Winter at the Door

by Sarah Graves

  “He said that?” asked Lizzie, the odd phrase—lord of the forest—pinging her memory.

  A jagged laugh escaped the girl as outside the front windows snow gusts blew horizontally. A plow went by, its orange lights flaring and its blade sending up a white cascade.

  “No. His father did, actually.” And in explanation, “You know Old Dan, the man who gets lost or tips over his motor chair all the time and has to be taken back to the nursing home?”

  “Oh,” Lizzie exhaled, remembering now. “That’s …?”

  Missy nodded. “Daniel’s dad raised him; his mother died a long time ago. And Daniel visits his dad sometimes. Or he did. That’s how I met him—after high school I volunteered there.”

  “Does he visit anymore?” Because if he did, maybe they could wait. Let him visit his dad, then they’d know right where he was; they could move on him when he—

  “No,” said Missy. “He’d stopped doing that around the time I left him. Quit doing anything normal, really. He’d gotten some kind of a job, using his van for something. I don’t know what it was, though. He never told me anything about it except that now he had some money where before he hadn’t.”

  “A van … you mean like he was moving something?” Dylan mused aloud, and in response Lizzie turned to Chevrier.

  “Your guy from the bust earlier today, Izzy Dolaby … if they were storing all those meth packets at his place, someone had to be delivering them to him, right?”

  There’d been no decent vehicles on the Dolaby property. “And someone had to be picking them up, moving them along. So could this guy Missy’s talking about have been doing it?”

  “Transporting them? Sure,” replied Chevrier. “DEA’s got no info on that yet, it’s why they were doing those flyovers, trying to find somebody to flip.”

  He made a sour face. “Izzy Dolaby’s turning out to be less talkative than they were expecting. He’s holding out for a walk. DEA says he’s looking at time inside no matter what. And if the DEA won’t cut him any slack in exchange for info on their own case, they’re sure not going to do it for ours.”

  Then something else seemed to occur to him. “He did say one thing, though. One of the DEA guys threatened to stick him in a cell, see if he’d change his mind by morning.”

  “And?” By now Lizzie was pretty sure she had no interest in Dolaby, who probably was just dumb enough to keep his mouth shut when opening it might help him, and vice versa.

  But her opinion changed abruptly when Chevrier replied, “He said by morning it wouldn’t matter. That by then there wouldn’t be anything or anyone for them to find.”

  And that did it; Missy was done talking, her hand finding the doorknob. In another moment she’d be outside, and then …

  Then when the snow stops, we’ll be hauling another body out of the woods. Obviously, the minute she got away from here, Missy meant to take off, go find her kid.

  Or die trying. And Nicki might be out there, too. The words came out before Lizzie could stop them. “Missy, wait.”

  Halfway out the door, the girl turned, her retort already on her lips. “I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”

  “Lizzie,” Dylan began, putting a hand up, “don’t …”

  She waved him silent. On her way out the door, she heard his cell phone warble, heard him answer.

  “… like the other two?” she heard him saying into it, and from his tone she knew it was bad. His case in Bangor, maybe; the two dead girls. Or were there three now?

  Spud, she thought as the closing door cut Dylan’s voice off; where the hell had the kid gone?

  But she couldn’t do anything about him now. Not when outside, the wind pushed her sideways, snow whirling in it. She was out of her element here, in the wild, brutal weather and the coming night.

  Nicki. I’ve come so far to find her, left so much behind.

  She caught up to Missy, who turned with defiance on her face. “Don’t try to stop me,” she began again warningly.

  “I’m not trying to stop you,” Lizzie replied, then took a deep breath.

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  He’d lost the stud. From his nose, he’d put it in his pocket yesterday and then somehow he’d—

  Jesus. Oh, Jesus.

  He’d tried telling himself it didn’t matter. Maybe on TV a little mistake like that would get you caught, but not in real life. Even if it got found, there was no way to link it to him.

