The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

  Well. In a stroke, Jake had pretty well eliminated anybody “average” in the area. I’d seen Cletus Borglan’s gun cabinet, and nothing having any connection to a handgun had been in there. Not necessarily a complete negative, but another difficulty.

  He said to have Art call him. Sure thing.

  I hung up the phone, and looked at Lamar. “You know anything about a PSM?”

  “It’s Russian,” he said. “That’s about it.” He folded a piece of paper, and put it in his pocket. “Notes on the PSM and the cartridge,” he said.

  “I’m kind of anxious to hear what Art has to say about this,” I said. But alas, Art had slipped out, no doubt on the case of finding a warmer winter jacket.

  When I got home, Sue and I had a nice, late, no-pressure kind of supper. We cooked together, making spaghetti and fat-free meatballs, toasted garlic bread, a great fresh salad … It was nice. I would have had some wine, but opted for soda instead. Legally, we were always subject to being called out, and if somebody got in real trouble, I didn’t want to let them down.

  We ate in our dining room, as opposed to TV trays in front of the tube while watching the news. Nice. No conversation about work. For either of us. For about two minutes.

  “How are things going with Art?” she finally asked.

  “Fantastic!” Well, as close as you can come with spaghetti in your mouth.

  She gave me a look of disbelief.

  “Well,” I admitted, “it might have something to do with his not being around today.”

  “Well, just don’t let him distract you too much when he gets back,” she said. “I know you’ll do your best, but he’s just not as important as your business.”

  We cleared the table, and I sat down in my recliner, started to watch the news, saw that the damned warm front was still off to the west, and slept for about an hour and a half. That was unusual, but welcome.

  “Still tired from being up for about two days, like a teenager,” said Sue. “But you’re not …”

  “I guess so.” I stretched. “No, I’m sure not. The nap helped, though.”

  Consequently, when the phone rang at about 2115, I was almost ready to go. Full, not too tired, and a bit testy, but nearly ready. It was John Willis, the new guy. Like I’ve said, new but sharp. Respectful, as well. Not necessarily respectful of my enormous talent, maybe, but at least respectful of my age.

  “Sir?”

  “Hey, John. What’s up?”

  “Uh, could I pick you up … I’ve got somethin’ to show you, I think …”

  I went back to the living room, where Sue was reading. “Gotta go for a bit,” I said.

  “I thought so.”

  “Sorry … I’ll try to get back as soon as I can.”

  “Something dangerous?”

  “I hope not.” I grinned. “I’m too full of spaghetti to chase anybody, or to run away, for that matter.”

  I went upstairs, and pulled on a uniform. I always kept my utility belt attached to my uniform pants. You do that with little fasteners, called “keepers,” that loop over the garrison belt, and secure the utility belt in place. It was much easier with the newer nylon belts than it had been with the old leather ones. Anyway, as I stepped into my uniform pants, the utility belt with its pistol holster, magazine holders, walkie-talkie holder, chemical mace holder and can, and handcuff case was already attached. All you had to do was put on the right underwear for the season, put on and fasten the Velcro straps for your bulletproof vest, put on a shirt, pull on the pants, lace your boots, and fill the various holsters and holders as you were on the way out of the room. Since it was very cold, I had to take the time to put on long underwear. But I was still fully uniformed and equipped in under three minutes. I pulled on my dark green sweater and walked down the stairs.

  “Just like a forest green Batman,” said Sue, “heading out of the Bat Cave.”

  I locked the chamber of my S&W? 4006 open, slipped a magazine into the butt, snapped the chamber closed with a loud clack, and dropped the hammer. Ready to go. You never knew.

  “You better wear more than that down vest.”

  “I’ll grab my parka from my car,” I said. “I’m gong to be riding with John for a while.”

  “Be careful.” She looked up. “If you’re going to be late, give me a call. Don’t call after eleven, though, because I have a faculty meeting at seven. With all the people out with the flu, I really have to be there.”

  “Okay.” I leaned down and gave her a kiss. “Have a good day if I don’t get back before eleven.”

  Eleven

  Wednesday, January 14, 1998, 2125

  As I walked out the back door, I saw that John’s squad car was already at the end of the drive. The porch light caught the reflective five-inch, blue-bordered gold stripe on his white car. Not too good for hiding at night, but great at wrecks. I ducked into the garage, to my unmarked car, and pulled out my Canadian Army parka. The best way to not have to spend time standing outside was to take it. Its pockets were full of neat things, like a stocking cap, thermal gloves, individually wrapped granóla bars… I also grabbed my black flashlight.

  I opened John’s back door, and threw in the parka. I stuffed myself into the front passenger seat. “Hi, John.”

  “Good evenin’, boss.”

  I reached down and picked up his mike. “Comm, Three’s ten-eight for a while with Nine.” You had to let them know where you were, and you had to be logged as working if you got hurt. Insurance companies can be a pain in the ass about that stuff.

  “Ten-four, Three.” In wraparound sound. John had wired the police radio to his stereo speakers.

  “Cool,” I said. “Sounds better than in real life.” Actually, it sounded a lot more bass, and gave her a bedroom-sounding voice. A bit out of character for Eunice, whose voice I recognized.

