3.
Even With Johnny’s Plow leading the way, Deputy Bradley Coggins’ squad car got stuck in a snowdrift not ten miles down Highway 2. The angry deputy slammed his gloved hands against the steering wheel and pumped the gas in frustration.
Then he swore. And swore again.
After punching the steering wheel a second time, he grabbed the radio and clicked the call button rapidly, not bothering to identify himself. There was a brief moment of silence, followed by a burst of static.
“Coggins? That you?” Deputy White asked, and Coggins detected what could have been a hint of satisfaction in the big man’s voice.
Goddamn it, why did I ask that stupid question about the Gretzkys?
It had been his cockiness, of course; he knew thousands of obscure NHL trivia facts, but that one was his favorite—his go-to. No one ever got that one right; Wayne had over twenty-eight hundred points, while his brother Brent—who had only played thirteen NHL games—had four points.
Goddamn it.
The radio crackled again.
“Sheriff? That you?”
Deputy Coggins closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“No, it’s me,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm. “Got stuck up here on Highway 2.”
He honked the horn, and when he saw Johnny’s eyes look up at him in his rearview mirror, he made a sweeping arm gesture indicating that the man should get out of his truck and come to him.
“Fucking guy,” he muttered, forgetting that the radio was still on. “Not you, Paul; Johnny—I’m going to see if this miscreant can get me out of here.”
He let go of the button and waited.
“Okay,” Deputy White replied hesitantly. “Are you going to keep going up to Mrs. Wharfburn’s after you’re out?”
Coggins brought the radio to his mouth and was about to answer when he changed his mind.
Fuck it, he thought, better to keep going than head back to the office and field calls all day—again.
“Hello?” Deputy White asked. As if to reinforce his decision, Coggins heard two phones ring in the background.
“Yeah, I think I’ll keep going. The sheriff is probably just stuck inside—snowed in—having tea and talking about the last bowel movement the woman’s stupid cat had.”
Even though he had meant it as a joke, his words rang hollow. The sheriff had been gone for almost two days, and Coggins had a sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong.
Nevertheless, Deputy White chuckled on the other end of the radio.
“Hey, Coggins?”
“Yeah?”
“Brent Gretzky only had—”
Deputy Coggins reached over and flicked off the radio before the big man could finish his sentence.
4.
It Wasn’t So Much a question of if Corina’s leg was broken, but rather, of how badly it was broken. And although none of the Lawrences were doctors, they could all tell by the way the flesh on her shin jutted out with an unnatural acuteness that the diagnosis was universally “very bad”.
Surprisingly, however, Corina was not the most upset about this, although it was clearly more than just unsettling for her; instead, Marley was the most distraught, a state that Cody chalked up to a combination of the severity of her daughter’s injury and their increasingly dire situation. What had not too long ago seemed exciting and adventurous had quickly turned frightening. The power had been out for more than a day, and the generator, which hadn’t been completely full to begin with, wouldn’t last much longer. Thoughts of fuel reminded Cody that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday—none of them had.
“Ma, could you put together some sandwiches?” Cody asked, looking over at his mother.
Veronica Lawrence seemed the least disturbed by the afternoon’s occurrences, as she had barely acknowledged the situation. Instead, the woman resolved herself to sitting in her chair, slowly rocking back and forth, her hair immaculate, her off-white cashmere sweater wrinkle-free. But it was the strange, flat look on the woman’s face that bothered Cody most of all. It was clear that this whole situation was too overwhelming for the woman who, since Gordon had died, usually spent her time alone on the veranda reading or just watching the trees.
Cody couldn’t blame her; the whole situation was overwhelming for him too, case in point being him blowing up at his brothers. At least Henrietta had stopped crying for the time being, though that was more likely from exhaustion rather than her getting past whatever was irking her.
“I’ll make something,” Seth offered.
Cody turned to face the voice. The meek, pale man with the dark, shaggy hair and boy-like features had said very little since they had come inside, and Cody noticed that he had done everything he could to avoid looking directly at Corina’s broken leg.
“No, that’s alright,” Mama said, slowly pulling herself to her feet. “I’ll do it.”
Seth opened his mouth to interject, but seeing the determined look on the elderly woman’s face, he decided against it.
“Tuna fish okay?”
“Fine,” Cody answered as he watched his mother make her way slowly to the kitchen.
Definitely too much for the poor woman.
They were all huddled in the family room again, much like the previous night, but unlike yesterday, there were no smiles or anxious anticipation of gift opening. Instead, the atmosphere was tense bordering on despair.
The wind howled just then, and everyone in the room looked upward as if trying to spot an aerial intruder.
Come
“We have to get out of here,” Marley said suddenly, breaking the silence. Her grief-stricken face made her look at least a decade beyond her thirty and change years.
And you have to stop saying that.
“I know,” Cody answered.
Corina turned her head gingerly in Marley’s lap at the sound of his voice and stared at him with glazed eyes.
“I know,” he repeated.
They had turned the temperature down to fifty-five degrees in the house and had turned off all but one of the lights. But despite their conservative efforts, the lone bulb in the lamp behind the couch on which Marley and Corina lay glowed a dull yellow—the generator was running on fumes now.
