A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel (2 page)

We stood there, no one saying anything. It wasn’t all that rare in the Adirondacks for vacationers to get stranded in a sudden snowstorm on what they had thought would be a pleasant afternoon hike and freeze to death before anyone could find them. Far too often a local would drink too much on a Saturday night and drive off the road and die in a deep ravine. And sometimes, in the middle of a jobless, loveless winter, someone would write a note, put his mouth around a shotgun barrel, and thumb down the trigger. Or go out for a long walk and never be found. Someone cried for them, or no one did. Someone cleaned up the mess, and life went on.

And with all the lakes here, people find plenty of ways to drown. In winter they’ll take a Ski-Doo out when the ice isn’t thick enough and go under. Maybe they have the time and presence of mind to toss a child or grandchild to firmer ice before they sink, maybe not. Or in spring someone will go boating without a life jacket and drown under a bright shining sun, in water so cold it saps your will to keep moving until you give up and slide under, maybe on the way down thinking of the rest of your life you’ll never have.

Last summer I’d nearly drowned in Lake Champlain, and sometimes in my dreams I’m back in that water, cold and alone, wondering if I’ll ever take a breath of air again.

Matt came over and nodded at us, shaking his gloved fingers hard to warm them. A police car drove up and a policeman got out, walked over, and peered down at the ice for what seemed like a long time. Then he looked up and beckoned to Matt. Another policeman arrived, then a rescue squad. They all walked
over, looked down at the ice, retreated to talk it over. Finally Matt came and asked me if I would take photos of the body before they started trying to remove it.

When I’d been the sports editor here, I’d covered everything from kayaking to boxing to luge to snowshoe races. But I’d never photographed anything under ice, and it was tricky with the sun reflecting off the surface. I concentrated on exposure and tried not to think about this being the body of a man I’d known.

After I’d taken multiples of every shot I could think of, I nodded at Matt. The men moved in with saws and began to cut the ice around the body. I kept shooting. It was something to do, and I needed to do something. Someone brought me another steaming cup from the deli, and I gulped it down. This time it was coffee. I kept clicking.

It seemed to take a very long time to free the block of ice, lever it out, and wrestle thick flat canvas bands under it to slide it toward shore. By now a crowd had gathered at the edge of the lake. I kept pressing the shutter button as the body slid along in its ice coffin. I saw it but didn’t see it. I let the camera see it for me.

If I had simply heard that Tobin had died in a car crash downstate somewhere, I don’t think I would have mourned him. But that dark shape in the chunk of ice sliding past hit me in a way I wouldn’t have expected. Jessamyn had cared for Tobin, and somewhere were friends he’d grown up with, gone to school with, shared his rich-boy escapades with. Somewhere there was a family who would mourn his death and the extensions of him that would never exist: wife, children, grandchildren. And no mother is ever ready for a phone call telling her that her child has been found frozen into a lake.

The good thing about weather this cold is that tears freeze before they fall, so you can brush them away without anyone noticing.

On the shore, paramedics were having a discussion with the police, apparently adamant that this giant chunk of ice was not going into their ambulance. Finally someone drove an oversized
pickup out onto the lake, which always makes me nervous. It seems to break one of the immutable laws of nature—water isn’t meant to be driven on, and there’s water on the other side of that ice, cold and dark.

Every man on the crew went to help hoist the slab of ice and slide it into the pickup bed. Probably they weren’t all needed, but wanted to feel they were doing something. Off drove the truck, to a heated municipal garage, I imagined, where they’d wait for the ice to melt from around Tobin’s body. Or maybe someone would chip away at it. There were people around here skilled in ice sculpting, and I supposed this would use the same basic skills, sort of in reverse.

Matt appeared at my side, and I was cold enough that I could almost sense the heat coming from his body. “We’re going to go to the tavern, Troy,” he said. “Do you want to come?”

I shook my head. I knew the guys needed to unwind before they went home, where their wives and children would want to hear the story. This would be told and retold in years to come, an almost apocryphal tale to keep kids from venturing too far on thin ice. It would be an easier story to tell, I thought, if you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t seen Tobin’s body being sawn out of the lake. If you hadn’t known him when he was alive.

