The Snow Falcon (10 page)

“SHIT,” ELLIS MUTTERED. He raised the rifle again for another shot, but it was too late. The falcon fled beyond his line of sight.

He dropped the barrel to see what the hell had happened, and somebody was up there, across the slope. Whoever it was looked straight at him, then turned and started walking away. For a second, just an instant, it flashed in Ellis’s mind that he could pick him off as easy as swatting a mosquito. Then the impulse passed, and he loosened the tight grip he had on his rifle and rose to his feet.

He shook his head in disbelief. He was jinxed, he had to be.

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FROM HER BEDROOM WINDOW, SUSAN SAW A beam of white light flash through the trees, then swing around as Coop’s car came down the access road. She heard the dry crunch of tires on the snow as he came to a stop outside the house. Fixing an earring, she stood back to examine her reflection in the full-length mirror. She was wearing jeans and a loose woolen jersey that came to midthigh; her hair, shining coppery hues, fell over her shoulders.

“Will I pass?” she murmured to herself.

As she always did these days when getting ready to go out, she’d dressed down. She hesitated, wondering if for once she should wear something different, but it was just Coop taking her into town.

She turned out the light and went down the stairs, reaching the door before he knocked. He stood in the porch light, filling the space with his size. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his hair close-cropped, his skin weathered.

“What have you got there?” she asked, indicating the package he carried in one hand.

He held it up. “It’s something for Jamie. It’s just a fishing reel. I thought the one he has is getting kind of old.”

“Coop, you didn’t need to do that.” She stood aside to let him in.

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

“Let me have your coat. You can take that in to Jamie while I fetch you a beer; he’s watching TV with Wendy.”

She went through to the kitchen and popped the cap on a beer; she usually kept some in the house for when Coop stopped by. She

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lingered for a minute. The kitchen was her favorite room, the heart of the house. Half the room was occupied by the huge pine table where she and Jamie ate their meals and where sometimes at night she sat to work or read. The room had large windows that looked out toward the mountains and let the natural light flood its open spaces, bouncing off the stainless-steel refrigerator and the row of copper pans that hung above the range.

Through the glass doors that led into the TV room she watched Coop show Jamie the reel. Unaware that she was watching, Jamie remained impassive. He and Coop stood apart from each other, striking an unnatural tableau. Jamie should have been crowding close, eagerly, wanting to hold it and work the ratchet the way boys do. Instead, when Coop held it out to him, he hesitated before accepting it, then without even looking sat on the floor and turned back toward the TV, the reel beside him. If Coop noticed his lack of enthusiasm, he gave no sign of it.

She took his beer through, carrying her own glass of wine. “Hey, that looks great,” she said, trying to make up for Jamie’s poor grace with her own enthusiasm. “What do you think, Jamie? I bet you can’t wait to try it out.”

She knew she sounded forced. Coop took his beer and pretended not to notice.

“It’s no big deal,” he said easily.

“Did you thank Coop, Jamie?”

Jamie looked at her, then to Coop, and kind of nodded, which was a gesture he could make convey as much or as little as he chose. That this was a token response was obvious. She felt a flash of anger with him and sympathy for Coop, who was trying not to let on that his feelings were hurt. He watched a commercial on the TV with patently false fascination.

Hank and Sarah Douglas’s oldest girl, Wendy, sat on a chair with her legs curled up underneath her. “Where are you guys going tonight?” she asked in the awkward silence.

Susan seized the opportunity gratefully. “Just the hotel, aren’t we, Coop?”

He nodded his agreement. “How’s your dad, Wendy?”

“He’s okay.”

“Everything okay at school?”

Wendy pulled a face. “I guess.”

Susan was eager to get away. “Come on, Coop, let’s finish our drinks in the kitchen and leave these two to the TV,” she said.

She could never relax in the company of both Coop and her son. The tension was too much for her. She bent to kiss Jamie’s cheek and he barely acknowledged her.

