Dead of Winter

by Gerri Brightwell

  “What did they take?”

  “Take? Take Grisby.”

  He runs a hand over his head. In the last few minutes he’s done this often enough to know exactly where the mound of tender flesh starts. Despite the pain, he’s let his fingertips rest on it again and again, as though he can hold back the swelling. “Yes,” he tells her, “I know they took Grisby, but what else did they take? Money? Pills?”

  The delicate skin of her brow puckers like a disturbed pond. “Pills?” she says, and the word’s all stretched and strange.

  Fisher steps toward the doorway and beckons for her to follow. He gestures toward the wall, and the few boxes still there. “Did they take the stuff that was in those boxes? Computer stuff? Guns?” He holds two fingers out like a gun barrel.

  “Yes, gun,” and she nods. “Two men, have gun.”

  “But they’ve ripped the place apart. What were they looking for?”

  Her lips look a little swollen and her eyes tired. On her cheek, sugar sparkles in the light. Maybe she notices Fisher’s eyes going to it, because she rubs the sugar away. “I no understand.”

  Fisher bends and starts picking up the clothes scattered over the carpet, pretending to look under them. “The men were looking, like this, right?”

  She stares back at him.

  “Did Grisby know them? Did he say their names?”

  She stoops too and picks up a flannel shirt of Grisby’s, a lacy black thong, a blue sock, a pair of jeans, a leather skirt so short it must barely cover her crotch. Fisher stops her. “No,” he says gently, “I wasn’t telling you to clear up. The men—the men who took Grisby—they went through his things like this, didn’t they?”

  She strokes her fingers through her hair. Her bottom lip’s pressed tight against her teeth and he knows she has no clue what he’s saying.

  “OK,” and he heaves out a sigh. “What the fuck, hey? Never mind.” He looks into her eyes and she looks back, her gaze flitting over his face. When he reaches out and gives her arm a squeeze, she flinches then lifts off the sweatshirt, and he sees that she’s naked beneath it. Her breasts are surprisingly large against her thin chest and that chest’s yellow and purple where bruises have bloomed over her ribs. “No, no.” He waves his hand at her, even takes hold of the sweatshirt when she drops it and passes it back to her.

  He walks out of the bedroom and has his hand on the cold knob of the front door before he thinks to say, “If Grisby comes back you have to call me, OK?” He mimics a phone with his little finger and thumb outstretched beside his head. “I’ll write down my number.” He pats his pockets. But what’s he thinking? He knows he doesn’t have a pen on him.

  She’s pulling on the sweatshirt, feeding her arms into the sleeves as she comes across the room.

  “OK?” he says. “If you see Grisby, you call me, understand? Do you have a phone?” He makes a phone with his hand again and raises his eyebrows, never mind that it shifts the skin of his scalp and makes the swelling smart.

  With one hand she’s digging into the pocket of her jeans. A moment later, the black rectangle of Grisby’s phone is sitting in her palm. She holds it out to Fisher. “This?” she says.

  He reaches for it so fast she flinches.

  21

  TURNING THE KEY in the ignition makes Fisher’s car bawl like a sick cow. How long was he out cold on Grisby’s floor? Long enough to freeze the engine? No way, he thinks. Just after he’d come to, the light behind his eyelids changed—she’d hit him then turned on the light to see who he was. But maybe that wasn’t what she’d done. Maybe she’d sat there with him in the dark with the broom handle at the ready until he’d moved. The clock on his dash says 10.55. He can’t remember when he got here, can’t think through the mossy throbbing in his head.

  Stupid girl, he thinks. She panicked. Couldn’t she hear in his voice that he hadn’t come to hurt Grisby? That he was a friend?

  But then, he’d broken into the apartment. What kind of friend does that?

  He turns the key again. This time the engine catches, splutters, roars as he works the gas pedal. A cloud of exhaust rolls out behind the rear window, all devil-red from his taillights. He turns the heat up high and cups his gloved hands over his ears because they’re prickling from the cold. A hat, he thinks—he needs to buy a new hat.

