Cold to the Bone

by Emery Hayes

  Joaquin followed, slower. His father’s body was unmoving, a patch of darkness on the ice. He stopped and knelt beside him. He turned his father’s head so that he was looking up at the starlit sky, but there was no breath from his lips, no sight from his eyes. His face was remarkably peaceful. The skin translucent, unmarred, the dagger of beard under his lip crystal with frozen spittle.

  He took the glove from his right hand and placed his fingers over his father’s mouth, under his nose. To be sure. No breath. He waited. Placed his hand on his father’s chest, where he’d been shot, and felt the wound. Warm still. He looked down and watched his father’s blood stain the ice, Joaquin’s jeans, and his boots. So much blood. He was aware of the snowmobile in the distance, the hum of the engine fading, and knew he needed to follow.

  No more death. His father’s last wish. And Joaquin knew the man who had murdered his father had no plans of stopping there. The sheriff’s son. A kid. Younger than Beatrice had been. No more death. He clung to those words as he laid his father down and climbed onto the Bobcat.

  38

  Nicole drove the department SUV off the Lake Road and down the snowy banks, breaking sharply before she rolled onto the glassy surface of Lake Maria. The tires slid on the ice and she kept a soft, steady pressure on the gas pedal. She glanced at the GPS screen on the computer, at the flashing red dot. They were on the move again, not a half mile ahead, not yet off the lake, but approaching its shoreline. Beyond their position, the Lake Road continued to the north, though its winding turns were tighter, the woods there dense and holding the cold temperatures longer. Black ice was thicker on the road, stayed longer, and caused more accidents. Not a mile down the road, the trees thinned and then opened abruptly into a valley populated with turbines. Most of the resorts were perched at the top of those mountains and had cross-country ski and snowmobile trails, sledding and tubing slopes—but all of them well away from the energy farm and the fierce winds that circulated there. Her best guess, Benjamin was headed for one of those trails.

  Nicole’s headlights and strobes had a span of one hundred-fifty-five feet. Her gaze swept over the surface of the lake inside that perimeter and she almost missed it. A body. Black parka and pools of inky darkness.

  She opened the radio and hailed Lars. “Location?” she asked.

  He was at the lake. Two minutes behind her.

  “There’s a body out here,” she told him. “An adult, maybe,” she said.

  “Dead?”

  “Probably.” She had sensed the absolute stillness of the body. “I can’t get close enough.” Not without moving the Yukon through a series of wide turns that would eat up time Jordan didn’t have. “Inside our crime scene,” she told him.

  “It’s not Jordan,” he said, and she appreciated the conviction in his voice.

  “Definitely not.” She’d seen booted feet, but they had been too big to be Jordan’s. And the shape of the lower legs had been longer, fuller than her son’s. “I’m continuing on.”

  “I’ve got this,” he returned.

  Nicole took another look at the computer screen. The flashing dot had turned at the shoreline. Not onto the road, but below it, in the shallow dips running parallel. Benjamin didn’t know that Jordan had his phone on. That Nicole was tracking him through the GPS. He was staying off the road to prevent detection.

  She thought about returning to the road. She could move faster, but if Benjamin spooked and went back across the lake, she would lose time and distance.

  Lars called her over the radio.

  “It’s Esparza,” he said. “Dr. Esparza. Best I can tell, two gunshot wounds. Massive blood loss. And someone’s been swimming in it. Knelt beside him. Footprints and a handprint.”

  “How long dead?”

  “Minutes.” There was a pause. “Blood is ice at its thinnest, still liquid at its deepest.”

  He told her about the Durango parked at the side of the road. It matched Benjamin’s rental, make, model, color. A unit was securing it.

  “Jordan was in it,” he said. “Star Wars stocking cap left on the back seat.”

  Nicole felt her heart take a nose dive. Confirmation. It didn’t matter that she’d already known. That she’d heard it go down. They now had tangible evidence that connected the victim to the perpetrator. That identified Jordan as the kidnapped. And that caused bile to crawl up her throat.

