Glare Ice (4 page)

“I went for a swim.”

He shook his head, looking her up and down. “I’d advise against it this late in the year.”

“Advice taken, but it’s a little late,” Claire said as she brought Dr. Lord over to where the body was laid out by the firemen. “I’m glad you could come out. I wanted you to see the body before it was moved again.”

“We oldsters don’t sleep that well. A little break in the middle of the night is not unusual. What happened?”

Claire walked him up to the covered body of Buck Owens as they talked. She explained what she knew. “Car went part of the way under the ice. His head was tied to the headrest, so he was under water. He was probably dead before I even arrived on the scene. But only minutes. They did try to resuscitate him, but it did no good.”

Claire reached down and pulled the sheet back. Dr. Lord slowly lowered himself down on his knees beside the wet and sprawling body and put on a pair of latex gloves. Deftly he checked over the body, looking into the eyes, the mouth, the ears, taking the temperature by putting a thermometer far into Buck’s mouth, even though he told her it wouldn’t be very accurate.

“I’m sure the water brought his temperature down fast. I know it did mine.”

“This kind of ice water can lower the temperature quickly. I have some charts back at the office that will tell me how quickly.”

“He’s carrying a little extra weight. Would have kept him warm a little longer.”

“Yes. He looks like a strong young guy,” Dr. Lord commented.

Claire filled him in on what she knew of the man. “Buck Owens. Twenty-five years old.”

“This is where he was tied?” Dr. Lord pointed to the ligature marks circling Buck’s thick neck.

“Yes—as I mentioned, when I found him, he was tied to the headrest in his car with a red rag. The rag had been wrapped several times around his neck. So when the car went into the lake, he couldn’t get out of it.”

“I’d say he put up one hell of a fight to get free, pardon my French. Somebody pretty big must have done this.”

“Or he was taken completely by surprise.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you think he was dead when he went in the lake?”

Dr. Lord gently moved the head back and forth, staring at the marks on the neck. Then he reached up for a hand from Claire. She pulled him up, and he patted her hand in thanks. “Claire, Claire, a little patience.”

“We’re about to take some photos.”

“Yes, let’s do that and then move this body out of here. I have seen enough. His extremities are beginning to freeze. None of us need to be working out in this frigid weather.”

“Cold as a morgue.”

“A comment like that from you?” He smiled at her. “What time might I expect to see you tomorrow?”

“When would be convenient?”

“Late afternoon would be perfect. Come a little early, and you can watch me at work.” He waved and walked away. The proper gentleman, Claire thought, no matter how dirty his hands might be.

The first time she had come to watch him do an autopsy, he had been a little put out, never having had to perform for the sheriff’s office before. But now she felt that he looked forward to her company. He was the only medical examiner she had known who seemed to still regard the body he was dissecting as a human being. He treated them gently, almost reverently. But then, unlike the medical examiners in the Twin Cities, he maybe only got one or two bodies a month to examine.

The tow truck was pulling the car out of the water behind them. Claire turned and watched. The truck started right on the edge of the frozen lake and chugged slowly down the dirt road, pulling the car out of the lake like an icebreaker.

“Just take it into Durand for tonight,” Claire had told the tow company. The crime bureau could send someone out in the morning. And she had a present for the lab. She felt it in her pocket: the glasses that had been on Buck’s face, sealed into a plastic bag. Maybe they would get lucky and pull a print from something in the car or even from the glasses.

Scott came walking up. “I went and checked out the bar. There were a couple of drunks helping the owner close. The owner said that Buck had been in there tonight. Didn’t stay long. Owner thought some guy he didn’t know had come in, but couldn’t remember much about him except that he was big. Said he thought it was funny when Buck left his dog.”

“Dog?”

“Yeah, I guess Buck owned some kind of little dog, and they always let him bring it into the bar. When Buck left, he didn’t take the dog with him.”

“Strange. He must have thought he was going to return. Where is the dog now?”

