Winter at the Door

by Sarah Graves

  “Don’t be.” He slung a solid arm around her, drew her close. To her surprise, she let him. “You think you’re immune?”

  She sighed shakily. “I guess not. Or even if I am, something was different about today.”

  “Yeah. Today it wasn’t some civilian, someone you could put over there. In that category, you know? Far away.”

  She nodded against him. His shirt smelled like laundry soap and some other sharp scent, something bracing and medicinal.

  “And it wasn’t your usual scene,” he added as the spaniel settled itself on her stockinged feet. “Big city, lots of other cops around.”

  I could get used to this, she thought, even through a pang of disloyalty to Dylan.

  Right, her mind retorted instantly, because he’s been such an honorable guy to you. Still, she couldn’t escape the feeling as Washburn went on:

  “That big woods up there is no joke, Lizzie, so don’t think it is. It plays by different rules, it doesn’t have any mercy at all, and it doesn’t give any warning, either.”

  He settled his arm more closely around her, his voice softly reflective. Probably it was only her own imagination that made it sound more warning than consoling.

  “It just takes people. Sometimes on its own, sometimes with help,” he said. The fire popped loudly with a flare of red sparks, startling her.

  But then she settled back against him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there are people out there. Little groups, some are survivalists, end-of-the-world nuts, tiny religious sects.”

  She listened carefully; no one else had said this to her.

  A weird place, the lost hunter had reported. But now he was dead, so she couldn’t ask him any more about it.

  “You get back far enough into those trees, you could make nuclear weapons with no one figuring out what you’re up to. And I’ve heard stories about guys who live all alone like wolves out there. Not many, and not often, but—”

  “You think that’s what happened? The lost hunter ran across someone who didn’t want to be seen?” Or who didn’t want someone else to be seen … like a little blond girl.

  But Washburn shook his head. “I don’t, actually. Not now. In summer, maybe, but now it’s just getting too damned cold.”

  The fire in the huge stone hearth had fallen to glowing embers; the dogs snored softly.

  “My best guess is that some local punk tried robbing Harold Nussbaum. It’s well known he had wealthy clients at that hunting camp,” Washburn said.

  “With an automatic weapon?” she objected. Also, she hadn’t seen any punks like that around here. But she was too tired to debate, so when he shrugged a “who knows?” she didn’t argue.

  Instead she sat up. “I guess it’s too late to have that tour of the property you promised me. And I’m pretty tired …”

  It was not, she felt sure, his own acreage that he had been hoping to explore tonight. But if he was disappointed, he was too gentlemanly to show it. At the door, he held her jacket for her and switched on the yard lights.

  “Hey.” He caught her in an embrace. “I like you a lot, you know that?”

  Drawing her in, he held her just tightly enough. The moment lengthened as almost against her will she relaxed into him; at last he released her, steadying her as she stepped back.

  “There,” he said, smiling. “Maybe that’s enough affection for one evening.”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “How’d you get so smart?” She really did like him. It was just that she couldn’t shake the thought of Dylan, recuperating from a gunshot wound tonight.

  His injury, once the nicked artery got sewn up, had proven to be fairly minor; when she called the hospital after her long session with the state cops, she’d been told he’d already signed himself out against medical advice.

  Which was typical Dylan, she thought as Trey Washburn zipped her jacket for her, snugging it up to her chin.

  “A vet has to learn how to get close,” he replied lightly, “without getting bitten. There, now you won’t freeze.”

  “Thanks, Trey,” she told him. “My turn to cook next time, okay?” Assuming there is a next time, she thought as she pulled the Blazer out of the veterinarian’s driveway.

  “I mean, rushing out like this isn’t exactly a compliment,” she told Rascal, who sprawled on the back seat.

  The dog yawned hugely in reply and settled again. Having him had turned out to be a blessing instead of an inconvenience, especially since Spud was walking the dog daily; another living creature, one she could hang out with and bounce her thoughts off of without fear of contradiction, was comforting.

