Out Cold

by William G. Tapply

  “Local boy makes good,” I said. “Nice story.”

  She nodded. “He said he intended to come back, be a family doctor here in town, and I supposed that’s what he did plan to do originally.” Nick paused, sipped her coffee, looked up at me.

  “Didn’t happen,” I said.

  “He got married, had a child,” she said. “And then his wife died, and he had the little girl to raise, and I guess he felt he had to make some money. So he set up his business down there in Massachusetts. But he kept the family homestead after his parents died, and he came back to town every now and then, him and his little girl. He’d come in here, have lunch, shoot the breeze with the locals, and little Ursula, she was cute as a button. Skinny, pale little thing, with these great big blue eyes, blond hair practically white. Sometimes, if it was a nice day, she and Gaby would go outside and play. They were about the same age.” Nick shrugged. “Anyway, Ursula died, terrible thing, drowned in somebody’s pool at a birthday party, and pretty soon after, the doctor, he moved back into his old place and made it clear that he just wanted to be left alone. We respect that. It’s been three, four years now. I suppose he’s still grieving. No one ever sees him. We just steer clear of his place, and try to protect his privacy if some stranger should come snooping around.” She looked up at me and smiled.

  “Lots of strangers come snooping around?” I said.

  “Far as I know,” she said, “you’re the first.”

  I picked up the photo of Dana Wetherbee and showed it to Nick. “Did Ursula look anything like this girl?”

  She took it from me, held it up, and frowned at it. “This the picture that Gaby was talking about?”

  I nodded.

  “Mm.” Nick was shaking her head. “I mean, there are similarities. Both fair, blond, cute. Ursula might’ve looked something like this girl if she…had she not died.” She looked up at me. “Who is she?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Are you looking for her? Is she missing?”

  “I’m trying to figure out where she’s been. I was hoping somebody might’ve seen her.”

  Nick shook her head. “I’m not sure I’d remember her if I did see her.”

  “Is there a bus line or a train near here?”

  She nodded. “There’s a bus.”

  “Where does it go?”

  “It comes down from Quebec, goes to New York and D.C. Stops at about a hundred places along the way, if anybody’s waiting.”

  “It doesn’t go to Boston?”

  “Nope. You want to go to Boston, you get off in Springfield and change buses. The bus stop’s right there across from the post office.” She reached across the table and touched my arm. “Do you feel like telling me what this is all about?”

  “Sure.” I told Nick about finding Dana in my backyard. I told her about the Christmas card that had been postmarked from Churchill. I told her about the truck with the bear logo that I traced to Ursula Laboratories in Cambridge, owned and operated by Dr. Judson McKibben, who was now living in seclusion in Churchill.

  I did not tell her about Sunshine and Misty being murdered.

  “Dana was pregnant,” I said. “She died of a miscarriage. I feel like I should have saved her life. But I didn’t. I feel responsible.”

  Nick was shaking her head. “That’s a terrible story. I’m sorry.”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe she was on a bus passing through, and when it stopped across from the post office…”

  I nodded. “That’s when she mailed the Christmas card. Maybe that is what happened.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Nick shook her head. “It just makes me want to go hug my daughter, you know?” She blew out a breath, smiled quickly, and stood up. “Anyway, I really gotta get back to work. How about a piece of pie? We got apple and banana cream. Fresh today. The apple’s still warm.”

  “Warm apple pie,” I said. “Perfect.”

  It was around eight o’clock when I stepped outside the restaurant. It had been snowing for a while, and it was still coming down, big soft flakes drifting down in the floodlights that lit the area out front and mounding over the parked vehicles.

  I zipped my parka up to my chin and went over to where I’d left my car. Two or three inches of fluffy new snow covered it. When I went to the door to get in, I noticed that a patch of snow had been cleared off the driver’s-side window. I pictured Chief Nate Harrigan’s gloved hand brushing away the snow, then Harrigan bending over and shining his big cop flashlight around inside my car.

  My duffel still sat on the passenger seat. I’d left it half unzippered so I could easily reach my .38 revolver—a silly and unnecessary precaution, of course. Careless of me not to zip it up tight when I went into the restaurant.

  I wondered if Harrigan’s flashlight had shone on the checkered end of the revolver’s butt protruding from the socks and T-shirts I’d buried it in. And if he did see it, I wondered if he recognized it for what it was, and if he did, what his reaction was.

  If he wanted to, Chief Harrigan could stop me, search my car, find that gun that he already knew was there, and run me in for a firearms violation.

  I unlocked the door, slid in, and pulled the duffel onto my lap. I shoved the gun down toward the bottom and zippered the bag all the way shut, which I realized amounted to latching the kennel door after the dog had run away.

  I got the car started, turned on the defroster and the wipers, popped the trunk, picked up the duffel, and got out. I went around to the back of the car and shoved the duffel in behind the spare tire. Then I brushed the snow off the windows, headlights, license plates, and brake lights.

