Hard Cold Winter

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “We’ve got this, Shaw,” said Rusk. “Stand down.”

  “You first.”

  “We beat you to Fat Boy, here. But you can still turn a profit out of this.”

  Parson moaned. One of his eyes was puffed shut and abraded.

  “Move away,” I said.

  Rusk sneered. “You’re helping him? This fucker tried to blow you up. He destroyed your house.”

  “Move.” The knife man took a step back. Rusk stayed put.

  “Twenty years minimum, for murder with a firearm,” he said.

  I aimed at his groin. “Doesn’t have to be a kill shot.”

  There was the sound of footsteps downstairs. I moved sideways to get clear of the doorways.

  “Vince,” called the knife man. “Get backup.”

  Two guys, their guns within reach by the bed, two doorways, and at least one other player downstairs. And Parson was starting to wake up. Tactically speaking, this situation was going rapidly to shit.

  Vince was not the brightest. He came charging up the stairs. I aimed at the top of the center doorway and fired, blowing a large chunk of the wooden frame to toothpicks. Rusk and the knife man hit the floor. My ears buzzed with the sudden blast.

  “Stay there, Vince,” I shouted. The noise of the shot had revived Parson. He blinked and mumbled something, trying to press himself upright.

  “Rudy?” called Vince from the stairs.

  “Backup, goddamnit,” said the knife man, rolling behind a chair. I pressed myself against the wall, where an armoire offered a small amount of cover. Rusk was up on his knees behind the linen chair and aiming a pocket derringer at Parson’s temple.

  “Drop the gun,” he said to me.

  “Nope.”

  The knife man edged toward the suit jackets on the bed and I fired another shot one foot in front of him that smashed a baseball-sized hole in the drywall. He ducked back behind the chair.

  “We’re leaving,” said Rusk, “and he’s coming with us.” Parson numbly tried to pull away and Rusk yanked him back by the ear, using Parson’s wide body as a shield.

  “He can’t tell you where the Tovex is if he’s dead,” I said.

  “I’ll chance it.” Rusk angled his head toward the door. “Go,” he said to his partner. The knife man ran out of the room and down the stairs without any more invitation.

  Rusk hauled at Parson, pressing the derringer against the nape of Parson’s neck. “You come with me, or I’ll find your sister and cripple her,” he hissed. “Get the fuck up.”

  Parson stood, wavering. Rusk kept his eyes on me. I could shoot him in the face. I was good enough to risk the shot, just past Parson’s cheek. But that was my only option. Any chance to wound Rusk was gone. Maybe I’d have an angle when they made their way down the stairs. Unless Vince and the gang were waiting to blow my head off the second I stepped out of the bedroom.

  Rusk was almost out of the door, shuffling sideways with Parson between us. Parson looked at me, with his one sorrowful eye. He nodded.

  And threw himself backward.

  His huge mass bowled Rusk over and the two men toppled out onto the landing. Over six hundred pounds hit the slim railing and crashed through like it wasn’t there at all. I ran forward as they fell twelve feet to land with a boom that shook plaster dust from the ceiling.

  The front door was open. I didn’t see the knife man, or anyone else. I dashed down the stairs, gun pointed. Still no one. A car screeched away from the curb in front of the house.

  Parson and Rusk had landed on a slim hall table, completely smashing it and the decorative vase atop it. They were both on the floor, and moving. Rusk crawled dazedly toward the door. I smacked him on the back of his head with the barrel of the S&W. He slumped.

  Parson made a gargling sound, hands clutching at the wall.

  He was choking. Maybe he had hit the table wrong, or caught Rusk’s arm in his throat. His face was all tones of crimson, flushed skin under the darker streaks of blood. I forced his head back and stuck my index finger down his throat. Air rushed into his lungs with a wet pop. He flailed at me and moaned.

  “Lie still, damn it,” I said. I felt his throat close again, down past my finger, and his thrashing became frantic. I didn’t know the house. Was there a med kit anywhere? Parson’s one visible eye bulged.

