Ice Shear (36 page)

“She made you mad,” I said. “It wasn't premeditated. Your lawyer could plead you down.”

“Plead down for the death of a congresswoman's daughter?” Her laugh was harsh, echoing off the trees. “Like that would happen. Plus Ray. My life is worth less than nothing if his family gets ahold of me. He couldn't even cook meth, wasn't smart enough to look on the Internet to figure it out, which is how I learned. He sent a text to my phone—didn't even know who he was sending it to—telling me where the drop was and asking me to cook it for him. I guess all his low-life family are really proud of their meth-making skills, and he wanted to keep face. The coward cried when I hit him, so I hit him again and shut him up.” She paused. “At least the girl was smart.”

“Stupid and greedy and young is a bad combination.” I thought of poor Ray, with his grape soda and video games and his unborn child.

“I wasn't greedy,” Denise said. I held my position. I could hear help arriving, but the sirens sounded distorted and hard to place, as though they were bouncing through water. Should I stay or should I go? Denise was agitated, her Smith & Wesson flashing in and out of the light as wildly as she was talking.

“I just took enough tonight so that I could dig out. I was going to pay off our debts on the store, pay off the mortgage we took on our shitty house. I wanted my little piece. Not like Danielle. She wanted everything.”

“That is greedy,” I said.

I edged the light higher so that it reached Denise's waist.

“I was going to let you have the glory, you know,” Denise continued. “Going to call in the rest of the junk, let you find it, be the hero. I didn't want that in my community. Did you know how much they were going to make?”

“But you can still help me be a hero. Please, let's make it so we can both get out of this alive. Jason's safe. So is Greg. . . . So are you.”

“We don't have anything now that I've lost my reputation. I don't have anything to give them. I can never escape this.” Denise's gun hand dropped into the light, gesturing, making her point. “Don't you understand?”

She raised the gun and took aim. Without thinking, I jumped. I hit her middle, throwing her off balance. Denise twisted in midfall, and I found myself half underneath her, my injured arm pinned. The pain gave me a burst of adrenaline to roll her.

Now Denise lay half buried in the snow. I gripped her gun hand at the wrist, but my right was weak, and Denise was bucking. I lifted up, restraining Denise's free arm under my knee. I had her for a second, but she wrenched away, putting me off balance, and raised the gun straight up, inches from my head. I propelled the arm down, pressing it against her chest. She closed her eyes and pushed up.

The gun fired.

Blood poured from Denise's chin and neck, crimson spattering the beech tree behind her.

I pulled off my scarf, staunching the blood with it. The wound spurted sideways, soaking into the snow, into my clothes, a brief bit of warmth before the coldness, the wetness, overwhelmed the feeling. I struggled to stay upright. In the distance I could hear Lorraine calling for me to report, report now! Jason could be heard over all of them.

“Mom! Mom!” he cried. “Mom! Are you there?”

“Your son is calling for you,” I said. The last thing the dying lose is their hearing, and maybe if the tiniest bit of life was still in her, Denise could hear me. “He loves you. He will miss you so much.”

Denise Byrne's answer was a terrible silence. The cold got deeper. I reached into the darkness.

“I'm here,” I croaked, my voice weak. Then, into the radio, “I'm here. I'm alive.”

M
OM, MOM, MOM
!”
LUCY
yelled from across the ice. “Mom, look!”

I stopped in midcircuit, the winter temperatures of the rink washing over me the second I stopped moving. Outside it was warm, at least relatively; in the forties. I watched as my daughter skated in reverse. Well, perhaps skated was too generous a word. Lucy was doing little more than walking backward, but her form was perfect. Get a little force behind her and she had the making of a wonderful figure skater, if I said so myself. I clapped wildly and raced over to congratulate her.

“That was excellent, honey,” I called. I sped up, the tendrils that escaped from my ponytail whipping across my eyes as I turned. With these new skates—thank you, overtime!—I sped up and twisted, sending a spray of ice across Lucy's boots. She laughed and tried it, twisting her hips and then, ten seconds later, her skates. She succeeded only in throwing herself off balance. I reached for her and pulled her back into standing position.

