Murder in a Very Small Town Page 8

  He was standing directly behind her. His hands rose to caress her shoulders, but he didn’t allow them to touch. Instead, he followed the turn of her head.

  Wiki was scanning the hut. It was no bigger than a walk-in closet. The walls were pale wood. To her left there was a wide wood bench, long enough to lay on, with two folded blankets and a half-pillow. On the back wall there was a toilet atop a canister, and a single bookcase that was half-full. The opposite wall was bare except for a hanging rectangle of yellow canvas. A window? Before it was a golden yellow love seat, end table, and a second lamp.

  To her right, a camp stove stood on metal legs with an ice chest beside it. She saw tools, a radio, a neat stack of well-thumbed notebooks, and a squat metal box that had coils like a heater.

  “This is not the norm,” Jame said over her shoulder. He could smell his shampoo in her falling blonde hair.

  “You’re too young to know what is and isn’t normal,” Wiki said to the room. “But I’ll grant you this one. What do you mean?”

  Jame leaned back from the harshness of her voice. He looked around the hut. “It’s size. It’s way bigger than the norm—the others.”

  Wiki stepped away from him to the pine wall to their left. She moved to the pillow end of the bench bed and looked at the picture pinned to the wood. It was a large photograph. She recognized Jame in the shot. Her hand went out to it, but did not touch. She turned her lovely, sleepy eyes to Jame. Her left eyebrow arched.

  Jame stepped closer and traced her raised arm to her hand. Her fingertips were a breath away from touching the photograph.

  “More un-normal?” she asked, her tone slightly less harsh.

  He looked at the photograph, and his eyes widened in confusion and surprise.

  “Bet you consider Abel as normal,” Wiki said, stepping aside and looking up to Jame’s expression. He stepped back, giving her room, while continuing to look at the image. He didn’t reply. He heard her sit down on the love seat.

  There was no fishing equipment. No hole in the ice or a canvas shroud over one.

  Wiki was on the far side of the love seat, her boots pulled in. She was rubbing her hands together with one glove held in her teeth. Jame crossed to the propane heater and lit it. The coils began to glow and the heater started to hum. He cranked the control knob to full.

  “This is nice and weird and all, but why did you bring me here?” Wiki asked.

  “I thought you’d want a break.”

  The heater was blowing warm air onto them. He turned around. Wiki’s face appeared divided—one-half was ghostly pale, the other warmed by amber lantern light.

  “Thank you, that was thoughtful,” she said, not looking to his face. Her gaze was on the barren wall behind him, the wall that Abel must also look at. A lot.

  “Been here before?” she asked.

  “Not inside. I don’t ice fish.”

  “Is Abel normal?” she asked the room.

  Jame looked at the left side of the yellow love seat. Her hand rested there and didn’t rise as he wished, in a welcoming gesture.

  “I—” he started.

  “Just some girl in glasses, right? Normal, right? Unnoticed, right?”

  Jame nodded to the empty space on the love seat.

  “Jame? There is no normal. At least not with people. And, well, places. And, uh, experiences.”

  “Okay,” he replied cautiously.

  “Have you ever looked at her?”

  “Of course.”

  “No. Stopped. Taken a breath and looked closely? For a full minute or two? Looked into her eyes? Searched and seen her as little girl? As an old woman? Hell, at least see her in your shower?”

  Jame was shaking his head, not answering, falling behind her list of questions.

  “Thought not.” She was facing him and saw the pain in his eyes. She added, “It’s okay. You still can.”

  He had stopped on a memory of Abel as a little girl. With little eye glasses and wearing a dress. A smudge of food—no, ice cream, chocolate—on her cheeks and lips.

  “You doing okay?” Wiki interrupted.

  Jame dropped the very young Abel. He didn’t progress to Old Abel. Instead, he looked at the pine wall over the bed bench. The angle made the view of the photograph difficult and that was okay, he could still see the image. It was of the two of them, him and Abel, almost side by side, in a small group in the quad at their high school. He was smiling and laughing. Abel was standing a couple of steps away. Her left hand was partially raised and extended. She had a look that he had never noticed before—admiration, perhaps passion.

