Frozen Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “Now I want you to follow me. Pick up the gun the way I showed you.”

  I do as instructed, holding it in my right hand with the grip in my palm and my index finger down the length of the barrel.

  “Next I want you to pop the clip in.” He inserts his and I mimic his actions on my gun. “Now I want you to grab the slide, pull it back, and let it go so it snaps into position like this.”

  Again I follow his lead, startling when the slide snaps into place with a rapid, loud snick.

  “Okay,” he says, “your gun is now ready to shoot. Normally you should wear eye and ear protection but since I don’t have anything, we’ll have to do without.”

  Hurley then shows me how to line up my sights and take a proper stance with my feet spread apart and my arms extended. “Now breathe in, then out and squeeze the trigger when you exhale.”

  “But what if I miss and the bullet goes flying off into the woods, hitting something . . . or someone else?”

  “Don’t worry. This is private land and there’s about forty acres of it. Plus there’s a high ridge back behind these trees that will stop any strays.”

  Dubious, I close one eye and line the sights up with the turkey target, breathe the way he told me, and pull the trigger. The loud explosion nearly deafens me and it startles me so much that I yelp. I hear the bullet thunk as it hits a tree and just when I’m starting to feel pleased, thinking I might have hit the target, I see bark disintegrate two trees over.

  “Okay, not a bad start,” Hurley lies. “Let’s try it again.”

  “I suck.”

  Hurley laughs. “Most people suck the first time. You’ll get better with practice.”

  For the next hour we aim and shoot, aim and shoot, aim and shoot. Hurley takes a turn at it to show me how it’s supposed to be done and obliterates the turkey’s head with a series of six shots.

  “Show-off,” I mutter.

  He smiles and says, “I know you’re competitive by nature. So beat me.”

  “You mean with a stick?”

  He gives me a warning look but there’s amusement behind it.

  “Okay,” I say, resigned to my humiliation. And humiliating it is. Over the course of the hour I slaughter every tree surrounding the one with the target but manage to miss the tree with the paper on it every time. My shots go left, right, high, and low. By the time we’re done, my shoulders ache, my ears are ringing, and the woods are begging for mercy.

  “I guess I need more practice,” I say, unloading the clip. I then open the slide, check to make sure the chamber is empty, and set the gun down. I may not be able to hit the broad side of a barn but I am much more comfortable just handling the gun.

  I help Hurley take the guns apart and he shows me how to clean them. Then we put them back together without the clips. “It’s best if you’re going to carry a gun to have a secure holster for it, like one of these,” he says, handing me both of his. “Over time you’ll figure out what kind of holster works best for you.”

  “You say that like you think I’m going to be carrying one of these on a regular basis,” I say. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “You never know. And until we get this mess straightened out, I want you to have a gun with you.”

  I frown, examining the holsters as I try to imagine myself packing.

  “There are smaller guns, like little Derringers you could carry in your purse, though it’s illegal to carry concealed in the state of Wisconsin,” Hurley explains. “But that said, you’d be surprised how many people do it.”

  He has me put on his shoulder holster and practice pulling his gun from it, but it feels awkward and my boobs keep getting in the way. The second holster comes with loops to run a belt or strap through, but given the girth of my hips, I’m not too keen on adding anything there.

  “You can also get an ankle holster,” Hurley says.

  I glance down at my feet, both of which are swollen—one because I sprained it when I was Tasered, and the other because of my broken toes and the Frankenstein shoe—and wonder if anyone makes a cankle holster.

  “For now, just keep this one close at hand so you can grab it if you need to,” Hurley says, handing me the second gun.

  A cold blast of wind blows against us and, as I take the gun, I pray it isn’t an omen.

  “You hungry?” Hurley asks.

  “Always.”

  “Then let’s get some lunch. Shooting always gives me a ravenous appetite.”

  Chapter 39

  Since Hurley handled the breakfast duties, I decide it’s my turn to demonstrate my culinary talents by fixing us lunch. In honor of the upcoming holiday, I fix turkey sandwiches and top it off by ripping open a bag of chips and popping the lid on a soda. Ever wary of the spider contingent, I opt for a noncaffeinated beverage this time.

