Tamarack County

CHAPTER 15

Stephen sat on the passenger side of the 4Runner’s front seat. Marlee was at the wheel. They were driving around. Just driving. And talking. Marlee was a good talker. Stephen was an adept listener, a natural talent, but it was also an ability that Henry Meloux had encouraged him to nurture.

At first, Marlee had talked about the play she’d spent the last couple of hours practicing at the high school, You Can’t Take It with You. She had the role of a dancer, “a ditzy dancer” was how she described her character. She told him it was a famous play, a screwball comedy. She said, “You’re going to come, right?”

He assured her that was his intention.

They were south of Aurora when Marlee turned onto a back road, only recently plowed. It was unpaved, gravel washboard. She pulled to the side of the road, right up against the mound of plowed snow, and killed the engine. The sun came through the windshield bright and warm. Marlee turned to him, removed her gloves, and unbuttoned her coat.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For everything you did last night. You were wonderful.” She leaned to him and kissed him a very long time.

When they separated, Stephen smiled and said, “You brought me all the way out here just to thank me?”

“No. I . . .” She turned her face away and was quiet a moment. Then, as if she’d made an important decision, she looked back at him, looked deeply into his eyes. Her almond irises seemed to contain little flecks of gold. “No,” she said. “I wanted to give you something special.”

She shed her coat, turned to him fully, and lifted her sweater. She wore a lacy red bra, which cupped two very firm breasts. Stephen sat stupefied as she slid apart the clasp that held her bra together in front, and the red lace parted. What was revealed to him in the brilliant stream of sunlight was nothing short of heaven.

He started to reach out. “Can I . . . ?”

She nodded. “Take your gloves off first.”

In the blink of an eye, he had them off. He reached out and gently touched her left nipple, which had grown hard, then took her whole breast in his hand. It was a sensation like he’d never felt before, both holy and sinful at the same time, dizzyingly surreal and yet he was terribly, wonderfully present, aware of every sensation in that moment, of the softness of her breast and the heat of his palm and the shine of her eyes and the quickness of his breath.

“Kiss me,” she said.

And did he ever.

He had no idea how far things might have gone if the truck hadn’t come along. They both heard it, rattling over the washboard, approaching from the main road. Marlee quickly sat up and pulled her sweater down. Stephen flung himself back against the passenger door, where he tried to look as if nothing had been happening. The truck came abreast but didn’t pause at all. It was spattered with hardened mud, and the side window was so splashed with road spray that Stephen couldn’t see through it with any clarity. He watched it pass and realized, when he saw his breath begin to crystallize on the windshield of Marlee’s car, that it had grown chilly inside the vehicle.

“Mood spoiler,” Marlee said. She looked over at him, almost shyly. “We should go.”

“Probably, yeah,” Stephen said, although pretty much everything in him didn’t agree.

She reached under her sweater and spent a few moments putting her bra back in place. Stephen turned his eyes away, feeling suddenly awkward.

They were quiet after that. Marlee maneuvered the 4Runner in a U-turn and started back toward the main road. At the junction, she stopped and looked both ways, then, instead of turning toward Aurora, headed in the direction of the rez.

“Where are you going?” Stephen asked.

“I was just thinking. Mom’s probably already gone to work. She was going to get a ride with Kit Johnson.”

“I thought one of your uncles or cousins was going to come and stay with you until we figured out who killed Dexter.”

“That would be Shorty, my great-uncle. He didn’t show last night, and even if he does tonight, he won’t be there for hours.”

Stephen didn’t say a word in objection.

Marlee took County 16, which followed the shoreline of Iron Lake north toward the reservation. Stephen’s whole body tingled. His brain seemed to be sizzling in a delightful but confusing frenzy of electric signals. His mouth was dry. He tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to him seemed senseless and unnecessary.

Then Marlee said, “Stephen, what color was that truck that went by us?”

“I didn’t see any truck.”

“I mean when we were parked.” Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know. Kind of pale green, maybe.”

“A green pickup truck’s been following us for a while.”

Stephen turned and looked back. He saw a dirty, mud-crusted truck, and thought Marlee was right. It had a plow blade mounted on the front, and he was pretty sure it was the same vehicle that had passed them when they’d parked on the washboard road. Immediately he thought of Dexter.

“What do I do?” Marlee asked. Her voice was taut, and Stephen saw her grip tighten on the steering wheel.

“Just hold it steady. We’ll be in Allouette in ten minutes.”

Stephen kept himself turned, his eyes on the truck, which had drawn to within a dozen yards of Marlee’s rear bumper. Sunlight hit the truck’s windshield in a way that created a glare, and he couldn’t see the driver.

“There’s a straightaway coming up,” Marlee said, a little desperately. “Maybe I should slow down. Maybe he just wants to pass.”

“Okay,” Stephen said. “Just a little, just to see what he does.”

They came to a long, rare stretch of straight road. Marlee eased up on the accelerator, and the needle of the speedometer crept downward. The truck slowed, too, maintaining its dozen yards of separation.

“Shit,” Marlee said.

The next thing Stephen knew, she had hit the gas and he was thrown back against the seat as the 4Runner shot ahead.

“Easy, Marlee,” he said. “There’s ice on these roads.”

But she didn’t seem to hear him. Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle rocketed.

“Jesus, Marlee, slow down.”

“You want him to kill us?” she said, her voice rising.

“If he doesn’t, you will. Slow down.”

