Hard Cold Winter

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “I’m all the way in. Anything from the guards?”

  His voice was clear but sanded smooth of emotion through the phone. “All quiet. There are two on duty tonight. One is walking the halls now. He’s been gone six minutes.”

  We had timed the guard’s rounds at fifteen minutes. With five floors, three minutes per. That was during the workday. It might be a little faster at night. So he’d be on this floor within two or three minutes, and gone in six or seven.

  I used a pencil flash to scan the shelves of the storage room. Loads of equipment whose functions I could only guess at, maybe bit and pieces of laser generators, and some kinds of thermal imaging cameras that looked like tiny televisions on sticks. Gallison specialized in optical engineering, which was why they had the top-quality lenses I was looking for.

  I found their cases bungee-corded in place on two of the lower shelves. Twenty-six cases in all, in varying sizes. Each was made of hard black plastic with a built-in handle, like a toy suitcase. The smallest case could hold a baseball glove, and the largest could hold all three bases stacked together. I undid the bungee cords around one of the small cases and clicked the plastic latches open. Inside, wrapped in clear oiled plastic and tucked into gray protective foam, was a thick circle of glass that cost about five thousand dollars, retail price. The biggest cases would be worth ten times that. The value increased exponentially along with the size. I grinned as I stacked the cases neatly by the window. You could light one hell of a campfire with one of these magnifiers.

  The contents of the backpack came next. Fuel tanks. Hollow alloy rod and attached torch. Plexiglas safety mask. Gloves. Tongs. And two hundred coiled feet of slim cotton rope, with rubber-coated carabiners attached to it on little loops every four feet.

  My watch said seven minutes had passed since Dono and I had talked. The guard would be off my floor by now. I attached the fuel tanks to the torch, put on my gloves and mask, and beeped Dono three times. That was the signal that I was ready to start. Four minutes later, I heard his answering beeps. The guards were back in the lobby.

  I lit the torch. It whuffed to thick orange life, bright as a birthday cake in the black room. I quickly dialed it back to a narrow flame that ran along the inside of the hollow alloy rod. The rod tapered to a point. It was a very special piece of metal, as expensive as some of the lenses for its ability to retain heat. Over twelve hundred degrees Celsius, once it really got rolling. The tip glowed red, then white, then almost clear. I could feel it even through the silicone-coated Kevlar gloves.

  I picked a spot on the window, about one foot above the floor. And started melting through the glass.

  It was slow going. The window was two panes of tempered safety glass with a thin layer of argon in between for insulation. The panes would crumble if I created too much stress. So I let the heat do the work, just like a hot blade cutting frozen butter. The glass popped and sizzled in tiny beads, almost launching itself away from the superheated rod. I wondered if one of the hot beads might somehow fall four stories to land on the truck. We’d have to check, later. It could be evidence.

  I needed to make a hole about one foot by two feet, for the largest cases. After five minutes, I’d melted a three-inch line. If I kept the same pace, I’d have my hole in two hours. The liquefied glass smelled like candle smoke and paint thinner.

  This was the first big score—not just a house job or piecemeal stuff—that Dono and I had done together in months. He’d had other work, with other crews. Dono didn’t like involving me in scores that required a team. He said the fewer people who knew about me, the better. I was at the age where the law might prosecute me as an adult. It made some sense.

  But I wondered if his secrecy was also to keep me from branching out. I knew I could get work with some of his partners. Maybe even set up my own scores, with Hiram as the buyer. Hell, I’d have to chew through the leash, someday.

  The earbud beeped once. I kept cutting. I was nearly to the end of the first side. It beeped again, a longer blast.

  I spoke as it was starting again. “Yeah?”

  “You’re supposed to signal back before talking,” Dono said.

  Jesus. “I’m here now.”

  “They’re making rounds. Two min—no, three minutes in now.”

  The torch was quiet enough. The guard didn’t come into the Gallison offices from the hallway. “All right.”