  Two armed men, she said, and they searched the place. For the gun Grisby took from Jan and Brian’s house? The gun that killed Brian? And that killed the dead cop? Or was there something else in Brian’s stuff that they wanted? But then, why hadn’t they taken it earlier in the evening? So much for the militia being a bunch of dumbshits. They’ve already tracked down Grisby. How long before they find him? Or Bree?

  Maybe they’ve already found her.

  His heart clenches with fear. No, he tells himself, it’s not like that. Chances are, what happened to Grisby has nothing to do with Brian and his wacko buddies. Grisby’s one of those people who treads on the rotten edge of things: dealing Percocet and Vicodin, getting himself just a little high, just a little low, doing favors here and there with money changing hands. Now he wonders: did that guy Grisby was scared of come back for him? Or was it a robbery plain and simple, because someone who deals Percocet is going to have money around the place? But then, why take Grisby with them? Did he owe someone more money than he had in his apartment? And as for the girl, who the hell is she? Some East European working girl? Some poor kid brought to the States, who had no idea what kind of work would make someone fly her all this way? Did Grisby pick her up last night? No, he thinks. Working girls don’t hang around until morning like that. She knows Grisby and she’s scared, but she’s got nowhere else to go, or nowhere else she wants to go.

  And if Tessa calls around and finds her there? Grisby didn’t say a word about breaking up with Tessa, not that that means much of anything. Hell, maybe she’s already found that girl and is mad as hell. But Christ, not mad enough to get her brothers to bust into the place and take Grisby away.

  The sky’s brightened enough for the lights stuck on the outdoor walkways of the building to look small and mean. Fisher nurses the cold engine and huffs through his gloves to warm his hands. He has the radio on loud above the hiss of the vents, but there’s no news, not now. But here comes a pickup heaving across the snow, and it parks a couple of spaces away. It’s nothing, Fisher tells himself, just someone going about their business. The trouble is, the pickup just sits there with its engine churning and no one getting out and no one getting in. Panic flutters in his chest. Maybe he’s got it all wrong. Did the girl call someone? Could it be that she’s working for the guys who came for Grisby? Hell, just because he found her in Grisby’s apartment doesn’t mean she knows him. She could have been told to wait there in case some friend of Grisby’s showed up, and Fisher did, like the dumbass he is.

  Wouldn’t she have opened the door in that case? Wouldn’t they have left her with a gun? And she gave him Grisby’s phone—why the hell would she have done that?

  Unless it’s a trap of some kind.

  Don’t be fucking paranoid, he tells himself, it’s not going to help. Still, the pickup rumbling away disturbs him. He glances over the roof of the car between them, thinks he can make out a guy at the wheel. He slips his car into reverse and backs out fast, yanks the wheel around and speeds out of the parking lot with his eyes on the rearview mirror. Sure enough, the pickup’s reversing too. Could be chance, he tells himself, but he’s too scared to believe it and sends his car swinging out across the road so fast that it slides and slides, nearly into the oncoming traffic, and he straightens it up only just in time.

  When eventually Fisher pulls up it’s on a residential street between two parked cars. From his mirror comes a dazzle of lights. A bus, huge and bloated on this narrow street. It doesn’t stop. He waits. Nothing else moves.

  Soon his eyes are staring at nothing: how easy it is to not pay at
tention. The houses behind their chain-link fences, the western edge of the sky the blue of a tropical sea, the upturned cups of streetlights spilling out light for nothing, because the sun’s here at last. A coil of exhaust. Lights. A car pulls out of a driveway and its headlights flash off the snow, passing Fisher, turning off at the next block. In his heart he knows he lost the pickup at the first intersection, but he can’t help checking his mirror. He wonders if it was following him at all.

  He turns up the radio. An old Tom Petty number: he can’t bear it and snaps the music off. In the quiet there’s only his car engine murmuring away and the rush of air through the vents. He pushes back the hood of his parka. Even the slight pressure of the fabric against the swelling is too much. It sends fingers of pain across his skull. That’s the last thing he needed: a pain on the outside of his head to match the raw ache inside.

