Dead Cold

by Claire Stibbe

  His finger curled around the words, pressing deep into the grain as if by doing so he could see where Abe was. Hear his voice. Be him. His eyes grew heavy as he stood there and by the time he reached the hard bench and took off his cap, sleep laid a heavy hand on him.

  It would have been a good night but for the infernal barking. He thought he was dreaming, eyes opening a slit in the darkness unable to process the disjunction between the nightmares he was constantly swallowed by and the rusty railroad car where he now found himself. His phone said four thirty-eight in the morning and he sat up to take in the unfamiliar sounds of the wilderness, the rustling of a canyon wren, or a rattlesnake. It was a dog this time. And shouts humming in the early morning breeze, about a hundred yards off.

  There was barely enough light on the horizon and Flynn shrugged on his backpack, grabbed the cap and eased himself out of the railroad car as silently as he could. It would be bad manners to be found sleeping in his dad’s bed and worse still, before they had even said hello.

  He slipped the cap on and stood up straight, felt the crackle of tension in his neck and staggered forward about five feet. The gradient changed suddenly underfoot and he found himself barreling down through a thicket toward the thumbprint of a pool. His rear end grazed dirt and rock before his boot became wedged against a tree. Jarred by the pain, his breath coming in loud pants and his eyes strained in the darkness. All he could see was the moon’s face reflected on the surface of the water a foot from his boot and not much else.

  It was three minutes before he heard footfalls. Two men, voices louder now and boots scuffing through the dirt as they climbed the hill toward the railroad car. Flynn lowered his head and tried to make out their faces, but all he could see was the glowing end of a cigarette and the stray beam of a flashlight. If the dog hadn’t been straining on a leash it would have given him away.

  As far as he could see he had two alternatives. One to come out of hiding and let them know he was there. Or to wait until they had breezed around the semicircle of wasteland so he could get a better look. But these crabby-ass stalkers didn’t appear to be breezing anywhere and by the gruff tone of their voices no one was welcome in their territory. They paused on the hillside, rifles hooked over one shoulder. It hadn’t occurred to Flynn the railroad car might have been home to anyone else, or a known vantage point for rangers taking count of the wildlife in the area. Neither met the description for Abe McCann.

  He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and for a long time the only sounds he heard were the scratch of boots against the floor. Those and the occasional grunts and then a string of audible words. “He’s gotta be here somewhere, Dutch. Look!”

  A second voice deeper than the first. “I’m not staying. Them’s demons out here.”

  Then a blustering shout. Flynn winced. Someone was having a meltdown at the three empty bottles of ale he’d left in the sink.

  Could he be seen? The sky was marbled with wisps of orange, sun glinting on each pane of glass. He looked back over the landscape, saw no sign or sound of another human being, and he couldn’t be sure there wasn’t a ramble of law enforcement out there either. The dog was chuffing on the steps, a brindled herding dog so amped up Flynn briefly wondered if it was a German Shepherd on crack. What did they call them now? PSDs? Police service dogs. He knew it had an uncanny ability to distinguish air currents and wind direction, and worse still, human odor. If Flynn made the slightest twitch, the dog would sense that too.

  The track was about seventy feet in front of him curling north toward Schnebly Hill Road. Even if he was fast enough he couldn’t outsmart a dog. The advancing dawn threw light over the two figures emerging from the railroad car and he could see their faces now. One was dressed in tired jeans and a wide-brimmed hat. His boots were well oiled for slogging through the rough and he was short enough to run through the trees without having to duck. The other was tall, arms sunburned and rough with scars. He may have had a shave three or four weeks ago but obviously hadn’t thought much about it since then. The corner of his mouth seemed to tick upward—hard to tell if it was a smirk or a wince—and he was giving the dog some major side-eye.

  Neither looked like two hikers with a Red Rocks Pass, nor did they scream Arizona Game and Parks. But they could have been hunters with the rifles they carried. Their eyes seemed to flick over the landscape, taking in details, filing away thoughts.

