Thin Ice

by Paige Shelton

  I trusted Viola though. I trusted her completely.

  I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake, I thought, as I went back to the comfortable bed and the warm covers.

  But sometimes, you just needed to trust someone.

  Eleven

  Breakfast was a quiet event. No one said much. The entire meal was strange and fraught with unasked questions and held breaths. I didn’t really care, because Willa made biscuits and gravy and eggs, and again I ate more than everyone else. I could not seem to get filled up. No one minded my appetite.

  “You’ve been to the Mercantile,” were the only words Loretta uttered. She rolled her tired eyes at my attire and then turned her attention back to her plate. She, of all of us, seemed the most tired after our middle-of-the-night interruption.

  Viola didn’t stay in the dining room, but the three other women were so subdued that I didn’t ask questions I wanted to ask. Something more than the late-night incident was on their minds. Or they were just all tired.

  I was strangely well rested. My jeans were stiff, but the T-shirt fit well, and I liked the cap. I didn’t much care what I looked like, and it was freeing not to care. I wolfed down my food amid the uncomfortable silence and then left to wait outside for Donner. I would have liked to have a private conversation with Viola, but I didn’t want to miss my ride and I didn’t think she’d tell me anything anyway. I was glad to leave the Benedict House, an extra sense of freedom in my bones. Not only was I away from Levi, I wasn’t a parolee under whatever restrictions they were under. Was it possible I could get back to my old self simply because I recognized my own true freedom? I hoped so.

  As if he knew exactly when I’d be done eating, Donner’s truck came into view from down the paved road that lead to the dock just as I stepped outside. I still hadn’t ventured the direction he came from and I wondered if we’d go back that way.

  We didn’t. We went the opposite direction instead.

  “Listen,” he said, very seriously, shortly after we set out, “you need to be extra careful, and I know we don’t have consistent cell service out here but you do inside the Petition building. You need to try to call me if you get in a bind or something.”

  “What kind of a bind?” I asked as I looked at the business card he’d handed me.

  “You need to be careful around here. No setting off on bike rides in rainstorms, no exploring without the proper guidance and gear. You came here with no real preparation. I talked to Gril and let him know I would tell you to call if you needed anything.”

  “Do all the new residents get such a welcome?” I asked, suspicious that Gril might have told Donner who I truly was.

  “Only the ones who show up with a brain surgery scar on the side of her head, and no luggage.”

  I frowned. “That’s fair. Thank you.”

  “Good, now here’s a small speech about living in the wild.”

  Apparently, I shouldn’t have left the Petition until the storm passed. And, in fact, I shouldn’t have gone anywhere without the appropriate footwear and clothing, all of which I now owned, thanks to our shopping spree. I should not even consider exploring the woods on my own yet, but Donner would be a willing guide. So would others. I just had to ask. I was to never go anywhere without a raincoat and boots. Ever. And when winter hit, he would give me a new set of rules.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “Good. Now, did you know George Rafferty, the husband of the deceased, has gone missing?”

  “No.” Gril hadn’t mentioned that part to me, not that I thought he should have. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “We have no idea.”

  “Do you think he could have killed Linda and then run away or did someone take him, someone else killed Linda and came back to kill George too?” I speculated aloud.

  Donner shook his head slowly. “We’re just not sure. He called in when he found her body and now we can’t find him.”

  “That’s not good, no matter what it means.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Are you a law enforcement officer?” I asked as we rode another bumpy path through the woods.

  “Gril is the chief, but we help fill in when he needs us, and when I say ‘we’ I mean park rangers. Sometimes we have to call in Juneau police, but though things can get dicey around here, Gril and the few of us that work with him seem to be able to manage,” he said. “All of us are well trained in outdoor survival, and our training is ongoing. We take it seriously.”

  As we fell silent and Donner steered his truck into an even more thickly treed patch, flashes of a memory came to me, but not a bad memory. Levi Brooks wasn’t part of this one.

