by Mary Logue
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m not too young for you?”
“As long as I’m not too old for you. What with me being old enough to be your father.”
“You’d have had to start pretty young to be my father, like when you were ten.”
John laughed and said, “I can’t remember that far back.”
“Sounds good.”
They played a few sets of pool and each had another beer. Then they both noticed that, even though it was not even eleven yet, the bar had emptied out and the bartender was looking ready to leave himself, counting out the cash from the register.
“I guess it’s time to go,” Amy reached for her jacket.
John took it from her and helped her put it on. As he did he leaned in and kissed her on the neck.
Amy wanted more. She didn’t want her night with John Gordon to end.
“I’m not sure you should drive home.” She turned in his arms, stood on tiptoe and and kissed him quickly on the mouth.
When they pulled apart, he said, “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure how much you’ve had to drink, but if you tried to drive I might have to arrest you.”
“Well, now, that would be mighty embarrassing. What’re we going to do about this situation? You have any ideas?” He wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her close.
“I don’t live too far from here.”
The deep kiss he gave her warmed her body in a way she hadn’t felt since the hottest day last summer.
11 pm
From the way he was sitting—shoulders hunched, head lowered—Sherri could tell Dan wasn’t feeling very good. He tried to act as if he was okay, but she knew he was tired. She was sure he hurt all over. The frostbite on his face had to be bothering him, not to mention his foot.
Before they left the hospital, the doctor had prescribed him some kind of pain pill. Dan said it helped some, but he needed to add some liquor to the mix. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to drink with it, but he was working on his second large snifter of Courvoisier. No one could tell big, strong Daniel Walker what to do. She had given up trying. But sitting in her favorite chair next to him Sherri knew this was where she wanted to be. If only he meant half the things he had said recently.
The gas fireplace was on high. Sherri was always surprised by how much heat it gave off. She had wanted a real fireplace, but, as Dan had explained to her, a gas fire was more convenient and supposedly even more environmentally correct, but she missed the smell of wood burning in an open hearth.
Dan leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. “I got something to tell you, Sherri, and you’re not going to like it.”
“Thanks for warning me.” She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to hear him tell her that he still wanted to get the divorce. “I’m not assuming anything. I’m here because you need someone to take care of you.”
“No, it’s not about that. I was serious when I said I wanted to give it another try. I do think almost dying has made me a better man. Even as bullheaded as I am.” He sighed and took another large swallow of brandy. “But it’s confession time. Much as I hate to confess.”
“Do we really have to do this right now?”
“Well, I know you’re going to find out sooner or later and I’d just as soon the news came from me.”
She was pretty sure she knew where this was going and she really didn’t want to hear it. What did it matter who he slept with while they were separated? As long as it wasn’t anyone she was related to or one of her best friends. “What did you do and with whom?”
“With whom? That’s one thing I’ve always liked about you, Sherri darling, you speak such good English.”
“You’re stalling.”
He put his head in his hands and looked down at the floor. “Did you know that Bonnie Hegstrom had a baby?”
“Bonnie? Our cleaning lady’s daughter?” Even as she tried to sound nonchalant, her stomach was sinking. She felt a horrible tug in the pit of her guts. “She had a baby? But she’s just a kid.”
“Well, it might be mine.”
Dan lifted his head up and looked at her. His eyes were flat brown like a piece of wood. He looked even worse than he had in the hospital and she wondered if the doctors had been right to let him come to the cabin.
Sherri could feel she was still resisting taking in what he was saying to her. She didn’t want to know it. Shaking her head, she asked, “What are you saying? You slept with that girl?”
“And I really fucked up this time. I might get into a real legal mess,” he said. “Bonnie’s underage.”
A knock sounded on the door. Two sharp raps.
“Who could that be?” Sherri asked.
“The cops might be here to take me away,” Dan said with a slight laugh. “Or probably Danielle ready to make up with her old dad.”
Dan stood up and hobbled toward the door. She should have gotten up and answered it, but she couldn’t move. Danielle was the last person she wanted to see at that moment.
Sherri sat still in her favorite chair. But nothing seemed favorite any more. Who was this man she was married to? How could he have slept with Bonnie Hegstrom? What was love and sex and all of it to him? She realized she didn’t understand him at all and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Sherri turned and watched Dan pull open the door. A wave of cold air poured in, sharp as teeth.
At the same instant, she heard a loud crack and saw him bend double. A tree breaking in half. Thunder crashing down on the roof. An explosion in a quarry, blowing rocks apart.
Dan fell in the entryway and the door banged shut in front of him. Her husband lay in a heap, a pile of flesh and bones. Nothing more.
Sherri stood up. Inside of her she was pushing this all away. This moment. This time when the world tore apart in front of her. She still held her snifter and could smell the deep sweetness of the brandy. The warmth from the fake fire made her sweat and shake at the same time.
She had to walk over to him.
It felt the same as when she found him in the snow. She knew he was no longer in his body. She knew that loud sound had been made by a metal object slamming all that made him human into oblivion.
