Frozen Stiff (20 page)

Claire moved forward and grabbed the butt of the gun. Andy let go and stepped back. Suddenly he was behind her. She was thrown off balance and he pushed her, sending her stumbling toward the hole. Both guns went flying as she fell.

At the same time that her head hit, she felt her right leg plunge through the ice, the tight hole scraping her pants as her leg submerged. The water was beyond cold, it was searingly frigid. She had to get her leg out. She clawed at the hole, trying to release her leg. Pushing herself up on one knee, she managed to pull free.

Behind her the door slammed shut. Andy had left and taken both guns with him.

Her head reeled and she fell down onto the ice and blacked out.

5 January: 6:15 pm

I
can smell the chili,” Meg said, walking into the kitchen.

“How spicy did you make it?”

“Just a mild blow-your-head-off. I thought you said your mom would be back soon,” Rich said, stirring the chili.

“You know her. I told you she was just going over to the Palmquists to ask Andy some questions. But you know how she gets when she’s working on an investigation.” Meg threw her arms up in the air. “Time loses all meaning.”

Curt walked in behind Meg and draped his arms around her shoulders. She snuggled back into him.

Rich loved seeing these two together, so easy and natural with each other. However, he wasn’t sure he wanted them to be together forever. He hated the thought of neither one of them exploring love with anyone else, but how nice to meet someone at such a young age to learn from.

“Well, she’s been gone way over an hour. I think I’ll try to raise her.” Rich called her cell, but it went right to voice mail. Then he called the sheriff’s department. Susan, the new office manager, told him that she hadn’t heard a peep from Claire. When he asked for Amy, she told him that Amy had checked in a few minutes ago and said she was headed home.

Andy Palmquist lived just outside of Pepin, which was less than ten minutes away. If she was going to do something official—like arrest him—she would have called the sheriff’s department. At least that’s the way she usually did it.

“Let’s give her another ten minutes. If she doesn’t show, we’ll eat.” He didn’t like that Claire had been gone so long on what was supposed to be a casual conversation, but he didn’t want to let Meg know how worried he was getting.

Maybe it was the cold that was making him more nervous than usual about her being late. What if she had slid off the road? What if she was stranded someplace? In this kind of weather, a few minutes could make a huge difference in survival.

6:15 pm

When Claire came to, she was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. She knew this was not a good sign. Her leg felt like it didn’t belong to her anymore. She had to get to her car. Sitting up, her head ached, but she didn’t feel like she would pass out again. Move slowly, she told herself.

When she tried the door to the icehouse, she found she was locked inside. She was so cold she was having a hard time focusing her mind. All she could think about was the absence of heat, how all-enveloping it was.

She went to the far side of the structure away from the door and forced herself to run at it. The space was small, only about a couple yards, and she had to watch out for the hole. She slammed her shoulder into the door and felt it give. Something was starting to wrench free. Maybe the hinge on the door.

She lunged at it again and this time heard a crack. She could see it was shredding where the door met the lock.

One more time she stepped across the small space and threw her full force at it, body slammed it. The door ripped apart and she fell as it splintered open. At least the snow softened her fall. Near total darkness outside, but by the faint ambient light she could make out the darker shape of her squad car.

Picking herself up she limped over to the vehicle. Her frozen leg was nearly useless. She had no feeling at all in it and her wet pant leg had hardened into an ice cast. The door to the squad car was open, but when she looked inside, she couldn’t see the keys. She slid into the seat and looked under the seat.

No keys.

Andy must have grabbed them.

No matter. She could get help.

She picked up the radio to call in to the office for help, but then found that the wires had been ripped out.

Panic started to fill her up. She had to get someplace warm. Her leg was leaving her.

6:45 pm

After dinner, Rich put the cover on the chili and left the pot on the stove. Claire could reheat it when she got home.

The chili hadn’t tasted as good as he had hoped, lacking in something. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe he was the problem. He couldn’t help being mad at Claire for making him worry again. He had to learn to let go of that. She had proven to him time and time again that she knew what she was doing.

