Deep Winter

by Samuel W. Gailey

  He started walking again, but his arms and legs were growing heavier, making it harder to trudge through the snow. He let his eyes flicker closed, and he walked blind. With his hands held out in front of him, he felt his way deeper into the woods. A low-hanging branch tore at his face, leaving a thin red welt on his cheek, but he kept walking, waiting for the voice to tell him what to do next.

  Okay. We’re here, Danny. Time to rest.

  Danny forced his eyes open but saw nothing except darkness and more trees.

  “I don’t see nothing.”

  The wind blew in response.

  “All I see is the woods.”

  The voice wasn’t there anymore. It must have left him again. He turned in a complete circle and searched all around him without knowing what he was looking for.

  “Why am I stopping here?” His answer came to him when he leaned against a tree and felt something hard and smooth press into his lower back. He reached behind him and ran his hands over the trunk of the tree until they came into contact with a wooden plank nailed into the bark. A foot above it was another plank. He peered up at the tree and saw that the planks continued upward and disappeared into the darkness above him.

  He gripped a plank at chest level and pulled himself up the tree. His fingertips reached up and found the next piece of wood, and he pulled himself up the side of the tree, plank by plank. One felt kinda loose, so he balanced himself as carefully as he could and continued on.

  The boards were frozen solid and real slippery. Halfway up the tree, he glanced down but couldn’t see the ground through the darkness. He looked above him and saw darkness up there, too. He kept climbing the ladder and was glad it was nighttime, because he didn’t like high places. They scared him. He had always been afraid of heights and never climbed trees like all the other kids did.

  When Danny reached up again, his knuckles knocked against a piece of wood that was too big to be a climbing plank. Working in the dark, he let his fingers feel around the edges of a wooden platform, soft with rot, which had been built on top of a few thick branches. He pulled himself onto the wooden stand, which couldn’t be more than a few feet wide and a few feet long. Danny thought for a second that maybe kids had built a tree fort way out here in the forest but then remembered that Uncle Brett used to climb trees to hunt for deer sometimes. Uncle Brett had built three or four deer stands out in the woods and would hide up in the branches and wait for a deer to pass under him before he shot it with a gun.

  On his hands and knees now, Danny felt along the platform to check for the edges. Four pieces of two-by-four had been nailed to the tree limbs a few feet above the platform and served as a railing. He touched one of the two-by-fours, and the piece of wood jiggled with rot. He scooted himself to the middle of the planks and rested. Something rattled and flapped beside him. When he reached over, he felt a piece of plastic tarp whipping in the wind.

  Danny squatted and pulled the small piece of plastic over him. It didn’t help much. He could still feel the wind and snow smacking against his makeshift blanket, but it would have to do.

  After he put his head down on the rough wood, he gathered a clump of damp leaves for a pillow. He thought about his room above the laundromat and how warm it always was. The dryers always made it nice and cozy in the wintertime.

  As his eyes flickered closed, he remembered that he hadn’t locked the laundromat up for the night. He hoped that Mr. Bennett wouldn’t be too sore with him. He was never supposed to leave it unlocked at night. Kids might come in and mess around with the washers and dryers. And Mr. Bennett didn’t like folks using the toilet. Said folks don’t treat public bathrooms as well as the ones in their homes.

  Right before sleep took him away, Danny wished that he would get the chance to see Mr. and Mrs. Bennett again. They sure were nice to him.

  Lester

  Lester told Taggart that he wanted to take another look at Mindy’s body. See if he noticed anything unusual. Taggart told him not to tamper with anything until the forensics team and the detectives arrived. Lester nodded, bit his tongue, and said he wasn’t gonna touch anything.

  The snow had been coming down harder, the wind stronger, so they had to keep the front door closed up, since Mindy’s place was still considered a crime scene. It might preserve the condition of the room itself, but the unfortunate end result was that it kept in the smell of death. Lester shut the trailer door behind him and still couldn’t believe what surrounded him. Mindy and Johnny Knolls. Dead. Worse yet, murdered.

