Cover of Snow

by Jenny Milchman

  They knew which spot, of course. The leg of road just before the boulder. Gil was already starting to move, hoisting Cooper up in his arms. But Cooper died in the back of the cruiser before Doc could even arrive.

  There was nothing to do then. It was an accident, a horrible accident, and it had happened before Tim or Gil had gotten anywhere near. But if Cooper’s body was discovered now, things wouldn’t look as simple as that.

  Gil figured out where to put the man until nightfall. They staggered up the side of the hill to the snow cave, sharing Cooper’s weight. They’d hurried because the cruiser had been left on the road. Not many people drove out this way, but someone might.

  They had a body to hide and they had to do it before snowmelt. As the Chief had put it, Paulson’s loader would come in useful. With spring would come the need to do a better job.

  But spring felt very far away.

  Tim looked across the seat to Gil. “Get out.”

  “What?” Gil looked out into the swirling snow outside. “Yeah, right.”

  Wearily, Tim reached down past the front seat, lifted the piece he’d brought from home—he wouldn’t use his service revolver, not for this—and aimed it at Gil.

  In a flash so fast Tim had no idea what had happened, the gun was back on the floor, and Gil was on top of him, elbow lodged in Tim’s throat.

  Tim fought to suck in breath—unable to budge his partner’s arm so much as a millimeter—and an image of Cooper dying flashed before his grayed-out vision.

  Then suddenly he was free.

  Gil loomed above him.

  Tim was sputtering and gasping, air like claws in his lungs. Gil didn’t even appear to be breathing hard. “What the fuck, man?” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Force clearly wouldn’t work here.

  Gil was strong, and he was trained. But he wasn’t all that smart. And he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He never had.

  “Please,” Tim said. “Whatever happened with Cooper or the reporter or anyone else—I know it wasn’t your fault. None of this is your fault. But I can’t take it anymore. Hamilton couldn’t, and I can’t, either. I want out.”

  Every word was true. He just had to hope that the way out Gil imagined him taking wasn’t the one he had actually decided on. Or that Gil wouldn’t care enough to give the matter any further thought.

  “You want out?” Gil repeated.

  Tim glanced meaningfully at the gun on the floor. “I need to be alone right now.”

  Gil studied Tim where he half lay, still angled back against the seat.

  Then Gil gave a snort of dismissal. He readjusted his coat from the dismantling it had gotten when he attacked Tim, opened his door, and went out into the night.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  When you’re in an unfamiliar house, you attune differently to sounds. You don’t have to tighten that creaking wood or joist, the balky furnace that comes on won’t be yours to adjust, and so these things mostly pass unnoticed. I’d been sitting still for what felt like hours, letting Dugger’s video replay in my mind, getting used to the idea that my dead husband had been a father. The sound of the heavy wooden door opening up and someone coming in registered only dimly. But the noise that followed next was too loud and brutal not to note.

  The muffled report of a silenced gun.

  Someone had found me. But he had found Dick Granger first. The breath I took stabbed my lungs.

  It felt like a long time went by as the headline printed itself across my brain, but it couldn’t have been more than a second or two. BED & BREAKFAST OWNER, GUEST KILLED IN SUSPECTED DISPUTE. SEARCH CONTINUES FOR SHOOTER.

  There was no link between Wedeskyull and Cold Kettle. Even Ned might not suspect.

  I thought again of kindly Dick Granger at the desk, and my body shook with horror.

  If whoever had come in went upstairs—assuming me to be in my room—then I might be able to make it to the front hall. So long as I could keep from being heard overhead, I could dash down the entry hall and get out, run to Olivia Peterson’s house, to any house at all.

  Olivia’s was probably staked out. Dear God, I hoped she was all right.

  I was formulating this plan when steady footsteps began to thud. They weren’t moving toward the staircase.

  I flew to a cold, black window. Raise it and climb out? It was big enough, but these old windows were often painted shut, the double-hung mechanism long past use.

