by Неизвестный
When it came off, hot smoke drifted slowly out of the open end, stinging her eyes and filling her nose with the warm scent of spruce and the acrid bite of creosote. The stove was banked way down. Working quickly, Kris packed the pipe-elbow with snow. She stuffed it down the bend and packed the dry, talcum-like powder as hard as she could. When it was full, she reconnected the pipes, not bothering to push them as tightly together as they’d been before. Then she ran around the cabin and hid in the trees across the clearing from the front door.
The cold, which her excitement had held off, set back into her. She squatted under a tree wrapped into a tight ball, watching the door, which was clouded every few seconds by her breath. Maybe he would die of smoke inhalation before he woke up. That would solve a lot of problems. Nobody could pin his death on her and it might confuse the hunt for Lambale’s murderer long enough for her to get out of state.
She waited.
Suddenly the door burst open and Barrett, without his parka, dashed out, hacking viciously and sucking in the clear air. He grabbed a double handful of snow and rubbed it in his eyes. Behind him, thick smoke floated out of the cabin and up into the night, dimming the stars above the roof. When he’d gotten control of his coughing, he covered his mouth with his shirt and vanished back inside. Kris heard the stove door open and Barrett curse. A second later he was outside again, coughing and shouldering into his parka. Stepping in her footprints in the snow, he disappeared around the corner of the cabin, heading for the stack.
Kris sprinted across the clearing and into the open door. The smoke inside was thick; her eyes teared and burned. She stooped below it and beelined for the back corner where the kitchen counter hooked into the back wall. Her heart beating, she moved the pots and plastic barrels away from the wall and squeezed into the space under the counter. She hugged her knees and listened; Barrett was still fiddling with the pipes. She uncoiled and crawled out. Keeping low, in the fresher air, she searched for her pack, then noticed that her gear was lined out on the counter. The assholes had gone through her stuff. Her fingers picked around the bags of food until she felt the candy bars. She grabbed a handful and stuffed them in a pocket. Barrett passed the side window; she saw his shadow, cast by the starlight, against the wall. Silently and stifling a cough, she scurried back into her corner under the counter and shrank into the shadows.
Barrett stepped through the door and closed it behind him.
“Kris,” he said. He clicked on a flashlight and probed the darkness with the brilliant beam. The light bounced off her boots and kept on going. He reopened the door and yelled into the night. “Kris, come in and get warm.” He stood in the door; the cold air sinking to the floor, misting, and wrapping itself around her. She didn’t move.
Barrett yelled again, listened, and then came back in, closing the door. The stove was drawing now, but the cabin had cooled down. He put the flashlight on the counter, pointing it at the stove, and came back by Kris to gather an armful of the split spruce stacked against the wall. Kris counted the eyelets on his boots. Fancy, fake ruffed, Sorels. He loaded up the stove and in minutes the fire was roaring. It drew the last smoke out of the room and waves of heat rolled over her and her blood begin to throb in her cheeks and fingers.
She bit her knee to keep from crying.
__________
Kris awoke. The cabin had cooled down. Her legs ached; she stretched them out on the floor in front of her and dozed off again.
Barrett was awake. She felt him come alive in his bag. Quietly, she folded her legs, tucking her heels against her butt, and pushed herself deeper into her corner. His feet thumped softly on the floor, the grate of the stove squeaked open, and then suddenly he was in front of her, his hands pale in the darkness lit only by the starlight falling through the windows. His body radiated a warm moistness; sweat from sleeping too warm. The stack of wood against the back of the cabin was low; Barrett squatted and loaded an arm with spruce; he reached to the right, groping for sticks. Kris lowered her face against her knees to hide the whiteness of her skin.
She felt him stop moving.
“You had me worried,” he said, “I thought you were outside.”
Kris lifted her head. His face, a dim blur, the eyes hidden, was looking at her.
“Come on out. You must be stiff.” He rose and took the wood to the stove and began rebuilding the fire.