  The guards finished that patrol, and made one more an hour later, while I was closing in on the last inch of uncut glass. The piece I’d carved out of the window was warped into tiny crocodile bumps at the edges. A cool bit of sculpture. If it wasn’t a dead giveaway, I might want to keep the thing. I gripped the big rectangle with the tongs in my left hand, lifting its weight off the rod. Drops of sweat had been rolling off my forehead and the tip of my nose for the last hour, drizzling the inside of the face mask.

  Then the rectangle of glass was free, and I had to drop the tongs to catch the sudden burden. I set the glass aside and rolled out my shoulders. The night breeze came in through the open hole and chilled the perspiration on my chest. I shivered, and it felt great.

  I took off the face mask and heavy gloves, and beeped Dono. He responded instantly.

  “Fresh air,” I said.

  “Go.”

  I grabbed the end of the hundred-foot rope, and fed the end out the open hole. When I came to the first rubberized carabiner on its short loop, I grabbed the nearest carrying case—one of the little ones, no need to risk fifty grand on the first try—and clicked the carabiner onto the handle. The case went out the window, and down a few feet before I got to the next loop. I heard the case tap softly against the side of the building. I repeated the process with the next case and carabiner, and the pricey pieces of custom glass steadily inched their way down the side of the building.

  I worked quickly now. The cases could be spotted as we lowered them, from the inside or by someone who happened to walk by the building, not that pedestrians were likely in an office park at two in the morning. But there were other buildings, other guards who might step outside for a smoke. And I didn’t like the way the cases tapped randomly against the building. Faster was better.

  At the bottom, Dono was receiving the first of the cases, unhooking them, laying them in the open truck bed. I couldn’t hear him over the wind, but I felt the tug on the rope as the weight of each case came off.

  Onto the last of the cases now, the big ones. They fit through the hole I’d made with an inch to spare. Hot damn. I let the cord play out, giving Dono just enough slack.

  Then there was a sound from outside the storage room. The heavy clunk of a door closing.

  I stuck my head out the window. The last case was still two stories above Dono.

  My earbud beeped. He must have seen me looking.

  I beeped back.

  “Everything all right?” he said.

  It could be a janitor, in the outer offices. Or just a regular spot check by the patrolling guard. No reason to panic.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Someone turned on the lights in the outer office. The yellow glow came under the storage room door with an almost audible rush.

  “Talk to me,” Dono said.

  From the outer office, a radio receiver squawked with an indecipherable voice. And footsteps. I definitely heard footsteps now.

  Coming right toward the storage room door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AT EIGHT THE NEXT morning I was carefully shaving around the scar that followed my jawline. The slim furrow had a bad habit of catching the razor. I’d long since learned that going very slowly was the only way to keep from adding another mark to my face.

  Leo had still been awake when I’d gotten in the night before from A. Borealis. He’d nodded hello and then gone back to reading a year-old Sport magazine. Dono had subscribed to the UK weekly to follow the Ulster coverage. Addy Proctor had collected Dono’s mail while I’d been ov
erseas, and a tall stack of issues had grown in the front room.

  I’d heard Leo go out around midnight. This morning he was still gone, and his pack was leaning against the hearth.

  As I scraped the stubble from my face I thought about Kend Haymes’s strange flock of friends. Suspicious Charlie Shearman. Controlled Barrett Yorke. And her loyal and potentially spine-cracking brother, Parson. Were they just circling the wagons around one of their own, out of class courtesy? Maybe they did care for Elana, but more so for Kend. Or perhaps there were secrets between friends that the new guy with the suspect pedigree should never know.

  And Trudy Dobbs. I’d see if I could get a line on her. Had she been gone on vacation before any of this went down? Or had she left in a hurry?

  I had an hour before my appointment, or whatever it was, with Maurice Haymes. Charlie Shearman had done me a small favor, without meaning to. I hadn’t considered whether the Haymes family might be worried I was going to sue them. That might be the reason for Maurice’s sudden urge to meet me. Hell, maybe they were thinking about suing me, just for hiking over their private land.