But it was too late. Directly ahead of them was a hard curve to the right. Marlee tried to turn the wheel, but the pavement was slick with packed snow frozen hard into a glazed coating. The 4Runner swung sideways and kept going, off the road and into a growth of dead reeds that bordered the lake. When it hit the drag of the reeds, the car flipped, and Stephen saw the world spin. He heard Marlee scream, and her scream mixed with the screaming of metal against ice, and the vehicle was sliding over the frozen surface of Iron Lake. Shards flew against his face, and he didn’t know if it was window glass or grated ice. He closed his eyes, and in a moment, everything stopped, and all Stephen heard then was a terrible, terrible silence.

His thinking cleared slowly. When it did, he understood that the 4Runner lay on its side. The driver’s door was against the ice and the window glass was gone. Stephen was held in place by his seat belt; otherwise he’d have been lying on top of Marlee. He saw that her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t moving.

“Marlee?”

He started to unfasten his seat belt but realized he needed to brace himself first so that he wouldn’t tumble onto her. He settled into a more upright position, firmed his leg against the heater console, grabbed the door handle with his right hand, and with his left, clicked his belt free. He eased himself down so that he knelt against the ice through the empty window of the driver’s door and leaned over Marlee. He touched her gently.

“Marlee?”

She didn’t respond, but he could see that she was still breathing. That was a great relief.

Then he heard a sound that reminded him at first of the high-pitched whine laser weapons made in some sci-fi movies. It was like the 4Runner was the mothership, and laser beams shot out in all directions.

He knew what it really was, and adrenaline coursed into his bloodstream.

“Marlee,” he said, desperately. “Marlee, we’ve got to get out of here.”

Through the empty window under his knee, he saw the spiderweb begin to form across the ice. He reached for Marlee’s seat belt lock and managed to free it a moment before the ice gave. The vehicle tilted forward. The front end, weighted by the engine, dipped into the water first. Somewhere in his frenzied thinking Stephen understood that he shouldn’t move Marlee, that he might do her great harm, but with the gray water already eating the hood he had no other choice.

He wrapped his arms around her and tried to lift. For a slender woman, she seemed to weigh a ton. He succeeded in getting her into a sitting position, more or less, then looked upward at the blue sky on the other side of the passenger window, which was still intact, and realized that, with the engine off, he had no way to lower the glass. He let Marlee slump a moment, reached up, and tried to unlock the door, but the lock seemed jammed. He braced himself and tried to force the door open, pushing upward with all his strength. Useless. He felt the wet, icy grip of the lake on his boots. He glanced down and saw that Marlee was sitting in water that already covered her legs. He looked up at the window glass, formed a fist with his gloved right hand, drew back, and gave the punch everything he had. The window shattered in a rain of shards. Stephen knocked out the jagged edges. By the time he bent again to Marlee, the water had reached her chest. Her clothing was soaked, and that made her even heavier. He hooked his hands under her arms and tried to haul her up. He’d never lifted anything so heavy.

“Marlee,” he croaked. “You’ve gotta help me.”

But Marlee, though not dead, was dead to the world.

He saw the edge of the broken surface ice creeping up the windshield, a line three inches thick. Above it was blue sky, below it gray death. As the vehicle tilted ever more forward and downward, Marlee’s weight shifted with it, and Stephen’s stance, precarious at best, shifted as well. He tried to resettle himself, to find firm footing in the rising water, but his boots kept slipping from under him. He managed to keep Marlee’s head above water, but it took all his strength, every ounce of it just for that.

He understood, in a moment that came to him with absolute clarity and a kind of high-voltage shock, that he could not save her. He still might be able to save himself by climbing out the window he’d broken, but in order to do that, he would have to abandon Marlee.

He wrapped his left arm around her body and held her up as best he could. With his right hand, he lifted her chin to keep it above the rising waterline. The cold rose around them both, like painful concrete, paralyzing him.

“I’m sorry, Marlee,” he said and realized that he was crying.

Still, he didn’t let go.

He felt hands cup themselves under his arms, and heard a gruff voice command, “Hang on to her, boy.”

Then he was being lifted, and Marlee with him, because he did as he was told and held fast to her. He was pulled out through the window into the icy air and sunlight that gave no heat.

“You grab him, Wes. I got the girl.”

Stephen felt Marlee being tugged away from him, but he didn’t release his grip.

“Boy, you want to kill us all you keep ahold of her. Otherwise let go, and we’ll all get out of this alive.”

Stephen let go. He was pulled-dragged really-off the tilting 4Runner and across a couple of dozen feet of solid ice.

“She alive?” he heard the gruff voice say.

“Breathing,” came the reply, a voice nearly as rugged.

“Let’s get ’em into the truck, or this cold’ll kill ’em for sure. Can you stand, boy?”

Stephen nodded and felt himself yanked to his feet. He stayed upright, although with some difficulty, and watched two big men-hell, they were gorillas-pick up Marlee and carry her off the ice toward a black crew-cab pickup parked at the edge of the lake. He stumbled after them. They laid Marlee on the backseat and covered her with a green wool blanket.

“Call 911, Wes,” said the man whose voice Stephen had heard first. He spoke through a brown beard stained with tobacco juice. “Tell ’em we’ll meet ’em at the junction with Highway One. Tell ’em five minutes.”

“Squeeze in, kid,” the man named Wes said. He nodded toward the backseat where Marlee lay. “It’s warm in the truck.” Then he whipped a cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and punched in three numbers.