  The weather outside has shifted, and dark, heavy clouds are rolling in, churning above us in an ominous meteorological dance. Once more I wonder if it’s an omen of some sort. I’m starting to feel twitchy and useless sitting here doing nothing.

  Hurley must sense my restlessness because he heads over to one of the shelves and returns to the card table with a Scrabble game.

  “I hope you don’t mind getting your ass kicked,” he says. “I’m pretty good at this. Callie and I used to play all the time and she was a serious contender. She even played in tournaments.”

  “They have tournaments for Scrabble?” I say, thinking it sounds ridiculous.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” Hurley says. “But the woman won hundreds of dollars at it. And not only is there a national tournament, there’s a world competition, too.”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given that the Trekkies of the world hold huge conventions all the time. It seems the nerds and geeks in our civilizations are quite adept at using their hobbies for networking and profitable gain.

  We start out simply enough with mostly three- and four-letter words and a nearly tied score until Hurley plops down all seven of his tiles, hooking onto an R I just played and making the word ROUNDERS through a double word score.

  “That’s good for seventy points,” he says, writing down his score. “Twenty for the play and a fifty-point bonus for using all my tiles.”

  “Great,” I say, pouting and staring at a rack that includes the Q.

  I study my letters for a moment and then plop them all down playing to his S. “Too bad proper nouns don’t count,” I say, looking at the word QUINTONS.

  “Interesting,” he says with a smile, “but not acceptable.”

  “I know, but it seemed so appropriate.” I take back the O and N, and play the word QUINTS instead, again using his S and landing the letter Q on a triple letter score. “Thirty-six points,” I say, jotting down my score and feeling pretty good about the fact that I managed to come up with just over half of what Hurley scored with his last play. If the scowl on Hurley’s face is any indication, I still have a chance.

  “Hold on a sec,” he says.

  I look at my play, wondering if I screwed something up. Then Hurley surprises me by reaching over and taking the other two tiles off my rack.

  “Hey!” I protest. “What are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer me. Instead he reaches over and takes my last play off the board, setting all the tiles on the table beside him. Then he plucks several more tiles from the board and adds them to the collection.

  “Hurley, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Bear with me a second,” he says, and he starts shuffling the tiles around until he has them all in a line. “What’s that say?” he asks me.

  “Quinton Dilles,” I answer, stating the obvious.

  Hurley then rearranges the same letter tiles, forming a new name. When he’s done, he leans back in his chair and gives me a pointed look.

  “Coincidence?” I say, staring at the new name.

  Hurley shakes his head. “Nothing with that man is a coincidence.”

  “But it can’t be him,” I say. “
He’s in prison.”

  “He may be in prison, but somehow or other he’s the one pulling the strings. It makes perfect sense. He’s a game player and this sort of thing is just his style. Trust me, it’s no coincidence that our car renter is named Leon Lindquist, a pseudonym that just happens to use all the same letters as Quinton Dilles.” He scrapes the letters up and dumps them back into the bag they came from. “Pack everything up,” he says, clearing the Scrabble board and folding it up. “We’re leaving.”

  Less than an hour later we’re on the road, everything we brought with us—including my still-damp underwear and my sweaty, stinky gym clothes—loaded back into the car. Hurley is wearing his gun under his coat in his shoulder holster and the Glock is tucked beneath his seat.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “First we’re going to stop at the house of my friend who owns the cabin. Then I’m going to Connor Smith’s office.”

  “Connor Smith? You mean Dilles’s lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s the day before Thanksgiving. What if he isn’t there?”

  “I suspect he’ll be there. He’s working on a pretty big case right now. But if he isn’t, I’ll go to his house.”

  When my mind registers his pronoun use, I say, “You mean we’ll go to his house, right?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve involved you too much already. I’m doing this alone.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Hurley. I’m already in this about as far as I can be. And what if you need backup?”

