Dead of Winter (54 page)

He turned and walked to the door. Outside, the August air was still and scorched-smelling, baking the buildings and sidewalk like they were rocks in a kiln.

“Kincaid.”

Louis turned to see Mobley standing in the dark doorway of the bar. His hair was the color of hay, his skin as bronzed as a lifeguard. A cigarette hung limply from the side of his mouth.

“You really serious about wearing a uniform again?” Mobley asked.

“I told you I was.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a shot.”

“A shot?”

Mobley tried to take the cigarette from his mouth but the paper stuck to his dry lip and he had to peel it off. It took him a moment to refocus on Louis.

“I got this situation going on I’m going to deputize you for.”

“Deputize me?” Louis asked. “Is that even still legal?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Mobley said. “Anyway, doesn’t really matter. I can do what I want.”

“Right.”

“You’ll get a temporary badge and ID card,” Mobley said, “but no uniform. You’ll wear street clothes. Jacket and tie.”

In ninety-nine degree heat. Mobley was screwing with him but that was okay. He had a jacket. Somewhere. In his truck maybe, from that last case he had worked over in Palm Beach.

“So, consider this a test, Kincaid,” Mobley said. “You pass it -- and only I decide if you do -- and I’ll get you in front of my hiring board with a five-star recommendation.”

“You got a deal,” Louis said. “When do I start?”
“I’ll get you your credentials tomorrow, but you can start right now.”

Louis squinted up at the sun. It was already three. He looked back at Mobley.

“Okay, what’s the job?”

“I want you to go pick up a dead cat.”

Available as an
ebook
January 2013.

CHAPTER 1

Wednesday, December 31, 1969

He was staring at the frozen lake and thinking about his mother lying on a table somewhere screaming in pain.

He was remembering what she told him, how they had kept her in that little room and held her down, how it felt like her insides were being torn in half and how it went on and on and on for two days until she begged to die.

He was thinking about her and how much he had loved her. But he was also thinking that if she had been able to stand the pain for two more minutes –-
two damn minutes
-- his life would have been so very different.

But she couldn’t. So he was pulled from her womb at two minutes before midnight on September 14, and because of that everything now had changed.

The ferry was coming in. He heard its horn before he saw it, a white smudge emerging slowly from the gray afternoon fog. It was running late. The straits had frozen over early this year because of the long bitter cold snap and the ferry was forced to stay in the narrow channel that had been cut by the coast guard icebreaker
Mackinaw
. It was so cold, far colder than it should be, even for December. He pulled the hood of his parka up and looked down at the duffle at his feet. Had he remembered his gloves? Everything had happened so fast he hadn’t given much thought to what he had packed. Now he was so cold he didn’t even want to open the duffle to look, so he stuffed his red hands into his armpits and watched the ferry.

It was taking a long time to get to the dock, like it was moving in slow motion. But everything was like this now, everything was moving as if time no longer existed. But it didn’t really, he thought. Not anymore. Time was nothing to him now. By tomorrow, he would have all the time in the world.

But
what
world?

He looked around. At the clapboard ticket house of the Arnold Line ferry, at the docks, the empty parking lot and the boarded-up pastie shack. He looked past the park benches and the bare black trees still wearing their necklaces from last night’s ice storm. He looked back toward town where the fog blurred all the places he had known during his nineteen years here, and he tried hard to burn everything into his memory because suddenly he knew that once he got on the ferry there would be no way to ever come back and he would forget all of this and the person he had been here.

He turned and looked left.

Canada. It was just fifty miles away, less than an hour’s drive up I-75. He had never been there before.

But until now he had never had a reason to.

The ferry had docked. No one came out to take his ticket so he picked up his duffle, sprinted up the gangplank and boarded. The cabin was empty and but at least it was warmer. He set his duffle on one of the long wooden benches and sat down. He wanted a hot cup of coffee but there was no one at the snack bar at the far end of the cabin. The clouded glass carafes sat empty on the coffee machines. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, and he had the weird feeling that he was the only human being left on earth.

But then the metal floor began to vibrate beneath his feet and the ferry pulled away from the dock. He leaned his head against the cold glass of the window and closed his eyes.

He slept. And for the first time in weeks, he dreamed.

Dreamed of a bald man in horn-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. Dreamed of shooting a rifle that looked nothing like the one he used to hunt deer with his dad. Dreamed of lying naked on a cold steel table in a white room with his red intestines pouring out of his gut. And then the bald man was holding up a big bright blue capsule and smiling and telling him that if he just took it all the pain would go away.

He was jerked awake by a jabbing on his shoulder.

He looked up into the red face of an old man wearing a navy pea coat with the ferry line emblem on the pocket.

“Time to get off, son.”

He rubbed his eyes and looked out the window, but it had fogged over. He rubbed it with the sleeve of his parka and saw something in the mist outside. It was the boarded-up pastie shack on the dock. They were back in St. Ignace.

