Cover of Snow (14 page)

Everything was still chaos when I arrived—having driven too fast along snow-strewn roads—but the fire appeared to be pretty much over. Black plumes of smoke gusted out of the shattered first-floor windows of Ned's house, like the breath of some hellish beast, and long strips of clapboard had peeled away, exposing the core. The fire seemed to have been contained down there; the second and third stories appeared to be untouched.

Two neon yellow fire trucks stood close to the house, with firefighters walking around, checking for hot spots. A generator was running, plus the Hotshot, used for thawing outdoor pipes. In wintertime, lack of ready water was the number one reason for a fire blazing out of control.

I braked to a halt at the end of the long drive. Tim and Gilbert had followed me from the station; they joined Vern and Dave in a ragged cluster of gray-clad bodies.

There was also a runner, dressed head to toe in a second, blue skin, and jogging in place.

Where was Ned? At work? Did he know what had happened?

A single, hard thump sounded against my window. I jumped, turning toward it. Club's thick fist still lingered on the glass. I started to pull at the door handle, and he stepped back, asking before the door was even fully open, “What are you doing here?”

I raised my head. “I'm working on this house.” It was almost true. About to be true.

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? You've been here recently?”

This perhaps inevitable reaction hadn't occurred to me. I nodded.

“Step over here then,” Club said, all cop now, not a friend, even though I noticed he wasn't in uniform. “Let's have a word.”

I stood patiently for his questions: the last time I had been here, what I had done, whether I'd seen anything. I volunteered that the only appliance we had touched was the microwave, then asked, “Does Ned know what happened?”

Club frowned. “
We
don't know what happened,” he replied.

At that moment Weekend bounded up, frolicking about his master, poking his moist snout into my palm. I rubbed him absently. “You brought your dog?”

Club shrugged large shoulders. “I wasn't on duty. We were on our way back from an outing when the call came in.” In a moment of solicitousness, he explained, “Week likes to listen to the police channel in the car.” Then he pointed somewhere off in the white, smoky distance, and I spotted his civilian car, a Jimmy. The dog gave a bark of assent, and Club lowered a hand to quiet him.

I glanced toward the house again. It was smoking as it cooled, and the sight brought about an almost physical pain. The house was like someone recently admitted to the hospital, once hulking and imposing, but now laid low, vulnerable. Another board fell away, offering a glimpse to the house's maimed insides.

Dave Weathers walked up. He extended the hand that had been depressing a button on his radio, letting forth a blurp of static before he could fumble it silent. His face stained red, and he looked like he didn't know what to do with the offending hand.

I took it.

“Hi, Mrs. H.,” he said in a friendly tone.

“You get a statement from that jogger?” Club asked. There was derision in his tone, but I couldn't tell if it was meant for the runner or Dave.

Dave jutted his chin up and down.

“Let him go then,” Club commanded, and Dave began to back away, still nodding.

Weekend had abandoned Club and come to sit by me, upright on his haunches, silky ears perked. Drenched stalks of grass that had been washed clean of snow were already beginning to ice over. The firefighters were rolling up flat lengths of hoses, shouting instructions, stepping back from the drifts that billowed up when the hose nozzles hit them. Someone was nailing sheets of plywood over gaping holes in the exterior.

Club was watching his dog. “Can you look after him for me? For a few hours?”

“You want me to take Weekend?” I responded, becoming aware of something then. Weekend was close enough for me to feel his heaving flank, but even though I hadn't yet cracked open my new medicine, I hadn't sneezed once. I wiggled my nose, testing it while breathing in the smell of damp dog, but didn't feel so much as a single sniffle.

“Can't stay off duty now,” Club said, while one gloved hand checked that his gun was in place. “There'll be things to do.”

And then Club's eyes narrowed and he folded his arms across his chest. He was so well-built that muscles could be seen through the thick coat of his uniform.

I turned in the direction he was staring. Ned Kramer had just driven up.

Ned got out of his car and crossed the broken plains of snow. “What the hell is going on?”

Club stepped forward and I backed away with Weekend, listening to Club's low rumbling explanation, and Ned's louder rejoinder.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “Go see for yourself, if there's anything left to see. I'm hardly living in this place. I don't even have a fucking stove.” My heart squeezed at the raw pain in his voice. He scrubbed a hand across his face.

