Dead of Winter

by Gerri Brightwell

  “Think? I’ve already done my thinking. There’s some sweet stuff in this place that Mr Step-Dad’s not gonna miss.” Grisby’s face is a little shiny, and no wonder when he’s still got his hat on and his parka zipped up.

  Fisher kneads his knuckles into his eyes so hard the lids pop and smack. “Oh great: so it’s going to look like a burglary that went wrong, and you’re going to be the dumb-shit who did it and have a murder hanging over you too?”

  “But just think—it won’t be Bree they’re looking for. Everybody wins.”

  “Everybody wins?” he says quietly, and looks up at Grisby. “It’ll be you they’re looking for, and me too. Christ.” He sniffs. His nose is stuffed up. He yanks a tissue from his pocket and blows hard. That’s a mistake because the smells from the bathroom—the blood, the sour smells of vomit and urine—are sharper now. Familiar, too, making him think of buckets of soapy water and scouring brushes and bleach, because years ago he cleaned up messes as bad as this at the motel his dad and Ada run. A woman murdered by her boyfriend, and after the police left Ada sent Fisher along to fix up the room. Perhaps that’s why the idea comes to him. “We’ll get rid of him and take care of this mess. There’ll be no reason for the cops to look for Bree. No body, no murder, no murder suspect, nothing but a guy who’s taken off and not told anyone.”

  Grisby’s mouth pulls wide. He lifts both hands, the gun swinging from one of them. “Whoa now, I can’t be cleaning up that shit.”

  “But you want to take that gun and sell it? And whatever the hell you’ve got in your pockets? Think about it: stuff from a house where a guy’s been found shot dead? Oh yeah, real smart.” Grisby’s looking past him, but Fisher sees his jaw tighten.

  “Christ, man, fucking Christ.”

  “We’ll take him out someplace and dump him.”

  “That’s your brilliant idea? Come breakup, those fuckheads who like hunting and fishing and crap are gonna be out. Someone’s gonna find him.”

  “That’s months away. For now, what I need is time to find Breehan before she digs herself in any worse.” He forces himself to his feet. How far away the carpet is, how insubstantial this house, with its windows looking out onto the darkness. A dumb idea, to think that such a place could keep anyone safe.

  8

  TO WRAP A body takes thirty-five minutes and a blue tarp (large and without holes or tears), duct tape (most of a roll to do the job properly), plastic sheeting (if you have it) or, in a pinch, newspaper to lay in the trunk of your car to catch fluids that might leak out, and rope—don’t forget the rope, because without it you’ll have nothing to grab hold of when you drag that body to your car, and from your car to its final resting place; rope, properly tied, will give you a handle of sorts to pull with, especially if you think to tie it into loops or, better yet, to cover those loops with rags to prevent the rope biting through your gloves because, if you didn’t know already, you’ll soon find out what dead weight means.

  To clean away the evidence of someone dying from a gunshot wound in a bathroom takes three times as long as wrapping the body, and a lot more equipment. If you’ve had experience as a housekeeper, cleaning motel rooms, for example, you’ll know instinctively what you need: rubber gloves, buckets of soapy water, a scrubbing brush, bleach to rub into grouting where blood has stained it, spackle to fill in the hole in the wall left by the bullet (unless it has, by a miracle, lodged in the body), paper towels to wipe down mirrors and tiles, a washing machine to launder towels and the bathmat. It helps if you haven’t vomited into the toilet. If you have, count on an extra five minutes to scrub it clean, and you’ll want to do that: who knows if vomit contains DNA to identify you, but you’ll worry that it does.

  Lastly, you’ll need to take a break, however hard that is at a time like this, and come back up to that room with fresh eyes that will catch the tiny red flecks that would otherwise give the game away, the white chip that looks like a sliver of bone, the gray smear down by the baseboard heater that you think might be brain but could be something more innocuous. You’ll worry that the place is too clean—cleaner than the rest of the house, for Chrissakes!—but you’ll tell yourself that’s just too bad, and really, who’s going to notice?

