by R. L. Perry
And in the case of the Carringtons, there was something serendipitous about the business of ice and how it could lead to slipups. Driving out of the forensic lab late in the afternoon, my face pressed toward the pink setting sun, I wondered if the dichotomy of the cold and the heat of my pressure might create a combustion, of sorts. Though rarely in play, I felt that something was about to break or that, like a child walking across a thinly frozen pond, someone was flirting with disaster.
Milt came to mind.
But I was already on my way back to the ice factory to retrieve me cell phone—which was another reason I thought of him. Driving back across familiar ground, over railroad tracks and past the veiled poverties of the shotgun houses, I marveled at how, in just a few hours and days, lives and crossed and intersected in the aftermath of death. I pondered the incredible matrix—the intermingling of the living with the dead. And as I drove on through the encroaching darkness, I experienced an indescribable grace, a gratitude of sorts that could be nothing other than Christmas joy—the wonder of the gift of life, and love, and even laughter . . .
Hastening toward the ice factory, I warmed my hands against the heater vents, wiggled my toes inside my boots. I was tingling with anticipation.
When I pulled into the Clarity Ice parking lot, I noticed that all of the delivery trucks had already loaded and departed. The place looked vacant, but Milt’s car was still parked near the back door and there were outlines of light coming from inside the office. I sidled next to Milt’s car, shut off the engine, and rubbed my knees and elbows to get my circulation moving again.
I tightened my scarf and drew out of the car just as the security lights came on around the factory. The fresh light also drew my eye toward the horizon where the sun, now distant and alluring, was sinking low in the sky, a half-shell of orange distilled through the barren browns and drab, snow-covered white of the winter-scalded trees. There was beauty, but I didn’t want to linger in it . . .
Bounding up the concrete stairs, I was surprised to find the back door unlocked. But there was a light on in Milt’s office, though I could see, soon after entering the foyer, that he was not sitting at his desk. I came through the set of double-doors, allowed the warmth to fill my lungs, and then shouted, “Milt . . . anyone home?”
There was no answer, save my own faint echo of words. I stepped inside, feeling marginally like a trespasser, growing uncomfortable in the vacuous space of hallways and cubicles. But the work day was over and it was, of course, a Christmas break . . . and so I proceeded down the short hallway toward Milt’s office.
I stuck my head in, gave another greeting in hope of finding Milt, but again there was no answer. On the desk, a tiny reading lamp glowed with a forty-watt bulb, and the papers that Milt was working on earlier in the day lay strewn across the face of his desk. His office chair was angled toward the wall, as if he had risen and walked away from it.
Standing over his desk, I noticed the edge of my cell phone sticking out from underneath a sheaf of loose papers. Yes—I must have placed the phone on the desk and then it was covered over with papers. Not the first time I had misplaced the thing, but glad I had found it. I placed the phone in my pocket and then looked back down the darkened hallway toward the factory door. There was no one else in the office, but the light was still on in the accounting office as well.
I lingered at Milt’s threshold for a few minutes, hoping he might return from his check of the factory. Still, no sounds. The ice machine was not running, and all of the delivery trucks had left the property for their evening deliveries.
After a few minutes I decided to walk the short hallway to the factory entrance. I strode past the small cubicles and peered into the accounting office. Again, the lights were on but the beautiful accountant was not sitting at her desk. Beyond the factory door, with its tiny porthole window, I could hear the humming of the overhead fluorescent lights.
I opened the door and walked into the factory, the expansive warehouse only partially lit, the high windows fastened shut and the dock doors closed. I called out again for Milt, my voice rising and falling across the high walls and the stainless steel labyrinth of the ice maker.
I noted that the warehouse floor had been freshly cleaned, sprayed to a high gloss, and I took extra care as I began clicking across the cement toward the monster. I studied the shadows, hopeful to catch some movement somewhere in the dim recesses of the factory.
