Glare Ice (18 page)

A
FTER
she hung up the phone, Stephanie saw that Jack was nearly at the front door. She had locked it as soon as she saw the car turn in the driveway. Thank God she had been in the kitchen when he had come, or he could have walked right in on her.

Snooper had heard the car and was going crazy barking. She had to take care of him immediately, her first concern.

She swooped the dog up in her arms and ran to the bedroom, where she had left the crate for him in the closet. She pushed him into the crate, shut the crate, closed the closet, closed the door to the room, and ran back to the kitchen.

Jack was pounding on the front door. Then he started crashing into it. She didn’t know how long it would last. This house wasn’t built for battering. She put her down jacket back on and slipped into her moon boots. When she looked again at what he was doing, she saw he had picked up a flower pot she had left sitting on the steps from last summer and was slamming it into the window in the door. On his third try, the small window shattered, and glass flew everywhere.

Stephanie backed out of the room. His hand came in the window and he tried to reach down to the door knob. She thought of fighting him off, but the stronger instinct in her was to flee. She went out the back door and circled around the house. She wanted to get him away from the house so Snooper would be safe.

Stephanie ran down the driveway. When she was at the road, she turned back. Jack had seen her and had jumped off the steps of the house and was coming after her.

She ran. She had always been a good runner, but the combination of moon boots and a half foot of powder snow didn’t increase her speed. But it wouldn’t help Jack either. She knew her way in this white, snowy world better than he did, and she knew where she was headed. She hoped the snow would shroud the way and that he would give up and leave them alone.

But if not, she was headed toward safety—Sven’s house on the edge of the park. She knew he was there and would let her in. Jack would not want a witness to his anger and would leave her be—if she could reach Sven’s house without Jack catching up to her.

It was hard to run in the storm. She tucked her head down into her chest, only lifting it occasionally to see her way. The streetlights were blurry white balls of light. She could hear Jack behind her, and she picked up her speed, not allowing herself to look back at him. She was running as fast as she could. It would do her no good to see him gaining on her.

She cut across the street and knew she was only a block away from Sven’s house. She couldn’t see it yet. Then she saw his outdoor light. She ran toward it. As she came up to his house, she saw that he had already shoveled his walk once. The snow was filling it in. When she got to the door, she banged on it. Looking back, she could see that Jack was only a half a block away. She could see his vague moving form.

“Stephanie,” he called.

She turned and banged again. She tried the door. It was locked. Damn, why would Sven lock his door? Jack would be upon her in a few moments. She couldn’t stay pounding on the door.

She jumped off the steps and made her mistake. Instead of turning toward town, she turned toward the lake and ran.

Sven had just finished taking a long, hot shower and was doing his rendition of “Camelot”—his wife and he had seen the play in New York with the original cast, and he imagined himself as Robert Goulet—and tying his shoes when he heard the pounding on his front door.

Who the hell could that be? Probably Arne from down the street wanting to play hearts. Sven hated hearts. He never won, and he could be a bad loser. But he did have a six-pack of beer in the fridge, and he hated to drink alone. He had done that a few times after his wife died, but never found it satisfying. But he wasn’t sure that’s the way he wanted to spend the evening—drinking with Arne.

Arne didn’t bother to call. He knew that Sven was never doing anything, so he stopped by whenever he felt like it. Usually Sven welcomed his visits, but he felt like being alone tonight.

Sven pulled on an old woolen sweater that his wife had knit him for Christmas many years ago and walked out into his front room to answer the door. Instead of Arne he saw Stephanie, all bundled up, standing at his door. She looked behind herself and then went flying off his steps and into the park.

Then he saw a man go running after her.

Sven knew it must be the man who had battered her. He was trying to catch her and beat her up again.

Sven had to help her.

Don’t think. Just do it.

He put on his parka, pulled on his wool stocking hat, and lunged out the door. He could barely make out the two figures, running down toward the lake.

Sven turned and grabbed the implement that he had left standing next to the door after he had done his sidewalk—a long-handled instrument with a heavy, thick blade on the end—the ice chipper.

