Ice on the Grapevine

by R. E. Donald

  There were narrow gaps between the pallets, so he made his way carefully, moving in a crouch, and feeling his way along the cold, plastic wrapped surface with his hand. His fingers were already beginning to feel numb from their contact with the cold door, and now the frozen cartons. His left foot slipped off a frosty edge and into a crevice between two skids, and he cursed as he almost lost his balance. He was thankful his ankle hadn't lodged in tight, and, having learned his lesson, moved over to the right hand side of the load so he could keep one hand on the trailer wall. The noise of the refrigeration unit grew louder, and the air blew colder. Once or twice his head brushed the billowing plastic sleeve that hung from the ceiling. Finally he was at the front wall of the trailer, where he banged and hollered for what he judged to be a full minute before stopping to listen, his hands tucked into his armpits. He heard nothing but the loud hum of the reefer and his own breathing. His thigh muscles ached from the cramped position and the cold.

  Hunter was only half way back when the door swung open and let in a flood of daylight. He heaved an involuntary sigh of relief, and said nothing until he was out of the trailer and able to step into the sun. It felt good to stretch his legs. "Well?" he asked Al.

  "They never would've heard anything up front. The back, yeah, at least in a situation like this where there wasn't much other noise."

  "That's about what I figured."

  "Not that it would have made any difference."

  "What do you mean?" Hunter rubbed his palms together, trying to warm his hands.

  "I mean, if they wanted the guy dead, what difference would it make whether they could hear him screaming his head off?"

  Hunter waited, imagining how the victim would have felt, and knowing from Al's expression that he had more to say.

  "I followed up with a couple more witnesses this morning," Al continued. "That argument the victim had with your friend's wife, they raised their voices enough for one of the waitresses to hear the end of it."

  "And?"

  Al referred to his notebook, recited emotionlessly, "God damn you. You used me, and I never got a damn thing out of it. You owe me." He shot Hunter a meaningful glance. "Then Williams replies, You're alive aren't you? Isn't that worth something? And she says, You're going to pay for screwing me around, you bastard, and he says, If I hand ‘em over, I’d be the one getting screwed, Share. Then she starts to leave and Williams says, Wait, Share. I’ll make you a deal, or something like that, and he follows her outside."

  "What's all that supposed to mean?"

  Al scratched his chin. "It means that she threatened him."

  Or maybe he threatened her, thought Hunter, but that was almost as bad in terms of a motive for murder. "But what was it all about?"

  "Drugs, maybe. I'm thinking maybe she was a courier. They made some kind of deal and she was trying to welsh on it, sounds like. The important line is, You're going to pay for screwing me around, you little bastard. The other witness heard the same thing."

  "They say anything else?"

  "Sharon Nillson and the victim had a friendly relationship over the last couple of years, according to the witnesses, and often spoke together privately when Williams was playing there. Nobody knew any intimate details, but one of the waitresses speculated - and took pains to assure me she had no first hand knowledge - that Williams might have been selling Sharon cocaine. She had a drug problem, ended up in rehab.”

  Hunter didn’t like the way this was shaping up, another lead pointing to Sharon. He shook his head and was about to head toward his cab when he remembered the graffiti at Hanratty meats and told Al about the signature. “I had someone look into that,” said Al. “Every meat warehouse in the Lower Mainland has been hit in the last few months. I can’t see animal rights graffiti as a motive for murder. By the way," said Al, "how did it feel?"

  "What?"

  Al jerked his head toward the trailer.

  Hunter took a deep breath and looked down at his hands, which he was clenching and unclenching to get the blood circulating. He stared into Al's face for several seconds before replying.

  "It was a horrible way to die."

  Alora Magee wasn't ready to give up on her new client. So far, she'd learned nothing useful from Sharon Nillson, because Sharon refused to talk about the circumstances surrounding the frozen body. Alora knew they needed something to open up the lines of communication between them, something to break the ice. Break the ice. When that analogy occurred to her, her mind wandering as she sat at her desk polishing the final draft of a brief, Alora groaned aloud, and decided that “building a bridge” would be a better label for it. With a free hour at the end of the day on Monday, she decided to give it a go.