  “Yes, I’m good,” he said.

  “I’m nearly unfrozen,” she said. “Break time over in five?”

  Five minutes later, Jame opened the hut door to the lake. Pale light and cold air entered with a low circle of spinning snow. He looked out. Across the field, there was a line of white trees. To the right was Dent, hard to make out, but there. They were a little over halfway across the lake. A muffled rifle crack carried from the town. Instead of turning in that direction, he looked skyward.

  The storm was happening. It had rolled in and was dumping heavy flakes.

  Jame got back into his snowshoes. He listened to the sound of Wiki binding hers behind him. She clacked her way outside. Jame looked inside the hut and cursed. He got out of his snowshoes, went inside, and circled the inside of Abel’s hut, turning off all of the propane valves.

  He put his snowshoes back on and looked for Wiki. She was out a ways and he followed, placing his marks on hers.

  Mrs. Sheaan, the mayor’s wife, read her watch again and looked over to Tory, who sat on the floor opposite her in the storeroom. The sales clerk had his knees raised and his head rested on his crossed arms.

  “Tory? Sorry. Don’t mean to wake you, but it’s gotta be light out now.”

  Tory raised sleepy eyes to Mrs. Sheaan with an unfocused scowl. The two of them were going to have the same tired exchange. Tory’s vague dream had been stirred from his mind. Again. Tory repeated the same thing he said a half hour before. “I’m waiting for Wesley to come back and say it’s okay.” He laid his forehead back on his arm and closed his eyes.

  Mrs. Sheaan scowled at the sales clerk. He had made it clear that he respected Wesley Lorenzo, probably his uniform more than him, but who knew?

  “He has no business wearing that uniform,” she said to him. “It’s creepy and wrong. We fired him. There are civil suits against him for what he did to Viv, and other charges are being reviewed.”

  Tory didn’t reply or even raise his head.

  “Don’t you want to get home? I know I do. Climb into your warm bed and sleep the rest of the day? That’s what I’m gonna do. Right after a big breakfast.”

  Tory did not stir.

  Mrs. Sheaan turned and switched the AM radio back on. Static played softly as she rolled the dial.

  “I’d want a warm bath between the breakfast and my bed,” Tory spoke, not raising his head.

  Mrs. Sheaan raised her finger from the radio dial. “Oh, yes. A long, quiet bath. In warm steamy water.”

  “Then clean flannels,” Tory said.

  Mrs. Sheaan watched Tory raise his eyes. The young man was looking past her with a faraway expression.

  Mrs. Sheaan stood up. “A warm bath would do my, our, backs well. This damned cold concrete.”

  “Try the phone again,” Tory said, staring at the storage shelves.

  Mrs. Sheaan walked to the worktable and lifted the receiver. Like before, she listened for a dial tone without moving her finger to the buttons—no sense trying to dial without it.

  The line was dead. She listened anyway, stalling.

  “You and I are on our own, Tory. Wesley isn’t coming. He’d have been here by now. The sun is up. Let’s go home, dear.”

  Tory looked to the storeroom door at his side.

  Mrs. Sheaan offered the young man a hopeful smile. Tory lowered his head back onto his crossed arms. She hung up the phone.


  “I’m going,” she said. “Big breakfast, bath, and then my bed.”

  As expected, there was no response, and that iced it for her. She unlocked the door and stepped out into the dark store. She was looking about, getting her bearings, when the door behind her closed and locked. That helped her move forward. The store windows were gray instead of black and the aisles were cast in shadows. She pulled on her gloves and walked to the front of the market. There was a distant ringing sound, like bells, behind her. Hard to tell. She didn’t turn.

  Opening the front door, the cold swept in over her. After hours of storeroom stupor, the cold stung her cheeks. Denny Moore’s snow-covered body lay crumpled in front of the gas pumps. Seeing him, her shoulders sagged but she didn’t stop. She turned right and continued on her journey.