In the kitchen she apologized, even though she knew Coop understood how things were with Jamie. “You know he doesn’t mean it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I think I’m too soft with him. I ought to send him to his room for what he just did,” she said.

“He just misses his dad,” Coop said simply.

She looked through the door at her son. “Yes, I know.”

In the quiet moment that followed, their eyes collided.

“You look great, Susan,” Coop said.

She smiled and reached out to touch his arm. “That’s sweet,” she told him. Then, turning quickly away and putting her glass in the sink, she saw Coop’s frown reflected in the window.

THE BAR OF the Valley Hotel was busy even for a Saturday night. George Jones scanned the restaurant reservation list with a creased brow.

“Looks like you might have to wait for a little while,” he said apologetically.

“We don’t mind waiting,” Coop said.

“Maybe fifteen minutes?”

“That’s fine.”

They left George going over his table plan and walked to the bar. Coop nodded to people as they went. Everybody in town knew Coop. He’d been a cop there since he’d joined up straight out of college, and after Dan Redgrave had retired, a few years back, he’d been promoted to sergeant in charge of the station house in town. As far as his career went, that was the end of the line unless he chose to leave Little River, but Susan couldn’t ever see him doing that. Sometimes she envied him for a certain air he had about him. She’d puzzled over it for a while, trying to find the right term to describe it. It wasn’t contentment, exactly, but it had to do with the fact that he was comfortable with his place in the world, and a feeling that the respect people paid him was no more than his due. At times it

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annoyed her, too, that he could be so self-possessed when she herself didn’t know what she wanted.

“You know we’re going to be taking somebody’s table, don’t you?” she said when their drinks arrived. Coop looked at her as if he didn’t understand. “Come on. You know George is going to bump somebody back to make room for us.”

Coop smiled at her. “He’ll work it out, Susan.”

She could see he hadn’t given it any thought, nor would he. It was George’s problem. It didn’t occur to him that somebody who’d booked might have to wait longer for their meal because of them. It was just a tiny little thing, and she didn’t know why it should concern her. He was as honest as anybody could be without being a saint, and in every important way imaginable he upheld the law just as it was written down. So what if he bent the rules a little? He didn’t do it for himself, though undoubtedly he did benefit in small ways. The Valley Hotel, for example, sometimes stayed open beyond the hours permitted by George’s license, a fact that Coop overlooked and which coincidentally meant he never had to wait long for a table even when the hotel restaurant was busy.

Then there was Tommy Lee, who she knew occasionally dropped off half a deer at Coop’s door and who she also knew sometimes carried loads over the limit in his truck when he was hauling around the back roads. She doubted he ever got a ticket. Once she’d asked Coop about it, and though he’d looked a little puzzled by the question, he’d explained his reason. He’d said that Tommy struggled to keep his truck on the road, what with all the competition from the big out-of-town companies, and sometimes he had to cut a few corners. What good was it going to do if Coop just made things harder for Tommy than they already were? She’d seen his point, but all the same, she wondered if Coop ever questioned whether he was setting himself up as judge and jury, as if Little River were his own little state and he the benevolent dictator. She’d never asked him because she knew it was an exaggeration, but she thought if she had asked, he would have been astounded.

While they were waiting, Craig Saunders, who ran the Texaco station on the east side of town, came over with his wife, Julie. Craig and Coop were friends from way back in their school days, and when Susan had first moved to Little River with David, the Saunderses were among the first people she’d gotten to know. The three guys

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had sometimes gone fishing together, and Julie would come over with her three kids and they would spend the afternoon getting food ready for a barbecue. It had all felt a little strange to Susan, the whole notion of the little women taking care of the domestic stuff while the men went off together and had a good time. It hadn’t really been like that with her and David, though; he’d never been the kind of guy to expect her to fill that role. With Craig and Julie, however, she thought it wasn’t far off the mark.

“How’s Jamie?” Julie asked her when the men’s talk had turned to hockey.

