely.

“Can't risk a turned ankle,” she went on. “Here in the great frozen north.”

I smiled again.

She peered closely at me, snow flying about her face. Her knit cap was already covered in white. “Hey, Nor, are you going to be all right?”

I jerked my elbow toward the bus, whose gears I could now hear grinding.

Teggie stood her ground.

“Yes.” I heaved a sigh. “I'll be fine. Reassure Mom and Dad that I've gotten on with the business of living.”

“Whoa, mocking Mom and Dad now, are we,” Teggie said, finally heading toward the bus, duffel bag swinging in her surprisingly strong grip. Her next words were almost lost. “When am I going to talk to Dad?” She turned and began to walk backward.

“Teggie!” I shouted, not sure what I wanted to say.
Goodbye
?
Come back
?

“Whose life?” she called loudly, over the engine noise and storm. “Yours or Brendan's?”

It was a question only an unmarried woman, one who'd never even really been in love, could pose. Brendan's life wasn't distinct from mine, not entirely. They were linked. And if I didn't find out why Brendan had taken his life, then I would never be able to live my own.

“Go, Teg!” I shouted, and she ran, perfectly graceful, without a hitch, over the covered expanse of pavement.

I plodded back to my car, scraped off the windshield again, and drove out over the heaps of snow that the salt hadn't yet attacked, back onto the slippery road.

I was alone now. Really alone for the first time since Brendan had died.

I stopped in town at a place called Coffee Rockets. I could sit there until the drugstore opened at nine.

The café was filled with its usual mix of customers, united by only one thing. Whether they were skiers in brightly colored, outrageously expensive gear, fueling up before their day on the slopes, or professionals whose footwear wasn't even up for the trek across the parking lot, buying breakfast-to-go before their workday, all of these people were foreigners in Wedeskyull. At the diner across the road, they would've received something close to shunning. The ladies behind the counter would've eyed them silently, and the customers who idled away most of the morning there would've snapped their suspenders or chucked dogs beneath the table, causing the animals to sniff and mutter at the unfamiliar scent in the air. Coffee Rockets had been built to house the encroachers, and that was why, for all its tech lighting and matte chrome finishes, the smells of roasting beans and buttery pastry, it had the feel of a prison camp.

I could've stopped in at the diner and gotten a warm enough welcome. The girls who worked there were good to the cops. But just as I'd never gone to Al's, I always came to Rockets instead.

The kid behind the counter started preparing my tall as soon as I appeared. He didn't live in Wedeskyull—went to college near here and came into town to work—and wouldn't know my name or anything about me, but he recognized repeat customers. I pointed to a muffin behind the glass case and he handed that over as well. Then I went to sit down in one of the armchairs near the gas fireplace, a choice spot.

Today the coffee, usually so appealing, turned my stomach; I could barely take a sip. I concentrated on my muffin instead, biting it mindlessly, letting it crumble away in my mouth.

The clock on the wall, which managed at once to be artsy and not at all unique, finally showed nine o'clock. I shrugged into my coat, and hurried down the street to the pharmacy, pushing in against a warble of bells. An older man, balding and stooped, occupied the high counter at the back.

It was a dim, dusty place, but the heated air felt good. The aisles were sparsely stocked, a small selection of out-of-date shampoos, and only one bottle per brand; a short stack of soap cakes on the shelf, Ivory, and the pink kind with an old-fashioned lady's face on the wrapper. The candy aisle smelled stale, the colors on the bags no longer bright. This place was to the CVS several towns over as Al's was to the Mobil. But it was the one the police preferred.

The pharmacist looked up as I approached.

“Can I help you?”

I glanced down at the amber bottle. “Are you Donald Brannigan?” I asked, reading the name under the tab for
pharmacist.

“Folks call me Donny,” the man replied in a friendly way. Then he repeated, “Can I help you?”

Was I really going to tell this stranger that before my husband committed suicide, he'd drugged me so I wouldn't be able to stop him? How could the pharmacist dispute or confirm that Brendan planned his act a week in advance? I wondered if I would be better off trying to contact Doctor Bradley, although the man had a reputation for distance and remove, answering mainly to the Chief.

I extended my hand. “What can you tell me about this medicine?”

The pharmacist reached over the counter and took the bottle. “Sonodrine is a sedative,” he said, before handing it back. “For when someone's having trouble sleeping. Also dulls aches and pains, although that's a lesser use. A hospital might administer it that way.”

He wasn't telling me anything the computer hadn't. “Yes,” I replied. “But more specifically?”

The pharmacist smoothed his strands of hair into place, an unconscious gesture instead of a vain one, which somehow lent it dignity. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

I bit my lip, considering what to say. “I found this with—with my husband's things. But as far as I knew, he wasn't taking any medication. Can you tell me why it would've been prescribed?”

“Perhaps your husband was having trouble sleeping,” the pharmacist suggested. “Or had some slightly more than minor ache or pain.”

Which of course didn't tell me anything besides the indicated uses.

I breathed out a sigh of frustration, studying the bottle. And then I saw something on it that I hadn't noticed before. “Mr. Brannigan? Donny?”

The man nodded, delivering another finger swipe to his scalp.

“What does this little red mark mean on the label?”

The pharmacist reached across the counter again and took the bottle from me.

“I can't really say,” he replied. Swipe, swipe. “Could just be a blotch of ink from our printer. Never did get the hang of using that thing. But Medicare says everything has to be electronic.”

I nodded, though it didn't really look like a smudge from a printer. The mark wasn't quite even enough to have been made by a machine.