Susan called from the sheriff’s department. “Hey, Rich. Has Claire shown up yet?”

“No, she’s still not back.”

“I just tried to get hold of her on her car phone and it wouldn’t go through. Something’s not right. Do you know where she is?”

Rich felt a sheet of ice water run down his back. “Meg said she went to talk to Andy Palmquist. Do you want me to call over there?”

“Why don’t you? Get back to me. I’ll keep checking around.”

Rich called the Palmquists. When he asked to speak with Andy, Mrs. Palmquist was quite abrupt, saying simply, “He’s not here. Don’t know when he’ll be back. Maybe he’s down to his house,” and hung up.

Meg and Curt had come into the kitchen and were watching him.

“Andy’s not there. His mom said something about his house. What does that mean?”

Curt twisted up his face, then said, “I think I know. Andy has an ice house out on the lake.”

“Let’s go,” Meg said.

“Not you,” Rich said. “Someone needs to stay here in case she calls. Curt can come with me and show me where the ice house is.”

“You’re not leaving me behind. I’ll go nuts.”

Rich looked at her. He knew it would be harder on Meg to stay behind that almost anything that might happen if she was with him. “You can come if you promise to stay in the truck.”

The three of them pulled on their boots, down coats, hats and mittens and were out the door, climbing into Rich’s pickup.

“Go down to the Pepin Beach,” Curt said. “His ice house is straight out from there.”

They were quiet on the way over, but as they bumped down to the shoreline, Meg said, almost to herself, “Mom is careful. Super careful. Something’s probably just funky with her car phone.”

Rich nodded and started out onto the ice. The rutted road was easy to follow across the lake, the indentations holding his wheels in place. When they got to the edge of the icehouses, all looked quiet. No lights, no sounds. Then he spotted the car.

“There’s a squad car,” Curt said at the same moment.

“What the hell is going on?” Rich asked as he scrambled out of the truck. The two teenagers followed suit.

The door to the squad car was hanging open and the interior light was still on. When Rich looked inside to check the phone, he could see that the wires had been pulled to it.

“Man, I do not like this.”

Meg let a sound between a squeal and a whimper. “Where is she?”

Then she whipped around, cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed as loud as she could, “Mom!”

And again, “Mom!”

They listened to the call bouncing across the lake and hitting the bluffs on either side.

7:00 pm

C
laire sat down for a moment to rest. Her leg didn’t feel so bad anymore. Just a gentle throb. Her face felt warm. She took off her hat. She knew she needed to get home, but she was getting so tired.

She had lost the car tracks and was trying to figure out which way to go. The icy snow made it hard to walk. The hard crust on top would break and she would fall through and then have to pull her legs out. Her frozen leg made walking difficult anyway.

She would take just a short rest. She could see the lights of town. It wasn’t that far away. After a minute she would get up and start walking again. But now she felt like taking a break.

Claire lay back in the snow and looked up at the stars. So cold and puny. She blew out a stream of breath and it reminded her of the smoke from a cigarette. She remembered doing that as a kid at the bus stop, pretending she was smoking.

Just as she was feeling herself drift away, she heard Meg calling her.

What was her daughter doing out here? Shouldn’t she be home in bed?

Claire sat up and looked around.

Again, her daughter’s voice came across the lake, “Mom!”

Claire knew that Meg would keep calling until she answered. That kid never let up. She yelled, “Over here.”

7 pm

Heading back to Durand, Amy was so ready for sleep that she could taste her bed and smell how sleep would roll over her. She had gone home in the morning for a rest and was disappointed to find that John had already left. His car had been parked only a few blocks away at the bar. But she could smell him on the sheets.

When Amy crossed the city limits, she called in to the department and Susan told her that Claire had gone missing and that the last known place she had been was the Palmquists.

Without another word, Amy turned her squad car around and headed back to Pepin, knowing she wouldn’t sleep if she didn’t know that Claire was okay. On her way, she called Claire’s house, but there was no answer. She wondered where Rich and Meg were on such a cold night. She hoped not out looking for Claire.

