Dead of Winter

by Gerri Brightwell

  Breehan isn’t safe. She hasn’t gone to Colorado. She’s still hiding, all alone because Fisher gave up looking for her.

  He hears a sigh and braces himself, imagines Lyle’s hand smacking into his face again, or a boot catching him in the groin, but instead Lyle, stupid, lazy, rat-faced Lyle, saunters to the kitchen. He takes the bag of chips from Al and tries one. “Do you only buy cheap crap?” he says and tips them out over Pax like a fall of petals, then drops the bag on him too. From the pocket of his flannel shirt he takes a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and pulls his lips tight against his teeth as he sucks in the smoke. Next he snaps his fingers at Al, who swings his round bland face toward him.

  Al says, “What?”

  “Your gun, fuckhead,” and Lyle holds out his hand.

  “Use your own. I mean, what the hell?”

  But Lyle snatches it from him and Al shoves his empty hands into his jeans pockets.

  Lyle turns the gun over like he’s never seen one before. He says, “Thing is, Mikey, we’re busy men. We’ve got better things to do than ask you nicely a dozen fucking times where Brian fucking Armstrong’s hiding out.” He plucks the cigarette from his lips and forms his mouth in an odd O-shape. Out of it floats an off-center smoke ring. He tilts his head to watch it wobble and fade. “Last chance, Mikey.”

  Fisher gets to his feet. “C’mon Lyle,” he says, but his voice sounds lost. “I’ve told you, he’s dead.”

  Lyle lifts the gun and shoots. The sound’s curiously flat. The dog’s body jerks and the legs splay out. One’s missing a paw. It ends in a bloody stump, and a soul-curdling whine fills the trailer.

  Lyle looks at the end of the gun, then lets it hang loose from his hand. “Feel like telling us now, do you? ’Cos I’m just getting started.”

  Pax is trying to get to his feet. His claws are scraping against the floor and blood’s everywhere, like he’s scratched it up out of the linoleum. He slides in it, his eyes on Fisher, and when at last he heaves himself up, Lyle kicks him under the chin. Pax flies against the wall, a ghost of a dog with a flaring red stump where a paw should be.

  Fisher’s barreling across the room. Fuck them, he thinks, fuck anyone who’d shoot a goddamn dog, then the gun’s pointed at him and he keeps going until Al kicks his legs out from beneath him. From the floor he yells, “Christ, he’s just an old dog. What’s wrong with you?”

  Lyle’s turns the gun back to Pax. “Five . . . four . . .”

  “He’s hiding out someplace. Wouldn’t tell me where. OK? OK?”

  Pax is on his feet again but he’s shaking hard.

  “Three . . .”

  Fisher’s on his knees. He crawls toward his dog and lays a hand on his head. “Fuck—of course he didn’t tell me where! He wanted me to keep the bag in case—in case he decided to fly down to the States. Wasn’t going to go home again and pack, was he?”

  Lyle’s thin face has twisted. Deep under his brow, his eyes are nothing but dark specks. “Down to the States—listen to you. You sound like a good ol’ sourdough, don’t you? Except for the fact everything you said’s a pile of crap.” He lifts the gun again, cocks an eyebrow. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a shit—I’d tell you if I knew, if—”

  That flat sound again and Pax’s old body judders. The white fur of his chest is a slick red, then he’s still. All Fisher can hear is his own breath. When he looks up the gun’s aimed at his crotch. Lyle spits, “Talk, you fucker.”

  Fisher’s filling his mouth with words, any old words, anything to fend off Lyle and the bullet about to come at him, when a phone rings. He recognizes the bland bleating. His phone. The skin around Lyle’s eyes tightens. He gestures at Al, and Al pulls Fisher’s phone out of his coat pocket and slaps it into Lyle’s hand. Lyle says, “Y’allo?” Then his eyes widen in delight. “No, but this is his phone. . . Well, he’s kinda busy. What’s this about?” He bends his head to listen. “No, this is a friend of his . . . Oh sure . . . Yup . . . Really? . . . Just a second.” He stares at the phone for a moment, then presses a button and Fisher hears Jan’s voice all tinny through the speaker saying, “Mike? You there? You’ve got to help me—you saw the paper, didn’t you? And Brian’s taken off with Bree. Christ, I could kill him. You there?”

  “Yeah,” he calls back. “But I thought you were supposed to take her to Anchorage.”