As I rounded the corner of the ice maker and the end of the conveyor line, I sensed a stirring beyond the door of the industrial freezer, the corner vault where the additional inventory was stored. I stepped across the floor, still wondering where Milt had gone.
I was about to turn back, return to the office.
But that’s when I noticed the blood on the floor.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t panic. But I gathered myself and took a breath. The freezer door was shut, but beyond it I could hear the sound of ice stirring—faint but there. In the dimmer light of the factory I followed the trail of blood spots toward the freezer door, noticed that there was also blood smeared on the handle. The door was shut. Tight.
I removed a handkerchief from my coat pocket, placed it on the door handle, and opened it. A slim cone of light filtered into the dark interior of the industrial freezer, the walls lined with bags of Clarity ice, piles of product ready for shipping. The bags loomed over me, beyond me, like building blocks forming a well-designed and orchestrated jigsaw puzzle, the weight and scope not easily taken in by a single glance. There was ice layered on ice, a tonnage of immense proportions.
And then I heard the stirring again, the sound of ice cubes cascading onto the stainless steel floor. A groan. I turned in the shadows and saw Milt lying in a heap next to the door, blood seeping from his forehead, his hands propped on several opened bags of ice . . . ice that he had been tossing against the door.
“Thank . . . God,” he groaned. “Thank . . . “
He was trembling, his hands drained and his face bleached. I knelt down next to him. “Milt . . . what—?”
“—Be careful,” he shuddered. “Just . . . get me . . . out.”
There was only a few feet to go and with my assistance Milt worked on his hands and knees toward the threshold and then lunged himself onto the factory floor adjacent to the ice making machine. He was free of the freezer, his body cleared, and I shut the door behind him, angled his head toward the dim lights to get a better view of his wound.
Visibly shaken and stunned, Milt seemed on the edge of frostbite, his hands useless, his eyes dimming with relief and distress. “Milt,” I said, patting his cheeks. “Milt, don’t go to sleep.”
He stirred again, whispered, “Be careful.”
I gave a quick glance around the factory, wondered what nightmares might be lurking in the shadows. The fluorescents hummed, and I noticed movement back in the office beyond the porthole window. There were shadows floating on the walls and I could hear, in the distance beyond, a scurry of voices.
“I’ve got to get you to a doctor,” I said. “We can’t stay here.”
“Don’t . . . “ Milt said. “Don’t. Be . . . careful.”
While he was still speaking, Milt’s head bobbed to one side, his eyes closed, and I could tell that he has passed out—perhaps from his injuries, perhaps from the cold. Instinctively, I gently patted his checks, hoped that his eyes might open again. I tried to rub warmth into his forehead. But he was out. I didn’t think I could move him again without help.
I reached into my coat pocket and removed my cell phone. I called Lance, but he didn’t answer. I checked the time, realized Lance was likely on his way back to the house, eager for dinner and making preparations to spend the night with me. I didn’t have time to leave a message, so I dialed the precinct number. One of the dispatchers answered.
“This is Mary Christmas,” I said hurriedly. “I’m at the Clarity Ice Company and there’s been an accident. Please send an ambul
ance! And police backup.”
The dispatcher, likely disbelieving, didn’t react with due haste. “Is this you, Mary?”
“Yes!” I said. “I’m at the ice company and . . . ”
“I heard you,” he said.
“This is serious,” I yelled.
The dispatcher, realizing at last the severity in my voice, responded immediately. “We’ll get someone over there right away.”
Hearing the conflagration of voices again, I hung up and slouched down next to Milt. But there was no place to hide.
Energized by the opportunity, however, I stood up again, grabbed Milt’s arms, and dragged him across the slick concrete floor behind some shipping palates. I made a small pillow with my scarf, put it under Milt’s head, and peered through the slats in the pile of palates toward the office. But I couldn’t see much. I knew I would have to find a better vantage point.
