Ice Shear (19 page)

“So when was the last time you saw Ray?”

Pulling his leg up on the couch, Craig faced me directly, touching my shoulder briefly before speaking. He described how Ray had stayed until seven thirty, when his brother called. As he spoke, Craig reached forward and pulled a cigarette out of the pack in front of him and lit up. I couldn't tell him not to smoke in his own house, and Dave, who quit last year, looked ready to ask for one. Craig blew smoke wide into the room, watching it arc.

“And?” I asked.

“And what?” Craig said. “Then I didn't see him again.”

Craig was leaving gaps, and if I guessed, I bet it was because Hale coached him not to lie but
to omit
.

“No,” I said.

“No what?” Craig took two sharp drags on his cigarette. “I mean, I was supposed to meet him later and help him carry some stuff, over at Dani's. He didn't show.”

Dave sat forward, despite the couch's best efforts to immobilize him. “Did he call?”

“No, man, he
didn't call
.” Craig pointed at Dave, nearly knocking over the lava lamp propped on the table next to him. “He texted, telling me he'd give me a heads-up when he needed my help.”

I usually avoided open-ended questions, but Craig had given some pretty interesting responses.

“Who did you see?” I asked.

“What do you mean? The girl? I didn't touch her, you know. And I even got her home by her curfew.” He said the last smugly.

“No, at the Brouillettes',” I said. “You were there, right? That's where you waited for Ray's text.”

“Yeah.”

“So who did you see?”

Craig hesitated. “No one, man. I sat there for like an hour, freezing my nuts off.”

“Until when?” I said.

“Ten thirty. I don't know. I was sitting there waiting for Ray to call me back, but I got the all clear. I drove out, never turning on my lights. I felt like a secret agent, slipping away.”

“And who gave you the all clear?” I said.

Hale tapped the chair.

“Hale,” Craig said. “He was wearing that crazy-ass hat with the flaps.”

Hale sat forward. “I think you might be mistaken, Craig. That wasn't me.”

“Ohhh. You're probably right.”

Dave stood up and grabbed Craig's cigarette out of his hand. He pounded it into the ashtray, sending butts spilling across the table. He stood over Craig, chest heaving. I had never seen Dave anything approaching angry, and I stood. Hale was up a second later.

“Craig, I'm tired,” Dave said. “So rather than spending another thirty minutes with Officer Lyons applying the thumbscrews, why don't you describe the special friendship you and Agent Bascom have.”

“Ask me,” Hale said from behind Dave.

Dave held up a hand inches from Hale's face, his eyes on Craig. “I trust Craig more. Craig?”

“Shit. Don't you people talk? Hale said if I was ever questioned by the cops to direct them to him.” Craig gestured at Hale. “So I'm directing you to him.” He stood up, one of the few people who could meet Dave eye to eye, heightwise. He marched to the front door and opened it, all bravado except he wouldn't meet our eyes. “My mouth's shut. I'm no fool.”

“Oh, you are,” Dave said, and walked out the door. I ran to catch up as he crashed down the stairs, with Hale gliding fast behind me. As we arrived at the first-floor landing, the door flew open and the inhabitant, dirty
CREED
T-shirt and skin covered with scabs, came out, ready for a confrontation.

“I heard what you said!” the man raved, his snarl revealing black teeth that were rotting out of his mouth. He got lost, drumming his fingers, and I mentally shifted gears from the Craig interview to patrol officer, preparing to take him into custody. He seemed to notice us again and pointed an accusatory finger somewhere to our left: he didn't quite seem to know where we were standing. “Don't think I don't know about your plots!”

I approached him slowly, ready to intercept. I didn't know him, but someone who was that disordered would show up on my radar sooner rather than later. He hadn't actually done anything criminal, but I wanted to get his name, because I knew I would be seeing him sometime soon. I didn't get the chance. The man slammed the door.

The slam was still echoing in the hall when Dave reached past me, grabbed Hale's collar, and swung him around, slamming him against the wall.

