Another half hour, and most of his face was stiff and the nerves had shut down, and still he hadn’t seen a single house, a single structure of any kind, except the ghostly shadows of fish shacks on the ice he’d passed earlier. A lot of them had heaters, and, Lord, he’d been tempted, but he couldn’t go back there.
Fifteen minutes more and he decided that this was the biggest lake in the state, the only one without houses on it, and that he was going to die. The funny thing was that it wasn’t even that cold out; not by Minnesota standards. Ten, maybe even fifteen degrees, and freezing to death in that kind of balmy winter temperature would be just plain embarrassing.
So he pushed on for another agonizing ten minutes, veering away from the lakeshore, up a shallow hill to a flat, empty field that seemed to go on forever. The hill, shallow as it was, had damn near killed him. By the time he got to the top he’d fallen twice, his lungs were burning, and the sweat was freezing his hair to his forehead. That’s when he started counting steps instead of minutes, and he knew that was a bad sign. Bend a knee, he told himself, then let the thigh muscles scream while he lifted a foot he could no longer feel above the snow, then stop to breathe and cough and then do it all over again with the other leg. He stopped counting at five, because he couldn’t remember the number that came next. And that’s when he saw it.
Such a dim, tiny light, barely visible in the distance through the falling snow, maybe a mirage, but maybe not. He started counting steps again.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of shelter he’d been hoping for, but it was out of the wind, a few degrees warmer than the outside, and by God it was going to save his sorry life, and the truth was that for the first time in a long time, he had a lot to live for.
Payback, he thought, stumbling around on half-frozen feet, feeling his way in the darkness with half-frozen fingers until he found what he needed to survive the night.
9
Iris Rikker hadn’t been up before the sun in ten years, and she didn’t like it. By the time she stumbled her way through the dark bedroom to the wall switch, she’d cracked her elbow on the dresser and stepped in a fresh pile of cat vomit.
‘Shit. Shit.’
The offending cat materialized when the light came on. She was sitting near her little surprise, blinking her startled pupils down to pinheads.
‘Puck, you puke,’ Iris muttered, then hopped on one bare foot into the bathroom and stuck the other one in the sink.
The water was freezing. Iris sucked air through her teeth when it hit her foot. It would take long minutes for hot water to rise two floors from the ancient heater in the basement, and she didn’t have extra minutes this morning. New water heater. It was first on the list of home improvements she might be able to afford now. That was something, at least.
Even the sound of running water couldn’t drown out the breathy wail of the wind around this north corner of the old farmhouse. Icy pellets of sleet dived out of the dark to tap at the bathroom window, where a layer of frost had built up on the inside wooden sash again. New windows. Maybe that should be first.
She scowled at the sleet hitting the window as she dried her foot, thinking about moving to California, or Siberia – anywhere she could count on the weather to be reasonably consistent. Two days ago she’d ridden her bicycle the quarter-mile to her mailbox; yesterday the mailbox had disappeared under a foot of snow; this morning a new storm front was adding a coating of ice to the mix, just for openers.
The cat waited until Iris was sitting on the toilet, then came into the bathroom and simply stood there, staring at her.
‘Voyeur. Puking voyeur.’
Puck blinked at her, then came over to rub against her legs. Iris chose to interpret this as a kitty apology, and stroked the thinning black fur. The cat was fifteen this spring, and probably shouldn’t be blamed for the occasional uproar of an aging digestive system. ‘Poor Puck. Don’t you feel good?’
The cat began to purr, then promptly threw up on Iris’s other foot.
It was six a.m. and still dark when Iris finally went downstairs to the kitchen. She wore the clothes she’d laid out the night before after an agonizing hour of indecision. Black slacks, white pullover, and a black blazer waiting, draped over the back of her chair. She had purplish smudges under her eyes this morning, and makeup wasn’t helping.
She was in the middle of her first cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal when the phone rang.
‘Is this Iris Rikker?’ a male voice asked.
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Lieutenant Sampson. We’re down at Lake Kittering, public landing, you know where that is?’
‘Uh…’
‘North shore, just past the courthouse, right next to Shorty’s Garage. We’ve got a body.’
Iris stood absolutely still, connected to a brand-new world by the length of a phone cord. She took a breath. ‘I can be there in half an hour.’
‘No, you can’t. The roads are shit. But don’t worry. This one isn’t going anywhere.’
The click of a sudden disconnect made her blink. She eased the receiver back into its cradle, then took a step back from the phone and hugged her arms. She looked around at her cozy kitchen – white cupboards, dark green wallpaper, a jug of dried flowers on an oak table. It smelled like fresh coffee and the cinnamon candle she’d lit last night. It was a nice kitchen – a homey farm kitchen – and phone calls about bodies didn’t belong here.
There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door, and Iris looked into it as she pulled on a pair of moon boots she’d had for ten years and a black parka she’d bought last week. Something old, something new, she thought, wondering why she looked so small this morning; a little blond-haired woman with blue eyes too big for her face and very pale skin.
Damnit, there weren’t supposed to be bodies. Bodies had never been mentioned, not once.
She stared holes into the eyes of her reflection, mentally reinforcing who and what she was – onetime city girl, substitute English teacher at whatever school in the district would take her, and the brand-new deputy who’d been working a scant two months on night-shift dispatch because part-time teaching couldn’t pay the bills – and then she closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. Yesterday she had been those things. Today she was the newly elected sheriff of one of the largest rural counties in Minnesota, and some jackass named Sampson thought she was the person to call when you found a body lying around.
‘Oh, yeah,’ she breathed at the mirror, and then headed for the upstairs bathroom at a dead run.
Puck found her kneeling in front of the toilet.
Iris looked at her balefully. ‘Watch and learn, Puck.’
Aside from the monster under the bed and other such delicious childhood scares, Iris had never really been afraid of anything. In a life that, by most people’s standards, seemed charmed, there hadn’t been any reason for fear. Until Mark left, the bastard. For some reason, that changed everything. Suddenly the nighttime noises of the old house became sinister, imagined faces lurked just beyond every black window, and now she stood with her hand on the back-door knob, paralyzed by the thought of stepping outside onto her own porch, simply because it was dark out there. Oh, how she hated him for that; for shattering a self-assurance she had always taken for granted.
Damnit, you have never been afraid of the dark, and you are not afraid of the dark now.
‘Yeah, right,’ she said aloud, then opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.
The wind picked up as soon as Iris was away from the shelter of the house. It blew off the hood of her parka and whipped her hair in crazy circles around her head. Four steps away from the porch and the circle of light from the house bled into darkness. She slogged blindly in the general direction of her SUV through knee-deep drifts, cursing Mark again, because shoveling snow was supposed to be his job. Too bad he hadn’t stuck around long enough for the first snowfall – lots of people died of heart attacks while shoveling snow.