The Deep, Deep Snow

by Brian Freeman

  Ellen’s arm reared back like the cocking of a gun. She was going to slap me, and I tensed, waiting for it. Then she stopped herself at the last moment. Her open hand sank back to her waist, and her eyes squeezed shut. Her knees buckled beneath her. She slid down to the wet grass and buried her face in her palms.

  Trina knelt and put an arm around her shoulders. Ellen leaned against her. They were two mothers, both staring into their own versions of hell.

  “Ellen, I swear to you, we are doing everything we can to find Jeremiah.”

  Ellen’s cries died out slowly, and her eyes opened. With Trina’s help, she stood up, and I could see that her pant legs were soaked with dew from the grass. Her fever had broken; she’d cried herself out. She wiped her nose and cheeks with her hands, and she took a loud breath. She was calm again, in control, in charge. I had to admire her for that.

  “I talked to Violet,” she told me. “I conveyed my concerns to her.”

  “What concerns?”

  “Simply put, Tom’s not competent to handle this investigation. I know he’s your father, Shelby, but we’re talking about my son’s life. I’m not going to sugarcoat this. I want him off the case. I want this handled by professionals. I should have insisted on that from the beginning. As it is, we’ve lost the most important time we had to find Jeremiah.”

  I tried to take my emotions out of it and not be defensive. I was a deputy, not a daughter. “Ellen, bringing in strangers isn’t the way to go. Nobody knows Mittel County and the people around here better than my father.”

  “Maybe so, but he doesn’t have the experience or resources for a case like this. This is bigger than Mittel County. Plus, let’s not kid ourselves, Shelby.”

  “Kid ourselves about what?”

  Ellen stopped, as if she’d gone too far. “Nothing.”

  “No, go ahead, what are you saying?”

  She looked right at me. So did Trina. The fact is, I knew what Ellen was going to say before she said it.

  “Tom’s no longer up to the job. Mentally, I mean. I know you may not be ready to face it, but that’s the truth. He’s going the way of his parents.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Take off the blinders, Shelby. I’m sorry, it’s sad, but that’s what it is. You think I didn’t hear him ask Adrian the same question twice?”

  “One question. Come on.”

  “It’s not just that. It’s been getting worse for months. Everybody in town has seen it.”

  I looked at Trina. “Everybody?”

  Trina turned her eyes down to her feet and said nothing.

  “Violet already talked to the county board,” Ellen went on like a steamroller. “They’ve been in touch with the governor. He contacted the FBI and made a formal request for their child abduction team to take over the investigation. They’ll be here in a few hours. It’s done, Shelby. Tom is out.”

  *

  Hours later, at two in the morning, I broke from the tangles of the national forest land onto the dirt road. I’d gone back there to join the search, but my flashlight battery was dead. I was exhausted, and the sweat on my body had turned cold. My skin was bleeding where the branches had scratched me. I bent and put my hands on my knees as I got my strength back. Gnats swarmed around my warm breath. The noise of the crickets in the brush was deafening.

  When I stood up again, I stared out into the nighttime woods. Dozens of other dancing lights dotted the forest like fireflies. Every few seconds, someone called Jeremiah’s name in the distance. Shoulder to shoulder, the people of Mittel County hunted for the boy through the dark hours.

  My father stood alone by his cruiser. His car was parked near Jeremiah’s bicycle, which lay where it had been abandoned and was now cordoned off by police tape. Dad still had his thermos of coffee in his hand, which he’d refilled at least three times over the course of the night. He’d had that dented thermos as long as I could remember. It was the same one he’d been using on his boat the night he was visited by the owl. The night he’d found me.

  I walked over to him. He didn’t even notice me at first, because he was so caught up in his thoughts, as if thinking hard would bring Jeremiah back. He held himself with the stiff, proud bearing of a tin soldier. As a kid, I remember thinking that bullets would just bounce off him.

  “Jeremiah’s not out there, Dad.”

  He drank his coffee. He was still focused on the forest. “I know.”

  “If he’d wandered off by himself, we would have found him by now. He couldn’t have gone that far.”

  “You’re right.”

  “We should call off the search until daylight. Someone’s going to get hurt out there.”

  My father noticed the blood on my face. “What about you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. But we’re not going to find him like this.”

  “No. We’re not.”

  The lights of the searchers reflected in his eyes and made his face look pale. A mosquito landed on his forehead and began feasting on his blood, but Dad didn’t even bother brushing it away.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Go home, Shelby. Get a couple hours of sleep.”

  “You should, too.”

  “No, I’ll bring the people in. Then I’ll go back to the office.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. You need to be ready for it.”

  I was too tired to argue with him. “Okay. Good night, Dad.”

  I began walking past the lineup of vehicles parked together like train cars on both sides of the dirt road. My own cruiser was near the far end.