  To occupy yourself while the washing’s on—bathmat, towels, perhaps even your own clothes (it’s hard to avoid getting blood on them, after all, but in the end maybe you can’t bring yourself to sit around in your underwear in this place)—watch the TV (something mindless but not violent or it’ll remind you of what you’ve been doing and you won’t be able to finish the soda you took from the fridge without thinking, and that’s another thing to remember, as you’ll need to wipe the empty can clean of prints or take it with you, which reminds you that you mustn’t forget the bags of garbage with their bloodied paper towels and rags you’ve set by the stairs).

  Best of all, bring a friend you can count on. Not one more interested in rooting through the bathroom cabinets, or hunting for the keys to the gun lockers in the den, and looking over the desktop computers and laptops and flat-screen TVs, the jewelry, the watch left on the nightstand. Not one who can’t mop a floor, or who disappears downstairs and tries every key he can find on the gun lockers, never mind that he’s supposed to load the towels and bathmat into the dryer when the washer’s finished. And when all that’s done, don’t forget to pack a bag with clothes, and a shaving kit, and even the poor dead sucker’s wallet and passport, to write on the bag’s label his name and the address of some hotel you invent down in Denver, because this guy’s leaving town. Permanently.

  9

  THERE’S A PLACE Fisher has in mind a couple of miles south of the center of town: a stretch of river just downstream from the power plant where, even in the heart of winter, steam drifts lazily from black gashes of open water, and the ice is rotten and treacherous.

  He drives hunched like an old man. Beside him, Grisby’s bobbing his head to an old Bachman-Turner Overdrive song on the radio and sipping coffee as though nothing the hell’s the matter, as though the car hasn’t been stiff with the silence between them since they pulled out of the driveway.

  What is it with Grisby? Fisher thinks. He kept carrying more stuff out to the car, like they were emptying the place—boxes bristling with guns, for crying out loud, two laptops piled together like a sandwich, a box of electronics with wires trailing out of it. He filled the back seat and was going to start on the trunk until Fisher asked where the fuck he thought they were going to put the body. We could always come back for it, Grisby said, then added, Hell, OK, OK. Fisher walked away, back into the house. One last check in Bree’s bathroom in case he’d missed something. And what was Grisby doing downstairs? Making coffee and pouring it into two travel mugs he’d found in the dishwasher. Now he’s sipping his coffee like there’s nothing wrong with any of this, driving along with a dead guy in the trunk and the backseat crammed with his stuff, and Fisher can’t bear it: he lowers the window and tosses his travel mug out, plucks Grisby’s from his hand and throws it out too.

  Grisby blurts, “Hey, for fuck’s sake—”

  “Fucking evidence, isn’t it?”

  “Man, you’re letting this get to you,” and Grisby turns up the radio.

  It’s close to eleven at night and fifty-four below. A little warmer, not that you can feel it. The DJ says: Stay safe, you guys out there, we’re still in the deep freeze, and it don’t take much to slip over the edge. Behind his voice, the chords of a Steely Dan number start up, then the music takes over. The song pulses out, wrapping itself around Fisher like the world means something, like there’s some plan to it. Within seconds the music crackles and yawns, and when it comes back it’s all twisted around by the cold, and Fisher’s just a guy driving through the night who’s gotten in over his head.

  How hard it is to drive as though it’s just him and Grisby heading to the south of town, for a drink at the Lucky Fox, perhaps, or to pick up some b
eers at the convenience store. This is the time of night when the cops wait like wolves, hungry and ready to strike. Fisher’s not in his cab; that would give him a little slack with the cops because, hell, cabbies drive home drunks and druggies and put up with their shit. No, in a sorry-ass dented-up Mazda all it takes is a bend you should have braked harder for, a wobble as you correct, and they’re onto you, no matter that a moment ago the world was nothing more than the glazed road and the silvery gleam of streetlights. A pair of headlights will bear down on you, glaring off your mirrors and licking round the inside of your car until—your heart can hardly bear it—they twitch with red and blue and you have to pull over.