  Over breakfast I found Trudy’s profile online. Her latest post showed a stock picture of a tropical beach at sunset, with the caption Off for a week in Paradise!!! See you later!! It was followed by a couple of dozen replies, including one from Barrett, marveling at her trip and asking where she was going. There was no response from Trudy.

  The time stamp on the post was near nine thirty in the morning on Saturday. Elana and Kend had been shot sometime Friday night.

  It could be coincidence. Trudy leaves at the end of the workweek, for a vacation off the grid. Her bestie Elana and Kend go to the cabin, also away from civilization. Taken separately, neither event sounded unusual. But put them together, and I was very interested in talking to Trudy Dobbs.

  On my way out to the truck I heard Stanley woof excitedly, from down the block.

  Leo was standing in the street outside Addy Proctor’s house, holding a stunted length of heavy rope. He tossed it high in the air and Stanley leapt to catch it. As I came closer I spotted Addy sitting in her usual wicker chair on the porch, wearing a white snowsuit trimmed with fake fur. Stanley’s leash lay on the table next to her.

  “Drop,” Addy said. Stanley chewed on the chunk of rope, and danced side to side, his eyes on Leo. Leo didn’t move. His attention was as focused on the dog as Stanley’s was on him. Addy repeated the command. Stanley set the rope down and ran in a big circle, off the street and into the lawn, tearing up wads of earth and grass, and back to Leo again. I walked over the mud-splattered flagstones to Addy. She tutted.

  “Ready for Westminster,” I said.

  “Ready for a nap,” she said, “just too excited to know it.”

  Leo picked up the rope and tossed it again. Stanley’s pale flanks were covered with his own slobber and splashes of dirt.

  “Everything okay?” I said.

  “With me and Stanley, sure,” said Addy, speaking under her breath. “I don’t know about your friend.”

  “Leo’s safe.”

  “Well of course he’s safe. I’ve never seen Stanley take to someone so quickly. But he’s been throwing that toy for an hour, with hardly a word beyond saying hello. I never even had to start our morning walk.”

  “How’d you know he was with me?”

  “From what I choose to see as an advantage of being old. I hardly sleep more than two hours at a time. Mister Pak was sitting out on your stone steps half the night, without the decency to smoke like I do, and then I suppose he went for a long walk. Stanley and I met him when we came out. I had to take the first step to make introductions.”

  No kidding. “Leo’s the quiet type.”

  Addy frowned at me. “Give me more credit. I’ve worked in hospitals. I saw plenty of young men there, after Vietnam.”

  “Okay. So you know. Leo takes life piece by piece, I think.”

  “As do we all.”

  “I’ll ask him to join me this morning.”

  “Nonsense. Leave them be. If Stanley sleeps through lunch I’ll save hundreds on dog food.”

  I nodded to Leo as I passed, and he nodded back. Happy. Maybe.

  THE COLUMBIA TOWER ELEVATOR opened on the thirty-fourth floor to reveal three large letters in brushed steel on the opposite wall. HDC. The glass door separating the offices from the elevator bank elaborated that the letters stood for Haymes Development/Construction.

  The receptionist managed to leap to attention while remaining seated when I told her whom I was there to see. She picked up her phone to announce my arrival, and then whisked me to the far end of the building, past a couple of hundred office people doing office things. I didn’t see anyone who looked like an actual construction worker.

  We reached a set of large wooden double doors. Maurice Haymes’s name was on the right-hand door in the same aluminum letters as in the lobby, but smaller. Downright humble.

  The receptionist didn’t pause, but opened the door and nodded me inside.

  Haymes’s office was about the same square footage as the ground floor of my house. There was a full-sized conference table made of dark walnut, and another sitting area with a coffee table and club chairs.

  The man standing behind the giant wraparound desk looked enough like Kend for me to know I was looking at Maurice Haymes. His short red curls were liberally sprinkled with gray. He wore a dress shirt and tie, but his jacket was draped over his chair. He looked fit and energized.

