Cover of Snow (19 page)

A halfhearted snow had begun to fall, ceasing periodically as if even the weather lacked the will to collect itself into a storm. I felt thick with disappointment, movement coming only with great difficulty. I realized I'd been holding out hope—for what I didn't know.

“I heard about what your husband did,” the woman began. Then she paused, moving forward into a denser stand of trees. I noticed she was no longer saying
what happened to your husband,
instead making Brendan into a far more active participant. “And it seemed like there might be some connection.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why did it seem like that?” Then I burst out, “Who are you?”

Now that we were hidden away, the woman turned and faced me. Snow dusted her bare head. “My name is Melanie Cooper,” she said. “We moved up here four months ago.”

She still wasn't telling me anything—certainly nothing to justify my abandoning Ned on a sidewalk and walking off into the woods with a stranger as a storm was taking root. But maybe she did have something to offer. Maybe bringing things down a notch, speaking easily and congenially, would get this woman to open up.

“Ah,” I said. “Newcomers.”

“And you are …” she responded.

I gave a laugh of assent. “Slightly less of a newcomer.”

God only knew when I'd earn any other status. Maybe after three generations of my family had been born here? Sadness shifted over me. There'd never be another generation of my family now, in Wedeskyull or anywhere. Not without Brendan.

Melanie and I began to walk apace, into the deepening woods.

“Moving up here was the worst mistake of our lives,” she went on. “I'm afraid—” Blindly, she reached for my hand. “Oh, Nora, I'm afraid it was the last mistake we made!”

I stopped on the path we'd been forging. “You think your husband's dead?”

Stupid,
I told myself, or Teggie did. Of course she thinks that. Was that the connection she saw between her husband and Brendan? That wouldn't help me at all.

Melanie's gaze twitched, taking in all sides, although dark was beginning to descend and the falling snow added a curtain of concealment. Bare, black branches swept over our heads, and Melanie was shivering much as they were, her body trembling as if it were being jolted by electricity.

“I don't know what to think,” she said, starting forward again. “John went to work one day and never came home. He didn't answer his cell. Eventually it must've run out of charge, because now it just clicks right to voicemail.” She glanced sideways at me. “We have kids. Can you imagine how hard it is to come up with something to tell them?”

I couldn't really imagine that, and I looked away.

Melanie's head was ducked low, droplets of water making tiny divots on the new layer of snow.

“What kind of work does your husband do?” I asked softly.

We stepped between more trees into a few lilting snowflakes. They were disorienting; I didn't know where the street was anymore.

“That's why I thought to contact you, after I heard your husband was a police officer. Because of the work my husband does,” she said, and I nodded, thinking,
anti-terrorist plant near the border, organized crime spy, drug mule.

“He's in concrete.”

I almost laughed. The draining of tension, the pinnacle of anticipation I hadn't even realized I'd been on, then the sudden skid back onto my plateau left me weak in the knees. For a moment I forgot the cold, that I was out here in a burgeoning blizzard with a woman I had no good reason to meet.

Melanie noticed my reaction. “Seems pretty mundane, right?”

The echo of Brendan's voice far away.
Mowing is big business up here, Chestnut
.

“There's a lot of work here, though. All those big box stores going up on the Northway. John saw an opportunity to get in by taking on some of the overflow. But he didn't win a single bid. In the end he had to give up and go to work for Paulson's.”

Lenny Paulson was the only show in town, as far as I knew, the only one I ever used anyway. If the foundation on a house was bad, I'd have to get it reinforced first off, and Lenny was a good friend of Vern's.

I remembered something then. “On the phone,” I began. “You said you were afraid to meet in Wedeskyull.” In the way of storms in the north country, which disappear as quickly as they start, the snow had suddenly become sparse, and the woods had gone very dark.

“The policemen I spoke to—” Melanie looked down for a moment, and I saw she was crying again.

“It's okay,” I said softly. “You said they weren't very helpful?”

“I wasn't allowed to file a missing persons report for two days. That might be protocol, but once I did file one, I wouldn't swear that report was put where it was supposed to go.” She paused. “I wouldn't swear it was put anywhere at all.”

“Who did you talk to?” I asked.