  What would Fisher say? Ever since he eased the car down Jan and Brian’s driveway he’s been putting together explanations: that he’s helping his friend here move into a new apartment, which is why the car’s crammed with stuff. Except it’s eleven at night. The cop’s gonna ask, Couldn’t do it during the day, huhn? and he’ll say Nah, we’re on different shifts this week, and he’ll look at Grisby, and if there’s a pause before Grisby remembers to agree, the cop will linger. Can he search the car? He’ll need a reason to, but how the fuck will he not see what’s on the back seat? A box of guns, a couple of laptops, stuff piled so high it blocks most of the back window. Sure, Officer, he’d say, we’re on an innocent mission here, and his heart pinches in panic at the thought of it. Maybe he and Grisby stink of bleach. Maybe a dead-man reek will ooze out from the trunk—how long would it take for a body to freeze back there? Hell, maybe Brian’ll go stiff with rigor mortis and the way they folded him into the trunk will be their undoing, because how the fuck are they going to get him out?

  How easy it is to set his mind winging around and around like this. But before long it settles again and probes the delicate wound of his real dread: Is it possible that his daughter’s done this? That she’s killed a man? He tells himself no, it wasn’t her, that carrying away what’s left of Brian is all for nothing, a fool’s errand, that someone else shot him, one of his gun-nut buddies, or Jan—because where’s she? Did she drive down to Anchorage on her own in this merciless cold? Why would she, unless she shot Brian first?

  No, he thinks. Bree said Brian was going ape-shit. She said she didn’t know what she’d done. Now somewhere out in this frozen land she’s hiding, and so afraid that she’s lost all sense of what she should and shouldn’t do.

  He tries playing through what happened: Brian naked and buzzed, watching TV in the bedroom, and somehow Bree pisses him off. Maybe she was whining about being left here when Jan was supposed to take her to Anchorage, or maybe she wanted to go out and he told her no. So he goes ape-shit because he’s buzzed, and they argue, and he pulls out a gun. Hell, he always has a gun around. He follows Bree to her room, and she’s so scared and he’s so buzzed that she gets it away from him and shoots him. No, thinks Fisher, there was something else. Was Brian jerking off in his room, and when she disturbed him he came on to her? Is that what happened? A hot surge of hate slides up his throat.

  What keeps coming back to him is that Janice’s car wasn’t in the garage, that she took off for Anchorage and left Bree behind. Wasn’t there something to make her suspicious about Brian? No clue that maybe he had a thing for her daughter? And even if she couldn’t see it, wasn’t it enough that he was so hard on Bree? No wonder she didn’t fit in at school. All those rules, taking away her phone, shutting her off from her friends, not letting her go anywhere, perhaps not even down to Anchorage with her mom. What kind of man does that? A man with a thing for his step-daughter, that’s who.

  He lays this idea of Brian—Brian the molester, the rapist—over the man he knew, tries to push it down so that it snaps into place, but it won’t, and he realizes he’s driving without paying much mind to the road for all that he’s bent over the wheel and his hands are aching from holding it tight, and he brakes, cursing, because there’s the bridge, and there’s the goddamn turn already.

  10

  TO REACH THE low bluff just beyond the bridge, Fisher has to take one snow-packed road, then another. Of all the shitty luck, just as he makes the second turn, headlights sweep out of the darkness. In an instant, he’s snapped off his own lights. Grisby lets out, “Fuck, that’s stupid—now they know we’re up to something.”

  The vehicle comes at them steadily. Soon it’s so close its lights dazzle off the ice built up around the edges of the windshield. A pickup, the chassis high on outsized wheels, and just as it seems about to pull up next to them, its engine roars and it’s off in a storm of exhaust. Fisher watches until its taillights have vanished. The car’s barely moving. It crawls along until the snow widens into a turn-out, and here Fisher pulls up and lets out his breath in one long sigh.

  Even with the moon long gone the night’s not all darkness. In winter it never is. The snow catches the faint light of the stars and turns the color of old jeans. Fisher doesn’t bother with his flashlight. Safer not to, he thinks, but jams it into his pocket just in case. The trunk’s hinges groan and from its gaping mouth comes a whiff of something foul.

  Grisby comes crunching across the snow and stands beside him. He mutters, “Fuck, man. I’ve got a thousand other things I’d rather be doing right now.”

