Snow(72)

“We should probably go one at a time,” Todd said, bending down to survey the thickness of the ice. He thumped a gloved knuckle against it and it seemed sturdy enough.

When his handholds ran out, Brendan stretched his arms out like airplane wings. He took minuscule steps and looked like a tightrope walker overcautious of his balance. On the other side of the streambed, the scraggly twists of overhanging limbs dropped back down; Brendan’s long arms rose and he gripped the limbs. A number of branches snapped away and shattered like glass on the surface of the frozen stream.

With two ungraceful bounds, Brendan made it to the other side of the stream. He executed an awkward bow that nearly sent him tumbling back onto the ice, before seating himself in the Y of a nearby tree. He lit a cigarette, looking like someone waiting for a bus.

Bruce eased himself out onto the ice next. As Brendan had done before him, he utilized the overhanging limbs to facilitate his way out to the center of the frozen stream. Releasing the last of the limbs, the deputy sheriff crossed the center of the stream much quicker than Brendan, his balance more aligned and steady. He didn’t even bother grabbing for the overhanging branches on the far end of the streambed; he simply continued across at a steady pace, half sliding, half galloping.

When Bruce made it to the other side, Brendan handed him his cigarette and Bruce sucked the life out of it.

Todd slid out onto the ice, one hand groping for the branches above his head. He grabbed a sturdy one and inched out farther onto the ice. Beneath him, the ice felt solid. Thankfully, blessedly solid. As Brendan and Bruce had done, he used the overhead branches as support until he got to the center of the stream. But then he took an overzealous step and heard something that sounded like a bone breaking.

He looked down and saw a hairline fracture in the ice. It ran perpendicular underneath his right foot. Holding his breath, he lifted his boot and took one easy step backward. His heart was suddenly racing.

Something clutched at his hair.

Todd uttered a cry and jerked down, feeling something clawlike scrape his scalp. His knees gave out, sending him backward toward the ice. The world spun.

“Shit—”

He struck the ice with the center of his back—a solid punch that knocked the wind from his lungs. Instantly, he became aware of a bizarre sense of give, of surrender, and freezing water was suddenly infiltrating his clothes. He struggled to sit up but couldn’t; the small of his back had crashed through the ice, trapping him like a turtle that has been turned on its back.

Bruce and Brendan snapped to their feet on the far side of the stream. “Rope!” Bruce yelled. “Todd! Hey, Todd!”

Todd’s legs pumped at the air. The heavy police coat was becoming saturated and heavy. The back of his head was against a shelf of ice…but he soon heard that beginning to crack and break, too.

If that goes, he thought, I’m going under. For all I know, this little stream could be twenty feet deep…

Something flitted in front of his eyes. He felt something sting the side of his face: Bruce’s rope whipping across his cheek. Blindly, Todd groped for it. He found it and wrapped the rope around both his hands just as the shelf of ice at the back of his head broke apart. He felt his head snap back on his neck, followed by the heart-stopping sting of the freezing waters that engulfed him. His whole face went under, his arms pinwheeling, his legs bicycling in the air.

The rope tightened around his hands. He felt his arms nearly pop out of their sockets at the force of the pull. He was still holding his breath, his eyes clenched shut, when he realized he had been pulled clear of the water. He gasped, the force of which hurt his lungs, and he lunged forward until he was flat on his stomach atop the ice. On the other side of the stream, Bruce and Brendan were tugging the rope, dragging Todd toward them.

They managed to drag him up into the snowy embankment. Gasping, his skin stinging from the cold waters, Todd lay on his back, shaking violently.

“Help me get the coat off him,” Bruce instructed, and Todd was quickly manhandled like a rag doll. They stripped him of the police coat and then his shirt, too. His skin began to harden and crystallize. “Here.” Bruce thrust a fresh shirt at him, which he’d dug out of the backpack he had slung over his shoulders. “Lift your arms and we’ll help you put this on.”

Teeth chattering like typewriter keys, Todd obeyed.


Upstairs, the hallway looked slanted in the darkness. Gloomy half light bled through the pebbled windows at the end of the hall, where it pooled in murky white puddles on the tiled floor. Rubbing her forearms for warmth, Kate raced down the hall, stopping in every office she passed on the way. She searched the desks, the shelves, the file cabinets. There was no aspirin anywhere.

Opening a set of massive metal doors, she peered into the sally port. Her breath was visible right before her eyes. She saw the dark, hulking shapes of two police cruisers. The air smelled like radiator fluid.

Continuing farther down the hall, she became overly conscious of every noise that surrounded her—the ticking of a battery-powered wall clock, the rattle of old pipes deep in the walls, the sudden arrival of wind bellowing through the eaves. At the end of the hall she saw a secretarial office enclosed in stenciled glass. The door was unlocked. She entered and tiptoed around a desk, knowing with near certainty that every secretary in the good old U.S. of A. kept a bottle of aspirin in her desk drawer.

She pulled out a chair and began sifting through the drawers. It didn’t take her long to locate the pills.