Snow Blind

34

As Iris made her way down one of the still, silent village roads, she started to feel very strange – her limbs were suddenly hollow and weak, her head was light, and sparkles danced in her peripheral vision. Even her skin felt all wrong, crawling with a hot, itchy tingle that made her think of centipedes. It was probably just plain exhaustion, topped off by one big, bad adrenaline hangover, and her body was telling her to slow down. And she would, just as soon as she finished her last round of Bitterroot.

She forced her shaky legs to plod along for another couple blocks, then paused to rest at a tiny cross-street, looking up and down in both directions at the rows of quiet little houses. Bitterroot had been turned upside down and inside out this morning, but bizarrely, the only evidence of all that had transpired here were messy trails of bootprints, and they were already filling in fast with snow, like wounds healing before her eyes. Their physical presence would be erased within an hour; but their psychological presence would probably linger for a long, long time.

He radio unit crackled, and she heard Deputy Neville’s tinny voice talking through the plastic box on her shoulder. ‘This is two-four-five. We just gave the all-clear to the last house. Heading out. Over.’

Iris punched her call button. ‘This is Sheriff Rikker. Are you the last team in the town?’

‘We’re it, Sheriff,’ Neville answered. ‘Where are you?’

‘On the northwest grid. I’ll see you back at the office.’

As Iris walked back toward the parking lot to wait for Sampson, she noticed that lights blazed in every house she passed, but there was no sign of life in any of them. She suddenly felt very lonely in this silent, snow-shrouded village and found herself wishing desperately for a glimpse of just a single person, a dog in a yard – anything that would make this place seem a little more normal, as it had yesterday, before Kurt Weinbeck.

She never knew what made her single out that house in particular, but as she turned her gaze toward it, she caught a flash of movement inside, through the open louvers of a mini-blind. She paused and squinted through the snow, and saw two figures: a woman, and goddammit, was that a deputy? As she moved closer, she could make out the unmistakable shape of the county hat, and the badge glinting on the side of his parka. Maybe a straggler who hadn’t heard the all-clear call?

Suddenly, she wasn’t tired anymore, just furious. He had no business being inside that house, even if he had missed the all-clear – she’d given direct orders to all the deputies not to enter any domicile in Bitterroot under any circumstances, and yet here was one of her men, blatantly disregarding his superior officer, and she was going to have to march right up there, pound on the door, and knock her first head as Sheriff…

But as she stormed up the front walk, she saw something else, and that something else was a gun rising in the deputy’s hand, then coming down hard.

Iris had no idea what made her grab the knob and throw open the door – certainly not a cop’s experience, since she didn’t have any; and certainly not courage, because she’d never had any of that, either. She wasn’t even sure how her weapon had come to be in her hand, how her body had found the shooting stance without her mind’s direction, or if that was really her voice – a little shaky, but roaring nonetheless, shouting at this huge man, ‘DROP THE GUN! DROP IT!’

For a split second she had a glimmer of the feeling she imagined any cop would feel, what Sampson must have felt when he’d stormed into her kitchen when she’d been cowering, terrified, with her back against the wall and a butcher knife in her hand. She felt strong and just and full of purpose instead of flat-out scared to death, and that’s when she made the mistake. She forgot the first lesson. Worry about the perp first; the victim second, because you can’t help the victim if you’re dead.

But Iris’s eyes darted of their own accord to the woman held upright only by the choke-hold the man had around her neck. It was such a short glance, just a flicker, really, but it was long enough to see the blood streaming down her face, the floppy, broken arm, and the sad flash of relief in her eyes before they fell closed and the deputy tossed her aside.

Oh God. The deputy. He was a law officer, too, and he hadn’t forgotten the first lesson, because now he was spinning toward her, leading with a handgun a lot bigger than hers, and fast, so fast, he had it pointed directly at Iris’s chest and saw the red light in Sheriff Kenny Bulardo’s eyes that Roberta had seen for most of her life.

Iris felt her finger close on the trigger, and heard the deafening blast of a bullet breaking the sound barrier.

He’d been smart. Nobody could say he hadn’t been smart. Kept his hat and his department parka, filched an extra deputy badge from the stock in the basement, and bought a new, bigger weapon on his way home from turning in his department issue 9-mm. He’d been ready and waiting for the smallest of chances to take back his wife if not his county, and last night it had come in the form of a phone call from one of the men who was still loyal. For the fist time since the fence was built, the gates to Bitterroot were wide open, and no one was checking who drove in.

Ex-sheriff Kenny Bulardo stood over Iris Rikker, watched the blood seeping out of her body onto the tile floor, and felt the grin crawling across his face.