When Claire arrived at Stephanie’s house, it looked bad. Battered, broken door, window shattered, blood on the door frame. And a horrible howling coming from inside the house.

Claire’s heart stopped for a moment, and she wanted to sink to her knees and scream, but she knew she had to get into the house, no matter what she might find. She reached out to open the door and found it locked. Keeping her gloves on to preserve prints if possible, she overturned a large box that was next to the door, stood on it, reached her hand inside the door, and managed to flip the lock.

Stepping into the house, she pulled her gun out and had it at the ready. Nothing much had happened inside the house. Everything looked pretty orderly. She continued to hear the high, keening sound coming from one of the back rooms. As she stepped into the hallway, she saw that the back door was flung wide open. What the hell was going on here?

She walked slowly down the hallway, and the sound stopped. That scared her even more. Again it came, and she pushed open one of the bedroom doors. The sound was coming from the closet. Oh, God, she hated opening closets. She had seen some horrible sights.

She held her gun ready, pushed the door open with her foot, and gave a yelp of relief. The dog. The howling sound stopped, and Snooper barked up at her. He was contained in a big wire crate, and he was pawing frantically at the side of it.

“Snooper, you scared the bejezus out of me. I think you’re right where you should be.”

Claire closed the door again and looked in the other room. Nothing. The house didn’t look disturbed. Snooper howled again, but she didn’t have time to fuss with him. She needed to find Stephanie.

She ran to the back door and followed the tracks out of the door and around the house. Claire assumed they were Stephanie’s. She had walked around the house and then cut down to the driveway. Claire found the tracks at the end of the driveway, but now there were two sets of footprints.

Why was she doing this to him? Jack wondered as he ran. Didn’t she know he had come to explain everything to her? After the cop came this afternoon, he saw he had to keep Stephanie close by him. He saw what he always came back to: they needed to be together. It was above and beyond everything else. They had been brought together by their parents. They were born for each other. It was preordained. No one would ever love her the way he did. Why was she running away from him?

He was having trouble keeping up with her. He had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t changed out of his good clothes. His fine Italian shoes were slipping in the snow. He could get no traction. He could see Stephanie ahead of him, but she just wouldn’t let him get close enough to talk to her.

That’s all he wanted. That’s all he ever wanted was to talk to her. But she would twist everything up. She could make him so mad.

Through the falling snow, he could see a light in the trees, and he guessed that out farther was the lake. She was running toward the lake. What was she doing? The storm seemed to be centered over the lake, blowing up huge gusts of raging snow, billowing up like hands reaching out of the whiteness. His face was burning from the startling bite of the snow.

She had stopped at the edge of the lake, and he was gaining on her. He put on a burst of speed, came up behind her, and grabbed her. To have her in his hands felt so good. He would be in control soon. He swung her around, and just as he did, he felt something hit his right shoulder, a glancing blow.

“What the hell—” He spun around and saw a tall older man wielding a long stick with a blunt metal blade on one end, some sort of medieval contraption.

Without giving the man a chance to think, Jack moved in on him. He went right for the stick and yanked it out of his hands.

“No, Jack!” Stephanie screamed. “Leave him be.”

What did the old guy think he was doing? Coming between him and Stephanie. He would teach him a thing or two. Then, like it always happened, he felt his rage rip through his body. It gave him so much. More strength than he knew what to do with. He saw the old man, but he saw his father, he saw all that was keeping him and Stephanie apart, and the hate that poured through him was pure and clean. He would get him this time. He would stop him for good. No one would ever tell him what to do again.

He swung the chopper at the old man as he turned to run away. The man dropped to the snow. He stayed sitting for a moment and then fell backward.

Stephanie grabbed onto Jack and tried to pull him away, but he was not to be stopped. It was too much. Interference. He threw her off him. She needed to let him do this. It would be one less thing in their way. He had the power to end it.

Jack raised the chopper up high in the air. Stephanie screamed. The snow fell all around them. Like the snow, with the weight of all the world, the chopper fell on the old man, again and again.