Kris hesitated, then crawled out.
The wood caught and the orange light of the flames danced on his face.
Kris stood by the stove, little heat came from it yet, and watched Barrett looking intently into its belly. The wood began to crackle.
“I cooked up a couple of your macaroni and cheeses,” he said. “Looked better than the barley sugar and C-rations in the survival gear. Let me heat up the left-overs.” He used a stick of wood to push the fire deeper into the stove and set up Ben’s cooking grill. He dipped a small pan into the large pot of snowmelt on the stovetop, testing the water with his finger before placing it on the grill. He stirred water into the pot with macaroni and set it in the stove next to the other. His movements were quiet and assured; nothing rattled or clattered as he searched for spoons and lids in the dark.
The cabin warmed and she slipped out of the parka, dropping it on the floor and, a minute later, still too warm, she unzipped the snowmobile suit, pulling her arms and legs free and laid it on top of the parka. She untied the shoepacks and pulled the liners out with her feet, leaving the liners on as slippers. Unprotected by her arctic gear, the heat radiating from the stove pushed through her clothes and rubbed, hot and dry against her skin.
Barrett wrapped a bandanna around his hand to protect it from the fire and tended the pots, pulling the one with the macaroni out frequently to stir its contents. When dinner was ready, he gathered up his clothes, flashlight, pistol, wallet, keys and other hardware off Ben’s only chair and lay the bundle on the kitchen counter. He pulled the chair in front of the fire and gently guided her into it. He poured water from the small pan into a mug, found Kris’s coffee among the Ziplocs on the counter and mixed it in adding sugar and then put the mug into her hands. He scraped the macaroni into a bowl, added a spoon, and set it at her feet. Then he pulled the plastic bucket from under the counter, turned it upside down, and sat it next to her in front of the fire, his head at her shoulder.
Kris sipped the coffee; he’d made it sweet. She sipped again, wrapping her hands around the cup’s warmth. The fire crackled, casting its light against their legs and into their laps. Barrett lifted her bowl of macaroni from the floor and balanced it on top of the stove to keep it warm. The stove was beginning to shed heat like the hot California sun.
“We’ll have to bank it down soon, or it’ll cook us out of here,” he said. It meant losing its light and muffling its sound. He shifted forward, his knee brushed her thigh, and peered into the stove, then poked at the fire with a stick, breaking it apart, spreading the logs and coals around the stove’s interior to cool it. He was in his long underwear; the synthetics had absorbed his odor and it swirled around him when he moved.
The coffee was gone; she set the mug down and reached for the bowl. The macaroni was hot and thick with cheese. She ate it all, running a finger around the bowl and sucking it clean. He took the bowl from her and set it on the floor in the darkness. His body moved like a cat’s; when he stood to fill her mug the fist of his cock pressed against the fabric stretched tight over his thighs and hips.
Her heart began to thud slow and hard against her chest. Years ago, when Save Our Sisters was dusting the street off her and primping her for a job, Kris had hung out with Mariah, who’d had a rabbit named Dyke. It ran loose in her apartment, dropping hard pellets of shit wherever it hopped. Mariah would pick them up and jump shoot them into bowls she had set up on the bookcases and refrigerator. One night, when Kris was sitting cross-legged on the floor, Dyke started humping her knee.
“I thought it was a she,” she said. The rabbit, its eyes murky-gray and unblink
ing in their intensity, gripped her thigh with its forepaws and pumped her knee like a toy jackhammer.
“Yeah, she’s just asserting her dominance,” Mariah said.
Kris had slapped it away.
“More?” Barrett asked.
She reached down for her mug on the floor by her feet and when she turned to hand it to him, she brushed her breasts against his arm. He made her another cup, moving silently and with animal-like assurance in the darkness. When he handed her the mug, she waited until he had seated himself on the bucket before sliding off her chair and on to her knees at his side. He turned his head; she pushed it away with her chin, sucked the lobe of his ear between her teeth, and bit hard, exhaling into his ear, tasting blood. She slid her hand down his belly and under the waistband of his long underwear. When she touched him, he shuddered as if he’d been hit.