Keeping her hands in mine, I decided to show her what speed felt like. I skated backward, towing her.

“Glide, sweetheart,” I said, when Lucy ran on the ice to make us go faster. “Gliiide.”

“I can do it, Mom. Let go now.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You're not tired?”

“I'm not tired,” Lucy said. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

Perhaps because I
was.
The “murder of the century,” as Jerry called it, had taken almost everything out of me, and doing the paperwork almost finished me off. Even after a month, the pain and exhaustion would still creep up on me.

When I was brought out of the woods I wasn't in good shape. I called out to Hale, to Dave, to anybody, to come help me.

“We're coming,” Lorraine said in my ear. “Keep talking to me, June. Stay awake! Talk to me so you don't lose consciousness.”

Light threaded through the trees, shining closer and closer. Sleepy and light-headed from the cold, I stopped trying to yell. Freezing rain washed down my chest. I could feel wetness but not the cold. Hale and three other agents—Ernie! I thought, but my mouth wouldn't form the word—were first on scene.

“Officer down.” Hale spoke rapidly into the radio, dropping next to me as Ernie and two other agents swept the area.

“Where?” Hale demanded. “Where's the injury?”

It took a while for me to understand his question, and even longer to speak.

“Not me,” I said.

“June,” Hale said. Ernie radioed our location to the helicopters that circled overhead. A spotlight wiped away the grove's shadows, exposing the misery. Hale put his jacket over my shoulders and wrapped his arms around me, sending shocks of pain through my whole body.

The paramedics arrived and strapped me onto their immobilizing board. They carried me quickly toward the Brouillettes' property, weaving through the grove, twisting left and right and at points lifting me over the trees. At this angle, with my soaked-through clothes, I felt like I was at the bottom of a lifeboat. The combination of the motion, my injury, and the bright lights from the helicopters made me nauseous.

“Her first,” I said, as we passed the congresswoman. Amanda Brouillette sat on the porch surrounded by three police officers and four paramedics. She didn't seem to notice them, clinging to her husband. They were both crying, with Phil rocking Amanda back and forth.

“She's conscious and aware, and has refused to go to the hospital,” the paramedic said. “You're the top priority, little miss hero.”

I closed my eyes to stop the motion sickness and to keep myself from telling the nice man who was carrying me not to refer to me as
little
or
miss
again. I figured I could enjoy the word
hero
for a minute, but images of Danielle, Ray, and Denise wiped that pleasure out quickly.

I woke up in the hospital, the emergency room personnel going to a lot of trouble to warm me up. Through the fog I was able to catch bits of the news station from the TV bolted into the upper corner of the emergency room. As I waited to be x-rayed I watched Marty's release. He made no statement, but his mother made plenty. I propped myself up on the bed so that I could better hear Linda Jelickson.

“An eye for an eye,” Linda said. “And a life for a life. Revenge has been served, and Marty, an innocent man wrongly accused, is now free.”

In the background, Marty leaned close and whispered something to Zeke. Zeke smiled wide. I shivered, and had to explain to the nice emergency room doctor that yes, really, I was warming up considerably.

“Yeah, you can't remember warm,” he said.

I asked for another pillow, and he brought me another blanket. I was about to complain when the pillow and a bear hug arrived, care of Dave. He gave off warmth like an electric heater, and unlike the staff who'd slipped the little hand warmers over my fingers, he was willing to share his coffee.

“Sure you're not contagious?” I teased. He looked as healthy as a horse.

“That yellow dust isn't going to hurt anyone. Unless you are allergic to bees, like Craig. It was pollen.”

“Pollen?”

“Bee pollen. Some kind of vitamin that the pharmacy stocks in bulk. Denise knew his medical history, what with having filled his past prescriptions, and hit him where she knew he'd hurt.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Not sure yet. We're lucky they got to him when they did. He had a second reaction, but they ventilated him.”

“And you?”

