Fisher thinks: he and Grisby had felt strangely safe in that house as they cleaned it and loaded up the car, as though no one was going to disturb them. Any earlier and they’d have run into the militia guys; any later and Jan would have walked in on them. For fuck’s sake, he thinks, that house was like Grand Central Station.
And now another thing occurs to him. Somewhere—perhaps still at the hardware store, or driving back to the motel and mad as hell—is Ada. She’ll complain to Fisher’s dad about his useless son and then pour herself a cup of her watery coffee and prop herself against the reception desk with the paper in front of her. Fisher imagines the way her lips will tighten, how she’ll lay a finger next to the paragraph at the very end that says the police are looking for Brian Armstrong and Bree Fisher. She’ll smile to herself because she’ll have caught a whiff of something not right, and there’s nothing she likes better than ferreting out secrets.
He shouldn’t have pissed her off, Fisher thinks. What was he thinking—dumping her like that in the hardware store? Because she won’t forgive him for that, oh no, she’ll find a way of paying him back. When Fisher was fifteen, she sent him to fix the toilet in one of the motel rooms at six in the morning. The police had been called during the night and the couple who’d occupied the room had fled leaving an unholy mess and a toilet that kept running. To Ada that was like letting money wash down the drain, so she woke Fisher and told him to fix it before he went to school. He remembers how the room smelled of sweat and cigarettes. From the bathroom came the slow rush of water. In the toilet bowl, cigarette butts swirled round and round. He lifted off the top of the tank and right then saw the problem: a plastic bag jammed in against the flapper and holding it open. He yanked it out and the flapper dropped shut. The bag dripped on his feet as he held it up. Inside, a stack of twenties held together with an elastic band.
He didn’t say a word to Ada. He hid the money in one of his old running shoes under his bed then went to the office. There he snatched up a donut from a box and gulped down some coffee while Ada watched him. At last she said, “Well? Gonna tell me?” He forced himself to look at her with as blank a look as he could come up with. He said, “About what?” but she wasn’t having that. “Oh come on, you always get this look when you’re hiding something. What’s it this time, huhn? Find another bottle of bourbon? A box of condoms? Some porno mags? D’you hide them in your closet next to those photos of your ma?” and she let out a sour laugh. He wiped the sugar from his mouth and said, “I’m late,” then shouldered his way past her.
When he got back that afternoon she was standing in the doorway with the spring sun harsh on her face and a cigarette trailing smoke behind her. She didn’t say a word as he stalked past. Up in his room he put his hand in the shoe, but he knew already. The money was gone. Later that afternoon, Ada went out and insisted Fisher come along. She bought a brand-new TV, unfurling twenties from a roll she took from her handbag, and counting them out with her tongue smacking against the roof of her mouth. He said, “What’s this all about?” but of course she just smiled, said, “Felt like treating myself. What’s wrong? You don’t like it?” She made him carry the box across the parking lot, and he remembers how badly he wanted to hurt her, and how she stood at the open trunk and watched him, leaned so close he could have shoved the box at her and she’d have fallen beneath it, and how she smiled like she was daring him to.
Fisher fills his mouth with coffee and its taste washes over his tongue. He tears open the bearclaw’s plastic wrapper and takes a bite. Dry and over-sweet. He takes another sip of coffee and lifts the pastry like he’s going to eat more. Only he’s not hungry enough, not when his belly’s all knotted up.
Nothing seems pinned down the way it should be, nothing feels safe. He thinks of Ada reading the paper, and Grisby with Brian’s stuff piled in boxes against his wall—even the gun used to kill him, for fuck’s sake. What had he been thinking, letting Grisby take it? Because now it’s not just a matter of Brian being dead, there’s a dead cop too, and the militia guys all stirred up, and Bree lost somewhere out there in the darkness.
He was buying Grisby off to keep Bree safe. Isn’t that why he let him take the gun, and all the rest of that stuff? Because Grisby’s the kind of friend you can’t necessarily count on otherwise, though what kind of a friend is that?