T
HE
wind was lashing the huge branches of the cotton-wood trees that lined the lakefront. Stephanie had always been afraid of those trees in a bad wind. They were brittle and lost branches easily. The branches fell from such a great distance they could do real damage—the least of her worries now. She ran under them and out onto the lake, where the wind was sweeping the snow up in to the air.

She couldn’t stop running. She knew Jack was close behind her. She thought, for a brief crazy moment, of trying to run across the lake. It was about a mile and a half across and she couldn’t see the lights from Lake City in this storm, so she could easily lose her way. What she needed to do was to get him out onto the ice and then run around him and get back to town.

But he headed her off. He figured out what she was trying to do and cut between her and the shore.

“Stephanie, don’t do this. Stop. We can talk. Come on, baby.”

She faced him and shouted back. “Leave me alone. I hate you, you killer. You killed Sven. You killed Buck.”

He stopped and screamed, “It was all for you. They were getting in between us. Don’t you see? You know we have to be together.”

“But why did you have to kill Buck?”

Jack looked wild in the wind, his long wool coat open and blowing off him. “He wanted it. After I told him about us, he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with you. He said things about you. I had to get rid of him. Don’t you see?”

Stephanie didn’t want to believe him. He polluted everything he came near. She tried to run past him, and he grabbed her. His hand seemed to come out of the storm. She had circled too close to him, and he got hold of her jacket. She bent and twirled under him, kicking and punching at him as she spun, but he held on.

She tried to unzip the jacket, but couldn’t get the zipper to work. Jack grabbed at her face, and she bit his hand.

Somehow she knew this would be their last fight. It had come down to this whirling in the white snow out on the frozen lake—he would kill her or she would kill him—one of them would not walk back to shore.

He was lunging at her, both hands going for her throat, when he slipped. Down he went, his knees cracking the ice underneath the snow.

She ran.

She could make out the vague outline of the trees in the light from the park. She followed the shoreline, which lifted up slightly from the flat white surface of the lake.

Suddenly she knew what she would do. Sven had warned her about a spring along the edge of the park, close to where the pier was in summer, out by the point. He said not to go over there, that the ice was weak there all winter long with the warmer springwater bubbling up. It formed a slick of glare ice. She would lead Jack over there.

She would lead him to the spring, and they would both break through the ice. She didn’t care if she died anymore. She just wanted to get rid of him. To stop him.

He was close behind her again. Her breath was coming jaggedly, her lungs torn up by the cold. She didn’t know how much longer she could last. The end of the point was close. She kept running. She had an idea of where the weak spot was, but in this near blind-out whiteness, she would have to guess.

Stephanie heard him getting close. The point was on her right. She knew the spring was close to shore. She cut slightly away and veered back, hoping to make him run right across it, cutting straight to get her. There was still a small part of her that hoped to get away from him.

The sound was what hit her first. A deep crack, a shriek of ice tearing apart, and then a splash and a roar from Jack. The ice sank beneath her feet, and she sunk into the freezing water, the burning-cold shock of it—cold searing through her, sucking her in. First her down jacket ballooned up around her, then as it absorbed water, it clung and pulled on her, dragging her down.

Her hands clutched the edge of the ice, and she tried to kick her way up onto the shelf. With her head above water, she felt like her body was cut off from the neck down—total paralysis. She had to force herself to move her limbs, to try to keep some warmth in her core.

“Help, Stephanie. Help me!” Jack yelled. He was in the water behind her.

Her name, now he used her name. She turned around, still holding onto the ice ledge, and kicked at him. He backed off.

When she tried to boost herself up onto the ice, the ledge broke off. She felt something on her back. Jack was grabbing her. He was trying to climb her. Utter panic and pure hate flowed through her with the cold. She decided to take him down. She swallowed a deep breath and flung her arms up in the air, sinking into the water. Jack released her, and she kicked back up to the surface.

It was then she knew she would die. They would die together. Just what Jack had always wanted.

Jack was in total panic. He was thrashing, grabbing at the edge, trying desperately to get out of the cold water. Stephanie moved away from him to the other side of the hole and found some sturdier ice toward shore, which held her weight, her arms resting on the ledge, allowing her to catch her breath.

