The water on my clothes was soaking through to my skin. I tried not to shake.
“I made some more inquiries, Mr. McKnight. It seems that the Fulton family suffered a great misfortune recently. The Fulton heir, Edwin the third, was tragically killed. Of course, this is not news to you. I understand that you were employed at the time by a lawyer named Lane Uttley, and that Mr. Uttley was in fact representing the Fulton family. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Mr. Edwin Fulton,” he said, “the man who died so suddenly. He led a rather interesting life, did he not? I have heard many rumors. Voices in the wind, if you will. It made me think, here is a man, Alex McKnight, who has a license to be a private investigator, but doesn’t seem to do any investigating. Yet when a wealthy man with many problems disappears, Mr. McKnight is close by. Then comes a young woman with many problems, different problems to be sure, but just as serious. When this woman disappears, once again Mr. McKnight is at her side. It makes me begin to wonder if perhaps this is … Am I using the correct word here? His specialty?”
The room was getting colder. The kerosene heater was hissing like it was running out of fuel.
“This place,” he said. “It does seem to be perfectly suited for disappearances, does it not?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“The next question, of course,” he said, “is does Mr. McKnight help these people disappear, or make them disappear?”
“I don’t know what happened to Dorothy,” I said. “But I do know what happened to Edwin Fulton. He’s dead.” I was starting to feel dizzy. My own voice sounded far away from my body.
“I wonder what Edwin Fulton’s widow might say if I took up this matter with her? What is her name again? Sylvia?”
“No,” I said. “Not her.”
He drew the gun out from his breast pocket. He didn’t point it at me. He didn’t hold it away from his body or wave it around in the air like most men would. He held the gun close to his body, as naturally as holding a telephone or a fountain pen. “I am offended,” he said. “Do you believe that I would harm this woman?”
I looked at his gun. I didn’t say anything.
“To harm a woman,” he said. “An innocent woman. That you would even think such a thing. I’d like to show you how strongly I object to the very idea.”
I looked up at this face.
The heater had gone out. There was silence.
“Gentlemen,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. “Please remove those coats. They are quite expensive. I would not want them to be ruined when we perform our little demonstration.”
The two men stood up and took their coats off. They put them on the bench behind them. The bigger one, the one with the hard face and the nose that had been broken, he looked at me with the cold eyes of a natural killer. He flexed his hands in their black leather gloves.
I waited for what would happen next. My whole body was tight. I will not shake, I told myself. I will not let them see me shake.
The other man. I saw him blink. He sneaked a look at his partner, and then at Molinov.
Molinov raised his arm sideways and shot both of the men.
They fell backwards, first one, then the other. The bench fell over with them. The shots rang in my ears. Molinov’s upraised arm did not move.
“I understand,” he finally said, lowering his arm, “that when my associates were questioning Mr. Gobi and his female companion about Mr. Bruckman’s whereabouts, they committed an act of extreme brutality. The woman was innocent. There was no reason to kill her.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Not at all,” he said. “Now I wonder if you’d be so kind as to collect their coats. I believe you’ll find the keys to the vehicle in Mr. Pearl’s pocket.”
“Which one is he?”
“They didn’t introduce themselves? How impolite. Mr. Pearl is on the left.”
When I stood up, the room began to spin around me. I grabbed the bench to stop from falling over.
“Careful, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to fall through that hole and join Mr. Bruckman.”
I shook my head clear and went over to the two men on the floor. They were both staring at the ceiling, with holes perfectly centered in their chests. I pulled the coat out from under him, the one named Pearl. I found the keys and pulled them out.
“Bring them to me,” he said.
I turned and took two steps toward him. I looked him in the eyes.
And then I dropped the keys into the water. They disappeared instantly.
He looked down at the water, then back up at my face. He smiled.
“You have seen death before,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re not afraid of me right now, are you? Not enough to beg me for your life.”
“I don’t have to,” I said. “We’re both stuck out here together.”
“Are you cold?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You don’t know what it is to be cold,” he said. He slipped his free hand out of its glove, switched the gun, then took the other glove off. His fingers had all been amputated down to the first knuckle, all of them except his right index finger. His trigger finger.
“I believe the heater has run out of kerosene,” he said. “This room is not comfortable anymore. The smell of death isn’t very pleasant, either.” He stood up, his fur coat reaching all the way to the floor. We were exactly the same height, his dark eyes dead-even with mine. He picked up the lantern and walked to the door. On his way, he pulled the other coat out from under the other dead man. He looked at it closely, brushing away some sawdust.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“To the car,” he said.
“You don’t have the keys.”
“I have my own keys,” he said. “I asked you to take Mr. Pearl’s keys because I wanted to see what you would do with them. If you had given them to me, I would have been very disappointed. But you didn’t. I believe you when you say that you don’t know where Miss Parrish is. As for the matter of Mr. Fulton, I will need to look into that situation a little further. I believe I see some unique … opportunities there. If you really are a private investigator, I assume that your services are available for hire. Sometime in the future, I may wish to retain those services.”