Fisher’s fingers are sticky from the bearclaw. He licks them and they’re still slick when he pulls his phone from his pocket and turns it on. Eight messages. From Ada, he’d bet. Christ, from Jan too, most likely, because mustn’t she be out of her head with worry, her husband gone, her daughter too, and a dead cop on her deck when she got home?
But he doesn’t check his messages. He calls Grisby’s number, even though Grisby won’t pick up unless he’s on break. He leaves a message: “Call me, OK?” Nothing else. Nothing that could be incriminating. But he can’t leave it at that. He dials the diner’s number and the woman who picks up sounds real pissy, and she gets more pissy when he asks for Grisby because Grisby hasn’t shown up for the breakfast shift.
18
IT’S CLOSE TO ten and the sky’s brightened on its southern edge. When Fisher stops at an intersection and stares out toward the dawn, the sides of the buildings along the road are caught in a thin mid-winter light. It doesn’t seem right that the sun should be close to rising when nothing else about the day is as it should be. Round and round in Fisher’s head, like birds trying to land, come the possibilities of what’s happened to Grisby: kidnapped by the militia; shot dead by them and dumped; wasted and still asleep in his own bed, dreaming of Hawaii; off to a pawnshop in his VW Rabbit, all pleased with himself because he has no idea what he might stir up.
The coffee was too much. A regular size that must have been a pint or close to it, and Fisher’s head has turned brittle and light, his bladder’s aching, and his heart’s hammering in his throat. He drives up College Avenue with his foot too hard on the gas. Every now and then his tires slip on the icy road, and it doesn’t matter because he’s not quite here. There are two worlds sharing the same space, just like being at the movie theater: the bright dangerous world on the screen, and the world you’re tugged back into when someone’s phone rings, and there you are in your seat in the flickering dark with an empty popcorn box on your lap and your belly bloated and aching. Fisher doesn’t see the road, or the school bus he overtakes, barely knows he’s driving, because he’s thinking of the dead cop on the deck, and Zane’s creased face as he sucked on his cigarette and what the hell’s up with Grisby that he’s not even answering his phone.
Inside his gloves his hands are sweating. It doesn’t help that when he pulls up at a stop sign and signals right the vehicle behind him does the same, nor that when he takes a left onto Beaumont, it follows close behind all the way into the parking lot. His hands are ready to wrench the steering wheel round and stamp on the gas, to flee back to the center of town, but the pickup swerves around him with a blatttt! of horn and pulls up at the far end of the lot.
Aurora Apartments is about as wretched a place as you could live in, even in this town: a U-shape of apartments staring back at each other so residents can’t escape the sight of peeling paint and broken railings and snow sagging from the edge of the roof, not to mention fractured glass mended with duct tape or scorch marks above window frames. It’s the place named in the paper when someone’s been arrested for domestic violence or drug dealing, or found dead from an overdose. The sort of place where Fisher’s had to chase down fares who bolted, where he’s run as fast as his bulk would let him while his thoughts ground to slo-mo telling him, this is stupid, the little shit’s high on meth and any moment now is going to pull out a knife, and I’ll be dead over twenty bucks. But most little shits, it turns out, don’t expect to be chased. They give in and find money they didn’t know they had folded into the back pocket of their jeans.
Grisby’s apartment is on the second floor and behind the curtains a dim
light shows. The stairs haven’t been shovelled and the snow groans under Fisher’s boots and twists his ankles this way and that. You can’t sneak up on Grisby, not when the snow and the shoddy wood beneath give you away. Before Fisher’s even at the door a shadow has slipped across the curtains and the light has winked out. Stupid Grisby, he thinks. Like that’s going to fool anyone. He knocks on the door, though the sound is muffled by his glove, then calls out, “Grisby? It’s me. Open up.”
He listens over the sound of his own breathing, thinks he hears the creak of a floorboard just behind the door. He hisses, “Grisby, let me in!”
Even with his hood up, the cold numbs his ears and his head feels naked. He gives the door a kick and it shudders against its lock. “Don’t fuck around. This is serious. Let me in.”