She tried to kick her way out of the water, but again the ice broke under her weight. She fell back into the water, her head going under. When she came up, the cold had a tight hold of her. She could hardly move.

Then, suddenly, she had no more. She couldn’t fight. The cold was beyond her. She gave in to it and felt herself sinking.

Claire followed the tracks as they led her down to town. They were being filled in by snow, but she could still make out the blurred outlines, the smudges they left through the white. They led her to Sven Slocum’s house. But then there were many prints.

The screen door was closed, but the inner door was open at Sven’s. Not a good way to keep the heat in. She stuck her head in and hollered, “Sven.”

No answer. He must have joined in the chase. She turned and saw that the trail led down to the lake. She turned and ran, following the tracks.

The oddest sensation came over her as she ran. She felt like she was running in slow motion, the snow pulling at her feet. The scene was surreal: a fairy world falling in the faint light at the end of the park. But she ran faster: she hated to think of Sven getting in between John Klaus and Stephanie. No good could come of it.

She heard some voices, and then she saw the black hole in the ice. The spring. Sven had warned everyone about it. Two forms were floundering in the water. Stephanie was hanging onto the edge of the ice, and Jack was trying to grab onto her.

Claire got down on her hands and knees and started to crawl toward the hole in the lake. Jack made a feeble attempt of grabbing at Stephanie again, and she kicked him away. Then all movement stopped.

“Stephanie,” Claire called. She was about five yards away from the hole. She saw a stick lying next to the hole and grabbed it. “Stephanie,” she yelled louder.

A white face turned in the water. Claire didn’t want to lose her. She got within a yard of the hole. The ice was holding.

“Grab onto this.” She shoved the stick in front of the face. She hit Stephanie in the face, and hands instinctively came up to protect it. They grabbed the stick.

“Hold on.” She dug her heels into the ice and started to pull Stephanie to the edge of the ice.

Then she heard the sound that she had heard before—a screech, a snarl of ice breaking, and the ice gave away beneath her.

The water was colder than ever, rushing around her, but she didn’t go completely under. Beyond cold, she couldn’t help letting out a shriek as she fell. She managed to keep her face above water.

She was afraid this time she would drown. She grabbed Stephanie around the neck, trying to stay up, trying to kick with her booted feet. She reached for the edge of the ice.

For a moment, she thought she could get out of the water. The ice felt thick beneath her hands. But she didn’t know how she would manage to lift Stephanie out. The woman had gone limp in her arms. The coldness of the water crushed her. Claire felt like she couldn’t breathe, could hardly move.

As she tried to hoist herself up onto the ice, it broke beneath her arm, and she plunged back into the water. She went under the surface and kicked to come back up. She still had an arm around Stephanie, but her weight dragged on Claire, making it more difficult to stay afloat.

Claire knew she didn’t have long. She knew that hypothermia would set in any time now. She had to resist the urge to thrash around in the water, just to keep warm. Her mind was starting to race as she desperately tried to come up with any way out of this ice water.

She had to make an attempt at the ice. She thought of letting go of Stephanie. She would do Stephanie no good if she drowned with her. At least, if she could get herself out, she could try to rescue Stephanie. But she clung to the other woman as if she were a life jacket.

Once again, she grabbed onto the ice ledge that circled the hole. She took a deep breath and allowed herself to sink into the water. Then she kicked her legs, pushed up with her one arm, and managed to get her body partway onto the ice.

She lay there, panting, for a moment. She knew she had to let go of Stephanie to get completely onto the ice. She was afraid if she let go, Stephanie would sink into the water.

A hand grabbed her wrist.

She screamed.

“Claire.”

Her name. She recognized the voice. It was Scott.

“We’re here. Me and Billy. I’ve got you. Keep hold of her, and we’ll pull you up.”

Claire tightened her hold on Stephanie. They had a chance. She was starting to shake, but had to hold on.

The hand on her wrist pulled, and she felt herself being lifted onto the ice. She kept a tight hold on Stephanie. They pulled again, and she felt hands around her. Her eyes were freezing shut. She was cold beyond belief.