A Wee Dose of Death

by Fran Stewart

He’d never been able to work things like this out on the computer. He needed a hard copy, something he could flip through, jotting ideas in the margins. Denby wanted it the other way around, all of it on the computer. Marcus had argued with him. “We can’t use the system here at work. What if somebody stumbles onto it?”

  “Passwords,” Denby purred. “Unbreakable passwords.”

  “No such thing,” Marcus had insisted.

  “Don’t worry.” Denby even smiled. “I’ve got it covered.”

  Marcus hadn’t liked it, but so far the system seemed to have worked.

  Denby took odd moments during what little free time he had at work to add a bit here, a bit there. Marcus couldn’t do that. He’d printed out this latest version from his laptop at home, and it was a good thing he had. As he’d left his office at the University of Vermont on Friday—was today really only Sunday?—one of his graduate assistants had complained of a computer glitch. It seemed to have eaten a large number of documents. He’d shown Marcus the directory. Denby’s whole password-protected folder was gone, as were several folders of older reports and data from failed experiments. “No great loss,” Dr. Wantstring had assured the student. “I have a printout of everything I need.”

  He had his backups, too. That was what thumb drives were for.

  He lopped off another dead branch that hung from a few threads of wood. Live wood was no good for kindling, but with the snow piled up the way it was, most of the fallen branches were covered completely, unless they were tucked under a thick pine. Thank goodness the forest constantly renewed itself, with trees that grew where older ones had died.

  He looked around the clearing. This whole area was a well-managed woodlot. The trees weren’t crowded by any means, but they were close enough to offer protection to one another from windstorms and the like.

  He paused, leaned the ax against the tree trunk, and placed his right hand, made into a fist, against the center of his spine at waist level. He arched his back against the pressure. He never used to get stiff like this. He held the pose for a couple of seconds and listened to the birds. Behind him, across the small clearing, a blue jay—he was pretty sure that was what it was—began to scold something, probably a squirrel bedeviling the bird. He would have turned to look at it, to see what the bird was upset about, but his back needed about five more seconds to ease out those muscles.

  For a moment, he thought he heard a voice. A man’s voice. Someone calling for help? He glanced around him, back across the clearing, which seemed to be where the voice originated, but the sound wasn’t repeated. He thought he saw a movement under a copse at the top of the small rise on the far side of the clearing, but then that noisy blue jay burst from the trees, squawking. That was what he’d heard. Not a voice. An irritated bird.

  He forgot about the jay when he noticed a fallen tree a few yards farther on. It looked like it had been dead at least a year. There was a deep, blackened scar along the upper side of the fallen trunk, leading Marcus to assume that a lightning strike had caused the tree’s demise. The way of nature. He set to work on the upper branches with gusto. Long-dead wood burned easily as long as it hadn’t been in contact with the ground. He’d leave extra kindling for the next poor soul who came along.

  Dr. Wantstring picked up the pile of kindling he’d harvested. He’d break it—or chop it if he had to; some of these branches were fairly thick—once he got inside. He turned at a sound behind him. The figure skiing toward him over the clearing was the last person he’d expected to see. “What are you doing here?”

  “I felt like skiing. I just came for the day. The mountain is beautiful early in a storm like this.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. Coincidence, I guess. Don’t let me slow you down.”

  Wantstring didn’t believe in coincidences. Not usually. The last thing he wanted—or needed—was an interruption like this. Still, his inborn good manners, the result of a mother who’d insisted, made him school his thoughts. “Did you have a good trek up the path?”

  “As good as it could be. I followed a set of tracks. Maybe they were yours? It was good to have tracks to follow.”

  “Right.” Wantstring cringed inwardly at how abrupt he sounded, but he truly did not want anyone around. “Here, let me get this kindling inside. I’ll get a fire going and you can warm up for a bit. Do you want to have lunch before you leave?” He emphasized “leave”; he didn’t intend to be rude, but he also didn’t want to encourage anyone to stay. “Did you bring food?”

  “I have a couple of sandwiches.”

