Deep Winter (13 page)

L
ester told Taggart that he wanted to take another look at Mindy's body. See if he noticed anything unusual. Taggart told him not to tamper with anything until the forensics team and the detectives arrived. Lester nodded, bit his tongue, and said he wasn't gonna touch anything.

The snow had been coming down harder, the wind stronger, so they had to keep the front door closed up, since Mindy's place was still considered a crime scene. It might preserve the condition of the room itself, but the unfortunate end result was that it kept in the smell of death. Lester shut the trailer door behind him and still couldn't believe what surrounded him. Mindy and Johnny Knolls. Dead. Worse yet, murdered.

Lester gave the kitchen a quick search for a pack of cigarettes. He knew that Mindy smoked. Hell, who didn't? He felt a pang of guilt for only coming in here to look for cigarettes, but his craving
for a smoke was greater than the guilt. Good old nicotine. The kitchen stood neat and tidy except for a bottle of whiskey his deputy must have gotten into, but no sign of cigarettes.

He glanced over at the living room and spotted an ashtray and a carton of Salems on a TV tray beside the recliner. Lester avoided looking directly down at Mindy as he walked over and pulled a pack out of the carton. He smacked the pack against his palm a few times and tore off the foil. Lit up and took a deep draw.

Lester didn't particularly care for menthol, but this would have to do the trick. He was moving toward the front door when his eyes finally fell on Mindy's corpse. Her face and head weren't covered, just everything else from the neck down. He knelt to pull the blanket over her but stopped himself.

Funny. Didn't notice that before.

He inspected a few abrasions on the side of her cheek and neck. The skin looked red and irritated. Probably happened when she fell down. Maybe Danny dragged her across the carpet and it scuffed up her face.

Lester touched her cheek gently. Her skin cold now, and growing stiff.

I'm real sorry, little lady. You were a good kid.

As Lester pulled the blanket over her face, his eyes went to the robin figurine that was still lying beside Mindy's head. He knew immediately that it was Danny's handiwork. He had seen the boy playing with blocks of wood, whittling away outside the Wash 'N Dry, lost in his own little world. The boy had a knack for carving—that much was for sure.

Lester picked up the wooden bird and turned it over in his hands a few times. Specks of blood dotted the robin's feathers, staining them red on the orange belly of the bird. It was evidence that the
detectives would probably want to take a look at, but something about it troubled him a little. Why in the hell would Danny go through all the trouble of carving this figurine, hike all the way out here three miles in the freezing cold, then beat the poor girl to death? Just didn't make sense. Maybe Mindy didn't react so well to him showing up in the middle of the night unannounced. Rejection was a damn strong emotion, especially if the boy had held a torch for the girl for so many years. Maybe she was a bit too nice to him over the years, and that gave him false hope. Hope could be a double-edged sword. Once hope got turned away and crushed, it could make a person do things he wouldn't normally do.

A truck pulled up outside and killed its engine. He heard voices talking to each other, making their way toward the front door. Lester hoped that it was the coroner's office. He wanted to get the bodies out of here before anybody else showed up. He still couldn't figure out why in the hell Johnny showed up. Maybe Mindy had phoned him before making a call to the deputy.

He couldn't give it much more thought, because the front door swung open and Taggart stepped inside with Sokowski and Carl in tow. Lester did a double take at Carl's face—his lip was busted open, and his cheek had swollen up to the size of a peach.

“Christ. What in the hell, Carl?” Lester managed.

Carl didn't answer. Just looked down at the floor, wide-eyed. He and Sokowski were both staring down at Johnny's Knolls's body.

“Let's take this outside,” Lester said, and motioned toward the door.

Sokowski and Carl remained frozen in their spots, trying to piece together exactly what they were seeing. Sokowski saw Johnny's rifle on the floor beside him and glanced over at Lester.

“Johnny showed up a bit ago. Madder than hell, and for good
reason. He had his gun drawn on me, and Officer Taggart here did what he had to do.”

Carl could only stare at Johnny's body while Sokowski gave Taggart a look. Taggart stood stone-faced but kept Sokowski's gaze.

Lester moved forward and finally managed to guide them out onto the porch. He shut the door behind them and sucked his cigarette down to the filter. He flicked it into the snow and went back to the business at hand.

