Hard Cold Winter (15 page)

W
HEN THE EVENING RUSH
had finally subsided, Luce left the closing of the bar to Fye and her other employees, and she and Leo came to the house. I stacked wood on the hearth while breaking the news about Elana, and Willard.

“Thank God she’s not dead,” said Luce. “But that poor girl, Trudy. Didn’t anyone go looking for her?”

“She lived alone. Elana knew that, and decided to buy herself some time with texts to Trudy’s boss and posts on Facebook. It worked for a couple of days.”

Luce sat in Dono’s old wingback chair and stretched fiercely, like the topic of conversation demanded it.

“I should be happy,” Luce said, “but using Trudy’s money and things to run away just makes Elana look about as cold-hearted as anyone can get.”

“She’s desperate, maybe. It’s hard to wrap my head around Elana as a killer. Maybe she saw it happen.”

“Then why not call the police? Or Willard?”

“The cops, I can figure. Elana’s family doesn’t trust cops any more
than Dono did. Why she didn’t tell her uncle is anybody’s guess. Maybe he’s part of what happened, and she knows it.”

Luce raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But he sent you to the cabin himself.” Then she sighed in exasperation. “Never mind. That could be an alibi, couldn’t it? Pretending to be worried for Elana when she didn’t show up for work.”

“He was honestly surprised when it wasn’t Elana’s body in the morgue, I’m sure of that. That would lead me to believe he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”

“Kend and Trudy, dead together,” she said. “I wonder if there was something between them.”

“Maybe. It would be a motive, if Kend were hooking up with somebody else. But I’ll let that whole circle sort through their own trash. I don’t give a damn anymore.”

Leo jabbed at the fire with an andiron. He was still wearing his favorite gray hoodie, with a blue down vest zipped over it tonight, like armor. He hadn’t said a word since halfway through my story. I signaled Luce with my eyes.

“I’m going to shower.” She stood up and gave me a quick kiss. “Would you put on coffee?” Luce could drink coffee at any time, without it affecting her sleep one way or the other. Maybe it was a bartender thing.

Leo waited until Luce was upstairs. He sat on the hearth, the fire crackling into slow life as it ate the damp wood.

“You should have called me,” he said. “When you went to have it out with Willard, you should’ve called.”

“I wanted you on Luce.”

He shook his head. “Luce had the whole lunchtime crowd around her. Or she could have stayed low while I was out. You were the priority, man.”

“I handled it. I know Willard.”

“You think you do. Now you’re wondering if he might be killing people at cabins.” His eyes flickered between me and the windows and the doorway.

“It was my risk,” I said. “Maybe it was the wrong call, but it’s done. Don’t act like I crapped in your helmet.”

“If he’d had another guy there to back him up, you would have been fucked.”

“You’re not some grunt that needs this explained, Leo.”

He stared at me from under the gray hood. “Forget it.” He got up and walked to the kitchen and out to the backyard.

I put another log on the fire and stoked the ashes to let the flames breathe. Leo was brittle. Maybe I should walk tiptoe on those eggshells. But tonight I wasn’t in the goddamn mood.

Luce came downstairs, blond hair sleek as seal fur from the shower. She’d changed into my bleach-stained Mariners sweatshirt and her own yoga pants. If I’d owned yoga pants, she’d have probably have purloined those, too.

“Leo okay?” Luce said.

“Not yet,” I said.

She hugged me. “Can you get him help?”

“I don’t know what kind he needs. He’s tried doctors, and pills.”

“Maybe there are other ones.”

Thousands. And programs and V.A. hospitals and volunteer organizations. Finding help wasn’t the hard part.

I could hear Leo patrolling, coming up the porch out front. He was very quiet, but the old wooden slats creaked. I opened the front door to let him in.

“I’ll make the coffee,” I said.

I heard the kitchen door slam open with a splintering of wood. Leo, eyes wild, came flying through the kitchen. I grabbed for Luce but Leo was already digging his shoulder into her back at a full run, lifting her up like a football tackle and slamming her headlong into me. Glass shattered. I glimpsed a thick, whitish cylinder banded in duct tape hit the wingback chair, bouncing crazily, as I fell back and out through the open front door, Luce and Leo almost on top of me. We all tumbled off the porch. An instant before I hit the gravel, a clap-BANG of high explosive tore everything away from sight sound wall house Luce Leo

On fire. Leo was on fire. He was facedown and still. The back of his vest smoldered and glowed. I grabbed him and rolled him over to smother the sparks, before a hurricane of vertigo made me fall back again.