  Or fear of romantic complications. Or any other kind … But as she turned onto her street, her headlights reflected off a car parked in front of her rented house.

  A state cop car. For a moment she was puzzled; she’d spent the afternoon with state homicide investigators, explaining how and why she’d been on the island near Allagash that afternoon when the shootings happened.

  So what did they want now? And … why didn’t she see them? Dousing her headlights, she drove slowly past the empty car to the end of the street. No cops … but her house lights were on.

  When she’d gone out earlier, she’d left only one lamp in the living room burning. Negotiating the turnaround, she headed back up the street. What the …?

  Follow-up questions from one of the Staties was one thing; even at this hour they were probably still working. But entering her house while she wasn’t home was …

  She pulled into the driveway and parked, then told Rascal to sit tight, still puzzling over her unexpected company.

  She could have left the door open. It had a way of seeming to lock without really doing so. She swung her legs out of the Blazer just as it flew open.

  Two men emerged, one pushing the other ahead of him. Dylan. And—

  Dylan shoved his captive off the front step, then seized him by the neckline of his sweatshirt again. It was Spud, his face flushed and his eyes bright with tears.

  “You know why this young man might be in your house all by himself?” Dylan demanded.

  He was angry, his lean face hatchet-like and his lip curled in fury; from experience she recognized the delayed reaction of a guy who, if a bullet had zigged instead of zagged a few hours ago, would be dead now.

  “Honest,” Spud pleaded, “I know I probably should’ve waited, but you said a guy already hadn’t showed up to do it, so I—”

  “Right,” Dylan drawled, giving Spud a one-handed shake. For a guy who’d been shot today, he was feeling pretty peppy.

  Or maybe that was part of the reaction, too. She’d taken a round once, just a flesh wound, nothing major at all, and that night she’d cleaned her service weapon, both her personal guns, and all the closets in her apartment before falling into bed at dawn, her eyes wide and her heart hammering.

  “Dylan, let go of him.” Spud sniffled, dragging his sleeve across his face. Then:

  “Hey!” She got up in the kid’s face. “Talk to me, bud, or I’ll hand you back to that guy.”

  The kid cringed. “All right, okay? I’m going to, just let me …”

  Dylan couldn’t take any more. “Let you what, think up some fairy tale to lay on her? Forget about it, Lizzie, I already called the local cops, but I’m taking him into custody myself, he can get a lawyer and—”

  “I’ve got a new lock for you, okay?” Spud shouted. For the first time, she noticed the paper bag he was clutching; Dylan snatched it from him.

  “I should’ve waited. I know that, I apologize.” Spud rushed his words nervously. “But I wanted to …”

  The Bearkill patrol car pulled up just as from the bag Dylan withdrew a new lockset, still in its plastic packaging.

  The redheaded officer Lizzie had met in the bar got out and came up the walk. “… surprise you,” Spud finished miserably.

  Eyeing the kid in disgust, Dylan shoved the lockset at her. It was a heavy-duty one, the kind she’d hav
e chosen herself.

  “I was going to leave the new keys in the mailbox and a note on the door so you’d be able to get in,” Spud pleaded.

  And so would every junkie burglar for miles, Lizzie thought automatically before remembering they didn’t have those around here. Or anyway not nearly so many of them as in Boston.

  “He’s got some tools inside,” Dylan offered, not the least bit apologetically. But she could tell he was cooling off some.

  “The tools are yours?” asked the redheaded cop.

  Spud nodded. “My dad’s. He used to do a lot of handyman stuff, before …”

  His voice trailed off. “Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m really …”

  The kid looked freakish, but he’d been a real straight arrow for a week now, nothing hinky about him. She came to a decision.

  “Okay, big misunderstanding here. Dylan, why don’t you go take Rascal down the street, okay?”

  Grudgingly he obeyed; his gunshot arm was in a sling, but he looked okay otherwise. She watched him go with relief, the big dog loping cooperatively along beside him, and the Bearkill cop also departed, grumbling about more false alarms.