Kris freed him from the tangled fabric, he raised his hips and she pushed the underwear down his legs, letting them fall around his ankles. He reached to touch her; she pushed his hand away.
“Hang on,” she whispered. “I got to take a leak.” She stood, picked her parka off the floor and put it on and then swept the floor with her feet until she found her shoepacks, which she stepped into but didn’t bother to tie. She shuffled to the counter, kicking over her pack, which had been leaning against a counter support and started rifling through the Ziplocs, hidden by the darkness. As she felt through the bags, Kris glanced through her hair at Barrett, who, outlined by the flickering glow of the fire, had turned to watch her. He looked comical sitting on the bucket, his long johns puddled around his ankles.
“Tissues,” she said to herself, but loud enough for Barrett to hear. She pulled his long metal flashlight out from under the heap of his clothes and pointed it at him. “Where’s the switch?” She pushed it and the white beam shot out and hit him in the face. “Oh.”
Barrett squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away. Before he could recover, she swept the plastic food bags off the counter and into her pack and then tucked the pack under her parka.
“Got them,” she said. She shuffled to the door in the loose shoepacks and opened it. Next to it, were his boots.
“Back in a bit,” she said and swept the beam across the plastic bucket he was still sitting on so he couldn’t see her kick his boots into the snow. She pulled the door shut, yanked her shoelaces tight, picked up his boots and switched off the flashlight before running to the tool shed, where she dropped the pack next to the snow machine and heaved the boots into the trees behind it. Inside the shed, she waved her hands in the darkness until they bumped into the large snowshoes that she’d rehung from the ceiling the day before. She pulled them free. Under the workbench, she found the plastic jug of gasoline and dragged it and the shoes outside, dumping them by the pack. She fought the frozen tarp off the snow machine and, as quickly and as tightly as she could with mittened hands, she lashed the pack, jug, and snowshoes onto the back of the seat. When the load didn’t shift when she tugged on it, she hauled the tarp back over the snow machine. She cut over to the woodpile, gathered up an armload of wood, and jogged back to the cabin, flicking on the light as she approached.
Cold air came in with her, sank to the floor, and, in the flashlight’s beam, swirled in a mist towards Barrett, who was sitting in the chair now facing the open stove.
“Monumental piss,” he said.
Kris dropped the wood on the floor next to him and turned off the flashlight. He’d pulled his long underwear back up. She took off her parka and pulled her feet out of her boots, ignoring him. She knelt in front of the stove and fed more wood to the fire. It grew and warmed the outside air that had come in through the door with her.
“Where’s my sleeping bag?” she asked after a while, watching the flames.
“Under the bunk.”
“Would you set it up, please?”
Barrett stood and rummaged under the bunk, which was high—only a few feet below the slant of the roof. Hot air rose in cabins, sleeping close to the floor was chilly. She heard the sound of the nylon fabric being pulled out of its stuff sack and then a zipper being opened. Barrett arranged the bag on the bunk and then pulled off his long underwear and climbed up.
When she was warm again, she took off her clothes, laying them on the counter next to the flashlight and the pile of Barrett’s clothes. She stood naked before the fire, feeling its heat and watching the pattern of shadow and light play across her legs. The light didn’t touch her breasts, but the lumpy bandage over her nipple was silhouetted against the firelight that bathed the cabin floor. She worked it free and threw it into the fire and thought of the lonely nights listening to Evie keeping a man happy.
She closed the stove door and turned the damper, then climbed up and kneeled on the bed, straddling Barrett.
He reached up and traced the curve of her thigh with a finger.
