The Overnight Guest(17)
Once at the top of the lane and past the windbreak of pines, Wylie spotted the tire tracks, a vehicle had traveled this road recently. Deep ruts that zigzagged back and forth across the field were already filling with new snow. Whoever was driving was having a hard time staying on the road. Wylie swung the flashlight from side to side as she searched the ditches half-filled with snow and ice. No vehicle. The wind lifted, and a piece of dingy, white fabric tumbled toward her and clung to her pant leg.
Wylie peeled the cloth from her pants. It was the size of a hand towel, grimy and frayed and covered in faded bunny rabbits. It reminded her of the blanket she had as a kid. She dragged that thing around until it was as thin as tissue paper. She pressed it to her nose. It smelled musty and like wood smoke. Maybe it belonged to the boy or maybe it was wayward garbage. She shoved it into her pocket.
A flash of red in the snow caught her eye. Her breath quickened. Was it blood? Wylie focused the beam of light on the ground in front of her. More red speckles shining through a thin layer of snow. She bent down to get a closer look, ran her gloved hand through the snow, expecting it to smear pink. It wasn’t blood. Shards of what looked like a broken taillight dotted the snow. Next came a trail of unidentifiable pieces of broken plastic and more broken glass.
It had to be a car accident, Wylie thought as she fought against the wind. Every time she tried to catch her breath, a blast of air would snatch it away.
A few steps farther, more detritus. Wylie reached down and picked up the remnants of a side-view mirror. She examined her face, numbed by the cold, in the cracked glass. Her distorted reflection, as frightened as she felt, looked back at her.
The blizzard winds had arranged the newly fallen snow into tall dunes. Wylie picked up her pace, walked a few yards and came to the spot where it looked like a vehicle first left the road: undisturbed snow where it must have gone airborne for a moment after striking a telephone pole, then a violent gash in the ground covered in a mosaic of broken glass.
Ten feet farther, Wylie found what she was looking for. A black truck flipped upside down in a deep furrow next to a field.
Using the hiking sticks to keep her balance, Wylie picked her way down into the ditch and circled the mangled steel and rubber tires now encased in a glaze of ice. She rubbed at the rear window using her gloved fingers, but a lacy film of ice and snow covered it, making it impossible to see inside.
The driver’s side door was wedged open. The faint impression of small shoes led away from the truck. Wylie held on to the truck’s undercarriage to maneuver around to the other side, and her legs plunged through the icy crust up to her knees.
“Dammit,” she muttered and tried to brush away the snow that had fallen into her boot but only made it worse. She waded through the snow and bent down to look through the open door. The front window was shot through with a spiderweb of cracks and what looked like specks of blood.
Wylie twisted her neck to see if anyone was in the back seat. It was vacant except for some empty cans of beer. Had the driver been drinking with a child in the car? Was this why the tire tracks had been all over the road? At first, Wylie thought it was just the icy roads, but it looked like there could be more to the accident.
Wylie finished her search around the truck. The snow must have been able to hold the boy’s weight as he made the trek to Wylie’s house in his tennis shoes. How cold his feet must have been. If Wylie had stepped outside even an hour later, she surely would have found the boy’s dead body.
Where could the driver have gone? Would a parent really leave their son alone in a wrecked car even if it was to go find help? Or had the boy been the one to go for help first?
Wylie looked toward the farmhouse and spotted a soft glow through the gloom. From the child’s viewpoint, the lights must have seemed like a welcoming beacon after not knowing where the driver had gone.
She backtracked the way she had come looking for any sign of the truck’s driver, this time staying in the ditch and the upturned ground that marked the truck’s path. The ditch protected her somewhat from the now rising wind, but still her face tingled with cold. She stepped over more debris half-buried in the ice and snow. A nearly empty package of sunflower seeds, more beer cans, broken glass and fast-food wrappers snagged on frozen prairie sage. Wylie kept walking.
And that’s when she glimpsed it, poking out of the snow in the empty field—a red swath of fabric. Wylie struggled through the knee-deep snow, her legs burning with the exertion. She stopped short when the rest of the figure came into view. The truck’s driver or another passenger, thrown from the vehicle as it careened off the road.
The woman was lying on her stomach at the edge of the snowy field, entangled in a web of barbwire fencing pulled from its post. Her forehead rested on one bent forearm; the other arm was outstretched as if reaching for some sort of lifeline. The woman’s long hair, dusted with snow as fine as sugar, spread out like snakes, frozen in midstrike. She was deathly still.
Wylie hurried toward the woman, her breath coming in raspy, white puffs. When she was about thirty feet away, Wylie could see just how ensnared the woman was. The fencing coiled around her legs and the sharp prongs bit deeply through the woman’s pants into her skin, leaving bloody skin exposed.
“Shit,” Wylie muttered. She had to step down into the ditch, cross the basin filled with snow and climb up the other side to get to the woman. Wylie moved carefully, knowing one wrong step could result in a broken ankle or twisted knee.