Dead of Winter

by Annelise Ryan

  “Old man winter is revved up something fierce, isn’t he?” I say with a smile.

  Izzy doesn’t answer. Instead, he cups his hands over his mouth and blows into them, eyeing me with a sardonic tilt of his brows.

  “How is Sylvie dealing with the cold?” I ask as I back the car around and head down the driveway.

  “She’s managing,” Izzy says, lowering his hands and holding them out in front of the heat vents instead. “Though I think she’s trying to cook herself. She’s constantly cranking the thermostat in the cottage up as high as it will go. The other day, I found it set at ninety.” He rolls his eyes, lets out a loud sigh, and shakes his head woefully. “Her mental faculties are really starting to slide,” he says in a sad voice. “These days, she’s a few clowns short of her usual circus.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, pulling out onto the road. “Maybe she’ll mellow some with senility.”

  Izzy scoffs at my suggestion. “I doubt that. She’s ticked off at Dom again because he won’t let her babysit Juliana. She can’t seem to understand why we’re upset over the fact that she was trying to tune in NBC on the stove the other day, or why it should bother us that she forgets to bathe for a week or more.”

  “Is she aware?” I ask. “What I mean is, does she know that she’s losing it?”

  Izzy shakes his head. “No, and I guess that’s something.”

  “I’m truly sorry, Izzy. I know how difficult this is for you. Let me know if Hurley or I can help in any way.”

  “Thanks.”

  My stomach, which has been behaving for the past ten minutes, gives a threatening rumble that makes me rub it and catch my breath. Izzy doesn’t miss the gesture.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Food poisoning,” I say with a grimace. “I ate some leftover tuna I probably shouldn’t have last night. I think the worst of it is past. The nausea is almost gone, but I’m not sure my gut is done cleansing itself.” As if to confirm this, another rumble rolls through me, and this time I’m seized by an uncomfortable feeling low down. “Oh, crap,” I say, a bit breathless, an expletive that is ironically apropos. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel while simultaneously tightening my sphincter muscles.

  “Are you okay?” Izzy asks, looking alarmed.

  “I think so,” I say with half-clenched teeth. I hit the gas as I turn onto the main drag, eager to get to the office. The speed limit here is only twenty-five miles an hour, but there is little traffic this early in the morning, and I only have a few blocks to go.

  The Fates, who have a history of screwing with me, decide to have some fun again today. The light in front of me turns yellow. It’s an intersection where I need to make a left turn, and I gun the gas a little. Izzy, sensing what I’m about to do, braces himself the best he can, though there isn’t much he can do, since his feet barely touch the floor and his arms aren’t long enough to reach the dash with the seat as far back as I need it to drive. He clutches his seat belt strap with one hand and grips the armrest with the other.

  The light turns red just as I reach the intersection. There are no cars coming from the opposite direction, and while there is a car to my right waiting to go through the intersection, he hasn’t started to move yet. I turn the steering wheel to the left, brake slightly, and fishtail into the turn.

  Unfortunately, there is a lingering patch of ice near the far curb of the street I’m turning onto. Plowed remains of the last snowfall have accumulated and then melted, thanks to steam coming up from a nearby sidewalk grate. The resultant puddle has refrozen in the frigid night air, and the rear tires of the hearse hit it. I feel a sickly sliding sensation in my gut and I’m not sure if it’s the movement of the car causing it, or something else.

  I hear Izzy say, “Christ, Mattie!”

  And then the rear end of the hearse slides up onto the sidewalk, hitting a lamppost. The jolt of the collision is jarring and sudden, but it stops the car’s momentum.

  I quickly shift the car into park and look over at Izzy; then I look past him out the window. The police station is less than fifty feet away, our office a mere two blocks past that. So close.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Izzy, after letting out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. But as I take in a new one, it comes with a fetid, nauseating odor—a definite ten on the sphincter scale.

  He nods and starts to speak, but then clamps a hand over his mouth, his eyes bugging out. “What is that smell?” he says, his words muffled behind his hand.