  Then she turned back to Spud, whose bike lay in the bushes nearby. Surely if he’d been up to something nefarious, he would have hidden it better. And he hadn’t yet taken out the old lock, she saw; yet more small favors.

  Life was just brimming with them tonight. Sort of. “Go home. Leave the tools,” she added when he turned first toward the house instead of the bike.

  The despair on his face changed to dawning hope. Christ, the kid was a bowl of jelly inside; it struck her that this was what all the piercings and tattoos were about.

  Covering the soft inner parts; another reaction she knew too well. “The job’ll be a lot easier in the daylight, right?”

  He couldn’t quite believe it, scanning her face closely for signs of a cruel joke. But when it didn’t come:

  “Yeah. Yeah, it sure … Thanks, Miss Snow,” he finished.

  She’d asked him to call her that, not wanting first-name familiarity; the phrase “Deputy Snow” was a mouthful for him, around that ring in his lip.

  “Really, I hope you don’t think I’d ever do anything to …”

  “Just get lost before he comes back.” She glimpsed Dylan’s shape and Rascal’s, approaching out of the gloom.

  Dylan still looked ticked off, his sharp features pushed forward aggressively. One thing about Spud, though: despite his ungainliness and general air of being perhaps the biggest doofus on the planet, he could move fast when he had to, so that by the time Dylan and the dog arrived both kid and bike were gone.

  “Here,” said Dylan, handing the leash over. Rascal turned his jowly face upward and cast his droopy gaze from one to the other of them.

  “I’m sorry I jumped the gun,” Dylan said. “I was driving by, and all those lights were on—”

  “Oh,” she said evenly. “Just driving by. Why not in your own car?”

  “Left it in Bangor. Exhaust system sounds funny, I dropped it at the mechanic’s and took a car out of the motor pool.”

  Sure. Or he wanted a vehicle she wouldn’t immediately know was his; if, say, she happened to catch sight of it. So she wouldn’t know he was keeping an eye on her.

  A closer look at his face, though, showed it pale and drawn, pinched with pain he wasn’t admitting. And even aside from whatever else they had once been to each other, he was still a fellow cop.

  “You’d better come in with me,” she said.

  SIX

  Oh, man. He’d rushed into the job, wanting to put it behind him, figuring that if she came home, she’d believe him, that he was only trying to help. Which in the end she had, because she trusted him, as over the past week he’d worked hard to make sure she would.

  But Spud hadn’t figured on that suspicious friend of hers showing up just when he did. Man, that was close … Pedaling fast on his bike toward home through the icy night, Spud wondered what the guy in the van would say if he knew.

  But then he stopped wondering, because the answer was that the guy probably wouldn’t say anything. He’d just do something.

  And Spud wouldn’t like that thing.

  He wouldn’t like it at all. Cruising past the high school with its dark, silent windows and empty athletic field, Spud felt a pang of hopeless longing go through him, for the days when he thought “getting good grades” and its equally hopeless partner in his ambitions, “being popular,” were all he had to worry about.

  The first so his dad wouldn’t bitch at him and his mom would smile weakly at him in that sad, already-beaten-down way she had, like having a kid who got As in geography was all she had ever dreamed of back when she was his age.

  And the second so he wouldn’t be so goddamned lonely all the time. He’d had a friend once; back in grade school a kid by the name of Ty Weston had been Spud’s constant companion.

  Just not by Spud’s choice. Kinky red hair, a bad lisp … Ty had hung around, day in and day out, trying to ingratiate himself with a Super Soaker squirt gun.

  Spud cringed recalling the lengths he had gone to, trying to shed the little loser.

  Like me. Still a loser. In high school he’d started getting the tattoos, holding back some of the money he earned digging potatoes each fall—

  And God, you want to talk about backbreaking? Little kids did it, got out there in the fields and waited for the machine to come down the row. Once the potatoes were unearthed, the kids scrambled over the hills, pulling them out and tossing them into baskets. Up and down, grab and lift, turn and drop …

  Stupid work, his father called it. That’s why you’re so good at it.

