Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  Garf shifted his feet, turned away, and stared at the frost crystals gnawing through the window glass.

  Allen opened his medical bag, scooped up a bag of lactated ringers along with glossy bends of IV tubing. “Now, listen to me,” he said. “If you and Jolene do it my way, we can get out of this.”

  Machines quit when it got this cold. They were damn near the only thing traveling on wheels.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a smart idea,” Broker said as he took an exit just past Virginia and pulled into an Amoco station. It was a different kind of storm, invisible, like J.T.’s vampire in a mirror. They couldn’t see it because it didn’t snow.

  It didn’t snow because the cold had killed anything that tried to move, including the wind.

  He got out to pump the gas and Amy and Jolene sprinted for the john, and they were all stunned almost dumb by the temperature. Road salt bleached a gritty borax-white on the metal skin of the Jeep. They could almost hear the steel molecules shriek as they hugged tight.

  “Jesus,” Jolene said, hoofing back from the can, hands over her bare ears. Her breath made a cloud thick enough for the children of Israel to follow through the wilderness.

  “Twenty-seven below,” Broker said, coming back from paying for the gas. “If the wind comes up, the windchill will be fatal. End of story.” He handed out Styrofoam cups of coffee from a cardboard tray, candy bars, and snacks of beef jerky.

  Jolene, who wasn’t wearing her hat, shook her head. “It makes you crazy.”

  “Grease up,” Broker said, offering her a jerky.

  The cold was bad enough on the deserted Interstate. When they creaked through the empty streets of Ely, they left the blacktop and the comfort of artificial light behind and crunched onto the gravel. The high beams converted the trees and swamp grass into sinister patterns at the side of the road, and the cold became lunar, utterly foreign to warm flesh.

  And J.T. was right about his Jeep. It didn’t look like much on the outside but everybody in the Chrysler plant in Detroit must have been having a good day when they made it, because the car had heart and kept pulling through the cold.

  They turned at a frost-shriven sign—uncle billie’s resort—and drove down the wooded drive. Broker stopped the Jeep in front of the lodge and got out and looked up at the ice-pick stars.

  He left them in the Jeep with the heater running while he dashed inside, turned up the furnace, started a fire in the fireplace, and folded out the sleeper couch for Hank.

  Then he came back and he and Amy each took one side and lifted Hank from the back of the Jeep and hauled him in a two-man fireman’s carry. Scurrying beside them, Jolene hesitated when she heard an eerie, twanging, hollow sound.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ice forming on the lake,” Broker said.

  Jolene went inside and balked at the moose head with its horns spread out from over the mantel. She shook her head. “Men are really pretty weird, you know?”

  Then she and Amy made Hank comfortable on the rolled-out couch. They folded blankets to insert under his knees and calves to elevate his feet. Broker brought them pillows and quilts to prop up his back and sides.

  Jolene changed Hank’s diaper and administered a water drip to his gastro tube. Amy shook her head in amazement.

  “This guy may have a tricky airway but he has an incredible set of lungs.”

  “There’s no justice,” Jolene said. “Two packs of Camel straights a day all his life.”

  Hank continued to sleep.

  Broker squatted by the fire and watched the two women work side by side and couldn’t help comparing them—the way they moved, the way they wore their jeans. Amy filled hers to the brim while Jolene’s seemed to follow along with her. Amy’s naturally freckled aura and her trim lines were maintained by constant patrols of exercise and denial. He suspected that if her discipline faltered she would put on weight.

  They moved between the kitchen stove and the fireplace, trying to convince themselves they were warm. Amy made a pot of hot tea.

  Broker listened to the roof timbers creak as he fought mild disorientation. They really hadn’t been out in it; but just the idea of temperatures this cold got inside their brains and slowed their thoughts.

  His and Amy’s, anyway, because they became drowsy, lazing near the fire. Jolene reacted in the opposite direction, nervous, pacing; she explored the lodge, she fretted over Hank’s minute-by-minute condition. She kept looking at her wristwatch, fingering the pager clipped to her belt.