She hesitated. “An Officer Mitchell and one named…” Her gaze flit away briefly, then she handed me a small gray card, its paper slick and familiar.
Gilbert Landry
was the name on it.

I wondered why Brendan wouldn't have been with Club when they spoke to Melanie. Gil was ex-military, a firecracker, always ready to go off. Brendan had said that he'd never liked him, even as a kid, and that he was worse once he joined the force.

“They were more than not helpful, Nora,” Melanie went on. “They gave me instructions. What I should and shouldn't do. And while he was talking, Officer Mitchell kept reaching for his gun. Not taking it out, of course, but it was—” She broke off, leaving me to think what that gesture would look like to someone not accustomed to it, to someone who was looking for help.

“What do the police think happened to your husband?”

Melanie averted her gaze. “They say he must've run off. Just left me and the kids.”

I was trying to tease out the possibilities of her story, the things she wasn't saying from what she was.

“But he wouldn't have done that, Nora, you have to believe me!” Melanie cried. “If John didn't come home, it means something terrible has happened. And they must know about it! Anything that goes wrong, at the plant or on a job, has to be reported!” Her voice disturbed the silence. “And then I learned your husband killed himself!”

Her words were as stark as a splash. My mind instantly shot to the night of January sixteenth. “When did John disappear?”

“Only two days before,” she said, her gaze burning into mine, eyes like two embers, red-rimmed and fierce.

“Two days before what?” I asked.

A bird took flight, releasing a branch. Snow plummeted, but Melanie didn't bother to duck. The spilled flakes melted upon her face, making slow, teary rivulets. “John disappeared just two days before your husband's death.”

And then her head jerked up, gaze rising as if she were tracking the sight of something.

It was behind me.

Melanie turned and fled. For a second, the tails of her coat could be seen flying out behind her while the drumbeat of her footsteps sounded dully against the terrain. Then all trace of her was gone.

I revolved slowly, instinctively beginning to back up.

Ned Kramer stood before me, hands held out appeasingly.

Pent-up breath escaped in a
whoosh.
“You scared me to death.” The draining of adrenaline added a bite to my tone. “You always have that effect on women?”

Ned 's gaze followed Melanie's retreating form. “They've been known to turn and run.” Then he explained. “I was worried about you. You hadn't said anything about meeting someone, and then you ran off into the woods. So I figured I'd try and tag along. Took me a little while to find you.”

Ned was a reporter; I'd known him first in conjunction with a story. Had I become the potential story?

He was peering at me closely. “You need to get someplace warm.”

It was suddenly all too much to think about. Everything was too much to think about.

Ned seemed to sense my state of mind. “Let's drive back together and talk,” he suggested. “I booked a room at the inn in town last night. But I have to be in Albany tomorrow, and I can take the bus down, pick up my car then.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Wouldn't it make more sense just to stay here?”

“Come on,” he said, beginning to lead me away. “You can tell me all about your friend.”

Melanie had said she would've liked to talk to a reporter, so I assumed it was okay to reveal what she'd told me. But still I hesitated as we began to drive, my car pegged toward Wedeskyull as if it knew where it was going.

I didn't have a good handle on Melanie. Was she a bereft woman, projecting her abandonment outward—running from reporters in the woods and elevating normal police procedures to the level of a cover-up? Or was there something dreadful and unexplained going on here, a missing man, and police who failed to take notice?

“She's not my friend,” I began. “I just met her. Her name is Melanie Cooper.”

Ned twisted sharply in the passenger seat.

“What?” I asked. “Do you know her?”

Ned was staring out the window, his mouth set in that clean line again. “No.”

I forced myself to focus on the road. “You sure?” I tried to get him to look my way. “Are you being straight?”

Ned didn't crack a smile. “How did someone you didn't know come to be talking to you a hundred miles from home?”

It was a good question. “Her husband … I guess he's disappeared. Or left. And Melanie found that the police didn't help her very much. When she heard that Brendan died … she thought there might be a connection.”

“Because Brendan happened to be a cop?”

I spoke sharply. “She's reaching. You do that when you're bereft. Right?”

Ned didn't reply.

The road was a dark river before us. The contrast between it and the wild whiteness flanking the highway made the eyes blink, do funny things. “Maybe I shouldn't have told you all that.”

