Deep Winter (9 page)

D
anny had the same dream again. It seemed to visit him when he was scared or confused or missed his folks a whole bunch. The dream always started in the middle of the pond. Wind snapped across the hard surface of frozen water, flurries of snow whizzing past. He stared down at his skates with two different-colored laces and watched them slice over the ice that blurred under them. He was laughing even though his nose stung and his ears throbbed from the cold. Then everything changed. The ice groaned and shifted under his ice skates, followed by the sound of snow crunching under his feet, and then the crackling of breaking ice filled the air. Above him the sky drifted clear as a bell jar. He tried running from the sound, but the crackling just got louder and louder no matter how fast his legs took him, until that was all he could hear.
Breaking ice.

The world below him gave way, and he got sucked into cold
darkness. The cold touched every part of him, water soaking through his winter clothes. His arms flailed in the ice water as it wrapped around his body like a wet sleeping bag. Screams were cut short as water was sucked down into his lungs, and he kicked and thrashed, but he sank deeper and deeper into the black abyss. Above him he could make out the shadows of his desperate parents, reaching down for him and yelling for help. They were surrounded by a cone of light. The same sunlight penetrated the dark water's surface, creating a hazy shaft of brightness that stopped short of reaching Danny. He kicked desperately to try to reach it. His hands stretched up toward the two shadowy forms that seemed to lean through the light. Under the water Danny could hear another cracking sound. It was louder than the one that had sucked him in. It sounded like hard claps of thunder. Loud and thick, and he could feel it in his bones. Ice collapsed all around the cone of light, and the shadowy figures plunged into the water over him. Their bodies twisted and swirled above him, creating clouds made up of thousands of tiny white bubbles of air. More water filled Danny's lungs, and he sank deeper. He let it take him and stopped fighting. Just gave up. The image of the sun above him grew smaller and smaller until it was a tiny point of light.

Then voices broke through his dream. Men's voices. They sounded familiar, but he had never heard them before in this dream.

“His jaw is broken in a few places. That much is for sure. Probably needs to be wired. Possibly surgery, but he's gonna have to go to the hospital for X-rays to determine all that.” The man sighed with a hint of a dry chuckle. “I'll be damned. Your deputy gave him a good walloping for sure.”

“Hell.” It sounded like the sheriff's voice.

Danny's eyes slowly flickered open. He stared up at the ceiling,
where a bright exam light shone down on him. He tried to lift his head up, but a shock of searing, red-hot pain ripped through his body from crown to toe. It kinda felt like when he was playing with that yellow jackets' nest behind the house when he was just a kid, but even worse. A few dozen angry wasps took after him and stuck their stingers in his face and neck and back. Danny had never felt pain like it again. Not until now.

Doc Pete put a warm hand to his chest. “Easy, boy.” Doc Pete always had a smile for Danny, but he wasn't smiling now. His pockmarked face and smudged-up glasses stared down at him, real sad like.

Doc Pete looked over to Lester. “You going to run him up to the hospital?”

Lester shook his head. “This situation's a little bigger than me right now. A homicide makes for state business. Fixing to put a call in to the Towanda state police office. Guess I need to call for an ambulance, too. Hell.”

“You want me to run over and take a look at Mindy?”

Lester shook his head again. “No need. She's gone. No way around that.”

Danny turned to look at Lester and tried to speak. He wanted to know where Mindy had gone to. Maybe she was okay after all. He opened his mouth, but his tongue stuck thick in his throat and another shot of pain made his skull flinch with a flare of white light.

“Never thought this boy could hurt a fly. Can hardly believe he would do such a thing.” Doc Pete spoke to Lester like Danny wasn't even there.

“Yup. Missus said the same sort of thing. But he was never the same after the accident. Losing his folks and all. Who knew what was ticking inside that brain of his?” The sheriff reached into his
shirt pocket and grabbed his smokes. Tapped one out and offered one to Doc Pete. The doctor accepted and both men lit up and sucked on their cigarettes.

“Well. Mind if I use your phone? Need to make a couple of calls.”

“Help yourself. Might just as well brew us a pot of hot coffee. Figures to be a long night. A long night.”

