Cold Was The Ground

by B A Black

  Offshore from the police activity, he can see a rocky cove, far out, where the ice is patchy.

  “Hell, there it is,” Sal says.

  “Where?”

  “It’s the paler one. Stuck up at an odd angle.”

  Houston doesn’t see it, and Sal gives him a look like marking a tally. Houston doesn’t have to reach far into his memory to pull up Sal’s smug remark: You need glasses.

  “These cops are idiots,” Sal observes, after letting Houston squint in silence for a minute. “How'd you ever survive as one?”

  “I didn't,” Houston reminds him. “I graduated academy and then never got placed.”

  “Wonder what that was all about.” Sal doesn’t sound like it’s much of a mystery to him.

  “Lucas. Not the—well. Not the relationship. He had ties to antiwar protests, and I had ties to him.”

  “Hmm,” Sal says. “Well. What do you want to do? It's cold to try and sneak around to another part of the lake, and you're in rough shape for it anyway.”

  “I'm in fine shape,” Houston argues. “It's just that some of me is in the shop.”

  Sal snorts. “I'm glad you didn't say your equipment was faulty.”

  “You know damn well it isn't. You had a look under the hood not so long ago.”

  “Well,” Sal temporizes. “I have an idea...”

  Houston doesn't argue, instead he sits up suddenly, spotting Exeter's solid form moving amongst the police on-scene, disengaging to climb up the incline to the road as the rest of the force breaks up, apparently giving up on the scene at the shoreline as too much of a mess to be useful.

  “Let's catch Ex,” Houston says.

  Sal turns the engine over as the other officers return to their cars. They catch Exeter before he reaches his own, pulling up alongside the detective when he pauses to light a cigarette. He has to know they’re present, but he doesn’t look at them, like he could dismiss them by turning his eyes as he would from a mirage.

  “What are you doing here, Mars?” he asks, sounding and looking tired. “Returning to the scene of the crime?”

  “What's on the boat?” Houston calls out the window.

  “Why the hell should I tell you that?” Exeter demands, looking at the both of them like the school dunces. “This is police business. Go back to the small-times.”

  Houston reaches out and puts his good hand on Sal's chest to stop him from trading insults with Exeter. “What was in that message you took from our secretary?”

  Exeter eyes him, solid and stony over the glowing ember of his cigarette. Sal winds up. Houston gives him a warning pat.

  “You don't have a secretary,” Exeter says.

  “Don't play dumb, Ex,” Houston says.

  “Why's it matter to you , Mars? You handed this case over. Go home. It's cold outside.” His eyes flick toward Sal, briefly. “It's the holidays. Spend some time with people who are important to you.”

  “We won't be put off,” Sal says, leaning around Houston.

  Exeter ignores him. He looks straight at Houston. “What do you want from me? You want me to do my job, check in on me like you're my boss, breathe down my neck? You aren't endearing yourself—or this case—to me.”

  “What were you looking at down there at the shoreline?” Houston asks.

  Exeter drops the expended cigarette to the ground and immediately lights another. When his voice emerges again, it's rough. “Sal, take him home. There is a case here, and the less you know the better. Go home. Watch your backs.”

  He hesitates, looking at both of them in turn. “We're going after the Winsomes. It won't be pretty.”

  Victorious anxiety climbs up Houston's spine.

  “And I don't wanna work anymore company cases before the goddamn new year,” Exeter says, getting into his car at last.

  ◆◆◆

  They watch Exeter leave, making his way past the police blockade. Sal, with a silent sort of consideration and Houston with a re-awakened drive. A few minutes pass as the car fades from sight, and the police pack up their gear, giving side-eyed glances to Sal’s old hayburner.

  “Let’s go home,” Sal suggests, fumbling a cigarette out from his pocket in thickly gloved hands. “Exeter’s right, we know this is gonna be dangerous.”