“You’re going to leave me here,” I said. “I’ll freeze to death.”
“Perhaps you will,” he said. “Perhaps you won’t. If you survive, then that will tell me something very important about you. It will tell me that you are a man who may be of great use to me.”
I stood there watching him. There were no words to say.
“If you survive,” he said, “we will have something in common. Something very rare. You see, I was in a similar situation myself once. I didn’t freeze to death. But I must warn you. The cold can take away a piece of you. Not just your physical body. I mean inside of you.”
He opened the door, then stopped. The brutal air rushed in. I could feel my shirt frozen against my chest. “Once you freeze all the way through to your soul,” he said, “you will never feel warm again. You’ll see.”
He closed the door, leaving me in the cold darkness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I was alone in the ice shanty, alone except for two men dead on the floor and Bruckman underneath us somewhere, wearing my coat, either sinking to the bottom or bobbing against the ice itself. The heater was dead. Molinov had taken the lantern. It was completely dark and getting colder by the minute.
Okay, think. You’re alive. You want to stay alive. What do you do?
I started to remember something. I’m sitting in the barber shop, waiting for the chair. An old copy of Michigan Out of Doors there, pick it up, there’s an article about hypothermia and frostbite. What the hell did it say? I wish I had paid more attention …
I felt my shirt, frozen solid where I got splashed, like having a block of ice s
trapped to my chest. That was the first problem.
No, wait, my hands. They are so cold. Where are my gloves? I went down on my knees, felt around on the floor for them. I couldn’t even remember taking them off. Maybe when I went digging in the dead man’s pockets for the car keys.
I felt around on the rough wooden floor. There! There’s one of them. I put it on my left hand. Now, where’s the other one? I felt around with my bare right hand. It’s here somewhere.
What’s that? Oh fuck! I shifted my weight before I realized what I was doing, felt the icy sting of the cold water all the way up to my elbow.
That’s just what I need right now. Fall through the fucking hole in the ice. Say hello to Bruckman on the way down.
I sat back and shook my hand. When I put it back down, I felt leather.
Great, it was right under me. I put it on. Okay, now what do I do about this wet shirt? What did that article say? Something about how snow soaks up water. When you’re wet, you’re supposed to roll around in the snow.
No, I don’t think so. I’m not going out there and rolling around in the snow. I don’t care what the magazine said.
The dead men. What about their clothes? Molinov took their coats. What a wonderful thing to do. But what about the rest of their clothes? Two shirts, two pairs of pants.
Yeah, I’m going to go find the two dead guys in the pitch black, strip their clothes off.
Easy, Alex. Listen to your breathing. You’re using up all your energy. Just sit here for a minute. Relax and think about it.
I found the bench, the one I had been sitting on from the beginning. My hands felt cold even with the gloves on, especially my right hand after the ice bath. I tucked them under my armpits. The wind picked up again outside, rattling every inch of the place. I put my head down and felt the shivers take control of my body.
This is not good, Alex. This is not good at all.
I tried to remember what the place looked like. I went down on my hands and knees again and crawled toward the back corner, feeling for the heater. When I came to it, I picked it up. It was too light. I shook it. Nothing. Maybe there was more kerosene somewhere. I felt around the back wall. I came upon the heavy metal ice spud that they used to break through the ice. I kept feeling against the wall.
There! A metal can! I picked it up. It was empty.
Matches. Could there be matches somewhere? I could start a fire, burn some wood or something. I came to a wooden box, took my gloves off and opened it. A fish hook bit into my finger. It was just a tackle box.
What a stupid fucking sport, anyway. Sitting in a little shack in the middle of a frozen lake with a fishing pole.
As my eyes became adjusted to the darkness, I saw that there was some light coming through the back window. It was the faintest light you could ever imagine, just one shade above black, but it was enough for me to start making out the general shape of the room. I stood up and looked out the window. There was enough ambient light from wherever the moon was hiding to see an endless expanse of snow and nothing else.
All right, you’re going to have to do this. You have no choice.
The two dead men were just shadows on one side of the floor. I went down on my hands and knees again, crawled over and reached out toward them. I touched a hand, recoiled from the shock of it.
You’ve got to do this, Alex. Don’t think about it. Just do it.
I reached out again, felt the arm, moved up to the chest. I started to unbutton the shirt. I could feel the blood. It was still warm enough not to have frozen.
Blood. This is all I need right now.
I made myself breathe in and out a few times. Then I kept unbuttoning the man’s shirt. When it was unbuttoned, I struggled to lift the man’s body. I had to get the shirt off him. His arms wouldn’t bend. It’s just a mannequin, I thought. A big heavy mannequin with some blood on it.
When I finally got the shirt off, I thought about what to do next. Take my wet shirt off, put this one on instead? This one might be just as bad, now that this blood is freezing. I tried putting the shirt on over my own. It smelled like cigarettes.