The Chief had arrived at Club's side. “Mr. Kramer, I wish I could say your situation was unusual,” he said. “But we see this from time to time. Folks move up, occupy these big old houses, wired back in a different age. A circuit gets overloaded, and
boom,
before you know it you got …” The Chief extended an arm toward the smoldering house.

Ned was staring at him. “I just said I'm not even using the stove.”

The Chief looked back levelly. “Craig McAllister, the fire chief, wants to talk to you, sir. I'm afraid me and the boys got work to do at the station.”

I hadn't known if Ned realized I was there, but as he turned and went in search of the fire chief, he paused. “Hold on for a bit, Nora, will you?”

I flinched at the brokenness in his tone.

“Take good care of my dog,” Club said, as he headed toward his Jimmy.

The other cops were dispersing as well.

Vern rolled down his window as he got into his car. “You get out of here now, honey. There'll be other houses for you to decorate. This place is unsafe in a dozen different ways.”

I promised, and Vern gave a single wave of his hand, his face creased with worry as he drove off.

I struggled to lead Weekend away by his leash. Club had said he should visit a tree before we left. A shallow perimeter of field, now snow-veiled, had been mowed around Ned's house. Once it ended, thick woods encroached upon the land. We entered them, Weekend eager for his break, sniffing one tree trunk after another.

His hind and forelegs were soon buried. The snow in the woods was deep. Weekend was still looking for a tree that pleased him when he let out a loud bark. I looked up to see Ned stomping through the snow after us. We had come quite a ways.

“I'm so sorry,” I said, as Ned neared. Weekend seemed to have abandoned his search for the perfect tree, twining himself between my knees.

“I didn't have this in me,” Ned replied, his voice low, and rough with something like anger. “I didn't have this in me to lose.”

“I understand,” I said softly, “when a house is hurt. I think I feel the injuries myself.”

Ned accepted that with a nod.

Weekend was starting to move a bit agitatedly, and I bent down. “Go on, boy. It's okay.” He turned liquid eyes on me—you could've sworn he was making sure—before trotting off.

“You haven't lost it, you know,” I went on. “I think the structure is all right. And it's not like it didn't need some pretty major attention before this.”

“There were hard copies,” Ned said after a moment. “That burned. Nothing I don't have backup for. But still—my office suffered the worst damage.”

Vern's words returned on a gust of wind, overloaded circuits, houses not upgraded for their new purposes. I considered the flammability of paper. Could this have been Ned's fault after all? In some ways, the untended nature of the house made it more vulnerable. There must've been whole rooms he never even entered. But not his office.

Ned was looking off into the distance. I heard some faraway banging. There came the heaving sound of fire truck engines departing, and a car engine gunned as well.

“What did the fire chief say?” I asked.

“A lot of stuff while saying nothing at all. You know? How it is when there's nothing to say?”

I couldn't stop tears from welling up. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Ned was starting to turn. “I'd better go check if my old cabin is rented this week.”

“Look,” I called, hearing my voice pitch and yaw. I didn't want Ned to leave like this. It didn't matter who was to blame, if anyone even was. “I can match the remaining clapboards. We could do a real painted-lady exterior.”

Ned paused while mounting a drift of snow.

“I'll make some calls,” I shouted. “Disaster repair first, there must be a lot of water and smoke in there. And someone to come seal things up better.”

“Yeah?” He was still clambering upward, but at least he was calling over his shoulder, engaged in our exchange. “You really think this could still turn out okay?”

“Better than okay!” I shouted, beginning to laugh as Ned skidded down the embankment, one hand raised, giving a thumbs-up, as the rest of him disappeared.

I opened my sack and jotted a few notes, people to call, materials to order. I was getting back to work, for real, and I thought Brendan would be glad.

Then I huffed on my hands, drawing my thick gloves back on. I had gotten cold suddenly; the warmth of the trek out here had worn off. I looked around for Weekend. I could see soft mounds of snow he must have kicked up, but no sign of the dog.

“Weekend?” I called. “Week?”

The dog's coat was pure ebony; he should've been easy to spot. But I didn't see him anywhere in the winter woods. I started to walk, scouting for paw prints in the deep drifts. When I found some, I followed their trail.