  Outside, a gray car rolled up, nearly invisible in the gathering storm, just a shadow amidst flakes. Had all three cops come? In my mind another patrol car, then another, emerged like apparitions from the concealment of snow.

  I whirled around, hunting something that could be used as a weapon. What would there be in an inn? I patted my pockets wildly, but the only thing I felt was Dugger’s recorder. Hardly even aware of what I was doing, I pressed a button, felt the little machine start to whir inside my coat.

  Then Club strode into the parlor, and I ran for the corner of the room.

  I had a hunch—based on the way in which Greggy had been shot—that Club wouldn’t shoot me immediately upon entering. And in that moment, I also knew who’d killed Aunt Jean.

  “Why did you kill her?”

  Club was already reaching for his belt, but his hand hesitated then.

  “Shut up, Nora,” he growled. “Let’s do this the easy way, okay?”

  Do what? Kill me? Or handcuff me? What was he intending?

  “Jean was shot from behind,” I answered. “Like you shoot all your victims.”

  “Victims.” Club let out a barking laugh, but the skin around his mouth had gone white. He started to massage the gun in his holster. “You think Aunt Jean was a victim?”

  I cast my gaze around. The TV cabinet, several chairs too heavy for me to lift, and an end table whose legs looked deadly but would never make it past a bullet already in the chamber. “What are you talking about?”

  Club removed his gun, settling it into a practiced, two-fisted hold.

  “She talked shit about my dad,” he muttered. “Said he couldn’t find anything if it was hidden right under his nose.”

  I recalled Jean’s ransacked kitchen. And something else, too. Jean, taking Brendan’s box from me after I had been attacked, and idly stroking its side. At least, I thought then that it had been idle, Jean distracted and distraught over my assault. But that had been the false side she was touching, and now I realized she must’ve been checking to make sure that nothing had gotten disturbed. When had Jean put the Polaroid inside? When she had gone upstairs to our bedroom after the funeral? Or a long time before that, when the box had still belonged to her brother? The cops had been searching for something for weeks. Burning down houses, stealing, even plundering the box itself, and the crucial bit of evidence had been right there all along. Vern must’ve known about the picture. He was in it after all.

  And there in the parlor, with another body lying dead just one room away, and the kill weapon now trained on me, I tipped a silent glass to Brendan’s aunt.

  “What the fuck are you smiling about?” Club demanded. “You think the same thing can’t happen to you? You think I’m going to be caught? We’re never caught, Nora. We can do whatever the fuck we want. And you know what? Someone will thank us for it.”

  He really seemed to believe it. There was a dark overlay of insanity in his tone.

  I shifted my gaze just long enough to snatch another look around.

  “So the Chief won’t mind if you kill me?” Maybe he wouldn’t, I realized. But there was one thing he must’ve minded. I knew from the Polaroid. “I bet he wasn’t too happy about Jean, though. He loved her, you know.”

  Club had been about to flick the safety on his gun, but I saw his finger jog before gaining control. “The Chief knows things sometimes get out of hand.”

  Things got out of hand, and the cops did whatever they had to. I refuted Club’s claim with all the rage it lit inside me. “Bullshit. I b
et he never forgives you for it—”

  Club lowered his head like a charging animal, and his stare was ragged, desperate. He must’ve looked like this right before he shot Jean. There was no stopping him now.

  Unless I moved awfully fast. I’d spotted something. It shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did. These were the tricks of my trade, and Dick Granger had alerted me to their presence the moment I arrived.

  I had a few seconds. Club had to get into position. For all his comfort with weapons, he didn’t seem to like shooting anybody straight-on.

  I sidled over a few feet.

  Club jumped behind me in one ungainly leap.

  I whirled on him, even though it meant losing sight of what I’d been going for.

  And then I saw something else, and the expression on my face made Club take his eyes off me. I froze, foot already extended in preparation for my next step.

  Club swiveled expertly, gun still raised, maintaining every inch of his stance.

  Tim Lurcquer stood in the parlor doorway.