  The garden hose. On the front porch. I jumped over Rusk’s unconscious body and ran to where the hose was wound around the gnome. The blade on my knife was sharp. I sliced a foot of rubber tube from the middle of its length in less than ten seconds.

  Parson’s foot kicked a dent in the wall. I pinned his arms with my knees and yelled at him to stop thrashing. I didn’t want to pistol-whip him, too, just to save his life. His huge body heaved, almost throwing me off. I grabbed his head and forced the tube down his throat and he coughed and gagged, just as air whistled into the tube. His body went almost limp as it focused completely on taking in oxygen.

  We lay there, three large men collapsed in the shambles of the small hallway, like drunks in the grips of the world’s worst hangover.

  I gave Parson the okay sign. “You can breathe?”

  He weakly returned the affirmative. From far away outside, I heard police sirens.

  “You owe me, Parson,” I said. “Help me save Elana. Have you seen her? Found her a place to hide?”

  He hesitated. And nodded.

  “Do you know where the Tovex is?”

  He made a fractional head shake, and winced in pain against the hose.

  “Thumbs-up or -down. And fast. Can you tell me where Elana is?”

  Affirmative. He pointed at Rusk. Then again.

  The sirens were definitely coming for us. Two cars at least and maybe a motorcycle. I checked Rusk’s pockets and found an iPhone with a funky yellow-striped case.

  “Yours?” I said to Parson. Thumbs-up. “You called her? Texted her?”

  Negative. I turned the phone on, held it up for him. Parson tapped the Maps.

  I looked at the list of recent addresses. The first was the bungalow, right here. The second was in the Ravenna neighborhood, just a mile north of us.

  “Here?” I said. Affirmative. The sirens stopped outside and LED lights streaked the foyer of the house in whirling red and blue. I erased the address from Parson’s phone.

  When the cops stormed in, I had already tossed my gun away and had my hands raised in surrender. They didn’t shoot me. Maybe my luck was on the rise.

  AGE SEVENTEEN

  Dono and Willard and Dono’s lawyer, Ephraim Ganz, all turned to face me as I walked into the Morgen. In the middle of the bright afternoon, just enough sunlight fought through the grime on the high windows to allow Dono to keep the overhead lamps turned off, like he preferred. The three men sat at the end of one of the long plank tables, where the illumination was marginally stronger.

  Dono waited until the door had closed behind me.

  “Elana’s been arrested,” he said.

  I dropped my school backpack. “Why? For what?”

  “Held on suspicion of grand larceny,” said Ganz, “by Sultan County.”

  I looked at Ganz, then at Dono. He nodded confirmation. “We can talk here.”

  “She was arrested for Gallison?” I said. “She didn’t have anything to do with it. Not really.”

  “The evidence says different, Van,” Ganz said. “The Sheriff’s Department found Elana’s fingerprints on a tank of something like welding fuel left at the scene.”

  Fingerprints. But Elana hadn’t touched the gear at all. She hadn’t even seen it. I’d hidden the rod and the tank and everything in the locker in the back of the truck before we—

  Before she and I had dropped off the truck together. Dammit. Elana had been pressing me for details about the Gallison job. She must have come back and opened the locker to find out what she could, just to satisfy her stupid curiosity. And she’d been careless in what she touched.

  It wasn’t hard to read Dono’s face. I told you, boy. We�
�d fought that night about my recklessness, as he called it, in accepting a ride from Elana. I had argued that without Elana’s help distracting the cops, I’d be in jail, so her poking around that night had worked out pretty darn well for us. Until now.

  “That’s just circumstantial, isn’t it?” I said. “Her prints could have been on that tank for months.”

  Ganz shook his head. “The two patrol officers can place her near the Gallison office that night. She gave them a tale about coming home from a friend’s and being assaulted, before giving them the slip. So right off the bat she looks suspicious. Yesterday the county detectives identified her prints and tracked her down at school.”

  “She called Willard from the sheriff’s office,” Dono said, “and Willard called me. That’s why Ephraim is suddenly representing Elana, as of this morning.”

