White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller)

by Danielle Girard

  “Hey, man. Listen, first I want to make sure you’re okay . . .” The awkward start of Mike’s message had made Iver wince, and a knot had grown in his gut. Something was definitely wrong. He and Mike went all the way back. They’d been babies together. Mike never tiptoed around him.

  “Last night . . .”

  Iver had held his breath, waiting for Mike to go on. The strain in Mike’s voice was so clear, so gut wrenching. What about last night?

  Finally, Mike said, “I mean . . . shit.”

  Iver stooped for the basketball and turned back to the court, trying to shake the memory, but it was right there, dribbling inside his brain. “I don’t know if you want to talk about it,” Mike had said. “Or if I should never mention it again.”

  It.

  Iver thought of the silver thread in his watchband, the dead woman. It couldn’t be that. There was no way. Except there was. He felt that anger, the memory of it. He’d been angry last night.

  He launched the basketball up toward the hoop and missed. Fighting back the panic, he leaned over and pressed his hands to his knees. So he’d been angry. That didn’t mean he’d hurt someone. Or killed her.

  “I’ll play it however you want,” Mike’s message had continued, his voice cracking. “But I’m here if you want to talk.”

  When Mike stopped talking, Iver had thought the voicemail was over. Just as he was about to delete the message, Iver heard Mike say, “Okay, man. I’ll see you later.” Then the voicemail ended. Iver swiped to delete the voicemail, then went to his deleted voicemails and cleared them. There could be no record of that call.

  Except the recording that looped in his mind. He’d done something. Mike wouldn’t rat him out. But something bad had happened.

  Iver grabbed the bottle and made his way across the dull floor. In high school, the gymnasium had always felt magical. The bleachers, the shiny wood—it was the biggest indoor arena in Hagen. He’d sat on that bench for three years, hoping for a turn to play. As a senior, he had finally gotten his chance to play—and it had been every damn thing he’d ever imagined. Man, he loved the noise of a crowd, the ball, the satisfying hiss of the ball through the net, the thump thump of a player dribbling before a free throw.

  A door opened on the far side of the gym. Iver swung around, feeling the alcohol hit him. He reached for the bleachers to catch himself and fell hard onto a wooden slat.

  Alan scooped up the ball that had bounced across the gym and walked toward him. “Yo, man. You okay?”

  “Fine,” Iver lied.

  Alan glanced at the bottle, then averted his gaze as though pretending he hadn’t seen it. “I’ve got to lock up in about ten.”

  “Sure,” Iver said, his tongue awkward against his teeth, like they were just meeting for the first time. “I’m heading out.” He took a step toward the basketball but felt gravity shift beneath him.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” Iver took a breath and stood.

  Alan reached for his arm as though to help, but Iver shook him off. “Said I’m fine.”

  Iver grabbed the ball from Alan and took a shot, which bounced off the rim. On the first bounce, Alan caught it easily in one palm as Iver turned toward the door to leave.

  “You forgot your stuff,” Alan said, palming the ball as he nodded at the bottle in the paper bag.

  Iver thought about the fifth he’d bought on the way over. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to drink today, but then he’d passed the liquor store. Damn. “Think I’m okay,” he said.

  “Sure.” Alan lifted the bottle and gave it a shake. “Seems like you did a good number on it.” He crossed to Iver. “You mind taking it with you? Be bad for me if someone found it here.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Iver reached out, but his fingers somehow missed the bottle. Alan took his hand and pressed the bag into it.

  Iver raised a toast. “Thanks, man. Appreciate you letting me in.”

  “Anytime,” Alan said. “You okay to get home?”

  “Yeah. No problem. I’m walking,” Iver said, raising a hand as he left.

  He made his way down the long dark hallway of the high school. How many times he’d walked across these floors. He hadn’t especially liked high school, but something about the place was comforting. Since returning from Afghanistan, he occasionally came to the gym when the school was empty. He liked the smell of it—the rubber scent of gym shoes and dodgeballs, the underlying stink of young-kid sweat, the squeak of his shoes on the floor, the way every noise was both hushed and amplified.