I retreated deeper into the warehouse, rounded some massive boxes filled with plastic bags, and made my way along the far end of the production facility, past the stainless steel hopper of the ice maker, back toward the office. There were large ice blocks on the ready near the top of the hopper, seemingly ready for shipping, and I could tell that they had been freshly frozen. I crept along a vacant wall and noticed, behind an adjacent door, an electrical breaker box. Glancing back at the windows overhead, I could see that the sun had set, and there was nothing left to do but level the playing field. I powered up the flashlight feature on my cell phone, opened the breaker box, and then threw the master switch.
Immediately the facility went dark—just a pitch brighter than total darkness—and I retreated from my place and hid momentarily behind the giant ice hopper, powering down my cell phone and embracing the night. I waited. Watched. Listened.
And then another light. Dim at first—but a flashlight beam coming from the office portal fastened its glare on the ice maker. I remained still, peering around the edges as I could in order to get a glimpse, or any hint, as to who was in the building. The light darted, its beam scouring the recesses of the warehouse, searching for me. I could hear boots on the floor—a heaviness that belied strength and youthfulness.
Suddenly, the lights came on again.
I peered around the edge of the stainless steel monstrosity and noticed a young man emerging from the breaker room. I recognized him immediately as one of the Clarity Ice workers who had attended the Carrington funerals. He was wearing the same company jacket, a heavy blue coat that gave him a muscular, stocky appearance. Still carrying the lit flashlight in his left hand, he looked confused and concerned—his gaze deep into the warehouse. Puzzled, he began taking steps toward the ice maker, but then stopped.
Something had arrested his attention. He turned.
Indeed, he had heard it first, but then I quickly noted it too and breathed a sigh of relief.
Just blocks away, a police siren was whining. It was looming closer—and coming on fast.
I didn’t have to listen long to know it was Lance.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The young man—perhaps in panic, perhaps in pain—suddenly ran toward the back of the warehouse. There was no place to hide, as I had discovered, but he seemed more intent on support than subterfuge. Realizing that he would soon find Milt, I retraced my steps along the back wall, listened to the siren, hoped that help might converge before our paths did. But as I hastened past the storage boxes and rounded the corner near the shipping palates, our eyes met as we found ourselves standing over Milt. We were face-to-face.
My heart was racing, my hands and feet ready to react, but the young man made no move to counter his surprise, nor mine. “I . . . I,” he stammered. “You’re that funeral director,” he said finally.
“Yes,” I found myself saying. “Yes.”
“I . . . is he okay?” The young man, a bundle of nerves and disjointed energy, pointed the flashlight at Milt.
“What did you do?” I asked. I was looking at Milt, hoping that his injuries would not be made more severe due to my interference. I knew he couldn’t survive a second attack.
The young man, his hair disheveled and his hands trembling, looked quickly at us both. As the siren neared the parking lot, he offered an explanation, a passing observation. “He’ll be okay,” he said, pointing at Milt. “But we can’t . . . we can’t let her get away.”
“What?”
“She hit him. Hit him with that wrench.” He pointed to a pipe wrench that was, quit handily, lying on the concrete just outside the door of the industrial freezer. It was there all right—but I had missed it. Still, what did it matter? And how did he know that it was there?
I remained tense, my hands clenched. “Lance,” I whispered. “Please, Lance.”
The young man walked nonchalantly over to the freezer as the wail of siren carried over the railroad tracks and echoed between the shotgun houses and the warehouse. He picked up the pipe wrench with his right hand. “See,” he said. “It’s got blood on it.”
“Don’t,” I said, trying to calm him down. But he was calm—or appeared to be. Too calm. Spookily calm. His eyes were dancing with his own brand of fear.
“Put it down,” I said. “Just put it down.”
“But she’s probably . . . gone out the back,” he said, he eyes darting toward some clandestine corner of the building. “They can get her . . . if they—”
“—Just put the wrench down,” I said slowly. “You’ve done enough damage.”