“Okay, pretty boy.” Dave twisted his hands, drawing the fabric tight across Hale's throat, not enough to choke, but definitely enough to hurt. “You want to tell me what that was? Because I've stayed awake for almost two days straight, and while I am a patient man, I am done with your bullshit.”

Hale looked past Dave to me. “You have to understand, there's more going on here than you realize.”

I ducked under Dave's arm, putting myself between the two of them. I tapped Dave's arm and he released.

“Meth, obviously,” I said to Hale. “But I have to assume that it is FBI level. Big supply? Big distribution? The Abominations? Tell us, Hale.”

Hale couldn't meet my eyes. “You don't have clearance, and . . .” He lunged past me. “No!”

I heard, rather than saw, Dave punch the wall. The construction was thick, but there was the sound of bones grinding against flesh, followed by a rain of plaster flaking to the ground.

“Fuck.” Dave shook his hand out vigorously. That was a good sign—waving his hand would hurt like murder if he had broken anything. There was banging on the wall. The tenant of apartment one didn't appreciate the noise.

“Hale.” Dave's voice didn't have the sharpness and anger of before. He sounded tired. “Hale, I'd like you off the case, but unlike the FBI I'm not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face. We'll liaise. We'll liaise like no one has ever liaised before.”

“And we will assume,” I added, “that every word out of your mouth is a lie.”

“I'm not lying, June,” Hale said.

“Fine. We will assume that everything you say is not the complete story.”

I was holding the door for Dave when Hale called to us.

“Y'all call me—call the Bureau—if you need some help.”

I slammed the door shut on him.

Dave and I walked to the car. This whole case was such a hard slog, with everyone who should be working to get it solved throwing sticks in the spokes, sending me tumbling. I didn't feel beaten, though. I felt mad. I was going to solve this case despite the best efforts of Hale, Jerry, and the Brouillettes. They could try to stop me, but I was moving forward.

“So,” I said as we reached the car, “you think Hale's pretty?”

“He's got nice eyes.”

Dave marched through the unshoveled drive around to the passenger side. The wood-frame house, now covered in aluminum siding, had been built before the advent of cars, and the single lane that ran between the two buildings was barely wide enough for one vehicle. Dave ended up scraping the door on the opposite house.

He was still mad. “Your idiot FBI friend has been thwarting the investigation the whole time. I may not be able to run them out of town, but I can burn their hotel down. I mean, c'mon.”

“I have an idea,” I said. “I could go myself, or—”

“Yeah, to get the accelerant down in time we'll need two people.”

“Or we could regroup and talk to Hale and company tomorrow. Get some sleep and face them at full power.”

“What do you mean? I'm at full power,” he said faintly. He crossed his arms and rested his head against the seat belt strap. Within a minute, he was asleep.

I lowered the volume on the police radio, the quiet chatter of Leslie and the fading light of the afternoon cocooning us in the car. I made the executive decision to drive Dave to his house. He lived a few blocks over in a Victorian he was converting in his spare time. I pulled to a stop in front of his house and nudged him.

Dave slept on. The house rehab was going slowly, the time he spent at work leaving little time for construction. Last summer, at the end of his Fourth of July barbecue, Dave and I, mellow with too much beer and too much sun, had talked, the smell of burned charcoal dying away. With his bottle of Rolling Rock he'd gestured down the hill toward the river, which flashed behind a line of tall trees.

“I can never forget where I came from, even up here.” He threw out his arms to take in all he surveyed, including his back deck, his yard, and farther down the hill the house where he grew up, on the island in the old Ukrainian section of town. It was the first time the two of us had discussed anything other than police work. Dave had described his life: his father, his brother, his maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, all making sure he didn't even miss his mother after she took off with some guy.

“And look at how far I've made it,” he said.

I smiled. While Dave was working his way up through the department, I was across the country doing work I never dreamed possible. Now I found myself at home again, most of my go-getter friends long gone, following the trail of jobs and money to New York City. I had been long gone, too, a country between me and this town and these people who I had thought were going nowhere. I was glad when I found them again, grounded, but having landed where I belonged, at home.

I pushed Dave harder and harder until he woke with a start.