“Me? I'm healthy and strong. Which is more than I can say for you.” He ran his hand over my head. He was probably checking for bumps, not stroking my hair.

“You okay?” he asked.

I didn't know what to say. I'd seen people die before, but all I could think was
What a waste
. Not only Danielle and Ray but also Denise. Denise had worried what Jason and Greg would do without her for good reason. They kept Jason away until the body was removed, but I doubt that they removed the snow, red and telling. Denise hadn't considered the loss she created in people's lives when she killed young Ray and Danielle, but still. Jason would miss his mother.

I let myself sink back into the pillow. I felt as far from a hero as you could get.

My doctor wasn't going to let me out even after the X-ray proved I didn't have a broken arm, just a dislocated one, and only relented once I was in a sling and my father promised to take care of me.

“I can open a goddamned can of soup,” he said. His conversation with Shirley, an RN he went to high school with, sealed the deal.

Dave wheeled me out to my father's waiting car, where he tucked a blanket over the sling holding my arm in place, keeping me warm in the hospital scrubs. They had cut off my bloody clothes and bagged them as evidence.

“I'm going to keep Craig company. He's a lot more fun to hang out with when he can't talk,” Dave said with a jaunty wave. “Plus, he was brave, in a very complaining way.”

I was a little disappointed that Lucy wasn't in the car.

“I didn't know how you'd . . . look.” My father kept his eyes glued to the road in front of us. He was going three miles an hour all the way, swerving to avoid potholes. You couldn't really see them in the predawn light; he had them all memorized.

“I wanted to get you stowed in bed before she saw you. Jeannette from next door came over. It might be hard for, for . . . someone”—and his voice broke, but he got it under control quickly—“for someone who loves you to see you like this.”

“Sorry,” I said. I never thought my father the cop might worry.

“Nothing to be sorry for. You did the job. We're lucky that things like this only happen once every fifty years in Hopewell Falls. You'll have retired as chief before it happens again.”

The next week was spent at half speed, with Lucy physically attached to me most of the time. I cleaned up before she saw me, leaving only the sling, but Lucy was pretty freaked out nonetheless. To her, a sick parent meant death. I made sure I put on clothes every morning and came downstairs, even if all I was able to do was nap on the couch while pretending to watch TV. Dave brought reports of Craig (“Fully recovered. Whining at full volume”) and the Byrnes (“Store's shut up, with a sign telling people to go to the CVS”). Hale brought reports of the Brouillettes (“They thank you for your diligent efforts in finding their daughter's killer”) and Jeff Polito.

“You're kidding me,” I said. “Jeff was the drug distribution network? He was going to move two million hits of meth?”

“Only a few hundred thousand. He was Denise's guy, not Danielle's.”

“Still. That's quite a leap from buying beer for high schoolers.”

“He's a trucker,” Hale said. “They don't call meth ‘trucker speed' for nothin'.”

“Was he connected to the Abominations?”

“Nope. Just helping Denise out on her project. It happened after Danielle died. He moved a little that she made out of store stock, but I don't know if he transported any, or simply had intent.”

Neither of them brought word of Marty. After ten days, I returned to the station and spent three days doing paperwork. I was supposed to be staying off the streets, leaving the heavy lifting at the Byrnes' house and the pharmacy to people who could still lift things. Everyone seemed to be done with the excitement, particularly once the Jelickson parents, along with Ray's body, left town in a blaze of exhaust. Behind Ray's hearse rode the Merrimen, the first of a long line of outlaw gangs that would honor Ray on his route back to California. The Abominations would pick them up in the lower Midwest, following through Arizona and California. An honor guard, of sorts.

Still, Marty stayed, and I visited him, hoping to shake his hand now that he was cleared.

“What?” Answering my knock wearing jeans and a wifebeater, Marty opened the door a foot and blocked the whole entrance with his body. The tattoo on his right arm of a skull with flames coming out of the eye sockets was in full relief.

“Back to bust me? Or maybe show me pictures of my dead wife and brother?”