  “Good. Park your skis and come on in.” He brushed the blade of his ax against his pant leg to remove the dusting of snow from the metal. “Once the cabin warms, we can talk while we eat. I don’t want to keep you too long. You’ll need to get back to town before the snow gets too deep. Don’t head farther up the mountain.” He extended the ax toward the steep mountainside behind him. “The trail gets really steep. Only the best skiers should try it. You’ll need to go back the way you came.”

  “I know.”

  Inside, Dr. Wantstring stamped the excess snow from his boots, leaned the ax against the wall beside the door, and crossed the floor, pulling the scarf from around his neck as he went. He draped it over the back of the chair. “Make yourself at home.” He dropped the kindling beside the stove and casually lifted his manuscript from the chair that held his scarf. “I’ll just make a little more room.” He stepped to the woodpile, wondering about the law of probability. Why now? Why here? Was this truly a coincidence? Maybe he was being overly careful, but if one person could consider an oncoming blizzard a great time to ski, another one might, too.

  “Need any help?”

  “No. Of course not. You just go ahead and park yourself on that chair.” Using his body to shield the action, he tucked the manuscript behind the piled-up wood in the corner. He picked up a log, rummaged in the pocket of his flannel shirt for matches, and knelt beside the stove. “This won’t take any time at all.”

  In the end, Dr. Marcus Wantstring was right. It did not take any time at all. The ax made it go much faster.

  8

  The Joy of a Wee Run

  The second ski was too good for Mac to leave it lying beside the trail. With his rotten luck, somebody would come along and steal it. He took his bearings. Nearby, to the left of the trail, two skinny white birches formed almost a semicircle as they bent toward each other across one of the lower branches of a thick-girthed sugar maple. Between that and the rock cliff, he’d be able to find this spot easily once he was back on his feet. Grunting with the effort, he shoved the leftover ski beneath the light, fluffy snow. There. Safe. He added one of his ski poles to the stash but kept the other one with him.

  The backpack weighed three tons as he struggled to get it on. He couldn’t leave it. He’d need the water and food. It might take those people in the cabin a while to get help up here. With his luck, they’d be the kind of people who were never prepared for anything. You sure couldn’t trust anyone these days.

  The cabin couldn’t be that much farther ahead. His body was still warm from the effort of skiing and the ordeal of getting his broken leg splinted, but he knew the heat would begin to leach out—had already begun to, in fact. There’d be a fire. Surely the people who’d skied ahead of him would have started a fire there.

  He laid his head down on his gloved hands to catch his breath. Just a minute to rest. Maybe two minutes. Then he’d get started.

  A long while later Mac raised his head and stared with bleary eyes at the snow sifting onto him. Had he fallen asleep? Something had woken him, some sound, but he couldn’t place it. At the top of the hill in front of him, he saw a blur of movement, something dark. He had the crazy—no, it was insane—thought that maybe it had been a person disappearing behind the crest. He called for help, but his voice came out more like a croak than a y
ell. Whoever it was couldn’t have heard him. He could have sworn he’d seen a knitted cap sinking out of sight. That was impossible. Whoever it was, if it had been a person, would have stopped to help.

  Mac’s eyes gradually cleared and he looked around him. He’d obviously been asleep. There was another inch of snow. For now, all he heard was silence.

  It wasn’t far, but getting to the top of the incline seemed to take hours. He peered over the rise and spotted the small cabin in the clearing. One set of skis stood propped up to the right of the door. He called out, but nobody appeared. There wasn’t any smoke from the chimney, so maybe one of the two guys whose trail he’d been following was out collecting firewood.

  Mac took a deep breath, noticing the almost buried tracks of the second skier who had moved off the trail a few yards to the right. Probably wanted to take a quick pee against one of those trees. Those tracks rejoined the first set of tracks partway down the incline. Mac could clearly see the outhouse on the far side of the clearing. Couldn’t the guy have waited that long?

  He shouted, but nobody came to the open door. He was probably hard of hearing. Mac was having trouble getting enough breath. Damn. This would be over soon, though. Once the guy in the cabin called for help, Mac would be okay.