  Beyond the roof over the pump island, she entered the heavy snow. She hugged her arms across her body and lowered her head. She tried to stay in the center of Main Street, but it was hard to make out. It helped when she entered a snowmobile track and she let it guide her.

  Fifty yards up Main Street a group of people appeared—coal-colored silhouettes—moving toward her from a vacant storefront. She did not see them at first; her head was down and her eyes focused on her boot steps. Within the heavy snowfall, sound was muffled, but she heard a voice say, “You get her.”

  Mrs. Sheaan stopped and raised her eyes to the voice. In front of the storefront, out from under the awning, were five people. There was a smaller person out in front of the group and he shouted, “Not me!” The small person had an odd-shaped head.

  “Get her,” one of the others instructed, and the kid started toward her after being pushed from behind.

  The child struggled through a waist-high drift with his arms extended out to his sides for balance. She saw that the child wore a metal bucket on his head. She thought she recognized the face when the kid nudged the pail up to look at her. The boy extended a glove while taking his next carefully placed step, and she started toward him. A minute later, the two touched gloves and she took his in hers. They turned and started back to the group.

  Standing before the half circle of teenagers and continuing to hold the small boy’s hand, she saw their cold and fear even with two of them holding rifles across their chests.

  “Tell you what we’ll do,” Mrs. Sheaan said to them, looking from face to face, “We’ll go to my place. Get out of this and get warm. My husband will build a fire, and we can stay safe until we know what’s up.”

  There was no reply. The youths looked to one another.

  “We need to get this boy inside,” she added.

  One of them spoke, “Buckethead is fine with us. But…yeah.”

  It was too damned cold to smile. Mrs. Sheaan looked up the road to her and her husband’s cottage. She made out a faint light beside the house on their driveway.

  “Come on. I bet Tom’s got the generator running and if so, we’ll have heat.”

  There was no response, and Mrs. Sheaan became irritated with them. This was just like the crap with Tory. She stepped away with Buckethead’s hand held tight and started out into the road. A few steps out she heard the sound of the teenagers following.

  The group went through the snow-hidden gate and up the short yard to the cottage. Mrs. Sheaan saw that the light was from Tom’s car door.

  “What the…” she started and stopped. She turned her attention to carefully climbing the steps to the enclosed porch. Opening the door, she wondered why Tom didn’t have the generator up. Asleep, she guessed as she led the boy and the teenagers inside.

  ✳ ✳ ✳

  There was a brief parting of the dark clouds, a narrow tear of baby blue and gold light across the eastern sky. Abel watched the opening until it closed and all was once again gray. She saw the whiteout rolling across the lake. Within a minute, there was nothing to see.

  Before dawn, she had seen the big fire on the east shore and watched her brother’s list item number five go up in flames.

  What Abel wanted was the warmth and privacy of her little home. She knew it was out there, maybe a half-hour trudge away.

  She took out the flashlight she had swiped from Jame’s place, turned it on, and placed it in her mouth. Her hand went inside her coat pocket and pulled out her twice-folded list. She had added a line to it, not in ink; she would not even think of modifying Father’s design. The addition was in her mind. She had added the line after watching that girl step into Jame’s shower with him.

  She could still feel the fierce heat from when she fled from the window beside Jame’s house. The heat had travelled with her. Years of making herself available, of finding ways to cross his path, waiting for him to see her, and he never had. True, he had never shown any dislike. There had been one day. In summer. He had offered her a ride on his parent’s boat. Then nothing. Like she was invisible. Years. Seasons. Different outfits and swimsuits and even a dress and…nothing. And now, that girl walked in from nowhere and…

  She stopped. The ‘and’ was what she had watched through the window, and she was not going to think about that again. Ever.

  Abel tilted her head and aimed the beam from her mouth to the list. She was watching her hands unfold it when there were a series of sounds coming from the cottage door at her back. There were people inside the Sheaan’s place.

  She heard loud talking. She recognized a few of the voices and pushed her list back inside her pocket. Clicking the flashlight off, she used her sleeve to wipe the metallic spit from around her mouth.