  But then she’d looked at him. In the office, his nose empty of its usual jewelry for the first time since she’d met him. She had looked at him. And she’d known …

  And now it was snowing. He sprinted across the slushy street toward the Food King, its lit-up parking lot crisscrossed with dark tire tracks in the deepening snow. Cars pulled in and out, their occupants hurrying to stock up before the roads got bad.

  Although they wouldn’t be completely impassable; another plow rumbled past behind him as he hesitated on the lot’s landscaped verge. Stormy weather never stopped any self-respecting northern Mainer from getting around; if all else failed, there were snowmobiles.

  But he didn’t have one. So he’d have to hope those plows were doing their stuff. He’d hung around until dark, hiding in a shed behind the potato wholesaler’s barn, not wanting to chance being seen walking or biking toward the interstate.

  He hadn’t reckoned on the storm, though. And now he’d spied them in her office: Lizzie, Chevrier, and that other cop. Talking about him, probably, so he had to get out of town before …

  Taking a deep breath, he waited until a woman in a hooded parka got done loading her bags of groceries into a back seat. Once she was in her car and pulling away, he ducked from behind it and began running again between rows of cars, keeping out of the lights as best he could.

  Thinking, How? How had it all gone so disastrously bad, and so fast? Like an avalanche of disaster:

  First the guy ordering Spud to get the kid, hand him over, and keep his mouth shut about it or—

  Or I’ll cut your freaking head off and I’ll mount it on a stick, the guy had said while his hand stroked the knife on his belt meaningfully.

  Spud had believed him, too; oh, he definitely had. Then came the lost nose stud, its absence somehow betraying what he’d done to the girl last night, though he still didn’t understand exactly how …

  And now the storm had arrived, as if even the weather was out to get him. He scanned more cars; the next one had a barking dog in it, the one after that a kid. Come on, come on …

  A snow gust slapped him, shoving him back a step. But he hurled himself forward again, blinking away the tears and the melting snow.

  Because he had to. Just the way he’d had to take the baby. And what he’d had to do to the girl last night, too, it was all the same, things he got forced into or that he couldn’t help.

  But if they found him, they’d blame him. That much he knew for certain. Gasping, Spud flung himself into a little Ford Fiesta sedan, the keys gleaming like treasure in the ignition.

  Turning the key, he felt the still-warm engine firing to life, the heat coming on strong right away. Hitting the gas, he tore out of the parking lot, praying no one had seen him.

  But on the street, he slowed abruptly, peering nervously past the windshield wipers for the Bearkill squad car, puttering along though his heart’s racing urged him to go, go, go! Not until he passed the potato barn, its porch lights glowing dimly through the snow, did Spud slam his foot down onto the accelerator.

  Ahead, the road vanished into a curtain of white. A plow loomed up suddenly, then vanished in the rearview mirror. If you come back here, I’ll kill you, the guy had said after taking him to see the forest encampment.

  But now Spud had nowhere else to go. The wipers slapped open dark wedges on the windshield.

  Enough to peer through, out into the night. The wipers flapped, and the snow went on falling, and the car he had stolen went on racking up the miles, due north.

  After a
while he felt tears leaking down his cheeks, the salt stinging his skin, but he didn’t bother swiping at them.

  Maybe he won’t kill me. Maybe …

  Maybe he’ll let me stay.

  Half an hour after agreeing to accompany Missy Brantwell on a mission to get Missy’s son back, Lizzie was in her office again, finishing up last-minute preparations for the trip.

  Gloves, flashlight, water bottle …

  Dylan and Chevrier had tried to dissuade her, of course. But in his heart, it was what Chevrier had wanted, too, and once he’d caved, Dylan did as well, so now all four of them were going.

  Scarf, earmuffs … The path in to the camp from the road, Missy had told them, was a half mile, maybe a little longer. She wasn’t sure about weapons, remembering only that there were some at the camp: a crossbow, a pistol, maybe some long guns as well, she’d said uncertainly.

  Which wasn’t great news. Still, he was only one guy. And he could probably only shoot one gun at a time, she told herself as the office door swung open and Trey Washburn came in.

  “Hey,” he greeted her, taking in the gear on her desk.