“The bartender said his girlfriend took it home.”

“Oh, and who is that?”

“All he knew about her was that her first name was Stephanie. He said they had come into the bar together a few times.”

Claire stopped when she heard the name. Stephanie Klaus? What might this mean? “Did he describe her?”

Scott looked back over his notes. “Didn’t say much. Not a very talkative guy for a bartender. Said she was a young blond.”

Being blond didn’t narrow the field very much in Wisconsin. “So Stephanie and Buck came in the bar together?”

“He didn’t think so. The way he remembered it was that Buck came in and left, and then Stephanie showed up. Said she seemed a little upset over finding out that the dog had been left there all alone. Said she just took the dog and left herself. This was right when they got the news about the car going in the lake.”

“This bartender sounds like one sharp guy.”

“Just doing his job.”

There was an easy way of finding out if this Stephanie was the Stephanie with the bruises. Go over to her house and see if she had the dog.

R
ICH
woke up and turned over and looked at the glowing dial of the clock next to the bed. Three-twenty. Claire was almost three hours late getting home from work. Not good—it could only mean trouble. Usually the night shifts were very quiet, and she often got to leave early. She had surprised him on more than one occasion as he slept in the recliner chair in front of the TV.

He flopped over and tried to go back to sleep. He counted sheep, then switched to pheasants, then turned on his back and counted his breaths. When he got to two hundred, he decided to get up.

He could always call the station. They would be able to tell him where she was, what was going on, but he would feel like a worrywart if he did that. Claire had warned him about what her life was like. She had told him that it was a lot more normal now that she was working for a sheriff’s department, but she said that her hours were erratic and her time was not always her own.

“We might plan to do something, and I’ll end up having to cancel. Or you’ll want to go to a movie, and I’ll have to catch up on some work. Or you’ll want to tell me about your day, and then I’ll need to tell you about mine, and it won’t always be fun listening.”

Rich felt that in the beginning Claire had almost tried to scare him off. He knew a lot of that had been about her own fears—learning to trust someone again, learning that not everyone you loved would die on you—but some of it had been about her own indecision about being in a full-blown relationship.

He was beyond ready to be with someone. He had waited a long time to find a woman like Claire, almost giving up hope that he ever would. It scared him that he felt as if he would do almost anything to keep her.

Turning on the light next to the bed, he watched the shadows gather in the corners of the room. Slowly, trying to make no noise, he swung his legs out of bed. He had left an old flannel bathrobe at Claire’s, and he pulled it on and tied it around his waist. He walked softly out of the room and down the hallway, not wanting to wake up Meg. He had found her to be a light sleeper.

Down in the kitchen, he filled the teakettle with water and then pulled open a drawer next to the stove. Postum with a little warm milk. That should send him back to sleep. He lifted the top off the cookie jar. Two Oreos left in the bottom. Perfect. He made his hot drink and brought his snack out to the full-season porch, where the TV sat perched on top of an orange crate.

Claire had splurged this fall and bought a satellite dish, which he had installed. Satellite was the only way they could get decent TV reception down in the river valley. Since then he had become slightly addicted to the Weather Channel.

He sat down in the recliner and set his hot drink on the window ledge next to him, the two cookies piled up next to his cup.

His mom would meet Claire in a few days. He wondered how that would go. His mother had not cared for his first wife; she called her a little tart, in no nice sense of the word. He hadn’t felt like explaining to his mother that he liked the slightly overt sense of sexuality that Tina had displayed. And unfortunately his mother had been right in the end; maybe Tina had been a little bit too much of a hot tamale for him.

Claire, too, could be quite sexual, but it was more controlled. And this sense of restraint in her was all the more appealing to Rich. When he touched her and got her warmed up, he felt as if he was seeing a part of her that few men had ever seen. He felt very lucky.

But he wondered if his mother would pick up on that. She had a kind of radar for a willing woman.

