Open season

14

It was mid afternoon before we picked our way through the scaffolding, the workmen, and the piles of construction material outside the doorless lobby of Kees’s building. It was snowing again, as it had been almost all week. TV reports had broadcast travel advisories for that morning, and from what I could see, or couldn’t see, things were not improving.

We found the car, the only white, furry-looking, rounded lump in the now-crowded parking lot, and put our bags and the cooler in the back seat. Glancing over my shoulder as I pulled out the ice scraper, I saw the building we’d just left as the vaguest of shadows on a whited-out television screen.

“Christ, it’s really coming down,” Murphy said as he wiped the snow from the windshield with his gloved hand.

I handed him the scraper after I’d done my side. “You want to pass on going home? We could spend the night at some motel.”

He shook his head. “I’m sick of sleeping where I don’t belong-we’ve been through worse than this.” He finished clearing the windshield and opened the door, adding, “Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to give Ski Mask a little run for his money. If he is on our trail, maybe we’ll find out if he’s a flatlander or not.”

Boasts like that aside, drivers in New England handle heavy snow the same way everyone else does-they cling to the right lane and crawl. By the time I got to the interstate heading north, I knew we were in for a very long trip. Occasionally, in the straightaways, when the wind would briefly shift and open up visibility, I’d venture onto the white-crusted, slippery passing lane to overtake a couple of my more timid fellow travelers, but for the most part we were stuck in line. My eyes strained to see through the flurries to the blurry outline of the car just ahead.

“I wonder how many people go off the road because they follow the guy in front of them?”

Frank grunted. “You thinking of doing that?”

“I’ve heard of it happening.”

He didn’t respond. He was wearing a shapeless black coat and a fake-fur trooper hat with the flaps pulled down over his ears. His chin was buried in a brown scarf. He looked like a tired Russian commuter sitting on a bus.

“Why don’t you turn up the heat?”

He shook his head. “Makes me sleepy.”

“So sleep. You can take over at Hartford.”

“Naw. So what are we going to do now?”

“I say we dig into Kimberly Harris. We know damned well she wasn’t the innocent victim of a drug-crazed loner.”

“Got any guesses?”

1em" alknow damneA couple. Floyd Rubin, for instance.”

“The pharmacist?”

“He could be the father.”

“Are you kidding? I thought she just worked there.”

“He said they were friends, but it may have been more. It’s pure hunch right now, but she was five-and-a-half months pregnant when she died-and that was five months after she quit Charlie’s.”

“Does that make him Ski Mask too?”

“You’ve never seen the man. I think he’s clear there, but he could easily be her four-thousand-dollar-a-month sugar daddy. Those payments also started near the time she quit and went up to the end. I’d love to be able to look at his bank records, but I doubt we could get a warrant.”

“We could get around that, maybe.”

“Wouldn’t risk it. If it does give us something, we’d never be able to use it in court. We might wear him down-imply we’ve already got the records or something.”

“What about Ski Mask? Why not bring in some outside help?”

“I doubt we have the choice anymore. We had one body when we left four days ago; that’s more than we’ve had in the last three years. I’d be surprised if the selectmen haven’t forced Brandt to bring in everybody but the Mounties by now. Gail said they’d soon be looking for someone to hang.”

For once, Frank didn’t even groan. Slim as it was, Kees’s conjecture about Harris’s killer had given him something to chew on besides his endangered reputation.

He muttered, “I bet he’s a government man.”

“A spook?”

“That, or a vet. Special Forces or something. He’s got to be on his own, though. Sure as hell that bug was stolen.”

“He might be the fetus’s father.”

“Sure, or even the real killer. It’s not impossible that since we missed him the first time, he’s renewing the invitation-the man’s obviously bonkers.”

I nodded. “I like that one.”

“The only problem with it is he doesn’t fit my image of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and according to Kees that’s who did her in. You ever notice Ski Mask having trouble breathing?”

“You mean asthma? No, from the little I’ve seen, he’s in good shape. Of course, Kees didn’t say it had to be asthma.”