For some reason, Amy wasn’t that worried about Claire. She had never known her to get into trouble. It was probably the weather that had caused her phone to go out. This severe cold made everything harder. But Amy did want to follow up on it.

Amy let her thoughts drift back to John. She saw him as she had left him, drowsing in bed. How she would love to find him there again, waiting for her. She was still so surprised by what had happened between them. While she had been attracted to
him, he was not what she would call the man of her dreams. He was not even her type, if she had such a thing.

She usually went for the louder, boisterous kind of guy—like Bill. Someone who was the life of the party, someone who could make her laugh. But with John she felt like she was on solid ground, literally that she knew where she stood. He had made no bones about the fact that he wanted her. She could tell he wasn’t fooling around and that scared her and delighted her at the same time. Maybe she was growing up and was ready for a real relationship.

Tearing her mind away from thoughts of John, she looked for the turnoff to Palmquists’. If she remembered correctly, they lived past the cemetery off N, but close to town. She found the house easily and drove in behind a pickup truck. When she stopped, she felt like she was ready to lay her head down on the steering wheel and go to sleep. She didn’t want to leave the warm cocoon of her car. But she forced herself out into the cold and walked up to the door.

Before she even knocked the door flew open and Mrs. Palmquist was talking to her. “It’s Andy. He came home about fifteen minutes ago and went right out to the barn. I’m scared. He took his gun and he seemed like he was going to do something crazy. Please stop him.”

“Call the sheriff,” Amy said, then drew her weapon and walked to where the woman had pointed, to a pole barn behind the house. Lights were on in the building and she crept up to the door and nudged it open.

Andy stood in the middle of the space, his back to her, pretending to shoot his shotgun at some enemy that Amy couldn’t see.

Amy had her gun at the ready. As he started to swing around to face her, she called his name. “Andy, put the gun down.”

He lifted the gun up and fired into the air. The sound cracked the air like thunder. “No one can stop me. I am Danger Man.”

In that moment, she saw him so clearly as a young boy, caught in a game that he didn’t know how to play. “What’re you going to do?” She knew to keep him talking. Hard to shoot a gun when you were talking.

“I’m in too deep,” he said. “I just have to shoot my way out.”

Whatever he had done, Amy was not going to contribute to his paranoia. Keep it simple and real. “Listen, your mom’s scared you’re going to hurt yourself. Put the gun down and let’s go inside and talk.” She took a step toward him. While she had her gun trained on him, he still had his pointed up in the air.

“Too late for talking,” he said.

“Never too late for that. We can figure this out.” Amy kept inching closer to him, hoping to get a chance to disarm him.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” He let his shotgun fall toward the floor, one hand holding it.

“I don’t blame you. Let’s just call it a day and go inside and get warm.”

He shook his head and suddenly seemed to see her. “There’s no turning back.” He started to lift the gun.

Suddenly Amy saw his intention. He wasn’t lifting the shotgun toward her, but swinging it up to point at his own head.

His mother’s voice called from the door of the pole barn, “Andy, don’t.”

Andy turned toward the voice and Amy bolted toward him and swung her gun arm as hard as she could. The weapons connected
and the shotgun went flying out of Andy’s hand. She grabbed his arm and forced her gun into the side of his neck.

He stood stock still and said, “Shoot me. That’s what I want. Just shoot me.”

“Come on, Andy. We need to talk.” She started to move him toward his mother, who was still standing in the doorway. “Let’s go back to the house.”

He offered no resistance. His head down he walked toward the door. All he said was, “I did it for her.”

9:30 pm

To rewarm her leg, as soon as they were home, Rich had put her in a lukewarm bath. While she complained of pain as feeling was coming back to her leg, none of the skin was waxy or yellow so he didn’t think there had been any permanent damage. Her leg was red and swollen and blistered in a few spots, but Rich didn’t think she needed to be taken into the hospital. After gently drying her off, he wrapped her leg in a loose bandage.