Lester sighed again and followed Doc Pete out of the exam room, neither one of them turning around to look at Danny.

C
arl slouched in a waiting-room chair that had seen better days, chewing at his fingers and his eyes twitching as if someone had just kicked a bunch of sand into his face. He never much cared for Doc Pete's office, because it was too quiet, and all the plants were made of plastic, and the pictures hanging on the walls were paintings of fields of flowers, and all the magazines were boring and out of date. The last time he'd visited Doc Pete's office had to be twenty years ago when he busted his head open after turning over his dirt bike. Doc Pete put more than a dozen stitches in his skull and told him to come back in a few weeks to have them removed. Carl never came back. He ended up taking the stitches out himself.

Carl had to help load Danny into Lester's truck and then drive over to Doc Pete's with him. Sokowski stayed behind at Mindy's, and when Carl left the trailer, Sokowski gave him a look that said it all:
Don't say a fucking word.

Carl jumped an inch off his seat as the door to the exam room opened and Doc Pete and Lester stepped out into the hallway. He saw Danny sprawled out on the exam table for a second before they closed the door behind them. Carl tried to read their expressions. Tried to figure out if they knew what he and Sokowski had done. Danny probably told them everything. Probably told them that Mindy was dead when he got there.

Oh, Jesus, they know what I've done.

Carl's heart pounded like a jackhammer. He could hear the thudding in his chest and thought that Lester and Doc Pete would be able to hear it, too. He kept his gaze on the two men at the end of the hallway, whispering to each other and looking his way every few seconds.

Maybe I should run. Just run out the goddamn door.

But it was too late for that. Lester and Doc Pete came down the hallway and stopped in front of his chair.

Lester sighed, searched his pockets for his pack of smokes, and lit a fresh one off the one that was still burning. “Carl.”

Just a single word, but it scared the hell out of Carl. He stood up with a bolt, barely able to contain the twitching in his arms and legs. He wanted to confess. Wanted to blurt out his guilt and be done with it.

Lester pressed his index finger and thumb into the corners of his eyes and rubbed at them hard. “Do me a favor and stay here and make sure Danny doesn't go nowhere. He's a mess and probably can't stand on his own two feet, but you never know. I'll meet up with the staties over at the trailer and send them back to pick him up in a little bit. Doc Pete will be here, but just in case.”

“What did Danny say? He talking?” Carl asked, a little too quickly.

Lester stopped working at his eyes and gave Carl a curious look. “You okay there, son?”

Carl found himself taking a step away from the sheriff. He forced his head to nod up and down. “Yeah. Just kinda in shock, I guess. Thought maybe Danny might've said what happened.”

“What's to say? Pretty clear what he did. Besides, his jaw is so messed up, I don't imagine Danny will be talking for a while.”

Carl glanced over at the door to the exam room. “You sure you want me to stay here? With Danny.”

“Don't have much of a choice here at the moment. Once I get back to the trailer, I'll send Mike on over. Shouldn't be but a half hour or so.”

Carl's big possum eyes blinked rapid-fire for a second. “But I ain't a deputy or anything.”

“Well, I guess for the next few hours you'll be an unofficial one. I don't believe Danny will be doing anything else, but just in case it might be better to have someone here with the doc.”

Carl kept staring toward the exam room, opened his mouth to say something else, then just nodded instead.

Doc Pete showed Lester into his office and shut the door behind them, and Carl went back to gnawing at his fingernails again. Chewing at them until his fingers started to bleed a little. He kept glancing toward the door of the exam room, knowing he should just stay put, but finally started to move toward it. He got a few feet, stopped halfway down the hall, and checked back over his shoulder.

What the hell am I doing?

He was having trouble thinking—his brain doing flip-flops. He rubbed at the thinning hair on his head and noticed how badly his hands were shaking. Everything had happened so fast. He knew that Sokowski had a hair-trigger temper but never thought he was
capable of what Carl saw him do to Mindy. This thing was bad. Part of him knew he should tell the sheriff what had happened before things went any further, but it wasn't just Sokowski that was in trouble. Carl had held her goddamned hands and watched as Sokowski had choked the life right out of her.