  The dog lifted its head and the sound it made ripped through Flynn’s skull like a blaring siren. It made him jerk upright, head and shoulders clearing the grass before he had time to realize how visible he was. The dog launched off those steps, claws kicking up a cloud of dust, leash snaking in the dirt.

  Flynn jogged downhill hearing the snap of branches behind him and with any luck, the leash would become hooked around a root or a jagged piece of rock. The gradient was steeper than he thought and he stumbled down most of it, ripping his jeans at the knee. Bowling through the fat stalks of century plants, he narrowly missed a piñon pine. The dog bothered him, a silent stealth which could change rhythm at any time; no growling, no movement. It was hunting him.

  Flynn felt hemmed in at all sides but there was one thing Jesky had taught him when he was a kid during a simple game of hide-and-go-seek. Stay down in the thick of it and get a sighting on the hunter.

  He would have climbed a tree only there wasn’t a stick of wood sturdy enough to carry his weight and he didn’t fancy the idea of a dog’s jaws bolted around one leg on the way up. A thin path wound toward a clump of cacti and he crouched to one side of it, breath coming in spurts.

  He didn’t know much about dogs but he figured it was close, only ten feet to the left of him and scenting white-knuckle adrenalin. What occurred to Flynn was the lack of voices, as if the two men had joined in the chase knowing exactly what was at the end of it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A change in the breeze confirmed what Flynn dreaded the most. The dog had launched itself into the air and it was somewhere behind him when he heard a snapping sound followed by a high-pitched yowl. It must have kissed a few spikes and now it was wrapped around the base of the cactus and anchored by its leash.

  As Flynn hurtled down the hillside, he realized he knew nothing about the terrain. Branches slapped against his cheek, grass rushed past him and then he felt the slam like a tight knuckle in his midriff. He dropped to the ground and tried to gasp for air, feeling the spasm in his diaphragm. It seemed like an age before it stopped cramping and he was able to catch his breath.

  No rough hands hauled him to his feet. No barking, no shouts. Wind soughed through the long grass and he could hear the whine of a dog in the distance. He ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth in an attempt to find moisture, tasting blood and rough particles of sand instead. He rolled to a crouch to relax his muscles, noticing a thread of red spittle that clung to his lip before trailing over a root. Directly above was the trunk of a dead tree where one branch reached out in a gnarled fist. Flynn almost laughed.

  He waited for a good ten minutes in the lee of a boulder gazing back through a net of grass. With a severely disabled dog, the men were now quartering the slopes again and streaming in a southerly direction following a false scent. It was a stroke of luck.

  Flynn put his hand to his head and felt only the rough spikes of short hair. The cap had been yanked off when he fell and he wished he’d stuffed it in his backpack instead of wearing it. Keeping low, he pressed his hands against his stomach, took a few small breaths before climbing five feet up the slope. He’d hardly taken more than three steps when he saw it; a striped denim cap perched jauntily on the crown of a small rock. He let out a moan, tears welling up behind his eyelids.

  The bike was propped within a stand of piñon trees some twenty feet from where he crouched. A field of grass and an explosion of yuccas sloped up to the crest and there wasn’t much cover unless he followed a shallow trench to the north. Flynn decided to take his chances and jammed the cap in his pocket.

 
; There was no time to warm the bike up and releasing the kickstand, he pushed it backward along the trail through runnels of dried mud. Swinging his leg over the seat, he turned on the ignition, checked the oil and generator lights and heard the roar. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have time.

  Helmet on, he crouched low and gunned the bike north along a gray ribbon of road. Beyond the ridge, he saw faint sprays of dust, a car wending its way toward him, perhaps? Then he looked up into the pink May sky and saw a shape, a Cessna flying in narrow circles over the crags and valleys.

  At its lowest point, Flynn couldn’t make out the logo on the fuselage. He felt like a prisoner where hope crashed and minutes were endless, and the only sanctuary was to get to Sedona and blend in among the traffic. Then all of a sudden the plane peeled away and drifted up into the heavens. The focus of the hunt had changed.