  Lester gave the kitchen a quick search for a pack of cigarettes. He knew that Mindy smoked. Hell, who didn’t? He felt a pang of guilt for only coming in here to look for cigarettes, but his craving for a smoke was greater than the guilt. Good old nicotine. The kitchen stood neat and tidy except for a bottle of whiskey his deputy must have gotten into, but no sign of cigarettes.

  He glanced over at the living room and spotted an ashtray and a carton of Salems on a TV tray beside the recliner. Lester avoided looking directly down at Mindy as he walked over and pulled a pack out of the carton. He smacked the pack against his palm a few times and tore off the foil. Lit up and took a deep draw.

  Lester didn’t particularly care for menthol, but this would have to do the trick. He was moving toward the front door when his eyes finally fell on Mindy’s corpse. Her face and head weren’t covered, just everything else from the neck down. He knelt to pull the blanket over her but stopped himself.

  Funny. Didn’t notice that before.

  He inspected a few abrasions on the side of her cheek and neck. The skin looked red and irritated. Probably happened when she fell down. Maybe Danny dragged her across the carpet and it scuffed up her face.

  Lester touched her cheek gently. Her skin cold now, and growing stiff.

  I’m real sorry, little lady. You were a good kid.

  As Lester pulled the blanket over her face, his eyes went to the robin figurine that was still lying beside Mindy’s head. He knew immediately that it was Danny’s handiwork. He had seen the boy playing with blocks of wood, whittling away outside the Wash ’N Dry, lost in his own little world. The boy had a knack for carving—that much was for sure.

  Lester picked up the wooden bird and turned it over in his hands a few times. Specks of blood dotted the robin’s feathers, staining them red on the orange belly of the bird. It was evidence that the detectives would probably want to take a look at, but something about it troubled him a little. Why in the hell would Danny go through all the trouble of carving this figurine, hike all the way out here three miles in the freezing cold, then beat the poor girl to death? Just didn’t make sense. Maybe Mindy didn’t react so well to him showing up in the middle of the night unannounced. Rejection was a damn strong emotion, especially if the boy had held a torch for the girl for so many years. Maybe she was a bit too nice to him over the years, and that gave him false hope. Hope could be a double-edged sword. Once hope got turned away and crushed, it could make a person do things he wouldn’t normally do.

  A truck pulled up outside and killed its engine. He heard voices talking to each other, making their way toward the front door. Lester hoped that it was the coroner’s office. He wanted to get the bodies out of here before anybody else showed up. He still couldn’t figure out why in the hell Johnny showed up. Maybe Mindy had phoned him before making a call to the deputy.

  He couldn’t give it much more thought, because the front door swung open and Taggart stepped inside with Sokowski and Carl in tow. Lester did a double take at Carl’s face—his lip was busted open, and his cheek had swollen up to the size of a peach.

  “Christ. What in the hell, Carl?” Lester managed.

  Carl didn’t answer. Just looked down at the floor, wide-eyed. He and Sokowski were both staring down at Johnny’s Knolls’s body.

  “Let’s take this outside,” Lester said, and motioned toward the door.

  Sok
owski and Carl remained frozen in their spots, trying to piece together exactly what they were seeing. Sokowski saw Johnny’s rifle on the floor beside him and glanced over at Lester.

  “Johnny showed up a bit ago. Madder than hell, and for good reason. He had his gun drawn on me, and Officer Taggart here did what he had to do.”

  Carl could only stare at Johnny’s body while Sokowski gave Taggart a look. Taggart stood stone-faced but kept Sokowski’s gaze.

  Lester moved forward and finally managed to guide them out onto the porch. He shut the door behind them and sucked his cigarette down to the filter. He flicked it into the snow and went back to the business at hand.

  “Tell me what happened here, Carl.”

  “Danny is what happened. Fucker attacked him,” Sokowski responded instead.

  “Hell. You okay, son?” Lester asked Carl, who kept his head down and nodded.

  “Ain’t the worst of it. He got out the back window of Doc Pete’s and took off running. I knew we should have cuffed him. Christ.”