The tracks ended abruptly at the perimeter of trees that formed a moat around Ned's house. I stopped, using one hand to shield my eyes against the few flakes that flew, and squinted at the scene, which had cleared out. All was still, cold, and blankly white.

I looked about for Ned but he had beaten me out here and taken off. Probably couldn't bear to remain for one minute longer than necessary near his house.

“Weekend! Come here, boy!” I shouted, wondering if the tremor in my voice would scare him off, or summon him. If he was here to be summoned. Had Club taken his dog after all? And then I heard a whine. It came from the direction of Ned's house.

The house was steaming in places, with a few tendrils of smoke curling up. I took another look around, hunting for a last, straggling fireman to ask if it was safe to approach. But no one was left.

And still that high whine persisted, almost a yipping.

The house didn't look in danger of collapsing; the fire's reach hadn't extended to the support beams or outer walls. And it didn't matter anyway.

I set off at a run, boots clumsy in the snow, sending up clods. Relative to the frigid air, you could still feel heat coming off the house, and everything was a sodden mess, shrubbery trampled, dirt that wouldn't normally have been exposed for another three months turned to mud.

“Weekend?” I called, tramping through the muck and debris.

A floor-to-ceiling window had either blown out or been shattered to gain access; someone with a more astute eye than mine could probably have said which. A sheet of plywood had been hastily nailed up in place of the glass, and as I neared it the whining grew louder.

“Weekend!” I shouted. Still he didn't bark, which somehow frightened me most of all.

I started to attack the nails. Gloves made my hands less precise, but at least their padding was able to withstand the slit of the nail heads. The nails hadn't been that well secured; I was able to tug them out without a claw. Once I had freed all but the lowermost ones, I tore off the sheet of plywood, and left it dangling.

An overwhelming smell of smoke and char assailed me. I had to reel away, momentarily dizzy, scrubbing at my eyes. The second my vision cleared, I peered into the house.

Weekend crouched as close to the outer wall as he could get, a length of rope drawn taut between his collar and a heavy table that had partially burned. He had been able to drag the table some ways, as evidenced by marks on a ruined rug, but had apparently reached the limits of his endurance, or else given up.

The dog was terrified. He was trembling, fur rippling as his body quaked. When he saw me, he immediately ceased whining, gazing up with dark, confused eyes.

“Oh, Weekend,” I murmured. “Oh, you poor thing. Who did this to you?” I continued clucking words of reproach meant for someone else, which seemed to soothe him, as I stripped off my gloves and picked at the knot in the rope that bound his neck.

And then I saw a note tucked under the cruel collar.

The scrap of paper held three words:
Stop asking questions.

Weekend stared silently as I extricated the piece of paper. It was evidence, wasn't it? I could show it to someone. But who? The police? And evidence of what?

Weekend's chest was quivering beneath my fingers. I hadn't realized I was stroking it.

“I'm sorry, boy,” I murmured, getting back to work.

My hand stung with the cold. The plywood had been a slap job, but this rope had been well knotted.

When he was finally loosed, I led Weekend through the frame of the window, shielding him from its jagged glass teeth. His flanks were heaving in uneven bursts, but he didn't lope away from the site of his imprisonment. Something in him had changed. He huddled by my side, and I couldn't tell if he was offering me protection from some unnamed threat, or still too scared to make a move.

I thumbed buttons on my cell as I drove home, Weekend silent in the backseat. I had to send a crew out to Ned's house immediately now that I had opened that makeshift barrier. I hadn't spent a moment fiddling with it once I'd freed Weekend—I didn't even stand the plywood back up. I had simply gotten the two of us away from there.

Turning the car into my snow-slicked drive, I parked and got out. Then I opened Weekend's door. The dog moved in his new, hesitant manner, setting his front paws on the ground, before easing the rest of his body out and trailing behind me slowly.

I had just begun to twist the knob on the front door when a low, deep rumble started in Weekend's throat. I wasn't sure if it was the aftereffects of his entrapment, or something else.

I placed my hand on his neck to calm him. “It's okay,” I murmured. “You're okay now.”