  Before Sal can follow Exeter's advice, Houston gets out of the car, stepping out onto the slick road surface and turning toward the lake. He hears Sal curse softly behind him, then the engine of his car stops. Houston heads for the frozen shore of the lake, scrambling down the steep bank nearest to them with some difficulty.

  He slips down a ten foot slope when the rocks and loose soil beneath the snow give out under his weight. A firm, broad palm seizes Houston by the collar, closing at the back of his neck and steadying him.

  “Slow down,” Sal warns, getting Houston back onto his feet. “It'll be much harder to go off half cocked if both your arms are broken.”

  “Well,” Houston says, catching his breath and scanning the dark, ice-covered horizon. “I have a pretty good nanny if I break the other arm.”

  “I oughta break it myself,” Sal mutters, dusting mud and snow from his coat.

  “You could try.” Houston scans the horizon for any sign of activity out on the ice, keeping his eyes trained on the rocks

  Sal doesn't dignify his bravado with an answer. Instead he asks, “What are we doing out here, Houston?”

  “That story—that they found the boat...” Houston starts to explain. In the far distance, a small beam of light cuts the darkness. There! It must be setting out from Indiana Harbor to get here from the unfrozen side. “...it was all over the news.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, if I was a Winsome and I knew that boat hadn't sunk... that it was out there in the hands of the police, and it was a murder scene, I wouldn't be sitting on my hands.”

  “And what would you be doing?” Sal asks, following after Houston as he steps cautiously out onto the ice, his breath forming small white clouds in the night air.

  “Same thing I tried to do to the nosey detective that was onto us,” Houston says, setting his course carefully over the ice. “Same thing I tried to do with the boat in the first place—get rid of it.”

  “Mars, the rocks have to be a mile out,” Sal says. “The police are going out in a tugboat from the other side.”

  Houston makes an affirmative noise and keeps going. It's crazy, he doesn't really have a plan, just determination. He's glad that Sal stays behind him, slow and careful on the ice. He keeps his eyes on the rocks, on the slowly approaching tugboat when it sets off from the harbor.

  “This is crazy,” Sal mutters. “How do you know this ice will hold us?”

  “You never went skating as a kid?”

  “Yeah, in a rink in the city.”

  Houston chuckles. “Watch for dark spots in the ice.”

  “It's night,” Sal huffs, easing up beside him. “All of the ice is dark.”

  “Well,” Houston says, walking in a careful manner and feeling the solid, slick ice beneath him. This is old ice, long frozen. It won't be as easy as they get further out onto the new ice. “If you fall in, I'll pull you out.”

  “Sure you will,” Sal mutters. He slips and catches himself, swearing, but he stays at Houston's side.

  Houston keeps his eyes on his target, watching the tug’s light approach the rocks cautiously from one side as they come from the other. Every so often, the spotlight slides over the ship amongst the rocks before it pulls up as close as it can. Houston sees a dark figure drop over the side of the tug and into the beam of the spotlight, shuffling ever so carefully across the delicate ice to anchor a line to the illuminated stern of the yacht to try and keep it from sinking any further, Houston thinks.

  Then, Houston can’t see anything but the outline of the yacht in the dazzling light anymore, and moving over the ice is exhausting. He and Sal press on wordlessly, and neither of them suggests going back. Perhaps that's some outcome of the case that he had
n't expected—he and Sal are closer, more unified. He hasn't had to fetch his partner out of Lee-Lee's once since before he was shot. Sal's engaged. Here, present in a way that Houston could get used to. The next time Sal slips—neither of them are in practical shoes for this, but Sal's loafers are soaked through and the smooth soles aren't made for traction—Houston hooks his good arm through Sal's elbow so they can keep each other steady.

  For a time, they progress in silence, Houston's heart pounding slow and hard to keep the cold at bay. His mind is quiet, but buzzing, alive. Attuned.

  Houston can see that the yacht is listing back, a massive hole in the stern, rocked up from the water level. Through this aperture, he can see that some water has entered the cabin. The ice is the only thing that's kept the yacht from sinking, but it must have done a number on whatever is inside.