  Sharon Nillson shuffled into the visiting room and Alora had to look to see if she was in leg chains. She wasn't. The guard removed her cuffs and left.

  "Are you okay?" Alora asked. "You don't look well." Sharon's skin was pallid, her hair hung in lusterless strings, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  "There's a crazy woman in my cell," she said. "If I don't get out of there, there'll be two crazy women."

  "She keeps you awake?"

  "No. She keeps me asleep. That's the only way I can escape from her." Sharon closed her eyes and worked her jaw. "If I have to listen to her and look at her, that woman will drive me stark raving mad." She shuddered and opened her mouth as if she were about to scream. "A troll. She's an ugly troll."

  "I'll see what I can do," said Alora, knowing that all she could do was complain to the Sheriff's Department "I'd like to help." When her client didn't respond, she said, "We need to help each other, you and I. We have to communicate better if I'm going to build a good case for you."

  Sharon just took a deep breath and lowered her eyes.

  "I can tell that you're uncomfortable with me," Alora started with a sentence she'd partially rehearsed, "so I thought that perhaps if I told you a little bit about myself, it might help to break... to break the barrier between us." Gawd. She'd almost fallen into the ice analogy again. "Yuck. I almost sound like a social worker, but trust me, I'm not the touchy feely type. I just want us to find some common ground so we can work together. We don't need to be friends, you don't even need to like me, we just have to come to an understanding that we're both working toward the same goal. Am I making sense?"

  Sharon barely nodded. Alora noticed that Sharon was fiddling with her hands underneath the table again, so she clicked open her briefcase, which she'd left on the floor beside her chair, and extracted the emergency pack of cigarettes. "Would you like a smoke?"

  Sharon reached for the pack and tapped it against a knuckle. Three cigarettes flipped out onto the table. "Sorry," she said.

  "Okay," said Alora, wondering where to start. With the basics, she decided. "I'm thirty seven years old and I've never had kids. How's that for a start?"

  Sharon was busy lighting a cigarette. She nodded as she inhaled, then said, "Me neither. Go on," and settled back in her chair. Smoke curled out her nostrils.

  "I've been a lawyer for five years, and before that I tried teaching school, but I hated it." Alora realized that her education could turn out to be more of a barrier than a bridge, so she quickly continued. "On weekends, I ride my bike, mostly in the mountains." She watched Sharon suck deeply on her cigarette and decided that sports probably wasn't going to be much of a bridge either. "I have a sister and a brother, both younger, and my sister is married with two kids, so I'm an aunt. How about you?"

  "My kid sister - my only sister - OD'd on heroin," said Sharon, her voice emotionless.

  If she'd intended it as a slap in the face, it worked. "I'm sorry," said Alora, putting her fingers to her lips. They were both silent for a moment, and Alora scrambled for something neutral to say. Hobbies? Pets? "I used to like to ride my bike alone, when I had a dog. Then I lost my dog, so now I only go on organized rides, or ride with friends."

  There was a spark of interest in Sharon's eyes. "How did you lose your
dog?" she asked.

  Alora squirmed in her chair. The death of a dog couldn't compare with the death of a sister. Was this another mistake? "I had to put him down," she said. "He wasn't even ten yet, but his hips were really bad. Dysplasia. It's very painful. Have you heard of it?" Sharon shook her head. "He was a German Shepherd," added Alora. "It's very common in Shepherds."

  "I have a Pomeranian," said Sharon, her eyes averted. "Ray gave her to me."

  "You must miss her," said Alora. Another faux pas? She hastened to add, "And Ray, too. You must miss them both."

  Sharon nodded, kept her eyes lowered. "Life's a bitch."

  "What did you say her name was? This bitch," she added with a smile.

  "Peaches," said Sharon, acknowledging the joke with a soft snort.

  Alora didn't like small dogs. They weren't strong enough to give her any sense of comfort, not powerful enough to frighten a man, to ward off a stalker. "My dog's name was Brutus. I... uh... got him for protection."

  "A guard dog?"

  "You could say that."

  "I've never had much worth stealing," said Sharon.

