by Gregory Ashe
Somers skirted the river’s edge, where the land dropped sharply into the vulcanized water. Glancing up and down the Petty Philadelph, he seemed to be looking for something. Then he nodded and, without looking back, beckoned for Hazard to follow. They crossed another ten yards, maybe twenty—hard to tell, Hazard thought as his footsteps jagged left and right through the snow, leaving a meandering trail behind him. Hard to tell in all this snow.
Then Somers cut towards the water. For a moment, Hazard thought his partner was going to go right over the edge and splash into the frozen river, but instead, Somers turned down a narrow slope that led along a stand of young willows. Hazard followed. Willow stalks, bare and stiff with cold, scraped his cheeks as he plodded down the narrow strip of land. The world tilted once, and the water roared up at Hazard. He clutched at the willows and closed his eyes, painfully aware of his heels rocking on the sandy ground beneath them. A moment, then another, and then the dizziness passed. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Hazard inched down to the shore that had been hidden by the trees.
Somers, kneeling, had already brushed away much of the snow. Wisps of brown, winter weeds poked through the ice and slush, mixed with muddy sand and chunks of pale river rock. Against the bleached colors of the land, the dead man looked like just one more part of nature: his skin bluish-white, his hair dark, his clothes a mixture of muted grays.
THE DEAD MAN, SOMERS RECOGNIZED.
“It’s him,” he called up to Hazard. “Gene Bequette.”
Somers eyed the frozen river’s slush as it sped past him. He didn’t want to touch that water. His fingers ached from the cold, he’d slept only in fits the night before, and they had no guarantee of warmth. Still, after another moment’s consideration, Somers gripped the dead man’s cardigan and hauled him higher up the shore. Somers hadn’t wanted to disturb the body, but it was obvious that Gene had drifted some distance in the river; Gene’s layered sweaters were soaked with the freezing water, and Somers wiped his hands and then buried them in his pockets. The dead man had nosed into this sheltered strip of beach by luck, Somers was willing to guess. Moving the body ensured that it wouldn’t drift away if the right combination of currents jostled him loose.
Somers stayed on his knees a moment longer. Judging by the bluish-black gash on the side of Gene’s head, Gene had not gone into the water willingly, or even by accident. Gene Bequette had been murdered.
“You see this?” he called to Hazard.
Hazard, slumped against the bluff, the willow branches grazing his face, didn’t answer.
“Hey.”
“Yeah,” Hazard said. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“It’s him.”
Hazard heaved himself away from the bluff, took two staggering steps towards Somers, and stopped there, wobbling like someone with a spitball could have knocked him over.
“It’s him,” Hazard said, his voice slurred. He seemed to be thinking, and after another moment, he pronounced, “He didn’t come on a bridge.”
Somers straightened, dusting snow and sand from his trousers. He studied his partner. Hazard looked wrecked; dark circles ringed his eyes, and his normally translucent complexion had sickened to a waxy gray.
“Are you sweating?” Somers asked.
“A bridge.” Hazard tipped forward, and he would have fallen if Somers hadn’t caught him. Somers got both arms under his partner and managed to steady him. Hazard didn’t even seem to notice; he just blinked at Somers, and then he said, “We came on a bridge.”
“You’re burning up,” Somers said. “Jesus.” He steadied Hazard. “Why the hell didn’t you say something?”
Hazard closed his eyes, wavered on his feet, and opened them with an effort. “The bridge.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“He didn’t come on the bridge.”
“Well he sure as hell didn’t swim,” Somers said. Grabbing Hazard’s arm, he prodded his partner towards the path. “Come on. We have to get you back to the house.”
Navigating the cramped span of ground between the bluff and the river was difficult in the snow and cold. It was almost impossible while trying to maneuver Hazard’s bulk, and twice Somers was only saved from plunging into the river by grabbing onto the willows. The second time, when Hazard’s weight came crashing against Somers, Somers gripped one of the young trees, and the combined weight of the two men ripped the roots half-free of the soil. When they finally reached the higher ground, Somers faced a hard truth: he would never get Hazard back to the main house, not like this.