  My brain, in an initial postcrash haze, was working hard to convince me that I had merely expelled some gas. But I can feel it now: hot, lava-like liquid seeping between my thighs and up my back. “Oh, God,” I say, letting my head drop forward, chin on my chest. “I think I crapped my pants.”

  Izzy, kind, supportive friend that he is, snorts back a laugh. “You did not,” he says, his tone clearly amused.

  “I did,” I say, feeling like I want to cry, or die of embarrassment. “What a great start to the day.”

  “Well, it’s about to get a whole lot worse,” Izzy says, his tone sounding oddly jocular considering his words.

  I lift my head and give him an inquisitive look, unsure what he means. His eyes aren’t focused on me, and as I follow his gaze out the passenger side of the windshield and see two uniformed police officers approaching us on foot at a rapid trot, his meaning becomes all too clear.

  “Get out!” I tell Izzy.

  He looks back at me, puzzled.

  “Get out of the car and stall them,” I explain. “Keep them occupied. Answer questions. Keep them away from me.”

  “But you’re the driver,” Izzy says in the same tone of voice I’ve heard him use to explain something to my son when he doesn’t understand basic logic. “They’re going to have to talk to you.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed, curse under my breath, and feel my face grow hot. When I open my eyes again, I see the two officers—Patrick Devonshire and Brenda Joiner—mere feet away. Biting my lip, I roll down my window and lean out.

  “Brenda, come here,” I say. “Patrick, can you check on Izzy to make sure he’s okay?”

  My maneuvering works and the duo is cleaved down the middle, with Patrick going to Izzy’s side of the car. “Get out, Izzy,” I say under my breath. “Please.”

  With a chuckle that makes me want to give him an extra little shove, Izzy climbs out of the hearse. I turn back to my window and Brenda. There is no way to escape some embarrassment over what has happened, but at least with Brenda, it’s another woman I’ll be sharing my shame with, and for whatever reason, that seems preferable. Plus, Brenda is dating Christopher Malone, and given that he has so many hot-air emissions that he might be solely responsible for global warming, I figure the woman must have a higher than average tolerance of the odors that go with such things.

  “What happened, Mattie?” Brenda says as she reaches my window. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not okay,” I say in a low voice that is a hair above a whisper. “I have just crapped my pants.”

  Brenda stares at me for several seconds, the corners of her mouth twitching as she tries to decide if I’m being funny or not. Then her eyes grow wide and I see her nostrils flare. “Oh, geez, Mattie,” she says. She gets my dilemma right away, glancing around to see who else is nearby and what they’re doing.

  “Remnants of some food poisoning,” I say in my sotto voce tone, speaking fast. “I felt it coming on and I was trying to get to the office. I took the corner a little fast, hit a patch of ice, and the rear end fishtailed. We’re okay. I’m sure the car is okay. It’s as tough as a tank, thanks to those reinforced panels Hurley added onto it a couple years back. And I don’t think the lamppost suffered any permanent damage. Please don’t make me get out of the car. And please don’t let Patrick near me.”

  I stop, and suck in a deep breath as I’ve exhausted my lungs’ reserves with this rapid-fire explanation, all uttered in one whispered breath. Brenda, bless her, g
ets the situation immediately and takes things in hand.

  “Hey, Devo,” she says, using the nickname I’ve heard other cops use for Patrick, presumably a play on his last name. “Car and lamppost okay over there?”

  Patrick nods. “It’s fine,” he says. “The car isn’t even dented. There’s a tiny paint scrape on the rear-quarter panel, but that’s it. And the lamppost is solid.” Just to prove his point, he wraps his gloved hands around the lamppost and tries to shake it. It doesn’t move.

  “Great,” Brenda says. “Can you steer traffic around us then, until Mattie gets back on the road? I don’t see any need to do a report here. No one is hurt.”

  Patrick, who is well known for hating the myriad bits of paperwork that accompany his job, even more so than most cops, is all too eager to comply. He steps out behind the hearse and waves on the few cars that have stopped to gawk. I hit the power button for the passenger-side window and lower it.

  “Get in, Izzy,” I say.