  A sigh. “She was being a little bitch. So I come home and . . .” She stops, like she can’t find the words.

  “You want me to find her?” His voice is knotted up.

  “You sound weird, Mike.”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Can you go after them? Out to the cabin?”

  Fisher says, “The cabin?”

  “Your mom’s old cabin. Brian sold it for you like he said, Mike, only he bought it for himself. Christ, even I didn’t know,” and she laughs, “not until Marcie asked what he was doing out at Moose Lake all those weekends. I thought he was off camping in the White Mountains. That’s what he told me.” She laughs again and the sound of it makes Fisher wince. “Now I’m worried. Real worried. He’s got himself mixed up in some dangerous stuff.” He can hear her breathing, too fast like she’s been running. “He’s gone too far, way too far. But why’d he have to take Bree?” and her voice catches.

  “I don’t know, Jan. It’s not like they ever got on.”

  She’s crying now, her voiced stretched and loose. “It’s been so hard. The last few years. I was . . . well, we all make plans, don’t we? But for now, we have to find Bree. They’re watching me, the cops are, and you know how Brian can be. He might do something crazy.”

  Fisher cranes his head closer to the phone. “It’s all right, Jan. I’ll find her. I’ll head out there tonight, OK? And the moment I find her, I’ll let you know.”

  “Want me to take care of Pax?”

  Fisher can’t bear to look where what’s left of his dog is lying at the foot of the wall. “No,” he says quietly, too quietly probably, then more loudly, “Pax’s dead. But—look, if you don’t hear from me, call Ada. Tell her Lyle’s coming with me. He’s Brian’s friend, after all.”

  “Who’s Lyle?”

  “Her neph—”

  But Lyle jerks the phone away. “Talk to you later, Jan,” then he turns it off. He rounds on Fisher. “You smartass fucker,” he says. He balls his fist and goes to hit Fisher, but Fisher ducks. When he straightens up Lyle’s aiming the gun at his crotch again. “I don’t forget crap like that, you hear me? You’ll pay for it, well and good.” He steps closer. “Now, where’s this place?”

  “On Moose Lake.”

  “Christ, which fucking Moose Lake?”

  “The one out by Tomlin.”

  He calls out to Al, “Make some coffee, for fuck’s sake, and find a thermos.”

  Al runs a hand over his head. “You’re fucking joking. I’m not driving all the way out there in this kinda cold.”

  “Think about it, Al—how else we gonna find him? And if we don’t . . .”

  They give each other a grim look, then Al starts opening cupboard doors and slamming drawers, and the whole time he’s muttering under his breath, “Fucking Moose Lake, fuck.”

  37

  THE WHOLE WAY out of town, Fisher wonders about something: when Lyle slammed the door of the trailer shut and saw the cab parked in the driveway, he let out a roar of laughter and said, “The cab? You’re kidding me. This is too fucking perfect.”

  Only it isn’t, is it? The cab’s too conspicuous to be perfect. That’s what bothers Fisher as he takes the highway east with Lyle in the passenger seat and Al following in his truck, too close for comfort, the headlights glazing the inside of the cab and glinting off the rearview mirror so that he curses, quietly, as he drives. It doesn’t help that Lyle lights up and won’t crack his window. He sits with his seatbelt strapped across his chest an
d a gun in his lap, and every now and then he says something like, “You don’t even drive good. Isn’t there anything you can do right?” or “Don’t try anything clever, Mikey, you’re not up to it.”

  It’s hard for Fisher to keep his mind on what he’s doing. Instead of the minivan’s headlights spilling out ahead of the hood, he sees Pax juddering as he died, and his leg with its paw blown away. In a few weeks Pax’d have been dead anyway, but to die like that—into the darkness Fisher says to himself over and over, I’m sorry, Pax, I should’ve saved you. The fact that he didn’t, or couldn’t, stirs up an anger that sticks in his throat, and makes him drive too fast, taking the curves sloppily, making Lyle sway and hold onto his seat until he lifts the gun and pushes it into the soft skin beneath Fisher’s ear. “Cut it out.”

  “Or what? How d’you plan on finding the cabin without me?”

  Lyle shoves the barrel harder into Fisher’s neck. He cries out and the van swerves. “There’s always your ex. I can have one of our men go pick her up. You want that? Huhn?”