The stables seemed the best bet. Looping one of Hazard’s arms around his shoulder, Somers set off towards the building. Hazard clomped along beside him, but his steps were too heavy, and the rhythm was off. More often than not, his efforts to move turned into a bizarre kind of wrestling match, with Somers struggling to keep both of them from falling. The distance to the stables, no more than a few hundred yards, suddenly seemed like miles.
“No bridge,” Hazard said, his voice loud enough to break through the blizzard’s wailing.
“Shut up about the fucking bridge,” Somers grunted.
He was never sure how long it took to reach the stables. Some inner voice calculated twenty minutes, maybe thirty, but that didn’t feel right. Downstairs, where fear and worry had nested like old cottonmouths, it was hours. Hours and hours with the certainty that Hazard was really sick, was dying, and with particles of snow stinging Somers’s eyes and with the wind and the cold sawing at every inch of exposed skin until a stinging numbness took over.
And then the reddish-brown of the barn surged out of the snowdrifts. Laughter built inside Somers, deep down, wild laughter. It exploded out of him as he reached the door and dragged his partner inside. The laughter left him weak, and he stopped on the stairs to wipe his eyes as he laughed. Not until they were in the cramped apartment in the stable loft, not until Hazard had collapsed on the narrow bed and Somers had dragged a pile of blankets over him, did the laughter start to fade. The exhilaration, the sense of having walked a tightrope over Fifth Avenue and lived, fucking lived, began to drain out of Somers. His legs turned noodly, and he leaned against a wall and slid down to the floor.
Then all that was left was the cold wetness of the snowmelt seeping under his ass, and the grim certainty that they were very close to dying in this frozen nightmare. Less than twenty miles from a city, from a hospital, from warmth and food and comfort, and they might very well die.
Somers only allowed himself a few minutes of this thought. Then he moved over to the Franklin stove. He found a poker, stirred the ash, and his hand tightened painfully on the iron.
Embers.
There was still heat in the stove. There was still a chance at getting both of them through this. Carefully, Somers cleared away more of the ash and waste. Then he began to lay pieces of coal in the old stove. He blew on the coals, and the embers flared like newborn stars. Cinders whirled in the air, stinging Somers’s cheeks and mouth, but he didn’t care. He blew again. And again. Then there was a pop, and then another, and that tightrope-walking exhilaration blew through Somers again: the damn things were catching.
It took time: almost an hour, all told, before the coals were glowing and the heat was pouring off the stove. Somers shoveled in more coal and then moved to Hazard’s bed. His partner’s eyes were open, and they looked clearer than they had in some time.
When Hazard spoke, his voice cracked. “I’m ok.”
“Sure.”
“I am. I don’t know. It was the cold, I think.”
“You’ve got an infection.”
To Somers’s surprise, Hazard didn’t answer at first. Then he gave a scant nod. “Possibly. It’s unlikely it would develop this quickly though.”
“How likely was it that I was going to carry you back from the river?”
In answer, Hazard closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can make it back to the house.”
“For God’s sake, Hazard, do you try to be this stu
pid? Do you practice? You’re not going anywhere. You’d fall down those stairs if you tried to walk out of here.”
“I can make it to Windsor.”
“You’re going to stay here. I’ll go back to the house, get the others and any supplies, and we’ll pull back here. It’s our best bet until the weather clears and we can get out of here.”
Hazard scarecrow eyes glistened; not self-pity, Somers knew, but frustration and rage. He blinked rapidly. “You can’t trust them, Somers.”
“I don’t trust them. I’m not a fool.” Somers fumbled in his pocket and drew out his phone. He swiped at the screen, undoing the passcode lock, and slid the phone into Hazard’s hand. “Call Cravens. Keep calling until you get her or Swinney or Lender. Anybody at that goddamn station. They’ll get the cell tower fixed, or some of the pressure will ease on the network or something. You’re going to get through, and you’re going to tell Cravens to get us out of here.”
