“Sleep? Seriously, Cami?” Erin asked.
“A glass of wine might help, Erin. Do you want a ride home?” Pinky said.
Erin lifted her eyebrows. “No.” She rolled her shoulders backward in a half circle. “But thanks.” She looked at each of us in turn. She nodded then left. Mark followed her out the door.
May turned to Pam. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I wasn’t going to, but it came out anyway. And Jerrell is a—”
“No-goodnik,” Archie finished for her then slipped out himself.
Lauren pulled on Pam’s arm. “Time to go.” Pam nodded, and they left without another word.
Pinky brushed a crumb off a table. “Let me help you carry your things to your car, May.”
“You know what? I have everything packed in my suitcase on wheels, and I’m parked right outside. But thanks. It was a good class. I wish now that I had just left it at that.”
“Yes, it was a good class,” I agreed and zipped my mouth shut before I told her it was probably the last time she ever taught a class at our shop. Pinky held the door for May, who rolled her supplies out behind her.
“Well, that went well. Not,” I said and sank onto a stool at the counter.
“Holy moly, Cami, our hopes of holding classes here may have died on the vine.”
“Yeah, well, after some time passes, maybe we’ll get our enthusiasm back.”
“That’s optimistic.” Pinky adjusted her neck scarf. “Well, it’s an early day tomorrow, getting up to bake my delicacies, so I’d better head on home.”
I stood up and gave Pinky a light hug. “Rest well, friend.”
“You, too.”
Alone in the shop, I walked around to settle my nerves. The last thing I had wanted that evening was a conflict. And a fairly significant one at that. I checked to see that every electrical appliance was off, then shut off the lights in the coffee shop and headed into my more familiar territory on the curio side. I picked up a recently acquired snow globe on a shelf near the counter and gave it a shake. It snowed on the man and woman who were dressed in Victorian clothing, snuggled together on a rocking horse. Their expressions of both joy and contentment had been captured and preserved for at least a century, according to the best information we had from one of our dealers in Germany.
I carefully replaced the globe then sat down in front of the computer on the checkout counter. I read through and responded to some e-mails and read the featured news headlines of the day. I was surprised when the clock on city hall chimed ten times. My hour online had seemed like half that amount of time.
“You need to head home yourself,” I said out loud and shut down the computer. I went to the back of the store and used the bathroom then grabbed my jacket and backpack from the back room and slipped them on. When I returned to the retail area, I walked toward the front window to turn the security light on, but a snow globe sitting on a nearby shelf stopped me in my tracks. It was “snowing.” I blinked, knowing I was imagining things, and watched until the last of the flakes had settled on the ground. I had never seen that particular globe before and wondered where it had come from. It was made of similar, or the same type of, materials we had used in our class. How odd. A chill ran up my spine as I reached for the front door to be sure it was locked. It was. I was relieved because I honestly could not remember locking it, no matter how hard I thought about it.
I picked up the foreign snow globe and studied the scene. Inside, there was a man sitting on a park bench with his head resting almost on his chest. He appeared to be sleeping. There was a streetlamp, several leafless trees, and a moon behind them. The scene looked familiar, like it could be in one of our town parks. I set the snow globe back on the shelf and let myself out. I locked the door behind me and double-checked it to be certain it was secured.
I went to the back lot, where I usually parked, and had a moment of panic when my Subaru wasn’t there. “No. Of all the days not to drive,” I chided myself. My house was less than a mile away, and I often walked or biked to work. It had been a gorgeous October morning, and it was an even lovelier evening, with a full moon overhead. And, as Archie had pointed out earlier, unseasonably warm.
Even though I generally felt safe walking after dark, I removed the small canister of Mace from my backpack and slipped it in the front pocket of my khaki slacks. It had been a long day on my feet, but I hadn’t thought of bringing a change of shoes with me, so my walking sandals would have to do. I headed south on Central Avenue, glancing up at the top half of the old county courthouse building that sat on the rise of a hill, a block west of the buildings on the opposite side of Central. A bank building dating back to 1890 that currently housed an antique business was directly across the street. It still held the original internal vault, a feature that added to the building’s charm.