  He looks over at me with a tolerant smile. “Well, if I was going to meet with a dangerous and deadly tree that might be a valid argument.”

  “Very funny,” I say, pouting. “Make fun of my shooting all you want. It’s not going to change my mind.”

  “I’m serious, Mattie. You’re not coming with me.”

  “Then where am I supposed to go? I can’t go back home yet. If I do, I’ll probably be arrested, killed, or kidnapped again.”

  “I know. That’s why you’re going to stay at my friend’s house.”

  “Oh, great, I get to stay with some stranger?”

  “No, you’ll have the place to yourself. He’s in Florida for the winter.”

  “Then why didn’t we stay there in the first place instead of bunking down with the spider community in hillbilly hunter’s haven?”

  “Because I don’t have a key to his house and it isn’t very isolated. As long as you keep a low profile, you should be okay there alone. It’s my face they’re looking for.”

  “Wait. If you don’t have a key to the house, how are we going to get in?” Then I remember how he picked the lock on Callie’s apartment and say, “Never mind.” I sit back against my seat with my arms folded over my chest and pout, sensing that Hurley isn’t going to back down.

  A little while later, Hurley parks on a street in the small town of Tomah. “Come on,” he says, taking the gun from beneath the seat and sticking it in his jacket pocket. “We’re going to make the rest of the trip on foot. I don’t want to risk my car being seen near the house.”

  We walk several blocks through working-class residential neighborhoods until we come to a small ranch house. Hurley’s eyes are busy checking out the surroundings, watching for anyone who may be watching us. He steers me through a privacy fence and into the backyard, and as soon as we’re secluded, he takes out his lock toolkit and goes to work on the back door.

  We’re inside within minutes and the first thing Hurley does is close the blinds on the front windows. The house is neat and sparsely furnished, and the air smells faintly of burned wood. There is a woodstove in the living room but there’s also a thermostat on the wall to regulate a furnace.

  “Don’t use the woodstove,” Hurley cautions. “The smoke coming out of the chimney might attract attention.”

  Next we head to the kitchen where Hurley opens the refrigerator. It’s on and cold inside, but the shelves are bare except for an open box of baking soda. Next he opens the freezer, which produces better results. Stacked neatly on the shelves are a dozen or so frozen, microwavable meals—my sort of cuisine. The pantry is well stocked, too, with canned soups, fruits, and instant oatmeal.

  “I’ll be back later tonight after it’s dark and I’ll bring some groceries with me,” he says. “Make yourself at home in the meantime but stay inside and keep the blinds drawn and the doors locked. If you want to watch TV, use the one in the basement and keep the volume down. If anyone comes knocking, don’t answer. I’ll let myself in when I get back.”

  “Hurley, I don’t think this is a good—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore, Mattie.” He walks off and enters a den, where there is a desk and a computer. He boots up the computer and when it’s done loading, he launches the Internet browser and types in Connor Smith’s name. One click later he’s scribbling down Smith’s office address and a couple clicks after that he has the man’s home address.

  “You’ll be fine,” he says, stuffing the sheet in his pocket. He takes out a wad of cash and peels off a handful of twenties. Then he takes the extra gun out of his pocket and hands it to me along with a full clip. “I don’t think you’ll need either of these, but just in case I don’t get back for some reason, use them if you need to. I’ll see you later.”

  Two minutes later I’m alone in the house, feeling frustrated, lonely, and bored. So I take the next most logical step and start snooping. Rummaging through the desk drawers, it doesn’t take me long to find out the name of the person whose house I’m staying in: Carl Withers. When I get on the computer I see that he has Outlook for his e-mail server and though I feel a few seconds of guilt, it’s not enough to stop me from browsing through his e-mails. On a whim, I search through his old saved ones looking for Hurley’s name and come up with nearly a page full. From these I glean that Carl is a widower who was a longtime friend of Hurley’s father. The e-mails are brief and nothing but chitchat.