  “Shelby,” he called after me.

  I stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

  “I’ll find that boy.”

  I tried to summon a smile, because as of the next morning, I knew he wasn’t going to be the one in charge of finding him. “I know you will, Dad.”

  Then he went on as if a brand-new thought had sprung into his head. “Listen, it may be nothing, but Mrs. Norris was complaining about a Peeping Tom outside her bedroom window last night. She thought it was someone staying at the motel. You should probably check it out.”

  I stared at him. He was dead serious.

  “Sure,” I replied, my voice cracking. “Sure I will.”

  I made it all the way down the road to my cruiser before I began to cry.

  Chapter Eleven

  I squinted through the windshield into the darkness as I drove home.

  Around here, you have to be alert for night creatures. I had to brake hard near the ranger station to avoid a raccoon that rose up and gave my headlights a cold, disinterested stare with its masked eyes. The animal hunched its craggy shoulders at me and then slouched into the woods. He was lucky. Over the years, like most of the people here, I’d left behind my share of roadkill. Your first deer is a rite of passage for the young drivers of Mittel County.

  The glow of stained glass windows welcomed me home. From the outside, our house still looked like a church. The steeple still pointed at the sky, although Dad had long ago replaced the cross with a weather vane. He kept the wooden siding painted church white, and he always left the downstairs lights on overnight to illuminate the windows for passersby. The multicolored panels told the story of Jonah and the whale. When I was four years old, I used to hide under my blankets with a flashlight and pretend that I was inside the belly of the beast. It felt surprisingly safe there.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My room was at the back, with a sharply slanted ceiling and hardwood floor. A row of windows overlooked the cemetery. My walls were filled with pictures of me and my father. My first day on the job, with him next to me, beaming with pride. Me in a dress for an eighth grade school dance. Dad’s twentieth anniversary party as sheriff. Things lik
e that. I had volleyball trophies on my dresser and yellowed copies of the newspaper from our state championship and one of the balls we’d used in the winning game. Ten stuffed owls of different sizes were lined up on my window ledges. In one corner of the room, beside the bed, was a rocking chair, along with my guitar.

  I took a shower and washed off the day. I opened one of the windows, which made me shiver because I was still damp. I spent a long time staring at the woods. I was naked, but I didn’t worry much about modesty, because no one was around to see me, and the animals didn’t care what I looked like. Eventually, I crawled under the blankets, and I wasn’t even aware of falling asleep. I blinked, and the darkness was gone, and early morning light streamed into the bedroom.

  It was five thirty.

  Someone was ringing the bell at our front door.

  I put on a robe and ran downstairs. When I threw open the door, I found Keith Whalen standing there. He was still dressed as he had been in the cemetery the previous day. His beard line was heavy on his face. He didn’t look as if he’d slept.

  “Keith.”

  “Sorry to bother you so early.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, actually, I never went home last night. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to leave the cemetery, so I slept in my car. I was heading out this morning, but I saw your cruiser and figured you were here.”

  “Not for long. I have to get ready to go.”

  I hoped he would get the message. I didn’t want him here. But he lingered on the doorstep anyway. He flipped his hair back, his usual nervous gesture. “Hey, would you mind if I used your bathroom?”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  I opened the door wider and let him inside. It was pretty impressive coming into our house, because Dad had left the great space of the church wide open when he converted the place. Voices echo, and you still feel as if you should talk in a hushed tone. Keith had never been here before, and he drank in the arched windows and the high ceiling with its crossbeams.

  “Wow. Beautiful.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”

  “You fit here, Shelby.”

  I had nothing to say to that. “The bathroom’s over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  He went to do what he had to do, and I waited next to the front door. That was rude, but I wasn’t offering an invitation to stay. He came back a couple of minutes later, admiring some of the church paintings that Dad had saved. When he looked at me, I saw him take note of the outline of my body, and I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. He looked away quickly, but I knew we were both having the same memories, no matter how much I tried to crowd them out of my mind.

  “Thanks,” he said again.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you find whoever was lurking in the cemetery yesterday?”

  I knew he was stalling, because he didn’t want to go.

  “It was Anna.”

  “Anna Helvik? Trina’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and Trina are pretty close, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  He didn’t say anything more, but he still didn’t leave. I was impatient, partly because I needed to get back into town, partly because spending time with Keith was like watching a movie highlights reel showing off all of my questionable decisions in life. I didn’t know what he was expecting. I was hoping it wasn’t sex, because I wasn’t entirely sure I would say no. Whatever else had happened between us, I still felt the same old attraction to him.

  “What do you want, Keith?” I asked finally. “What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. Then he shrugged and said, “I hate being home these days. I feel like Colleen is haunting me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But as they say in the bars, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

  “I know. This is awkward for you. It is for me, too. When I saw you yesterday, I was reminded of all the rough edges we left behind. I suppose there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “No. There isn’t.”