  Stepping out of the school, Iver curved his shoulders against the full force of frigid air and driving snow. He’d left the house in only a flannel. Thankfully, he had the alcohol to warm him. The sky was darker than he’d expected, and he wondered what time it was. He had intentionally left his phone at home—half because he didn’t want to be bothered by the bar and half because . . . He slowed his step and scanned the empty street. Half was because he was scared that the police would show up at his house. That woman detective in particular. She would show up with more questions that he couldn’t answer.

  He remembered the note he’d left on the door for his mother. How long had he been inside that gym? He picked up the pace, wondering if he’d missed her. What a shit son he was. A shit human. Iver had spent most of the day half dozing on the couch, staring at the television. Unfortunately, the flashing lights and movement—even from something as slow paced as the damn golf channel—left his head pounding, so he had gazed at the black screen. By midday, the migraine was gone, at least the blindingly painful part of it. His phone rang all day, but Iver had ignored it. Mike. His mother. A couple of other guys from the bar. Not Debbie, he noticed. Had she heard that a woman was murdered at the bar? Did she wonder if he’d done it?

  But Debbie had no reason to think he would kill someone. Iver was the only person alive who knew that he was a killer. The people who’d known about that day were all killed in the Humvee accident.

  That he had killed, he told himself. It wasn’t the same as being a killer. War was different.

  But that hadn’t exactly been war. It wasn’t a sanctioned kill, anyway. Debbie knew something traumatic had happened. With the nightmares, there was no way to keep it from her, but he’d never told her the details. Never let her know just what kind of a man she’d married. She knew he’d shot people, but killed a woman with his bare hands? How did you tell your wife that? How did you hear that from your husband? How did you ever love someone who had committed that kind of violence?

  And now?

  A dead woman at his bar.

  But it was more than that. He couldn’t remember exactly, but he had a sense that there’d been a fight. He remembered the anger. He rubbed a thumb across the scabs on his knuckles. Had he punched something?

  He bunched his fist, and the anger rushed through him. His hand near her face, her eyes closed in fear. He stumbled on the sidewalk, slipped, and caught himself. But the bottle inside the paper sack dropped from his hand, shattering against the pavement.

  He didn’t reach for it but kept moving. The vision of that woman nudged at his subconscious. He’d been so angry—not afraid, not like with the Afghan woman. What he remembered was pure rage, his fingers trembling with the desire to strike, the skin on his hands vibrating with it. But why would he hurt a total stranger?

  The cold was piercing, cutting through his skin and drilling into his bones. He ran a few yards, but the snow turned slick under his tennis shoes, and he fell. The sidewalk struck hard, his skull slamming on the concrete slab. For a moment, he felt nothing. Then the alcohol churned in his stomach, and he turned sideways to vomit across the layer of slush on the ground. He wiped his hand across his mouth and heaved himself onto his feet.

  He staggered a few steps before his footing felt firm again and he could walk at a normal pace. He ought to have felt better after purging the alcohol, but his head began to thunder again. The snow drove hard and thick. He waved a hand thr
ough the air as though to clear the flakes from his path, but the clumps caught on his eyelashes and fell into his eyes. It felt like he might never make it home.

  He reached the corner and tried to read the street sign. His eyes wouldn’t work. He crossed and made it another ten or fifteen yards before he heard the sound of Cal’s barking. But this wasn’t Cal’s normal bark. Cal sounded scared. Iver ran, slipping and catching himself as he approached the house. The whole place was dark. Cal hated the dark. Had Iver forgotten to leave lights on? He stumbled up the stairs and shoved the front door open.

  Cal’s barking didn’t stop.

  A gust of snowy wind followed him into the house, and Iver pulled the door closed, palming the wall for the light switch. Nothing happened. He turned it off and on again. Nothing. Cal ran toward him, still barking. A shadow shifted in the hallway. Someone was in the house.