  “How far out are you?” Lars brought her attention back to the call.

  She’d closed the gap some. The screen showed she was point-two-six miles from her son. “About a quarter mile.”

  “More units are coming in,” Lars said.

  “Send one up to the resorts,” she said. “Benjamin is going to need another vehicle. One that will get him out of Blue Mesa.”

  “On it.” She heard Lars make the call, and then he returned with, “You think Esparza was out here to meet Sanders?”

  “Maybe he thought so, and got Benjamin instead,” Nicole said. “I think Esparza chose the place, and that he knew what he was walking into.”

  “Like that scientist he told us about. Montgomery.”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “Then Sanders hired Benjamin,” Lars followed her thinking. “And he wasn’t a neutral party.”

  “Callon Pharmaceuticals and Sanders,” Nicole said. “Joaquin was right. There was no way his father would survive this.”

  * * *

  The north side of the lake was colder, the air sharper. Joaquin had pulled the cowl up over his chin and cheeks, but the wind drew snot from his nose and even behind the goggles his eyes teared. But he followed. He gained on his father’s killer. He had the advantage of no headlight. Three times Benjamin had stopped, cut his engine, and listened for Joaquin. After the first time, he’d realized invisibility gave him power. It gave him strategy. He’d watched the progress of the Bobcat, listened to its purr, the engine downgrading as it slowed to its next stop, and had cut his engine in time, drifted over the ice soundlessly until air and ground resistance stopped him. And then he had sat motionless, careful not to give away his location by even stirring in his seat. It made Benjamin nervous, and he’d stopped one more time before ascending the banks of the lake and pressing the Bobcat full throttle down the side of the road, over the moguls created by the snowplow. Joaquin followed in the wake of his rails. Every fifty yards, a streetlight illuminated a cone of geography. Joaquin was careful to stay out of the spotlight, skirting the edges, but remained on their tail.

  Benjamin wasn’t as experienced with the snowmobile as Joaquin, and that helped. The guy plowed through standing drift, causing the engine to slow and sputter. He hit hillocks head-on, and the Bobcat jumped and shuddered. Joaquin took them on an angle and glided over them.

  Up ahead the curves in the road were cut like diagonal hash marks, and Joaquin anticipated that Benjamin would slow down. Snowmobiles were not known for their dexterity. He loosened his grip on the throttle, fell back several more yards, but Benjamin kept going. He hit the first curve and jerked the handlebars, and the tail of the Bobcat slid across the bank and hurtled into the road, completing a 360 before it rocked to a stop. But he didn’t wait. He gunned it and hit the next curve only slightly slower. Joaquin listened to the whine as the engine protested.

  He looked behind them. There were headlights on the lake, a vehicle crossing and closing the distance between them. And further away, a police cruiser had stopped, its bar light rolling. Had they found his father? Did they know the sheriff’s son could be next? Their snowmobiles had left fresh tracks—had they picked up on those?

  Joaquin turned back to the road. He watched the Bobcat in front of him bounce over the uneven snow, catch air, and then wallow when they hit ground.

  He wasn’t surprised when the Bobcat rolled. When the riders slid across the road and slammed into drifts. He thought it would have happened sooner. Joaquin cut his engine and removed his helmet. He dropped it in the snow and started walking. His target—the canted headlight
of their Bobcat. As he walked, he watched the beam of light bounce and realized Benjamin was trying to right the machine. That wouldn’t happen. It weighed eight hundred pounds, and even if he had gravity on his side and got it back on the rails, it wouldn’t start. The metallic shrieking before the crash made that clear. At least to Joaquin.

  He kept his feet on the ice as much as possible, where they made a scraping noise that was lost on the wind. He lengthened his stride. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he arrived. He couldn’t stand in front of a killer and ask for the kid, or he’d be in the same place as his father and Beatrice. But he couldn’t let him get away with the sheriff’s son, either.

  Benjamin gave up on the snowmobile and started looking at the road, turning in a tight circle. He pulled the boy along with him, then down with him when he started peering at and sifting through the snowbanks. He was looking for something. Something important.

