Dead of Winter

Outside on the porch, Louis held the uniforms as Jesse pulled the door shut and tested it to make sure it was locked.

“Do you think the chief would let me see Pryce’s old case files?” Louis asked.

“What for?”

Louis shrugged. “A fresh pair of eyes maybe.”

Jesse slipped his sunglasses back on and stared at Louis. “We tried, Kincaid. We talked to local criminals, retired criminals, local mental cases, Pryce’s relatives. We even visited the Rambos up at Lake Orion.”

“Rambos?”

“You know, those weird Vietnam vets who live in the woods. Chief thought maybe they just decided to start popping cops. I’m telling you, we talked our asses off. And we didn’t find squat.” Jesse started down the porch.

“Jesse.”

He stopped and turned.

“I wasn’t implying you didn’t try.”

“Sounds like it.”

Louis hoisted the uniforms. “Sorry.”

Jesse turned and walked to the cruiser. Louis followed, laying the uniforms across the backseat. They drove in silence, heading back to Main Street.

Louis pulled the photograph of the Pryce kid from his pocket.

Jesse noticed him looking at it. “I keep thinking of his kids,” Jesse said quietly. “I keep thinking of those kids and hoping they didn’t come down those stairs.”

“Yeah,” Louis said.

They were silent again. The radio crackled as a call came for another unit to assist a man who had fallen on some ice.

“You know,” Jesse said, “more cops are killed during December than any other month.”

Louis didn’t respond. They headed back onto Main, starting into the business district.

“Hey,” Jesse said suddenly. “I almost forgot to show you the most important place in Loon Lake.”

He did a U-turn and pulled up to the curb. “Ground zero,” he said with a grin. “Dotty’s Blue Star Café. The state’s biggest deposit of natural gas.” He grabbed the mike. “Florence, this is L-13. We’re 10-7 for a few.”

Louis slipped the photograph back in his pocket. His mind was working back, replaying his job interview with Gibralter, wondering if the chief intended to appoint someone to take Pryce’s investigator job. If he himself had been interviewing for it, he wished Gibralter had mentioned it. Maybe Gibralter had been doing just that and he hadn’t picked up the clues. He had worked for only two men before. His first chief in Ann Arbor had been as easy to read as a telephone book. But his experience with the sheriff in Mississippi had told him that impressions and, worse, assumptions about character, could be dead wrong.

Gibralter…what in the world was he? Soldier? Scholar?

Louis shook his head. Whatever Brian Gibralter was, it was clear that beneath that starchy exterior buzzed a Byzantine brain.

A meeting of the minds. Shit, maybe that was why he had been hired.

CHAPTER 4

Louis lingered on the porch until the moon scuttled behind a cloud, then he went back inside the cabin. He stood for a moment, looking at his suitcase sitting on the bed then went to the kitchen. Grabbing a Heineken from the refrigerator, he popped it open and took a long drink as he surveyed his new home.

The placed was a little shabby but not bad for two hundred a month. The moment the real estate agent had unlocked the door Louis had liked the place. The furniture was utilitarian, standard-issue rental stuff. But the wood floors, rough-hewn walls and log-beamed ceiling had a certain rustic charm. It was the fireplace that had cinched it, though, a huge stone thing dusty with soot and cobwebs. The agent was barely out the door with the signed lease before Louis was out back gathering wood.

It took four tries but now a fire was blazing, softening the dark corners and dissipating the mildew smell with the sweet scent of burning wood. Louis looked down at the rug in front of the fireplace. It was a bear rug, dusty brown and pocked with moth holes. He had found it rolled up in the closet. It smelled like dirty sweat socks but he doused it with some foot powder from his ditty bag and it had settled down. The taxidermist had given the bear a maniacal grin, and as Louis stared down into the animal’s glassy eyes, he found himself smiling.

Damn, he liked this place.

He took a swig of the beer. Settling down the bottle, he went outside to get some more firewood.

It was quiet – no wind, no animal sounds. He stopped, staring out at the frozen lake. The strong pine scent pricked his nostrils, reminding him for a moment of Mississippi. But the air was different here, cleaner, fresher, like just taking it in made you healthier.

As he gathered up logs, he thought of the portrait of Pryce back at the station. The irony of his situation was almost too strange. He had landed again in a small town, this time replacing another young cop. A black cop. A black cop who wore size sixteen shirts and spit polished his badge. Louis shivered and started back to the front of the cabin.