In the Bleak Midwinter (35 page)

From the hillside behind her, she heard an enraged bellow. She skidded to a halt. She turned around, her feet deadened, her legs burning and stinging with cold, her arms cramped and aching. She clutched the boots in her stiff, clumsy hands and shook them over her head.

“Suck wind, you loser! I’m gonna put your boots over my fireplace and laugh at you every time I see ’em!” She spun around and bounded away. Another garbled, angry cry. She could make out, “Bitch!” and “kill you…” There was a sound of branches cracking, a deep whumpf as a heavy load of snow slid off an evergreen. Was he coming after her? Clare churned through the snow, blinking away the flakes that landed on her eyelashes, desperate to find that ridge.

She fell onto it, face first, when her nerveless feet rolled over a branch hidden underfoot and sent her sprawling. She swiped at her face, a hopeless gesture of drying, and groped for the boots. Dangling one glove from her teeth, she knotted the laces together and hung them over her shoulder. She went up the ridge soundlessly, listening for any indications that her attacker was on her trail. The huge silence of the forest was disorienting; she had no way of knowing if he had given up on catching her or if the sounds of his pursuit were being muffled by the snow and the trees.

At the top of the ridge, Clare crouched, looking for her old tracks. She finally found a few, frighteningly indiscernable, already vanishing under the falling snow. She stood up, thighs and back complaining, and pressed a gloved thumb hard between her eyes. Risk that the ridge would lead her to the road? Or backtrack along to the camp road, hoping that there was enough of a trail left to follow?

There was a sharp crack followed by a rustle. Impossible to tell how far away. Her heart seized hard, trying to send the icy slurry that was her blood into her frozen extremities. Time to fish or cut bait. She took one last look at the blurred marks she had left climbing up the ridge during her flight from the camp road. She stamped her boots and waded into the virgin snow to her right.

It was slow going. Plodding over branches and around trees, stumbling down one side or another and scrambling back up to the narrow ridge crest, misstepping again and again because she felt as if she were walking on wooden boxes, unable to read the terrain under her feet.

The cold stole inside quietly, implacably. Her legs had gone numb. Beneath her parka, she shivered spasmodically, violent quakes that did nothing to dispel the damp chill of her skin. Her face felt raw, her hands distant and unwieldy. Even her brain seemed stiff with cold. Instead of listening alertly for any noise from her attacker, she found herself drifting, mesmerized by her legs breaking the snow, by the constant movement of the flakes filling the air, by the patterns of the trees she slapped against as she plowed onward. Birch, pine, birch, unknown, fir, fir, hemlock.

With a start, she realized she had run out of ridge. The thin spine of rock had melded seamlessly into the forest floor, no slope on either side of her to keep her headed in one direction. No indication of which way she should continue. Nothing to keep her from wandering in circles until she surrendered to the cold.
They say hypothermia is a happy death
, the old warrant officer observed. Angry, frustrated tears flooded her eyes and spilled over, hot against her raw skin. She took off a glove and wiped them away with the heel of her hand. Breathed in shakily. Okay. She would navigate by line-sighting between trees, even if she could only see a few feet ahead. Tree by tree, she would try to keep to a straight path. If she didn’t reach the road within… a half hour, she would dig in. Branches and evergreen boughs were sure to provide her with some protection. Snow itself was an insulating material.

She had to force her spine to straighten, her legs to move forward. Her fear had cooled, too, to chilly despair. She sighted a marker tree and stumbled through the snow. When she reached it, she did it again. And again. And again.

When she caught the first flash of light from the corner of her eye, it almost didn’t register. It flashed again, and she jerked her head left, her mouth dropping open. It was a flashlight beam, a strong one, casting through the forest from some distance away. She steadied herself against a birch. Either she was saved, or there were two of them. All she had to do was find out which.

She giggled involuntarily. All she had to do was stalk this one, knock him down and whack him with her flashlight. Then she could take his car keys. She giggled again, shrilly, unable to stop herself.
Stress and tension
, the warrant officer drawled.
Screws up your thinkin’
. She swallowed a giggle, hiccuped, giggled some more. Hit herself three times hard in the midsection. When she was silent again, she set out for the light in the distance.