  But at least it’s not a concussion, or not much of one. He can drive, he can function. He can still find Bree, can’t he?

  He pulls out his phone. If bad news comes, it’ll have the same bleating ring as any other call, the same bland numbers on the screen. Should he call Jan? If he doesn’t, won’t it seem strange? Hell, their daughter’s gone and a dead cop’s been found at her house. If he hadn’t dumped Brian’s body, what would he do? He’d talk to her. For sure.

  He takes off his glove so he can make the call. The battery’s so low he’s surprised the screen doesn’t go blank. His heart’s beating a little faster. He tells himself, I was home last night. Grisby came over. We had a few beers and hung out. That’s all we did. And this morning Ada woke me and I drove into town, and things have gone crazy since I saw the paper, and where the hell’s Bree? The paper said she’s taken off.

  On the other end, a flat buzz then another, then his call’s sent to voicemail. He hears Jan’s voice bright-edged and cheery, because she’s Jan Armstrong of Armstrong Realty and values your business, so she’ll return your call as soon as she can. He lets his head tip back against the headrest, turns it slightly so that the edge of the swelling just touches it and the pain reminds him, Watch yourself now, Fisher. After the tone he says, “Hey Jan, it’s me, Mike. I just saw the paper. Christ, a dead cop? What in hell’s going on at your place? The paper says Bree’s taken off. Why didn’t you let me know right away? Call me back and let me know what’s up, because I’m real worried, OK?”

  He ends the call with a jab of his finger and takes a deep breath. But almost straight away the phone rings and he lifts it. Nothing. Dead air. Like holding a rock to his ear. Has the battery just died? But then, that’s not his ring tone. It’s not his phone ringing, but the one in his pocket. Grisby’s phone. He pulls it out and lays it on his knee. In its case it’s the size and shape of a bar of soap, but black and slick, as if worn smooth by Grisby’s hands. After the fourth ring it cuts off.

  Grisby has six voicemail messages. The first is from a guy called Jed saying he’ll make a purchase and will meet him out back at ten. The second’s from Desiree, who wants to stop by because she’s running low, and where the hell was he last night when he’d said he’d be there? The third’s from Tessa and she calls Grisby a scumbag motherfucker, then hangs up. The fourth’s from a kid saying he’s got Vicodin to sell but he wants fifty a pill and he’s got a whole bottle, then he laughs and leaves his number.

  The fifth message makes Fisher lean forward onto his elbows and plug his free ear with his finger. A guy called Manny who says simply, Yeah, I’m interested. Stop by and show me, OK? I’ll be in by eight.

  One more message. It takes him a moment to recognize the voice: his own, curiously flat, saying, Call me, OK? How odd to be outside yourself for a few moments. He remembers sitting in his car outside the movie theater. Calling the diner. Calling Grisby. As though Grisby had gone in to work, or was at home, when he’d been taken away by two armed men.

  He plays Manny’s message over again, and a third time. He thinks, that’s why Grisby didn’t go into work. He was going to try to sell Brian’s stuff. The question is, did he meet Manny and offload anything? Or did those two guys get to him first?

  There’s only one way to find out. Manny’s number is right there on the screen. He calls it and a guy picks up and says in one well-worn rush, “Arctic Gun and Supply, can I help you?”

  22

  FISHER CAN’T HELP himself. Crossing the bridge he slows to forty and his eyes search the ice turned yellow by the low sun, the ribbon of black water, the turn-out where emergency vehicles would have pulled up if a body had been found. But there’s nothing except the ice and the water, the scrawny undergrowth on the slope he slipped down last night, the blur of fog beyond, and then the river’s gone and he’s turning off the highway onto a back road.

  Arctic Gun and Supply is a ramshackle cabin down by the power plant, a God-forsaken part of town where the wash of the new laps up against the old. The store sits by itself on a patch of ground, bare except for a couple of black spruce leaning toward each other that do nothing to block the view of the blank-walled power plant across the road, with its chimneys and glaring lights. Despite the daylight, a single bulb lights the store’s sign: a grizzly holding a rifle. Of all the stupid things. As bad as Bear Cabs, for fuck’s sake. And as he thinks it, he realizes he’s had that thought before. He’s seen that logo, and recently too. He tries to catch the memory, but it slides away.

