Cold As Hell
Page 5
Heard the train whistle, the blast closer this time.
He knew where he’d intercept it, maybe a mile up the road. If he waited it out, it could take forever. The engine would be pulling seventy, eighty, a hundred slow-moving cars. He’d definitely miss kickoff, quite possibly the first scoring run. And why the fuck did she have to stay on his ass like that anyway?
“Ease up, buster,” Ava said. “There’s black ice under the snow. I can see it glistening.”
The train wailed, then the conductor hit another blast on the whistle and Ava, if she hadn’t heard it before, definitely heard it now.
“Train!” she hissed. “Stop, damn it!”
He could see it now, off to the right, rumbling slowly in a low, steady roar that told him it would take forever if he had to wait it out.
“Not a problem,” he told her.
He could make it. He was sure of it. But then the big cherry red Pontiac caught a patch of ice and swiveled under him, but he stayed with it. That was the secret: ride it out.
The train whistle blasted a fourth time. Louder now. Much louder, it seemed.
Ava braced herself against the glove compartment with both hands. “Peter!”
She was right. Why take the chance? He was responsible for four lives now, not just his own.
So he stopped. And waited.
Or would have, but the tires had found the black ice that Ava had warned about, and Peter could feel the Pontiac gliding, twitching, faking left and right like an agile fullback. He had the sudden insight that their lives were no longer in his hands. He was a spectator here, his brakes and steering wheel and best intentions useless against simple physics.
And there was the train, fifty, forty yards away.
“Stop, Peter!” Ava shrieked.
He was trying. He was trying, damn it. The Pontiac slid forward, angling toward the tracks. Now they were so close that Peter could see the red spray-painted graffiti scrawled over three cars.
Seasons Greatings One and All, it read. In the big, loopy scrawl of a drunken street artist in a festive, holiday mood.
It was indeed a close call, but the big Pontiac never came to within more than twenty yards of the train.
The century-old oak tree to the left side of the road instantly stopped all forward momentum.
7:00, said the round, analog clock set into the dashboard of the ’71 Pontiac Bonneville. Game time.
Chapter Ten
Shattered
The big old Pontiac hit the tree with an earsplitting, night-ripping roar of sheared metal and shattered glass and bark-stripping tree trunk assault. The oak bowed toward the Pontiac embedded in its base, but thankfully never toppled.
But all of that he saw much later. At the moment Peter was scared and confused, and felt only intense pain and a teeth-chattering chill. Stray particles of snow illogically drifted inside his car. Some landed on his sweating face.
The pain, the excruciating pain, radiated most specifically from one knee. His left knee. Peter had no idea why it hurt him like it did. He had no idea why it was snowing inside his car and his teeth were chattering. He had no clue as to why his ears still rung with some explosive, jarring bomb of a sound memory. Or why his steering wheel was tucked in his lap, pinning him to his seat. He felt his heart racing, his breath expelling in harsh, shallow hitches.
He didn’t understand it—any of it—at first. He had to sit there as calmly as possible, frozen in place, and feel the intensity of the pain of his ruined knee and think about it. Rewind the mental tape in replay. And then it came back to him. Some of it, anyway.
“Ava!”
He thought he’d screamed her name. That had been his intention, but the single word came out in a choked whisper. “Ava,” he said again, this time not even trying to lift his voice beyond the twisted, shattered Pontiac parked at the base of a wounded oak tree.
In another second the fog lifted enough for Peter to figure out why the interior of his vehicle invited snow flurries, why the crystal-white particles would land gently on his nose and cheeks to melt instantly away in his hot sweat, and why his lips felt numb with the paralysis of cold and impending shock.
The windshield was broken. That’s why. Above his crumpled steering wheel the glass showed a map of tributary fractures. It was a pattern that discontinued as he followed the glass with his eyes to the passenger side. Here, the windshield had taken a much larger blow, and most of the glass was not cracked, but gone altogether.
So was Ava.
“Ava,” he said for probably not the first time, but his lips were barely moving and his brain had turned sluggish in the cold and pain, so he quite possibly only voiced his wife’s name in his head.
Peter’s gaze now left the car, as Ava had obviously done, and strayed to the dark heap vaguely outlined in the snow.
He would also be forced to see that crumpled form in full, glossy color at a later time, during a legal hearing that never ended up going further than an accusation of hazardous speed and negligent death. He had been, as it turned out, too pitiful to prosecute. He couldn’t pull his gaze from the still form already nearly half-buried in the swiftly falling snow. It looked like some abstract painted form of black and white and red that only in time resolved into Peter Craig’s new reality.
The freshly fallen snow looked clean, still and virgin except near two points under the unmoving figure where red pools had collected and steamed in the snow.
He heard voices, loud and excited and hushed and harsh, all at the same time. Sirens wailing in the distance.
“Are there any—? Hey, there’s someone in the car! We need an ambulance right away!”
Others formed a half-circle around the figure in the snow, but few approached it too closely. Those who did looked ready to run for cover if it made the slightest movement.
It didn’t.