  Bored with my snooping, I decide to head out to the kitchen and fix something to eat. I opt for an oriental Lean Cuisine dish and carry it over to the microwave, which is mounted beneath a cabinet not far from the back door. That’s when I see the key rack.

  There are two keys there, one that looks like it might be a spare house key and one that is obviously a car key with a fob. Curious, I leave the kitchen and explore the hallway that goes to the bedrooms. Halfway down it I find a small laundry room that also serves as a mudroom. There is a metal exterior door at the other end and when I open it, I discover the garage and a relatively new Lexus.

  The discovery of the car seems like a good omen to me and without a second’s thought I head back to the den, get back on the computer, and pull up the browser history. When I’m done I head back to the garage and climb into the Lexus. Apparently Carl Withers is a short man because I have to move the seat back as far as it will go just to get my knees to clear the steering wheel. And as I do so, I flash back on the discovery of Callie’s car and how the lab tech had to move the seat back when he got in.

  That’s when it hits me. There’s no way Hurley could have driven that car with the seat in the position it was found because of his height. And then I remember the basement window in my house, and the trouble I had squeezing through it, which resulted in a cut from leftover glass, a cut that required stitches. Granted my butt may be bigger than Hurley’s, but my shoulders aren’t, and they barely fit through. Hurley’s shoulders are delightfully, appealingly broad, much wider than mine. He never would have fit through there. Combine these things with the apparent left-handedness of the person who stabbed Callie and it all points to someone other than Hurley.

  Five minutes later I’m pulling out of Carl Withers’s garage with a picture of Connor Smith from a newspaper article about Dilles’s trial, and the addresses for his home and office on the seat beside me. Hurley’s gun and its clip are safely tucked beneath the seat, and Hurley’s cash is safely stuffed in my bra. I wish I had a way to call Hurley and tell
him what I’ve figured out but he has the cell phone with him and I don’t know the number for it. Without my own throwaway phone, I have no way to reach him.

  The Lexus is equipped with GPS navigation and when I plug in Smith’s office address, it tells me that my estimated arrival time will be well into the evening hours. His home address isn’t much better since it only shaves fifteen minutes off my travel time, so I settle into the Lexus—easy to do since the seats are quite plush and come equipped with a butt warmer—and drive.

  As soon as I hit the interstate I take my speed up to sixty-nine, wanting to travel as fast as I can but unwilling to risk getting pulled over, especially since I’m now guilty of operating without a license and car theft—though I’m hoping Carl Withers will see it as more of a car borrowing kind of thing. I know Hurley tends to be a bit of a lead foot but I suspect he’ll be cautious too, given that he doesn’t want to get caught. Though I don’t really expect to catch up to him, I keep scanning the cars ahead of me, looking for Hurley’s.

  An hour into my drive, when I’m only half an hour or so outside of Sorenson, I notice that the Lexus’s gas gauge is bordering on empty and I start looking for an exit that can provide me with food, gas, and a toilet. Though stopping somewhere this close to home makes me a little nervous, the next exit has what I need, so I take it and prepare to pull into a mini-mart gas station combo. But I get caught in a bottleneck almost as soon as I leave the freeway and as I inch my way toward the end of the exit ramp, I see why. A blockade of cop cars is positioned in front of the mini-mart and an officer is directing us to go around. I follow the rest of the drivers, rubbernecking like everyone else but also wary of being seen and recognized.

  And that’s when I see Hurley, handcuffed and standing beside a police cruiser in the mini-mart parking lot.

  Chapter 40

  My first impulse is to hide but I realize that with all the attention focused on Hurley, I’m not likely to attract any more attention than any of the other drivers. Besides, I don’t even know if anyone is looking for me. My second impulse is to stop and tell the cops that I know Hurley and what’s more, I know he’s innocent. But I quickly realize how suicidal that move would be. While I may be able to prove Hurley’s innocence eventually, he’ll be locked up anyway and who knows what might happen. So I stay in line with all the other cars, drive past the mini-mart, take the first U-turn I see, and get back on the freeway.