  Fisher doesn’t say a word, but slows the van and hunches over the wheel looking as defeated as he can until the cold barrel of the gun lifts away. But he’s thinking, why haven’t the militia picked her up already? What’s to stop them? Then he realizes: Jan said she thought the cops were watching her. A dead cop found on her porch. Hell, yeah, they’d watch her. They’re waiting for Brian to show up, or for her to try and contact him. A cop-killer: they’re going to go all out to find him. But so’s the militia. To turn him in? To get the heat off them? Something about it doesn’t make sense. Gun nuts like Brian’s buddies don’t help the cops, not ever. Besides, why would Brian leave the dead cop on his own deck? Was he planning to dump him after he’d taken care of Bree? But hell, you don’t end up naked in your step-daughter’s bathroom if you’re trying to shut her up for good. Not unless someone is trying to set you up.

  Now Fisher wonders: what if Brian didn’t kill the cop? What if one of the other guys did? He remembers Zane sitting beside him in the car—hell, just this morning—the hoops of his earrings catching the light, sucking hard on his cigarette between telling Fisher what he thought had gone down before Bree fled: the militia guys holding a meeting, the cop snooping around. But why leave him on the deck? A warning to the rest of the cops? A warning to Brian? But the Commander, Fisher thinks, sounded pissed, like everything had got fucked up. That voice full of menace. That foot kicking hard into his belly. Anything to get Fisher to spit out what he knew about Brian.

  The Commander’s the guy who’s been telling the IRS to go fuck themselves, Fisher realizes, the guy Zane was talking about, the guy that’s been in the news. Getting hauled into court, saying he was a sovereign citizen, pulling all that crap to get out of paying Uncle Sam, and rounding up a bunch of shit-for-brains guys with guns as back-up.

  He must have expected things to turn out differently. Only, Brian’s vanished and now the militia are the ones running scared.

  Before long there are no headlights coming toward them and no taillights up ahead. The few lit-up signs for bars or small stores have fallen away. The world’s nothing but icy blacktop, an occasional row of mailboxes where a side road branches off, and Al’s headlights shining into the cab.

  Lyle’s so close Fisher hears the bright rustle of paper burning whenever he takes a drag on his cigarette. Already his head’s clogged from the smoke, his thoughts slow and awkward. Fucking Lyle, he thinks, fucking little shit that he is. That laugh when he stepped outside and saw the minivan, as though Fisher had obliged him without knowing it. But that doesn’t make sense. Neither does the fact that they didn’t bring sleeping bags or blankets, didn’t stop for supplies at the grocery store, are driving a hundred and fifty miles in the darkness with nothing more than a thermos of coffee.

  It’s years since he’s been out to the old place. Fuck Brian, he thinks, buying the place on the sly, like there had to be something dirty about it. He went out there every summer with his dad until his dad ballooned up from sitting around so much at the motel, and eating donuts and candy and chips like he just couldn’t stop himself. Even carrying their supplies the couple of dozen yards from the truck up the path to the cabin got to be too much for his dad and he made excuses for not going out there, and soon Fisher stopped asking.

  Ada must have thought the cabin was his dad’s. Maybe his dad let her believe that because, after Fisher got married, after Bree was born and things had started going wrong between him and Jan, somehow it had slipped out that the place was Fisher’s and always had been. Ada worked on Fisher until he sold it. A fresh start for him, she said, a nest egg it was time to hatch out. He thought about going to the community college and getting a diploma—as a mechanic, maybe, because he was handy at fixing things—but that didn’t work out. Besides, Ada had other ideas. A new roof for the motel, and a paint job inside and out, new furniture too, and he spent the whole summer fixing up the place without getting paid a dime. She said it made him a business partner, that he’d get a share of the profits. But when has Ada ever given him any of the profits? The one time he brought it up, she rounded on him with her cigarette held high, asked if he didn’t think she’d done enough for him, buying him books for school, making sure he had clothes and shoes and snowboots, feeding him, and what had she asked for in return? He should have told her: hours of cleaning motel rooms, and picking gum off carpets, and scraping dried puke off bathroom walls. But he didn’t. He knew he’d lost.

  And of all things, Brian bought the place and never told him. A sick feeling wells up in Fisher’s gut. Was it Jan who suggested he use Armstrong Realty to sell it? Was she already sleeping with Brian back then? Or did that damned place somehow throw her into Brian’s path?