“Tell me what happened here, Carl.”

“Danny is what happened. Fucker attacked him,” Sokowski responded instead.

“Hell. You okay, son?” Lester asked Carl, who kept his head down and nodded.

“Ain't the worst of it. He got out the back window of Doc Pete's and took off running. I knew we should have cuffed him. Christ.”

Lester felt Taggart's eyes on him. Judging him and their small-town ways.

“When exactly did this happen, Carl?” Lester asked.

Sokowski didn't give Carl a chance to answer. “Dunno. Probably thirty, forty minutes ago.”

Lester looked past them and up into the night sky. The snow was still coming down pretty good.

“You know what direction he was heading in?”

“Up toward Spring Hill, I think,” Carl muttered softly.

Lester looked down at his old Timex. It was a little after three in the morning.

“Well, we ain't gonna find him tonight. That much is for sure. Deputy, why don't you take Carl and go on home and try to get a few hours' sleep? We'll meet up at the office before six and go see if we can't track him down. He ain't gonna get far tonight.”

Taggart finally spoke up. “You really think that's such a good idea, Sheriff?”

Lester felt his stomach tighten up and his blood pressure soar. “Yeah, I do. It's hard terrain around this way. We ain't gonna find him in the dark, and I think we're better served having fresh legs.”

“I think we might be ‘better served' going after the suspect while we might still have a trail,” Taggart stated matter-of-factly. “Snow might be covering some of his tracks at the moment, but by morning there'll be no sign of them.”

Lester ignored Taggart's suggestion and instead nodded at Sokowski. “I'll see you in a few hours.”

Lester watched and waited for Sokowski and Carl to get into their truck and back out of the driveway before he turned to Taggart again. “Look, son, I appreciate your help in this situation, and I fully expect to cooperate with your office, but there are a few things in play here that I need to better inform you on.”

Taggart's expression remained unchanged.

“Danny Bedford has a bunch of limitations. He ain't very bright, and he doesn't spend much time in these woods. That much I do know. It's true that we don't see our share of homicides out here, but I think it's best if me and my deputy get our heads screwed on straight so that we can properly assist in the tracking of him. We know these woods better than anyone. A few hours ain't gonna hurt nothing.”

Taggart let out a small breath. “Fine. Have it your way, Sheriff. I just hope your boy doesn't hurt or kill anyone else before you find him.”

The strobe of emergency lights pricked through the dark countryside and wound their way toward the trailer. Another set of
emergency lights wasn't far behind the first vehicle. Lester and Taggart watched the ambulances as they got closer.

“Well. I suppose I should head over to Sarah Knolls's house and let her know what happened out here. She'll be wondering where the hell Johnny is, and I don't want her hearing the news from anyone else.”

“You do that, Sheriff. I'll handle the situation here.” Taggart walked to the end of the driveway and waited for the two approaching ambulances.

Lester found his new pack of menthol cigarettes and lit one up. He climbed into his truck and pulled away from the trailer, glad to put some distance between himself and it. In his rearview mirror, he watched Taggart greet the ambulance technicians as they hauled two gurneys from the back of their vehicles.

Lester returned his attention to the road and tried to figure out the best way to let Sarah Knolls know that both her husband and daughter were dead.

T
he first thing Sokowski did when they got back to his house was head straight to the liquor cabinet and haul out a half bottle of Wild Turkey. It was the same house that Sokowski grew up in, a big, two-story home with four bedrooms. The furniture remained unchanged, a worn sofa with the springs poking out of the fabric, chair cushions held together with duct tape, a kitchen table buried under boxes of cereal and stacks of unread newspapers, and a gun cabinet lined with various shotguns and rifles.

Carl watched Sokowski pour two drinks into dirty glasses and hand one to him. Carl accepted the glass but didn't feel much like drinking.

Sokowski drank his down with one swallow and poured another.

“You got any ice for my lip? It's throbbing like a bitch,” Carl asked.

Sokowski chuckled and pointed toward the freezer. He watched
as Carl took a few ice cubes from a tray and wrapped them in a paper towel.

“Shit. Danny whupped your ass pretty good, huh?” Sokowski laughed again.