  Ganz glanced at his notes. “Before I got there, they pressed her to identify the friend she was visiting, and she couldn’t. Add all that to the fact that a few hundred grand of optical lenses are missing from Gallison.” He shrugged. “It’s enough for them to work hard on unraveling her story. Right now, she’s taking my advice and not saying one word more.”

  “Can they make a case?” Willard asked. It was the first time he’d spoken. He hadn’t looked at me once since I’d first walked in. The three men were so varied in size they were like different breeds of canines. Ganz would be a Jack Russell terrier, Dono a muscular Doberman, and Willard—the big man would have to be one of those extinct dire wolves like the drawing I’d seen in the museum, the dog version of the saber-toothed tiger.

  “With her priors,” said Ganz, “I’d say they have a case and probably a conviction.”

  Holy shit. “Priors?”

  “Elana’s been arrested before,” Willard said.

  “Twice,” Ganz chimed in. “Once for theft, and once for a fight with another girl that got out of hand and turned into a complaint of assault. Probation, both times.”

  There wouldn’t be any probation this time. Not for a G.L. rap.

  “We have to give the lenses up,” I said. “That’s what they want.”

  Dono looked at me.

  “It was my job,” I said. “It’s my call.”

  “It was your field operation,” Dono said, “because you wanted it, and I let you.”

  “If the lenses are sold, we can buy them back.”

  When my grandfather was at his angriest, he became very still. He hadn’t moved a hair in the last minute. But now, as if recognizing that, he placed his palm lightly on the tabletop.

  “If obtaining the lenses is even possible,” he said, “what do you imagine the police will say when Elana changes her tune and hands them over?”

  “They’ll want a full confession,” I said automatically. Then I realized what that meant. They would have Elana walk through every detail. Where the special thermal rod and other equipment had come from. How she got into the building. How she cut through the window.

  And when she couldn’t explain any of that, or demonstrate that she knew how to use the gear, the cops would know that she’d had at least one accomplice. Whom she would also have to give up, if she wanted to skate.

  “I’m not an adult,” I said. “I can take the heat.”

  Ganz whistled. Willard actually looked a little startled.

  “Chivalrous,” Dono said, in about the same way he’d sometimes call me clever when he thought I was anything but.

  “You’re seventeen, kid,” said Ganz, “and I know the Sultan D.A. It’s an election year and Gallison is big news there. He’ll push to ignore your age. In trial and in sentencing.”

  “But if we give up the lenses—”

  “Not an option,” said Dono.

  I looked at him. “So I’ll owe you.”

  “It’s not the money, God damn it.”

  “Jesus.” I walked around the table. “You’re worried about saving your own ass, right? If she tells the cops about me, then they’ll turn around and look straight at you.”

  Dono was back to imitating a petrified tree again. “Be smarter than that, at least. A felony record would hang on you like an albatross for the rest of your life.”

  I didn’t even know what the hell that meant, but I was too mad to care. Mad that whatever alibi Dono would invent for his whereabouts that night, it would be sure to hold up under scrutiny. It would be her word against his. And mine, if I played along.

  Letting a fifteen-year-old girl get tossed into long-term juvie just because she made one dumb move sounded like the very definition of scum.

  I looked at Willard. “Tell me you’re not going to let Elana take this. There’s got to be something we can do.”

  He grunted. “We can pass some money around. The youth center there is privatized. Somebody up top will have their hand out. If Elana keeps a good record, she’ll be released before the max.”

  “One year,” Ganz said, “with the right judge.”

  I stared. “A year in jail.” How could they be so fucking casual?

  “If Elana cooperates,” Ganz amended.

  Willard took a deep inhale. “I’ll convince her.”

  He would. I had no doubt of it. God.

  Ganz said some words about filing with the county for something, and scurried out the door. Willard didn’t say anything at all as he left.

  Dono and I were alone at the table. A minute passed, with him considering me, and me trying not to think about him.

  “What would you do,” he said at last, “if it had been you who left your prints on the tank?”