Hazard raised the phone to eye level. “No passcode.”
“Now you don’t have to keep swiping at the screen to keep it unlocked, which you wouldn’t have to do if you’d just admit that you know my birthday. But because you’re stubborn and because I don’t have time to fight with you, no passcode.”
“I don’t know your birthday.”
“Yeah. Ok.”
“I might not. Get hold of Cravens, I mean. I might never get through. And if the coal runs out, or if the killer is smarter than us—”
“Drop it, Ree.”
Hazard dropped his head onto the pillow, his face washed out, the rings around his eyes purple and black. “We’ll be frozen. Like Thomas. Like Ran. Like Benny. Like an ice age. They won’t know when we died.” His words slurred. “Maybe they’ll think we died a million years ago. Like woolly mammoths.”
“I’m pretty sure they won’t confuse me for a woolly mammoth. You, on the other hand, are a totally different story.”
“Frozen forever.” Hazard’s voice still had its fevered quality, the sounds slipping in and out.
Somers pushed himself to his feet. The heat from the furnace filled the room, making the space seem smaller, bringing sweat popping along Somers’s brow. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” No response. “Hazard, I need you to focus. You’ve got your gun?”
Hazard twitched back his jacket, revealing the shoulder holster. His scarecrow eyes were too bright.
“Try not to shoot me when I come back.”
“Somers?”
“What?”
“Be careful.”
Somers tried for his best grin, but the effort was too much, and instead of crisp and white Somers felt like the grin was coming off stretched out and gray, like used underwear. “I’m always careful.”
He trotted down the stairs, buttoned his coat, and dove headfirst into the storm.
BY THE TIME THAT WINDSOR'S OUTLINE APPEARED, wispy, vanishing between screens of snow like a battered gray ghost, Somers had done some thinking. It was something about his conversation with Hazard, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Every time he felt like he was getting close, Hazard’s slurred words interrupted: “Like an ice age.” And then Somers would picture, without wanting to, his own frozen corpse lost in the blizzard.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen if Somers had anything to say about it. The reality, Somers knew as he approached Windsor’s sprawling front porch, was that Hazard was out of commission for the rest of their time here. Either Hazard had developed a rapid-onset infection from his injuries, or the extent of the injuries was worse than Somers had realized. The possibility of a serious concussion, or even of bleeding on the brain, had not escaped Somers. Whatever the case, Hazard could barely walk. He wouldn’t be able to help Somers solve this crime, and Somers was beginning to realize that he had to solve this crime if he and his partner were to have any chance of surviving the ice age.
Windsor’s front doors were unlocked, and Somers let himself into the entry hall. The building was almost as cold as the storm outside; Somers’s breath curled in white rings as he marched deeper into the house. The electricity was still on, and the lights blazed, a strange contrast to the freezing cold, but everything was silent.
“Hello. Meryl? Leza? Adaline? Columbia?”
Nothing. Even the echoes of Somers’s voice seemed to have difficulty coming back to him; Windsor’s frozen air seemed to trap the sound and lock it away, like—
—an ice age—
—a museum. Somers scouted the lower rooms. Benny was still dead, his corpse unmoved from where he had been shot. The kitchen was empty, as was the dining room. Somers even checked the basement. Snow spilled in through the broken windows, and a dusting of white buried the shards of glass on the floor, but he found no one.
As Somers reached the second-floor landing, the first thing he noticed was the door to the study: it stood open. The door had been locked, but now light from the study spilled into the hallway, along with the chilled, leftover smell of feces and urine. From the doorway, Somers checked the room. Thomas Strong still lay in the chair, as dead as ever, his features blue and waxy. The desk, however, had been moved.