  The backpack weighed four tons now. Even though it took him two tries to make it only one foot farther along the path, at least from here it would be downhill, and he wasn’t talking about skiing. He wanted a fire. He wanted shelter. He wanted help. And they were all just a hundred feet away. A hundred agonizing feet.

  * * *

  I turned from the window. “This snow looks too good to pass up.” I picked up a skein of neon pink yarn as I passed the table at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m going skiing.”

  “I will go wi’ ye.”

  I turned on the bottom stair and looked him over. His sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. He had hand-knit stockings that came almost up to his—I had to admit it—gorgeous knees, but he probably didn’t have anything on under his kilt. I stopped that thought before it could progress. “Stay here. You’re not dressed for it.”

  He tilted his head to one side. His mouth was open. “Surely ye jest.”

  I slapped the newel post. “I’m not kidding, Dirk. It’s probably five below out there.”

  “Below what?”

  “Didn’t you have temperatures back then?”

  “Temprachoors? What would they be?”

  “You know. Fahrenheit. Or did you use Celsius?”

  Dirk looked at me like he thought I’d lost my mind.

  I spoke slowly, as if he were five years old. “How on earth did you know how cold it was outside?”

  The kilt pin holding his plaid over his shoulder—it was made of antler—moved as he took a deep breath. “The snow was one indication. If ’twas melting, the day was becoming warmer. If ’twas like this”—he turned to look out the window—“we’d have a wee fire. Even a wean could tell ’twas cold.”

  “Well, there’s a big difference between just above freezing and five below.”

  He turned back to face the window. “I dinna understand this five below.”

  “That means it’s really cold. If you go outside now, you’ll freeze.”

  “Nae. I willna. I canna feel the cold. I canna feel anything.” His voice faded away.

  I shifted my feet on the bottom stair. “Stay here, Dirk. I’ll just go a little way up one of the trails. Maybe the Perth. It’s an easy one, the bottom part of it. Be back in a jiffy.”

  “I will go wi’ ye. Ye said it could be dangerous if one skeeded alone.”

  “Skied. And only if they’re lost in the mountains, and you can’t get lost on the Perth.”

  He crossed his arms. “I am coming wi’ ye.”

  Stubborn Scot, I thought. “This snow is too fluffy, and you don’t have skis. How do you know you won’t sink in?”

  “We will discover that soon enow, would ye not say?”

  I threw up my hands. It would serve him right if he fell in and got stuck. “I have to change clothes.”

  “I will wait for ye. Dinna take long, for ye wouldna want to be caught out of doors in the dark.” He turned his obstinate face back to the window.

  No, I wouldna want to be skiing after dark, but I also didna like him telling me what any halfway intelligent adult would already know. Grrr.

  * * *

  It took too much energy to keep calling out. The door of the cabin stood tantalizingly open. It looked like one or two steps up, but he could make that. He’d come this far. At least he could get inside, off this cold ground. Hopefully, whoever was staying here would be back soon and they could get a fire going.

  By the time he hauled himself up the steps—the snow fell so freely in the clearing they were practically buried by now—he was close to exhaustion. The thought that if he didn’t keep going he’d freeze to death kept him motivated. That and the possibility that whoever was using the cabin might not come back for hours, so it was up to him to save himself.

  “Anybody home?” That sounded stupid. Of course there wasn’t; they would have heard him long ago. They must have taken snowshoes out to walk around. He inched forward another foot or so, enough to see into the square room.

  The man sprawled on his back beside the cold woodstove wore bright orange-, red-, and yellow-striped socks. The man’s pant legs were stuffed into the socks. Any good skier knew that technique to keep cold air from flowing up inside your pant legs. But this man would never ski again. He was quite obviously dead. Mac had seen enough dead bodies to be sure, even if it hadn’t been for the state of the guy’s skull and the ax beside the body. For a moment, Mac forgot his own situation and tried to pull himself to his feet. The pain swamped him, and he collapsed in agony. It was a long time before he managed to shrug out of his backpack and a longer time yet before he could make it across the floor to check the guy’s pockets.

