Ice Cold

25

SHERIFF FAHEY DID NOT LOOK HAPPY TO SEE JANE AGAIN. EVEN FROM across the room, she could read his face through the glass partition, a look of dismay, as if he expected her to issue some new demand. He rose from his desk and resignedly stood waiting in his doorway as she crossed toward him, past law enforcement personnel who were now familiar with the three visitors from Boston. Before she could ask the expected question, he headed her off with the same answer he’d given her for two days in a row.

“There are no new developments,” he said.

“I didn’t come in expecting any,” said Jane.

“Trust me, I’ll call you if anything changes. There’s really no need for you folks to keep dropping in.” He glanced past her shoulder. “So where are your two gentlemen today?”

“They’re back at the hotel, packing. I thought I’d come by to thank you before we head to the airport.”

“You’re leaving?”

“We’re flying back to Boston this afternoon.”

“I hear rumors there’s a private jet involved. Must be nice.”

“It’s not my jet.”

“His, huh? The guy in black. He’s a strange fella.”

“Sansone’s a good man.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to know. We see a lot of folks around here who are loaded with money. Hollywood types, big-shot politicians. Buy themselves a few hundred acres, call themselves ranchers, and then they think they got a right to tell us how to do our jobs.” Although he was talking about nameless others, his words were really directed at her, at the Boston outsiders who’d swooped into his county and sucked up his attention.

“She was our friend,” said Jane. “You can understand why we’d want to do everything possible to find her.”

“Quite a group of friends she collected. Cops. A priest. A rich guy. Must’ve been quite a woman.”

“She was.” She looked down as her cell phone rang and saw a Wyoming area code, but she did not recognize the number. “Excuse me,” she said to Fahey and answered the call. “Detective Rizzoli.”

“Jane?” The voice was close to a sob. “Thank God you answered!”

For a moment Jane could not utter a sound. She stood mute and paralyzed, the cell phone pressed to her ear, the noise of the sheriff’s office drowned out by the pounding of her own pulse. I am talking to a ghost.

“I thought you were dead!” Jane blurted.

“I’m alive. I’m okay!”

“Jesus, Maura, we had your memorial service!” Tears suddenly stung Jane’s eyes, and she wiped them away with an impatient swipe of her sleeve. “Where the hell are you? Do you have any idea what-”

“Listen. Listen to me.”

Jane sucked in a breath. “I’m right here.”

“I need you to come to Wyoming. Please come and get me.”

“We’re already here.”

“What?”

“We’ve been working with the police to find your body.”

“Which police?”

“The Sublette County sheriff. I’m standing in his office right now.” She turned to find that Fahey was right beside her, his eyes full of questions. “Just tell us where you are and we’ll come get you.”

There was no answer.

“Maura? Maura?”

The line had gone dead. She hung up and stared at the number on her call history. “I need an address!” she yelled, and recited the phone number. “It’s a Wyoming area code!”

“That was her?” Fahey asked.

“She’s alive!” Jane gave a joyous laugh as she dialed the number. It rang and rang unanswered. She disconnected and redialed. Again, there was no answer. She stared at her cell phone, willing it to ring again.

Fahey went back to his desk and tried calling from his phone. By now everyone in the office was riveted to the conversation, and they watched as he punched in the number. He stood drumming his fingers on the desk and finally hung up.

“I’m not getting an answer, either,” he said.

“But she just called me from that number.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked me to come get her.”

“Did she give you any idea where she is? What happened to her?”

“She never got the chance. We were cut off.” Jane looked down at her silent cell phone, as if it had betrayed her.

“Got the address!” a deputy called out. “The phone’s listed to a Norma Jacqueline Brindell, up on Doyle Mountain.”

“Where’s that?” said Jane.

Fahey said, “That’s a good five miles west of the accident scene. How the hell’d she end up out there?”

“Show me on the map.”

They crossed to the county map displayed on the wall, and he tapped a finger on a remote corner. “There’s nothing but a few seasonal cabins. I doubt anyone’s living there this time of year.”

She looked at the deputy who’d given them the address. “Are you sure about that location?”

“That’s where the call came from, ma’am.”

“Keep calling it. See if anyone answers,” said Fahey. He looked at the dispatcher. “Check and see who we’ve got in that area right now.”