He helped. He helped Sokowski kill her for no good reason. He'd be going to jail for what he did. Rotting away in some cell all because of Sokowski.

Carl got to thinking about his kids, little Betty still tromping around the house in diapers. She went through about six or eight of them a day, and he wished he would have changed them once in a while instead of making the wife do all that kind of stuff. Baths, supper, bedtime—all that fell to Kelly to do. And Ben was an awful handful, always skinning up his knees, breaking everything he touched, and picking on his sister until she bawled louder than a coyote. Carl would sit right there in the living room chair, drinking beer and watching it all unfold and never lift a damn finger to help out his old lady.

Maybe he always bitched to Sokowski about Kelly, but she was a good woman—married
his
sorry ass. She was a good mama, too. Raising the kids the best she could. And what did she get in return? All he did was bitch and bellyache about having to always eat chicken-fried steak, that the trailer was a pigsty, that all she did was sit around and watch that stupid
Wheel of Fortune.
Maybe she'd gained a little weight since having the kids, but Carl knew he wasn't any prize. Losing hair and gaining weight around the belly by the day.

Carl regretted everything he didn't do for Kelly. Never took her to a nice dinner at the Salty Cow. Hardly ever remembered her birthday, and even if he did, he never got her anything. Never bought
her a new dress or fancy shoes for Christmas or their anniversary. He never did shit but bitch.

It was now only because he faced a whole mountain of trouble that Carl got to thinking about all this stuff—taking his wife and kids for granted and treating them like shit. If he somehow got out of this whole mess, he promised himself all that would change. He'd help around the trailer, take some time for the kids, and treat Kelly like something other than a royal pain in the ass. If he got away with what he'd done tonight, he'd stop hanging out with Sokowski and get a real job over at Taylor Beef or up at Sylvania in Towanda. Hell, he would even be willing to give up the pot and slow down his drinking to just the weekends. Whatever it took.

Damn Mike.

Carl licked at his dry lips and reached for the door to the exam room.

S
tate Trooper Bill Taggart sat in the rec room that was the gathering place for officers reporting to duty and for those who were wrapping up their shift for the day. He nursed a lukewarm cup of awful coffee, rereading a dog-eared copy of Charles Bukowski's
Post Office
for the fourth or fifth time. He liked all Bukowski's books, but
Post Office
had to be his favorite. The crazy bastard drank too much and chased too much tail, but his observations of all the little things in life—sad, pathetic people and the lives they led—cracked him up. Taggart always kept some kind of book handy. He'd rather read a book than talk to the mental midgets he worked with.

A half dozen officers shot the breeze at other tables, talking about their night and making plans of where to go after they clocked out for the day. Taggart was at least twice as old as every one of them and looked twice as old as well. In their mid-twenties, single, and horny, and they partied as if every day was a Friday night. The
rec room was like a frat house around the station, and Taggart was the dinosaur that didn't fit into their clique. The odd man out. Story of his life. He knew they talked about him and laughed their asses off at him behind his back. Taggart's fondness for books earned him the nickname of “Professor” in the Towanda office, and that was fine with him—let them laugh.

He glanced at his watch. One-forty
A.M.
Twenty more minutes, and then he would pack it up for the night. His shift had been pretty uneventful. Dealt with a few snow-related automobile accidents in the area and assisted in a holdup at a doughnut shop downtown. A junkie needing to get some fast cash for his fix had walked into a Dunkin' Donuts with nothing but a baseball bat and a bad jonesing for heroin. The dirtbag had smashed a few windows and broken the arm of the teenage clerk, then made the mistake of using the john to relieve himself. Happened all the time—a felon so wired and jacked up by committing his little crime of theft or rape or murder that the urge to defecate becomes too overwhelming. When Taggart arrived, the junkie still sat in the men's-room stall, heeding the call of nature. Taggart enjoyed shoving the punk's head into the unflushed toilet. Served the bottom-feeder right.

Worthless street scum. It's just getting worse.

From the corner of his eye, Taggart watched the new guy approach. Tall and gangly, a big pointy nose over thin lips, and barely any facial hair to speak of. At the table behind the new guy, three other officers looked on with big, stupid grins.