“Why not?”

“Well …” I felt suddenly silly. “Why're you so interested?”

“I'm a reporter,” Ned said. “I'm interested in everything. You could describe your last trip to the grocery store and I'd be taking notes.”

“What about the fires?” I asked bluntly. “You were there at both houses. How do I know you're not behind them?”

Ned was still staring out at the glistening scenery, the night sky. The stars were blanked out by remnants of the earlier storm. “How do I know you're not?”

“What?” I took my eyes off the road for a moment, and with the glare of the headlights lost, the lightless sky overwhelmed me.

“Look, all I'm saying is that you were going to work on my house and it caught fire. Then you let me stay at your house and it burned down. Maybe you're trying to kill me.”

My lips quivered. “You're kidding, right?”

Ned twisted around in his seat. “The fires are a false road, Nora. Or at least any connection I have to them is.”

“What?” I couldn't follow what he was saying. “What does that mean?”

“If you focus on the fires—try to track down where I was when they started, if there were accelerants used, what the reports say, who made the 911 calls, that kind of thing …”

He was handing me a roster of ways to go about it, an investigative reporter's approach to the matter. And then Ned finished his thought.

“… you might be giving some pretty powerful people enough time to cover their tracks.”

Everything seemed to go quiet around me. I was flying down the highway at seventy miles an hour, temperature plummeting and moon racing across the planet to make its appearance in the north, yet all was suddenly still. I couldn't hear a thing, not the blast of the engine nor the rush of tires against the road. Not even the steady, quiet rhythm of Ned breathing.

He had just confirmed—for me, for Melanie—that forces were at work here we hadn't yet begun to comprehend. That the one thing I'd held on to, ever since finding my husband's lifeless body dangling from the ceiling, was true.

“Do you want to pull over?” Ned asked, and I nodded soundlessly. He pointed to a swath of shoulder up ahead, helping me steer the car, while looking behind us to make sure there wasn't any traffic. He leaned over, chest brushing my arm, to shift into
park.

“Which powerful people?” I asked at last.

Ned stared out the window, but the dappled globe of the moon still hadn't appeared. I followed his gaze, hunting some spark of light. We both seemed to give up at the same time.

“You think of Wedeskyull as a town, the place you've made your home.”

I was about to tell him that wasn't quite the whole story when Ned looked over at me, planing his hand across the seat.

“I've come to think of it as a tiny empire.”

His use of the word made me laugh, and he jumped on it. “You think we're a country, Nora? A democracy, one nation under God?”

“Well, you make me sound a little naïve, but …”

Ned gave a definitive shake of his head. “Power-hungry people want to control.” He swept his hand across the seat again. “Before my wife and daughter died, I was trying to write a book. If I ever get back to it, that's what it'll be about.”

“So who are you saying has control here?”

Ned looked out the window. “Look, I'm just beginning to be able to answer that myself. And I can't tell you everything—protection for sources and all that.”

I nodded slowly.

“But I can say this: I had cause to start looking into things, matters of public record. How this town is run, how it's always been run. And that opened up some questions that didn't have answers, not good ones anyway.”

“Like what?”

Ned grinned at me, but the look was devoid of mirth. “Did you ever wonder how the police force came to be so well appointed? The barracks, computers in the cruisers, all of it?”

I shrugged. “It always just seemed a plus for us. Brendan's job was secure, and he was well paid, especially for these parts. It's what allowed me to start my business.”

Ned gave a snort. “Well paid for sure.”

He was staring at some far-off point, impossible to see. “The chief of police—and his father before him, and grandfather before him—have always made sure they have plenty of funds, and they aren't overly scrupulous how they procure them.” Ned refocused his gaze on me. “And of course, there's always something to use them for.”

I frowned. “Do you mean—are you saying that the police manufacture crime?”

Ned gave me a look I'd seen before, but only in my sister's eyes. “I'm saying they're the criminals themselves.”

My mouth went chalky and I couldn't speak. Denial crested up inside me, but just as quickly Ned's likely refutations crashed down. “That's impossible. Brendan wouldn't have been part of anything like that.”

Ned hesitated. “Look, why don't we go to my office? There's stuff there that will make what I'm saying seem a little more plausible.”