  "Oh, no," said Alora. "It wasn't that I was worried about burglars. It was..." She didn't really want to have to talk about this, but Sharon was looking at her with interest now. Maybe this would be the bridge. "...it was my ex-husband. He threatened me." She felt compelled to add, "I was very naive when I married him. I didn't know. He wasn't violent before the wedding, so I had no idea." She shook her head. "It was a mistake."

  Sharon looked thoughtful, sat tapping her front teeth with a thumbnail, her cigarette hovering inches from her nose. "Did he beat you?" she asked.

  Alora closed her eyes, involuntarily recalling the nightmare of that day. "Only once," she said. "It scared me so much I ran away from him, filed for divorce." She shivered, feeling suddenly exposed and cold. "That made him angry. Very angry."

  "Scared? You're lucky you had the guts to run away. Once you let it happen the first time, it just keeps getting worse," Sharon said. "They want to own you, like you're a car or a truck, or a dog. If you walk away, that's an insult to them, so they won't let you go." She held the flimsy aluminum ashtray with one hand, tapped the cigarette against its edge. "Once they got their teeth in you, they're like a pit bull. You ever seen a pit bull lock its jaws on someone?"

  Alora shook her head.

  "I have. A friend of mine. We'd been partying, and the guys were getting pretty pissed. Just beer, but they'd been drinking all day. My friend, Verna, she'd had enough of her old man mouthing off at her, so she said she was leaving, and she got up to go." Sharon squinted across the table, a bitter smile twisting her lips. "The bastard sicced his pit bull on her. It got its teeth into her here, right at the back of her thigh." She stood up and grabbed her leg just below the buttock. "And its jaws locked shut. Verna screamed and tried to run but it just stayed there, hanging off her, like it was attached. First her husband laughed. The bastard laughed! Then he tried to call it off. He called and whistled and when it wouldn't let go, he started to kick at it. Verna was crawling along the ground screaming like crazy, and the dog still wouldn't let go. So finally Gary beat it over the head with a crowbar." She shuddered. "It was awful. The dog went into convulsions and died, its mouth all bloody, and Verna was still screaming and crying, her eyes almost bugging out of her head. Then Gary booted the dead dog halfway across the yard, and came back at Verna, yelling at her and threatening her with the crowbar, like the whole thing was all her fault."

  "Jesus."

  "I wish I'd never seen it."

  "It must have been horrible."

  "I wish my boyfriend had never seen it either," Sharon continued. "He held it over me, brought it up every time he got drunk. He said he was like that pitbull, that he'd never let me go unless I killed him."

  Alora nodded. This was familiar territory for her. Too familiar.

  Her client smiled bitterly. "But the bastard forgot to add, until he found a younger, more attractive woman who was willing to put up with his shit."

  "Lucky for you," Alora said, shaking her head. "So you've been there, too."

  "I've been there." Sharon took a last deep drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. "I've been there so many times that I thought that it was my fault. I thought I'd never know anything different. But I was wrong."

  "Ray?"

  Sharon nodded, her lips pursed tight.

  "He must be a very special man. I'd like to meet him one day," said Alora. It occurred to her how absurd that was. As if they would meet socially one day, go out for dinner or a walk on the beach. Even if Ray and Sharon were both acquitted, if their marriage held together after the strain of a trial, there was little chance of any kind of social evening together. Except for abusive men in their pasts, she and Sharon had so little in common. And Alora was trying to forget about her abusive man.

  "You're still afraid of him, aren't you?"

  Sharon's question took her by surprise and Alora caught her breath, realized she didn't have to answer because Sharon already knew it was true.

  "Does he know where you are?"

  "I don't know," Alora said, shaking her head. "It's been a few years. I don't know."

  "Maybe," said her client in a grim voice, "you should get another dog."