  One year, one spring break, my mother had come upon some information about my dad’s whereabouts during the three weeks before he’d disappeared.

  “We’re going to talk to a woman,” Mom had said as she’d turned onto a dirt road in Missouri. “Some loser your father met at some sleazy backwoods bar.”

  She’d looked at me, frowned, and then tapped a Marlboro out of the pack that had been sitting on the old Buick’s bench seat. Over the years, she’d managed a few round, brown burns into the blue-and-tan striped upholstery.

  She stuck the cigarette between her lips and punched the lighter on the dash. “I don’t know what we’ll find, but just work with me.”

  “I always do, don’t I?” I’d just turned thirteen.

  She huffed a laugh. “Yeah, girl of my heart, you do.”

  She lit the cigarette and sucked in hard. She talked as she exhaled. “Your dad ever talk about women to you?”

  My attention jerked to her. “No!”

  “Hang on, don’t get all sensitive on me. I’m just curious, Bethie. He’s dead and gone probably and I loved him, you know that. You know he loved us. Hell, we wouldn’t be out here looking for what happened to him if we didn’t love him. But he was a man, and men are led by … well, you’ll see as you get older. But I do need to know everything. Did your dad ever talk to you about another woman?”

  “No, Mom, he never did.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.” Something bitter burned at the back of my throat. I was old enough to wonder why I was so bothered by her insinuations. She was right, he was probably dead and gone. But that was my dad she was talking about. He’d been loyal to her. To me. To us.

  “Beth,” Donner said.

  I blinked back to the present. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “I was just saying that this is an area we call the Northwest quad. I don’t know why or how Benedict got split up into four zones, so to speak, but it works for us. The Raffertys have a P.O. box, but if someone were to tell someone else where they lived, we’d say Northwest quad, third right road in, road 12-60.”

  “Not third road on the right?”

  “Nope. Third right road in.”

  “I can handle that.”

  We were under such a canopy of thick branches that the sky was barely visible. Narrow slits of sunlight made it through, but only a few. It was as dark as dusk, and even though warm air moved out of the vents on Donner’s truck, the window next to my arm seemed to become colder.

  “The temperature really went down when we moved under the trees?” I asked.

  “Yeah, probably,” Donner said.

  “Can it be different by a lot in the shade?”

  “Yep, and it’ll rain soon, which will make it colder.”

  “It always rains soon.”

  “That’s right. Good job.”

  I nodded but my attention was pulled to the cabin we were approaching. It was a log cabin in the classic sense.

  “Did they build this, log by log?”

  “The Raffertys didn’t, but the previous residents did.”

  The square-shaped house wasn’t big, and with windows on each side of the door, it seemed like it could be made into a cozy place, something that might be used in a magazine ad for a vacation destination. There was no smoke coming up from the chimney,
but I could easily imagine it. I squinted at the crime scene tape over the front door. It wasn’t my place to offer an opinion, but it seemed like an afterthought, not really a deterrent. It was the middle of nowhere though.

  “How many rangers work with Gril?” I asked.

  “Depends on the day, I suppose. We have four who’ve been deputized. I mostly help with search and rescue situations. And airport runs,” he added.

  “Thanks for that.”

  He threw the truck into Park. “Stay here. I need to check something in the cabin, but it’s still a crime scene and I’m here on business.”

  I nodded.

  I watched Donner make his way to the cabin door. I also watched as he looked over the grounds. I didn’t know what had been determined so far, but Donner was alert to the world around him. He looked at the path he walked. He looked around at the surrounding woods.

  I wished I’d asked more about the Raffertys on the way over. I’d been surprised by the news about George, but who knew what that meant. Donner had seemed concerned but not overly so.

  Some reporter I was going to make. I looked around too. If there was a boondocks, it probably didn’t feel as primitive and uninviting as this. I shivered.