“Dispatch ten-fifteen, this is unit ten-fifty-seven.” Russ gingerly picked up the Styrofoam cup of hot cocoa and blew on it.

“Unit ten-fifty-seven, this is dispatch.”

“Hey, Harlene. You get ahold of Lyle and Noble yet?”

“I reached Lyle, he said he can come on in. Haven’t been able to find Noble yet.”

Russ took a sip and swiped whipped cream off his upper lip. His arteries were probably clogging even as he idled in the Kreemie Kakes parking lot, but on a stormy winter afternoon, nothing beat their homemade hot chocolate. He’d do penance later tonight when Linda served up frozen diet dinners. “Keep trying. Two Saturdays before Christmas, nobody’s gonna let a snowstorm stop ’em from shopping. I want to make sure we have enough men on the road once folks start plowing into each other.”

“That’s why I’m doing all my Christmas shopping over the phone this year.”

Russ took another sip before keying his mike. “Did you know Linda wants to put out a catalogue?” It was all she could talk about when he had picked her up at the train station noontime.

“Does she? Good for her! Sell enough of those fancy curtains and you can retire a rich man. Let her support you.”

“That’s the plan.” He slid the hot chocolate into a plastic cup holder. The prices she had been quoting for publishing the damn thing would have made his eyes pop out if he hadn’t been wearing his glasses, but she was convinced the increased sales would make it worthwhile. Linda knew a damn sight more about the care and feeding of money than he ever would. He hadn’t asked if increased sales would make their lives more worthwhile.

“Dispatch, I’m rolling out of Main and Canal, heading for Route forty-seven. Anything else?”

“Reverend Fergusson called a half hour ago. Said she’d be in her office in the church until five thirty or so. Want me to raise her for you?”

He tapped the microphone against his chin. “No,” he said, “I’ll swing by that way. Let me know if you can’t get Noble, we may have to call in one of the part-time guys. It’s gonna be a mess out here within a few hours.”

The church was dark when Russ pulled into the tiny parking area out back, but he could see lights shining from the attached building that housed the offices and parish hall. The kitchen door was locked tight. He followed the walkway shoveled around the parish hall until he reached the big double doors. Open, of course. He shook his head. It wouldn’t occur to her to lock the door behind her.

“Clare? Hey, Clare, it’s me. Russ.” He brushed snow off his parka. The coffeemaker squatting on the table was on. So were the hall lights. In Clare’s office, the remains of a fire burned low on the brick hearth. Her appointment book, a fistful of pink phone message slips and a half-full mug of cold coffee sat on her desk.

“Clare? You here?” Maybe she had run over to the rectory? He backtracked outside, crossed the parking area and craned to see over the tall boxwood hedge separating Clare’s driveway from the church grounds. The rectory was dark. No tire tracks or footprints marred the fresh snow on her steps.

Frowning, he returned to her office. What the hell had taken her in such an all-fired hurry she couldn’t bank the fire or turn off the coffeemaker? He glanced at her appointment book. Nothing for Saturday except a morning visit to the Infirmary. He flipped through the pink phone message slips. Nothing. He walked down the shadowy hall to the cold, dark church. A single votive candle hung in a red glass container to the left of the altar, washing a carved wooden cabinet with a ruddy glow. “Clare?” he called. His voice echoed back from hard lines of stone.

He slapped his gloves against one thigh, talking himself out of the unease creeping up the base of his skull. She had probably been called away on one of those mysterious “pastoral emergencies.” No big deal. There was nothing compelling him to find out what it was. Of course, if he listened to the answering machine, he might be able to figure out where she had gone without making an ass of himself calling around. He stalked back up the hall, annoyed at Clare for being so damn hard to get hold of, annoyed even more at himself for wasting time worrying about it.

The main office was as dark as the church. He snapped on the lights, dropped into the secretary’s chair, punched the blinking red button on the answering machine. It beeped and obediently began reciting its messages. Next to the phone was a spiral-bound book for written messages, yellow carbon copies, and unused pink tear-out squares. He sat up straighter. There were carbon records of his calls, that one about the baptism, a meeting, and there, slopping over two spaces, a detailed message he hadn’t seen on Clare’s desk.