“Why don't you let me hold on to this for you?” said the pharmacist. “Technically, any kind of prescription meds, especially painkillers, are supposed to be turned over as soon as they're not being used.” He gave me another friendly grin. “There's even a whole campaign about it. National Hand In Your Medications Month or some such. You have a good day now.”

Clearly dismissed, I turned and walked out of the store, troubled by the feeling that in addition to being no closer to finding anything out, I had just lost the one clue I'd really had.

I ran between snowflakes, dwindling now, less driven in their assault. When I reached my car, I blasted the heat, hoping it might melt enough of the snow that I wouldn't have to get out and scrape. Where could I drive to anyway? Was there anywhere for me to go?

I had a sudden, compelling need to return to my house, take up some project that would let me dig and scrape and peel at plaster, real things, instead of the unknowables that were seeping in all around me. Maybe call Ned Kramer, get back to the paying kind of work I would have to rely on from now on. I poked around in my bag, pushing stuff around to locate my tools, testing their tips. My phone sat underneath. Until I'd started my business, I'd seldom had need of a cell, and this one had probably gone unanswered in the past week. I figured out how to scroll through the list of calls that had come in, seeing an unfamiliar number repeated. Almost idly I began to press
send,
wondering who would answer on the other end, when a glimpse through the windshield distracted me. There was a cop strolling around, his uniform a faint gray shadow between the remaining flakes.

And suddenly I decided.

The sixteenth. Even without the amber bottle to look at, that date was stamped in my head. Brendan had been working late all week, shifts running over.

I would go to the station. To Brendan's other home and family—Club Mitchell, and the men who might have been with him when this prescription was filled.

Making a turn onto Water Street, I drove out of town.

Officer Tim Lurcquer looked on while Mitchell dragged the body.

No, he didn't drag it. He lifted it by the armpits, then skated it lightly over the top layer of snow. A hundred and eighty pounds of literal dead weight, give or take, and Mitchell moved it as easily as if he were hoisting a fishing pole. The composite, lightweight kind.

Tim grimaced.

He craned his head to look up at the snow sky, a solid fleet of clouds. Mitchell was now circling the enormous, mottled boulder, a stone whose surface resembled faces. The faces changed all the time, depending upon the degree of light, how much lichen grew. In Tim's younger days, the faces had seemed benign. He and his buddies had broken beer bottles against a grinning lip of stone, made jokes about protruding noses. But for some time now the faces trapped in the rock all seemed to be scowling.

It was brutally cold out, with occasional harsh blasts of wind that penetrated even the thickest coat, like the hidden, deep cells of a lake you swam out to in summer, sudden reminders that warmth wasn't ever the true condition of the north woods.

Tim had been born to it, but he'd never get used to it. He pulled the earflaps on his hat a bit lower. No uniforms today. Chief's orders.

No grays today, boys. Street clothes. I don't want anybody recognizing you.

No one's even gonna see us, Chief,
Mitchell had said.

The Chief had also made it clear that Mitchell was in charge, with Tim assisting.

Tim didn't object. If this had been his job, the brute force required would've made him look bad. But it'd be the psychological weight of the task he really would've struggled with.

“Lurcquer?” Mitchell grunted, the only sign he'd shown of exertion. “You mind?”

Tim looked around. What was he supposed to be doing?

He always felt like this, two steps behind, while the others were like some rarefied elite. The damned starting lineup on the varsity hockey team. He'd played, of course, but he hadn't started. Even Gil—who they all called the rookie, because he'd only recently joined the force after getting back from the service—had it over Tim. Back in high school, Gil had spent more time in the box than on the ice, the enforcer who broke opponents' teeth and bones.

Brendan hadn't played, but off the ice he wasn't as bad as the others. Brendan had been a good-natured sort, full of fun, ideas for what to do when their shifts were over. He'd smashed his share of bottles. It'd been Brendan who started the annual polar bear dunk for the cops. And once in a while he'd ask Tim to ride along with him and Club, and they'd spend most of the shift laughing and complaining about the job.

There were also the times when Brendan went solo or stayed behind in the barracks. It'd always baffled Tim how much the Chief seemed to love Brendan, given what a slacker the guy could be. He was a good cop though; he really cared about people. Tim didn't want to speak ill of the dead. Maybe Brendan wasn't slacking after all, just didn't want to be quite as close to things, this deep in the muck.

Tim could relate to that.

“Look at the hole,” Mitchell grunted again. He supported his burden with one hand, pointing with the other.

Tim turned around on the patch of recently dug-up earth, his boots packing down new snow. Now he saw. Snow had already partially filled in the trench.

He used both hands to fiddle with the mechanism on the shovel, open it to its full length. Then he started to scoop out the fresh accumulation. As he dug, he registered how shallow the grave was.

But hell, it was amazing they had a burial place at all. The Chief had had equipment from Paulson's available to him. He and Lenny Paulson went way back, which was lucky. Only heavy machinery could break up the ground this time of year.

Trench empty, Tim turned to face Mitchell.

The other cop gave a massive bellow of preparation and tossed the body in.

“Well,” Mitchell said, breath emerging in even white gusts. “There goes number two.”

Both looked down at the rift in the ground, then around the whitened woods. They did it as one, gazes falling, heads turning to check.

And Tim experienced a brief, fleeting link of connection, the reason he had stayed on the job for so long. He could do it. He could be just like them.

They were two men sizing up a problem, assessing their location and the likelihood of its being discovered. Two men deciding to work with what they had.

Tim threw Mitchell a second folded shovel, and Mitchell flicked it to its full length as if it were a match.

They worked to conceal what they'd done here today.