  “Okay. I’ll go.”

  As Keith went by me onto the threshold, he was close enough to brush past my body, which gave me a little shock of electricity. Then he turned around before I closed the door.

  “One more thing, Shelby.”

  “What is it?”

  “I also wanted to tell you—just so we’re very clear about it—I had nothing to do with Jeremiah’s disappearance.”

  His words came out of nowhere, and I couldn’t hide my surprise.

  “Why would I think you did? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about what happened to him?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Then why say something like that?”

  “Because sooner or later, I’ll be a suspect. And I want you to know right now that I’m innocent.”

  “What makes you think you’ll be a suspect?”

  Keith shook his head sadly. He flipped his hair back again. “Because of Colleen. Because the whole town thinks I murdered her. I guarantee you, people are already making up stories about me and Jeremiah. They need someone they can blame for this, right or wrong, and I’m the easy choice. Everybody is looking for an Ursulina, Shelby. They won’t stop until they find one.”

  *

  After Keith left, I wondered if he was right. Were people really talking about him as a suspect?

  And if so, what were they saying about me?

  I didn’t think anyone knew about my affair with Keith, but I might have been naive about that. Everyone saw us hanging out together after the Halloween fair. It doesn’t take much more than that to get whispers flying through the town. Rumors are like motor oil here, lubing up every conversation, and sex is a favorite topic. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that tongues had been wagging about me and Keith.

  My relationship with him was a one-time thing. Literally one time. But the damage was already done.

  Little wonder I had decided at that point in my life that I was better off without dating, romance, hookups, or sex. Between my job and my friends, I didn’t have time for men. Some of the local guys would have liked to change my mind, but the rule of numbers in a small town meant that pickings were slim.

  Sure, I’d dated. Most people around here figured my high school boyfriend and I would get married, but that was never going to happen. He was cute, and you have to learn about sex somewhere, but I knew it was a short-term thing. After that, I went out a few times and endured a few fix-ups. None of them turned into anything serious.

  And then there was Keith.

  By the morning after Halloween, I was already regretting what had happened with him. Actually, I was regretting it as I drove back home overnight at three in the morning. Keith called the next day, but I ducked his call. He called four more times over the next week, and I let all of them go to voicemail. I was determined never to talk to him again and never see him again.

  That lasted until the evening of November 14, when Adam and I responded to the 911 call at his house.

  We found Colleen Whalen dead in the tall grass. Shot in the head. Keith said he’d come home from a hiking trip and found her. He blamed a burglar for the crime. He said much of his wife’s jewelry was missing, including her wedding ring and an expensive watch she’d given him for their anniversary.

  And a gun.

  A gun he owned had disappeared, too.

  There was no way to prove he was lying and no way to prove he was telling the truth. Did my father believe him? No. Did Adam? No. But not believing someone didn’t mean you could put them in jail.

  Did the people of Everywhere believe him? No. The rumors and goss
ip in town all declared Keith guilty.

  What about me? Did I believe him?

  I’d thought about that question for months, but I still had no answer.

  All I knew is that while I was standing over Colleen’s body, Adam asked Keith how things were in their marriage, and Keith replied, “Fine.”

  That was a lie. I knew it was a lie. But I didn’t say a word.

  Chapter Twelve

  I met my father at the Nowhere Café an hour later. He hadn’t slept at all, but sometime during the night he’d ironed his uniform, and his hat wasn’t even a single degree off-kilter. He was eating a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon at the counter, and he had the newspaper folded in front of him to the daily crossword puzzle. Breezy was late getting to work, and the coffee pot in the diner was already getting dangerously low.

  Everything looked normal around here, but in fact, nothing was normal at all. This was Saturday. Day two. Jeremiah had been gone for an entire night.

  “Morning, Dad,” I said as I took the seat next to him at the counter.

  “Hello, Shelby. Did you sleep?”

  “A little. I wish you had, too.”

  “Something tells me I’ll have plenty of free time when the FBI arrives.”

  “So they’re really coming?”

  “The governor called me personally to ask for my cooperation. Also, the statewide media has picked up the story. It’s all over TV. I imagine we’re going to be inundated very soon.”

  I looked around at our sleepy café. It wouldn’t be sleepy here much longer. We were about to be swarmed by strangers asking questions, giving us suspicious looks, digging into our private lives, and studying our behavior as if we were exotic animals at the zoo. Cops. Reporters. Volunteers. Gawkers. You could almost feel the town holding its breath, waiting for the invasion like the return of the mayflies. Most of us who live here don’t really trust outsiders, for the simple reason that outsiders who come here don’t really trust us.