Somehow she was sure this time her husband Daniel Walker would not be coming back from the dead.
CHAPTER 18
4 January: 11:15 pm
You told me to call...” A voice so shrill and hysterical came over the phone line that Claire had to hold the receiver away from her ear. Some woman was screaming at her in the middle of the night.
“Calm down. Who is this?”
Instead of calming down, the woman got worse, not even talking in words, but completely incoherent. The sound of her voice grew muffled as if the phone had been dropped, and then Claire could hear someone sobbing.
Keeping the phone receiver pressed to her ear, Claire stood up and moved away from the bed. Rich didn’t need to be woken up too. She pushed her feet into her polar fleece slippers and grabbed her robe from the bedpost. Once out of the bedroom, she shut the door behind her.
“Hello?” she hollered. “Are you there?”
“I’m sorry,” the voice said, then a loud jagged breath. “This time he’s dead. He’s really dead.”
“Who is this?” Claire asked.
“Sherri Walker.”
Claire’s heart sank. This was not good. She had given Sherri her cell phone number when they were leaving the hospital, told her to call if Dan could remember anything new.
Even though Claire was sure she knew the answer, she had to ask, “Sherri, who’s dead?”
“You know.” The woman was crying again, but more quietly. “Dan. I can’t stand it.”
“Where are you?”
“At our cabin.”
“What happened?”
“Someone shot him right in the chest. They knocked at the door and then they shot him.”
“Who?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know. I didn’t see. Dan went to the door and opened it. Then there was a loud noise and he fell. I checked him and he’s not breathing. I felt for a pulse, I did everything. He’s gone.”
“I’ll be right there.”
11:00 pm
As soon as they walked into Amy’s apartment, John pushed her against the door and surrounded her. His arms held her against the door, his mouth pressed onto hers. He seemed ravenous, like he wanted to eat her up. His hunger made her realize she was starving too.
They started pulling off each other’s clothes—scarves, mittens, coats, boots. When John lifted her sweater over her head at the same time that she was trying to undo his belt they fell onto the floor, cushioned by all their outerwear. He finished pulling the sweater off, turned to her, and started to laugh.
Amy looked at him and cracked up too. His hair was lifting off his head from static electricity. His shirt was half off. Then they kissed while laughing, but the laughter slowed them down and their love-making turned playful.
The first time took place on the pile of clothes after John pulled a condom out of his wallet. “Hope it’s not too old. It’s been in there for quite a while.”
It was fast and awkward. Somehow in all their thrashing around Amy found herself halfway under the coffee table when they were done.
She held his head on her chest and said, “Would you like to try out the bed?”
“Bed sounds good. This floor’s a little hard. I think I abraded my knees.”
She grabbed his shirt. He pulled on his jeans, stood and walked around, inspecting her apartment. “This is cozy.”
“Oh, I know it’s small.”
“Yeah, but it feels real comfortable.”
Amy was proud of her apartment, the first place she had lived on her own. The small flat was above the pharmacy, only three rooms—a bathroom, bedroom, and then the main room which served as kitchen, living room and dining room.
“Let me give you the grand tour.” She pointed out the new two-seater couch that she had bought at IKEA two months ago. “Very green. Made from all recycled material. The only new piece of furniture I own.”
“The kitchen.” She had cleared the dinner dishes off the counter, but they were still in the sink. The seventies décor looked awfully faded in the dim light.
“Very efficient,” he said.
She walked down the short hallway. “The bathroom.” This was the room she was most proud of. It had cool blue and white tile and she had bought new shower curtains to match. After painting the walls a gleaming glossy white, it looked crisp and sanitary.
“Convenient.”
“And the bedroom.” Amy had made this room her refuge. The bed was a queen with a white down comforter on it. Over her bed she had hung an old hooked rug of an owl that her grandmother had made.
“Very nocturnal,” he said. “Nice.”
Amy was glad that she had dressed her bed before she left for work that morning and that she had put on clean flannel sheets.
They moved slow, exploring. John kissed her in places no one had ever kissed her before: the palm of her hand, the crook of her knee. Slowly he opened her up until she felt like she had never been so vulnerable. When he entered her, it felt like he belonged there, inside her. They came together in a slow wave.
“Wow!” he said when he finally rolled off of her.
“Really?” Amy said, pleased.
“Wasn’t it wow for you?”
“Triple wow.”
“Then why really?”
“I don’t know. I’m having a hard time believing this is happening. You know, with the homecoming king and all.”
He leaned over her, his face so close she could hardly focus her eyes on it. “Get used to it, my little queen. It’s going to be a long winter and I plan on keeping you warm.”
Amy was not used to hearing such sweet words from a man. Bill had been fun in a blustery sort of way. A good guy, but pushy. Plus, she had always thought of John as brusque. To find this warmth hidden under all that gruffness was so surprising.
Amy was in the bathroom, washing herself, when the phone rang. She had left it on the bedside table. John picked the phone up and brought it to her. She read the screen before connecting.