  Amy opened and heated cans of soup; found the ingredients for toasted cheese sandwiches. As they ate, Broker mentioned contacting Deputy Dave Iker. You know, like let’s get this show on the road.

  Jolene reacted testily, accused him of reneging on the deal.

  After the meal, she continued her pacing. She switched on the satellite TV, tore through the channels, turned it off.

  Broker figured these nervous tics were all the stuff she’d been keeping in, the strain from looking after Hank for the last week. Now, with Hank showing signs of stirring from his coma, she was dropping her guard, getting a little spacy, letting it out.

  She started and her right hand went to her pager, which must have vibrated against her hip because she pressed the button and focused on the number on the viewer. Immediately her head came up and she looked gravely, directly into his eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing, some wrong number,” she said.

  It was a look he remembered from somewhere. He had to stop himself and think back. Maybe that night just before they went to bed.

  “I’m going out for a smoke,” Jolene said abruptly, her face suddenly stiff, her words jerking. But she pulled a box of Marlboro Lights from her jacket pocket and opened it. The first cigarette snapped and broke apart in her fingers. She ignored it and selected another one. Put it in her mouth.

  Broker didn’t know that she was a closet smoker. But it made sense, given the AA background, the stress of dealing with Hank.

  Jolene pulled on her coat, hat, and gloves and said, “I won’t be long.”

  As she went out the door, Broker joined Amy in front of the fire. “What do you think?” he asked, nodding at Hank.

  “I keep pinching myself.”

  “Yeah,” Broker grinned. “I know what you mean. It’s kind of profound.”

  “You read about things like this once in a while. A patient wakes up from a coma.” She bit her lip and her eyes rolled up hopefully. “I don’t want to jinx it by wishing it comes true.”

  He stooped to add more kindling to the fire and fiddled with the poker. A lot had changed in the last few days since he’d left his sickbed in this room and traveled south to the Cities.

  Thinking about how he’d nailed Earl, he smiled, remembering the T-shirt: old age and treachery will always win out over youth and strength. It took the edge off the paranoia about his wife hanging out with younger men.

  Another thing. He felt even with Amy now. Hank really had cleared the air between them.

  Mainly he felt confident again. More like his old self.

  Broker felt an icy draft and the front door opened and Jolene stuck her head in. “Hey, Broker. There’s something out here you should check out.”

  He heaved to his feet, hung the poker back on its stand, and walked toward the door. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s by the woods.”

  “Probably a deer,” Broker said, stepping through the door.

  Jolene took him by the wrist and the elbow and tugged him toward the steps. “Over here . . .” Suddenly she clamped down on his wrist and gasped. “Jesus Christ, what’s he doing here?”

  Broker spun.

  The rush he felt didn’t come from outside. The pine branches in the yard light were still as statues. It came from inside his chest and speeded up his eyes.

  “Trick or treat, motherfucker!”

  The voice hissed behind his back. Galvanized, Broker yanked against Jolen
e, who clung to him. So he had to fling her aside and spin, raking back his left elbow, cocking his right fist.

  His elbow swept empty space and he thought he glimpsed a grotesque smile on Earl Garf’s bruise-streaked face.

  He heard Amy scream, turned to find her, which was a mistake, because Earl clubbed the butt of the .45 down behind his left ear and it all went black.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Amy had screamed, “Look out,” but the man had already stepped across the doorway and struck Broker from behind. Broker’s knees gave out and he crumpled to the porch. Coming forward, she recognized the belted black leather trench coat Earl had worn in the barn earlier today, except now it had an empty sleeve and Earl Garf had his left arm in a sling.

  Earl sneered and commenced to kick at Broker who was trying to push himself up off the porch. When kicking didn’t satisfy him, he bent over and swung the pistol again, and the steel hitting Broker’s skull sent a sickening slap into the dark. Broker fell forward and lay still.

  Jolene grabbed Earl’s good arm and screamed, “What’s he doing here?” Seeing Jolene moving to intervene, Amy had the racing contextual thought that this was more of the same from earlier—the hostility between the two men carried to absurd lengths.

