Dead of Winter
Page 22
I should’ve killed them, he thinks, should have, should have, but he turns and looks at the dark shape of his daughter curled on the bed, and he lies down as gently as he can and holds her, like he used to when she was so small he could cradle the whole of her in his arms.
47
WHEN SPRING COMES—and it comes fast up here in the sub-arctic, the brightness of the day suddenly too much, the snow lumping into crystals big as rock salt all shiny with their own meltwater—the cab emerges from under the snow. It was lucky, that sudden heavy fall in January, a mighty blizzard that clogged the town for days. Lucky, because the snow coming down so fast made Fisher feel invisible when he drove the minivan back to town, and dropped Bree at a supermarket with fifty bucks for a cab home. Then he headed away at what seemed a dizzying speed along the highway north. He ditched her gun when he crossed the river—did it matter whether her shot had eventually killed Al, or whether he’d frozen to death? Not to Fisher. But he thought about it as he took the cab north. Thought about how it could matter in the bigger scheme of things.
Crazy, heading north when such a bad storm was blowing in. But what else could he do? He didn’t go far. Just far enough to reach the turn-out for a gully thick with brush, a place well-known in these parts because it was choked with dumped cars and broken-down fridges. The cab almost took Fisher with it as he sent it off down the slope. For a few seconds he saw it—the happy bear on its side, the phone number, the jewelled gleam of its lights—then it was gone, and soon even the twin tracks it had scored into the snow had been rubbed out by the blizzard.
He knew the cab would be found. But that’d be months away.
And it is found, one day late in the short northern spring. What’s there to dispute the story he’s been telling for months, that the cab was taken from him at gunpoint? That he’d been forced to drive miles out of town and had no choice but to hitch back, just when the blizzard hit, confusing everything?
The cops scarcely swallowed the story, he knows that. But they were busy searching for the nuts who’d killed their buddy, and searching for Brian Armstrong, and a few days later they had four dead guys to deal with out at Moose Lake. As for Fisher, what did he have to do with all that? His daughter was Brian Armstrong’s step-daughter, but hell, what did that add up to? And when the cab melts out of the snow, it backs up what he’s already told them, though they bring him in to tell it once again.
Then it’s over, and Fisher’s walking out of the cop station and breathing in warm air that smells of mud and rotting leaves. He drives up Airport Road with his windows down and heads toward the hills. Out here there’s a shimmer of green about the birches, a sparkle of drips caught on branches where the sun hits.
He’s careful on the turn toward his hill. The water down in the old dredge pond is pooled under a crust of ice. The road’s slick now that the weather’s warmed and he has to fight the urge to hurry. No point risking going off the edge. No point coming through so much just to drown at the bottom of his own hill, is there? Not when things are looking up. Three months of short-haul deliveries across town and he’s managed not to fuck up, has made every delivery on time or close to it. Now the guy with the Anchorage run has quit and the guys with families don’t want it. Fisher does. What’s left of his family’s down in Anchorage: Jan with her new guy, and Bree still sulking about the move. But she’ll get over it.
Soon summer will be here with its long days that run into each other. Soon he’ll start work on his house again. No Grisby to help him, not that Grisby was ever much help. He’ll wander the aisles of the hardware store picking out what he needs, and haul it home, and it’ll be nothing like the times he followed Ada around that store. She doesn’t call him these days. She took Lyle dying hard. Took it hard that the cops were out at Moose Lake to untangle the unholy mess of those four corpses, and took it harder yet when the cops put the blame on Lyle. Fingerprints on the knife and the shotgun. A cold-blooded killer. Ada acted like they came up with that theory because they had something against him, just because he was part of the militia, but still, she’s a little afraid of Fisher now. And so she should be—she betrayed him to Lyle, and she must sense he knows that, and could tell her things about Lyle she’d do anything not to hear.
The sun’s scorching the air. Didn’t old-timers hang out their laundry to let the sun bleach it clean? Fisher thinks about that as he parks on the soggy snow close to his trailer. When he gets out he hears a frantic yelping from behind the door but he doesn’t climb the steps, not yet. Instead he turns toward the sun and shuts his eyes and stands there, letting it all go: the unbuilt house, his lost friend, poor Pax waiting for the ground to thaw to be buried. He thinks of his young dog who’ll leap at him when he opens the door, and how next week the dog’ll sit beside him in the truck all the way down to Anchorage, the two of them watching the road together, and he thinks how good that will be.
Acknowledgments
MANY THANKS TO my wonderful agents, Howard Morhaim and Caspian Dennis, for all their work on my behalf. A big thank-you also to Spenser Ruppert for taking the time to give me a glimpse into the life of an Alaskan cab driver.