“Shit! It’s work. I gotta take this.” She answered, “Hello?”
“Amy, I’m sorry to wake you, but Daniel Walker’s been killed. Over at his house. I need you to call the Crime Bureau and then get your butt over there. I’m just leaving my house now. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay,” Amy said and clicked off. She closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t have to say what she had to say. “I gotta go.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, someone killed Dan Walker.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Nope, I’m not.” She stood up and kissed him. “All I can say is you’ve got a damn good alibi.”
11:25 pm
Without waiting until the car warmed up, Claire pulled onto the highway barely able to see. Her breath was freezing to the inside of the car window so Claire tucked her head into her jacket collar. The defroster wasn’t making a dent in the frost and she could only see through a small hole in the windshield. Thank god it was the middle of the night and no one was out on the roads. She was going about thirty miles an hour down Highway 35.
Claire hated to think what she was going to find when she got to the Walker’s. When she had worked in Minneapolis, there had been a homicide nearly every day. Down in Pepin County, years passed with no one getting killed. Sheriff Talbert teased her that murders had gotten much more frequent since she had come to work for the department. Before her joining the force there hadn’t been a murder in the county in almost twenty years. Then Claire’s neighbor Landers Anderson had been killed. That was ten years ago. Since then they had averaged nearly a homicide a year. Claire blamed it on the influx of “foreigners,” which in Pepin County meant anyone from outside the county, like her.
A shooting like this needed to be handled carefully. She would find a bloody body waiting for her, a hysterical wife, a crime scene that needed securing in this blasted cold weather. She hoped the crime lab would get there soon. She already knew she would want tire mark prints and footprints. If they hadn’t drifted over.
As Claire turned up the hill away from the lake, the darkness deepened, the bare braches of the trees folding in over the road. The cold landscape entered her body. Winter was beautiful down in the coulees, but brutal. Even though heat was finally coming out of the blowers, Claire shivered compulsively, in hard jerks.
It wasn’t just from the cold.
Sherri’s voice had reminded her of her own hysteria nearly ten years ago, when her husband had been killed. She remembered the moments after Steve had been killed so vividly; they were tattooed into her psyche.
He had been hit by a truck on the road right in front of their house. Meg, eight at the time, had seen it happen, then hidden in the curtains. Claire remembered starting to scream. The calm, effective Minneapolis homicide detective couldn’t stop shrieking as she tried to bring her husband back to life, as he was dying in front of her. She couldn’t remember when she gave up, when she finally stopped. The sound of her screaming she still heard, sometimes in a dream, sometimes seeping into her waking life.
After a near nervous meltdown, Claire had left the cities so she would never have to experience that kind of evil again. Every year she had lived in the country she felt herself melt and unwind from what she had been put through, felt herself begin to trust the security and warmth she got from Rich, the safety in this small and tight community, where people watched out for each other.
She didn’t want to have to see another woman’s anguish that might so clearly mirror what her own had been. As she got close to the driveway turn-off, she slowed down even more.
In order to not ruin any marks—footprints or tire prints—Claire decided she better park out by the road and walk in alongside the driveway. The turn
to the Walker’s driveway appeared in her headlights and she pulled over and sat for a moment. The stars shone brittle in an infinitely dark sky. No warmth from those solitary wanderers, no solace anywhere.
Claire pulled in closer to the side of the road, blocking the end of the driveway so that no one could make the mistake of driving down it. She pulled her hat down tight on her head and, bracing for the cold, got out of the car.
Her shoulders automatically constricted, pulled in as the cold air hit her. She could feel her lungs constricting, protecting themselves. The air was so frigid it hurt to breathe. Again, Claire tucked her face into her jacket collar. She walked along the road and then waded into the snow alongside the plowed path of the driveway.
When Claire got close to the house, the light by the front door illuminated her way. She watched where she put her feet, not wanting to obliterate any recent prints. She was able to make it up the front steps and get to the front door by stepping only in unadulterated snow.
When she pulled open the door, she saw Sherri sitting on the entryway floor with her husband’s head in her lap. The woman was bent over and her hair was covering his face. Soft sounds were coming out of her mouth, but Claire couldn’t tell if she was gently weeping or praying or talking to her husband.
“Sherri,” Claire said quietly, not wanting to startle her. “I’m here.”
As if he were still alive and could feel what she was doing, Sherri stood up and gently placed Walker’s head on the floor.
Claire kneeled down, needing to check to make sure he was dead. She could see the small hole that had been blown open in his chest, near or next to his heart, a splat of blood surrounded it. As soon as she put her fingers on his neck, she could tell Daniel Walker was dead. Already heat had fled his body, leaving it plasticy and lifeless. No breath, no pulse. Dead.
Sherri was swaying back and forth, saying, “No, no, no,” her arms wrapped around her waist as if holding in her guts.
A resonance hummed in Claire, a huge desire to join this woman in her weeping and anguish, but she fought it hard, swallowing it down her throat as if it were a piece of food she could not longer chew.