Jane looked at the map again and saw wide expanses with few roads and rugged elevations. How had Maura ended up there, so far from the wrecked Suburban? She scanned the map, her gaze moving back and forth between the accident site and Doyle Mountain. Five miles due west. She pictured snowbound valleys and towering crags. Scenic country, to be sure, but no villages, no restaurants, nothing to attract an East Coast tourist.

The dispatcher called out: “Deputy Martineau just radioed in. Says he’ll handle the call. He’s heading to Doyle Mountain now.”

THE PHONE in the kitchen would not stop ringing.

“Let me answer it,” said Maura.

“We have to leave.” The boy was emptying out pantry cabinets and throwing food into his backpack. “I saw a shovel on the back porch. Get it.”

“That’s my friend trying to reach me.”

“The police will be coming.”

“It’s okay, Rat. You can trust her.”

“But you can’t trust them.”

The phone was ringing again. She turned to answer it, but the boy snatched the cord and wrenched it from the wall. “Do you want to die?” he yelled.

Maura dropped the dead receiver and backed away. In his panic, the boy looked frightening, even dangerous. She glanced at the cord dangling from his fist, a fist that was powerful enough to batter a face, to crush a trachea.

He threw down the cord and took a breath. “If you want to come with me, we need to leave now.”

“I’m sorry, Rat,” she said quietly. “But I’m not going with you. I’m going to wait here for my friend.”

What she saw in his eyes wasn’t anger, but sorrow. In silence he strapped on his backpack and took her snowshoes, which she would no longer need. Without a backward look, without even a goodbye, he turned to the door. “Let’s go, Bear,” he said.

The dog hesitated, glancing back and forth between them, as though trying to understand these crazy humans.

“Bear.”

“Wait,” said Maura. “Stay with me. We’ll go back to town together.”

“I don’t belong in town, ma’am. I never did.”

“You can’t wander alone out there.”

“I’m not wandering. I know where I’m going.” Again, he looked at his dog, and this time Bear followed him.

Maura watched the boy walk out the back door, the dog at his heels. Through the broken kitchen window, she saw them trudge across the snow toward the woods. The wild child and his companion, returning to the mountains. A moment later they vanished among the trees, and she wondered if they had existed at all. If, in her fear and isolation, she had conjured up imaginary saviors. But no, she could see their prints tracking through the snow. The boy was real.

Just as real as Jane’s voice had been on the phone. The outside world had not vanished after all. Beyond those mountains, there were still cities, still people going about their normal business. People who did not skulk in the woods like hunted animals. For too long, she’d been trapped in the boy’s company, had almost started to believe, as he did, that the wilderness was the only safe place.

It was time to go back to that real world. Her world.

She examined the telephone and saw that the cord was too badly damaged to reconnect, but she had no doubt that Jane would nevertheless be able to track her location. Now all I have to do is wait, she thought. Jane knows I’m alive. Someone will come for me.

She went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The cabin was unheated, and wind blew in through the broken kitchen window, so she kept her jacket zipped. She felt guilty about that window, which Rat had smashed so they could get into the house. Then there was the ruined phone cord and the ransacked pantry, all damage that she would pay for, of course. She’d mail a check with a sincere apology. Sitting in this stranger’s house, a house in which she was trespassing, she stared at the photos on the bookshelves. She saw pictures of three young children in various settings, and a gray-haired woman, proudly holding up an impressive trout. The books in the library were summer entertainment fare. Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel, the collection of a woman with traditional tastes, who liked romance novels and ceramic kittens. A woman she would probably never meet face-to-face, but to whom she’d always be grateful. Your telephone saved my life.

Someone pounded on the front door.

She jolted to her feet. She had not heard the vehicle pull up to the house, but through the living room window, she saw a Sublette County Sheriff’s Department SUV. At last my nightmare is over, she thought as she opened the front door. I’m going home.

A young deputy with the name tag MARTINEAU stood on the porch. He had close-cropped hair and the stern bearing of a man who took his job seriously. “Ma’am?” he said. “Are you the one who made the phone call?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes.” Maura wanted to throw her arms around him, but he did not look like a cop who welcomed hugs. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

“Can I have your name, please?”

“I’m Dr. Maura Isles. I believe there’ve been premature rumors of my death.” Her laugh sounded wild, almost unhinged. “Obviously, it’s not true!”

He peered past her, into the house. “How did you get into this residence? Did someone let you in?”

She felt her face flush with guilt. “I’m afraid we had to break a window to get in. And there’s some other damage. But I promise, I’ll pay for it.”