“Hey, Bill. A few of us are heading over to the Cork and Bottle after our shift if you want to join us,” the new guy offered.

The other officers cracked up at the table, loving every second of it. Taggart picked up his coffee, stood, and spoke loud enough so that the others could hear him.

“Tripper, right? I appreciate the offer, but I don't drink. Five years sober now.”

Tripper turned a bright shade of red and backed away from Taggart like he might be contagious. “Shit. Sorry. I didn't know. I was just talking with the other guys. I'm sorry. Really.”

Taggart gathered up his book and newspaper and spoke slow. “I know you didn't. You're just getting initiated, is all. Have a good time, and drive safely.” After Taggart stepped out of the rec room, he heard the eruption of laughter behind him.

Assholes. Self-righteous assholes.

He walked down the long hallway, fluorescent lights glimmering off the spick-and-span linoleum floor, and stepped into the men's room. His blood pressure was soaring.

Bullshit at work. Bullshit at home. Can't get away from the bullshit.

He stepped into the last stall and locked the door behind him. He listened to make sure that no one else was in the restroom, then removed the lid to the toilet basin.

They can kiss my ass.

Taggart reached into the water basin and pulled out a pint of Smirnoff vodka. It was half empty. He spun the cap off and tilted back the bottle. He drank deep twice, then washed it down with the cup of coffee he was still carrying.

Taggart recapped the bottle, then looked at his watch again. One forty-five
A.M.

Hell with it. Almost quitting time.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Taggart spun the cap back off and drained the rest of the clear liquid down his throat. He wrapped the empty bottle in the sports page and stuck it in his back pocket. And, as was his routine, Taggart took the ever-present box
of peppermint Tic Tacs from his breast pocket and popped three mints into his mouth and crunched them up.

Taggart stepped to the sink and washed his face a few times with soap and hot water until he thought he could pass the sniff test. He dried his face off and then made the mistake of glancing in the mirror—he looked like hell. His face was red, splotchy, and bloated. His head looked enormous, too big for his body, like the Pillsbury Doughboy minus the cheery smile. He had a pronounced brow that stood guard over deep-set, kelly green eyes. Blond hair turning white. Big, thick shoulders supported a thick neck. He had always been barrel-chested, but now his gut kept getting larger, heavier, and lower. He leaned a little closer to the mirror and inspected a few tiny red spider veins on the tip of his nose.

How does everybody not know? It's written all over you, you piece of garbage.

He turned away from his reflection. Couldn't stand looking anymore at the man he had become. Once upon a time, some twenty years ago, Taggart used to look good in a uniform. He turned quite a few heads in his day. But not recently. The booze had seen to that.

He shook a few more Tic Tacs into his mouth and stepped out of the restroom. He headed in the direction of the locker room to put another day to an end, tired feet barely lifting off the floor.

“Bill?”

Taggart stopped at the sound of his name. He turned too quickly and almost lost his balance. The half pint was hitting him pretty fast and hard. A female desk sergeant walked down the hall toward him holding a blue slip of paper.

Shit. You got to be kidding me.

The female officer stopped in front of him and held out the blue
slip of paper. “We got a call from the sheriff's office in Wyalusing over in Bradford County. Homicide. Female victim. The local sheriff says that they have the suspect in custody.”

Taggart listened to her but still didn't take the blue slip of paper from her hand. She extended it out a little further. “Ferguson wants you to take this.”

“Christ. Just great.” Taggart reluctantly took the slip of paper. “I was just getting ready to head home.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Guess you'll get the OT.”

Taggart looked at the slip of paper like it was written in Latin. “Wyalusing? Sounds like the sticks. Where the hell is it?”

“About thirty miles southeast of here. You know where Wysox is?”

“Yeah. I know the place.”

“Well, Wysox is the last town with streetlights before you get to Wyalusing.”

“Christ,” he said again.

The female officer offered him a half smile. “Drive safe.” She turned and went back down the hallway.

Taggart stared at the blue slip of paper for what seemed like an eternity, then sighed and made his way toward the locker room. He needed to get something for his drive.