  He bends down—though he doesn’t have to go far, given his height—and leans in the window. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, glaring. “Really? That’s how you’re going to play this? You, who have smelled things ten times worse, like week-old summer decomp!”

  “It’s nothing personal,” he says. “I need the exercise.”

  I am not fooled by his attempt to soften the blow, but I’m anxious enough about escaping this whole scene that I let it go. “Fine. Don’t slip on the ice and break your ass,” I mutter as I power the window back up, thinking evilly that a little fall, just enough to make his butt hurt, would be justice attained.

  Brenda steps back and checks for traffic, then gives me a nod and a come-on gesture with her hand. I slip the hearse back into gear and gently tap the gas. The tank glides off the curb with a small jolt, and I am back on the road. I give Brenda a smile of gratitude and mouth the words “Thank you” to her as I drive by.

  Less than a minute later, I pull into the relative safety and shelter of our underground parking garage. I park as close to the elevator as I can and climb out of the car. I look back inside and see a large brown area of wet nastiness on the leather seat. I can feel my pants clinging to my backside, and then I feel my stomach rumble ominously. That gets me moving, so to speak, and I slam the car door shut, badge my way into the elevator, and head for the main floor, praying that I won’t run into anyone.

  CHAPTER 14

  As I said before, the Fates like to mess with me and clearly they aren’t finished with their shenanigans for the day. I take off my jacket in the elevator, hoping it has escaped the damage my clothes have sustained, and examine it. Fortunately, it’s a waist-high jacket, and the lava doesn’t appear to have made it quite that high. I drape it over my arm and hold it away from my body as I hear the little ding that announces I’ve reached my floor.

  I start to barrel out of the elevator car as soon as the door slides open, but I’m forced to stop because someone is standing in my way. Startled, I step back and slap a hand to my chest. Then I recognize the face of my blocker. It’s one of the twins from the Johnson Funeral Home.

  “You startled me,” I say with a smile. Then I remember my predicament, and as the elevator door starts to close, I’m tempted to let it and head back down to the garage. But I step forward, catch it, and exit into the hallway, my embarrassment momentarily forgotten as the details of the face before me start to sink in and make me suspect that the woman in front of me is Kit, not Cass. She is bruised under both eyes; there is a cut across the bridge of her nose; her lower lip is bleeding and swollen. “Are you okay, Kit?” I ask as the door closes behind me.

  She starts to answer, but ends up clamping a hand over her mouth instead. I figure it’s because she just got a whiff of me, and I start to explain and apologize for my situation. But then the girl bursts into hard, heaving sobs, turning away from me. For a brief moment, I wonder if the rank smell of me is what brought her to tears, or if it’s something else. Then I remember that this is Kit Johnson, a woman I’ve watched scoop up the liquid remains of a putrescent corpse without so much as wrinkling her nose, and I come to my senses.

  “Kit, what happened?” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Is it that guy you’ve been dating?”

  She sucks in great gulps of air, trying to get her sobs under control. Unfortunately for her, the air she is currently sucking in is redolent with the smell of poop. Her eyes grow big, and the hand over her mouth clamps a little tighter. She stares at me, a questioning expression on her face.

  Wanting to address the stinky elephant in the room so we can move on, I do a quick pirouette, point to my butt, and say, “Sorry. I’ve got food poisoning and I had an accident. That’s what you smell. Why don’t you come with me to the locker room so I can get cleaned up?”

  Her sobs have abated somewhat, and the expression I can see in her eyes over the top of her hand changes. The hand drops, and I watch as the fattened lip starts to curl up at the corners.

  “You pooped in your pants?” she says, her tone a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

  “I did.”

  She makes a funny movement with her chest that looks like the start of a convulsion, and then she bursts out laughing. She laughs hysterically for a moment, tears rolling down her face, and just as I become convinced the red-hot shame crawling up my face is about to make me burst into flames, the laughter reverts to sobs. It’s unnerving to see this normally cool, reserved, and collected woman cycling between emotions with such instability.