  I could hide here, but I could also be alone in a place like this. I doubted anyone could hear a scream from inside this cabin; even nearby witnesses might only hear something that had been muffled by all the trees, or nothing at all. I wondered if anyone had heard a gunshot. I wondered how much hunting occurred in these woods. I needed to start asking the right questions.

  As I settled into the lumpy seat, something moved amid the dark patch of trees on the right side of the house. I bolted upright.

  A moose? A bear? I looked back and forth between the movement and the door of the cabin. Would Donner be caught unawares, or had he lived here long enough to know to look both ways before stepping outside?

  Should I get out and let him know? Honk the horn? I watched the movement as I put my hand on the door handle. I didn’t know how big a deal I needed to make of this.

  A man finally emerged from the woods, seemingly pushed out forcefully. He wore ripped winter gear, and again the thought that a bear might be nearby came to my mind. But if a bear’s claws had sliced at him, he’d be cut up too. Bloody. He’d be about dead, right?

  He didn’t notice the truck at first, and when he did I thought I saw panic flash in his eyes. With my elbow, I locked the door and then reached over to the driver’s side and did the same. And then I laid on the horn.

  The man jumped in his skin and his eyes got wider, but he didn’t run away. He blinked in confusion toward the truck and then at Donner when he emerged from the cabin. A second after he saw Donner, the man crumpled into a pile on the ground. Donner hurried to him.

  I unlocked my door and ran to join them.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do.” I crouched next to Donner. “Do we need to get him some help?”

  Donner felt at the man’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. This is George Rafferty. We need to get him to town for medical attention. I’ll call Gril on the way. Will you just go pull the door of the cabin closed while I get him in the truck?”

  I hurried to the door, satisfying a small part of my curiosity by glancing inside. From what I could discern, it still looked like an active crime scene. I did what I could to memorize the view.

  Blood spatter in a pattern that told me the bullet had come from the west side of the house. I could determine where Linda had been when she was shot and where her body probably fell after the shot. I didn’t spot any brain matter, or other body parts. But the blood was still there. At least some of it. I tried to burn the image into my brain for later contemplation, but if I knew anything at all it was that memory wasn’t always reliable, particularly with only short glances. I also knew that without precise measurements, suicide or murder could only be guessed at—where had the gun been when it fired the bullet that killed Linda? That distance, the measurements were needed to determine the answers. They had an ME who would or hopefully had done that, but I could too. I was good at that. I’d remind Gril.

  We hadn’t had a lot of violence in Milton, Missouri, but we’d had some. Gramps had taken me along to a few crime scenes, the ones where math would help—measurements could be important. But it had been a long time since I’d seen actual blood spatter.

  I was good at remembering things, good at noticing things. At least I used to be. But there wasn’t currently time to measure anything.

  I closed the door tightly and ran to join Donner and George Rafferty in the truck.

  Twelve

  If I wanted a story for the Petition, all I had to do was pay attention. One was unfolding before my eyes.

  Gril met us at the doctor’s office, which was simply a back room in the Saloon, a room set up like a bedroom with a cot and an old television. The most sterile item was the empty vodka bottle on the edge of an old dresser, but the sheets and blankets on the bed looked clean.

  “This is where the doctor meets people,” Donner explained. “He does the best he can, but we always get ahold of the Harvingtons just in case we need to get a patient to Juneau. Francis works part-time here behind the bar, so that can save some time if we have a real emergency.”

  I nodded, wide-eyed and silent. We were crowded in the room—Donner, Gril, me, and an unconscious George Rafferty on the cot. However, he wasn’t really unconscious as much as he was just deeply asleep. Donner explained that Gril had told everyone to approach George with extreme caution. He hadn’t been given the armed and dangerous designation because the gun that had been used to kill Linda was with her body and no one was aware if the Raffertys owned any other weapons.

  I didn’t say much, hoping only to stay out of the way, help if George Rafferty needed help.