  I slipped over to the stash of supplies, dropping to my knees. The churchkey fit in my hand like a sixth digit. It would’ve made a handy weapon in itself, but I might not be able to get close enough to use it. It didn’t matter. There was something even better, and just as lethal.

  I picked up a can.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Two things I should’ve put together. Why did Tim give me the log? And stand stock-still while I drove away from Eileen’s when he could easily have given chase?

  Because he’d been trying to help.

  He faced Club now, a few inches shorter, not quite as powerfully built.

  “What the hell are you doing?” For the first time, Club appeared truly baffled, with no idea which way to point his gun.

  Tim seemed just as genuine in his appeal to Club. “Too many shortcuts, too many bad outcomes. And it isn’t just the dirtbags, who deserve what they get. One of our own couldn’t take it anymore. And now he’s dead …” And Tim turned to me.

  I bore down on the can’s handle until it branded my palm.

  “Shut the fuck up now, Lurcquer,” Club growled. “You’ve gone crazy.”

  “No, Mitchell,” Tim said. “I’ve gone sane.”

  Club aimed his gun at me.

  “Enough!” roared Tim.

  With his voice for cover, I used the churchkey to pry the lid off the can and let it clank to the floor, taking care not to let a bead of its contents touch my hand.

  “I said enough!” Tim bellowed again. “Hamilton’s already dead.

  Are you going to keep killing anybody who threatens to say what they know? Who threatens to take one of you down?”

  “One of us down?” Club echoed. His next words emerged in a growl. “You’re one of us, you bastard.”

  My arm was still raised, the bucket not quite motionless, swinging like the world’s slowest pendulum.

  Club sighted his gun on Tim, who had just begun to withdraw his own weapon. I watched Club’s finger depress the trigger; I saw the fear in Tim’s small eyes as he realized he wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  I took one lurching step forward, and hurled the contents of the can.

  Catching sight of me peripherally, Club spun to get away, and fired.

  On wartime battlefields, in dungeons of torture, or the recovery wards of hospitals where people woke to their pain, there could never have been such a howl of agony.

  The gun clattered to the floor. Club’s hands ricocheted to his neck, clawing at the liquid that streamed down in rivulets, which only succeeded in searing his palms and fingertips. The paint stripper had mostly hit his clothes and he tore at those as well, trying to rip the fabric off himself, exposing his naked, burning skin.

  “Call a paramedic,” I told Tim, who was already shouting into his radio. “Call the police.” Then I stopped.

  Tim clicked off, keeping the radio low to subdue the ripples of static, and eyeing me. “The State Police,” he said. “That’s who it’ll be up here.” He took a look at me. “Let’s get you on the floor.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, though Tim’s expression told me otherwise. “I had to do it, right? He was going to kill you. Us.” I frowned. “Why do I feel so funny?” It was as if all air had been sucked out of me by a vacuum.

  “Nora,” Tim said, in that firm, unyielding voice of his. “Sit down. You’re bleeding.”

  I glanced over at Club, who was writhing on the floor, fingers so burned from trying to wipe the scourge off his skin that they’d become too clumsy and inexpert to unbutton his clothes.

  “Tim,” I said, and sank. “Oh, God, Tim, what’s wrong with—”

  He caught me.

  I looked down at myself. Blood seeped from a tiny, symmetric hole in my side.

  I wondered how long it would take for help to arrive in Cold Kettle.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Club and I rode in the same ambulance. By the time it came, I was weak and shivering, unable to move. I kept looking around blearily, whispering first aid instructions for Club from my position on the floor. Tim had refused to do anything before fetching blankets from the rooms of the inn and wrapping me up. Then he dutifully flushed Club’s prone form again and again with tepid water.

  Dick Granger’s body was left behind so the staties could collect evidence.

  All I remembered of our exit was that Weekend had been sitting high on the seat of Club’s Jimmy, panting patiently. The paramedics released him into Tim’s custody, but first Weekend bounded up to me, all snuffles and barks and licks of reunion.