  He wonders, is he cursed? Is he weak? Does he bring bad luck to everyone? To Pax, who should have slipped quietly from this world when his old heart gave out? To Jan, who was easy prey for someone like Brian? To Bree? To Grisby, because what the hell’s become of him? Did they let him go when he told them how to find Fisher? Or has he been dumped like garbage out in the woods and won’t be found until spring?

  No wonder this trip feels doomed. It is doomed. Even if they make it out to the cabin, what are Al and Lyle going to do when they find out Brian’s not there? And if Bree’s hiding in the cabin, she’ll be scared out of her mind when she sees two vehicles drive up. But is she there? She doesn’t have her license, she’s never driven anywhere. Why would she drive Brian’s car a hundred and fifty miles through the crushing cold of January just to hide out when she could have taken a plane to Anchorage and vanished?

  He hopes she’s there, and dreads it too. One thing’s for sure: he needs a plan, and he drives with his face bunched up, trying to think, as though somehow one will come to him.

  38

  WHEN LYLE’S HEAD starts to roll and drop and jerk up, Fisher pretends not to notice. He stares out the windshield at the snow along the road, doesn’t shift his grip on the wheel, doesn’t sniff though he’s dying to, doesn’t cough despite the pressure building in his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the bounce of Lyle’s head, and only when it comes to rest against the back of the seat, and a hollow snoring starts up, does he drag off his glove with his teeth. First he reaches for his own seatbelt. He pulls it over his chest and jams the tongue into the buckle. Next he lets his bare hand reach toward Lyle’s buckle. He doesn’t even glance at what he’s doing. He feels for the release: a click then the belt sighs as it slips up across Lyle’s chest. The ripple of his snore doesn’t change.

  Good enough, Fisher thinks. He glances at Lyle’s lap. He’s still cradling the gun but there’s no helping that now and he accelerates until the road’s reeling dizzyingly under the hood. Then he takes a breath. He braces his arms against the wheel and stamps on the brake.

  The force of it throws him forward and the seatbelt cuts into his neck. Beside him Lyle’s flung against the windshield
like a doll. There’s a crack as his skull hits the glass, and his face bursts open in shock. The gun tumbles into the darkness at his feet.

  The cab’s spinning, tipping, and Fisher can’t help it, he wants to save himself, and he steers into the slide. A flash of snow, of gaunt black trunks, of headlights bearing down on him, then the cab’s going slower, straighter. Fisher glances beside him. Lyle’s slumped between the dash and the seat. He moans and Fisher’s reaching out, that damned seatbelt that just saved him pinning him down now. He releases it, steering wildly with one hand, grabs for the shiny metal finger of the passenger doorhandle. Impossible to open it like this. He brakes again and the cab swoops. It’s almost at a stop and he throws himself across the seat and shoves the door wide.

  The dome light blinks on and cold air rushes in. Lyle’s got both hands over his head but he understands, he’s ready when Fisher leans back and kicks with both legs. He shields his chest with his arms then fumbles for a grip. One hand hooks itself over the edge of the seat, the other on the doorframe. His face is a mass of blood. One eye’s shut, the other glares at Fisher as he kicks again. Fisher’s boot glances off Lyle’s chest, and again. Fisher heaves himself across the cab and lets his weight fall against Lyle’s shoulders. One of Lyle’s hands comes free but the other’s still clinging to the doorframe. Their faces are only a few inches apart. The stink of blood’s everywhere and the cold’s closing in, drowning them like seawater. Lyle butts his head forward. Fisher’s not fast enough. The blow grazes the side of his head, then Lyle’s face is buried in Fisher’s coat. Fisher understands: Lyle’s reaching for the floor, his hand’s searching, lifting, holding the gun up, black and shining in the meager glow of the dome light.

  Fisher flails against him. His hands claw at that bloodied face, and as the gun swings its eye toward him, he lashes out. His knuckles hit something knobbly and resistant. Lyle’s gasping. He’s hit him in the throat. Fisher heaves himself forward, never mind Lyle’s weight or the gun that threshes the air beside his ear. Lyle’s hand snatches at his parka. The fingers grip, slip off. Fisher punches out then Lyle’s weight’s gone, and the light changes because there’s Lyle’s falling onto the gleaming snow with his arms splayed and his mouth wide.