  “Hey, yourself,” she replied, surprised. Washburn looked ready for anything in a red-checked hunting cap, voluminous down jacket, and hunting boots, and the shotgun on his shoulder only increased this impression.

  “Whoa,” she said, eyeing the weapon. Pump-action, doublebarreled … with its carved stock and gleaming engraved steel, the thing looked expensive.

  And deadly. A grin creased his face, which was pink with cold. “Yeah. It was my dad’s. Just one of the many things he had to sell when he went broke. I bought it back at an auction.”

  “Good for you.” She smiled briefly at him, then went back to organizing the backpack. She’d gone home for more warm clothes and to walk Rascal, get him situated for the evening; now Chevrier and Missy were getting baby supplies, communications gear, and weapons and ammunition together.

  And Dylan was Spud-hunting; she’d told him briefly about the nose stud she’d found at the accident site last night, and he had wanted to talk to the boy himself before they left, if he could.

  Now: “Looks like you’re getting ready for an expedition,” Washburn commented.

  “Just making sure my go-bag is all in order,” she lied, controlling her impatience.

  It was fine that he had decided to make friends again, but now wasn’t the time; this trip was nobody else’s business. Also, she was late; they’d be leaving in five minutes, but she still had to get her personal weapon out of the locked Blazer, check it, and stow extra clips for it in her bag.

  She hadn’t even had a chance yet to confer with Chevrier about his friend in Van Buren: the suicide that wasn’t. But that, too, would have to wait.

  “Pretty intense for routine prep work,” Washburn observed.

  “Yeah,” she replied, not looking up. “Guess I’m kind of an intense person.”

  Thinking, Please go away. Rummaging in her purse, she found a pack of tissues and a lip balm, fished them out and stuffed them into the pack.

  “Listen, the truth is, I ran into Missy Brantwell just now,” said Washburn. “In the Food King, and in a big hurry. Just like you.”

  “Is that so?” she replied distractedly, thinking, First aid kit, extra socks. They were going in two vehicles in case one got stuck somewhere or had mechanical troubles.

  Which, she thought, would be just her luck on a night like this. Then it hit her, what Washburn had just said.

  And that he was carrying a shotgun. She looked up. “She told you.” About the campsite, about where they were going and why—

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “I asked if I could help. She’s with Hudson and Chevrier now, she’ll be riding with them. To give me,” he added, “a little time for a private conversation with you.”

  “I see,” she replied lightly, wondering suddenly again how a man whose father had lost everything he had, putting his wife in an early grave and his son in foster care … how that man paid off school loans, bought the lost farm back, built a new, modern veterinary clinic, and paid for expensive horse upkeep, all on what he made as a rural animal doctor. Not to mention that fabulous house of his …

  Darn, she thought sadly. Just when I was really getting to like him, he turns out to be a—

  “Mmph,” Washburn uttered softly, his knees buckling.

  As he dropped to the floor, the man who had opened the door silently behind him dipped quickly to catch the shotgun Washburn had been carrying. In his other hand, the man gripped the brick Spud Wilson had been using to prop the door open when he brought things in and out: carpeting, shelving material.

  Tools and so on. The brick’s deep red hue was now darkened further by smeared blood from the back of Washburn’s head.

  “Old Trey here wasn’t the only one who saw Missy in the store,” said Roger Brantwell. He was, Lizzie noticed again, almost as big a man as Washburn.

  And there was a look in his eye she didn’t like. “We had a disagreement back at the house; she drove off all furious,” he went on.

  Sounding reasonable. Almost. Keep him talking. “Because you were at her again to tell you who Jeffrey’s father is?”

  Brantwell nodded. “But she wouldn’t. She told me to mind my own goddamned business for once,” he added. “Can you imagine, a girl saying a thing like that to her father?”

  Depends on the father, Lizzie thought as he went on. “She has no idea what it’s like trying to keep that place going. Food on the table, roof over her head. Keep my guys working, their jobs are on the line, too, you know. And it’s all on me.”