  A smaller beam, like a guard’s flashlight, shines out toward the wreck. Houston hesitates just a few yards from the yacht, hoping not to be seen. Something in the depth of the hole in the yacht's stern catches his attention when it’s suddenly illuminated by the light—a pale, blue-tinted flash of skin. Sal draws up puffing beside him, arm still locked with Houston's own.

  Frozen in the ice, yet protruding toward the sky as if to escape through the open hole in the hull, a man's hand—curled and cold and dead.

  Houston's sure of it.

  Sal gasps out another breath of cold air, then stops, suddenly as quiet as the world around them.

  “You hear that?” Sal whispers.

  Houston listens—and then—an engine, the faint sound of moving water.

  Coming closer.

  ◆◆◆

  The officer on the boat must hear it in the same instant that Houston does. The light from his flashlight wheels toward the side of the tugboat exposed to open water, stabbing out into the darkness there.

  A boat slides over the dark water, bumping against fragments of broken ice as it moves, engine now cut as it wheels around on remaining momentum.

  “Move along,” the officer on the tug calls, voice carrying over the water.

  Houston inches forward, trying to get a better view of the approaching boat. It sits low in the water, with a long-nosed profile and a dark surface. A speed boat; the kind moneyed people tool around on the lake in the summer sunlight. It's decidedly out of place here in the dark of winter. The ice under Houston's foot cracks threateningly.

  “You stuck out here, fella?” A voice calls out of the darkness.

  The officer's light sweeps out from the tug again in a dismissive gesture.

  “This is a crime scene,” he calls back. “Move along, now.”

  The speed boat is still inching closer.

  “Did you hear me?” The officer demands again. Houston sees no sign of a partner—has Exeter assigned this man out here alone? Doesn’t he have a partner?

  “What was that?” the other voice calls back as the distance closes a little more.

  A sound of shrieking metal reveals that the officer is swinging the massive spotlight on the deck of the tug around on its mount. There is a heavy ka-chunk as the switch is thrown. A powerful beam of light illuminates the smaller vessel, piercing the night. For a moment, Houston can make out two figures in the speed boat—one is standing up on the long prow with a Thompson submachine gun clutched tensely in both hands, the other still behind the wheel.

  Sal swears in Houston's ear, and throws them both down painfully on the ice as the gunner opens fire in a wild spray aimed as much for the officer as the spotlight itself. It rattles off a dozen rounds in two seconds, shredding the glass and filament of the light and the man behind it with equal ease.

  Houston hears the officer gasp out wetly once, a sound he knows indicates a punctured lung at the least. The rest is lost under the echoes of the burst of fire, pealing away over the lake like the haunting echoes of church bells.

  Houston's heart pounds, his chest pressed against the rough cold surface of the ice below him. His arm throbs, and Sal's weight is thrown half-over Houston's back, holding him down.

  “Did you get him?” a voice asks.

  “Yeah, I got him,” a second voice answers in a tight tone. “Pull up.”

  A quick burst from the motor. The sound of two hulls bumping.

  Houston starts to get up—to see, to try and help the injured police officer if he can. It hardly crosses his mind that there's a man up there with a machine gun—probably the same one who'd shot at him before. Houston sees a figure scramble up the side of the tugboat and up next to the spotlight.

  Sal tugs him back down, leaning in close to his ear “Are you crazy?”

  “They're getting rid of evidence,” Houston hisses back. “They just shot a man. A cop.”

  “And you'll be next if they see you.”

  “Ah, hell,” one of the voices calls. “Arthur, I think I got the tug’s engine.”

  The second voice—which Houston now recognizes as Arthur Jr’s—swears.

  “Well if you'd sunk it right the first time Arthur continues, “we wouldn't have to be out here. How in the hell are we going to yank it out of there, now?”

  “Sal,” Houston whispers. “We can freeze to death while we wait for those two murderers to dispose of the evidence, or we can—“

  A heavy, slapping splash interrupts Houston’s words. Sal winces.