“He’s fine.”

“I saw you guys the other day when he got off the bus. I waved, but I guess you didn’t see me. You know, he looks more and more like his dad when David was younger.” She put a hand on Susan’s arm. “It’s such a shame. It must be hard for you, coping the way you do.”

“It’s not so hard, Julie. We get along just fine,” Susan replied. She hated the way some people patronized her, as if living alone was such a remarkable feat. Even more, she hated the tone certain people took when they were speaking about Jamie, they way they oozed pity.

“How’s he doing at school?” Julie said.

“He’s doing good. His grades are fine.”

“I guess you must be worried about what’ll happen when he goes to high school,” Julie said as if she hadn’t heard.

“Worried?”

“Well, I can imagine what it must be like for you. God knows, I worry about my three enough, and there’s nothing…” Julie’s voice trailed off and for a second she looked stricken; then she smiled brightly and added, “I guess there’re tutors maybe.”

Susan clenched her glass; the smile she was wearing froze. Silently she counted to five and told herself not to react. What had Julie been about to say? That there was nothing wrong with her kids. Unlike Jamie.

“Jamie doesn’t speak, but it hasn’t affected his mental abilities,” Susan said.

Julie reddened. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean that.” Her hand went automatically to Susan’s arm again and rested there for a second before she let it drop away. “Don’t take any notice of me. I always say the wrong thing. I just meant that it must be harder for Jamie to keep

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up. I mean, it has to be if he can’t ask questions and the like, doesn’t it?” She fell silent and looked at her drink. “I didn’t mean anything,” she said again.

They were both relieved when the topic of conversation between Coop and Craig moved away from hockey. Craig started talking about his business, complaining about how it was getting harder these days to make a decent living, the way he was apt to if given a chance. Susan listened to him detailing how tough things were; he was a perpetually dissatisfied man, and she felt a moment of sympathy for Julie, who had adopted a bored but dutiful expression. She knew that Julie hadn’t really meant any harm, and she wished she hadn’t been quite so short with her. Craig droned on and Coop glanced toward her. There was an amused tightening around the corners of his eyes because he knew what she was thinking, and she hid her smile and looked down at her drink.

“I heard that Somers guy moved into his parents’ old place,” Craig said after he’d exhausted the topic of his business. “That’s the old place along the road from your house, Susan,” he added. “I guess you must be worried having a guy like that living next door.”

“Why should I be worried?” she said, taking a tone that set her opposite his way of thinking just for the hell of it. She swallowed a twinge of guilt, recalling the way she’d acted toward Michael Somers the other day.

Julie said, “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about him, Susan?” She looked at Coop and reprimanded him. “I thought you would have at least warned her, Coop.”

“I’ve heard people talking,” Susan said, annoyed at the implication that she needed Coop to look out for her in some way. “I just don’t listen to that kind of thing.”

She’d snapped more than she’d meant to, and she saw from Julie’s expression that the other woman was offended.

“I was only thinking of you,” Julie said in a hurt tone.

There was a moment of awkwardness, then Susan relented. “I’m sorry. I just meant that I don’t like listening to stories about people third-hand. You know how things get exaggerated.”

“But there isn’t anything exaggerated about this,” Julie said, quick to justify herself. “Craig knows him, and Coop, too. They went to school with him.”

“Yeah,” Craig agreed. “He was always a little strange, that guy.”

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“He went crazy,” Julie said. “He tried to kill his wife and baby girl and he shot some guy who was trying to get them away or something. I remember when it happened. It was over in the east somewhere—Toronto, I think. Michael Somers moved away after he went to college. His mother killed herself, at least that’s the story, but she always was strange. I guess that’s where he gets it from.”

There was a note to Julie’s tone that Susan found distasteful. She hated the way people took pleasure in regurgitating other people’s misfortune, as if their own lives were lacking something and they needed to feel someone else was worse off in some way. She glanced at her watch, wishing George would come and tell them their table was ready.