  She glanced past him out the windows to the street, where the snow seemed to be intensifying by the minute. “So you followed her. She drove off in a huff and you—”

  He nodded. “Into the store. I thought at least she wouldn’t yell at me in front of other people. I just wanted to talk.”

  Talk now, Lizzie thought. Keep talking, long enough for Dylan or Chevrier to wonder what’s keeping me and come back to find out.

  “But instead you heard her in conversation with someone else,” she said. “Trey Washburn.”

  Brantwell’s face darkened. “Yeah. They were at the end of one aisle, I was right around the corner at the end of the next one. So I heard it all.”

  He kicked at Washburn’s unconscious form. Washburn moaned and shifted a little, then was still again.

  “The whole plan,” Brantwell went on. “Where Jeffrey is. And who’s got him. His father. Daniel,” he snarled, as if out of the whole awful situation this was the worst part.

  As if he already knew Daniel, but that couldn’t be right … could it? Lizzie dared another glance to the street outside. But she spotted no Chevrier. No Dylan, either. And now Brantwell had Washburn’s shotgun, which he handled easily, as if he knew how to use it.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why’s it so especially bad that he’s Jeffrey’s father?”

  But then she did understand, or she began to, anyway: Brantwell had money troubles. He traveled often to New York, in a Cadillac Escalade whose cargo area had plenty of room. And if Daniel was one link in the meth-moving scheme—

  “You’re in business with him,” she said. “He picked up the product from the individual meth cooks. Izzy Dolaby did the packaging. And you …”

  Brantwell made the big-shipment deliveries, the next step up in the distribution system in New York. Once upon a time, that wouldn’t have been profitable; the Mexican manufacturers had been well established and well funded.

  But nowadays with immigration a big issue and the southwest border getting much more enforcement attention …

  He saw her getting it. “Yeah. I bet Daniel thought it was real funny, too. I bet every time he saw me, he thought about how funny it was, that he’d been screwing my daughter.”

  He hefted the shotgun. “Now turn around.” When she did, he touched the back of her neck with the end of the gun barrel, then took her duty weapon from it
s holster.

  “Empty your pack.”

  Once she had, showing him there were no other weapons in it, he made her fill it again, aiming the shotgun at her, keeping the barrel out of her reach.

  “Come on,” she said as she obeyed, “you aren’t going to blow me away with a shotgun right here in town, are you?”

  “Good question,” he replied. But he had an answer for it:

  “Accident. Terrible thing. I saw Washburn with the gun, he seemed to be threatening you, and I hit him. That’s when the gun went off.”

  He looked down at Washburn. “Killing you,” he added. “And I must’ve hit Trey too hard with that brick.”

  Washburn lay motionless except for his breathing, which was hitching and too slow. Lizzie had seen blunt-force head trauma victims before, and this one didn’t look merely unconscious.

  He looked comatose. “Although,” Brantwell went on, bending fast to snatch up the brick again, “it could be I was forced to hit him twice.”

  “They’ll be back here,” Lizzie said quickly, “Chevrier and the others, they’ll come looking for me any time now and—”

  Brantwell lowered the brick grudgingly. “You’re right. And he never saw me, so even if he does wake up …”

  Which without swift medical attention was unlikely, Lizzie thought. She’d seen it happen; accidents, assaults. Even with the proper care, a severe blunt-force head injury could be … Trey, she thought sorrowfully.

  “Come on,” Brantwell snapped. “Turn the lights out. Lock the door. You’re going to go around to the Blazer’s passenger side and get in that way, then slide across. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Which he was, the gun under his right arm, ready to drop into his hand. From the easy, practiced way he handled the weapon, she knew he wouldn’t fumble it or drop it. For a brief instant in the Blazer’s cab, she thought she might get the glove box open—

  His hand clamped hard around her wrist. “Ah-ah,” he warned pleasantly, punctuating this with a nudge from the gun barrel.

  She settled as best she could in the driver’s seat while he watched approvingly. “So listen,” he said. “I realize it must come as a shock to you, all this being out of your control all of a sudden.”