“Hey.” He rubbed his eyes, and slapped his cheeks a few times. “This isn't the hotel.”

“No, it's the place where I am reliably informed they keep your bed.” I wrinkled my nose. “And your shower. Hale will still be able to lie to us in the morning.”

Dave raised his finger to make a point and then dropped it. “Okay. Call me if you find the clue that'll crack this case wide open, right?”

I nodded, and he slowly picked up his things, before dropping them next to the gearshift.

“Got your head, or did you drop that, too?”

Dave flipped me the bird and slammed the door. He waded up his unshoveled walk, the snow leaving a ring of white up to his thighs. He reached the porch, where he picked up several papers, and waved good-bye. I pulled out into the street, heading toward home. We needed to be ready for the wake, the FBI, and an outlaw biker gang: whatever got thrown at us and whoever threw it. Considering the number of people pissed off at us, we had to be ready for anything.

T
HE DAY OF DANIELLE'S
funeral, I woke with my legs twisted tight in the comforter and my arm reaching across the bed, across Kevin's side. When had I become a person who took up the whole bed? I had always been a restless cover-hog—Kevin accused me of full-contact sleeping—but my body had always known intuitively where the boundary resided between my side and Kevin's. I pulled my arm back into my blanket cocoon, half for warmth and half to make it up to Kevin, forcing my body to remember him.

It was full dark still, and I couldn't hear anything stirring: no cars half skidding down the street, both my father and my daughter still fast asleep. I closed my eyes and pushed my head deep into the pillow, hoping the warmth of the covers would pull me back under. I inhaled and tried to clear my mind. I stopped when I realized I was searching for Kevin's scent, a combination of hair gel and green grass. Of course it was impossible, it had been more than two years, almost three, but I had found that my husband's phantom smell would show up out of nowhere, either ambushing or comforting me. For so long after he died our bedroom had reeked of ammonia, his odor during those last months no matter how many sponge baths we gave him. My father got a frequent-buyer card at the candle store during that time, bringing home bright pillars in lavender, apple pie, or eggnog. He was searching for the one that might get rid of the smell instead of cover it. They all made me sick. Eventually he stopped.

Lucy didn't seem to notice, climbing into bed with Kevin and pretending to read him stories. She turned the pages of books she knew by heart, flipping them around so he could see all the pictures. She built train tracks with bridges that traveled over Kevin's legs and sent the blue cars careening off the bed; they laughed and did it again. Away from Kevin, Lucy was no angel, with notes coming home from preschool for hitting, and night terrors that woke everyone in the house except Kevin, who slept the sleep of the Oxycontined. All Lucy's bad behavior stopped the minute Kevin died. She became quiet in a way that had only begun to pass in the last few months.

The night before Kevin's funeral, I didn't sleep at all, furious with my father, who had taken all the sheets and blankets and washed them while I was at the wake. Kevin had started to go missing from my life at that point. Secretly I was hoping he might come back. He'd still be sick, sure, but if they changed everything—if my father kept moving Kevin's stuff—then there would be no chance. He would certainly slip away if we pushed him.

Some people seemed to expect me to feel relief after his death, as he was sick for so long and was in a coma for almost a month.

“You said good-bye weeks ago,” my mother commented, as though it was supposed to comfort me. Our last night in bed, I told Kevin stories of my day. The final thing coma patients lose is their hearing, so he heard about Lucy's adventures in snow forts and how I'd picked up a pair of oxblood shoes from T.J. Maxx the day before that were a steal. Even in his coma he smiled, my love of hunting out deals a long-running joke between us, and the skin stretched tight across his teeth. I knew he was there, he was with me. He wasn't gone.

And then he was. The people from hospice were almost too efficient, arranging within an hour for his body to be transported to the funeral home. The next few days were nonstop activity: setting up the wake and the service; keeping Lucy close; arranging housing for Kevin's sister; talking my own sister into running interference with our mother so I could avoid her; and a million other things large and small. I kept in constant forward motion, as stopping and thinking would've been pointless: I couldn't think. The next thing I knew it was the day of the funeral, and I was lying awake, condemning my father, and exhausted in every way.