“Still no signal,” Jared said, his eyes transfixed on his phone.
The wind howled once more, a high pitched whistle that seemed almost mocking.
Come Come
Come
It was the third or fourth time that Cody had heard what sounded like a voice carried on the wind, and he cautiously looked around at his family to see if they had heard it too.
I must be losing it, he thought when he realized that none of the other Lawrences had reacted.
But there was something in the way that their glances were all sidelong, looking at something and nothing at the same time, that made him think that maybe—just maybe—they had also heard it. He was about to say something to this effect when Oxford spoke up and startled him.
“What’s the plan?”
Oxford’s speech was short and clipped—unlike Jared, he hadn’t completely gotten over Cody’s outburst earlier in the day.
Cody shrugged.
“We wait,” he offered. When Marley’s red-rimmed eyes shot up and glared at him, he added, “At least until morning. By then, either the plow will have come by or we will have reception again.”
Or not.
Despite his words, Cody doubted that the small back road that serviced barely a dozen homes—half of which were just seasonally occupied—was high on the Askergan priority list. And although Askergan County had its own plow service, he knew from experience that the larger cities frequently commandeered these vehicles when things got really bad to keep the major roads clear. Judging by the way the snowdrifts kept growing, now at least four feet high in some places, things weren’t only bad, but they had quickly crossed over to the impossibly bad designation, skipping very bad altogether. No, waiting for the roads to be cleared was not a v
iable option; they had to come up with something else. Problem was, Cody had no idea what to do—what they could do—and he was scared to admit as much in front of his wife and children.
When the wind gusted next—a long, hard burst that howled for a good minute—the cracked window high above them shattered and fell inward. Marley and Corina screamed as a massive section of glass crashed to the floor, just missing where Henrietta sat playing with the owl that Oxford had bought her. Cody immediately sprang to his feet, as did Jared, both hopping off their respective seats and lunging at the girl.
Cody reached the frightened child first and quickly scooped her into his arms.
“You okay?” he asked breathlessly, as Jared inspected her legs, arms, and hair for glass or wounds.
Henrietta stared blankly at Cody for a moment before her eyes widened and her lower lip slowly started to tremble. Then she started to cry. Again.
Cody placed his hand on the back of her head and gently pulled her face into his thick wool sweater. It was clear that she had been frightened more by him and Jared hurtling toward her than by the falling glass.
“She’s clean,” Jared informed him, sounding like a corrections officer who had just finished frisking a suspect for contraband. Then he went to the kitchen to get a broom.
Cody looked over at Oxford, who had shifted from having his legs hanging over the side of the couch to being poised on the edge. His face was gaunt, and the dark circles around his eyes seemed to be etched with a black crayon. Desperation clung to his features.
Clean for six months?
The statement had become a question now.
“It’s going to be okay—everything is going to be okay,” Cody said, turning back to Henrietta.
His voice wavered slightly, and he looked around to see if anyone had noticed; thankfully, everyone seemed to be lost in their own thoughts, except for Marley. His wife was staring at him, and her hands, although gently cradling Corina’s head, seemed tight, as if there was suddenly not enough skin to comfortably cover her fingers. The woman’s dark hazel eyes blazed at him—into him—and a solitary tear rolled silently down her pale cheek.
Things are going to be okay, Cody thought again, fighting back his own tears.
Just then, the wind gusted, and this time the bitterly cold air didn’t thump the sides of the house with a deep rumbling, but instead it whistled through the sharp remnants that clung to the frame of the smashed window. To Cody, it sounded like a high-pitched laugh.
Coooooome.
5.
Johnny The Mechanic Eventually managed to pull Deputy Coggins’ squad car from the shoulder of Highway 2. It had taken nearly two hours before the deputy was finally able to feel traction beneath his tires and the smell of burning oil began to dissipate. Judging by the way his washer fluid light blinked even though he had not used any and had filled it up that morning, he figured that he had put five years’ worth of wear on the car today alone. As he shifted from reverse and back into drive for what seemed like the thousandth time, the check engine icon appeared on the dash just below the washer fluid icon.
No, not five, he thought, staring at the crude engine outline, more like ten.
The only solace he took was the fact that he had managed to stay inside the warm car most of the time, protected from the bitter cold, and even had the pleasure of watching Johnny the mechanic—more like Johnny the delinquent—struggle to first shovel and then push his car. And when he got bored of watching the man suffer, Coggins watched the road. It surprised him that despite the blinding conditions and thick snow that covered the highway, and the fact that it was Christmas day, there were not a just a few, but many cars on the road. Most got stuck, or simply pulled to the side of the road to wait for the brunt of the storm to pass. He assumed that they would eventually just fall in line behind his squad car, following the path that Johnny’s plow dug.
Where the fuck is everyone going?
But it was Christmas, and he supposed that nothing would stop people from rushing to get a bite of Grandma’s famous turkey. And mashed potatoes. Maybe cranberry sauce. Stuffing. Gravy. Fucking gravy.