  Lester felt Taggart’s eyes on him. Judging him and their small-town ways.

  “When exactly did this happen, Carl?” Lester asked.

  Sokowski didn’t give Carl a chance to answer. “Dunno. Probably thirty, forty minutes ago.”

  Lester looked past them and up into the night sky. The snow was still coming down pretty good.

  “You know what direction he was heading in?”

  “Up toward Spring Hill, I think,” Carl muttered softly.

  Lester looked down at his old Timex. It was a little after three in the morning.

  “Well, we ain’t gonna find him tonight. That much is for sure. Deputy, why don’t you take Carl and go on home and try to get a few hours’ sleep? We’ll meet up at the office before six and go see if we can’t track him down. He ain’t gonna get far tonight.”

  Taggart finally spoke up. “You really think that’s such a good idea, Sheriff?”

  Lester felt his stomach tighten up and his blood pressure soar. “Yeah, I do. It’s hard terrain around this way. We ain’t gonna find him in the dark, and I think we’re better served having fresh legs.”

  “I think we might be ‘better served’ going after the suspect while we might still have a trail,” Taggart stated matter-of-factly. “Snow might be covering some of his tracks at the moment, but by morning there’ll be no sign of them.”

  Lester ignored Taggart’s suggestion and instead nodded at Sokowski. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Lester watched and waited for Sokowski and Carl to get into their truck and back out of the driveway before he turned to Taggart again. “Look, son, I appreciate your help in this situation, and I fully expect to cooperate with your office, but there are a few things in play here that I need to better inform you on.”

  Taggart’s expression remained unchanged.

  “Danny Bedford has a bunch of limitations. He ain’t very bright, and he doesn’t spend much time in these woods. That much I do know. It’s true that we don’t see our share of homicides out here, but I think it’s best if me and my deputy get our heads screwed on straight so that we can properly assist in the tracking of him. We know these woods better than anyone. A few hours ain’t gonna hurt nothing.”

  Taggart let out a small breath. “Fine. Have it your way, Sheriff. I just hope your boy doesn’t hurt or kill anyone else before you find him.”

  The strobe of emergency lights pricked through the dark countryside and wound their way toward the trailer. Another set of emergency lights wasn’t far behind the first vehicle. Lester and Taggart watched the ambulances as they got closer.

  “Well. I suppose I should head over to Sarah Knolls’s house and let her know what happened out here. She’ll be wondering where the hell Johnny is, and I don’t want her hearing the news from anyone else.”

  “You do that, Sheriff. I’ll handle the situation here.” Taggart walked to the end of the driveway and waited for the two approaching ambulances.

  Lester found his new pack of menthol cigarettes and lit one up. He climbed into his truck and pulled away from the trailer, glad to put some distance between himself and it. In his rearview mirror, he watched Taggart greet the ambulance technicians as they hauled two gurneys from the back of their vehicles.

  Lester returned his attention to the road and tried to figure out the best way to let Sarah Knolls know that both her husband and daughter were dead.

  Carl

  The first thing Sokowski did when they got back to his house was head straight to the liquor cabinet and haul out a half bottle of Wild Turkey. It was the same house that Sokowski grew up in, a big, two-story home with four bedrooms. The furniture remained unchanged, a worn sofa with the springs poking out of the fabric, chair cushions held together with duct tape, a kitchen table buried under boxes of cereal and stacks of unread newspapers, and a gun cabinet lined with various shotguns and rifles.

  Carl watched Sokowski pour two drinks into dirty glasses and hand one to him. Carl accepted the glass but didn’t feel much like drinking.

  Sokowski drank his down with one swallow and poured another.

  “You got any ice for my lip? It’s throbbing like a bitch,” Carl asked.

  Sokowski chuckled and pointed toward the freezer. He watched as Carl took a few ice cubes from a tray and wrapped them in a paper towel.

  “Shit. Danny whupped your ass pretty good, huh?” Sokowski laughed again.