  Mrs. Sheaan and the others were chattering and moving around inside the cottage. She heard the diesel generator in the basement start, through the window at her heels. She stood perfectly still in the dark of the mayor’s back porch, listening to the voices and looking at the storm. Abel frowned. Dropping the mayor’s wife could not happen with all of them in the cottage.

  While she could not edit the list, she thought it best to put this line on hold. She hoped that it would be okay, and that she could be forgiven. She pulled on her gloves and stepped from the back porch with the on hold decision made. She gripped the strap of the rifle on her shoulder, made her way alongside the cottage, and out onto Main Street.

  There was no first light of dawn.

  Heavy snow was falling, and the very small town of Dent was shrouded. The storm had brought a whiteout.

  Snow blanketed rooftops and cars. Drifts formed along Main Street and out on the lake; the ice buried by thick mounds of new snow, shaped by chaotic swirling winds.

  Inside the C.O., there was light and warmth, both cranked high. The basement generators were in high gear, and the furnace was blowing hard all along the mainframe under the rows of fluorescent lights.

  Wiki sat in one of the office chairs at the desk. She had pulled off her long black coat and the borrowed snow pants and had her feet up on a case of wire spools. Crappy music was playing from somewhere deeper in the building. She had just returned from what Jame called the vault, where she had sat on the steps watching him do his splicing thing. He sat squeezed inside the cramped, low space, tracing and soldering connections within a spaghetti maze of one of the sawed-through cables. Earlier, she had stood beside him as he went through a dozen binders identifying what he called NPA’s and their assigned cable pairs.

  The music was annoying and the office smelled like burnt coffee. She looked at the running coffee maker with black caramelized goo inside. The office was business-like and technical looking to her. No personal touches or any colors save lots of gray, wood, and metal. The bright ceiling lights added to the feel of tired business functionality. Under the surface of bad music, there was a current of clicking mechanical sounds coming through the door from what Jame referred to as the switches.

  She had used the gray-painted bathroom at the back of the office. She had opened the very old refrigerator and looked inside. She didn’t touch any of the suspect Tupperware containers or paper bags.

  She decided to take a nap and lay d
own on the industrial gray flooring and closed her eyes. Her head had just touched the floor when she heard Jame approaching. His socked feet were not making any sound, but he was talking to himself, mostly numbers and letters.

  She turned her head, and watched him enter the office with an open binder in his hands.

  “Thirty-seven is mostly spliced. As far as I can go,” he said.

  Wiki didn’t speak or nod. She had little idea what he was talking about, even though he had shown her and explained.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, putting the binder in the shelf and taking out another.

  She watched him leaf through the pages, tab by tab. He found the page he wanted and looked to her.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  “We have frappes, espresso with soy cream, mint Thai tea, or, if you’d prefer, sludge you can’t dent with a hammer.”

  “Sludge, please,” she grinned.

  They watched one another, sharing a half smile, a respite in the tedium.

  Jame carried the binder to the coffee maker and turned it off.

  “Cable thirty-seven is town, right?” she asked, half-remembering.

  Jame shook his head. “Thirty-seven is the lake; well, most of it. Forty-two A is town. It’s next.” He crossed to her, set the binder on the desk and picked up the phone. Wiki heard the sound of dial tone from the little speaker. Jame dialed the phone, and she saw his smile as the line began to ring.

  A man’s voice answered and Jame said, “Hey, Dad. All okay? How’s Mom doing?”

  Wiki watched Jame talk with his father, liking the warmth and the lightness of the casual conversation. The two sounded like good friends and both were free with short laughs and curses. Jame’s smile expanded after hearing his dad congratulate him on the good work, before adding, “Get back to it.” The two talked a minute longer, and Jame hung up.

  “Gonna get back on it,” Jame told Wiki. He picked up the binder, looking directly at her. “I assume you use the Internet. I can set up a modem, if you like. Just take a couple—”

  “What’s a modem?”