Carl didn't say nothing back. He just held the ice cubes to his throbbing lip and cheek. He couldn't figure out how Sokowski could be so damn happy. Two people were dead because of them.

“Christ. Don't be such a fucking baby,” Sokowski said as he took another sip of his whiskey.

“Why didn't you just take me on home?”

Sokowski flashed a smile over his drink, but there was no humor in it. His eyes were dead and vacant-looking. “'Cuz we ain't done yet.”

Carl wasn't sure what that meant. His lips were getting numb, but he kept the ice right where it was.

Sokowski shook his head at Carl and jabbed a dirty fingernail toward him. “You and me ain't done, chief. Not by a long shot. We gotta track the fucker down.”

Carl sighed out loud. “Shit, Mike. I ain't a deputy. I'm done. I didn't even do nothing. Besides, you were the one that killed her.” It slipped out just like that.

Sokowski slammed his drink onto the kitchen table, walked up close to Carl, and glared down at him. The whiskey was strong on his breath, stinging Carl's eyes and making them water up. “Let's get one thing real straight here, asshole. We're in this thing together. From start to finish. And from what I remember, I didn't see you trying to stop anything.”

“Yeah, but I . . .” Carl didn't even bother to finish. He knew that Sokowski wasn't going to go down by himself. Carl was tied to him, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

“Look, this whole business is gonna go away once we track
Danny down. I plan on us finding him first, and when we do find him, he's gonna resist arrest, which means we'll have to put a fucking bullet in his thick head. Then this whole fucking thing ends right there. That's our only option. You got a problem with that?”

Carl looked down into his drink and decided to have a sip after all. In one motion he drank every drop of it, then held the empty glass out to Sokowski.

“Hell, fucking yeah.” Sokowski grinned as he took the glass and filled it back up, sloshing some over the top of it. “This shit is almost over, Carl. We'll be back to selling weed, getting high, and making money in no time.”

Carl sipped his whiskey and watched Sokowski for a minute. “Ain't you sorry none?”

Sokowski glanced at Carl. Thought about the question for a second. “Sure I'm sorry. I loved that bitch. I didn't show up at the trailer planning on killing her, but what's done is done.”

Carl kept staring at him, and Sokowski let his guard down a little more. “It was an accident. You heard her. She said a bunch of shit to provoke me. I got pissed, lost my cool, and it just happened. I ain't a killer, Carl.”

Carl knew that part of Sokowski actually believed it. He figured that kind of thinking would help Sokowski sleep at night. Carl, on the other hand, knew what Sokowski was. And somehow he had become the very same thing.

“I don't want to be the one to do it,” Carl muttered.

Sokowski lit a cigarette and gazed at Carl through the haze of gray smoke.

“Killing Danny. I ain't gonna be able to do it,” Carl continued.

Sokowski put his hand on Carl's shoulder and squeezed it a little too hard. “All right, Carl. I get it. You're a regular Mother Teresa.”
Sokowski pinched his fingers tighter into the flesh of Carl's shoulder, making him wince. “I'll take care of it.” He released Carl with a wink and the bare hint of a smile.

Carl rubbed at his shoulder and took a step back from Sokowski. “I should call my old lady. She's probably shitting bricks 'cuz I ain't home yet. Can I use your phone?”

“No. Fuck, no. You ain't doing nothing. You can call her after we finish what we started. Now, drink up.” Sokowski didn't wait for Carl to drink with him. He slurped down some more whiskey, then went to the refrigerator and looked for something to eat.

S
arah Knolls slumped on the couch, dressed in a shabby nightgown worn thin from years of use. Her long and graying hair was pinned tight to her skull with a handful of bobby pins. Liver spots dotted her scalp like a leopard's skin. Only sixty-eight years old, but she looked and felt seventy-eight. She clutched a Kleenex in her hand and stared at the front door. Her expression was dull and flat, and she didn't seem to notice the cold that hung over the quiet house like plastic tarp.

She heard Lester's truck pull out of the driveway and was glad to have him finally gone. He had asked her if she wanted him to stay for a while. Asked her if she wanted him to take her over to Scott or Skeeter's house. Asked her if she wanted a drink. Asked her about a bunch of stuff that she didn't want or care about. She shook her head to all of that. She wanted him to leave. To get out of her house and leave her alone.

