“Jessica!” Linnie shrieked, flailing at Heywood, her bare palms slapping his naked skin, leaving white handprints.
“I thought she was in the truck!” Heywood yelled in self-defense, trying to ward off her blows. “There wasn’t anything I could do!”
“You could have grabbed her hand and pulled her out,” Joe said calmly. “You could have taken her to the hospital.”
Linnie was whaling away at him now, her hands balled into fists, swinging like an eggbeater.
“Linnie…” Joe said.
“Damn you!” Heywood cried, backhanding her across the face. “Stop it! I was freezing and wet. Smudge drove us into the goddamn lake! There was nothing I could do!”
Linnie was thrown back, but kicked at him hard. The heel of one of her feet caught him under the heart and brought a groan.
Joe had his weapon out, finding it in the folds of his clothes. “Darrell, you’re under arrest. I think the charge is officially ‘Reckless Endangerment.’ Kind of describes your whole life here, I’d say. You could have helped Jessica Antelope, but that wouldn’t have fit your little movie here, would it?”
Heywood howled in response, and stood up, tearing the top of the sweat lodge off, diving naked through the hole, his big body thumping the ground outside.
It wasn’t hard for Joe to follow the footprints in the snow, weaving in and out of the brush toward the river. And when Darrell Heywood began to moan, he was easy to locate.
Joe pushed through the brush.
Heywood had slipped on the ice of the river and fallen and was now stuck fast to it, his entire belly glued to the surface.
“I’m freezing here,” he said between sobs. “I can’t get free. I’m going to freeze to death.”
Joe shuffled across the ice and squatted down in front of Heywood.
“Hey, White Buffalo,” Joe said. “A real Indian would know not to run across a frozen river naked, I think.”
Heywood spat, and cursed. Said, “I’m freezing to death.”
“You’ve got a while yet,” Joe said. “But it’s not going to feel good when they peel you off.”
Heywood sobbed, his tears freezing instantly on the ice.
Joe saw the flash of wigwag lights bouncing off of the low-hanging wood smoke, heard the sirens coming.
“You never saw her play,” he said. “You didn’t know what she could do.”