Dead of Winter (2 page)

“It took a quart but you’re gonna need another soon.”

“Thanks.” He handed the old man some bills. “How far to Loon Lake?”

“About thirty miles.” His snow-encrusted browed knitted. “You going up there for some ice fishing?”

“Nope. A job.”

The man nodded and handed back the change. “Well, good luck to you. Pretty place, Loon Lake.”

“So I’ve heard.”

As he pulled back onto the highway, Louis shook his head and smiled. It was obvious that the old man had been trying his damndest to figure out what business a young black man in a beat-up convertible had in Loon Lake. Phillip had warned him it would be like that.
I just don’t think you’ll like it there, Louis. It’s a resort town where rich white men from Chicago build hunting lodges so they have a place to get away.

Louis reached down and turned up the heater to its highest setting. It answered with a cough and a blast of cold air. He banged a fist on the dash then switched the dead heater off.

A place to get away. That didn’t sound so bad. It wasn’t like he had such a great life back in Detroit. A roach-filled efficiency. And no job.

He shook his head, thinking back over the events of the last couple months. Stupid. Had he really expected to walk into the station and get his old job back after being gone for year? It had been official, his leave of absence, but by the time he got back to Ann Arbor there were cutbacks on the force. Last one in, first one out. Jesus, tough luck, Louis, you’re a good cop but you know how these budget things are, but if you need a recommendation...

The next day the letter had come. He could still see the envelope sticking out of his mail slot with the royal-blue seal that made his heart stop.

Dear Mr. Kincaid: Thank you again for your interest in the Detroit Police Department. We have given your application careful consideration and are impressed with your credentials. However, due to cutbacks in the City of Detroit budget, we will not be adding additional officers to our force this year.  Your application...

He saw the classified ad in the
Free Press
the same day. It was slipped in between the computer programmers and fast-food managers.

Police Officer. Loon Lake, Mich.

Must be MLEOTC. $22,000.

Physical/drug test required.

Application deadline Dec. 18, 5 p.m.

Come back home, Louis, Phillip had said. Just until you get your feet back on the ground. We’re worried about you. Loon Lake isn’t the answer.

The snow was starting to let up. Louis glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty.

He straightened in the cold vinyl seat, his teeth chattering. A green reflector sign caught the headlights: WELCOME TO LOON LAKE, GATEWAY TO THE WINTER WONDERLAND.

The pines parted, opening onto a two-lane residential street cast in the soft glow of old-style street lamps. Neat frame houses lined the street, with swings on the porches, smoke curling from the chimneys, and snowmen standing guard in the yards. In the dusk, ruddy-faced men shoveled their driveways. Louis drove past a redbrick school. Kids were sledding down a hill on cafeteria trays, chased by a barking golden retriever.

Louis continued down Main Street. There were garlands of lights festooned across the street and the store fronts were filled with signs announcing Christmas sales. Women stood in knots on the sidewalks, holding babies and packages.

“Jesus,” Louis muttered. “It’s Bedford-fucking-Falls.”

The thought made his mind trip back suddenly to childhood. It was a long-buried memory, and the suddenness of it was so acute, so unexpected, that it brought a sting to his chest.

It was 1967. He had been just weeks past his eighth birthday and had come to the fifth in a string of foster homes, arriving in the middle of a blizzard a few days before Christmas. There had been four other kids, all foster children and all white.

He had spent the day off by himself, eyeing the Christmas tree and the presents, knowing there would be nothing under there for him. Later, he picked at his dinner and moped while the other kids played stupid games only they seemed to know and talked of things Louis knew nothing about.

A man had come in, a very tall man. Louis knew he was the man who owned the big house, another strange face, another foster father. The man told them all to sit in circle. He handed each of them two Christmas cookies and a glass of milk then turned on the television. Stale cookies and some stupid old black-and-white movie about some stupid white guy who worked in a bank.

Louis had stood up. The tall man asked him, gently but firmly, to sit down. He refused and the man repeated his request. No one was watching the movie. They were all watching him and the man. When the man told him a third time to sit down, Louis kicked the paper plate, sending the cookies skidding across the floor.

“Testing me, Louis?” the man asked quietly.

“I don’t wanna be here.”

“Where do you want to be?”

“Home.”

“This is your home now.”

“I don’t like it. I hate it. I hate it.”

The man came over to Louis, slipped an arm around his shoulders and guided him over to the sofa. Louis sat stiffly on the edge, staring at the TV screen. Finally, the man pulled Louis’s rigid body into the crook of his arm and neither said another word for an hour. When the movie was over, Louis stood up, walked to the broken cookies and cleaned up the crumbs.

He didn’t understand the movie and he sure didn’t believe in angels. But after that, very slowly, he did come to believe in the tall man. He came to love Phillip Lawrence.

What was the name of that damn movie? Shit, it was all over TV every Christmas.
It’s a Wonderful Life.
That was it.

A sign for the police station lay ahead. The station was nearly obscured by pines and evergreens. Louis swung into the lot and cut the engine. The building was made of logs, like a ranger station. A smoking chimney reached into the gray sky and two bare maples formed a spindly tunnel over the sidewalk.

Louis got out of the car, stretching his stiff body. He was struck by the smell of the air -- pine and smoke. He bent and checked his tie in the sideview mirror. He had spent almost eight hours on the road. His trousers were wrinkled and he felt dirty. What a way to appear for a job interview.

He stepped into the station, the heat from a ceiling vent raining down on him. The interior was paneled in a coffee-colored wood, and a brick fireplace in the back crackled with a healthy fire. A polished pine counter and a long railing separated the work area from where he stood in the lobby. Behind the counter,on a closed door was a gold plate that read: CHIEF OF POLICE.

