Ice Shear

by M. P. Cooley

  Hale couldn’t meet my eyes. “You don’t have clearance, and . . .” He lunged past me. “No!”

  I heard, rather than saw, Dave punch the wall. The construction was thick, but there was the sound of bones grinding against flesh, followed by a rain of plaster flaking to the ground.

  “Fuck.” Dave shook his hand out vigorously. That was a good sign—waving his hand would hurt like murder if he had broken anything. There was banging on the wall. The tenant of apartment one didn’t appreciate the noise.

  “Hale.” Dave’s voice didn’t have the sharpness and anger of before. He sounded tired. “Hale, I’d like you off the case, but unlike the FBI I’m not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face. We’ll liaise. We’ll liaise like no one has ever liaised before.”

  “And we will assume,” I added, “that every word out of your mouth is a lie.”

  “I’m not lying, June,” Hale said.

  “Fine. We will assume that everything you say is not the complete story.”

  I was holding the door for Dave when Hale called to us.

  “Y’all call me—call the Bureau—if you need some help.”

  I slammed the door shut on him.

  Dave and I walked to the car. This whole case was such a hard slog, with everyone who should be working to get it solved throwing sticks in the spokes, sending me tumbling. I didn’t feel beaten, though. I felt mad. I was going to solve this case despite the best efforts of Hale, Jerry, and the Brouillettes. They could try to stop me, but I was moving forward.

  “So,” I said as we reached the car, “you think Hale’s pretty?”

  “He’s got nice eyes.”

  Dave marched through the unshoveled drive around to the passenger side. The wood-frame house, now covered in aluminum siding, had been built before the advent of cars, and the single lane that ran between the two buildings was barely wide enough for one vehicle. Dave ended up scraping the door on the opposite house.

  He was still mad. “Your idiot FBI friend has been thwarting the investigation the whole time. I may not be able to run them out of town, but I can burn their hotel down. I mean, c’mon.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. “I could go myself, or—”

  “Yeah, to get the accelerant down in time we’ll need two people.”

  “Or we could regroup and talk to Hale and company tomorrow. Get some sleep and face them at full power.”

  “What do you mean? I’m at full power,” he said faintly. He crossed his arms and rested his head against the seat belt strap. Within a minute, he was asleep.

  I lowered the volume on the police radio, the quiet chatter of Leslie and the fading light of the afternoon cocooning us in the car. I made the executive decision to drive Dave to his house. He lived a few blocks over in a Victorian he was converting in his spare time. I pulled to a stop in front of his house and nudged him.

  Dave slept on. The house rehab was going slowly, the time he spent at work leaving little time for construction. Last summer, at the end of his Fourth of July barbecue, Dave and I, mellow with too much beer and too much sun, had talked, the smell of burned charcoal dying away. With his bottle of Rolling Rock he’d gestured down the hill toward the river, which flashed behind a line of tall trees.

  “I can never forget where I came from, even up here.” He threw out his arms to take in all he surveyed, including his back deck, his yard, and farther down the hill the house where he grew up, on the island in the old Ukrainian section of town. It was the first time the two of us had discussed anything other than police work. Dave had described his life: his father, his brother, his maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, all making sure he didn’t even miss his mother after she took off with some guy.

  “And look at how far I’ve made it,” he said.

  I smiled. While Dave was working his way up through the department, I was across the country doing work I never dreamed possible. Now I found myself at home again, most of my go-getter friends long gone, following the trail of jobs and money to New York City. I had been long gone, too, a country between me and this town and these people who I had thought were going nowhere. I was glad when I found them again, grounded, but having landed where I belonged, at home.

  I pushed Dave harder and harder until he woke with a start.

  “Hey.” He rubbed his eyes, and slapped his cheeks a few times. “This isn’t the hotel.”

  “No, it’s the place where I am reliably informed they keep your bed.” I wrinkled my nose. “And your shower. Hale will still be able to lie to us in the morning.”