  That may have healed me more than anything the medics did.

  I woke in a hospital room. Outside it was light, and I wondered if more than one day had passed. There was an IV in my hand. Except for a hot stitch in my side that somehow refused to trouble me, I felt refreshed, almost reborn.

  A man with skin the color of tobacco came into my room. He took my chart from the bottom of the bed, then spoke in a strong accent.

  “The good news will be first,” he said, and I nodded, which the doctor didn’t appear to notice. “The good news is that the bullet did not come anywhere close to your baby. The not as good news is that you will probably require some rehabilitation on your hip.”

  I struggled to sit up, and a meteor shower of pain sparked inside me, penetrating the cushion of meds I had to be on. It was the drug haze that made me mishear. Or the accent.

  “What did you say?”

  “Rehabilitation,” the doctor repeated. “Your hip was affected by the path of the bullet. We have quite a good unit here at the—”

  “No,” I interrupted, and the doctor finally looked down at me. “The first part.”

  He began flipping rapidly through the pages of my chart.

  “Mrs. Hamilton,” he said. “Did you not know that you are pregnant?”

  The weight Teggie thought I was gaining, how the pants Dugger’s mother lent me were difficult to close. My aversion to coffee and the hunger that was rampant despite grief. Even the loss of my allergies, which I’d read once was a lesser-known side effect of pregnancy.

  A baby.

  Though a tinge of panic accompanied that thought—How the hell am I going to raise a child alone?—mostly I felt buoyed by a giddy, irrepressible joy. I could hardly even feel the pain in my side anymore and I refused a second dose of meds, even though the hospital staff assured me they were perfectly safe.

  “You have a visitor,” a nurse announced from the door to my room.

  My sister stood behind her.

  She took one look at me. “What happened to you? I don’t mean this.” She flung her hand out, indicating the hospital room. Then she looked again. “Oh my God. You’re pregnant.”

  I burst into tears. They were loud and furious, a tidal wave of feeling.

  Teggie waited for me to quiet, then traced one finger along my brow. “You’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

  “You’re going to be a wonde
rful wife.”

  Teggie stared at me. “Way to steal my thunder. You think taking a bullet and finding out you’re preggers all in the same week wasn’t enough?”

  I fought to smile through my wet face and dripping nose.

  Teggie reached for some tissues on a bedside stand. “How’d you know anyway?” she asked.

  I gave her a duh look, then touched the shiny stone on her left-hand finger.

  “Please tell me you’ll be moving back to the city now,” my sister said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I think I might try out this town a little farther north.”

  Night was descending when the door to my room was nudged open and a slice of light fell across the floor. I looked up, expecting a nurse at this hour.

  But it wasn’t a nurse. It took me a second to place the woman who did enter. She was holding on tight to a shopping bag as she crossed to the side of my bed.

  I struggled to sit up, the thin hospital blanket a strangling force. The call button dangled and I reached for it.

  “Don’t,” Mrs. Weathers said.

  The Chief’s wife probably knew the nurse on duty, could slip in past visiting hours.

  I swallowed, passing a hand across my belly. Pain flared in my side.

  “The Chief is ruined,” she said. “If you only knew what you’ve done. Wedeskyull will never be the same.”

  I tried to summon a reply. Was Vern here? If he came in, I was going to have to hit that button. No, I was going to scream. Would screaming do any—

  “Why did you keep digging in this ground?” Mrs. Weathers demanded. “Brendan didn’t ask you to. He didn’t even do it himself.”

  I couldn’t come up with a thing to say. Tiny Dorothy Weathers seemed a looming presence, accusing me of sacrificing her husband to protect the memory of my own.

  “How could you do this? When all of us kept silent for so long? When I kept—” Something clenched in her face, and she looked suddenly old and ugly. “Do you have any idea what I’ve had to do?” Mrs. Weathers reached down and grasped my wrist, and then I did let out a scream, or at least a little yelp.