  Turning west, Flynn reached a pass where houses appeared out of the trees and cars swung down the hillside road to a roundabout. He followed route 179 north as far as a roadside motel with panoramic views of the countryside and certainly not the grungy stain of a place he imagined.

  He left his bike in the shadows between a stand of trees and the motel wall, and beyond it a tract of wasteland sloping back down to the road. He made his way to a terrace that spread the entire length of the building and where a maid with a housekeeping cart dawdled in front of an open door. She had her back to him, earphones bright pink against a gray uniform and was studying a dollar bill. She hadn’t noticed the sound of the bike, or footsteps scuffing closer and if she suddenly turned it would be unlikely she’d dismiss him with a shrug. He looked like crap.

  He had no idea what made him do it, but as she let the door coast shut he slipped in behind, finding himself in a single queen room. There was a strong smell of air freshener and furniture polish and if that wasn’t bad enough, traces of vomit on the carpet under the heater.

  He closed the blinds and plugged in his phone. The bathroom was equipped with the usual eyebaths of shampoo and conditioner, most of which he would be taking with him, and under the sink was a small box of laundry soap. He filled the tub with warm water and washed his clothes, draping them over the heater to dry.

  Using the remote control he scrolled through four channels until he found the local Sunday morning news. A death at the Sedona Center for Arts and two drunk drivers had ploughed into a squad car on Airport Road. The newsreader was one of those bright young things full of fake energy, the type that creeped him out. And then, almost at the switch of a button, she began a detached patter on Tarian’s murder, showing a photograph of her with a wine glass in one hand and the only cigarette she ever smoked in the other. Unfortunate, in Flynn’s opinion, in view of the fire.

  The anchor went on to give a brief background of the two detectives covering the case. Temeke looked different somehow, hands thrust in his jacket pockets, head turtled in his collar. There didn’t appear to be a chink in his shatterproof armor reminding Flynn retribution would be swift and terrible.

  Santiago did most of the talking, one brow hiked a little. She reminded him of a dancer, dark hair tied back in a ponytail and high cheekbones. She seemed to match Temeke stride for stride, intelligent and down-to-earth, but it was those black, probing eyes that could see right through him.

  Thoughts started to crowd in and his blood pressure spiked. He’d traveled all the way to Sedona to forget the fire and he would have almost done it if KTVK news hadn’t reeled him in from his run-away world. The live-feed only added to the incessant chatter in his head. Both those detectives could be in Arizona by now and he wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day guessing.

  Sweat matted his hair and his body felt stiff and half asleep. Not enough caffeine. He was almost dying without it. Several slugs of tap water couldn’t dispel the hard knot in his stomach. He tried to breathe, tried to keep the water down rather than lodging itself somewhere in his throat. He sat on the toilet seat and studied the cut on his knee. A long red slash ran almost the length of his thumb, and it looked swollen too. He’d live.

  He wanted to call Jesky and ask him how things were. How things were? It wasn’t a casual conversation anymore and it was no use trying to bat away the secrets he’d fought so hard to keep, or hide them under a dust sheet of memories. It would come up when least expected, like a bubble of air when you’ve drunk a coke too quick.

  A roiling sickness in his stomach forced him to stoop over the rim of the toilet and he lost his fight with the water. He was shaking now and shaking hard. The news footage brought it all back and made him tense. Tarian’s picture was firmly lodged in his frontal lobe as if she were a fungus that had grown there.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Serena stood at the foot of his bed, nightgown translucent in a square of moonlight. She beckoned toward the corridor where the stairs led down to a black gelatinous pool. Temeke tried to call out her name, tried to stop her from falling. When he got there all he could see were three wide ripples, shiny like molten metal.

  The pillow was wet when he lifted his head. He remembered the final fragments of the dream, remembered slipping on the carpet as he tried to reach her. Sometimes it changed, sometimes the stairs led down to an open grave and sometimes it was a viscous curtain that claimed her. Sometimes his dreams left him with an erotic charge, which only reminded him his celibacy had gone on long enough. In all cases he had let the darkness in and it disturbed him.

