Snow Blind (2 page)

“Who’s the woman we’ll think you killed?” I asked.

“Jenny Mayhew, my ex-girlfriend. And I didn’t do it.”

“Who did?”

He was back to staring out into space. “I don’t know.”

Now, I thought, was the time. “Take me there,” I told him.

His voice regained some of its artificial strength and he waved the gun again. “Okay, but I’ll shoot you if you try anything. I’m not kidding around.”

“I know,” I reassured him, content that he had no idea who was out to control whom.

It took some doing to open the doors against the piled-up snow outside, and even more to get back up to the deserted roadway. I’d taken a flashlight from the back seat, but its effect was little better than my headlights had been earlier. Still, it did pick out the trees by the roadside, and thereby the direction we had to follow.

That we did largely in silence, since the snow’s depth made for hard going. Also, the cold was intense, and although there was no measurable wind, the bite of frigid air in the nostrils and lungs had a numbing effect. Heavy, quiet snowfalls worked like incubators anyway, muffling enough of the surrounding world to where one’s breathing and heartbeat were finally the only life signs left. You ended up staring at your shadowy, blurred feet, watching their endlessly repetitive movement without any sense of progress. I had no trouble believing that soldiers could sleep on the march in similar circumstances–they simply yielded to the same intoxicants they’d been exposed to as sleepy infants–their own regular, rhythmic, biological patterns combined with the metronome of a parent’s steady gait, walking in circles in the middle of the night, trying to soothe a fussy babe in arms.

Roger Blake was behind me through all this–his gun trained on me as I kept the light on the snow ahead–out of sight and eventually out of mind. I was startled when his voice suddenly intruded like a slamming door in the middle of a dream. “Here it is. Turn right.”

There was a subtle break in the wall of silent, white-shrouded trees–a driveway barely wider than a track. Once along it about fifteen feet, we came across a heavily blanketed pickup truck, tilted drunkenly to one side as if taking a nap.

“Up ahead,” Blake informed me dully. “About a hundred yards.”

I saw the lights first, hovering like two dim fireflies beside one another. I was very cold by now, and tired, and chose to see in those small blotches of yellow the warmth and comfort I was seeking, regardless of what else it offered. Slowly, I was rewarded with the emergence of a small, one story cabin, two lighted windows bracketing a front door, accompanied by the scent of wood smoke in the air.

There was also something else. The building looked vaguely familiar, its image scratching feebly at some memory long buried. I just couldn’t bring it back fully to mind.

I stumbled up the narrow front steps and paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Okay?”

Despite his effort to get here, Blake was hesitant, reminding me of the same effort he’d made to get away. I could appreciate the irony, but I sensed all he felt was dread.

“I suppose.”

For no reason I could immediately grasp, I responded to what I felt he wasn’t saying. “It’s okay. You’re not alone this time.”

He didn’t answer. I opened the door and stepped into the light.

The cabin’s embrace was such a relief from what we’d been slogging through for the past hour, that all we did initially was stand there, the door closed behind us, and let the heat from the wood stove soak through our snow-covered clothing. Finally, as if the same process were thawing my brain, I began to consider my predicament.

So, apparently, did Blake.

He prodded me in the back with his gun. “Go sit in that armchair over there so I can tie you up.”

We were standing in a small, square living room with a kitchenette lining its far wall, next to a door I assumed led to a back bedroom. The place didn’t smell too clean, was roughly furnished, and looked like a sampler for a building supplies outlet, its walls composed of an impressive and mismatched assortment of either unfinished sheet rock or wood panels ranging from fake mahogany to plastic-coated bamboo. The lamps on the walls were all kerosene fueled, and I recognized that both the slightly rusty fridge and the countertop cooking unit were gas fired. A wood stove squatted in the middle of the plywood floor, and now that I’d been here for a few minutes, I realized it was all but out.

I shook my head to Blake’s request. “Show me the body first.”

“What?”

“You told me you didn’t do it. You going to throw away the best chance you have to prove that? I’m a trained investigator.”

“Why would you want to help me?” he asked. “I threatened to kill you.”

“It’s not about helping you. If you didn’t do it, somebody else did. He’s the guy I want.”

He thought about that for a moment, but then pointed to the chair again. “Forget it. You’re just trying to mess me up. Put your butt over there.”

I shrugged. “Which tells me all your ‘I didn’t-do-it’ crap was just that.”

He half raised his hand to either hit me or ward me off like an evil spirit. “What the hell do you know? You son-of-a-bitch.”

I stared at his wide, bewildered eyes without comment.

After a long moment of suspended animation, he slowly capitulated, and said in a near whisper, “She’s in the bedroom.”

Now that I could, I didn’t move. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

“Nothing,” he said sulkily. “I came to see her, I found her dead, I left.”

I pointed at the gun in his hand. “What about that?”

He looked at it as if I’d just put it there. “It’s hers. I took it ‘cause I knew I was screwed.”

“Why’d you come here in the first place? You said she was your
ex
-girlfriend.”

He actually hung his head like a kid, reinforcing the notion that I could probably just snatch the gun away. If I’d still been interested.

“I just wanted to see her.”

“At night? In the middle of a storm?”

“Yeah,” he admitted simply.

Perhaps more than anything he’d said or done so far, that one comment–and the complex of feelings behind it–made me believe him.

“Who broke off the affair?” I asked.