  Without pausing, Iver ran across the room and tackled the shape to the ground. He smelled wool as the shape splintered into two, one part throwing weight at Iver as the other dropped. Iver spun and slammed face-first into the wall, then fell sideways and landed hard on his left elbow before knocking his head again.

  For a moment, Iver felt like he was in a dream. A sound punched through his stupor—someone pounding from somewhere far off. “Police!” someone shouted, the voice growing closer. “Open up!” He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. Cal’s face was pressed to his. The pounding continued, and Iver tried to sit up. “Police! Open up!”

  He was barely upright when he heard the creak of the front door opening and boots on his floor. He raised a hand. “Here. I’m here.”

  A beam flashed across his face, passing him before coming back. He caught the light as it landed on a shape across from him. The head dropped, eyes averted. The intruder.

  Iver pressed himself up with one hand as Cal nudged against him, barking again. The shape on the floor turned its head, and the police officer’s flashlight caught the sheen of eyes beneath the heavy cover of a wool blanket—his wool blanket. The intruder was a woman, her eyes wide and terrified, black looking in the sharp beam of the flashlight. Iver gasped at the thought of the woman in the bar, but this was not that woman.

  At the sight of him, she backpedaled, scooting away until her back hit the wall.

  Iver saw broken glass on the floor. A picture must have fallen. “Watch out. There’s glass.”

  The woman raised her hands with only a cursory glance at her palms as though afraid to take her eyes off him. She glanced over her shoulder, hands shaking, shivering at the wave of cold. Iver saw that the back door was open. She must have come in that way. But why was she here? What had happened?

  The officer crossed the room. “Neighbors called to report a fight.”

  Iver looked up at the shadowed officer, his face unreadable behind the bright light in Iver’s eyes. “I just got—” He shook his head. She’d been here. She’d broken into his home. But something kept him from speaking.

  Something about her.

  He closed his mouth and turned back to the woman huddled against his hallway wall. Only then did he recognize the woman as Lily Baker.

  But she stared at him like he was the devil.

  What if he was?

  CHAPTER 17

  KYLIE

  After a fifteen-minute drive on Highway 1804, Kylie and Gary Ross reached the scene of Brent Nolan’s accident. The two-lane highway was the most popular route in and out of town. A highway patrol car had already parked on the side of the road, lights flashing in the deepening twilight. Down on the tracks below the overpass, the highway patrolman moved around Nolan’s overturned car. The snow wasn’t falling here, and the roads were mostly dry. Crazy how ten miles could mean a whole different weather system, but that was North Dakota.

  Kylie left her headlights on high and flipped on her police lights, parking opposite the patrol car in the other direction. Common sense would suggest that two sets of police lights were sufficient to make drivers slow down, but out here there was no guarantee. After removing her flashlight from the trunk, she sidestepped down the hill to join the officer below the overpass beside Brent Nolan’s totaled car. It had landed on its roof. The crash had caved the window opening on the driver’s side to barely a foot.

  “How the hell did he get out of there?” she asked.

  The officer turned to her. “Been wondering the same thing. He must’ve been conscious after the car landed. Pretty amazing, considering that fall.”

  Ross joined them and introduced himself to the patrol officer. Feeling chagrined, Kylie shook hands as well. “Will Merkel,” the officer said.

  “You find anything?” Kylie asked.

  Merkel motioned up to the highway, where the darkness was softening the details of the road. “Tread marks on the road are consistent with a driver reacting to hitting a patch of ice. He braked late, and the car spun. Looks like it made a one-eighty-degree turn, then another ninety before the car rammed into the guardrail.”

  Heading out of town. She looked back up at the twisted metal above, squinting in the fading light. “What’s surprising is that the car had enough momentum to break through,” Kylie said.

  “You may want to get an engineer to look at that rail,” Ross said, pointing back toward the road. “Lot of these haven’t been updated during my lifetime. In Minnesota, at least.”

  The metal looked as flimsy as a twisted bike fender.