  “You ought to hear Sally,” he said, grinning. “Sounds the way you think she would in the morning. So to speak.”

  “Nice. I’ll tell her you said that.”

  “Wish you wouldn’t,” he said, backing onto the street. “Things are scary enough …”

  “So,” I said, as we straightened out and headed out of town. “What brings me out on a night like this?”

  It turned out that John had been patrolling in the area fairly close to the Borglan place last night. He had found a level field entrance at the base of a wooded hill, and had backed in about three car lengths, to have coffee and a sandwich. All lights off, but with the engine running, he was eating his midnight meal when he thought he saw something move, out of the corner of his eye. He unrolled his window a way, and listened.

  “All of a sudden,” he said, “there was this whine, and something came whipping by down the road. Going like hell, it went right off the roadway and down a little bank, and off into a field. Goin’ like a streak of shit. But really quiet. I mean, really quiet. Spooky as shit.”

  “I’ll bet.” We were turning off the highway, and onto gravel heading toward the general area of the Borglan farm. “What was it?”

  “That’s the really spooky part. I couldn’t tell. I really couldn’t.”

  “Did you get a look at his taillights? Any tire marks in the snow?”

  “Sorry. Sorry, he didn’t have any lights at all. God, I can’t believe I forgot to say that.”

  “That’s okay,” I chuckled. “No problem.”

  “It was really dark, and I didn’t want to shine any lights in case I’d fuck something up, you know? So I just sort of sat there for a while, and waited, but nothing came back down the road. So I walked over and tried to see, but there weren’t any tire tracks, so I thought I was seeing things.” In a major rush.

  “Slow down,” I said. We were slipping along at about 60, and the road was about 100 percent ice and snow-covered. “You’re driving as fast as you talk.”

  “Sorry. I suppose it wouldn’t look good to have a wreck with a superior officer onboard.”

  “Not with a big, ugly older one, eith
er. Now, then, you have no idea what it was? How big was it?”

  “I just got a flicker of it as it went by. I couldn’t really tell. Isn’t that the shits?”

  “Yeah. So … what are we doing now?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to fuck anything up, so I thought the two of us could go back down there now, and look out into the field and see what kind of tracks we had.”

  “Sure. You could have done it yourself, though.” I wasn’t really resentful, or anything. But I had been so comfortable …

  “Here we are,” he said, shutting off his headlights and sliding to a stop. He began backing into the little lane where he’d been the night before.

  “Boy, it sure as hell is dark down here,” I said. Only starlight, and it was partly cloudy. If the landscape hadn’t been covered with snow, it would have been like a black hole. As it was, it would take several minutes for your eyes to even begin to adjust.

  “Let’s just sit here a minute,” he said, “and then we can walk over and look.” He pointed as he talked. “It came from that way, and went off the road over there.”

  From the left, going right. We were about fifty feet back from the road, pretty well covered by trees and large limestone blocks that had rolled off the hill years before. From what John told me, whatever it was would have rounded a curve, gone by our location, and dipped right off the road, over a small bank, and out into a field. According cording to John, the place where it had gone into the field was about seventy-five yards from our parking place.

  “It pretty much had to be a snowmobile,” I said. “Don’t you think?” That explained my presence. The troops in the department knew we were looking at snowmobile tracks.

  “That’s kinda what I was thinking,” said John.

  “But, it was quiet?”

  “Yeah, that’s what got me, too. Never heard a quiet one in my life.”

  I opened my door. I felt dark-adapted enough to walk across the roadway. “Let’s go look. I’m getting really curious.” I got out of the car, took one step, and was up to my knees in snow. Apparently, the little lane was elevated a bit. “I’m up to my ass in snow over here,” I said, stomping my way back up to the surface of the lane. “Little ditch there.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. There isn’t one on this side.”

  “No kidding.” Now my feet were cold, and going to get colder. The all-weather boots were great, but they sure weren’t heated.

  It’s one of the peculiarities of the deep winter that the road is usually lighter than the surroundings. The paved roads are whitish with dried salt, and the gravels with packed snow. It makes it a lot easier to see the road in the dark. We squeaked in the snow as we walked across the road. Over to the bank. In darkness on the roadway, I became aware of the fact there was a bit of a moon, hidden from view behind the hill from our parking spot. The moonlight shadow of the hill reached out over the roadway. The field across the road was slowly lighting up, as a couple of clouds moved past the moon. It was like a postcard. We were standing on a roadway that curved very gently to our left, disappearing after about half a mile. It curved around a big flat field, maybe three quarters of a mile across. Like a quiet harbor in the Arctic.

  We reached the bank, and I shone my flashlight on the area John indicated. Snowmobile track, all right. Fresh, with little crumbled bits and chunks of snow scattered on both sides. Straight out into the field.

  I turned off my light. “Son of a bitch. Doesn’t that track lead toward Borglan’s and his hired man?”

  “I think it does. Harvey Grossman, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked off in the direction of the track, letting my eyes readjust to the darkness. There was a discontinuity in the snow cover, about half a mile across the field. “You see that … that different sort of area … off that way, and just before the trees …?”