  “What was that?” a loud voice demands, the one from the speedboat.

  “The body, Arthur,” the second—now almost certainly Robert—answers. “We don't need a shot up cop on the boat with us.”

  “He dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “He sank.”

  Houston's blood goes a fraction colder. How callous could these men be? Clearly enough to kill Charles and Edward, and everyone else who came in contact with the case, obliterating cups of blood under a tidal wave.

  “Gimme a hand with this thing, will you? I can't get the engine going and it's black as pitch out here,” Robert calls out, from the direction of the tugboat.

  Houston gets ready. Careful. He leans into Sal's long, prone form. “Get ready to take over that speed boat.”

  “Why?”

  Houston can't see his partner's expression, but he'd bet disbelief. “If we trap them here with the evidence...”

  “They'll probably shoot us,” Sal mutters, but he starts to lift himself from the ice. “What are you going to do?”

  “You don't want to know.”

  “Alright,” Sal says without wasting time to argue.

  Houston carefully crosses the last few dozen feet toward the trapped yacht, wincing at every creak and crack from the ice beneath him. This is the furthest reach of the freeze—fresh ice that could go out from beneath him at any moment. He keeps his balance low and spread, wary.

  The brothers are both on the tug now, and Houston can hear their low, terse voices. Well, if the sound of a machine gun didn’t get any attention, whispering is hardly necessary.

  Houston gets a hand on the boat at last, feeling immediately more secure, though he knows it's an illogical, false security. He leans against the angled hull and peers in.

  In the darkness, all he can see through the blown out hole in the hull are a few pale shapes above the level of the ice. One, the curled and reaching hand, stands out to his gaze, the pale skin swollen and exposed though the rest of the body is below the ice; a museum under the water level, held solid and tight in the embrace of the ice. Above the water level, the rest of the boat is held transfixed.

  It is a monument to the crimes of the Winsome brothers, held up to the light as if by an act of God. Houston, holding his breath, slips into the ship through the hole in the hull. It's a squeeze and the ice creaks ominously as he puts his weight on it, hoping that there's still a clear access to the deck. The ice slopes through the cabin, opening a space toward the prow where the ship has rocked back. The stern, filled with water, lifted the prow, leaving the whole ship at an angle and slowing the sin
king just long enough for it to freeze in place.

  Inside, the scene of the crime is clear—overturned and torn furnishings, bloodied walls. Houston wonders who the man in the ice is, and supposes the chance for an answer is why he's here.

  He slides painfully on his belly, his arm trapped under his body in the cast and sling. Outside, flashlights sweep the area around the tug, lighting his way in crazy, jagging motions as the brothers try to figure out what’s wrong with the tug. The last two feet of the ladder up to the deck and the hatch are visible, just ahead.

  Above him, he hears the sound of the tug's motor sputtering to life. It has a sickly, hesitating sound, but it runs. Houston holds in his sudden anxiety—if they pull the yacht free now, Houston will very quickly be pulled down with it.

  “I’m going across,” Arthur’s voice says, and there’s the sound of something heavy slapping against the deck above Houston’s head. “I want to make sure that line is going to hold when we pull on it. For the love of God, Robert, don’t do anything until I’m back on this deck.”

  Houston lunges for the last rung of the ladder, pulling himself up and through the hatch onto the deck.

  The coughing and then roar of the engine covers the wet slaps of Houston's hands onto the decking as he pulls himself up. It's only this which saves him from detection; just feet away stands the figure of Arthur Jr., examining the anchor lines between the two boats.

  Houston slows his movements, careful now to be silent. Is Sal in place already?

  “What do we do with the tug boat, after?” Robert asks, somewhere out of the light.

  “We'll sink it, too,” Arthur answers. “And let that be the end of it.”

  Houston, crouched low, makes his way over the deck. He's not sure what he's going to do, but the thought of payback settles comfortably in the back of his thoughts.