  “Oh,” a man said as he opened the door. “A bit crowded, I’d say.”

  “I can…,” I began.

  “No, no, it’s all right. Where’s my patient?”

  Dr. Powder was a puzzle piece of ages. His head was old, his face wrinkled, his hair gray. His chest was wide, framed by burly shoulders that couldn’t belong on someone who must be at least sixty. His waist was trim, but his legs seemed too skinny underneath his old jeans. He carried a worn doctor’s bag and I wondered if it had always been his or if it had been part of a Benedict doctor’s possessions for a hundred years.

  “And there’s Mr. Rafferty.” Dr. Powder cut a short path to the man on the bed.

  I found some space in a corner, but Gril and Donner stood behind the doctor and watched as he examined the patient.

  Dr. Powder listened to George Rafferty’s heart and lungs, then put the stethoscope to the carotid artery in George’s neck. He pulled a blood pressure cuff from his coat pocket, and with quick, efficient movements checked his blood pressure.

  “George, buddy, can you wake up?” The doctor gently shook his patient’s arm, but to no avail.

  On the way to the Saloon, George had sort of been awake but incoherent and mumbling things that included Linda’s name, but no other words had been clear. Once Donner had deposited him on the cot, he’d either fallen into unconsciousness, or this deep sleep, I didn’t really know the difference, and had been that way ever since, snoring once or twice every few minutes.

  The doctor pulled the stethoscope from his ears and looked at Gril. “Probably a little dehydrated, but not bad. I think he’ll be okay.”

  “Why can’t we wake him up?” Gril asked.

  Dr. Powder shrugged. “My guess is that his body is dealing with whatever trauma he’s been through. He’ll wake up when he’s ready, but he’s in good shape, considering.”

  I suspected most people in such a condition would be sent to a hospital but, again, I didn’t comment.

  “If he doesn’t wake up by tomorrow morning, we’ll get him to Juneau. As it is, I think he just needs some rest, fluids, and food. I’ll grab an IV and get some good stuff in him. We can get him to Juneau if you want
but I don’t think we need to rush him there.” The doctor looked at Gril.

  “Whatever he’s been through, it didn’t get down to freezing last night,” Gril thought aloud. “We could just watch him. I need to talk to him, see if we need to look for someone else.”

  “I think he’s okay. He could wake up at any second. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. He’s fine. He’s resting and processing.”

  “Is there anything you can give him to wake him up?” Gril asked.

  “Yeah, but it might not be good for his heart. I don’t know enough about his medical history, and I don’t have equipment to help him if he goes south.”

  I was standing behind them, but I could see by the set of Gril’s shoulders that he was considering his options.

  “We need some questions answered, answers that only George can give us,” Gril said.

  Dr. Powder shook George’s arm. “George, buddy, we need you to wake up.”

  Another time, the snort from George might have been funny. Today, no one laughed.

  “All right. Donner, can you stay with him while the doc grabs the IV stuff? I’ll go with him,” Gril said.

  “Yeah.” Donner looked at me and then Gril did too.

  “I thought you’d left,” Gril said. “You should have left.”

  “I, uh, sorry. I’ll go now.” I nodded at Donner. I had an urge to tell him thank-you, but I thought better of it. Maybe later.

  Donner nodded and then his attention went back to George. As I left the small room, the only eyes still on me were Dr. Powder’s. Did he wonder who I was or did he know and wanted to get a look at my scar? At least I’d know what he looked like when I went to talk to him about my situation.

  It was good to get out of the small, crowded room, but the Saloon wasn’t spacious either.

  Two customers were huddled together in a booth along the side wall. It was dark enough inside that I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. The bare wood slat walls had been adorned with a few neon signs—beer brands—but the place still felt unfinished. An old jukebox sat in a corner but it wasn’t illuminated. Did it not work or was it not plugged in? I was curious enough to investigate, but I didn’t get far.