Right before he stepped outside, Lester had asked her if she was going to be okay. She thought she nodded yes, but what kind of question was that? Her daughter and husband were murdered in cold blood. Dead. It just didn't seem real. She wished that this were all a horrible nightmare, but it wasn't. It was really happening.

How am I gonna go on? How?

She bit at her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

Why would God let this happen to my baby? What did she do to deserve this?

The house had never felt so quiet. The furnace was set to sixty, and the dogs were still sleeping upstairs, so only the occasional creak of the house settling interrupted the absence of noise. After all the kids had moved out, she complained to Johnny that it was too quiet. No quarreling. No tattling on one another. No whining about homework or chores. None of the squawking she thought she would never miss until it was gone.

When Johnny was at work, the whole house sank into a horrible silence except for the sound of the wind and the ticking of clocks. Sarah didn't know what to do with herself. Didn't know what to do with all her free time. Johnny wasn't so good about expressing his feelings or comforting her when she was feeling out of sorts. He told her not to get so worked up—all their kids still lived in town. Then he told her that maybe she would be able to keep the house a little cleaner with all her spare time. Son of a bitch only cared about himself. The love had slipped out of their marriage some thirty years ago.

Sarah felt numb. She didn't remember everything Lester had told her. She was fast asleep when he'd banged on the door. The dogs yapped a few times before burrowing back under the covers and dozing off again—guard dogs they were not. She figured Johnny was drunk again, couldn't find his house key, and was pissed off
about something. The nights of him coming home drunk and horny and wanting to crawl on top of her were long gone. Now he was always breaking something or punching walls or swearing to himself when he got all liquored up. He had hit her a few times when they were first married, so she was careful to stay clear of him when he was in a mood.

She knew Danny Bedford. Everybody in town knew everybody. Sarah always felt sorry for the boy. Big and dumb and all on his own. First his parents had their accident, then his uncle passed young. No loss with Brett, though. Johnny used to drink with Brett and bring him into the house from time to time after working second shift over at Taylor Beef. When Johnny would get up to fetch a few more beers, Brett would sit on her couch with his dirty boots kicked up on the coffee table, staring at her with those eyes. Eyes crawling all over her backside, and she could tell what he was thinking. She didn't like to be in the room alone with him if she could help it. And she noticed the bruises on Danny's arms when she saw him around town. When she went to Johnny about what she suspected with Danny, he told her to keep her big nose out of Brett's business.

Got to be hard enough raising that retard. No harm in using the belt when the occasion calls.

So it had made Sarah feel good that Mindy was so nice to Danny when everyone else laughed and picked on him. Even her boys, Scott and Skeeter, taunted him awful in school back in the day.

The urge to get up and off the couch hit her, but when she tried to stand, her knees buckled and gave out and she flopped back onto the cushions. Her little girl was gone? Just like that she was no more. Mindy hadn't even given her any grandbabies yet.

Mindy had wanted to leave Wyalusing right after high school. She was young and wanted to spread her wings and explore the
world, but Sarah encouraged her to stay put. She told Mindy that there would be plenty of time to go out on her own. She convinced Mindy that she belonged here with her family. Sarah knew that was selfish. She just didn't want her daughter to leave. Didn't want Mindy to leave her here all alone with Johnny since the boys were married and leading their own lives.

Oh, God, this is all my fault. I made her stay, and look what happened to h
er.

She held back her tears. Not yet.

Lester didn't want to say who had done it, but she wouldn't let him leave until she knew the truth. When he finally told her, she informed Lester that she wanted to see Danny. She wanted to ask him why. Why would he do that to her poor Mindy? How could he have murdered her baby? Lester wasn't able to keep her eye when he said that Danny had run up into the woods around Spring Hill, but he promised her that they would catch him after sunrise and lock him up.

“We'll find him, Sarah. You've got my word on that. We'll get him and lock him up so he can't hurt anyone again,” Lester had promised. Sarah heard herself laugh at him.

“That gonna bring Mindy back?” she had asked.