Russ held the memorandum book at arm’s length, tilting his head back to make out the words. A meeting with Kristen McWhorter up in the mountains? He closed his eyes, envisioning the route described on the message copy. Somewhere around Tenant or Buck Mountain? West of Lake Lucerne. Wherever this cabin was, it would be one hell of a tough drive for Clare’s car. He cut off the recording in the middle of some woman going on about her son and dialed the station. “Harlene? I need you to find a phone number for me. Kristen McWhorter. It’ll be in either McWhorter file.”

He traced the slashes underlining
URGENT
! while waiting for Harlene to return with the number. Jumping into that piece of flashy junk and driving into the mountains without stopping to think about the consequences sounded just like Clare. Somebody needed to teach that woman to measure twice and cut once.

“Chief?” Harlene rattled off Kristen’s number. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nah. I’m just trying to track down Reverend Fergusson. She’s not here at the church. If she happens to call in, make sure you find out how I can reach her.”

“You got it.”

He hung up and immediately dialed Kristen’s apartment. It rang once. Twice. Three times.

“Hello?”

“Kristen? This is Chief Van Alstyne.”

“Oh, Christ. What is it now? You find something new?”

“No. Kristen, did you call Reverend Fergusson earlier today and ask her to meet you and your mother at a cousin’s cabin? Someplace near Tenant Mountain?”

There was a blank pause. “What? I’m sorry, Chief, my cousins live in trailers, not mountain cabins. I haven’t spoken with Clare since the day before yesterday. What’s going on?”

The unease Russ had been fending off jelled into a solid icy mass of dread. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Can you—”

He dropped the receiver in its cradle, rubbing his forehead with his fist. Christ on a bicycle. The question of who had set out to lure Clare into the Adirondack wilds would have to be put on hold. Whatever was waiting for her there was more important.

He tore the yellow carbon sheet out of the memorandum book and left the church office at a fast dogtrot. In his cruiser, he radioed Harlene while firing the engine up and maneuvering out of the tiny parking area. “Ten-fifteen, this is ten-fifty-seven, come in.”

“Ten-fifty-seven, this is dispatch, come back.”

“Harlene, I want you to call in Tim and Duane for traffic duty. Somebody pretending to be Kristen McWhorter conned Reverend Fergusson into driving up into the mountains.” Squinting at the yellow sheet, he read the directions to Harlene. “I’m heading after her. I’m inbound to the station, gonna switch this cruiser for my truck. She’ll handle the roads up there better.” He slowed to take the left onto Main.

“Do you want me to send backup along?”

He frowned at the snow spattering against his windshield. “No. I have a feeling we’re going to be short-handed as it is. I can handle this. Ten-fifty-seven out.”

He pulled into the station’s parking lot as he hung up his mike. His truck was parked in the rear, already blanketed with snow. He killed the cruiser’s engine, got out, unlocked the trunk. From its locked safety box, he removed the rifle and a box of shells. He cracked the magazine. The chambers were loaded.

Russ laid the rifle and the ammunition in the backseat of the pickup before starting it up. It roared to life reassuringly, warming up fast as Russ swept the dry powdery snow off the windows and headlights. By the time he hiked himself up into the cab, warm air was blasting from the vents. He tossed his gloves onto the yellow memorandum sheet, reversed, and rolled out of the lot, the four-wheel-drive gripping tight to the packed-down snow.

He made good time, considering the roads. Traffic was heavy on Route 9, as he had predicted, shoppers heading home to fix dinner passing shoppers just hitting the stores. The evening trade would be starting soon, maybe not dinners-out so much in this storm, but worse, habitual drinkers who spent every Saturday night on a barstool, Christmas party-goers who wouldn’t see anything wrong in having just one more cup of rum and eggnog.

The driving was trickier once he had taken the exit to Tenant Road. His truck held well to the road, but it was a bad surface, driven over just enough to be slushy and half-frozen. His windshield wipers beat away steadily at the spitting snow. The sound made him think of Wednesday night, driving through the last storm, Clare in the passenger seat, exhausted and weeping. Paying attention to everyone’s feelings except her own, until they snuck up and blindsided her. A single car approached. He squinted to make it out, snorting as it crept past slowly. Some Subaru. God damn, he should have dragged her to the Fort Henry dealership and made her lease something winter-worthy.