The other thing he worried about was how strong both of the women in his life were. They were independent, opinionated, mouthy women. They might really hit it off, or they might not. Thanksgiving would tell.

Rich sipped his drink, ate one of the cookies, and then turned on the Weather Channel. Blue-and-pink pulses of light moved across the United States. A perky blond woman said that skies would clear overnight in Florida. Hurricane season was well over. He had enjoyed watching those storms move across the Caribbean, so far away.

He wondered what the weather would bring them. It was dropping down to under ten degrees tonight. He hoped that Claire wasn’t out in the cold. Then he thought about how he would have to warm her up when she got home. He watched the clouds drift through the satellite skies. He set his cup down and closed his eyes as the woman with the soft voice told him how cold the northern tier of the United States would be. Below zero. Nasty cold. Icy.

Snooper tucked her head into Stephanie’s thigh and whimpered as they pulled out of the parking lot. The silky fur of the small dog reminded Stephanie of a lamb she had petted once on her grandfather’s farm. A small comfort.

“I know it’s cold. I’ll get you home soon,” Stephanie promised the tightly curled-up dog.

A few minutes ago two guys had come into the bar, saying that a car had gone through the ice down the road a ways. Didn’t look good, they said. Stephanie called Buck, but all she got was his answering machine. She decided to head home and check out the accident on the way.

As she drove down Highway 35, she heard a siren, and then a cop car went sailing by her. She was glad she hadn’t had anything to drink in case she was stopped. She didn’t want to have to explain anything, certainly not why she was interested in the accident. As she rounded a curve in the road, she could see down to the lake and the tangle of cars and trucks that were lined up by the point.

She pulled off the road and watched what was going on. Not wanting to be in the way, she pulled off the track she had turned onto so that any vehicle could get by her.

She knew it was Buck who had gone through the ice.

She knew it before she saw the large, familiar body stretched out on the ground, before she saw that it was his old Chevy Nova they were trying to pull out of the lake. Before she saw how everyone moved around the body, not really paying it much attention, she had known he was dead.

She had always known she would never get to stay with Buck. He was a gentle soul whom she didn’t deserve. He had treated her like she was worth something, and she had tried to push him away. Now she was sorry that she hadn’t pushed harder. Because of her, Buck was dead.

Jack had killed Buck. She didn’t know how he had done it; she hated to think about that. She knew it as well as she knew her own name, as well as she knew that someday he would kill her too.

She had to freeze herself. She had learned how to do that many years ago. In order to get through the beatings, the fear, the relentless waiting, she had learned how to turn her mind off and make her body move forward. That part of her that cared about people, she needed to disconnect it from the rest of her mind. It had never done her any good anyhow.

Stephanie reversed out of her parking spot and turned back onto the highway. Get home, she thought.

When she pulled up into the driveway, she saw that the porch light was off. Maybe it had burned out. She tried to tell herself that as she got out of the car and walked up to the house, Snooper following at her side. Then the little dog stopped and relieved himself on some bushes.

“Come on, Snooper,” she called, needing to hear the sound of her voice in the still air.

The dog wagged his fluffy tail and carefully stepped over the rocks in the driveway. Stephanie walked up the steps to her house and tried her door. It was locked—a good sign. She inserted her key and slowly opened the door. Nothing. She reached inside and turned on the outside light and the light in the kitchen. Empty. Still nothing. She stepped into the house and let Snooper come in behind her.

Before she could do anything else, she needed to check out the house. She walked through the kitchen and into the living room. Everything as she had left it. The rug she was working on was sitting in the corner behind the couch where she had put it, red and green for Christmas. She had thought it might be nice under the Christmas tree. It all seemed like an odd dream—the holidays, Christmas, presents for Buck, good cheer, ho-ho-ho—what had she been thinking? She was halfway done with the rug, and now she might never finish it.

Then she checked the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain to one side to see into the bathtub. Finally her bedroom. Nothing looked disturbed.