  The gun. It had to be. Joaquin hoped it was. And he kept walking, added a little torque to his stride. He wasn’t afraid of the little man. Not if he was unarmed.

  Joaquin didn’t know how to fight. Not really. A few years in karate until he became a teenager and his interests changed had taught him about pressure points and the positioning of hits. But he had never used them in real life and it had been a long time since he’d practiced them in the dojo. They were a dim memory. But at least he had that. For his father, for Beatrice, that would be enough.

  He felt their loss pumping through his blood. He saw again the flash of orange and his father’s body, collapsing on the ice. Heard Benjamin’s mangled cries of frustration before he fired again, standing over his father, wanting him dead. And rage poured from Joaquin’s eyes in tears. He wiped them away, wipe under his nose, and ratcheted his stride another notch.

  He pushed emotion away. Stomped on it with both feet. He was stepping up, as his father expected. He was carrying on the name, and Beatrice and his father with it.

  He wouldn’t let this man kill the boy. He made that decision the way his father had made the decision to come here tonight, knowing that in saving the boy, he himself might die. He felt a flame of protest—that wick of life inside him flare—and he squashed it with determination. Some things were just wrong. Bea had taught him that. Death, when it could be prevented, was one of them.

  Loss was many things. Fear, sadness, anger, despair. Anger was easier for him to deal with, and in this case, had better odds for getting the desired results.

  By the time he reached the Bobcat, Benjamin and the kid were gone. He followed the road through its last curve, listened to the whopping clap of the turbines he knew were on the other side, felt their draft even before he left the protection of the mountains.

  The valley glowed. The wind farm was well lit and everything in it was white, from the massive foundations of the turbines to their metal blades, which had to be a 100 feet long. Benjamin and the kid were less than 50 yards ahead. They’d stopped and stared at the tilting blades, the wind pulling their hoods out behind them, ruffling their hair, plastering their parkas to their bodies.

  It was a dangerous place. Any back draft would pull you straight into the blades. So maybe he should have expected what would happen before the night was over.

  Benjamin stepped forward, pulling the sheriff’s son with him, held up a strand of barbed wire, and ordered the kid to crawl under it. They argued about it. Joaquin could tell even from where he stood. The kid was nervous. Scared. His body was as tight as a bow string. He shook his head. Tried to shake Benjamin off, but the guy was menacing. He took a fistful of the boy’s jacket and jerked him off the ground and up to his face and shouted words Joaquin couldn’t hear, then pushed the boy under the fence.

  Tall sodium lights spaced thirty feet apart cast a glow that reached just beyond the fence line and flooded the vast acreage. Joaquin stood in darkness, at the lip of light, and watched Benjamin drag the boy deeper into the turbine farm.

  There were only two reasons he would do that. To elude or to kill. Joaquin wondered if he had recovered the gun, or if he’d left it behind with the crashed Bobcat. Maybe he thought he could wind his way through the towering mills, tuck himself behind the concrete foundations, which were massive—taller than Joaquin stood and as big around as the barrel of a small airplane—and elude capture.

  He watched the killer and the boy as they approached the first turbine. One hand on the kid, the other empty. He could have the gun stashed in a pocket, but Joaquin didn’t think so.

  The draft was stronger here. It came off the mountain and howled around the trunks of the turbines. Wind ballooned their parkas and the boy stumbled.

  No one in their right mind would go in there. Maybe Benjamin was counting on that.

  Joaquin followed, scuttling through the barbed wires on the fence. He was in full light then. If Benjamin turned, he would see Joaquin. But what could he do without a gun? Still, he hurried across the snowy field, a third set of footprints.

  His sprint cut the distance between them, and Joaquin could hear them now. Benjamin was impatient, unrelenting. The boy was rebellious.

  “Move faster.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re still trouble, Jordan,” Benjamin said. “You were a whiny baby. Always wanting something. And now you’re a crybaby kid.”

  If Benjamin was Jordan’s father, then Sheriff Cobain had made a huge mistake.