  And Earl looked crazy right now, with his bare chest red with cold against a torn hospital patient’s robe under the heavy coat. When he aimed a kick at Broker she saw his bare ankle between the cuff of his jeans and his Nikes.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Jolene yelled, pushing forward.

  Earl swung the pistol at Jolene, backed her off, and yelled, “Just shut up and do what I say.” Then he lunged across the porch, his eyes burning up with cold, and she saw what Jolene had seen. There was someone else out there.

  Suddenly, Amy knew she was next.

  Immediately she set her feet to bound back into the lodge. She’d been raised up here. She’d played in this building as a child. She knew where Uncle Billie kept his guns—in the closet in his bedroom—and she knew there’d be a twelve-gauge pump and she knew how to use it.

  But Earl pointed the pistol at her face and her feet wouldn’t move fast enough, which gave him time to snake out a foot and trip her. Then, as she tried to regain her balance, he shoved her roughly against the doorjamb and forced her to her knees.

  And in that moment, with her face smarting like a red pincushion and the air all freezing needles, she saw the other person heave into the light.

  “What the hell,” Jolene blurted.

  “It’s cool,” Earl reassured her.

  Allen Falken stood over Amy with a syringe in his hand. In the other he held a black medical bag. In an open space between two sliding plates of panic, Amy noticed he was wearing latex gloves and he needed a shave.

  “How’re we doing?” Allen asked conversationally as he stepped over Broker. Then, as he knelt, he said, “Earl, take hold of Amy, would you; I want her absolutely still.”

  Through another window of shock, Amy recognized the calm authority of a surgeon greeting his team as he entered the OR.

  She scrambled to escape, which prompted Earl to grab her around the waist with his good arm. Earl smelled like spoiled meat and disinfectant.

  “Hello, Amy,” Allen said. “This will sting a little but then you’ll find it quite pleasant. Five hundred milligrams of Ketamine will produce a hypnotic effect. But you know all about that.” He jabbed her in the thigh, right through her jeans.

  Amy’s panic immediately lost its jerky gallop and she rolled out and up with the graceful thrust, and she was alone and poised in a slow-motion dive into a wide pool of peace. A beautiful vertical entry. No splash. A perfect 10.

  * * *

  Allen quickly drew another shot from a stopper bottle and injected it in Broker’s thigh. Then he addressed the shock on Jolene’s face as he took out a box of rubber gloves. “Put these on, please.”

  “Wait a fucking minute here,” Jolene said, looking to Earl.

  Allen smiled at her. “How’s Hank? Has he been blink-talking any more? Giving away any more family secrets?”

  “How do you . . . ?”

  “In a minute,” Allen said. “Right now, let’s drag her inside and shut the door. It’s cold out here.”

  He and Earl manhandled Amy through the doorway and laid her on the wooden-plank floor near the fireplace.

  “Earl? What’s going on here?” Jolene demanded.

  “There’s three of us now,” Earl said. “He’s got the plan and I’ve got the gun and you better have the smarts to go along.”

  “That’s clear as mud,” Jolene said.

  Allen continued to smile patiently. “We’re going to put Hank back to where he was before he started this blinking business.”

  “He hasn’t stopped blinking that I know of,” Jolene almost shouted.

  “I’ll get to that later. First we have to deal with her,” he pointed to Amy, “and him.” He jerked his head toward the door.

  “Deal?” Jolene said.

  “Kill, okay?” Earl said. “Only Allen is going to do it nice, not sloppy like you had in mind.”

  Jolene slumped her shoulders. “Jesus, how’d we wind up here?”

  “We arrived one step at a time,” Allen said. He pointed at Earl. “Him.” Then he pointed at Jolene. “You.” Finally he tapped his own chest. “Me.”

  Jolene shook her head.

  Earl tried to explain. “Jolene, he knows everything. He saw Broker and Amy together when they took me to the hospital, so he went to the house and heard you three guys doing the alphabet thing on the baby monitor, then he went in back and heard you on the cell phone calling me.” He turned to Allen. “Just tell her straight-out. Trust me, it works better that way with her,” Earl said.