  He did eventually. “Yeah, that’s that lonesome machine shed of Borglan’s. You know, the one with no other buildings anywhere …”

  Oh, yeah. The one where some of the tracks led from Grossman’s place.

  I walked back up the roadway, in the direction the snowmobile had come from.

  “Was it this dark last night?” I asked.

  “Darker, the moon was down by the time he came by.”

  “Hmm.” We stopped at the point of the curve, about a hundred yards from our car. I looked at it. “You say he had no lights?”

  “None.”

  I could make out the exhaust plume of our car because I knew to look for it, but not the car itself. Well, not clearly, at least. Too much stuff in the way, like brush, trees, and rocks. I began walking toward it. About sixty yards from it, the left front fender became visible. By fifty yards, you could begin to see the area of the driver’s door. At forty or so, a shrub began to block the view of the left front fender again. A narrow range of visibility, but …

  “It looks for all the world like he was coming around the corner, saw you, and ducked off the road.” I looked back toward the curve. “The distances are right if he’s goin’ about forty-five or so.”

  “But he didn’t have any lights …”

  “Yeah, I know.” So how did he see John? Night vision goggles, that’s how. “I’ll bet you look good in green light.”

  “What?”

  “Night vision goggles. NVGs.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’d do it.”

  “Sure would,” I said. “Let’s get back in the car before I freeze to death.”

  I stomped through the snow again, trying to hit my original tracks and not succeeding particularly well in the dark. But, back in the car, the heat felt good. I’d left my parka in the backseat, of course. Just too much of an encumbrance. Besides, the heat would warm up the granóla bars enough that they wouldn’t break my teeth …

  We each cracked a window, subconsciously listening. To hear a railroad train over the loud hiss of the heater/defroster and the engine would have been quite a feat, but we did it anyway.

  “Granóla bar?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  We munched in silence for almost a minute.

  “So,” said John. “What do you think?”

  “I think we got something really spooky here,” I replied. “I don’t know why, but somebody with a silenced snowmobile and NVGs is touring the countryside. Near a murder scene. Where the killer probably left via snowmobile.”

  “I never heard of a snowmobile like that, with the goggles and all.”

  “I did once,” I said, around a mouthful. “On TV. Finnish Army.”

  “Who?”

  “The Army of Finland. They and the Swedes were on TV. They have special units that use that sort of stuff. Go a hundred and sixty miles per hour on lakes in the Arctic like that. Quiet, and run ’em at night.”

  “Yeah …” said John.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think we’ve been invaded. But military people use this kind of stuff. Or, at least, would if they needed to. Survivalists would probably know about it, then.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just have to figure out who and why,” I said. “For starters.”

  I could just hear Art with that one. I’d be labeled the conspiracy theorist of the year.

  “Don’t tell anybody. I mean, anybody. Got that?” I was deadly serious.

  “Yes, sir.” So was John.

  “I want you to keep working this area, but don’t hang it out too far on this thing. All right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You did exactly right, last night, by not giving any indication that you saw it. He probably thinks he just blew past you and you weren’t even aware of him. That’s good. And …”

  There was a rising whine, followed by a suddenly deepened tone, along with the crunch of snow and gravel, and a black object flew by on the roadway. And was gone. Just like that. He’d come from our right this time, and wouldn’t have been able to see us at all.

  We looked at each other.

  “You see well enough to d
rive?”

  “Without lights, you mean?”

  “Yep,” I said, making sure my seat belt was secure. I knew his answer.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, pulling the gearshift lever down. And away we went.

  Without any lights on, it was fairly easy to see the road. It wasn’t possible, however, to see the speedometer, so I had no accurate idea of how fast we were going. Probably just as well. We were fishtailing a lot of the time, and I thought we were going to go into the ditch more than once. It might have just been my perspective, but I thought the ditches were getting deeper and steeper on my side as we went. Because of the curving road and the nearness of the hills, we were in and out of moonlight constantly I really sweated those dark patches.

  “You see him?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Let me know if you do …”

  We rounded a curve and caught a little moonlight. Up, over a small hill, going about 50 on a straight stretch. Over the top and down, like a roller-coaster ride.

  “Careful … there’s a bridge here somewhere,” I said. Just as we flew across it.

  “Yep.”

  He accelerated.

  “Watch it, the curves start again really soon … and be careful, he’s gonna be kicking snow, might be hard to see …”

  “I see him … I see him …”

  So did I. We were just barely gaining on a darker spot about a hundred yards up the white snow-covered roadway. He was hazy or fuzzy or … of course. The rooster tail of snow I’d just reminded John about. He was picking up just enough from the roadway to make a snowy haze.

  “Try not to lose him, but don’t fuckin’ kill us, either.” I get all fatherly in tight circumstances.

  “Okay.”

  I picked up the mike. “Comm, Three. Nine is in pursuit of an unknown vehicle, proceeding south on G4X. Vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed …”

  “Ten-four, Three.”

  Whoever it was was apparently oblivious to our presence. He was pooping along at about 40 or so, and we were now gaining perceptibly. But 50 was a high rate of speed for us, considering the snow-packed and icy condition of the road.