Leo was out cold, but breathing. Luce lay next to him, moving slowly, saying something to me. My ears were filled with a high insect whine. I tried to say her name, coughed, and was suddenly sick, vomiting through a mouthful of dust onto the gravel of the side lot.

Wisps of white smoke swirled around us. The other side of Luce’s head was bloody. I crawled over Leo to check her. Her ear was cut, and as I bent to look closely at the pink wash, a spat of blood from my own head fell onto her cheek.

“—okay?” she asked. From six inches away I could make out her words. Her eyes weren’t dilated. I peeled Leo’s lids back to check his pupils. He thrashed a little, coming back to the world.

We had to move, my stunned brain told me. Whoever had thrown the bomb might still be near.

Movement, to my right. I had no gun. I fumbled to stand, and then Stanley bounded up to us. His anxious barks pierced through the ringing. He ran in mad dashes, to and fro. Addy Proctor walked slowly up the steps. Her round face was twisted with fear.

The smoke around us churned thicker now, blacker. And there was heat. I steadied myself and bent down to help Luce stand. Addy walked with her toward the street, as I got my arms under Leo and hefted his buck-sixty into a fireman’s carry. I followed Addy, tottering under Leo’s weight and my own unfamiliar legs.

We reached the sidewalk as the first fire engine came screaming onto the block. I could hear the siren just fine.

T
HE PARAMEDICS BUNDLED LEO
off to the hospital, just as he regained full consciousness and started to ask me questions. They wanted to take Luce. She wouldn’t go without me. They wanted to take me, too. They were very insistent. But we were both standing and answering their questions cogently, and eventually I told them to screw off.

One of them tossed us a handful of gauze pads as he left. I held one to the laceration on the side of my head, and Luce held one to her ear, and we watched the firefighters do what they could.

The explosion had shredded the side of the house and blown out every window in the front room. That was only the start. The flames in the fireplace hadn’t been snuffed out by the concussion, and the old wood skeleton of the house made excellent fuel.

Two soaring arcs of water flew up and into the second story, the firefighters working the hoses back and forth. At this point their efforts were more about saving the nearby homes. The front of Dono’s house was gutted. The back was invisible behind black smoke and spray. Whatever personal papers I had owned were ashes by now. Along with Dono’s books. My mother’s St. Christopher medal. Everything else.

A uniformed cop came over with his partner and questioned us. When he got to the part about whether I knew anyone who might have wanted to do this, I said no. I’d already told Guerin about T. X. Broch. Laying his name on the uniform would just lead to an entire night of repeating the same information, on the record this time.

Luce knew what I was leaving out, of course. Her face stayed neutral. But I could feel her vibe.

The cop told me detectives would be in touch. He was partly right. When people started throwing explosives around, the FBI took an interest, too. Maybe even Homeland, depending on who they thought was doing the throwing. It wouldn’t escape anyone’s notice that I’d received a lot of training in demolitions myself.

Local news vans had arrived five minutes after the fire engines. They had raced to get their people in the optimal spot to pose with the fire in the background. The photogenic part of the blaze was over. One shellacked mannequin hurried over with his cameraman the moment the cop was finished to ask us for an interview. I told him no, in much less polite language than I’d used with the medics.

Luce watched the firemen knock down a smoking wall to keep it from falling outward. “This wasn’t Willard,” she said.

I nodded agreement. “He may want to grind a couple of my bones to make his bread, but no. He wouldn’t do this. It has to be Broch.”

“Trying harder, after those two assholes yesterday.”

I’d underestimated Broch. Fogh and Guerin had both warned me that the loan shark was violent beyond reason, and I’d still played defense. Dumb. Luce was right to be angry.

My phone rang, a 253 number.

“Mr. Shaw? Arthur Ostrander.” Maurice Haymes’s attorney.

“It’s a bad time, Mr. Ostrander.”

“I’m aware. You’re on the television right now.”

The news vans. Interview or no, their cameras would have at least filmed us from a distance. Luce was too good-looking not to wind up on the live feed.

“It’s best that we talk immediately,” he said. “I’m at my club downtown. May I send a car for you?”

“No,” I said. I wanted to check on Leo.

“It’s very urgent, Mr. Shaw. Or I wouldn’t be calling at such a time.”

Luce could hear what was being said. She gave me a puzzled look. I shrugged, almost as perplexed as she was. I had to give Ostrander credit for sparking our curiosity.

“If it’s that important,” I said. “Meet me at Swedish Hospital on First Hill in an hour. Emergency entrance.” I hung up.

