Dead of Winter

Louis looked around the dingy bedroom but it offered no clues about Fred Lovejoy’s death. It was simply a sad testament to a lonely life. He had heard that retired cops sometimes went off the deep end like this. Without the regimen of station or family to give their lives shape, ex-cops drifted into a netherworld of solitary idleness. Louis’s eyes drifted over the piles of unwashed clothes. Something on the dresser caught his eye and he moved to it.

It was a holstered gun. Louis slowly pulled it out and turned it over in his hand. It smelled of fresh Hoppes gun cleaner and the oil left spots on his latex gloves. Even the leather was cared for, like a beloved baseball glove. Louis slipped the gun back in its holster and put it back on the dresser.

He went to the small bathroom. It was filthy, the water in the toilet bowl iced over. Leaving the bathroom, he wandered toward a closed door. He pushed it open slowly. This smell was so strong he drew back. There was a large cage in the corner, with an old blanket in it, layered in dog hair. It was apparently where Lovejoy kept his dog when he was away.

Louis drew his arm over his nose and stared at the cage. It was clear that Lovejoy had not intended to be away from his cabin long or he would have caged the dog. Had his killer come to the cabin? Had Lovejoy been murdered in his own home and then dumped in the lake? Louis frowned. But how did you dump a body in a frozen lake? And where was the blood? Louis had never known of a shotgun blast that didn’t leave a drop or two. But if he wasn’t killed here, then where?

Jesse came down the short hall. “Hey, Louis, I think I – ”

He came to an abrupt stop in the doorway. His eyes locked on the cage. His expression went suddenly dead, his skin ashen.

“Listen, Jess,” Louis began, “we’re going to have to -”

Jesse bolted from the room.

“Jess!”

Louis stuck his head around the door frame but Jesse was gone. A moment later, he heard the slam of the front storm door.

“What the hell?” Louis muttered. He went back out into the living room. Through the open front door he could see Jesse leaning against a tree. His head was down and his ragged breath formed white clouds in the cold air.

Louis came up behind him. “Jesse? What’s the matter?”

Jesse shook his head. Then slowly, he drew two deep breaths and straightened. His face was sweaty.

“I don’t know. I felt sick,” he said. “The smell got to me, I think. And that damn dog.” Finally, he looked at Louis, his brown eyes glistening. “I’m sorry, man. Don’t…don’t tell the chief, okay?

Louis stared at him for a moment then awkwardly patted his shoulder. “No problem. It never happened.”

Jesse wiped his brow and stared off toward the lake. “Shit, I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“Fred was a fisherman.”

So?”

“An ice fisherman. You know, shanties, holes in the ice.”

Louis stepped around the tree and followed Jesse’s gaze out at the lake. “Like that one?” Louis asked, pointing to a small wooden structure about thirty yards out on the frozen lake.

“Yeah, just like that one.”

Louis turned up his collar and started across the snow. Jesse pushed himself off the tree and trailed after him.

“Maybe we should call the chief before we go out there,” Jesse said.

Louis pulled his radio out and hailed Florence. He advised her to notify the chief, and on a hunch, the county crime-scene unit. He stuffed the radio back in his belt just as they reached the fishing shanty door. A gray layer of haze drifted over the lake, casting smoky shadows that glittered with light snow. Damn, it was desolate out here.

“You going to open it?” Jesse asked.

Louis pushed open the thin door. The wind whipped in from behind him and he could hear a flutter of papers inside. The shanty was dim and Louis reached for the flashlight on his belt, shining it around the inside.

It was small, about ten feet by ten feet, made of cracked wood. Directly in the center, next to a hole in the ice, sat an old wing-backed chair. Next to it was a TV tray table holding a Coleman lantern. A generator-fueled space heater occupied one corner, a warped Styrofoam cooler another. The ice floor was covered with green Astroturf, littered with cigarette butts, beef jerky wrappers and Pabst cans.

Louis went in, swinging the flashlight up over the walls. They were festooned with fishing gear. There was also a Black and Decker chain saw, an Indian blanket and a sheepskin bota.

“Louis, look.”

Louis turned the light on Jesse, who was kneeling by the fishing hole. On one jagged edge there were dark stains.

Louis knelt, shining the light on the hole. It was blood. He trained the light back up on the chair. There was a small stain on the seat, as black as the water in the ice hole.

“This is where he was shot,” Louis said.

“Here? But he was found up near the shore,” Jesse said.

Louis stood up and pointed the flashlight at the chair and then down at the hole. “See the blood pattern? He was shot sitting in that chair. Then my guess is he was put down that hole.”