Core body temperature. That’s what the article said. That’s the number one priority. Keep the core body temperature up. When it starts falling, you’ve got big problems. There was even a little table with the different temperatures, what kind of symptoms you get as your core body temperature goes lower and lower. When you’re shivering, when your hands are starting to go numb, that’s mild hypothermia, right? That’s me right now. I’m off to a running start.
I moved over to the second man. It was harder to unbutton the shirt this time. My hands were getting worse. Not a good sign. He was the heavier of the two, so I had to strain to lift him, working the shirt off his body. I put it on over the other shirt.
Okay, Alex, you’re all set now. You’ve got three shirts on now, one wet with water, the other two with blood. Now you’re all ready to freeze to death.
Do I take their pants, too? I could stuff them inside my shirt.
Yes, Alex, you have to.
“I hope you gentlemen will excuse me for what I am about to do,” I said. I took the boots off of each man, unzipped their flies and then pulled the pants off them. I stuffed one pair of pants inside my shirt, between the frozen fabric and my skin. The other pants I wrapped around my neck.
This is much better. Now I might live for a whole hour.
That smell again. Cigarettes. The shirts, the pants. They all smell like cigarettes. And when you smoke cigarettes, you have matches. Or a lighter.
I felt the pants around my neck, felt for the pockets. I took a wallet out, threw it aside, felt around for anything else. Nothing.
I pulled the other pair of pants out from under my shirt, felt the pockets. Another wallet. And something else. I reached inside with numb fingers.
A lighter. One of those little butane lighters you see everywhere. God bless you.
I can break up the bench, maybe pull some wood off the walls if I have to. Just a few minutes of fire, that’s all I need.
Better make sure it works. I put my thumb on the little wheel, tried to give it a turn. Nothing. Damn it, I can barely feel what I’m doing.
I blew warm air on my right hand. Come on, thumb, don’t fail me now.
I gave it another try. Nothing.
Another try. Nothing.
I blew on my hand again. Come on, baby. Who wrote that story, Jack London? The guy who had to start a fire to save his own life. I think he had matches, though. Not a fucking piece of shit lighter that wouldn’t light.
I gave it a good turn. Nothing.
I shook it. I didn’t hear anything. Does that mean it’s empty? Why the fuck would he be carrying a fucking empty lighter in his pocket?
I cranked it again. And again. And again.
I can see the spark, Goddamn it. I know I’m doing this right. I’m giving you the fucking spark, why don’t you light already?
Crank. Spark. Nothing.
Crank. Spark. Nothing.
I gripped it like I was going to throw it, then stopped myself. Hold onto it. Give it another try in a few minutes. Maybe it’ll work.
I put my gloves back on, then found the nearest corner and sat down against it, drawing my knees up to my chest. I rocked back and forth slowly, riding a wave of shivers.
I breathed warm air on the lighter. Hell, maybe that’ll help. I took my glove off, gave it a try. And then another. And then one more.
And then I dropped it.
Okay, so I’m not going to build a fire. I’m as warm as I’m going to get here. Which isn’t a hell of a lot. Goddamn it, I’m cold. Am I supposed to wait here until morning? I’ll never make it. I’ll just sit here all night with two dead bodies on the floor. In a little while I’ll start hearing Bruckman knocking on the ice, trying to crawl his way back up.
If I move, I’ll feel warmer, right? I’ll generate body heat? Or will I just use up my energy faster? But if I can make it back to the main road, maybe
somebody will see me. Maybe. If I make it that far.
I pulled myself up off the floor. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay. Here we go.” I went to the door. “Don’t get up, guys,” I said. “See you around.”
I opened the door and stepped out into the snow. The cold air attacked me, seeking every inch of my body. “Oh, this was a great idea,” I said. “I am such a fucking genius.” I started making my way over the lake, back toward where the Jeep had been parked. I looked in all directions as I fought my way through the snow. The surface of the lake disappeared into total darkness no matter where I looked. There were no lights, no sign of life anywhere. Lacking any other idea, I would have to try to make it back down the access road. I had no other choice.
I kept my hands tucked under my arms as I stepped through the snow. Even with good gloves on, I could feel my fingers growing more and more numb. I tried to follow whatever trail we had made coming out to the ice shanty. Molinov must have come back the same way, as well, but the wind was filling in the deep footprints.
Keep going. The road should be here somewhere. You’ll get a little more shelter from the wind.
I looked back at the ice shanty. It was just a shadow. I tried to remember how long we had walked on our way out. Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen? It felt like more than that already. The lake should have ended by now. I felt the panic rising through my body, starting in my stomach. I’m going to get lost and wander around in circles on the lake. They won’t find me until the spring.
This was a mistake. I should have stayed in the shack and taken my chances. You can’t do anything right, McKnight. Now you’re gonna die out here because you’re such a fucking idiot.
No, wait. Up ahead, I began to make out a dark band. It had to be the edge of the lake. I kept going, fighting through the snow, keeping my head down as the wind picked up again, blasting me with a million tiny bullets. The insane howling of the wind rang in my ears.
Winter of the Wolf Moon: A Mystery Page 21