  “Mr. Shaw, please come in,” Haymes said, in a voice that an anchorman would have envied.

  Another man was sitting in a chair in front of the desk. He angled himself to look at me, but didn’t stand. Even sitting, he was very tall, and very thin. About the same age as Maurice Haymes, sixtyish, and immaculately dressed in a gray three-piece suit and tie with a Windsor knot.

  “Thank you, Bonnie,” said the thin man in the chair. The receptionist nodded and left, closing the door.

  Haymes came around to shake my hand firmly. “I’m pleased you could come and see us, Mr. Shaw. I’m Maurice Haymes. This is Arthur Ostrander.”

  Ostrander nodded. His gray hair was combed straight back from a widow’s peak.

  “Please,” said Ostrander, gesturing to the chair the chair across from him. I sat down. He leaned back in his chair, seemingly satisfied to have us both at the same altitude.

  Haymes sat on the edge of the desk. “First of all, Mr. Shaw, I want to say thank you for what you did for my son.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Kend was—everything a father could want. I truly do not understand what may have happened.”

  Haymes’s sorrow sounded authentic. Maybe it was. But his polished manner gave everything that he said the impression that he was working from a script.

  Ostrander jumped in. “We understand from the county sheriff’s office that you frightened away the animal. That took some courage.”

  “Perhaps not for a soldier,” said Haymes.

  Ostrander nodded. “Indeed. But we wanted to talk to you about something else. Could we offer you a coffee first?”

  I was starting to get dizzy from the glad-handing. “I’m fine, thank you. You’re an attorney, Mr. Ostrander?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a concern?”

  “Just trying to understand why we’re all here.”

  “Of course, of course.” Ostrander tried on a sympathetic smile. His gaunt face and widow’s peak made him look like a cartoon mortician. “It’s a difficult time for the family. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  “For Elana’s family, too.”

  “Yes. You knew Miss Coll?”

  “When we were kids.”

  “And her uncle? William Willard?”

  They were well informed. I shouldn’t be surprised. The Haymes name probably swung enough weight to have cops and hospital workers lining up to share details about the case.

  “Was Kend in trouble?” I said.r />
  “Excuse me?”

  “In trouble. Under stress. Did you know of any reason he might have hurt Elana, and himself? Stop me if you want to take these one by one.”

  Ostrander stiffened. “That’s hardly your—”

  “I want to ask you for your help, Mr. Shaw,” said Haymes. “We’re as upset by Miss Coll’s death as you are. She was a victim. But I believe Kend was, too, of his own emotions. Perhaps one day we’ll understand. For now, all we can do is deal with the pieces.”

  “What sort of help?”

  “Kend worked for HDC. Not full-time, you understand, but he was a trusted employee. He had taken some HDC property with him to the cabin, we believe. Boxes of documents which he was sorting through for me. Did you notice those, while you were—with Kend and Elana?”

  Documents. I looked at Ostrander, who was poker-faced, and back to Haymes. “Not that I saw.”

  “You wouldn’t have missed them, the boxes would be large. The material isn’t top secret—not like the information you’ve had clearance to see, I’m sure.” Haymes gave me a manly smirk. “But it is proprietary. The documents might be of interest to competitors, and we would like them back.”

  “I imagine. But they weren’t there.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Like you said, I wouldn’t have missed them.”

  Haymes looked at me. He didn’t say anything. Despite his strong energy, there were bags of fatigue under his eyes that even the year-round tan couldn’t fully conceal.

  “Perhaps Kend was working with the files elsewhere,” said Ostrander. “Miss Coll may have had another apartment.”

  “Would you keep an eye out for those, Mr. Shaw?” prompted Haymes. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”

  Ostrander gave a slow nod. “Should you happen across any HDC property, we would of course reimburse you for your efforts.”

  “Handsomely,” Haymes said. “You have served your country with valor. In Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere.” He paused, maybe to let me be impressed by the extent of their reach. “It can’t be easy to reintegrate after so long away. This could lead to bigger things. Much bigger.”