Louis went to the counter, glancing at the large tray of Christmas cookies. An officer sat at the rear desk, his blond head bent over a report.

“Excuse me...”

The young man looked up and smiled. He stacked his papers neatly, positioning them exactly parallel to the edge of the desk. He rose and came to the counter.

“What can I help you with?” The smile was genuine. He had perfect straight teeth and close-cropped hair. His skin was smooth and pink, and combined with the powder-blue police shirt, he looked like a baby shower gift. His silver nameplate said DALE MCGUIRE.

“I saw the ad in the paper,” Louis said.

The officer’s eyes moved over Louis’s blue blazer and he reached under the counter and produced an application form and several other papers. Louis moved the tray of cookies and turned the papers so he could read them.

“You have to do the app here. Chief wants to make sure you can read and write,” the officer said.

Louis nodded, reaching for his pen. “Have you had many applicants?”

“A few, but you’re the last. Chief says the deadline is five, he means five.”

Louis glanced at the empty chairs, debating whether to take a seat. His eye was drawn to a framed photograph on the wall. It had a small black ribbon across the top corner. The handsome black officer in the photograph was named Thomas Pryce. The plate beneath the photo said: IN MEMORIUM JUNE 12, 1952-DECEMBER 1, 1984.

Two weeks ago.

Louis turned to see McGuire staring at him.

“Is there something wrong?” Louis asked.

McGuire smiled. “No, nothing. Would you like a cookie?”

Louis nodded and picked up a cookie, munching on it as he completed the forms.

“L-17 to Central, we’re back in service.”

The sound of the officer’s voice on the radio drew Louis’s attention to the dispatch desk in the corner. The dispatcher was a walrus of a woman with a jet-black bouffant and Fifties-style cat-eye glasses. With a sigh, she lowered her paperback and keyed the microphone.

“Ten-four, seventeen. I have a message for you. Your wife requests that you stop and pick up egg nog on the way home.”

“Ten-four, Central.”

McGuire nodded toward the dispatcher. “That’s Edna.”

Edna gave a wave from behind her Danielle Steel novel without looking up at Louis.

More calls trickled in and Louis listened as he filled out the forms. A lost dog. An officer stating he was checking in on an elderly woman who lived alone. Another requesting jumper cables for a stranded motorist.

All his life, Louis had set his sights on working for a big city department with plenty of action. But here he was. What did this town even need cops for?

He glanced at Dale McGuire, who was re-taping the tinsel around his computer screen. Still, there was something about this place. Something in the air, something...sweet and clean that was more than just pine and gingerbread. He had felt it the moment he drove into town. He remembered something his foster mother Frances once said, something about people having places on earth where their souls felt comfortable. Places where, as soon as you set foot in them you felt at home. He had never felt that special pull to any one place.

“You know,” McGuire said, interrupting his thoughts, “the Chief hasn’t found anyone he liked yet. When you get done with that he’ll want to see you.”

See him? Now?

“He’s anxious to fill the job. Doesn’t like working short-handed,” McGuire said.

Louis glanced at the Chief’s door. He saw his cold ugly apartment back in Detroit and felt the sting of lonely nights there.

God, he wanted this job. He wanted it bad.

“The Chief will see you now.”

Louis looked at his watch. He had been waiting for two hours. He had read every flyer and wanted poster on the bulletin board and thumbed through the four old
National Geographics
three times. He stood up, smoothing his jacket. Dale McGuire led him to the Chief’s door and knocked. They waited until a commanding voice summoned them in.

There was no one in the office. Louis was wondering where the chief was when he heard the flush of a toilet behind a closed door to his right. Taking a breath to relax, he looked around.

He was standing on blood red carpeting, vacuum tracks visible around the perimeter. The walls were covered with framed photographs, certificates, plaques and newspaper articles. On the credenza behind the large desk was a handsome pewter chess set. Louis’s eyes were drawn to two swords mounted over the credenza. One was gleaming steel with gold cording. The other was old, foreign looking. Louis stared at it. Good God, was it a samurai sword?

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. The man was taking his time. Louis went to the credenza and picked up one of the chess pieces. It was a pawn, in the shape of a soldier.

“You play?”

Louis turned. The man was about six feet, trim but broad-shouldered in his starched baby-blue shirt. His short hair was silver-blond and his ruddy clean-shaven face was that of man in his late thirties.

“Some,” Louis said with a smile. “But I’m no good at it.”

“Maybe because you think of it only as a game,” the man said. “It’s more than that. It’s science, poetry, mystery. Just when you think you are solving its secrets, it thwarts you.”

“I never learned the strategy, I guess,” Louis said.

The chief came forward to take to pawn from Louis. “Anyone can learn strategy,” he said. “Courage is what really counts, courage to use original moves that surprise your opponent.”

Louis nodded, as if he understood.

“Like a Marshall swindle, or a Lucena position,” the chief went on. He saw the blank look on Louis’s face and smiled. “Or a gambit. You know what a gambit is, don’t you?”

Louis shook his head.

“The gambit is when you sacrifice one of your pieces to throw an opponent off,” the chief said. “There are many different kinds -- the Swiss gambit, the classic bishop sacrifice, the Evans gambit. These moves are what elevate the game to artistry.”

Louis nodded, half expecting the man to ask him to play as part of the interview.

The chief picked up Louis’s application from the desk. Louis found himself staring directly into the man’s face. It was chiseled, with a jutting jawline, broad forehead and strong brows shielding eyes the color of pale sapphires. Louis thought of a photograph in the
National Geographic
he had seen outside, the one of the mysterious stone statues on Easter Island with their massive powerful heads.