The streets were mostly deserted at that hour, even though it was Friday night, and I wished there was more traffic. Why was I on edge? I crossed the street and walked on the sidewalk that ran alongside Green Lake. Not a soul was fishing from the public dock. During the summer months, it wasn’t unusual to see fishers there late at night. But once school started in September, people were rarely there after dark, and the dock would be rolled in soon, before the winter snow fell and the lake froze over.
Where the sidewalk divided—one path ran alongside the highway, and the other turned and led into the park—I veered to the right and took the park pathway, a shortcut that saved me a fair distance. There were streetlamps every fifty feet or so, but because I felt more unsettled than usual, I wished there was one every twenty. I patted the cell phone in my left pocket and the Mace in my right pocket. I’d gotten in the habit of carrying a canister during my years in Washington, D.C.
As children, my friends and I had spent hours playing games in the park, sometimes after sunset, before we were beckoned home. Our favorite nighttime game was a version of tag called Starlight, Moonlight. Starlight, moonlight, I hope to see a ghost tonight. I thought about the words and raised my eyes skyward. Just kidding.
Something shiny on the concrete path caught my eyes. A penny. I had a thing for picking up pennies. I remembered my mother—my birth mother—telling me, “Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.” As a teenager, I had started to believe it was my mother who dropped the pennies from heaven just for me. I bent over quickly, snatched up the coin, and dropped it in the pocket with my Mace. The two items made a soft clicking sound as I picked up my pace.
At the bottom of the hill, before the ground rose again, I noticed a man sitting on the bench. I considered what I should do: sneak by him quietly or make enough noise so I didn’t startle him when I walked behind his back. I pulled the Mace from my pocket and cupped it in my hand. “Hi, there! Beautiful evening, isn’t it?”
No response. As I got closer, I saw his head was bent over, like he was reading a book. But it was too dark where he sat for that. I decided I had better cross in front of him so I could keep an eye on his movements, and be sure he didn’t have any kind of weapon in his hand or stuck in the pockets of the windbreaker jacket he was wearing. I put my finger on the trigger of the Mace container, just in case. When I was about six feet away, little nerve prickles touched the back of my neck. I sidestepped toward the lake, not only to put more distance between him and me, but also so I could get a better view of him.
He appeared to be sleeping, with his head bent over and his hands resting palms up on his thighs. His ball cap hid his face. A cloud moved across the moon, and since the streetlamp was behind him, I couldn’t see well at all. “Hello? Are you all right? Just to let you know, you can’t sleep in the park. The cops in this town are pretty strict about that.”
Still no response. The cloud moved and the moon’s light came through the trees, shining down on us. “Oh, my God,” I whispered. It was the scene from the new psycho snow globe in my shop. I pinched myself to be sure I was really awake and not in the middle of a nightmare. I squeezed enough
to make it hurt. Ouch.
I was afraid the man might be drunk and vulnerable to . . . whatever. I braved a step closer and then another. My pounding heart threatened to break through my chest. “Sir.” I didn’t want to touch him, so I picked up a stick lying by my foot and gently touched his shoulder with it. Instead of lifting his head, he fell forward and toppled onto the ground, landing facedown. I jumped back and then screamed.
The handle of a knife was sticking out of his back. His jacket was a dark color, maybe blue. It was too dark to see much more, but I detected a wet, earthy scent that I guessed was blood. “Oh, my God!” I yelled. “Help.” Was there anyone around to hear me? He must be dead, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe the knife was in just a little ways, stuck to a rib. Instinctively, without thinking, I reached down and checked. It felt like it was very deeply and tightly stuck in place.
Oh, Lord, I’d never been alone with a dead body before.