Tuesday, November 24
Kris slid quietly off the bed, pulling the sleeping bag with her and wrapping it around her body. The floor was cold, her feet bare, she padded over to the counter and felt for Barrett’s pistol under the pile of his clothes and slipped it into her sleeping bag. She gathered the last of the wood she’d dumped by the stove and fed it to the coals left from last night’s fire and, as the fire came to life, she stood on her sleeping bag to keep her feet off the floor and dressed. She stepped into her shoepacks, put on her parka and, carrying the plastic bucket by its bail, slipped outdoors with her sleeping bag and snowmobile suit. She groped in the bag for the pistol, stuffed it into a pocket and then rolled the suit up in the bag and stuffed them into the snow against the cabin wall opposite the sheds. She filled the bucket with snow.
“’Morning,” Barrett said when Kris reentered the cabin. He spoke from the dark; no light reached the bed from the fire.
Kris hung the parka by the door, carried the bucket to the stove, and stuck a finger into the pot of snowmelt; the water was hot, but half had evaporated during the night. She dumped the snow into the pot, mounding it high. The fire was drawing and the stove was beginning to radiate heat.
“Bath water?” Barrett asked. “Enough for two?”
“Plenty of snow,” Kris said. She stood in front of the open stove warming her hands. She’d packed the snow into the bucket without her mittens. The fabric of the Barrett’s sleeping bag rustled and Kris felt a gathering of purpose come from the bed.
“What happened to Loren Lambale, Kris?” Barrett asked.
He’d had his fuck, now it was back to work. Then the significance of his question jolted into her: he hadn’t found the body. What the hell was he chasing her for? She stood motionless in front of the stove, her mind scrambling for her next move.
She shook her head; then, because he couldn’t see it, she said, “Don’t know.”
“You thought Vern was blackmailing him.”
So Justin had talked.
“Which made it reasonable to conclude that he killed Evie,” he said. “So what did you do to him?”
Kris watched the fire build through the open door, then said, “Nothing. I waited for him at the parking garage and we talked in his car.”
Barrett waited.
“He told me he’d raped her.”
“Raped her? He admitted to it?”
“I guessed and he didn’t say no. But that’s what Vern was blackmailing him for and that’s why Lambale killed her.” The mound of snow slumped below the lip of the pot. Kris put the lid on.
“Then what did you do?”
“By then I was screaming at him. He couldn’t take it and got out of the car and ran down the emergency stairs.”
“Why didn’t you come and get me?”
“You’re a prick.” The fire was roaring now, the heat forced her to step back.
“Didn’t stop you last night.” When she didn’t reply, he asked, “You wanted him to get away?”
“Where was he going to go? I needed to find Corvus.”
“That’s why you came up
here?”
“Ben spent that winter here. I thought he may have brought Corvus up with him.”
“Kidnap his own child?”
“It was all I had.”
“And?”
“Nothing.” Kris lifted the lid and touched the water. If Barrett bought her story about Lambale, maybe she wouldn’t have to run.
“Lambale didn’t kill your mother,” he said.
Kris heard the sleeping bag rustle and tensed. If he got out of bed, he’d miss his boots right away. The rustling stopped and when he spoke again, his voice came from higher in the corner. He’d sat up to lecture her.
“He drove in with Alvilde that morning and was at the bank for a two hour executive meeting at eight. A little after ten, Alvilde picked him up in the Mercedes and they went over to the shelter to help set up for the ceremonies. Alvilde stayed about an hour then drove back to her gallery. She parked in the city garage, which is more than a mile from AWARE. He could’ve used someone else’s car to take Evie down to Thane, but it still would’ve taken a minimum of forty-five minutes there and back—assuming he knew where to find her. She’d been invited to the dedication but never showed. But it’s immaterial, he never left; between ten and four, there was never a moment when someone at AWARE wasn’t working with him.
“Alvilde arrived with the car after four; the dedication had already started; she’d had an accident and had returned home to change. Afterwards, they ate dinner with the mayor and most of AWARE’s board. They left the dinner at ten and arrived home at ten-thirty. The ME put the time of death between nine a.m. and four p.m.
“He’s clear; he had no opportunity to kill her.”
So Justin had been right.