I had no good answer for myself.
Something about turning over a new leaf, though. Making myself over. Becoming — I don’t know — a little less self-indulgent, a little more self-denying; a little less content with things as they were, a little more willing to risk what I was — or something.
The Winter of Virginiak’s Discontent?
No good answer, like I said, but...
It had something to do with Sandy.
I could never kid myself for very long about anything, and this was the no-mercy truth of it, even if I couldn’t find the words to make the connection between what I was doing to myself and...
Never mind!
I kept running.
Focused my eyes hard on the road at my feet, ignored the stitches in my back and side, the heaviness in my thighs, the stinging in my lungs, and kept moving, feeling the sweat start to puddle inside my clothes, thinking I was probably daring pneumonia, but knowing I wasn’t going to stop until...
The lookout loomed on my left, and I crossed the road to give the snowman a closer look because it had been well done and because it would take my mind off the pain for a second or two. Dawn was just beginning to break over Mount Hood in the east, and that in itself was worth a look. I was ten feet away from the bench when it finally hit me.
This was no snowman.
I came to a breath-heaving stop, took a moment to gather myself, then walked around to the front of the bench, squatted down, and peered up into the snow-frosted face of a dead man.
After a short, silent debate, I jogged back down to the ranger station to call the police. It was a bit closer than my cabin, and an easier run. There were a couple of houses in the general area, but there seemed no pressing reason to disturb anyone else’s early morning — the dead man was in no need of immediate attention.
So the ranger station it was. I made the call, then hiked back up to the lookout where the body still waited, its head tilted in a questioning attitude, and I waited with it, wondering what the question could have been.
Ten minutes later, a large black Land Rover sporting the logo of the Big Pine County Sheriff’s Department turned off the highway and stopped, and a deputy sheriff got out.
He noted the body, took a brief statement from me, asked a few short questions, told me I’d have to wait for the sheriff, then called for help, which arrived a little less quickly — another Land Rover, with more deputies and the black sedan of the county coroner, who began a lightfingered examination of the body.
I was asked a few more questions — actually the same ones — by one of the new deputies. A few more cars arrived — a reporter and a couple of gawkers — so the deputies left me alone and busied themselves keeping those people back, and then an ambulance pulled in and another sedan with four more deputies.
One of them cordoned off the area of the lookout with crime scene tape; one took pictures of the body, the bench, and the general area; one began a more heavy-handed examination of the corpse; and one asked me the same questions I’d answered twice before.
I was feeling chilled by then, and was getting a little irritated. I wanted to leave, but when I said so to the deputy, he said I’d have to wait for the sheriff, who was on the way, sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.
Which left me stamping my feet and shivering and getting even more irritated for nearly half an hour.
I was just about to tell them I was leaving and the hell with it when somebody said, “Here’s the sheriff now.”
I looked where everyone else looked and saw a black, tinted window Trans Am turn into the lookout, pull over beside the ambulance, gun its engine once, and stop.
Finally!
The driver’s side door sprang open, and after a second or two, a tall woman wearing a black Stetson, sunglasses, a wool parka, bluejeans, and brown alligator cowboy boots got out and looked straight at me.
I came away from the lookout rail where I’d been standing and took a couple of steps in her direction because I wanted to get this over with fast, but stopped when she took off her glasses and grinned at me.
“Mr. Virginiak?” she said.
I gave her a face-placing frown — blonde, blue-eyed, tanned, freckled, mid-thirtyish face, good straight features. I took a step closer, then I had her name. “Captain Dilly!” I said with a laugh.
She came over to where I stood, and we shook hands.
“I’ll be damned,” she told me. “Small world.”
“It is that,” I agreed. “It’s good to see you.”
Dilly, Loretta, Captain, USAR.
Nearly three years now since I’d seen her last, and she looked quite the same except for the change of uniform.
Which was pretty damned good, actually.
During the Gulf War buildup, she’d been one of three reserve officers we’d gotten as replacements assigned to the 40th Army Counterintelligence Office at Fort Lewis. Of the three, and looks aside, she’d been the only one worth remembering.
She’d only worked for us a short while — not very much longer than the war itself — so I didn’t get to know her well, but she’d struck me as better-than-usual reservist material. I’d liked her and had been sorry when she was deactivated.
“You look different out of uniform,” I told her, tapping the eight-pointed silver star on her jacket. “And it’s Sheriff Dilly, eh?”
“That’s right,” she said archly, “so mind yourself. What are you doing here anyway?”
“I’m on leave,” I told her. “I’ve rented a cabin up the road.”
“Fear Mountain Lodges?” she asked in a mildly surprised way.
I nodded. “I was just out for a run this morning when I came across that.” I waved at the body on the bench.
She nodded to one of the deputies who was hovering nearby.
He came forward shaking his head. “I don’t know what this is, sheriff. No wallet. No I.D. A hundred and twenty and change in his jacket pocket.”
“Not robbery, then,” she said.
“Nope.”
“Anyone know who he is?”
“Not so far.”
She started toward the bench.
“There’s a good couple of inches of snow covering him,” the deputy continued, “so we know the body’s been here at least eight or nine hours. It didn’t start snowing up here until after ten last night, and it stopped around midnight.” He waved a hand at the coroner, who stood patiently near the body. “Dave says he can’t see any obtrusive marks on the body, but he can’t be sure until he gets it into the lab.”
Dilly squatted down in front of the frozen corpse and looked into his face. “Indian?” she said.
“Or Mexican,” the deputy suggested.
“Or Asian,” I offered.
She examined the body’s jacket, a thin windbreaker, stood up, and shook her head. “Looks like he just sat down and died.”
Dilly started giving orders then, brisk, sensible commands that got the crime scene work finished, the body bagged and on its way to the morgue, and several deputies on their way to question residents in the area.
She gave a brief statement to the reporter, who wanted and got her picture. When the last gawker had gone, she turned back to me and asked if I wanted a lift.
“So,” I said, once we were under way, “I seem to recall you were with the Portland P.D. when you got called up.”
Dilly nodded. “I quit to come up here about a month after I was separated from the army. I was senior deputy when the old sheriff died last month, so...” She shrugged.
“Blood stripe,” I said.
She laughed. “It may only be temporary,” she said. “They’re holding a special election in three months.”
“And you’ll be running?”
“Oh, I’ll be running, all right, but people around here have fixed ideas about what a sheriff is, and it isn’t female.” She paused. “It’s more like Attila the Hun in cowboy boots.”