The dog's black lips rolled backwards, exposing a fierce V of teeth. I could feel the vibration of his growls against my palm. I let go, and Weekend scooted back a little, but didn't leave my side. “Week?” I said. “What's wrong?”

I must've loosened the latch just enough that when the wind gusted, the front entry swung open. Weekend's snarl split into a volley of barking, so alarming that I yanked the door shut and began to back away, down the porch steps. “What is it, boy?” I whispered. He was sliding after me, claws scrabbling on the snowy steps. “Is there someone in the house?”

I saw a shape appear behind the curtain at one of the windows.

Teggie and Gabriel—they'd come back—was the thought in my head. No one else had the right to enter my house without my permission. Not even Club, returned early for his dog.

But that shape didn't belong to my sister or her boyfriend—or to Club, for that matter. It was shorter, and tousle-topped. I looked again, and my shoulders slumped in relief. I should've known; I'd had cause to consider this possibility earlier today.

Weekend was huddled close to me on a hump of snow, and I reached down and patted him. “It's all right, boy. That's Dugger Mackenzie. It's just Dugger.”

“You scared us,” I said, when both the dog and I were safely ensconced inside.

“Sorry, Missus,” Dugger said calmly. Then his face split into a grin. “That's Club's, right? Club's pet?”

I nodded. “Club's working, so I'm watching Weekend.”

Dugger's face changed. “Something happened.” I was wondering how—or what—to tell him when he said, “Cloak, smoke, poke,” and I realized how Weekend and I must look, and smell, how badly we both needed baths.

“There was a fire,” I said, and Dugger's glance slid away.

“Did you get my present, Missus?”

Weekend gave a shuddering shake, and Dugger looked at him.

“Yes,” I said, suppressing my own shiver. “I did.”

“Dog needs water,” Dugger said. “Food, too.”

I glanced up.

“He had himself a fright.”

“He was scared when you were in the house—”

“No,” Dugger broke in. “Worse than that.”

As my eyes narrowed—how did Dugger know these things?—he went on, “You want to get him back to normal quick. Quick, lick—”

“Okay,” I broke in. The advice made sense. But I wasn't sure how to follow it. I didn't have any dog food, and the grocer in town was about to close up for the night.

Dugger ducked away behind me, a sudden, graceful move, occupying a space I wouldn't have thought big enough to hold anyone. Then I heard the suck of the refrigerator door. Dugger returned with a package of hamburger my mother must've supplied. Not the freshest, then, but the first barks I'd heard in hours began as Dugger tore away the cellophane, and placed the pound of meat on the floor.

“Okay?” he asked me. The dog had lowered his snout, and was ripping pink coils apart. I nodded, and Dugger went on. “Now we can go and listen?”

Something inside me winced at the idea of being upstairs alone with Dugger. I felt shame for my reaction, then dumb for being ashamed. I hardly knew this person. And one thing I did know was that his brain didn't work in the usual way. But I also feared saying no. Dugger had never been anything but kind to me. But if I made him angry—or even if he simply got upset again and had none of that medication along with him—then things might truly go bad.

Weekend was here, I reasoned. He'd shown the ability to watch out for me. If anything went wrong, the dog would be upstairs in a flash, fangs bared.

I added a bowl of water to his meal—still far from a dog owner, but figuring things out—then led the way to Brendan's study.

The computer was still booted, with Dugger's device attached. He slid into Brendan's chair and brought up the long list of files.

“Which ones did you hear?” he asked, with a white flash of teeth.

“Um …” The sound came out tonelessly to my ears. “This one.” I pointed, so as not to touch Dugger's hand on the mouse. “And this—this—all of those.” I traced a row of file names with my finger, deliberately failing to indicate the one called
Barn
—I didn't want to reference that—but too late I realized it would've been better to say I had already heard it.

Dugger began playing it without a trace of hesitation or embarrassment. I closed my eyes as the now familiar sounds started—the thumps, that crash, the rhythmic huffing—cringing while I waited for the recording's final, universal noise of fulfillment. No flush suffused Dugger's cheeks as he listened until it was over, then quietly lifted the mouse and started scrolling through the files again.

I leaned against the desk, tired of standing. I felt as if I'd been on my feet for a very long time. Weekend seemed to be okay downstairs, although he must've finished eating, for I could hear him pacing around. I wondered when Club would come. Dark was rapidly descending, and I returned my focus to the monitor.