“Hey!” he called out to the old man who was heading toward the door. “What happened? Why did we turn back?”

“No choice,” the old man said. “Got out aways but it was frozen solid. Got a call in to the cutter but she’s working the shipping lines and can’t get here until tomorrow morning.” He turned and started away.

“But I have to get to the island tonight!”

The old man stared at him then shook his head. “No one’s getting over there tonight, son.”

The old man shuffled off, the metal door banging behind him. The young man’s eyes went again to the window. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out his options. Stay here and wait? No, because tomorrow would be too late. Go home and try to explain? No, because he couldn’t look his father in the eye and tell him one more lie. Leave and try to start over somewhere new? No, because she wouldn’t be there.

And it was all about her.

He reached for the duffle at his feet but paused. It was an old thing and the name stenciled on the green canvas was so faded it could barely be read: CHARLES S. LANGE. It had belonged to his father, and U.S. Army sergeant Charles Lange had stuffed his life into the duffle. Everything he needed to survive was in it – heating tablets, rations, mittens, compass, bullets, and a picture of his wife and baby son. When he came home he packed it away, emptying it and himself as best he could. Even his wife couldn’t get him to talk about had happened in Korea, and when she died three years later Charles Lange withdrew into himself even more. He was there as a father, or at least as much as he could be. And when his son turned sixteen, he brought out the duffle and gave it to him.

Cooper Lange had never used the duffle. But last night he had pulled it from his closet and hurriedly packed it with the things he guessed he might need to survive. A change of clothes, matches, some Mounds bars, the three hundred and two dollars from his bank account, an extra pair of gloves, his father’s old Army compass.

He grabbed the bag and hurried from the ferry. The temperature had dropped sharply since he had boarded and the icy cold was like a hard slap against his face. He glanced at his watch. Almost four. It would be dark soon. He had to figure out something fast. The dock was deserted and there were no cars in the lot. Chartering a plane in this weather was out of the question, not that he could afford it.

The weather...it was getting bad fast. The fog had retreated but he could see a bank of heavy pewter clouds building on the horizon of Lake Huron. His eyes caught a spot of something dark on the icy lake just off shore. Then he spotted another dark spot beyond the first.

Trees. The dark spots were trees. That meant someone had started laying out the ice bridge. But was it finished?

There was no time to check. If he was going, he had to go now. He unzipped the duffle and found his gloves. He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight and screwdrivers -– it was crazy to cross the bridge without them -- but he hadn’t planned on having to do this.

He hadn’t planned on doing any of this. But she...

Oh God, had he it forgotten it? Digging beneath the clothes, he found her picture. It was her senior class portrait. Perfect oval face framed by long straight dark hair, somber dark eyes and not even a hint of a smile. He turned it over to read what she had written even though he knew it by heart.

When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. – Julie.

He started to put it back in the duffle but instead slipped it into the chest pocket of his parka and zipped it shut.

He put on his gloves, slung the duffle strap over his shoulder and headed across the parking lot. At the snow-covered beach, he stopped. Someone had tamped down a path that led to the shoreline, creating a crude entry to the ice bridge beyond.

The huge gray expanse of Lake Huron lay before him. And somewhere out lost in the fog was Mackinac Island.

It was only four miles across, but he knew what he was up against. He had grown up in St. Ignace and spent the last five summers over on the island making good money slapping fudge in the shops on Main Street and cleaning the stalls at the stables. But when the tourists left in October, the island closed down and the hard winters left the couple hundred residents there isolated and dependent on the coast guard icebreakers. But sometimes, if it was cold enough, the water between the island and St. Ignace would freeze over. Someone on the island would venture out onto the lake with spud bars to test the ice’s thickness. If he made it to St. Ignace, he’d call back with the news that it was safe. The townspeople would take discarded Christmas trees and plant them in the ice to mark the safe path across.

The ice bridge brought freedom. But the swift-moving currents of the straits could cause the ice to shift at any time so the ice bridge could also brought death.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the red brick coast guard building on Huron Street. There was a light on inside. The coast guard guys didn’t want people out on the ice bridge but they couldn’t stop them so every year they sent out the same warning -- tell someone if you go out on the ice bridge. For a second, he thought about going up to the station.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone where he was going. That was what they had decided. She wouldn’t tell her parents and he wouldn’t tell his father. No one could know.

He hoisted the duffle and stepped onto the ice. It groaned but held firm. He pulled in a deep breath and headed toward the dark shape in the mist.

At the first tree, he stopped and looked back. The lights of St. Ignace were just yellow blurs in the mist. Looking ahead again, he spotted the next tree and started toward it.

The sun was now just a pale pink glow above the gray horizon and out here on the exposed lake the wind hit his face like needles. But he kept moving in a tentative shuffle, trying not to think about the dark cold water beneath his feet.

He was panting and his head was aching by time he reached the fifth tree. It still wore its web of fake silver icicles and they danced in the wind. One small blue Christmas ornament clung to a branch.