Using his sleeve to cover his hand, Somers pulled the door to the study shut and advanced along the hallway. All the doors were open, Somers realized. No, that wasn’t quite right: the door that led up to the attic was shut, as was the last door on the right. Someone—perhaps multiple someones—had strewn a trail of belongings down the hall. Purple panties hugged the wall; a man’s tie, venomous green and coiled like a waiting snake, sat in the middle of the rug; nail clippers, a spilled box of Band-Aids, a black vinyl whip that looked like it was meant for sexy times, mismatched socks (purple and yellow bands; frogs on a navy background). On and on the line of spilled possessions ran, but Somers couldn’t tell which room the objects might have originated in.
“Hello,” he called again. “It’s Detective Somerset.”
A moment later, a latch clicked at the end of the hallway. Somers’s hand went to the Glock holstered at the small of his back, but he relaxed when Leza stepped into the hall. Fresh scratches, the wounds puffy and newly scabbed, marked one side of her face, and she was doing her best to look upset—maybe even devastated. The look didn’t fool Somers; he recognized, in the gleam in her eyes, in the curve of her lips, in the glimmer of teeth, something buried under Leza’s expression. This woman was happy about something. No, not just happy. Gleeful, like she’d just yanked on a slot machine and hit all cherries. And she was trying to hide it.
“Detective.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, Detective. I’ve been such a fool. We all have.” Leza’s hand drifted towards the furrows on her cheek. A crocodile tear trickled down her cheek. “I never would have thought—not her—”
“What is it?”
“Columbia, Detective Somerset. She killed all of them.”
SOMERS STARED AT LEZA, taking in the woman’s scratched face, her expression of sorrow, and the glitter of vicious happiness in her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“She confessed, Detective. Or just as close.”
“Adaline,” Somers said. “And Meryl. Columbia killed them?”
“No,” Leza said. “Oh God, I hope not. What I meant was that Columbia had killed the others: Thomas, Ran, Benny.
“Where are the women now?
“Adaline went with Columbia. Not willingly, I don’t think, but Columbia didn’t really leave her a choice. She had a gun.”
“Where did they go?”
“Adaline’s a wreck,” Leza said as though she hadn’t heard him. “You wouldn’t have known, but she was . . . involved with Columbia.” A cruel twist of the lips accompanied Leza’s next words: “I don’t know how the two of them made the bits and pieces fit, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Adaline’s got no experience, though. I could have told her it wouldn’t end well, but for her, it was a complete shock. The end of the world.”
An ice age, Somers
thought.
“Where did they go?”
Leza nodded. “Do you want to sit down? I’ve built a fire, and it’s freezing out here.”
“If Columbia—”
“You really shouldn’t go after her, Detective. She’s armed and she’s absolutely insane.”
“Then Meryl and Adaline are in danger. I think I’d better see what I can do.”
“Suit yourself.” Leza breathed out a foggy breath. “You have a minute, though. Don’t you? Enough time to hear Columbia’s last conversation with Thomas Strong?”
Somers shook his head. “Where are they?”
“If she’d wanted to kill them, Detective, she might have done that instead of running away. A few minutes won’t make any difference.”
A few minutes could make all the difference in the world. Somers knew that; he’d lived that just a few weeks before when Hazard had saved Somers from a brutal execution. But something nagged at Somers; there was something about Leza’s manner that was off, and he didn’t like the idea of running into a situation without as much knowledge as he could get.
“We have to hurry,” Somer said, motioning for the woman to go ahead of him, and he followed her into the room. Although Leza was dressed, like Somers, in winter garb, she had been telling the truth: a fire burned on the stone hearth, filling the air with the smell of wood smoke and hot pine sap. It also did a surprisingly good job of warming the room, especially near the fireplace. Leza had drawn a chair next to the blaze; Somers remained standing.
Leza produced something from one pocket. It was smaller than a cell phone, but it was clearly a digital device of some kind. Somers raised an eyebrow.
“A recorder. Not many people use these anymore. Not because they aren’t useful, but because there’s an app for everything now.”
“Whose?”