Somehow my reasoning kicked back in and I dialed 911. Thankfully it went through to the emergency operator. I didn’t know if the county had that capability with cell phone calls or not.
“Buffalo County, nine-one-one. Is this an emergency?” a woman asked.
“Yes, it is. I’m with a man who I’m pretty sure is dead. Someone stabbed him. Send the police to Lakeside Park right away. We’re maybe two hundred feet in from the Central Avenue side. Hurry!”
“Ma’am, my partner is dispatching an ambulance and a Brooks Landing officer. Do you know the victim?”
“No. I mean, not that I know of. I can’t really see his face.”
“Are you in danger yourself?”
Dear God, was I? I looked around and listened for sounds, but the only thing I heard was a fish jump in the lake behind me. “I don’t think so.”
“And what is your name?”
“Camryn Brooks.”
“Ms. Brooks, please spell your first name.” I did. “And your middle name?”
“Jo. J-o.” Why did they need that?
“Your date of birth?”
“A man might be dead here. He’s not moving at all, and there’s that knife sticking out of his back.”
“Okay, well, yes, but you need to stay calm. The officer and ambulance will be there in minutes. I need your date of birth and address to start the report.”
It was faster to tell her than to argue, and giving her the information helped distract me from the awful scene in front of me for ten or fifteen seconds.
“I’ll stay on the line with you until the officer arrives. My name is Betty. Stay with me, okay?” Her tone was sympathetic and she sounded like my mother. I felt my knees start to buckle under me. “Okay.” My own voice was weak and shaky. I heard sirens getting closer and turned to see emergency vehicles come around the lake from the north. There were three of them. I stole a quick glance at the body on the ground. Still facedown. He had to be dead, but my brain had trouble processing the whole thing.
“An off-duty officer is responding also. And I can hear the sirens over your phone so they must be close,” Betty said.
“They’re turning into the park.”
“Oh, good. I’ll leave you in their capable hands, then.”
“Okay, ’bye.” I hit the end button on my phone as the first police car pulled to a stop on the walking/bike path ten or so feet past me. Officer Mark Weston, wearing street clothes, jumped out and jogged toward me. An ambulance stopped behind him, and the second Brooks Landing police car parked behind it. Four people descended on the scene in seconds: Mark, a male EMT, a female EMT, and Clinton Lonsbury, another Brooks Landing High School alumnus. He was a year ahead of us, and Mark had told me he served as the assistant chief of police with the department.
“Cami, what in the heck?” Mark was first to reach the body. He knelt down and checked for a pulse on the man’s neck as the EMTs looked on. He shook his head and looked up at them. “Nothing you guys can do for him. He’s gone.”
The EMTs nodded, but didn’t make any attempt to leave. One did his own quick check of the body, probably a required procedure. They were the medical experts, after all.
Assistant Chief Lonsbury shined a bright flashlight around the ground and on the bench behind it. When he looked at me, his face was partially shadowed and far more handsome than I’d remembered. His large brown eyes studied me. “Mark said you were back in town.” He cleared his throat. “Can you tell us what happened, Cami? When you called it in, you said you didn’t know the victim’s identity.”
“It’s Camryn now,” I corrected him. I’d had my name legally changed to a more professional-sounding one when I lived in Washington. Only my family and oldest friends knew me as Cami. “No, I didn’t get a good look—or any kind of look—at his face. His cap covered it almost completely. Then when he landed, his cap sort of moved, but as you can see, his face is in the grass and shadowed,” I said.
“Go on.”
“I was walking home—”
“Through the park, at this time of night?” Mark interrupted.
Clint shot him a look that said, Be quiet.
“I didn’t mean to leave the shop so late, and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t forgotten I had walked to work—”
“Any one of us would have given you a ride home,” Mark said.
“Officer Weston, quit interrupting.”
“Sorry, sir.” Sir. Was that how I should be addressing Clinton Lonsbury now?