  For once, I was ahead of my grandfather. I knew damn well that I would go to juvie rather than name names. But I wasn’t Elana, and she wasn’t me, and I could survive any place Sultan County put me.

  “I’m going home,” I said.

  “It’s nobody’s fault, you know. Just damnable luck.”

  Easy to say, when you were on the right side of the coin flip.

  I decided to take the long hike up onto the Hill instead of catching the Metro. On the steep slope of the Denny overpass, just as my legs were starting to get good and rubbery, a rattling Celica sped past and blasted its horn for no other reason than to scare the shit out of me. I should have been pissed off. But I didn’t have anything left to give the Celica driver. My anger had steadily narrowed from Dono and Ganz and Willard and Gallison and the whole stupid world, to zero in right where it belonged. On me. I had let Elana give me a ride, so that she knew where the truck was. I was the one she had saved that night.

  And when it was all said and done, I was going to be the one to let her take the fall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  EPHRAIM GANZ AND I walked out of the North Precinct of the SPD almost twenty-four hours after my arrest. He nodded to a younger man with a lawyer’s satchel sitting in the lobby as we passed.

  “Well,” said Ganz, “you beat Rusk out of the door. But not by much.”

  “That was one of Ostrander’s people?”

  “Um-hmm. Not even a partner. If he’s here, it’s because the deal’s already been cut and Rusk just needs a ride home.”

  “Rusk and his goons beat Parson Yorke half to death.”

  “Rusk says it was the other way around, that the big boy attacked them when they spotted his car and came to the house to question him.”

  “How’d that story fly?”

  “About as well as you claiming to have found that Smith and Wesson just lying around at the scene. But Rusk stuck to his version, and so did you, and here we are. Everybody’s too excited about finding Yorke.”

  The news about the explosives had broken. Shattered might be a better word. I’d told the cops that Barrett had called me about her brother, and that when I went to find the kid, I had overheard Rusk interrogating him about the missing explosives. It was true enough to hold up, and it got the cops very interested in the origins of the Tovex that had been flung through my window. A sewage storm of legendary proportions was building around HDC, with Mauri
ce Haymes at its center.

  The downside was that everyone had concluded that Parson must be my mad bomber. And there wasn’t much evidence to indicate otherwise.

  I picked up my pace to keep up with Ganz, who wove through the other pedestrians as easily as a mongoose through tall grass. “Parson told me he doesn’t have the explosives. I believe him.”

  “But you’re certain that he helped Kend Haymes steal them. Why wouldn’t he be your guy?”

  “I don’t think Parson ever knew what he and Kend were taking. I saw the security video of the theft. The cases of Tovex were unmarked. And while Rusk was beating on him, Parson claimed that he and Kend never opened the cases.”

  Ganz looked skeptical. “The boy would steal dozens of heavy cases and never ask what it was?”

  “Parson thought Kend was about the best guy who ever walked the Earth. Maybe Kend thought it would be safer for Parson if he kept the kid uninformed. He asked for help, and Parson jumped. But the next thing Parson knew, Kend was dead. Since then his life has gone straight to hell. He can’t even barter the explosives with the cops.”

  “So who does have the repulsive things? The missing girl, what’s her name?”

  “Elana Coll. She might have helped with the theft. But I’m sure that whoever murdered Kend and Trudy at the cabin must have the Tovex now.”

  “The police are theorizing that Parson killed Kend and the Dobbs girl.” Ganz pointed and we hurried to make the crosswalk. “They didn’t say as much, but they have the look that all officers of the law get when they’re about to close a big case. Like overfed cats.”

  “No. I’m guessing Kend stole the Tovex to ransom it to his dad and pay off his loan shark. But then Broch turned up dead, and the explosives are still missing.”

  “It gets better,” Ganz said, smirking. “An inside source tells me police found a call record from Parson Yorke’s cell phone to none other than the late T. X. Broch.”

  I stopped. Ganz kept walking and I rushed to catch up.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “To the same rotten business where they found him dead. The kid knew Broch.”