  I would drive slowly and carefully, violate no motor vehicle laws, and give Chief Nate Harrigan no cause to stop and hassle me. But if he did, my duffel would not be sitting there in plain sight where he could legally search it, and he couldn’t force me to open my trunk without some kind of probable cause.

  I pulled out of the lot and onto the road. A fresh layer of snow covered the pavement. I crept along in third gear, following the snowbank on the righthand side, and after about fifteen minutes the Motel sign loomed up on the right, its red lights fuzzy in the swirling snow. I put on my directional, slowed way down, recognized the driveway by the rounded snowbanks, and crept up the incline to the parking area in front.

  The Sweeney’s motel appeared to have twelve units—six in front and six around back. There were three other vehicles parked out front. The office was down on the end. The neon pink Office light in the window was lit, but the room behind the window was dark.

  I parked in front of unit four, got out, retrieved my duffel from the trunk, and went to the door. The key, as promised, was under the mat. I unlocked the door, flicked the light switch inside the doorway, went in, shut the door behind me, and hooked the security chain.

  Typical motel room. I’d stayed in a hundred just like it. Standard double bed against the inside wall under a large framed print of round-topped New England mountains and autumn foliage, a table in the corner with a good-sized television set on it, a small chest of drawers, an upholstered chair in the other corner, a bedside table with an alarm clock and a lamp on top and a Bible in the drawer, a big front window with heavy orange curtains pulled shut over it, a small bathroom with a plastic shower stall, no tub.

  There was a little four-cup coffeemaker on the counter in the bathroom, with half a dozen coffee bags, a handful of packets of artificial sweetener and powdered creamer, two ceramic mugs. No minifridge, but I’d noticed a Coke machine in front of the office.

  I set my duffel on top of the chest of drawers, tossed my parka on the chair, kicked off my boots, and flopped down on the bed. I found the remote on the bedside table, flicked on the television, surfed through the channels, and stopped at a basketball game. The announcer’s voice was familiar and comforting, although I knew nothing and cared even less about the Providence and Seton Hall teams that were playing.

  I watched for a fe
w minutes, then muted it. I wanted to talk to Evie. I reached over to the bedside table and groped for the telephone.

  Right. The room had no telephone.

  I fished my cell phone from my pants pocket and checked the screen.

  “No service,” it said.

  I closed my eyes and saw, beside the Coke machine, a pay phone on the outside wall under the overhang beside the motel office.

  I pulled on my boots, hunched into my parka, made sure my room key was in my pocket, and went outside.

  The wind seemed to have picked up, and the snow was still coming down, hard little kernels now, blowing sideways and biting the backs of my hands. At the pay phone, I faced the wall, putting my back to the storm. I pecked in the numbers from my calling card, then the numbers for my house in Boston, and a minute later Evie said, “Hello?”

  “Hi, baby.”

  “Hey, it’s you,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I just sort of expected to hear from you before now. That you’d arrived safely. That you hadn’t gone skidding off the road somewhere in the White Mountains. It’s been a stormy day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no cell-phone signal up here. This is the first crack I’ve had at a pay phone.”

  “It’s stupid to worry,” she said.

  “It’s sweet and loving to worry. But I’m fine. No problems. I’m at a motel in Churchill.”

  “Sounds exotic.”

  “Satellite TV, no phone.”

  “Perfect.” She hesitated. “Learn anything?”

  “I learned that Dr. Judson McKibben lives here in Churchill,” I said. “He’s some sort of recluse, mourning his daughter’s death. I had a nice dinner at the local café, talked with the owner, who’s very nice, and the chief of police, who’s not so nice.”

  “Wow,” said Evie. “You’ve been busy.”

  “I haven’t actually learned much,” I said.

  “But you will.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “And to hell with the bad guys.”

  “I don’t know if there are any bad guys.”

  “There are always bad guys.”

  I paused. “Honey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do I detect a note of…cynicism in your voice?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s a note of loneliness, spiced with a soupçon of resentment and a pinch of apprehension. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I love you. Oh. Roger Horowitz called.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “He wanted you.”

  “Did you tell him—?”

  “Of course I did. I told him you were off on a quest.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t. What’d he say?”

  “What do you think? He’s pissed at you, which I take to mean he’s worried, which I understand. He said he tried your cell. I told him I was positive I’d be talking to you, did he want me to give you a message or have you call him. He said I should tell you to turn around and come home.”

  “If he calls again,” I said, “tell him that Dr. McKibben does, in fact, live here in Churchill. The local police chief is named Nate Harrigan. He knows about McKibben. Roger might want to talk to Harrigan.”

  Evie paused, then said, “Okay. I wrote it down. Harrigan. Anything else for him?”

  “Can’t think of anything.”

  She hesitated. “So you gonna do what Roger says? You gonna turn around and come home?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I will not consider that a promise.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. “I miss you.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “However,” I said, “I’m freezing my ass out here. Gotta go. I love you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Pat Henry for me.”

