Stretched out before me was a rising snowy plain, truly tundra as far as I could see, unmarked by anything, manmade or otherwise. I was calf-deep in the icy white stuff, but down here it was loose and wet, biting like frozen fingers through the soles and sides of my utterly inappropriate shoes. My enthusiasm for my brainstorm began to wane. I mean, there was no evidence here, none that I could see. Unless you looked a certain way at the surface of the snow. Was there an unnatural unevenness there? Kind of like faint ruts, way way down? Hard to tell, especially in the gray light with flurries angling down. We’d gotten, after all, twenty-one inches of snow on Thursday. Plenty enough to cover his tracks if he’d come skidding through here early enough.
But where would he have ended up?
The slope rose and then crested. From here I could not see what was beyond it. Quelling one more urge to turn around and get back into the nice warm Mustang, I tramped uphill through the knee-deep snow. It packed its way up under my pants cuffs and down into my shoes, causing my feet and lower legs to dampen and then numb. Hugging myself, I forced myself ahead, eyes on the prize, the crest of the slope. Beyond was a whole lot more white nothing. But this was a downslope, with several intermediate mounds, leading to what looked like a gully and another hill beyond. Amazing that this vast open area could exist here in the heart of a cloverleaf. Invisible to anyone passing by, especially with those walls of plowed snow alongside the roads.
Following the path of least resistance, I marched down the slope, aiming for the halfway point between two of the intermediate mounds. My legs were now numb from the knees down. The wind had picked up and was waging a serious attack on my coat. I hunched as I tromped along, hands fisted in the coat pockets. My chin was buried in the collar, mouth muttering monotonous oaths on the general theme of the things I do, the things I do. The snow fell thicker and dusk did, too. I did not realize how bad my vision was getting until I was barely twenty feet from the thing.
It was the first manmade object I’d encountered. It was a large, slanted rectangle, white, of course, being covered with snow except for just a black tip up high, the right angle of what appeared to be a rear fender.
My breath caught in my throat. Incipient hypothermia forgotten, I spread my arms and ran, high-stepping. The vehicle was nose-down, thrust like a blunt spear into what had to have been a sharp depression in the ground. Of course I could not tell that for sure, given the drifts of snow. As I drew nearer, I could see the whitish feint outlines of a rear wheel and a roof line. The ghostly silhouette of an urban assault vehicle, perhaps of the Ford Expedition variety.
Panting, I thrashed to a stop at the vehicle and brushed at the window. Peering in, I squinted long and hard. As my vision adjusted to the deeper dimness, I could just barely make out the interior white fuzzy dice hanging crazily from the sideways rear view mirror and, on the passenger side, the feint, crumpled outline of a body.
“So, it’s true then,” Shyla murmured, eyes downcast. “He did do all those things Virginia said.”
“ ’Fraid so,” I replied.
We stood in a hallway of the emergency room at Metro Detroit General. Around us bustled orderlies and nurses and people pushing gurneys bearing bodies, not all of them animate. The closed door in front of us said EXAM ROOM 2. NO ADMITTANCE. I was finally starting to thaw out and was leaving little puddles of melted snow on the linoleum floor around me.
Shyla shivered in her coat and hugged herself, half turned from me. “But why?” she asked softly.
I shrugged. “He’s just a man. People do bad things sometimes. It’s what happens.” I could relate. I thought, but did not say, that Randy Ryan had shown all the signs of a man who had gotten just so sick of himself. I could relate to that, too.
“What’s important,” I added, “is he was turning things around, trying to make things right.”
The young woman’s pale face crumpled, and she tottered to me, engulfing herself in a big hug. “It’s just so unfair!” she murmured into my neck through sobs. “Now he won’t get the chance to finish the job.”
I patted her back. “Don’t be too sure of that, kid. Doc says he’s got a fighting chance of—”
“Is this the room?” came a voice from behind me. We turned to see Virginia Ryan approaching, hatless, wearing a dark winter coat, short dark hair askew, lipless face pale, eyes icy as the outside. “Where is he?”
“What are you doing here, Virginia?” Shyla asked, disengaging from me.
“Your detective friend called me,” the mom said. “Which is only right, since I’m still your father’s wife, Jennifer. Surprised?”
Shyla’s eyebrows arched. “Not that Ben called you,” she said. “Surprised you’d care enough to show.”
Virginia stepped closer to us and glanced at the door.
“How is he?”
“He’s in a coma,” I answered. “Way dehydrated. Core temp is low. But in a way the freezing cold actually helped him. Retarded the bleeding from his crash injuries.”
“Will he live?” Virginia asked evenly.
“They won’t say for sure, naturally,” I answered. “Even if he does, he might lose some—”
The exam room door opened, and a nurse looked out at us. “Ms. Ryan?” Both women stepped forward. “Only one at a time,” the nurse commanded.
Shyla shot her mom a look. “Can I go first, Mother?” she asked.
“Very well, Shyla.”
The daughter went inside and closed the door. For long moments the mother and I just stood there. I could not help wondering if they were giving up on him in there, if I had been too late, with all my banging around and rookie mistakes. What Virginia was thinking was anyone’s guess. Presently she asked with the usual abruptness, “Well, are you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what, ma’am?”
“What he was doing up there. How he got in this fix.”
“Well, before the crash, he’d been to see his priest.”
“Confessing all?” Virginia asked, trying to sound hard and cynical and not quite succeeding.
“Don’t know about that,” I answered easily. “I do know about some of the other things he did while he was with Father Dave. If you’re ready to hear.”
She stared at me. “Well?”
I looked at her. Ready or not, I thought, here it comes. “Well, from Father Dave’s office he called his lady friend in Georgia and told her it was over. He called his boss to tell him he’d be making restitution for the money he stole. He called Detective Shanahan to tell him he was turning himself in. He called Shyla to tell her everything was getting fixed.” Virginia’s expression did not change. I thought my words were just bouncing off her, bouncing off the armor of her preconceived notions. “I know these things for a fact.”
“And then,” she said, “he took off from there, headed for the airport. He was blowing town. He did all that stuff to throw everyone off the scent—”
“That’s one way to connect the dots,” I cut in. “But there’s another way.”
She was looking at me intently now. “Yes?”
“Number one, if he were headed for the airport, he’d have turned west. Instead, he kept going south. You know where he was bound for, Virginia. You know it in your heart.”
“Where?” she asked, voice small.
“To your house. To see you. My guess is, to beg for your forgiveness.”
Just then came Shyla’s voice from inside the exam room: “Yes!”
Virginia blinked. Her throat worked She cupped her mouth with a hand that trembled I reached for the doorknob and opened the door. With a last glance at me, Virginia dashed through, and the door eased shut again.
Suddenly alone, I stared at the closed door. Reached out for the knob again, hesitated, let my hand drop. Under these circumstances the last thing they needed was me hanging around. I had never felt so suddenly useless. For a moment the unfairness of it blazed in my mind. Over already? Where was the applause, the admiration, the atta-boys? Where were the simple thank-yous, for heaven’s sake?