There would be a lot of beers downed this afternoon. The guys would talk about Tobin, how much he liked to drink, the crazy things he’d done, how he had ended up under the ice. Maybe it would be good to hear all this, but I couldn’t handle it. I needed to get home.

Most of all, I needed to tell Jessamyn before she heard it on the street.

It’s about twenty minutes to Lake Placid, if you don’t get stuck behind tourists. With my car heater blasting on high I had just about stopped shivering by the time I got home. But I was still cold, too cold to go looking for Jessamyn. I ran water in my tub, as hot as I could stand it, and crawled in and lay there, all of me submerged but my face, steam coming off the water, and thought about Tobin, under the ice. My dog, Tiger, lay in the doorway watching. She’s half German shepherd and half golden retriever, and just about the best dog on the planet.

It seemed to take forever to warm up.

I toweled off and dressed as fast as I could, but I was moving slowly, like in one of those dreams where you just can’t get anywhere. The walk up to town took longer than usual.

Jessamyn was working at a restaurant up on Main Street, where she regularly had the weekend shift. Tourists come into town determined to spend money, and they’re happy to drop it on tips for a smiling waitress. And Jessamyn could play charm-the-tourists as well as anyone.

This was your standard steak and seafood restaurant, with the requisite Olympic kitsch: hanging ice skates and hockey sticks, photos of ski jumpers and bobsledders. I kicked snow off my boots
at the door and stamped more off in the foyer. It was the afternoon lull before the dinner rush, and I saw Jessamyn refilling coffee cups for a table of tourists and laughing as if they’d said something incredibly witty. I waited until she headed back my direction.

“Hey, Troy,” she said, surprised. “Did you want to eat?” She knows I don’t often eat out, and if I do, it’s Desperados, where the food is cheap and the service fast, or The Cowboy if someone’s visiting from out of town.

I shook my head. “Can you take five minutes?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes. She knew I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. She set down the coffeepot, told the cashier she’d be right back, and grabbed her jacket.

Outside she crammed her gloveless hands into her pockets and looked at me. There was no easy way to say this. I would rather have told her at home, but word travels fast. Somewhere in town somebody probably was already telling the story.

I took a deep breath, and spoke. “I was over in Saranac Lake today—they started building the ice palace. They found a body in the ice.”

Now her eyes shifted. I’d learned with her this didn’t always mean she wasn’t telling the truth; sometimes it just meant she was uncomfortable.

I made myself say the next words. “It was Tobin, Jessamyn.”

She seemed to stop breathing. She stared at me, eyes wide, and swayed on her feet. I took a step toward her, but she righted herself. Her face was chalk.

“You’re sure?” she whispered.

I nodded. She didn’t ask any questions. She just stood there and breathed: in, out, in, out.

When Tobin had disappeared this last time, she had held out hope for a long time that he would return as usual. But as weeks turned into months, even she had given up. I think both of us had assumed he’d gotten tired of playing Adirondacker. I’d pictured him back at whatever posh home he had come from, living off
family money or making the motions of going into Daddy’s business, and frequenting bars more expensive and sophisticated than here. I’d imagined he’d dropped the Carhartts and flannel shirts into a Goodwill bin, or given them to the hired help.

Our breath formed little clouds.

“I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else,” I said. The words were thin in the cold air.

“I need a drink,” she said.

She told her boss she was taking the evening off, and after one look at our faces he knew not to protest. If Jessamyn was passing up a prime winter Saturday evening slot, there was good reason. He’d call in someone who’d be happy to take her shift and the fat tips that came with it.

We walked down the street wordlessly, our feet crunching on the packed snow. When we reached ZigZags, she opened the door, and I followed her in. She nodded at the bartender; I’d seen him around town but didn’t know his name. He served us efficiently, refilling her glass when she gestured to it, and topped up my Diet Coke without asking.

She didn’t cry; she just drank. She asked the bartender if he had any cigarettes, and he handed her an open pack and didn’t say anything about smoking not being allowed. There were no other customers. She smoked four in fast succession, lighting one from the butt of the other. I didn’t complain about the smoke. I didn’t remind her how hard she’d told me it had been to quit. I just sat there.