“She did.” I could barely hear him in the silent house.

“Why?”

“I hit her.”

I didn’t respond, his response settling like an all-too-familiar cold stone in my chest. He looked up at that, his expression pleading. “I know it was wrong. I was drunk and pissed off. I told her I was sorry. But she threw me out and had a restraining order put on me.”

“That still in force?”

He began getting worked up again. “Hell, yeah. Why do you think I tried to run for it? I know what this looks like. I’m a guy with no job, a drinking problem, I got a history of beating my girlfriend, and now she’s dead. This ain’t rocket science. I even have a record with you guys–assault and battery. Perfect, huh?”

“When was that?” I asked quickly.

He stopped with his mouth half open. “What? I don’t know. Five years ago. I got into a fight with some guy–broke his nose.”

A silence fell between us. I took advantage of it to move toward the bedroom door. He watched me, obviously wondering whether to stop me. I tried heading him off before he could decide.

“Okay,” I said authoritatively. “I’ll check this out. Don’t move around more than you have to. I don’t want you messing up any potential evidence.”

I reached the door and twisted the knob, pushing it open. The room beyond had one wall lamp burning. There was a double bed, a rickety chest of drawers, a night table made from a crate. Sprawled across the bed was a young woman, blond, fully clothed in jeans and a work shirt. She lay on her back, with her arms flung out to both sides. Her face was bruised and bloody, and her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. I checked for a pulse, despite the obvious lack of need.

She was already cold, her fingers and jaw stiffening.

I straightened and simply looked at her for a moment, wondering how and if she might have avoided ending up like this–and wondering, too, how many times I’d gazed at the bodies of dead young women in the past, and asked myself the same question.

I heard a ragged sob behind me and saw Roger in the doorway, tentatively looking in. “This the way you found her?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, his eyes welling up.

“You didn’t try to revive her at all? Take her pulse?”

“I half picked her up–lifted her head. But I knew she was dead.”

“How?”

He flinched, wiped his nose. “Look at her, man.”

“How?” I repeated, almost resentful of his sorrow.

“She was cold. And her neck …” He didn’t finish.

“Let’s see your hands.”

He shook his head, but only in resignation. Still holding the gun, he pulled off his gloves, saying, “That’s what I mean. I’m up shit creek. I knew it’s the first thing you people would do.”

I studied his right hand. “How’d you cut your knuckles?”

“You’re not going to believe me.”

“Not if you don’t tell me.”

“I punched the wall in my apartment. I was pissed, I was lonely. It was just before I came out here to talk to her.”

I nodded. He was right about the circumstantial evidence. It made for a strong case. “Let’s go back to the other room,” I suggested.

He led the way, his back to me, the gun dangling by his side.

“Sit,” I told him, pointing to a chair while I opened the stove and fed a couple of pieces of wood into it from a nearby box.

At last, I settled into the armchair he’d wanted me in from the start.

“Now what?” he asked, having apparently given up trying to be in charge.

“Tell me about Jenny,” I said. “When did you two break it off?”

He was sitting slumped in his chair, the gun held loosely between his knees. “A month-and-a-half ago.”

“This her house?”

“Yeah. I mean she rents it, but she’s been here a couple of years.”

“What’s she been up this last month? Any new boyfriends?”

His expression soured. “I guess. She got around.”

“Is that what you fought about?”

“That and other things. I don’t guess I was too good there, either … and there was the drinking … I can’t believe she’s dead …” His voice trailed off.

I scanned the room from where I was sitting. “Where’s her cat?”

His brow furrowed. “Cat? I don’t know. How did you know …?”

I pointed to a smudge on the edge of the refrigerator door, about a foot up from the floor. “My girlfriend used to have cats,” I explained. “They rub their scent glands on corners like that–it leaves a stain after a while. Besides, there’s hair on all the furniture.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s an indoor cat. It’s always here.”

I got up and began walking around the room, checking into corners, under a chest, behind a closet door. I repeated the same routine in the bedroom, with similar results. Signs of the cat were plentiful and recent, including some half-eaten moist food in a bowl. But the animal itself was missing.

I stood for a moment on the threshold between both rooms, my eyes traveling from where Jenny lay on the bed to the front door, trying to reconstruct what had happened. I finally approached the wood stove again and crouched next to it.

“What?” Roger asked from his seat.

“Looks like blood on the corner here,” I said. “And a few drops on the floor. It’s hard to see mixed in with the burn marks.”

I rose and crossed to the front door, buttoning my coat and pulling my flashlight out of my pocket.

Roger sat forward, alarmed, and pointed the gun at me as if he’d just discovered it there. “Where’re you going?”

“Outside to look around,” I answered, pointedly not looking at him. “If you can find another light, you can help.”

He rose and began searching the cabinets in the kitchenette, shoving the pistol into his waistband. I left him to it and stepped outside.

It was still snowing, but just barely, and visibility was much improved. I stood on the top step and played the light’s halo around me in ever widening arcs, hoping reality would confirm what was in my mind’s eye.

I found it just as Roger opened the door behind me.

“Wait there,” I told him, and stepped carefully into the fresh snow by the side of the steps. I walked about fifteen feet out in a straight line, to where the flashlight beam had revealed a slight, oblong depression in the powdery surface. There, I reached down gingerly, found what I was looking for after a few seconds of groping around, and extracted the frozen stiff body of a small, gray cat.