Coggins licked his lips and realized that he hadn’t eaten since earlier that morning, and even then it had just been a coffee and a muffin. He, for one, didn’t have any plans for an elaborate feast or meeting up with his extended family; it just wasn’t his style. Besides, his grandparents had long since passed, and only his mother, institutionalized with dementia, expected—or more likely didn’t expect—his visit on the holiday. Coggins had planned to do what he had done for each of the past four years: visit his mother and bring two Swanson “Christmas” dinners, and after his mother refused to eat hers—Who are you? Are you trying to poison me? Are you a spy, like the women in the white coats?—he would wolf down the second tray, trying to distract himself by watching old Matlock episodes on the woman’s archaic tube TV.
All this thinking about food—even thoughts of the TV dinner—made him hungrier, and he almost lunged at the glove box, scrounging for something, anything, to eat. As he felt his way through the refuse—old tissues, a box of matches, a manual for something or other—all the while trying to keep his eyes on the road, his cell phone suddenly rang. The jingle—duh duh duh duh dah, ba badi badi bah—cut through the muted drone of the wind, and Deputy Bradley Coggins was so taken by surprise that he nearly swerved off the road.
“Jesus,” he swore, withdrawing his hand from the glove box and grabbing the phone from the center console.
Up ahead, Johnny slowed, the snow coming down so thick now that visibility was next to zero.
“Hello?” he asked, bringing the old Nokia to his ear. Based on his trouble with the police radio earlier, he didn’t expect much from the old piece of shit cell phone.
There was a breathy pause on the other end of the line, and Coggins was about to repeat himself thinking that someone—what were the kids calling it again? Bum-dialed?—had rung him by mistake. But then a female voice replied, slow and timid.
“It’s me, Brad,” the woman said, and Deputy Bradley Coggins immediately knew who me was.
“Alice?” he asked. “It’s been—” Coggins thought about it or a moment, “—it’s been more than two days! Where the hell are you?”
There was another pause, but this time there was no breathing. Instead, Coggins could only hear wind on the other end of the line.
“Alice, are you—?”
“—I—I—it happened again.”
There was fear in the woman’s voice, fear laced with disappointment and pain.
Coggins’ heart fell to the floor.
Fuck.
“Alice—” Coggins began, but stopped himself when he realized that his dismay—his utter disappointment—was going to come off as condescension. He cleared his throat and pulled his foot back from the gas pedal. The snow was coming down in a thick blanket, and Coggins could barely make out the back of Johnny the Mechanic’s red pickup truck that was but a few car lengths ahead.
“What happened?” he asked, his tone deliberate and direct. Coggins thought for a moment that Alice might misinterpret his question, might think that he wanted her to relive the relapse, and he immediately wished he had used different words.
There was another pause, and the deputy began nervously squeezing the cell phone between thumb and forefinger while he waited for a response.
“I dunno,” Alice replied at long last, her voice meek.
Although Coggins was grateful that she had gotten his meaning, he still didn’t know what to say. She had been doing so well for so long that he had forgotten how to talk to her about her addiction. In fact, he had almost—not quite, but almost—forgotten about it altogether. But now, upon uttering those fateful words, “it happened again”, the memory of finding her that night at the police station more than two years ago, a needle still hanging out of her thin arm, blood and vomit covering her mouth and nose like an obscene beauty mask, flooded his mind. He shuddered.
&nb
sp; “The sheriff was looking for you,” he said softly.
He could almost hear her shake her head.
“I know,” Alice replied, her guilt-laden voice barely audible over the rushing wind.
“Where are you now?”
“Driving.”
“How far away?”
“Dunno. A few hours, maybe less.”
A few hours?
“I don’t know what happened this time, Brad, I really don’t remember. I—I remember leaving work, then—”
Her voice hitched and she began to cry.
“It’s okay, Alice, it’s okay.”
“Where are you?” she managed to ask between sobs.
Coggins squinted into the white squall before him.
“Highway 2?” he answered uncertainly. “But the roads are bad. Real bad. You shouldn’t be on the road—no one should.”
He squinted hard, trying to make out Johnny’s shadow in the truck in front of him. The man appeared to be waving his arm.
“I’m out to meet up with the sheriff at Mrs. Wharfburn’s.”
Deputy Coggins heard the breath catch in Alice’s throat, followed by a thick sniff.
“Why don’t you come and meet me there?”
Pause.
“I—I don’t think I—”
But the phone beeped twice and went dead before Alice finished her sentence.
Shit.
With only a quick glance down at his phone, nervous about taking his eyes off the road for even a second, he found her number and thumbed send. Nothing happened.
He glanced down a second time and realized that whatever weak signal his phone had grasped when Alice called was long since gone: zero bars.
Goddamn it!
A screech from the road drew his gaze just in time to see Johnny’s red truck skid and fishtail wildly. For a brief second, Coggins thought the truck would spin completely around, maybe even smash the front of his cruiser, but thankfully it butted up hard against the median, stopping its rotation. Coggins slammed on the brakes, the back end of his own car only tenuously gripping the fluffy snow. He stopped within two feet of Johnny’s truck and quickly switched on his cherries.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 9