With Dugger at the helm, the search was focused and concise, whereas mine had been aimless. There was no clicking or false starts. Canned noises and voices came to life, only to be deemed the wrong ones and abruptly aborted. Dugger made the mouse leap over whole lines of titles, circling the cursor as his mind seemed to chug, remembering, then landing precisely on whichever file he'd been seeking. The one he decided on now was called
Seconds
.

Second servings? Seconds of time? I couldn't get a handle on Dugger's naming scheme.

Before I could conjecture further, I heard the click of running footsteps on a floor or maybe it was pavement, then a woman's high-pitched call. “Wait! Baby, stop!”

Images of Baby leapt into my head—he was tall, good-looking, the woman was chasing after her departing lover—before the next bit of recording almost made me smile.

“Not in the street! Baby, slow down!”

A child's gurgle of laughter confirmed that the woman had no reason to caution her boyfriend about cars. There was a tangle of unintelligible sounds, then the rush of an engine, and behind it, muffled words as if the speaker held a small body up against her face. “Don't scare me like that again, baby. You have to hold my hand,” she said, and the child let out another burbling laugh.

I looked down at Dugger. His face was bland, expressionless, his hand immobile on the mouse. “Who are those people, Dugger?” I asked at last. “When was that recording made?”

An explanation for the identical dates on the files crept up on me. If the recordings had been made on an old technology, and only recently rendered digitally, all the time stamps would be the same. Could “baby” have been Brendan or Red, the only two possibilities that seemed relevant enough for Dugger to want me to hear them? But the loving mother in the recording didn't sound like Eileen, although I supposed life events could've changed her voice along with everything else.

Dugger was studying the screen again. He clicked. And a file called
Heart
began to play.

These sounds too were violent, and my own heart began to hammer. What was Dugger interested in, where did his tastes run? A thick swell of nausea lifted my stomach. I realized I hadn't eaten since those slapped-together sandwiches.

The woman in this recording was screaming. “I can't!
I can't!
Don't! Not there, don't touch me there, don't make me move, no! Oh, no!” A moan with no pleasure in it, only pain. Then thrashing, and the unmistakable rasp of tearing fabric.

It was sex, but not consensual sex this time. I was listening to a rape.

“Dugger, stop it,” I muttered. “Turn this off.”

“Please, don't make me—don't make me do this—” she sobbed. Despair as drawn out as taffy. I had never realized before how intimate were the sounds of suffering. I had no right to be listening to this, to be overhearing.

I started to turn, walk for the door, but Dugger extended his arm. His fingers settled onto my wrist, as lightly as falling snow, yet the touch compelled me to stay.

On the recording came a bustle of people moving around, a low murmur of excited voices, unclear sounds of objects being moved. Things thrown across the floor. Wheels rolling maybe. There were more than two people on this recording. With a jolt of horror, I realized that there had been other participants, watching, or waiting to join in.

“No screaming,” ordered one man, while another echoed him in a kindly tone that was somehow worse than all the cries: “Try not to yell, honey.”

“Oh, ow!” A shriek of pure pain, then an otherworldly howl. “Noooooo!”

I began, silently, to cry. Forced to listen, I felt violated in some small way myself.

Dugger looked at me, then at the numbers flashing by on the screen, tiny beacons in some countdown to hell. “Fifty seconds, Missus.”

“No—” I said, forcing my voice down from the bellows I was hearing in the recording, aware that pushing Dugger had its own risks. “I can't take any more. Stop it now.”

The woman had finally gone quiet, but a series of moist, slippery sounds had replaced her screams. I clapped my hands against my ears; that had to be body parts, slapping and mashing together.

“She's nearly through,” Dugger said calmly, and I hated him then, for speaking of this poor woman at the same kind of remote remove that allowed the men to do this to her.

“Almost. Ah—almost. Almost there now. We're almost done.”

Incoherent, guttural cries. “Uhn, uhn,
uhhhn
!”

“You did it!”

Impossibly, a woman began speaking, in a tone that could only be described as jocular. “That's the first time anyone's gone and ripped the sheets!”

Then came the high, thin wail of a newborn baby crying.