She spoke only once, and I had to lean in to hear her. “Damn him,” she whispered. I didn’t know if she meant damn him for dying, or damn him for things he’d done when he was alive. I didn’t ask.

Eventually I went off to the bathroom, and on the way back asked the bartender if he had any food—I figured that liquor and shock weren’t a good combination on an empty stomach. I thought
he might find some pretzels or nuts, but he came back with two thick sandwiches on sturdy plates and sat them on the bar in front of us. Maybe he’d heard about Tobin, or maybe he could just tell when someone needed to have food set in front of them. Jessamyn picked her sandwich up almost unseeingly and ate most of it, then put it down and emptied her glass.

“Let’s go,” she said, and stood. She pulled some bills from her pocket and dropped them on the bar. I caught the bartender’s eye with a look that said
If it’s not enough, let us know
, and he nodded. I grabbed my jacket and followed her outside.

It was snowing softly, the flakes falling on our faces and sticking in our hair. Dusk was settling. We walked to the house in silence. As Jessamyn turned to climb the stairs to her room, I saw a tear trail down her cheek. Maybe she’d cry up there, or maybe she’d just go to sleep. But I knew she needed to be alone.

It was past Tiger’s dinnertime, so I filled her bowl and left her in the kitchen while I climbed the steep stairs that led to my rooms. I have an outer room I use as an office, a tiny bathroom, and a small bedroom, all nicely separate from the rest of the house. I turned on my computer and clicked on my portable radiator. This is the only heat up here, plus whatever makes its way up through the stairwell and vents in the floor. But at night I have a down comforter and the warm weight of Tiger in the crook of my knees, so I do all right.

I sat at my desk. I could feel the heat from the radiator, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel numb. I wanted to forget the grinding sound the block of ice with Tobin’s body had made as it had slid past me, the grunts of the men struggling to move it into the truck, the look on Jessamyn’s face when I’d told her the news. And I wanted to forget that glimpse of Tobin Winslow’s face, frozen into the ice.

But I couldn’t.

I pushed my camera’s memory card into my computer, let Photoshop start uploading the photos, and turned away as they began flashing past. I rummaged in my dresser for some thick wool socks, pulled them on, and went down to the kitchen to brew some tea. Then I climbed under my covers to warm up.

There, while I sipped my tea, I realized I needed to talk to someone. This still doesn’t come naturally to me. But I do have people I can call: my brother, Simon, in Orlando, with his cool, logical policeman’s brain. My friend Baker, in Saranac Lake, with her kids and more routine life, always calm and pragmatic. Alyssa, a reporter in Burlington who’d been there for the worse parts of last summer. And Philippe, in Ottawa, whom I’d come oh-so-close to falling for.

But it was Jameson I wanted to talk to.

He was a police detective in Ottawa I’d met after I’d dived from a Lake Champlain ferry to rescue a small boy who turned out to have been kidnapped, a small boy whose father was Philippe. Jameson had seemed to consider me a prime suspect in the child’s abduction, or at least an accomplice. He could be insufferably rude; he was brusque and direct.

I trusted him absolutely.

Something was tickling the back of my mind, a memory of the week Tobin disappeared, of seeing Jessamyn coming in the kitchen with a fat lip and a stiff way of moving.
Walked into a door
, she’d said. I hadn’t believed her. I’d once worked with a woman who would come in with heavy makeup that didn’t quite cover the bruises on her face
—I fell off the porch
, she’d say, or something similar, and we would nod and pretend to believe her. But in the afternoon roses would arrive from her husband, and I knew that husbands don’t routinely send flowers whenever you’re careless enough to fall off a porch.

The phone rang three times before he answered.

“Jameson,” he said, as he would at work.

“Hey, it’s Troy.”

Something changed on his end, as if he had shifted in his chair. “Troy. How are you?”

“Something happened today,” I said. He knew I wouldn’t be calling about something mundane, and I knew he’d want to hear it from the beginning. So I told him about my roommate and the guy she had dated, a guy who had disappeared regularly, who
may have mistreated her, whose body had just been found frozen in Lake Flower.