Down below in the parking lot a car coughs and starts up. Its engine rumbles over the sound of traffic on the main road, a strange congealed sound in the frozen air.
“Grisby!” Fisher bellows, and his voice bounces back at him from the windows all around. When he closes his mouth his teeth are cold against his lips, and he tells himself he’s got to shut up or someone’ll call the cops, and then he’ll really be in the shit.
He yanks off one glove and stuffs it in his pocket, then pulls out his wallet and feels for a card: anything, his driver’s license, his bank card, what the hell. He works its edge into the gap between the door-frame and the door, wiggling against the cheap-as-shit lock while his fingers grow numb from the cold. He’s not even sure it’s worked, but he heaves against the door and it gives so suddenly he staggers into the darkness. A smell of cigarettes, of stale cooking oil. Then his skull splits apart and he falls.
19
THE DARKNESS IS as immense as the galaxy and pricked with far-off constellations. Here Fisher comes drifting through, huge and graceful and unwieldy all at once. This existence isn’t unpleasant, not at all, and he wonders why he never found it before. It’s not what you’d think—you don’t need a spacesuit or a ship. Space is an element you move through like water in a gliding, comforting motion that takes little effort. He lets himself roll, then roll farther, but now everything swings drunkenly. It happens so fast his thoughts fall away and he reaches out to save himself, only his arms won’t move. Or at least, they move together, awkwardly, somewhere behind him.
The blackness snaps to red. The red of blood coursing through eyelid skin. A light’s been turned on. He tilts his head away. His mouth’s dry and tastes of metal. There’s something soft and sour-smelling beneath his cheek and cold’s lapping across his face. He blinks his eyes open. Light shouldn’t hurt, but this light sears across his retina and along his nerves to smash up against the inside of his skull. He winces and shuts his eyes again, but he’s seen enough. A door—black scuffmarks from where Grisby’s kicked it shut hundreds of times. A dull pink carpet. A sheet of paper bent like a chute where it’s been folded.
A floorboard creaks. Fisher says, “Who’s there? That’s not you, Grisby, is it?”
But it can’t be Grisby. Grisby wouldn’t have tied him up. Grisby wouldn’t have whacked him over the head. He’d have let Fisher in as soon as he called out—unless he was scared shitless, and maybe he was. But by now he’d have seen it was Fisher he’s hit and would be talk-talk-talking about being sorry and hey man, things have gotten crazy like you wouldn’t believe, and better to be safe than sorry, right?
Not Grisby then. So who’s in the room watching him? He opens one eye a little. All he can see is the stretch of carpet from here to the door. Everything’s still. Everything held down by the iron-sided crush of pain in his skull. Better not to move, not yet. Instead he finds words, never mind that it hurts to push them out of his mouth: “I’m Grisby’s friend. Grisby—you there? Tell them—I’m your friend.”
A hand on his shoulder and he jumps. Another in his parka pocket, digging around, creeping under him to work its way into the back pockets of his jeans. He flings himself over, hits legs, hears a cry because whoever was emptying his pockets is falling, and Fisher tries to right himself before they do, but it’s too late and all he can do is roll onto his back. Beneath him something hard. A plug. Attached to a cord.
Cords and papers everywhere, like a whirlwind’s torn through here, and someone’s scrambling, feet slipping on sheets of paper. A young woman. Her maroon sweatshirt’s huge on her, her neck thin as a sprout, her hair light as cornsilk. Her ears are shot through with holes for earrings, but right now they’re bare and all those holes give her a used-up look. For a moment Fisher thinks he must have made a mistake and that this is the next-door apartment—the same carpet, the same stained ceiling. But with a shift of his head he sees Grisby’s lumpy black sofa and his TV on a plastic crate in the corner. As for the half-dozen boxes of Brian’s stuff they’d stacked against the wall last night, some are gone and others are lying on their sides, their contents spilled across the carpet—a router, a portable printer, knots of electrical cords, white, gray and black. And everywhere a mass of papers: receipts, envelopes, bills, as though someone’s flung it out in handfuls.