“That’s Maurice Haymes’s lawyer?” Luce said.

“And the family fixer, from what I can tell.”

The flames in the house were slacking. We watched the firefighters work the hoses closer and tighter on the blaze. Luce reached out and took my arm with one hand. A temporary truce. The cut on her ear had clotted.

“Leo saved us both,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Because he was prepared.”

Luce shook her head no. “That was just chance. Our good luck.”

“Maybe it was good that Leo’s brain is stuck in the suck. But I should have been ready.”

“I’d say you can’t fix this yourself,” she said, “but those words would just wave a red flag in front of you. You
shouldn’t
.”

“Somebody tried to kill us tonight.”

Luce laughed, without any mirth. “Uncle Albie used to tell me that laundering Dono’s stolen cash through the bar was just to help us make ends meet. That we wouldn’t survive without it. Maybe that was true. But Albie didn’t do it just for the money.”

She turned back to the house. The smoke coming from the smoldering walls was a translucent white, in the glare of the searchlights.

“He did it because he missed the thrill,” Luce said.

L
UCE WANTED TO GO
home instead of the E.R. My protests only made her more adamant. I made sure she was safely in bed with her friend Marcie watching her before I sped to Swedish.

The admitting clerk asked if I was family. I told him I was Leo’s brother.

“He’s in 14C, an examining room,” the clerk said, looking at the computer screen. “I’m missing a lot of details here. Does he have insurance?”

Leo didn’t even have his backpack anymore. “Check with the V.A.,” I said as I started down the hall.

The room had four padded examining tables with half-drawn curtains between each. Men in hospital gowns were asleep on two of the tables. Neither of them looked like they spent many nights indoors. Leo was sitting up in one of the far beds, bare-chested, while a young female R.N. examined the back of his neck.

“What’s to report?” I said.

“Toasted and roasted. But nothing much else.”

“His clothes saved him from a lot worse,” said the nurse. She
nodded to where Leo’s vest and gray hoodie were thrown over one of the room’s blocky wooden chairs. Only half of the vest was still blue. The back of it was crusted with black bits of scorched Gore-Tex. Tufts of whitish cotton showed through where the outer layer had been completely seared off.

That could have been Luce’s skin.

“These burns on your neck and scalp are only first degree, Mr. Pak,” the nurse said. “How is your hearing now?”

“Fine.”

“Fine like totally clear, or fine like the ringing is less than before? Barry from the ambulance said you couldn’t hear him talking to you when you were first brought in.”

“Less,” Leo admitted.

“Okay. The doctor will come and see you soon.”

Leo frowned. “I’m ready to roll.” He looked to me for confirmation.

“Mr. Pak,” the nurse said. “You may have head trauma, or worse. You’re here already. Let’s make sure, okay?” She was a pretty girl, with wheat-colored hair and a dusting of freckles. She knew how to turn on the charm.

“There’s nowhere else for us to crash right now anyway,” I said to Leo.

He glanced quickly around at the windowless room. I asked the nurse to give us a minute. She took another glance at Leo, then nodded affirmatively and told us to stay put.

“Let the doc check you out,” I said to Leo when it was just us and the sleeping homeless guys. “You might need an MRI. My head’s barely screwed on, and you were between us and the blast.”

“It was some kind of water gel, right?” Leo said. He hunched his shoulders, his compact body becoming even more coiled.

I nodded. “Not enough slam for plastic. Maybe some commercial brand.”

That notion made the back of my brain itch. Something for me to talk to Ostrander about. He’d be arriving in a few minutes, if he kept our appointment.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Leo said.

His eyes were doing that flickering dance. There was only one entrance to the room, which meant only one exit.

“You saved our asses,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Luce is all right?”

“She is. And she’s angry.”

“I’m pretty pissed myself.” Leo reached out to grab his vest from the chair. “Fuck, look at this.”

“She isn’t just mad at the bomber.”

His eyes steadied on me. At least I had his attention. “At you?”

I leaned on the wall across from him. “Luce thinks I might be some kind of war junkie. Only really myself when things are tight.” I shrugged. “Maybe she’s not all the way wrong. Life seems damn real to me right now.”

“And that’s bad somehow.”

“Bad or good. At least it’s not wandering around at night like a ghost. I didn’t tell you that part.”

He picked at the charred vest, letting flakes of burnt fabric flutter to the tiled floor.

“You ever feel like that?” I asked. “Cut off?”