  “You bet. Sleep tight.”

  Back in my room, I lay down on my motel bed with the TV muted and the basketball game still going on. I clasped my hands behind my neck and stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t know exactly what I’d been expecting from Evie, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it.

  Maybe something more effusive than “Me, too,” when I told her I loved her.

  I closed my eyes. It had been a long day, and my shoulders and neck were stiff from white-knuckle driving over narrow mountain roads in the snow.

  A pounding noise came at me through the fog of sleep. I blinked and pushed myself into a sitting position. The basketball game was still going on.

  More pounding. “Mr. Coyne.” A man’s voice at the door.

  “Hang on,” I called.

  I swiveled around, sat on the edge of the bed, stretched, took a couple of deep breaths, then pushed myself to my feet.

  “Mr. Coyne,” came the voice from outside again. “I need to speak to you, sir.”

  I went to my duffel, unzipped it, fished around inside, found the handle of my Chiefs Special, pulled it out, and peeled the sock off it.

  I went to the door and opened it a crack, leaving the chain hooked. I kept the gun behind my leg.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “My name is Albert Cranston.” He moved so I could see his face through the crack in the door. He looked to be in his forties, clean shaven, glasses, brown hair cut short. A pleasant, nondescript face, neither smiling nor frowning. He was wearing a dark ski parka, no hat. The snow was white on his shoulders. “Dr. McKibben would like to talk with you, sir.”

  “When?” I said.

  “Now, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said. “I’ve come to drive you there.”

  Twenty-One

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” I said to Albert Cranston.

  I shut the door and went over to where my duffel was sitting on the chest of drawers. I stuck my gun in its sock and started to shove it down among my underwear.

  Then I had a second thought. I went over to the bed, lifted up the mattress, and slid the gun in between the mattress and the box spring. An unnecessary precaution, no doubt, and futile, probably. If somebody really wanted to toss my room, under the mattress was the second or third place even an amateur would look.

  On the other hand, if I left the camera and the tape recorder and the binoculars there in the duffel, maybe they’d think they’d found everything there was to find.

  On the third hand, if they did find my gun under the mattress, they’d not only know that I’d brought a gun, but they’d also know that I was a cautious and suspicious person with something I thought I needed to hide.

  On the fourth hand, they’d also conclude that, cautious and suspicious as I might be, I was also too inept to be taken seriously, hiding my weapon in such an obvious place.

  I have a tendency to overanalyze things sometimes. Most likely, nobody would search my room in the first place. If they did, they could think whatever they wanted to think, as long as they didn’t steal anything.

  I pulled on my boots and parka, patted my pants pocket to be sure the room key was there, and went outside.

  Albert Cranston was standing under the overhang with his arms folded across his chest.

  I held out my hand to him. “Brady Coyne,” I said.

  He looked at my hand, then gave it a quick shake. “This way, please,” he said, and he walked over to a big Lincoln SUV that was parked beside my little BMW. The SUV’s motor was running. The wipers were keeping the windshield clear. Snow swirled in the headlights.

  I went over to the passenger side and climbed in beside Cranston. “What’s this all about?” I said.

  “Dr. McKibben wants to talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s under the impression that you want to talk to him,” he said. “Please fasten your seat belt.”

  I did, and he did, too, and then the door lock beside me clicked. I wondered if I tried the handle I’d be able to open the door. I didn’t bother trying.

 
; Cranston backed out of his parking slot, eased down the motel driveway, and turned right onto the highway, heading north. The illuminated clock on the dashboard read 9:58.

  The road was surrounded by blackness. No streetlights, no lighted buildings, no road signs along the way. No moon. No starry night sky. No other traffic moving in either direction. Just our headlights boring a tunnel of light straight ahead through the dark and the swirling snow between the high white snowbanks.

  Once he was on the road and up to speed, Cranston kept the odometer on forty MPH.

  He drove with both hands on the wheel at ten and two. He leaned slightly forward and kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t seem inclined to talk, which was all right by me.

  At 10:09, he took a right turn onto a narrower secondary road and eased back to thirty MPH. At 10:12 he took another right. Both were ninety-degree rights, which, if I visualized it accurately, meant that we’d doubled back and were now moving due south, parallel to the highway we’d started on.

  It occurred to me that Cranston was driving in circles to confuse me.

  If so, it wasn’t working.

  From where I sat, I couldn’t read the small numbers on the odometer, but I was doing the math in my head. Forty miles per hour was two-thirds of a mile per minute. He’d taken that first right eleven minutes north of the motel. A little under eight miles.

  Thirty MPH translated to a mile every two minutes. The second right came three minutes later. A mile and a half.

  At 10:16—four minutes and two miles later—he slowed down and took an oblique left onto a narrow sloping driveway. It curved up a hill through a thick stand of dark evergreens and stopped about half a mile later in a turnaround in front of a big rambling farmhouse.