  Dave raised his finger to make a point and then dropped it. “Okay. Call me if you find the clue that’ll crack this case wide open, right?”

  I nodded, and he slowly picked up his things, before dropping them next to the gearshift.

  “Got your head, or did you drop that, too?”

  Dave flipped me the bird and slammed the door. He waded up his unshoveled walk, the snow leaving a ring of white up to his thighs. He reached the porch, where he picked up several papers, and waved good-bye. I pulled out into the street, heading toward home. We needed to be ready for the wake, the FBI, and an outlaw biker gang: whatever got thrown at us and whoever threw it. Considering the number of people pissed off at us, we had to be ready for anything.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE DAY OF DANIELLE’S funeral, I woke with my legs twisted tight in the comforter and my arm reaching across the bed, across Kevin’s side. When had I become a person who took up the whole bed? I had always been a restless cover-hog—Kevin accused me of full-contact sleeping—but my body had always known intuitively where the boundary resided between my side and Kevin’s. I pulled my arm back into my blanket cocoon, half for warmth and half to make it up to Kevin, forcing my body to remember him.

  It was full dark still, and I couldn’t hear anything stirring: no cars half skidding down the street, both my father and my daughter still fast asleep. I closed my eyes and pushed my head deep into the pillow, hoping the warmth of the covers would pull me back under. I inhaled and tried to clear my mind. I stopped when I realized I was searching for Kevin’s scent, a combination of hair gel and green grass. Of course it was impossible, it had been more than two years, almost three, but I had found that my husband’s phantom smell would show up out of nowhere, either ambushing or comforting me. For so long after he died our bedroom had reeked of ammonia, his odor during those last months no matter how many sponge baths we gave him. My father got a frequent-buyer card at the candle store during that time, bringing home bright pillars in lavender, apple pie, or eggnog. He was searching for the one that might get rid of the smell instead of cover it. They all made me sick. Eventually he stopped.

  Lucy didn’t seem to notice, climbing into bed with Kevin and pretending to read him stories. She turned the pages of books she knew by heart, flipping them around so he could see all the pictures. She built train tracks with bridges that traveled over Kevin’s legs and sent the blue cars careening off the bed; they laughed and did it again. Away from Kevin, Lucy was no angel, with notes coming home from preschool for hitting, and night terrors that woke everyone in the house except Kevin, who slept the sleep of the Oxycontined. All Lucy’s bad behavior stopped the minute Kevin died. She became quiet in a way that had only begun to pass in the last few months.

  The night before Kevin’s funeral, I didn’t sleep at all, furious with my father, who had taken all the sheets and blankets and washed them while I was at the wake. Kevin had started to go missing from my life at that point. Secretly I was hoping he might come back. He’d still be sick, sure, but if they changed everything—if my father kept moving Kevin’s stuff—then there would be no chance. He would certainly slip away if we pushed him.

  Some people seemed to expect me to feel relief after his death, as he was sick for so long and was in a coma for almost a month.

  “You said good-bye weeks ago,” my mother commented, as though it was supposed to comfort me. Our last night in bed, I told Kevin stori
es of my day. The final thing coma patients lose is their hearing, so he heard about Lucy’s adventures in snow forts and how I’d picked up a pair of oxblood shoes from T.J. Maxx the day before that were a steal. Even in his coma he smiled, my love of hunting out deals a long-running joke between us, and the skin stretched tight across his teeth. I knew he was there, he was with me. He wasn’t gone.

  And then he was. The people from hospice were almost too efficient, arranging within an hour for his body to be transported to the funeral home. The next few days were nonstop activity: setting up the wake and the service; keeping Lucy close; arranging housing for Kevin’s sister; talking my own sister into running interference with our mother so I could avoid her; and a million other things large and small. I kept in constant forward motion, as stopping and thinking would’ve been pointless: I couldn’t think. The next thing I knew it was the day of the funeral, and I was lying awake, condemning my father, and exhausted in every way.