“I know, and I’ve heard of crippled kids becoming gymnasts. But I can’t believe a guy who was so sick three years ago would be a jock today.”

The car in front suddenly swerved out of control and started slowly spinning around and around, working its way toward the opposite guard rail like a gyroscope losing power. I downshifted and pumped the brakes a couple of times, feeling the road slide out from under the wheels. I hit the accelerator gently an atocopd crabbed by the other car, which had come to a stop a few inches from the edge of the road. My tires finally caught and brought us back into line.

“Everyone okay?”

Murphy was looking back over his shoulder. “Yeah. No damage.” He settled back and we both watched an abandoned eighteen-wheeler lying in a ditch loom up and disappear like a half-remembered thought. “Interesting trip.”

I waited a couple of minutes for my heart to start beating normally. Maybe it was time to get some snow tires. “Of course, no one says he even had a humpback. Kees did mention he might have just had poison ivy or something.”

I shook my head. “Kees was just covering his tracks. I don’t say the guy had the hump necessarily, but he was seriously into this prednisone stuff or Kees wouldn’t have brought it up. I have the suspicion he thinks we have, or at least we had, a full-fledged Cushing’s victim on our hands. In any case, hump or no hump, a run through the local prescriptions ought to give us something.”

“Assuming he was local.”

And so it went, hour after hour, traveling through white space with only the occasional slipping of the tires to let us know we were attached to the road. The conversation lapsed now and then, but only long enough for us to come up with a few more weird ideas.

It was a morale booster if nothing else. By the time Frank took over the wheel in Hartford, I knew for certain my old friend was back where he belonged. We had never worked together on a case as convoluted as this, but we had shared lots of long, winding conversations that had eventually set us on the right course. After all the uncertainty and frustration of the past few days, that simple process, even without final answers, was a big comfort.

Night had fallen halfway into the trip, narrowing our already limited view to a hypnotizing funnel of onrushing snow. Coming from the space-like void, it blazed briefly in the headlights before careening off the windshield, without sound or trace. It was like flying through densely packed stars while standing perfectly still. I was no longer sure if we were moving, or if the earth was slipping rapidly beneath us. And we were utterly alone. North of Springfield the traffic had ceased to exist and we hurtled along in total isolation.

The illusion was shaken first by the dark, deep rumbling of a diesel engine coming up from behind-an oddly menacing sound that enveloped the car. Murphy muttered, “Christ, the son of a bitch must be flying.”

I looked around. The ice-caked rear window glowed with two shaking headlights from an eighteen-wheeler. The noise grew and became a vibration, tickling the soles of my feet and making my hands sweat.

“How fast are we going?”

Both of Frank’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. “Forty-something.”

The light was getting stronger, along with the noise.

“He’s got to be going fifty or better.”

The truck was abreast of us now, a mechanical monster looming like a nightmare.

“What the fuck’s he doing? He’s going to kill us.” Frank tugged at the window crank, fighting against the ice outside. The window suddenly came free. Blazing snow, wind, and the screaming of a diesel engine swept into the car, making us both shout in alarm. Across Murphy’s chest I could see the trailer’s side marker lights gleaming inches from his door; had he reached out his hand, he could have touched them. The wind blew the hat from his head, and in the demonic red glow his face was tight with fear.

“Let up on the gas,” I shouted.

He was ahead of me. The truck’s speed picked up as ours lessened, but too late. The riveted steel wall of the box veered closer and connected. There was a thump and a screech of metal. The car wa s lifted as by the wind. The smoothness beneath our wheels rippled loudly and then sent a punch that lifted us from our seats. Briefly, as in the flash from a camera, I saw the guard rail dead ahead, heard a sudden smashing and then all was quiet and darkness.

For a moment we were airborne, the headlights gone, the windshield a spidery web of cracked glass, the car filled with wind. The nose made contact first, throwing me against my seatbelt. The windshield blew out and we began to roll, slowly at first, then faster and faster. I felt my body float in harness amid an orchestra of noise. The end I don’t remember. There was a flash of light from deep behind my eyes, and there was water. The lovely sound of rushing water.