Dead of Winter

“You missed it. It happens.”

Jesse said nothing, just slammed the cruiser into gear.

“Jess, pull in the park. I want to check something.”

Only one lane of the road had been plowed and there were no lights. The darkness engulfed them and Jesse flicked on the brights to illuminate the tunnel of dense pines. The road led to a parking lot, which was heaped with untouched snow banks, then continued into the trees.

“People use the park much in the winter?” Louis asked?

Jesse shook his head. “Nothing much in here but the baseball diamond. Kids use the hill by the school for sledding.”

“I bet this is where he left his car,” Louis said.

“And I bet he left that way,” Jesse added, pointing to the road.

“There’s another entrance?”

Jesse nodded. “It exits on Evergreen, which turns into Highway 44, which is always plowed and usually empty.”

Louis looked at him. “What does that tell you?”

Jesse frowned then blinked. “Shit, it means he knew. He knew there was another exit.”

“He probably knew about the dogs, too.”

Jesse sat back in the seat, lost in thought. It started to snow lightly and he turned on the wipers. “Whoever killed Pryce knew the town,” he said quietly.

“Probably,” Louis acknowledged.

The radio gave out a burst of static. Louis turned it down. Edna’s voice came on. “Loon-13 and 11. What’s your twenty?”

Jesse answered her. “City Park.”

“Be advised Loon-1 requests you respond to 181 Lakeside Drive, code three.”

Jesse looked at his watched and sighed. “So much for tacos.” He clicked the radio on. “Central, what’s the nature of the call?”

“Unknown, Loon-13. The caller was a teenager. He said…” Edna hesitated. “All he said was there was something gross in the lake.”

CHAPTER 8

The body was face down, frozen under the ice near the shoreline. It lay in a classic dead man’s float position, the upper back and the outstretched arms visible near the surface and the lower torso and legs blurring down into the icy depths.

Even through the milky ice, the green parka and red wool cap were plainly visible. So were the hands, frozen close to the surface, with the tip of the left pinky finger poking out through the ice.

Louis stared at the body. Ollie came up behind him, carrying a 35-mm camera. Without a word, he circled the body and began snapping pictures. Louis recalled the initials “O.W.” on the Pryce crime-scene photos. Apparently, O.W. was Ollie, sergeant, mystic and department photographer.

Louis surveyed the shoreline. There were only a few cabins and most were dark and shuttered on this stretch of the lake. He zipped up his jacket and nestled down into the fur collar. It was getting ball-freezing cold.

“We’re going to have to set up some lights,” Louis said.

“Electric’s bringing them.” Jesse started walking around the body. “We might be out here ‘til fucking dawn.”

Louis sighed loudly. “Damn.”

“Hot date?” Jesse asked with a grin.

“In my dreams, man, in my dreams. You call your wife?”

“Yeah, she’s pissed. No tacos for moi tonight.”

Jesse came up to Louis’s side. They stood there, staring down at the body. They had already called the coroner and the fire department. The latter had been Jesse’s idea when Louis broached the problem of how they were going to get the body out of the ice. At first they had considered trying to chip it out with a crowbar but quickly realized how stupid that would be given the foot-thick ice. To say nothing about what damage they could do to the body.

“Any idea who it is?” Louis asked.

“Nope. We’re about halfway up the lake. A couple small tourist cabins up here, so it might be an East Egger. They have a habit of getting tanked up, taking out the old Chris-Craft and falling into the lake.”

“Not in winter,” Louis said.

“Who’s to say the guy didn’t fall in last summer and just now floated up?

Louis glanced at him. “He’s wearing a parka.”

“No shit.”

They were getting irritable from the cold. Louis felt his stomach rumble with hunger.

“Well, no matter when he fell in, maybe somebody reported him missing,” Louis said. “You remember anything like that?”

Jesse shook his head. “That’s what makes me think it was an Egger, maybe somebody who was up here alone. A local would’ve been missed.”

Louis nodded in assent. He was staring now at the pinky sticking up from the ice. He focused the beam of his flashlight on the hand, picking up a flash of metal.

“He’s wearing a watch,” Louis said. Gingerly, he stepped down from the shallow bank onto the ice and the ice groaned with his weight. Louis squatted and directed the beam at the frozen body’s wrist. “Looks like a gold one.”

“Figures.” Jesse trudged back up the bank. “What the hell is keeping the fire guys?”

Louis moved the flashlight over the body. He was a large man and from the style of coat, the light gray hair and the thickness of the neck, probably an older man. Damn, why hadn’t anyone missed him? And how the hell did he get under the ice when the entire lake was frozen?

“Hey, you know what this reminds me of?” Jesse said suddenly.

Louis jumped. He hadn’t heard Jesse come back.