  He intended to park some distance off, just in case, though in case of what, he isn’t sure. In the end there’s nowhere to park without giving himself away, so he pulls up close to the door, beside an old pickup sitting low on its tires that has a couple of crates in its bed.

  He hurries toward the steps and up onto the porch. Already a dog’s barking from behind the door, deep chesty barks that mean Fisher knocks instead of going in. He waits, then knocks again. When the door swings open a fat guy in his sixties is standing there in a flannel shirt and overalls. Manny. He says, “It’s a store, for God’s sake, just come on in.”

  The dog’s chained up over by the counter, a German shepherd that’s sniffing the air for his scent. It’s fallen silent now but watches Fisher without moving, and Fisher stares back. It lets out a growl.

  “Just ignore her,” Manny says and swats at the dog. “Cut it out—you know better than that.” He leans onto the counter with his hands gently curled into fists. Their skin’s loose and mottled, and the counter’s glass top is all scratched up. Beneath it, ranged on two shelves, sit rows of handguns all pointing the same way. One of them is so small Fisher could close his hand around it and it would vanish. Guns give him an odd feeling: they’re just lumps of metal, but look at what they can do. A bullet from one killed his mother, the bullet from another blew a hole in Brian’s head. Fisher used to keep one tucked next to his seat when he drove nightshift and sometimes he wishes he still does. He’s only been robbed twice. The first time was by a guy in a suit who held a knife to his neck. The second was at five in the morning by a woman with a crooked nose and a tooth missing right in the front. She shoved her hand in next to the seat like she knew the gun was there and took off with it and all his earnings for the night.

  The old guy sniffs long and hard. “You just looking?”

  Fisher glances up. “It’s like this—” he starts, but Manny’s already got his hands up, a strange gesture in this place, and is saying, “Whoa now, just tell me what you need, son, I don’t need the whole story behind it.”

  “My friend called you about some guns he had to sell.”

  Manny’s staring back at him, his eyelashes so pale that his eyes look strangely naked.

  Fisher says, “Did he show up? See, I’m worried about him. He hasn’t been answering his phone, and—”

  “You playing babysitter to your friend? Is that it? Seems to me what he does is his own business.”

  Fisher runs one hand over his head, rests it on the sore lump and looks back at the guy. “Thing is, he’s gotten himse
lf into trouble. They weren’t his guns, see.”

  Manny’s lower lip is wet and shines as he says, “And now you want them back. Is that it?” Behind him his dog’s claws scratch the floor. It lets out a sound that’s half yelp, half growl.

  “I’ll pay you what you paid for them.”

  “What makes you think I’d buy anything from a guy who just comes in off the street? Huhn? D’ya think this is the only gunstore in town?”

  “You’re the only one he called.”

  “Your guns, are they, son?”

  “He’s in trouble.”

  “And you want to help. You’re just a Good Samaritan, aren’t you, because we don’t have enough of them around here.” He smiles and his dentures show, an unearthly white against bubble-gum pink gums. “But that’s not what I asked you.”

  “You wouldn’t want to sell stolen property, would you?”

  Manny laughs and a delicate thread of spittle hangs across his open mouth. “You want to watch yourself or someone might take that as a threat.” He leans on the counter again. “See, you could get yourself in a whole mess of trouble, and there’d be no way out of it. Wouldn’t want that now, would ya?”

  Fisher’s gut turns cold. “OK, OK, we can forget about it,” and now he lifts his own hands.

  Which is funny, because only then does Manny pull out a shotgun from beneath the counter and train it on Fisher’s chest. He says, “You can forget all you want, son, but I’m not the forgetting kind.”

  The black eye of the barrel stares at Fisher, and his bladder feels too small, and all he can think about is not pissing himself. He fills his lungs as best he can, has to force out his voice to say, “You shoot me, and you’re gonna lose this place and spend the rest of your life behind bars. You want that?”

  “It’s not so hard to make people disappear.”