  Carl didn’t say nothing back. He just held the ice cubes to his throbbing lip and cheek. He couldn’t figure out how Sokowski could be so damn happy. Two people were dead because of them.

  “Christ. Don’t be such a fucking baby,” Sokowski said as he took another sip of his whiskey.

  “Why didn’t you just take me on home?”

  Sokowski flashed a smile over his drink, but there was no humor in it. His eyes were dead and vacant-looking. “’Cuz we ain’t done yet.”

  Carl wasn’t sure what that meant. His lips were getting numb, but he kept the ice right where it was.

  Sokowski shook his head at Carl and jabbed a dirty fingernail toward him. “You and me ain’t done, chief. Not by a long shot. We gotta track the fucker down.”

  Carl sighed out loud. “Shit, Mike. I ain’t a deputy. I’m done. I didn’t even do nothing. Besides, you were the one that killed her.” It slipped out just like that.

  Sokowski slammed his drink onto the kitchen table, walked up close to Carl, and glared down at him. The whiskey was strong on his breath, stinging Carl’s eyes and making them water up. “Let’s get one thing real straight here, asshole. We’re in this thing together. From start to finish. And from what I remember, I didn’t see you trying to stop anything.”

  “Yeah, but I . . .” Carl didn’t even bother to finish. He knew that Sokowski wasn’t going to go down by himself. Carl was tied to him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  “Look, this whole business is gonna go away once we track Danny down. I plan on us finding him first, and when we do find him, he’s gonna resist arrest, which means we’ll have to put a fucking bullet in his thick head. Then this whole fucking thing ends right there. That’s our only option. You got a problem with that?”

  Carl looked down into his drink and decided to have a sip after all. In one motion he drank every drop of it, then held the empty glass out to Sokowski.

  “Hell, fucking yeah.” Sokowski grinned as he took the glass and filled it back up, sloshing some over the top of it. “This shit is almost over, Carl. We’ll be back to selling weed, getting high, and making money in no time.”

  Carl sipped his whiskey and watched Sokowski for a minute. “Ain’t you sorry none?”

  Sokowski glanced at Carl. Thought about the question for a second. “Sure I’m sorry. I loved that bitch. I didn’t show up at the trailer planning on killing her, but what�
�s done is done.”

  Carl kept staring at him, and Sokowski let his guard down a little more. “It was an accident. You heard her. She said a bunch of shit to provoke me. I got pissed, lost my cool, and it just happened. I ain’t a killer, Carl.”

  Carl knew that part of Sokowski actually believed it. He figured that kind of thinking would help Sokowski sleep at night. Carl, on the other hand, knew what Sokowski was. And somehow he had become the very same thing.

  “I don’t want to be the one to do it,” Carl muttered.

  Sokowski lit a cigarette and gazed at Carl through the haze of gray smoke.

  “Killing Danny. I ain’t gonna be able to do it,” Carl continued.

  Sokowski put his hand on Carl’s shoulder and squeezed it a little too hard. “All right, Carl. I get it. You’re a regular Mother Teresa.” Sokowski pinched his fingers tighter into the flesh of Carl’s shoulder, making him wince. “I’ll take care of it.” He released Carl with a wink and the bare hint of a smile.

  Carl rubbed at his shoulder and took a step back from Sokowski. “I should call my old lady. She’s probably shitting bricks ’cuz I ain’t home yet. Can I use your phone?”

  “No. Fuck, no. You ain’t doing nothing. You can call her after we finish what we started. Now, drink up.” Sokowski didn’t wait for Carl to drink with him. He slurped down some more whiskey, then went to the refrigerator and looked for something to eat.

  Sarah Knolls

  Sarah Knolls slumped on the couch, dressed in a shabby nightgown worn thin from years of use. Her long and graying hair was pinned tight to her skull with a handful of bobby pins. Liver spots dotted her scalp like a leopard’s skin. Only sixty-eight years old, but she looked and felt seventy-eight. She clutched a Kleenex in her hand and stared at the front door. Her expression was dull and flat, and she didn’t seem to notice the cold that hung over the quiet house like plastic tarp.