Snow(13)

“Yeah,” Todd said, his voice nearly sticking to his throat. Back by the Jeep, Kate and Nan were standing in the glow of the remaining headlamp, huddling together to keep warm.

“What are you getting on about, anyway, buddy?” Eddie said. “I got a missing daughter out here somewhere and you’re quizzing me about where I last saw my goddamn car keys.”

He doesn’t mean it, Todd thought then. He’s only saying that because that’s what he thinks he should say. I’m looking in his eyes right now and I can tell he doesn’t give a shit about any missing daughter, if there even is one to begin with.

“I don’t think this is your car,” Todd said flatly. “And I don’t believe your story, Eddie. Something’s wrong here.”

“I feel it, too,” Fred piped up from over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Now I don’t know what game you’re trying to play, but you better find someone else to play it.”

Eddie blinked his eyes and took a hesitant step backward. He looked over at Fred and then at Kate and Nan before swinging his eyes back around to Todd. There was something different in them now, Todd noticed. Something muddy. Hidden.

“What’s wrong with you people?” And now Eddie’s voice did come out in a growl. “I need help out here and my daughter needs help, and you’re going to gang up on me, accuse me of…of…well, f*ck, I don’t know what you’re accusing me of…”

“What’s the license plate number?” Fred said.

Both Eddie and Todd looked at him at the same time. Eddie managed a weak, “What?”

“The license plate,” Fred said. “If it’s your car, tell us the license plate number.”

Atta boy, Fred, Todd thought. That’s thinking, my man.

Eddie sucked his lower lip between his teeth and made a mssk-mssk sound. Again, his steel-colored eyes narrowed. Todd could almost hear the gears working in his head.

“PLO-744,” Eddie said after several empty seconds. “Louisiana plates.”

Fred trudged around to the front of the snow-covered vehicle, taking his time stepping up and over the jagged mounds of freezing snow, then paused at the front of the car. With his boot he swiped a trench through the snow down below the front grille, in the approximate place where the license plate should be. Todd only watched him for a moment, uncomfortable keeping his eyes off Eddie for too long. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard Fred Wilkinson sigh.

“What’s the score, Fred?” Todd called to him.

“PLO-744,” Fred answered. “Louisiana plates.”

Eddie Clement remained expressionless. If he felt any vindication, he was smart enough to know now was not the time to show it.

“All right,” Nan called to them. “Enough of this nonsense. We’re wasting time out here. We should get to that town and let the police know there’s a little girl lost out here somewhere.”

“That radiator won’t hold up too much longer, either,” Fred added, climbing back over the ridge of snow on the shoulder of the road. “We should get a move on.”

Eddie remained silent. His eyes were no longer boring into Todd’s; he’d turned them away and was gazing down the road in the direction they had come. There was moisture in their corners.

“Get back in the Jeep,” Todd told him.

Wordlessly, Eddie turned around and marched back to the Cherokee. Again, Todd saw the twin tears at the shoulders of the man’s coat. When Eddie climbed into the Cherokee’s open door, one of the tears parted like a mouth and Todd caught a glimpse of white flesh beneath.





CHAPTER FIVE



“There’s nothing here,” Kate said, leaning closer to peer out the windshield. The Cherokee’s remaining headlight did very little to illuminate the world around them, but what it did illuminate did not look promising. “There’s no town here. There’s nothing.”

“Relax,” Todd said, easing the Cherokee around the bend and down a ribbon of frozen blacktop. Dark pines loomed on either side of the road. Up ahead, where they had all been anticipating the soft glow of civilization was nothing but darkness. “There’s bound to be someone. We took the right exit.”

“Maybe it was an old sign,” Fred said from the backseat. “Maybe Woodson doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Stop it.” It was Nan, her voice cold and on edge. “All of you, just stop it. You’re giving me the willies.”

The Cherokee shuddered and the dashboard lights flickered out. Todd felt the steering wheel grow rigid and uncooperative in his grasp.

“Did the car just die?” Kate said.

Todd cranked the wheel all the way to the right until the Cherokee bounded over a crest of snow and came to a silent demise beside a stand of towering black pines. Todd cranked the ignition but the Jeep would not start.

Slight chuckling came from the backseat. Todd shot a look in the rearview and caught Eddie Clement’s dark, hollow-looking eyes staring right back at him. The man looked like a cadaver someone had propped up in the backseat. A chill raced down Todd’s spine.

“Forgive me,” Kate said, turning around in her seat, “but I fail to see the humor in this. Care to fill me in?”

Eddie Clement did not respond. Gradually, his laughter dissipated, but he never pried his eyes away from Todd’s in the rearview mirror. It was Todd who eventually looked away.