She went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and stared out into the night. She needed to go to bed. She would go to work in the morning. She would work until payday on Wednesday and then leave on Thursday, which was Thanksgiving. She would tell no one anything about where she was going—not her mom, not anyone. This time she would completely vanish.

Snooper was sitting in the middle of the kitchen, his nose pointing up at the sink.

“What do you want, Snooper? You need a drink of water?”

He stood up and wagged his tail, happy at her ability to communicate with him.

She reached up and got down a bowl and filled it with water.

“You’re going with me. I need a buddy.”

It was three in the morning. If she was going to be in any shape for tomorrow, she’d better try and get a few hours of sleep. No one would be in very good shape at the factory once they heard about Buck. He had been well liked. She thought of the locket he had given her. She kept it in her jewelry box. She would take that with her. But she would take little else. Only what she could pack in the car.

She walked down the hallway to her bedroom. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she started to shake. Don’t, she told herself. Don’t think. Just go to sleep.

She stood up and pulled back the covers, ready to crawl into bed in her clothes, when she saw the red. Something red was all over her sheets.

She dropped the sheets and screamed.

Then she saw what it was.

Rags. Red rags. From her weaving. He had come into her house, taken a handful of the rag strips that she used for her rug, and put them in her bed just to show her what he could do.

She knew what he could do.

He would kill her, but not tonight.

And maybe if she planned well and went farther than he would even dream of her going, she could get away before he got her.

He watched the lights go on throughout the house, leaving a trail of her movements. He wondered if she would stay in the house when she found what he had left her. If she went anyplace, he would follow her. He would not let her get away this time. It had taken him all too long to track her down.

A roaring filled his ears. Anger at her bounced around inside his belly. He hated the thought that that stupid fucking punk had touched her body. It would never happen again. No other man would ever touch her.

He was the only one who had any right to her.

He had been her first lover, and he would be her last. He would see to that.

A woman was supposed to be faithful to her man.

They were born for each other. He had told her that forever.

His eyes focused on the bedroom. He could see so clearly in the dark. He had left the shade partly drawn up in her bedroom so he could watch her. He loved watching her when she didn’t know he was doing it.

She turned on the light in the room, looked around, and left.

His eyes could see everything. They could pierce her skin and go into her mind. He always knew what she was thinking.

He was working on controlling his anger, not letting it control him. It made him very powerful, his anger, and if he could use it the way he wanted to, he would be able to do anything.

The key to this control was steady breathing and holding in. He did not always give in to his sex drive when he felt it. He often let it build up inside him just to feel the steam of it swirl around.

But still, he needed other women. He could not hold it back forever. That was not his responsibility.

He watched her come back into the bedroom. When she pulled back the covers, he saw her face. The shine of holy fear. She was worshiping him again.

He would not go to her tonight. She would want him, but he would hold back. It would bring him more power. He would have her again soon enough. And then he would have her forever. She was his.

When Claire walked in the door at four in the morning, she heard the gentle drone of the TV and found Rich slumped over in the recliner. His face was tilted to the side, and his mouth was slightly open, letting a soft whistle escape as he breathed. He didn’t look all that comfortable.

She hoped he hadn’t been there all night. She felt enormous relief to see him in her house.

How comforting to come home to a sleeping man.

She was beyond tired, hungry, cold, thirsty, and sad. She wasn’t sure how she would face the day that would begin all too soon. This case needed to be attended to immediately. Her mind began to whir at what she would have to check into in a few hours when she went to work: Stephanie, autopsy, the checks for Mrs. Tabor, the car, Buck Owens’s parents.

Claire stood in the middle of the room and put her hands to her temple. Let it go. You need to sleep. It will all happen soon. She shook herself and then looked again at her sleeping lover.

After turning off the TV, she walked quietly over to where he sat in the chair and knelt in front of him. She reached out her arms and laid them on either side of his waist, and then she bent over and put her head in his lap. He was warm from sleep. She felt him stir, and then she felt his hands smooth back her hair.