  Allen nodded, then gently explained. “Killers, plural, remember. Earl is one killer and I’m the other.” Allen spoke in the factual tone he used when discussing a patient’s case with family members. “In the hospital, when Hank was in the recovery room, I gave him the wrong medication when I found him unattended. No one saw me, and when I realized what I’d done I assumed it would look like a respiratory arrest caused by a sloppy nurse-anesthetist and a lazy nurse. So I turned off the alarm on the monitor and left the room.”

  Why, you fucker, Jolene was careful not to say.

  “See, nothing but cool,” Earl did say.

  “At first I thought it was a mistake, that I was confused from fatigue. But the more I thought about it I realized I don’t make mistakes of that magnitude. So, on some level, I must have been acting deliberately. The crude explanation is that I allowed my personal feelings to intrude on my relationship with a patient. It’s always been obvious I’ve been very attracted to you, Jolene. And I saw how Hank didn’t appreciate you. And it’s been hard, watching you go through this ordeal.”

  “Wow,” Earl said, starting to grin again.

  “You did that to Hank?” Jolene balled her fists.

  Allen went on in his patient voice. “And Earl did that to Stovall and you were ready to do it to Amy and Broker. And here we all are.”

  “Jolene, listen,” Earl said, “he’s got this really cool idea. We hide the bodies in plain sight.”

  “And the Ketamine only gives me ten to fifteen minutes to set it up,” Allen again offered them the box of Latex gloves.

  “Set what up?” Jolene asked.

  “Her suicide. See, she feels so bad about what she did to Hank, she just can’t live with it. Allen will stage it with drugs and stuff to make it look exactly the way an anesthetist would do it,” Earl said.

  Allen, less patient, now shook the box of gloves.

  Jolene and Earl exchanged questioning glances.

  “Fingerprints,” Allen said. “You have to wipe this place down while we take care of Broker. Anything you touched.”

  Jolene and Earl pulled on the tight rubber gloves. A knot of birch popped in the fireplace, showering the hearth with sparks, and they jumped. Allen, focused and calm, did not
.

  “Broker,” Jolene said.

  “We were thinking, so we stopped at a liquor store,” Earl said. He pulled a brown paper bag from his trench-coat pocket with his good hand and removed a fifth of Johnny Walker Red Label scotch. “We prime him with this stuff, we dress him less than perfect for the weather, and put him in his truck, take him in the woods, stage a crash, and leave him for the cold.”

  “And Hank?” Jolene almost whispered.

  Allen was taking items out of his bag and arranging them on a rough coffee table. “When we finish here, and get Hank back to town, I’ll inject his eyelids with something that will numb them so he can’t blink.” The drug was Botox—botulism toxin. It was commonly used in cosmetic surgery to smooth out wrinkles. Allen would inject it in the levator muscles to immobilize the eyelids.

  Jolene stared at him. “Something?”

  Allen smiled. “I could have brought it along and done it here but then you wouldn’t need me anymore, and maybe Earl would shoot me and dump me in the woods because I know too much.”

  “Not bad,” Jolene said.

  “Now,” Allen said. “Amy was an anesthesia provider, so she’d have some sophisticated ideas about getting high. I’m going to give her a long run for a short slide.” He and Earl each took one of Amy’s arms and lifted her to the fold-out couch. They dropped her next to Hank and their shoulders touched. Her weight shifted and her long hair drifted across her face.

  “Wait a minute,” Jolene said, touching her own short hair nervously. For the first time she noticed that Amy had taken off her sweater and was wearing a kind of neat print blouse, with a blue-patterned cave painting of stick figures on gray and gold. Her fingernails were painted this deep purple. “You’re going to leave her there?”

  Allen and Earl stared at her.

  Jolene said, “I mean, if I have to clean up, I don’t want to watch while she . . .”

  “Okay, let’s put her in a bedroom,” Allen said. They struggled through the kitchen and down a hall. Arms folded across her chest, Jolene followed them.

  The bedroom was cold and musty; there was just an antique mahogany four-poster bed and matching dresser. There were used prescription pill bottles on the dresser and a World War II picture. A tube of Ben Gay lay on the night table. It was the kind of room where an old guy lived alone.