  “Come on, Kit,” I say, taking her elbow and steering her toward the locker room. She comes along without protest, her sobs transforming into hiccups that make her elbow bounce in my hand. I push open the locker room door and steer her toward a bench seat along one wall. I leave her there a moment and head for the scrub closet, giving a silent prayer of thanks when I see that the laundry service has been here during the night with their delivery. I dig out the necessary items, and then head back to Kit.

  “I need to hop in the shower,” I tell her. “You sit here until I come out, okay?”

  She nods, but does so in a half-handed, glazed sort of way that makes me doubt the veracity of her answer. In the end, I opt for showering with the curtain open so I can see her, not caring if she can see my nakedness, though I’m not sure she’s seeing anything at the moment. Her eyes are staring off into space with an eerie emptiness.

  I peel off my fouled pants and toss them and my undies in the trash. Then I wash my hands and remove the rest of my clothing, which is fortunately uncontaminated. I step into the shower, scrub myself clean from the waist down, and then step out and dry off, keeping a watchful eye on Kit the entire time. She doesn’t move. In fact, she is so still, I find myself staring at her chest to ensure myself that she’s still breathing.

  I dress quickly, momentarily cursing the fact that I have no clean underwear and will have to go commando. I’d gladly put on an adult diaper right now if I had one—the embarrassment of wearing one mild in comparison to the shame I’d experience with another accident.

  Once I’m done, I settle on the bench beside Kit. She is still staring, and doesn’t acknowledge my presence. I have a sense that her mind is off somewhere else, and this is confirmed when I touch her arm and she starts, looking at me with wide-eyed surprise.

  “Kit,” I begin softly, “do you want me to call your sister? Or anyone else?”

  She shakes her head and shifts her gaze to the floor. “Cass was right about Ernie,” she says. “And knowing her, she won’t be able to resist telling me so, over and over again. I don’t think I can deal with that right now.”

  “I take it Ernie hit you?”

  “He did that,” Kit says with a humorless laugh. “I told him that I wanted to go to the movies with my sister tomorrow night, just the two of us, and he went berserk. He gets insanely jealous and he kept saying that he didn’t believe me. He thought I w
as going to meet some guy rather than my sister. I told him he could call Cass to verify it, but he only got madder, saying that Cass would lie for me because she doesn’t like him.” She pauses and looks over at me with a wan smile. “He’s right about that,” she says. “Anyway, I told him he was being ridiculous and overbearing.” She pauses again, starts to rake her upper teeth over her lower lip, but stops, wincing, as her teeth touch the split there. I wince in empathy, both for the pain she is feeling in her lip, and for what I suspect came next in her encounter with Ernie. “He didn’t like that at all,” she says with a slight hiccup. “He hauled off and slapped me in the mouth so hard that I saw stars.”

  She splays her hands on her knees, staring at them for a moment, and then she lifts them and rubs them together. “I hit him back because I was so angry,” she says, looking abashed. “So I guess I had it coming.”

  “You did not!” I say in as stern a tone as I can muster. “It is never right or acceptable for a man to hit a woman, and he hit you first, without provocation.”

  “Oh, I provoked him,” she says with a sardonic grin. “With my words. I knew it would make him angry.”

  I shake my head, frowning at her. “Kit, I don’t care how harsh your words were. There are no words in the English language that can justify him hitting you.”

  She shrugs, clearly not convinced. Her attitude about all of this worries me. I’ve seen it before in women who are abused; there’s an exuberance of forgiveness for their partners’ violent behavior, a willingness to accept some of the blame for the abuse, and a blanket of excuses and denial that they wrap around themselves like a cloak. It can become a vicious cycle. Kit needs professional help.

  “Did you follow up with that social worker who gave her card to you?” I ask Kit. “Hildy Schneider?”

  Kit shakes her head and looks over at me with red, tear-stained eyes. “I didn’t have time. Everything happened so fast. And it escalated.” She swallows hard and looks away for a moment. “He has a gun,” she says in a quiet, quavering voice. “And he threatened to use it on me.” She risks a look back at me then, gauging my reaction.