Johnny was dead because he was drunk and stupid. Sarah knew that he probably would have shot Lester if the state trooper hadn't shown up and killed him. She wasn't so sad about Johnny. Not really. She hadn't loved him in a long time. In fact, she had grown to hate the man. He hadn't used his hands on her in the last few years, but he didn't hold back on using his words on her. They were mean words—hateful, ugly words. She would have left him twenty years ago—after the kids were all gone—if she thought she could live on her own. As drunk as he always was, he still collected a paycheck.
He paid the bills and put food on the table. She didn't know a thing about working a job and taking care of finances.

She felt herself stand up on legs that were cooperating now and snatch the car keys from the hook by the door. Some part of her brain was telling her body what to do, and that was fine by her. She went outside without grabbing a jacket. It was cold and snowing, but she didn't care.

Oh, God, my baby girl is dead.

She got into the station wagon and felt the cold vinyl seats through her paper-thin nightgown. There was a layer of ice and snow on the windshield, but she didn't have it in her to scrape it off. The engine turned over after a few tries, and she pulled out of the driveway. She clicked on the windshield wipers, and they slowly pushed off the top layer of snow, but the ice stuck fast no matter how many times the wipers ran over it. Heck with it—she would drive anyway.

As she pulled the car out onto the road, she felt like she had tunnel vision. Like she was staring through a telescope. Dark on both sides of her. Through patches of ice on the windshield, all she could see was the road directly in front of the station wagon. Her hands clutched at the steering wheel, and her body began to tremble, but not from the cold—shock was creeping its way in. Closing her throat and making it dry as paper. Her tongue clicked on the roof of her mouth, and she had a hard time swallowing. The darkness on both sides of her narrowed even tighter—the road just a speck of light before her—but she needed to keep going before she completely shut down.

Please, Jesus, let them be on time . . . just let them be there.

Her mind felt foggy, as if she was dreaming or ready to pass out. She cranked open the window and let the bitter cold whip against
her face. Her feet felt so cold. She looked down and noticed that she wasn't wearing slippers or socks. She could feel the rubber pad of the gas pedal against her bare skin.

She drove through town, never stopping or slowing at stop signs. If there were other cars out this early, she didn't see any.

She passed the feed shop and turned right at the bottom of the hill. Her bare foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, and the station wagon started to slide on a patch of ice and drift toward the ditch, but she didn't slow down any. Her reactions were sluggish. She didn't jerk the wheel or let up on the gas. She let the car slide—she didn't care if she ended up in the ditch. If she crashed and was slung through the windshield and died, that would be fine by her. She could be with Mindy again. That thought made the lump in her throat get that much bigger. The car fishtailed two or three more times before it finally straightened out and she managed to stay in the middle of the road.

She saw the sign up ahead for Reliable Auto Repair. The boys had painted the sign themselves. Instead of slowing, she gunned the car faster. It took the dip into the parking lot and skidded to a halt in front of the glass office door. Just a few more inches and she would have run the car right through the panel of glass. She put the station wagon into park and sat there. She wasn't sure for how long. Her body shook, rattling the dentures in her mouth, and she couldn't feel her numb feet and toes, which felt like they were a mile away from the rest of her.

Sarah gazed down at her hands and saw that she was still clutching the piece of tissue. A dot of liquid dropped onto the lap of her nightgown. Then another. A warm trickle of tears flowed from her eyes and rolled off her tired cheeks. She shoved her knuckles into her mouth and bit down hard enough to give her body a jerk.

Just hold it together for a few more minutes. Just keep it together.

She didn't hear them turn in to the lot. Scott's red pickup truck pulled up beside her, and he beeped the horn. Skeeter sat in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette. She looked over and saw them exchange a look and say something to each other.

Sarah fumbled for the handle and tried to open the station wagon's door, but it wouldn't budge. She put her shoulder against the door panel and gave it a shove—the damn thing still didn't give. She slammed harder and harder, feeling trapped and panicked. Then she noticed that the lock was down. She yanked it up, shoved once again, and the door swung open easily. Sarah toppled out of the car and landed on her hands and knees in a few inches of frozen slush on the parking lot pavement. When the boys climbed out of the truck, she began to cry—loud, gut-wrenching sobs.

Sarah tried to stand but slipped onto her back in a frozen puddle of water. She didn't try to get up again. She just lay in the icy water feeling the cold soak through her nightgown as her two sons swooped down on her, grabbed her by the arms, and tried to get her back on her feet.