  My alarm rang. It was time to get up for Danielle’s funeral. I rolled over and hit the clock hard, banging my wrist. I could hear my father in the shower. I pulled the covers back and made the bed, knowing my father had done the same thing: the military trained him and he trained me. I heard him shuffle across the hallway to his room and I made my way to the bathroom, the cold from the wood floors seeping through my socks. My father kept the thermostat low during the night as a way to save money and build character. In another hour the house would be plenty warm. Not so warm a sweater wasn’t needed, but warm enough that your fingers didn’t turn blue.

  My father didn’t restrict the hot water, thankfully, and I took a nice long shower. I had so much hair that it pulled my neck back when it was wet: my hairdressers didn’t so much style my hair as keep it from achieving critical mass. Maybe after the case was finished I would get my hair cut. And shave my legs again, although there was really no point until spring.

  Out of the shower and blown dry, I made a fast dash to my room—cold, cold, cold—and put on the suit I’d laid out the night before. Black and conservative, the skirt hit my knee even when I sat. My little trick was the tailoring, which took the business out of it and made me feel ever so slightly feminine. I had a bunch of these suits, purchased during my FBI days, and had worn this one to Kevin’s funeral. I had pulled it out the morning of his service and discovered that it slid down my hips and was a half shoulder too big. I couldn’t fix it or buy another, so my jacket slumped sideways through the day, even when I worked to keep my back straight and to meet everyone’s eyes and thank them sincerely for their condolences, their cake, their support. It fit again now, even with the Glock holstered under my shoulder, and I finished by pulling my hair up into a French twist, applying some nude lipstick, and fixing pearls around my neck. I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to appear competent, trustworthy. Like a cop.

  I went downstairs. I could hear my father in the kitchen, speaking softly.

  “I know, right. . . . Uh-huh.” As I walked in he raised a cup of coffee to me. “Look, I gotta go.” He took a sip from his cup. “Yup . . . take care. . . . Bye.”

  I put some cinnamon bread in the toaster and poured myself some coffee, and stood against the counter at the opposite side of the kitchen.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Your mom.”

  I choked on my coffee, barely avoiding spitting it on my shirt. “Mom?”

  “You sound like a sulky teenager. Your mom and I talk. You know that. She’s an early riser, probably the only thing we have in common.”

  “So how often do these little chats happen?”

  “I don’t keep a calendar,” he said, sighing. “When there’s news. When something big happens. We’ve been divorced twenty years, which is enough time to get over things, even for a grumpy bastard like me.” He raised his coffee cup to me. “You should try it sometime. It’s been what? Three years?”

  “Since Kevin died. You know that. I’m a little busy, and she’d probably just tell me to balance my chakras.”

  “Your aura does seem a little off,” Dad said, and then more seriously, “You okay? You look fried.”

  “Just tired.” Not the truth, but I didn’t have time for grief over Kevin right now.

  “I boiled some eggs for you and cut up some carrots. A few corn muffins are in there, too.” My father handed me a paper grocery sack as my phone buzzed. It was Dave.

  “There’s enough for him, too. And a thermos of coffee.” I pulled on my boots and dropped my toast, wrapped in a napkin, into my purse.

  I yanked on the front door twice before the glaze of ice that covered it gave way. Halfway down the walk my phone rang again. I patted down all the pockets of my coat as well as my suit, pulling it out of my purse right on the fifth ring.

  “Hi,” Hale said. “Don’t hang up.”

  “Assuming you’re calling regarding our case, I’m not going to hang up.”

  “The way you laid into me, I figured it was even odds, but in your role of liaison . . .”

  I lost the second half of the conversation climbing into Dave’s car. “Hale,” I mouthed to Dave, who made a face at me before relieving me of the bag of food.

  “What?” I said.

  “I said that Marty and Ray’s folks have boarded their flight, so they’ll arrive in plenty of time for the funeral. Phil asked if the Jelicksons could be banned, Marty included.”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I told him. I’m going to be sticking with the Brouillettes until we get to the church, since they know me and trust me.”