He hadn’t really intended to kill anyone – certainly not a sitting sheriff, even if it was the bitchy little snip who’d stolen his badge. Hell, he hadn’t known the person he was shooting at was Iris Rikker until the bullet had left the barrel. When you live most of your life as a cop you learn early that you don’t hesitate when someone breaks in on you screaming, pointing a gun at your face. You turn and shoot first and ask questions later. That’s what they’d taught him all those years ago, and no one would blame him for doing exactly what a trained cop is supposed to do to save his own life, not even at his trial, if it should come to that. Roberta had been out cold by the time he’d pulled the trigger, so it was his word against a dead woman, who God damn her anyway had actually taken a shot at him – they’d find the slug punched into a wall or the floor somewhere – and his word had been good in this county for a long time.

Of course she wasn’t quite dead yet, but the way she was bleeding, it wouldn’t be long, and all he had to do was stand here quietly and wait for it to happen.

Except it was taking too long and he was feeling a little wobbly in the knees. He should have expected that. He’d felt the same way when he’d shot Billy Hambrick just before the stupid, drugged-up kid had slipped a knife into the stomach of one of his deputies. You didn’t want to shoot, but sometimes you had to, and it always left you weak and a little dizzy and not thinking right.

He closed his eyes, just for a second, and heard the steady drip-dripping of Iris Rikker’s blood hitting the tile, but that wasn’t right. She was lying down, and the blood hadn’t been dripping, just sliding out of her without a sound. God, he hoped it wasn’t Roberta, but that couldn’t be. He’d only hit her a few times; just that once with the barrel of the.45, but goddammit he could still hear that drip, drip and it was driving him crazy.

He tried to open his eyes, managed a slit before too dizzy to stand up anymore, and had just a second to look down and see the puddle spreading around his boots before his knees gave way.

Even inside the closed house, the shots had been very loud in the quiet town. Deputy Neville was less than a mile away when the 911 ‘shots fired’ call came over the radio, and for the rest of his life, he would never remember the miraculous 180 turn he made on that narrow, snowy road, or the wild ride back to the Bitterroot parking lot with his accelerator jammed to the floor.

He didn’t even shut off the car; just jumped out and started running around the big building, knees pumping high through the snow, heart pounding, gun drawn. Someone was broadcasting a location through his shoulder unit and his spirit sank as he raced toward the street Sheriff Rikker had been walking when he’d talked to her last.

Two blocks away, then one, then he turned the final corner and stopped dead. The narrow street was filling with people, a sad, rag-tag army of women with hair flying as they ran, some dressed for the weather, but most wearing a hastily donned jacket over pajamas and slippers. They were all converging on the fourth house down, gathering at the front door in absolute silence for the briefest of moments, and then, as he watched, they burst through the door and poured into the house where the gunshots had been fired such a short time ago. He didn’t even have time to open his mouth and scream at them to wait for the officers, professionals, goddammit, didn’t they know there was a shooter in there?

He put his head down and ran toward them, waiting for the gunfire to start.

Iris was flirting with consciousness, sometimes aware, sometimes not, as if life were a dance partner with an outstretched hand held just out of reach. Occasionally she saw a searing, painful light; more often, there was complete and utter darkness that pressed down on her, making it almost impossible to breathe. Scraps of frantic conversations drifted around her head like busy gnats.

Is she alive?

Just barely… too much blood… we need a line here fast, and more of those gauze pads… how’s Bulardo?

Silence for a moment.

Dead. But Roberta’s coming around, Doctor. She’s going to make it. The ambulance is on its way, but the roads are bad…

We can’t wait. Get the stretcher.

And then there was a more familiar voice, and something about it made Iris feel safe; safe enough to drift away into sleep.

I’ll take her. Let me take her. Iris? Oh, God, Iris… DOCTOR?

Busy, chilly hands around her face, so much commotion, and then the unmistakable sense of rising up, up…

We’re losing her! Out of the way, Sampson, please!

Deputy Neville took Sampson firmly by the shoulders and pulled him away from the stretcher. ‘Sir? Let them take her up to the lot. We need to get up there and get the squad ready to take her to the hospital.’

Sampson felt his head move in a stiff nod, and let Neville lead him out the door.

Other officers had responded to the call, more were racing in, snow flying from their boots. They arrived in time to see a stretcher coming out the front door of the little house, held high by women, so many women. Those who weren’t actually bearing the load still reached out with their hands to touch the cold, steel frame of the stretcher, as if touch itself would make a difference. There must have been over a hundred of them.

‘That’s the damndest thing I ever saw,’ one of the officers murmured, and then for some reason, he took off his hat and held it over his chest.