The young man—probably just shy of twenty-one—was not as stocky as he appeared up close, his slight frame clad in his company coat. But his eyes began to water. “Damage? No . . . you don’t understand,” he said. “She hit him. I saw her do it. I was back there . . . back there by the loading dock . . . ready to make my deliveries.”
Suddenly, as the wail of the siren glanced high against the factory walls, the clatter of the antique machinery interceded and the conveyor chains began to move, the mechanized wonder causing both of us to jolt in our boots, our attentions wrested from each other in those nanoseconds as we turned to face the moving parts. There were shadows above us and, before we could react, a large block of ice came hurling toward us. Dangerously close, it shattered on the concrete floor near the end of the conveyor, sending us, and shards of ice, scurrying like shrapnel to the outer edges of its epicenter. My cell phone went scuttling across the floor, and both the flashlight and the pipe wrench followed, their flash and colors spiraling across the ice chips like tiny propellers, all useless and beyond our reach.
I dove onto my back and found myself pressed up against the edge of the stack of palates. The kid had dived into the shadows near the industrial freezer. Milt lay helplessly between us.
The cry of the siren bounded across the parking lot just as another block of ice came hurtling down from the rafters. It hit the concrete floor with a thud, culling a small crater near the drain, and sending a second spray of sharp ice chips across the slick floor.
I was struggling to my feet, hoping to pull Milt into the safety and sanctuary of the shipping palates, when the young man scurried toward me, grabbed Milt, and dragged him into the back of the crates next to me. Our eyes met again—kindred and fearful spirits. “She’s nuts,” he said. “Are you . . . are you all right?”
I nodded, my mouth agape, unable to surmise what was happening. I was back in the dark again, my mind racing, my thoughts as fragmented as the ice chips that lay all about my feet. Nothing made any sense, and all I could do was work to stay alive in the moment.
“You stay here,” the kid said firmly. “Stay here.”
But as he rose to careen headlong into the falling ice, I instinctively grabbed his coat sleeve. “The police are here,” I said, noting the arrival of the siren. I pointed to the chains and pulleys moving overhead. Indeed, there were other blocks of ice in the waiting—and I could see another block being lifted from the stainless steel hopper as I thought of Lance. “Let’s stay here,” I said, hoping that my immediate inst
incts were correct. In the moment, I feared the hurtling ice far more than the young man who had been divested of his bloody pipe wrench.
“See . . . she’s working the old pulleys,” the young man told me—the siren, at last, falling off into silence just outside the docking doors. “She’s up there, waiting for us.”
I kept my eyes on the chains, the hooks and pulleys rummaging around in the rafters overhead. The movements of the old hardware reminded me of immense snakes writhing at the ceiling, their mouths ready to spit cold venom. “Watch out for the hooks,” the young man told me. In that moment, he seemed more subdued, less threatening. We were suddenly working together, our eyes fastened to the fast-moving chains crosshatching the ceiling.
The chains squeaked; the pulleys squealed in their casings. And then suddenly the old sounds ceased and we heard the ice machine kick in—another level of new noise that had the conveyor belt moving and the ice pellets forming on their dimples. Water was flushing through the tubes—the compressors humming along with the steady whine of the fluorescent lights. There were three of us, like frightened hens, hunkered down in the corner near the shipping palates.
I didn’t know when help would arrive, but I could feel Lance nearby. I sighed, eager for him to embrace me and pull me out of yet another mess.
“She’s started the ice maker,” the young man stated. “What’s she doing?”
I studied the young man for a few seconds and then asked, “By the way . . . who is she?”
The kid looked at me, eager to answer, but he didn’t have a chance. Milt suddenly came to life, reached up and grabbed my hand. “She’s . . . she’s right behind you!”
Chapter Thirty-Six
I wheeled to a shoulder-width stance, startled by Milt’s awakening and the fear in his eyes, and found myself face-to-face with the beautiful woman I’d seen in the accounting office—her hair dyed, her face slightly bronzed by tanning bed. She was startled as well, a doe caught in headlights. Her eyes fixed on me.