  Which Spud had been. He’d earned decent money, even after turning some over to his mom. The tattoos and the piercings he’d gotten in Bangor would finally make him cool, make him popular, or so he’d thought; instead, they’d merely made him notorious.

  At last he rolled up into his own driveway. Riding made him feel better, like he could get away from whatever he needed to. But once he got off the bike, it all crashed down on him again:

  Caught. Or nearly. The house was dark, his mom asleep and his dad most likely passed out in front of the TV. A loose strip of aluminum siding tapped rhythmically against the side of the house in the icy breeze; it had been doing that all Spud’s life.

  Inside it was going to smell like socks, TV dinners, his dad’s never-ending chain of the thin, brown cigarillos called Swisher Sweets, and the cheap sherry his mother thought nobody knew she nipped at, morning and night.

  Plus maybe a whiff of Spud’s own marijuana; he tried only smoking it outside, but now that it was getting colder that was becoming problematic. And anyway, what were they going to say, be substance-free like us?

  Leaning the bike against the garage, he plucked a joint from his jacket’s inside breast pocket and fired that sucker up. But the smoke didn’t quiet his head’s busy hum as it usually did for him. Instead, he felt worse again, much worse.

  Like he might have to do something. Something … forceful, so he wouldn’t feel so weak, so … caught.

  Something like he’d done before. Spud pinched the roach end out and dropped it back into his pocket; waste not, want not, and weed could be hard to get around here if you hoped it would stay a secret. Luckily he could hitchhike to Bangor for that as easily as he could for …

  The wreckage of tonight’s plan cut harshly into his musings again, the memory of his humiliation jaggedly painful. At first it had all gone smoothly; he’d been checking the house out, just riding by as he often did, when he noticed she was out. Pushing on the front door, he’d been stunned when it swung open.

  He hadn’t been able to resist a look inside. Luckily, he’d had the lockset with him. And she had asked him to do the work, so his explanation had sounded true. What he hadn’t said, of course, was that he’d meant to have the new key copied so the van guy could get in whenever he wanted.

  To do what, Spud had no
earthly idea. He doubted it would be good. Not much he could do about that, though, not unless he wanted the guy doing something to him …

  But there was no sense thinking that way, harshing his own mellow, what there was of it. Standing there in the frigid dark, he let his head loll around on his neck, working the kinks out.

  But on his last head rotation, he spied out of the corner of his eye the familiar van slowing down on the road. No headlights, just the vehicle stopping there.

  Waiting. At the foot of the driveway, the van just sat there: silent, malignant. Spud wished he wasn’t stoned, that on top of everything else he wasn’t going to reek of weed once he’d gotten into the vehicle.

  Which, of course, he was absolutely going to have to do. Even now, his reluctant feet carried him down the driveway. The van’s passenger-side door swung open, the interior lighting up to show the guy waiting.

  Face forward, hands resting lightly on the wheel. Spud got to the open door and halted, wishing he’d stopped to pee on his way home.

  Because wherever he was going now, he didn’t think there would be any rest stops. “Hey,” he said.

  The guy’s index finger tapped the steering wheel lightly. All the rest of him was as motionless as a snake readying itself to strike.

  Suddenly Spud’s own house with its socks-and-TV-dinner smell, its fusty old carpets and cheap furnishings and the jerry-rigged shower forever dripping into the rusty bathtub …

  As he climbed into the van, all that he was leaving whirled vividly before him in a kaleidoscope of longing: his mom’s pink foam hair curlers. His father’s undershirts.

  His own safe bed. But climb in he did, because he was …

  Stupid. Dumb kid, good for nothing but stupid work. Anything else, he screws up. Which he had, and the guy must know it. So now …

  The guy turned slowly. His eyes were like two black stones.

  Now he would have to pay.

  The wound under the dressing on Dylan’s upper arm was hot and tender, the suture line angry looking. They’d given him a pair of orange plastic prescription bottles at the hospital, one with painkillers and the other with an antibiotic.