“Ava,” Peter said. He choked on the word, sobbed noisily as the sirens drew closer and strobes of red and blue lit up the night. Now, in the sporadic bursts of light, he could see that the steaming red pools had formed under the still figure’s head and abdomen.
He couldn’t look away.
Chapter Eleven
Eyes So Green
Peter Craig blinked.
His heart raced so fast he had to lean against the concrete rail and clutch his chest with one cold hand.
He turned, expecting to see a long cherry-red Pontiac crumpled into a massive tree, but all he saw were cars calmly positioned, unmarred, on a clean, dry concrete floor of indoor parking.
He stared out at the view six stories below and beyond him, not sure exactly what he was looking for. Like a poorly synced movie, his thoughts seemed to lag just a second behind what his vision revealed. But he couldn’t quite get a handle on…anything.
And then he heard a sound of quiet movement and wheeled to confront it. Maybe Jack and Ellie or…
No. Just an old man in a pea green stocking cap shuffling toward Peter, stiffly as though everything hurt.
“Did you find them?” Peter asked Uncle Buster as the older man drew alongside him at the concrete railing.
The old guy ignored Peter at first. He rested both hands lightly on the rail and stared out at the snowy night. His cap was pulled low and a trickle of snot looked to make its escape from one nostril.
Buster said, “The Browns lost by two touchdowns and a field goal.”
Said it a bit smugly, Peter thought. As though he knew Peter’s team hadn’t covered his bet.
Peter shrugged. Didn’t let it get to him. “The kids,” he pressed. “Did you find…?”
But he stopped because he was no longer sure of the question. The kids?
Chicago. Scottsdale.
The kids.
“Almost,” Buster replied.
“Really?” Peter didn’t know quite how to take this. “You found them?”
“You know what you have to do,” murmured the old man with the pea green stocking cap pulled low, skater boy–style.
Peter followed Buster’s gaze to a five-car miniature train weaving in and out of traffic along the Commons’ main avenue.
Peter sucked in his breath. He leaned hard against the concrete rail for a closer look. He watched the train approach to a close enough point that he could just make out two little riders sitting huddled together in one miniature car, their little faces upturned.
* * *
It was the busiest part of the evening at the Gridiron. It was always that way by the time a game ended. Iris was used to her customers pissing and bitching about the Browns, how they’d blown another one. Every post-game went like that, it seemed. They’d embarrassed the town once again, the way the talk usually went. She was used to it, and at least they were drinking while bitching and whining. Morose drinkers weren’t notoriously generous tippers percentage-wise, but she’d make up for it in volume if they hung around long enough.
In fact, she felt so confident of her immediate financial future that she didn’t even hesitate to call out the rude college boys who’d more than overstayed their welcome.
“You guys leave Peter alone after this,” she snapped at them. “He’s a regular customer and a sweet man who only wants to have a drink or two in peace. Got it?”
“Or three,” one of them snickered.
“Sorry, Iris,” said the most obnoxious of the pack, the one who’d given Peter the most hell to pay. Carter, by name. “I didn’t know we were teasing your boyfriend.”
That set off a round of laughter that made Iris look around. Peter stopped by so often these days that she didn’t want him to have to walk in on a conversation like this.
But he didn’t seem to have put in yet another appearance that evening, so she said, “I mean it, guys. You’ll either have to leave him alone or find somewhere else to drink during Browns games. Got it?”
Had she been too harsh? It seemed that way judging by the awkward, sullen silence that suddenly hung over her bar.
“Sorry,” she said, and offered her young customers her most apologetic, engaging smile. “I just get worked up for the old guy because he’s led a hard life, okay? I don’t think he’s all there all the time and he doesn’t seem to have anyone taking care of him.”
“Assholes,” mumbled the silver-haired gentlemen with the expensive coat. Talking about the college boys, no doubt, and everyone knew it.
“Hey, we didn’t mean anything,” said one of the boys. “We were just having a little fun.”
“I know,” said Iris. “I just feel a bit protective of the old guy, that’s all. Didn’t mean to bite your face off, Carter.”
“So what’s his story?” asked the older gentleman with the coat.
Iris rang up a check. “Like I said, he’s a regular. Sometimes comes in two or three times during my shift. Flirts with me a little. Watches the game when it’s on. Places a bet when he finds a bookie.” She shrugged. “He’s harmless. But a little daft, I guess you might say. Doesn’t always act like he knows me. But he calls me his green-eyed goddess when he’s feeling up to it.”
The kid name Carter scrunched up his gaze and stared at her face. Iris knew what thoughts his less than lightning-fast brain was processing even before he spoke. “But your eyes are—”
“I know—they’re brown, sweetie,” she finished for him. Bit back calling him Einstein instead of sweetie. “But Peter insists they’re green. He’s got—I don’t know—a thing for green eyes. Maybe he confuses me with his wife, I don’t know.”
“So he’s got a wife at least,” said the silver-haired gentleman. “He’s got someone.”
Iris shook her head. “I don’t know the story. Not really. It’s confusing the way Peter tells it, and sometimes the details get jiggled around, but she died sometime in the distant or not-so-distant past. Violently, from what I can gather, and, whatever happened, it might have taken his entire family out. Like I said”—Iris shrugged again—“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it much, and when he does, the story isn’t always consistent.”