  No wallet, although patting the guy’s pockets wasn’t the easiest task considering the state of Mac’s fingers. No cell phone. No driver’s license tucked into the top of his heavy orange socks, the way some skiers did. The only things Mac found in the guy’s pockets were three empty Tootsie Roll wrappers in his pants and two ballpoint pens in his shirt. Green, no less. Who carried green pens, for God’s sake? Who was this guy? Why did somebody have it in for him?

  A niggling thought crept up the back of his spine, lodged in a primitive part of Mac’s brain stem, and wouldn’t go away. Mac never felt fear. He was big. He was strong. What was there to be afraid of? He was the chief of police. But what would happen if a bear wandered in, following the smell of blood, the scent of dead meat? Most of the bears would be hibernating by now, but there were always a few, usually the cranky males, who wandered the forest until well after the first snowfall. The dead guy didn’t smell too bad yet; Max could tell he’d been killed only recently. The blood on the floor hadn’t frozen yet, and the blood that had soaked into the collar of the guy’s brown plaid flannel shirt was still a bright red. But the smell would build if Mac didn’t get help soon. The bear would come. Mac could have kicked himself for not bringing his rifle along.

  He made it across the floor in record time, considering the state of his leg and the awkwardness of the ski splint. He closed the door and wedged one of the two chairs in the room under the knob. No bear was getting in here while Mac had breath.

  Still, what if it wasn’t a bear trying to get in? What would happen if the ax wielder came back? Even if the wedged chair held, there were four windows.

  Even if the ax was still inside the cabin, Mac had to admit to himself—he’d never admit it to anyone else—that in his present condition he couldn’t fight off a kitten, much less a murderous maniac. Not with his leg the way it was.

  Mac’s gut clenched. The police chief of Hamelin was scared.

  9

&nbs
p; Crisp Enough to Freeze

  The air was crisp enough to freeze the little hairs inside my nose, so it had to be colder than ten degrees. Anything warmer than that, and your nose hairs don’t freeze. Just one of those handy little Vermont truisms. So maybe the old Scots didn’t need thermometers. Dirk was right, doggone him.

  I grabbed my skis from the shed out back and, while Dirk pestered me with questions, I took a moment to scrape them lightly and buff on a layer of blue wax. Most everybody in town prepared their skis like this well before the first big snowfall was predicted.

  I usually did, too, but with the big kilt shipment we’d had to process Friday and Saturday, I hadn’t taken the time. It wouldn’t take long to whip my skis into shape, though.

  People new to the art of cross-country skiing usually bought tons of paraphernalia that we old-timers didn’t bother with. An old-timer in skiing is anyone who’s been on skis their whole life, whether that life is five years or, as in my case, thirty.

  Sporting goods stores like to sell new skiers fancy little pouches filled with four or five different colors of ski wax for different snow conditions—purple, red, blue, green, and yellow for gliding and another set of colors formulated for kicking off. The klister waxes are like glue. I guess you use those to keep from sliding off the side of an icy mountain. Sure can’t go fast with sticky gunk on your skis.

  Then there were scrapers, spreaders, corks, warming irons, rilling tools, special brushes made of some sort of exotic bristle; the increasingly expensive list seemed to multiply every year as more people took up the sport and more companies saw the possibility of a big profit margin. Maybe professional long-distance racing skiers needed some of those things, but most of the rest of us just threw on a basic coat of blue wax at the beginning of the season and headed out once the first snow fell.

  I loved gliding across a fresh snowfall. I pointed myself out of town toward the forest. Dirk stayed close to my side. After all, this was his first snowfall in more than six hundred years. I doubted that was a factor, though, as to why he stuck so close. “Stuck” was the operative word. He couldn’t stray more than a yard or two from the shawl as long as we were outside my house. There was some sort of exception to the ghostly rule, though. In my house and in the ScotShop he could roam around to his heart’s content, but anywhere else he was restricted unless he was carrying the shawl. Maybe I should have let him carry it, but there was a piece of me that wondered if he might run away with it if he had the chance. Of course, where would he go?