“Go on.”
I told them every detail of walking through the park and finding the body. I decided to leave out the part about seeing the same scene in the strange snow globe until later. “And I did something I knew right away that I shouldn’t have.”
“What was that?” Clint asked in an official tone.
“I touched the handle of the knife.”
Clint looked from me to Mark then back to me. He let go of a grunting sound and must have counted to twenty before he spoke. “Why in the hell—”
“I panicked. I thought maybe if it was in just a little ways, I could pull it out. I know it was stupid.”
He left that opening alone. “Have you ever been fingerprinted?”
“Yes, for my last employment position.”
Clint nodded, and to his credit did not yell or swear at me. He turned his attention to Mark. “We’ll need the Buffalo County Major Crimes Team to help process the scene.” Clint phoned Dispatch to get the crime team started. He flashed his light on the victim’s jeans. “Doesn’t look like he has a wallet in his back pocket. Mark, get pictures; then we’ll move the body, see if we can make an ID. And we’ll need to tape off a perimeter before anyone else shows up.”
“Yeah, I’m surprised a Buffalo County deputy hasn’t gotten here yet to check things out. Must all be out of the area on their own department calls.” Mark grabbed the camera from his car and snapped photos from every angle.
“Okay, let’s roll him on his side,” Clint instructed.
Mark set his camera down, and the EMTs assisted him with the roll on the count of three. Clint kept his magnum steadied on the body.
“Jerrell Powers, in the flesh. Or in the spirit, as it were.”
Jerrell Powers. I’d seen the newspaper clipping with pictures of him after his crime against Erin two years before, but this would be my first, last, and only encounter with him in person. Or spirit, as Clint had said.
“He was the topic of many conversations today,” I said.
“Any of them positive ones?” Clint asked.
“Um, no.”
Mark agreed with me by shaking his head.
“Any suspects, Mark?” Clint asked.
“A lot of ’em, I guess. Potential suspects. Real suspects with real motives? Not sure about that.”
“Well, the supervisor at the halfway house phoned before Powers was released to tell us his enemy number one at the house had been released a week ago. He’d be a good one to track down and question. And we’ll gather the evidence and interview everyone who knew him.”
; “That’s right. I kinda forgot about that call from the halfway house. What’s that guy’s name again?” Mark asked.
Clint stuck his flashlight in his armpit and pulled a memo pad from his breast pocket. He flipped through the first few pages then stopped. He turned it toward the moon so he could read it. I was struck for the second time since he’d arrived how Clint had miraculously matured into an actual hunk. Maybe it was the uniform. “Benjamin Arnold, age forty-two.”
“Not Benedict?” I asked. My nerves had brought out the smart aleck in me.
Clint lifted his eyebrows in place of an answer, and Mark said, “Very funny, Cami.” I didn’t remind my longtime friend about my name change.
The Buffalo County Major Crimes van pulled into the park about ten minutes later. I didn’t know either deputy who got out of the vehicle. They were both males; one was around thirty-five, the other, late twenties. At age thirty-six, I was starting to think of anyone younger than thirty as a kid. The deputies asked me some questions and then told me I was free to leave. At that moment, I felt like I had nowhere to go. The EMTs got into their rig and drove off. As the city officers and county deputies went about their business—looking for evidence along the pathway, taping off the perimeter, looking at the body—I walked over to a bench ten or twelve feet away and sat down while I tried to comprehend the unbelievable situation I had gotten caught up in.
The air had cooled and I zipped up my hooded jacket to seal in the warmth around my middle then checked the time on my phone: 10:44. Too late to call Erin or Pinky, even though I knew both would be upset with me for not phoning, no matter what the hour. I mentally went through the day’s events, from when we first heard of Jerrell Powers’s release to that minute in the park. I thought of at least four people who would be glad Jerrell Powers was gone. But dead? Gone and dead were two completely different things.
Snow Way Out Page 3