“Jesus,” said someone, and no one had a follow-up to that.
The college kids stared at their pilsner glasses and quit making eye contact with the room or one another. Then one of them said brightly, “Hey, thank you, Iris, for making us look like assholes.” His friends chuckled in a glum, forced sort of way and continued staring at their emptying glasses.
“Shoe fits…” muttered the man with the expensive coat.
Damn. The last thing Iris needed was a bummed-out section of bar. Mental mistake number one as a bartender: sending your customers on a guilt trip. They might tip more, in a spirit of sad generosity, but they’d leave sooner. Therefore be tipping on smaller bills than if they hung around.
She had a rent check due, so she put a smile in her voice and said, “As for his waiting on a train, well, that’s a new one on me. A train? In the Commons? For real?”
That earned her a few chuckles, none of them forced-sounding this time. Not even the silver-haired gent in the camel-colored coat could hide a grin.
Yes, she realized that, in turning the conversation back to the foggy foibles of Peter Craig, she was sacrificing up a sweet and probably slightly befuddled old man in a ploy to pump up spirits—both kinds—and fill her purse with a somewhat larger stack of crumpled singles. She didn’t like herself for doing it, but she had bills to pay. She had to make ends meet, like everyone else in the room tonight.
Bottom line, they were all in it alone.
“I got a train schedule right here. Gonna ride the hell out of the fucking snow belt,” said one of the college kids, and everyone laughed. Even Iris, who gave the kids her most tantalizing smile.
They sent her scurrying for more drinks as her bar settled in to try to watch the post-game show without bitching at the screen too goddamn much.
* * *
Peter watched as the little train pulled closer and closer and came to an eventual halt on the snow-covered sidewalk right alongside the parking deck, directly below him.
His bundled-up kids looked up with inviting smiles. Their hoods were still firmly secured and neither had lost a mitten. Or so it looked from this far up.
“There they are, Buster. You were right about—”
Peter turned excitedly to address the old guy, but he was no longer standing there, hands lightly positioned on the frozen rail. “Buster?”
Peter angled for a panoramic view of the garage interior, but took in only quiet rows of parked Lexuses and Beamers and SUVs and minivans. A few faint oil stains on the otherwise spotless concrete floors. Car engines ticking down. Low-volume holiday music piped in from overhead speakers, refusing to let him forget the season. His breath was vaporizing around him in white bursts that looked so cold he could almost see the frosty particles they contained.
As he swiveled to take in every shadowy corner of the gloomily lit interior, Peter’s vision got blocked by the cap on his head as it dipped low on one eye. He pulled it off slowly and stared at the pea green stocking cap in his hands. Two long strands of white hair had gotten caught in the wool.
“Ease up, buster! There’s black ice under the snow. I can see it glistening.”
The shriek tore through his thoughts. Melted some of the fog. And led him to another distant memory, or one not distant at all: “Bye, buster.” Ava, his green-eyed goddess smiling and waving at him in the blustery cold as she left him waiting for the children in the train.
But that wasn’t right. Jack and Ellie hadn’t come by train, he remembered.
They’d flown in from…Chicago and…somewhere. Hadn’t they?
He stared at the pea green skater-boy cap clutched in his numbing hands. He placed it almost tenderly on the concrete railing in front of him and stared a
t it. Stared until he grew convinced at last that his uncle wouldn’t be returning for it. Peter’s ears felt red-hot and cold at the same time. Scorchingly frozen, or so it seemed.
He pulled up his right leg, the one that didn’t hurt so much. Braced it on the railing and used it as leverage to awkwardly haul the rest of his sore and sorry-assed body to a crouching position on the rail. He winced with every command he gave his taxed muscles.
It was incredibly cold up here. Frigid and slippery with a thin coating of snow he carefully brushed aside. He had to be careful. The wind hit him, nearly lifted him off the rail and back onto the concrete garage floor behind him. He slowly pulled himself to a standing position, his left knee throbbing. Thighs burning, trembling with the exertion. His heart raced. His gaze narrowed to the snow-buffered landscape six stories below. The wind keened quietly.
“Hey, mister. Sir? Sir, you’d better get down from there.”
Peter turned. Slowly. Carefully. Concentrating so as not to slip off.
Five young people stood in a frozen tableau some forty or fifty feet distant. They were swaddled against the weather, faces concealed behind scarves and hats pulled low so that it was nearly impossible to tell genders, forget about reading faces. But Peter gave it his best try, on the lookout for familiar features. A nose or tone of skin or set of eyes he might recognize, all while trying to remember what Jack and Ellie had looked like in their teen years. Nothing came to mind. And no weather-disguised face looked familiar.
“Sir, be very careful, okay?” This speaker was a boy, his voice thin and slightly shaky. Peter had no idea why the kid sounded so tense.
He and the others had come from outdoors. Snow covered their coats and caps as if intent on providing them with winter camo. Their breath rose in vapor trails around them as they stood stock-still like snowmen struggling to come to life. Only one figure had removed gloves and was now dialing up a phone, slender fingers flying quickly over the keypad. He wondered if she was calling Ava.