Leo shook his head no, and plucked another tiny black leaf. He rolled it between his fingers until it disintegrated to ash. “It’s
too
real. I hear things.”

“Hallucinations?” Speaking quietly enough that the nurse wouldn’t hear, if she were just outside the door.

“Nah. Memories. My last rotation, the whole company was in Paktika province. We sat on our thumbs for a week at Sharana, eating the base chow and lifting weights and waiting on a green light for whatever the fuck they weren’t telling us about. The rumor going around was that some Taliban chieftain had spilled everything under interrogation. He had told Intel about a training camp, way up in the mountains. Deserted during the winter.”

I remembered Leo hesitantly asking me if my own bad dreams had started from a winter operation. Winter was dangerous as hell in Af
ghanistan. When we went out on a mission, we’d inevitably have less air support, or none at all. The weather might change from bright and clear to a full storm in minutes. Hiking through snow with seventy pounds on your back was like walking with anchors tied to each foot. And the enemy tended to dig into their shelters and fight hard, rather than retreat into the bitter cold.

“So if it was deserted . . .” I prompted.

“The chieftain had confessed that there were dead Americans buried at the camp. Guys that had been lost months before,” Leo said.

I nodded. Given the option, Rangers wouldn’t go hunting in the deep of winter. But sometimes there wasn’t a choice.

“What they paid us for,” I said. “To lead the way, and enjoy it when it sucks.”

“Yeah. So the birds dropped our platoon off as close as the pilots could manage, but we still had a long night of up and more up. The elevation of the camp was somewhere around eleven thousand feet. Just a ghost town, really. Dry stone walls and plywood sheeting for doors and one iced-over well. No wonder the Taliban only used it in the summer.”

“Did you find them?”

Leo looked at the wall. I wondered if he’d ever spoken this story out loud before, even during the in-patient program back in Utah. When he started again, his voice was fast and light, his words skipping over themselves.

“We had the K9 with us and she sniffed out the right spot fast enough. A patch about ten by ten. Obvious once we brushed the snow away. We started in at the edges with pickaxes. The sun was coming up but you could hardly tell with the fog and the cloud layer. Took us about three hours to clear the frozen top soil and the dirt underneath. It was a mass grave. Two of our infantry guys, and a bunch of locals. Families. Maybe people who’d refused to collaborate.”

“Jesus.”

“They were all stuck together. We had to cut them out of their clothes to pull them apart. Otherwise . . .”

I nodded. Otherwise the skin would peel off as readily as the clothing. I’d seen corpses left out in the cold, too.

“We’d brought bags but the bodies wouldn’t fit inside. All their limbs were fixed in place, sticking out, and nobody wanted to try moving them. Too worried something would snap off. We just wrapped our boys with bags and tape as good as we could, re-buried the rest, and called for exfil.”

Someone walked past the door, hurrying along to another room down the hall. Leo stopped.

“You said that you hear things,” I said.

He shivered, like he was coming out of a trance. “I was in the Chinook on the way back. You know how it is inside a chopper. You can’t hear shit, with the noise of the rotors and the wind and all of it. But I was right next to the bodies, where they were tied down to the floor, wrapped like Christmas presents. And I know I heard a sound. From under the plastic. Like teeth grinding on rocks. Every bump or drop of the bird, another something went crack in the bags. Muscle. Bones. I don’t know what. But I could picture it. Those two guys, nothing left of them but icicles. Breaking apart from the inside out.”

God. “That would screw with anybody’s head, Leo.”

“I didn’t think on it like that, not right then. I just thought,
That’s messed up
. But later on . . .” He faltered.

“Like scary movies as a kid. It doesn’t bother you while you’re watching. It’s later, when you’re thinking about it at night.”

“That’s right,” Leo said. “Later. In the dark.”

I waited. He didn’t say more. He just looked at the burned remains of one of his only possessions. I knew Leo was twenty-five years old. But his face looked twice that, and his eyes in that moment were ancient.

“You brought them home,” I said. “Whatever else, those men are where they should be because of you.”

My leather jacket had been spared the fire, along with the few items I’d had in the truck, including one of Dono’s burner phones. I programmed my number into it and handed it and my jacket to Leo.

“Phone’s charged. Call me when they cut you loose.”

He nodded, turning the little silver clamshell over and over in his hands.

“Leo.”

I waited until he met my eyes.

“You’re in the dark,” I said. “But you aren’t alone in it, brother. Clear?”

His skin was taut across the bones around his eyes.

“The dark’s where we go to work,” he said.

I grinned, almost a snarl. “Goddamn right.”