“We?”

She paused, suddenly afraid that she’d get the boy into trouble. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I needed to get to a telephone. So I broke into the house. I hope that’s not a hanging offense around here.”

At last he smiled, but something was wrong about that smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s get you back to town,” he said. “You can tell us all about it.”

Even as she climbed into his backseat, even as he swung the door shut, she was trying to understand what bothered her about this young deputy. The SUV was a sheriff’s department vehicle, and a metal grate isolated her in the backseat, trapping her in a cage meant to hold prisoners.

As the deputy slid in behind the steering wheel, his radio crackled to life. “Bobby, this is Dispatch,” a woman’s voice said. “You make it up to Doyle Mountain yet?”

“Ten four, Jan. Just checked out the whole house,” Deputy Martineau answered.

“You find her there? ’Cause this Boston cop’s on our backs.”

“Sorry, I didn’t.”

“Anyone there at all?”

“Must’ve been a hoax, ’cause no one’s here. Leaving the scene now, ten seventeen.”

Maura stared through the grate and suddenly met the deputy’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The look he gave her froze her blood. I saw it in his smile. I knew there was something wrong.

“I’m here!” Maura screamed. “Help me! I’m here!”

Deputy Martineau had already switched off the radio.

She reached for the door handle, but there was nothing to grab. Cop car. No way out. Frantically she pounded on the windows, shrieking, oblivious to the pain of her fists slamming against the glass. He started the engine. What came next, a drive to a lonely spot and an execution? Her body left to the mercy of scavengers? Panic made her claw at the prisoner grate, but flesh and bone were no match for steel.

He turned the SUV around in the driveway, and abruptly slammed on the brake. “Shit,” he muttered. “Where did you come from?”

The dog stood in the road, blocking the vehicle.

Deputy Martineau leaned on his horn. “Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled.

Instead of retreating, Bear rose up on his hind legs, planted two paws on the hood, and began barking.

For a moment the deputy stared at the animal, debating whether to simply hit the accelerator and run over him. “Shit. No point getting blood all over the bumper,” he muttered, and stepped out of the SUV.

Bear dropped to all fours and inched toward him, growling.

The deputy raised his weapon and took aim. So intent was he on hitting his target, he didn’t notice the shovel swinging at the back of his head. It slammed into his skull and he staggered against the vehicle, his weapon flying into the snow.

“Nobody shoots my dog,” said Rat. He yanked open Maura’s door. “Time to go, lady.”

“Wait, the radio! Let me call for help!”

“Are you ever going to listen to me?”

As she scrambled out of the SUV, she saw that the deputy was on his knees and had retrieved his weapon. Just as he lifted it, the boy flew at him. The two went sprawling. Rolled over and over in the snow, wrestling for the gun.

The explosion seemed to freeze time.

In the sudden silence, even the dog went completely still. Slowly Rat rolled away and staggered to his feet. The front of his jacket was splattered with red. But it was not his blood.

Maura dropped to her knees beside the deputy. He was still alive, his eyes open and wild with panic, blood fountaining from his neck. She pressed against the wound to stop the arterial gush, but already his blood soaked the snow. Already, the light was fading from his eyes.

“Get on the radio,” she yelled at the boy. “Call for help.”

“Didn’t mean to,” the boy whispered. “It went off by itself…”

Gurgling sounds came from the deputy’s throat. As his last breath fled his body, so, too, did his soul. She watched his eyes darken, saw the muscles in his neck go slack. The blood that had been surging from the wound slowed to a trickle. Too stunned to move, she knelt in the trampled snow and did not hear the approaching vehicle.

But Rat did. He yanked her up by the arm with such force that she was wrenched straight to her feet. Only then did she glimpse the pickup truck turning into the driveway.

Rat snatched up the deputy’s weapon, just as the rifle blast slammed into the SUV.

A second rifle blast blew out the SUV’s window, and pellets of glass stung Maura’s scalp.

Those aren’t warning shots; he’s aiming to kill.

Rat took off for the trees, and she was right behind him. By the time the pickup pulled up behind the deputy’s vehicle, they were already scrambling into the woods. Maura heard a third blast of the rifle, but she did not look back. She kept her focus on Rat, who was leading them deeper into cover, loaded down with the ungainly backpack. He paused only to hand her the snowshoes. In seconds she had them strapped on.

Then they were moving again, the boy leading the way as they headed into the wild.