The woman watches him glance around. As soon as he looks back at her, her eyes meet his. He wonders: was Grisby lying about why he didn’t want to go home last night? Was it woman trouble after all? “So,” Fisher says, and his voice is all cramped up, “you’re a friend of Grisby’s? A girlfriend?”
She stares back at him with the wary look of an animal and he wonders if she’s slow.
He says, “Where’s Grisby, anyhow? I need to talk to him.”
One eyebrow lifts. Fisher knows she’s not going to answer, or not in the way he thought. That gesture’s enough: she doesn’t understand a word. She’s not American.
Now that he’s rolled onto his back, his weight’s on his hands. He can’t bear it. He tilts himself over onto his side. “My hands,” he says. “Please. Untie me,” and he wiggles them.
Instead she backs away. She snatches something up from the mess on the floor: his wallet. Then she retreats to the kitchen area without taking her eyes off of him. How small she looks, as though she hasn’t quite outgrown childhood—her legs in tight jeans and—Fisher remarks with surprise—thick woolen bunched-up leg-warmers, the like of which he hasn’t seen in years but that leave her bare feet looking flat and wide as fins.
Her hands reach behind her to a broom propped in the corner. It takes Fisher a second to understand: this is her weapon. This is what she used to knock him on the head, and the ridiculousness of it—that she could even find a broom in Grisby’s apartment, for fuck’s sake—makes him want to laugh. But he’s tied up on his back with his soft belly exposed, and when she steps toward him with the handle angled like a spear, he realizes that she could kill him with that thing. Maybe she means to, because her face has turned hard. He lets out, “Whoa now, honey,” and curls up as best he can to protect himself. “No, no. I’m a friend! Grisby’s friend, Mike Fisher. Look at my driver’s license. Fuck,” and he tries to sit up. She shifts the broom and he flinches.
“Christ,” he says through his teeth and heaves himself into a ball, his thick legs hoisted toward his chest, and when she jabs he rolls to the side. The pain in his head’s all stirred up by moving like that, but what the hell. He’s close to her and he kicks, hard, and she folds up like a deckchair. As for the broom, it flails through the air then clatters against the wall, hits Grisby’s TV, the wall, the TV again, and falls to the floor. Fisher lurches to his feet like a moose getting up. He pulls against whatever she’s used to tie his hands: something flimsy and warm that bites into his wrists. When he twists them it gives, so he twists until it burns, because what does pain matter when she might kill him? At last it snaps, and a length of women’s hose tumbles gently to the floor like the shed skin of a snake.
He reaches up to the side of his head. A pulsing swelling as fat and smooth as a chicken breast. The skin stings when he brushes his fingers against it, sti
ngs even when he just touches his hair, like the follicles have been damaged. Somehow this swelling has unbalanced him and he turns slowly, his head unsteady. He squints against the fluorescent light from the kitchen. There she is—tucked into herself on the floor against the kitchen cabinets. Around her lies a snowfall of sugar and cereal and ripped cartons, a cheese grater, a paring knife, a broken bowl. She’s dropped Fisher’s wallet and he comes close and snatches it up. He wipes off the sugar and shoves it back into his pocket without taking his eyes from her.
She’s crying. He bends toward her and she sits up fast. In her hands, a barbecue fork. He grabs it and it comes free so easily it’s like she wasn’t even trying. He says, “No need for that. I’m a friend. Amigo. Freund. OK? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m looking for Grisby.”
“Grisby.” She says it oddly, buzzing the consonants and letting her voice dip on the first vowel. “Gone.” She lifts both hands with their palms up, as though Grisby’s ascended to heaven.
Fisher says, “Gone where?”
But all she says is, “Gone.”
20
SHE SHOWS FISHER the bedroom with its drawers pulled out and smashed, and the clothes dumped onto the carpet, and the bed with its mattress pulled off its frame and tipped up against the wall. “Two men,” she says, and mimics a gun with her hand. “Here,” and she sweeps that same hand toward the wreckage to indicate that they did this.
Dead of Winter Page 10