  The coffee maker gurgled downstairs and Dodger’s loud purring reminded him who shared his bed. He patted the soft head, paws stretching over his shoulder, body pressed against his side. Temeke threw back the covers and padded over to the window where the same wind that whined through a crack in the frame stirred the cottonwoods along the driveway. No more than a hundred yards away the neighbor’s dog barked at a gusting leaf, chasing it across Temeke’s yard. It was the backup alarm in case the bedside clock gave its final death rattle.

  Temeke did a double take. Dark divots and low rounded hills, a chain of them stretching across his lawn almost as far as the tree. If he wasn’t mistaken they were pet leavings. Fats Riley was on his way to his mail box, a perfect opportunity, and Temeke stuck his head out of the window.

  “If I catch your damn dog on my lawn again, I’ll staple his ass shut!”

  Temeke slammed the window and took a lukewarm shower, shaking off the fact that his yard was beginning to look like a bloody Pinterest page. He covered his head with shaving gel and ran the razor above his ears and scalp; a smooth dome with the tingle of aftershave lotion. Seeing Serena had given him a welcome change of mood. She hadn’t mentioned his drinking or given him a lecture on the harmful effects of smoking. It would have provided the slipknot he dreaded the most. She wanted to tell him about the job she’d got and how well she was feeling. It was important to her and that’s what mattered.

  He tugged on a pair of gray boxers and dragged a black polo shirt over his head as he padded downstairs. There was a clean pair of khakis in the laundry basket and he already knew they’d be covered in hairs.

  The cell phone on the kitchen counter gave a happy chirrup and he checked the screen.

  “Hey, Marl. What’s up?”

  “Still nothing on the Walley-Bennetts. Already left three messages. I think I might surprise them.” She blew her nose and then began speaking again. “There’s news on the tire tracks seen at the McCann house, sir. Matt called, said he thought they belong to a Mercedes. Tracks are forty-six point five inches in width and the skid marks suggest the car must have taken off extremely fast.”

  “Good work, Marl.”

  “And Hammond said two hunters called Sedona PD this morning, sir.”

  Temeke could hear her scrolling through the report on her computer. “Good lawd. How many friends does Hammond have?”

  “This one’s a Captain Valdez, sir. We can count it as reliable. These hunters said they saw a transient nosing around private property on Schnebly Hill Road at a little before five o’clock t
his morning. Their dog took chase and was badly injured. A Mr. Dean Connolly and a Mr. Dutch Fiennes of 4565 Mesquite Avenue. They’d been hunting white-tail deer and bears that week and they were on their way home. Parked their truck on 153 near Munds Wagon Trail and took a detour. Said they saw tire marks and a spray of red dirt on the concrete. They used to know someone who lived up there.”

  “So they went to investigate...” Temeke flapped a hand impatiently while trying to pour a cup of coffee with one hand and feed the cat.

  “They saw a man lurching down the hill, lost sight of him until he fired up his bike.”

  “You mean the bike they hadn’t seen on the way in?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did they get the license?”

  “No, but they got a description. Tall, blue railroad cap, khaki jacket. Not much, I’m afraid. They said he disappeared into thin air.”

  “Nothing disappears into thin air.”

  “Sir, I checked out the location. The street view shows a brown sign that says Road Closed Four Miles Ahead. There was a photograph of McCann in the Jesky’s living room. Looked like he was around four or five at the time, standing in front of a brown sign just like it. I’m wondering if it’s the same.”

  “Bring a Consent to Search, will you? Pick me up in ten minutes.” Temeke rammed an apple fig bar in his mouth and finished dressing.

  There was a white truck with the words Rovers Insurance parked on the dirt curb at the end of Caramel Drive. No sign of a driver, but Temeke suspected Jesky might have run back to the house because he’d forgotten something. He told Malin to park their unit behind it and they walked up the dirt path to the single-wide.

  A propped-open door was an invite Temeke couldn’t refuse. He stood on the front deck of the house staring down at a pixie in a red hat, or whatever it was, and smelled the acrid stench of burnt dinner. He rang the bell. Winced at the noise.