  Joaquin kept his shoulder plastered to the base of the turbine and walked around it, the wind clapping in his ears. He moved until he could see them again. They were halfway between stalks. Jordan had slowed considerably, dragging his feet in the snow, and Benjamin was pulling him along and complaining about it. And then the boy planted his feet. The man, not expecting it, lost his footing and came to an abrupt stop, sliding and pitching forward.

  “I’m not going in there,” the kid said. “People die in there.”

  “People die out here,” Benjamin said, and Joaquin could tell from the way his voice leaned heavily on Jordan that he was saying the kid could easily become the next victim.

  He pulled on the kid’s arm and dragged him several yards before Jordan dug in his heels again and they both stumbled.

  “Why are we here?” the kid asked.

  The man stopped and looked down at the boy. “Your mother is a bit of a bitch, Jordan. She’s done a few not-so-nice things to me, and I need her to know how I feel about that.”

  “Write her a letter,” he suggested.

  “That didn’t work.” Benjamin shook his head, a little sad about it. “I even sent a check. You know, back pay. Once I made it big, I wanted to make good on child support. You know what she did with it?”

  “Deposited it in my college fund,” Jordan said, and it surprised the man. His eyes flared.

  “She told you?”

  “She’s told me everything about you.”

  “Really? Did she tell you she knew I was hurting you but she did nothing about it?”

  “That’s a lie. She tried to get me away from you, but you fought her. You filed papers with the court.”

  “Because I love you, Jordan.”

  “Another lie.”

  “Yes,” Benjamin agreed easily. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone, and it’s too late to start now.” He pulled Jordan another yard or two, then put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. It must have caused a quick, sharp pain, because Jordan gasped and his knees weakened. He sank toward the snow, but Benjamin used his other hand to hold the kid upright. He crept closer and thrust his face forward until their noses almost touched. “Your mother chose me, Jordan. Even knowing what I was. You, that was a mistake she learned to live with.”

  “You’re wrong. She chose me twice,” the boy screamed. “When she learned about me, and when she learned about you.”

  Benjamin’s face turned scarlet. His lips peeled back over his teeth in a feral grin. “A mistake, Jordan. You’re a mistake. Never forget that.”

  Joaquin
knew then that he had to make a move. Rage was rattling the guy. He didn’t like to lose. It was in his steely tone and in the plaintive wail beneath it. And in the sudden clenching of his hands in the boy’s jacket as he threw the kid against the trunk of a turbine. He was pulling back, hand fisted, when Joaquin sprang forward.

  Behind them came a great shuddering. It was a noise, but strong enough that it shook the ground. Like a sonic boom from the thrusters of a fighter plane, but the source was closer, grounded. The earth trembled. The towers wavered on their concrete foundations. And the blades of the turbines squealed. It was a sharp, metallic wrenching, as though the bolts holding the blades fast were pulling against their welded moorings.

  “What the hell is that?” Benjamin asked, pulling back and looking deeper into the turbines.

  “Wind,” Jordan said.

  “That happen a lot?”

  “Probably.”

  It happened again. Longer. The earth vibrated with it. Joaquin felt a thumping under his feet, like a giant was walking the earth. And the towers, like masts on those old ships the Pilgrims had sailed to America, shook. There was creaking and a sharp splintering. It made the blood quicken inside Joaquin, but it also provided him with an opportunity. The shuddering was a distraction. It gave Benjamin a scare. Made him nervous. He let go of the kid’s coat, and Jordan took a step backward. And then another. While Benjamin stared upward at the twirling blades of the closest turbine, Jordan continued to put space between him and his father so that he was slowly drawing closer to Joaquin.

  And then the guy noticed, and he yelled at the boy to come back and he pushed his hand inside his parka and took out his gun. Under the light, Joaquin could see it well. The weapon that had killed his father. Dark metal, long barrel. Benjamin lifted it and pointed it at Jordan, and the kid froze.

  “This won’t do, Jordan. Your mom needs a statement. Like the grand finale at the end of a fireworks display. Shooting you won’t do that.”