  I rolled my eyes, and Dave mouthed, “What?”

  “Anything else to report?” Hale asked.

  “Not for the funeral,” I said. “I can brief you on our interview with Jackie and Chuck DeGroot later.”

  “I’ve got a second now.”

  “I don’t have time for you right this minute.”

  Hale sighed. “Debriefing later would be fine. I’ll see you directly.”

  I hung up the phone and broke the news about the Jelicksons’ arrival.

  “Great,” Dave said, his mouth full of egg. “They’ll probably firebomb the church and make you one of their old ladies.”

  “Or they could make you their old man. Mrs. Jelickson’s coming, too, don’t forget.”

  “She’s going to whisk me away from all this.” Dave waved his arm expansively, taking in the gray snowbanks that lined the streets and the old boardinghouses beyond them. “She’s going to throw me on the back of a Harley, drive me to sunny California, and support me in the manner I’ve grown accustomed to.”

  “I think that’s what Danielle was hoping, and look how well that turned out.”

  Dave pulled into the lot of Saint Agnes, parking close to one of the exits. A half-dozen cars dotted the parking lot, mostly Lincolns and Buicks from the eighties with one white late-model Honda tinged gray from salt and dirt. By the time of Danielle’s funeral Mass, the lot would be packed and cars would be parked all the way down the hill. In the shadowy early morning, even the little old ladies who attended funerals for fun were still at home, picking out their black dresses.

  The two of us walked across the gravel of the parking lot to the church. I accidentally skidded slightly across the rocks, then skidded intentionally, remembering how much I’d enjoyed it when I used to go to church with my parents.

  “Monsignor Ottario told us to cool our heels until Mass was over,” Pete called across the parking lot. He gestured over to a white van parked in front of where the Catholic high school once stood. The diocese had demolished it after they figured out it would cost more to keep it closed than to knock it down. “That’s the FBI truck. They tried to check IDs for the people going to seven A.M. Mass, but Mrs. Reilly—you know the one? was a union whip?—well, she and a few other old ladies told them to go hang. Monsignor backed ’em up, and the agents let ’em go.”

  I savored the idea of a few retired seamstresses sticking it to The Man, but realized I wa
s The Man, too, and shouldn’t be encouraging that kind of behavior. We heard the organ inside cranking out the recessional, “Now Thank We All Our God,” and went out front to intercept Monsignor. The front doors swung wide and Monsignor exited, gesturing two agents off the steps and several feet away. He greeted everyone who came out with a vigorous handshake, leaning over to talk with some and helping the weaker ones down the stairs. A few of the ladies shook hands with the FBI agents and gave them an earful about civil liberties. Norm Finch nodded as he passed.

  Monsignor was out of hands to shake and was heading my way.

  “So this is what I need to do to get you to church, June,” he said. Monsignor Ottario had been Father Ottario through much of my life, coaching my class through our first confession. I had been fearful, my ten-year-old mind coming up with all kinds of sins I’d committed that were unforgivable. Father kept it short and sweet, sidestepping my efforts at self-flagellation. After I had left the pews filled with my classmates and come up to the confessional as slowly as I could, I said the line I had memorized: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”

  He seemed to be considering me in all of my sinfulness. “Which team do you want to win the World Series?” he asked.

  His line of questioning threw me off. “The Mets?”

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Go in peace,” and I wandered in a daze back to my seat.

  He had presided over Kevin’s funeral, and stopped by three or four times, ostensibly to visit my father but somehow always catching me when I was home. He’d talk church gossip and church business—he was involved in the diocesan investigations into priests’ sexual misconduct, which he took seriously. He’d eat stale coffee cake, take my hand, and say a prayer. I hadn’t been the praying type for a while, but in my grief I found solace in this person who was a trusted part of my childhood.

  Now I needed him to trust me and give me access to the church. “Monsignor, we need to get in there and do a sweep before the Mass. It’s an intrusion, a serious intrusion, but until we know who we’re dealing with—”