  Fisher steels himself and reaches in. He grabs the rope tied around the tarp and uses his own weight to hoist the body, feels gravity pulling back and hisses at Grisby, “Help me, for fuck’s sake.” Between them they haul one half of the body over the lip of the trunk, but when it tips forward Grisby lets go and jumps back. The tarp snags and rips, and the thing slumps onto the edge of the trunk like a wet blanket over a clothesline. Something cracks. Fisher’s stomach clenches at the thought of what they’re doing. Why’s this part so hard when dragging the body down the stairs and across the living room, and all the way out to the car was easy? Even getting it into the trunk hadn’t been that bad. Adrenalin, he thinks, he’d been driven by adrenalin, and now he feels worn out and sickened by it all.

  He leans into the trunk and feeds his gloved fingers through the rope where it’s tied around the legs. With one heave he lifts those legs and the body slumps forward and nearly takes him with it. He has to let go and it flops onto the snow with a wheezy thud.

  The guardrail’s only a few yards away, but the snow’s softer here and their boots sink as they drag the body between them. In their wake they leave two sets of tracks with a smooth depression running between them, and the sight of it makes Fisher swear under his breath.

  On the other side of the guardrail lies a ledge, then a steep slope bristling with bushes and twiggy willow. Below, a long, flat crust of ice that doesn’t reach the shore. The open water’s dark and greasy and from it lift tufts of vapor. Fisher thought it would feel safe here—a forgotten place, except by a few old guys who sit on the bank in the summer and fish for grayling, but there’s the bridge with its lights, and a car humming along it, and another. Beyond, like a magnificent city seen from far off, the red and white lights of the power plant hang in the sky.

  Fisher can hardly bear to touch the tarp again—the thought of what’s inside, the ridiculously loud crackling it makes because the plastic’s frozen. It doesn’t help that now they have to get the body over the guardrail, and that means wrapping their arms around it. Fisher feels the round mass of the skull against his shoulder and has to swallow so he doesn’t throw up. Grisby’s staggering under the weight of the legs, and the sharp edge of the guardrail sings against the ropes and the woven plastic. But then the body’s up and going over, it’s tipping and falling, and it lands in the soft snow of the ledge. Silence, then from it comes a breathy groan.

  Grisby staggers back. “Holy freaking fuck, he’s still alive.”

  Fisher can’t feel his fingers. The cold’s everywhere, eating its way into him, and he lets himself shiver hard. “No way. There was a hole in his head, you saw it.”

  “Did you check? I mean, fuck—did you?”


  “I just scrubbed his brains off a bathroom wall.”

  Grisby’s laughing into his gloves, an awful chittering sound, then he’s bending over, saying “Oh Christ, oh Christ, fuck fuck fuck.”

  “Come on, Grisby,”

  But Grisby’s not listening. He’s walking back to where the car’s rumbling and its exhaust curling out, his boots slipping in the lumpy snow and his arms hugged over his chest. There’s the flash of the dome light and Grisby’s face gaunt under his hat, then the door slams shut and takes the light with it. Grisby vanishes.

  Fisher leans against the guardrail. The cold burns through to his thighs.

  He thinks, we could drive him into town. We could dump him at the hospital, and who’s to know what happened?

  He thinks, who am I kidding?

  He thinks, we could leave him here: he’s dying anyway.

  More than anything he wants to take off after Grisby and close himself into the warm shell of the car, to drive headlong across town and hide in his trailer so that all of this will fall away and be forgotten. But fuck it, if Brian’s alive, won’t he have recognized him? And if by some unimaginable miracle he survives—

  Fear’s sinking its teeth into him and he can’t shake it loose. He’s so afraid that he takes his flashlight from his pocket and turns it on. The cold’s been sucking away at the batteries and the beam’s flimsy. He shines it at the guardrail then forces himself after it: over the metal edge, onto the ledge on the other side. The snow has an icy crust, but beneath it’s perilously soft and he stumbles, the light swooping wildly as his arms flail, and when he falls he falls against the body. It rolls away down the slope. He hears it crashing through bushes, and when he looks up it’s come to rest against a spindly spruce. He thinks, fuck, that could have been me. In the back of his throat, a vile sour taste. He swallows against it and forces himself to his feet, so gingerly he’s scarcely moving. More than anything he wants to take hold of the guardrail and heave himself back over it to safety. But how can he? Come sunrise, a blue tarp caught on the riverbank is going to catch the eye of everyone driving across the bridge.