  Merkel nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got someone from state transportation coming out tomorrow.”

  “But no sign of a second car?” Kylie asked.

  “No second car, no,” Merkel said. “Looks pretty straightforward.”

  Kylie flipped on her flashlight and ducked to study the car’s interior. “Both airbags deployed. Does that mean there was someone in the passenger seat?”

  “No,” Merkel explained. “If the impact affects the passenger side of the car, that airbag is automatically triggered.”

  Shining her flashlight, she studied the tiny space inside the car. How had Brent Nolan gotten out of there after that fall? She stood back. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a long slender form a few feet away. At first, she thought it was a snake, but it was the wrong time of year for snakes. The shiny buckle caught the beam of her flashlight. A man’s belt. She stooped to look more closely.

  Merkel joined her, hands on his knees as he bent to study the item. “That his belt?”

  “It’s someone’s belt,” she said, trying to imagine why Nolan would have taken off his belt while escaping the car. Had he used it as a tool of some sort? Maybe he had broken the window with the buckle. It looked heavy enough.

  “You notice the hair on the passenger seat?” Ross called from the other side of the car, where he was on his knees, shining the light from his phone through the window opening.

  Kylie and Merkel joined him, and Kylie squatted to get a better look. Sure enough, there was a handful of dark hairs caught in one of the metal posts between the headrest and the seat.

  “Didn’t see those,” Merkel said. “No saying when they got there, though.”

  Tiny bits of tempered glass littered the interior, but there was no trash. No marks on the ceiling or seats. The outside, too, was clean, a feat in a town with as many dirt roads and as much dust as Hagen, especially with the snow and mud of winter. Brent Nolan obviously took pride in the car. How long would it have taken before he’d noticed and removed the hair? Not long, she thought. Scanning the car, she noticed a shadow. She looped a ballpoint pen under the seat belt and drew it out, pulling the fabric until the dark stain was clear in the light of Merkel’s high beam flashlight. “Take a look at this.”

  Ross pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket, tented it around his index finger, and rubbed the spot. When he removed the handkerchief, there was a deep-copper stain on the white cotton. “Looks like blood.”

  “So there was someone else in the car,” Kylie said. From the long hair, Kylie’s first guess was th
e passenger was female.

  “Starting to look that way,” Merkel agreed.

  If someone else was inside that car when it had gone over the pass, where the hell was she now?

  CHAPTER 18

  IVER

  Iver closed his eyes against beams of light that bounced off the walls as the first police officer was followed by a second, flashlights swinging across his living room. The effect was dizzying. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like he could see the beams pass over him, as though he were in a disco. The sound of boots pounded across the wood floor toward him. He opened his eyes as both officers crouched beside Lily Baker. Iver felt instantly sober, the alcohol buzz hardening into an immediate hangover. She had broken into his house, not the other way around. Plus, she had slammed him into the wall. Or someone had.

  But she looked injured. And terrified. You did that. Again. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t sit there. Pushing himself off the floor, he crossed to the foyer.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the officer yelled.

  The voice was familiar, but Iver couldn’t place it. “To get a flashlight and try to figure out why the damn lights are off,” he snapped.

  He found his flashlight in the drawer of the front-hall table and shone the beam at the three people in his living room. One of the officers looked up. The voice Iver had recognized came from Larry Sullivan. Sullivan had been a few years ahead of Iver in school, the type of guy who was meaty from birth, broad without having the coordination to do anything athletic with his mass. To make up for the lack of athletic prowess, Sullivan had made himself memorable by being loud and a bully.

  Iver walked past them to the laundry room, where the main fuse box was. The lights of neighboring homes were visible through the windows, so whatever had happened wasn’t a general outage. The fuses were all on in the box, so he exited the house through the back door and checked the main. There, he found the main switch flipped off. He turned it back on and felt the glow of the lights streaming from the house. He squinted against the brightness, his head starting to throb in a single point behind his left eye, like a nail. He hesitated, not ready to go back inside.