  Hunter eased The Blue Knight and its trailer load of beef into one of the parking slots north of the border, then tucked his clipboard under his arm and walked up to the U.S. Customs office. It would be nice to be able to discuss Ray and Sharon's border crossing with one of the customs inspectors, but he didn't hold out much hope for getting cooperation. In fact, even bringing it up could jeopardize his chances of getting across the border smoothly tonight. The U.S. Customs inspectors weren't particularly friendly toward drivers, and were quick to wield their bureaucratic power against anyone with a bad attitude. Asking questions would probably fall into that category. Hunter decided to leave that part of the investigation entirely to the RCMP

  As luck would have it, however, he was given an opening. He'd placed his paperwork in one of the stacked boxes and stood over in the waiting area to watch. One of the inspectors, short with a dark complexion, pulled out Hunter's paperwork and called out, "Hey! Tom. This one's for you," and flung the bundle of papers across another inspector's desk. "How about this time you make sure there's no human carcasses in with the beef," he said with a gruff laugh.

  The man behind the desk grinned at his colleague, then straightened out the papers and studied them before getting up from his desk. He was wearing dark glasses and had fresh pink scar tissue on one cheek. Hunter strolled over to the counter and identified himself before he could be called. "Trust me," he said. "There's no body in there this time. An RCMP detective and myself both looked."

  "Let's hope not," said the inspector, looking up. Hunter couldn't see his eyes behind the dark glasses, and hoped he hadn't said the wrong thing. Even polite small talk could backfire on a driver trying to stay on a customs man's good side. "But we still need to take a look inside. Bring 'er around to the dock." Just routine for a meat shipment. The man's voice wasn't particularly friendly, but it didn't sound menacing either.

  "You betcham," said Hunter, and left to comply.

  When Hunter swung open the back doors, the customs inspector was standing at his shoulder, along with an inspector from the Department of Agriculture. "What have we here?" asked the Food Safety man, stepping toward the nearest skid. Winking at the customs inspector, he added, "Any frozen corpses on board?"

  "Were you two the ones who inspected that load?" asked Hunter.

  The Food inspector deferred to the other man, who answered with a question of his own. "Did the RCMP really inspect this trailer before you left?"

  "We conducted a little experiment," said Hunter, reasoning that if he shared some information with them, they might reciprocate. "The detective wanted to know if you could hear a man yelling and pounding from inside the trailer." He smiled. "That was my job."

 
; "And could you?"

  "Hear? He said he could hear some from back here, but nothing from inside the cab."

  "You undercover?" asked the Food inspector. He'd checked the labels on the rearmost skids, made some marks on the paperwork on to his clipboard.

  "Not anymore." Hunter left it deliberately vague. "So you two saw nothing unusual about the load or the drivers?"

  The Food inspector shook his head, then looked sheepishly at the customs inspector. "I'm afraid I was a little... uh... under the weather that day, so it wasn't exactly a close inspection. And Tom there wasn't much help. He'd done a face plant from his mountain bike the weekend before - right, Tom? - and was suffering from a painful road rash."

  The customs agent lifted his dark glasses to reveal faint yellow circles under his eyes.

  "Shit, Tom. You don't need those anymore." The Food man turned to Hunter. "He thinks he's Tommy Lee Jones."

  "I didn't know mountain biking was a contact sport," said Hunter.

  "Great sport," the customs man said, deadpan. "As long as you keep your face off the gravel."

  "Thanks, chief," said Hunter. "I'll keep that in mind." They gave him the all-clear sign, and he swung the doors of the trailer closed, fastening a heavy padlock on the latch.

  To Hunter's relief, without any further delays he was back behind the wheel, heading down the I-5 toward Seattle. If the customs and Agriculture inspectors had been as lax with their inspection when Ray and Sharon had come through, there was no doubt that a man could have hidden deep in the darkness of the trailer and not been discovered at the border. If that were the case, why would Greg Williams have wanted to be in that trailer? He had no arrest record, so presumably, if he wished to enter the country, he could have done so openly. It seemed unlikely that Williams had resorted to smuggling himself across the border in a refrigerated trailer.

  If the two U.S. agents both remembered the load, there was little doubt that the trailer had been opened and at least a cursory inspection performed. So a man in the trailer against his will, unless he were unconscious, could have used that opportunity to escape. Russell Kupka had said there was evidence indicating that the victim could have been unconscious, that perhaps he woke up somewhere past the border and found himself lying on a bed of frozen meat, padlocked inside a moving trailer. Woke up to the cold. Woke up to the dark.