Cold (16 page)

Then the whole noisy contraption came to a halt, leaving silence.

Until the furnace motor kicked on in the basement.

•

The phone rang several minutes later and at first Norman considered not answering.
 
He still lay on his back in the bed, thinking he should get up, take a shower and go.

Go.

Vanish.

Disappear.

Coming back to North Eicher had been something he’d thought about since his first day inside Marquette Prison.
 
It was connected to time somehow.
 
If he could return here, he could turn back time like Noel had said in her letter.
 
Make it new.
 
Go back to before all this happened.

Before what happened happened.

The phone kept ringing.
 
When he finally picked it up, she said, “I thought you’d already left.”
 
He didn’t answer.
 
“I want to try and explain the marriage to you.”

“Don’t.”
 
She held her breath.
 
“Don’t,” he repeated.
 
“I don’t want to hear it.
 
I know why you married him.”
 
He waited, listening to her breathing.
 
“You thought it would make everything right.”

“Yes,” she said.
 
“Otherwise, you would have gone to prison for nothing.
 
I’m sorry.”

“It’s funny,” he said.
 
“I’m the one who’s been in prison, I’m the one who was found guilty, and you’re the one saying you’re sorry.
 
You don’t have to, you know.”
 
He realized now that what he wanted was not to undo what had happened, not to go back in time, but to stop it altogether.
 
He wanted this moment only:
 
lying in a dark motel room listening to her breathing.

Finally, she said, “Can I come down?”

“Sure.
 
Let me get a shower first.
 
Give me twenty minutes.”

“Okay.
 
I have something for you.”
 
She hung up.

•

Warren’s whole face hurt and the ribs under his left arm ached.
 
He sat at the kitchen table, eating Cheerios with his left hand because his right palm had scabbed over where he’d scraped it.
 
He put down his spoon, which felt awkward in his left hand.
 
Getting up from the table, he went into the living room.
 
His seaman’s chest sat on the floor next to the couch; he unlocked it and raised the metal lid.
 
He removed a pile of shirts and jeans and picked up the knife, which lay on newspapers lining the bottom of the chest.
 
Standing, he drew the knife from its sheath and gazed down the hallway.
 
Bobby’s bedroom was at the end and through the open door Warren could see the bedpost.
 
Bobby and Leah were both already gone.
 
Every morning since he’d moved in here, he’d wake up and listen to them get ready for work.
 
They had shit jobs—Bobby worked for an electrical contractor and Leah waited tables at Jacques’ Diner—but they still showered, brushed their teeth, made coffee and worried about being late.
 
Like it fucking mattered.
 
Holding the knife by the tip of the blade in his left hand, Warren cocked his arm and concentrated on the straw cowboy hat that hung from Bobby’s bedpost—Bobby loved Country and Western and the hat was signed by several of his favorite singers he’d seen in concert.
 
Warren took aim at the crown of the hat and threw the knife—in the empty house it made a fine, whirling sound as it traveled down the hallway, until the handle struck the bedroom doorjamb and fell to the floor.

Warren went back to the kitchen and finished his Cheerios.
 
He probably wouldn’t have hit the cowboy hat with a good right hand.
 
What he needed was a weapon that would send a message, something that didn’t require a high degree of hand-eye coordination.

•

Noel let herself into room 12 with the master key.
 
The room was dark, though the light from the bathroom was on and the door was ajar.
 
She could smell soap and the air was steamy from the shower.
 
He was standing in front of the mirror scrubbing his hair dry.
 
She caught a glimpse of his bare shoulder.

Sitting on the bed with her back to the bathroom door, “I have some clean clothes for you.
 
People leave stuff behind and they get tossed in the laundry with the linen.
 
I’m laying them here on the bed—underwear and a nice turtleneck shirt.”
 
After a moment, she added, “You can come out for them.
 
I won’t look.”
 
She listened to his bare feet on the carpet as he came quickly into the room, picked up the pile of folded clothes, then retreated to the bathroom.
 
“And I have an idea,” she said.

“Yeah?”
 
She could hear him pulling on his pants.

“That van of yours.
 
The police, they may be looking for it?”

“I suppose.”

“Take mine.
 
I have this Isuzu Trooper with four-wheel drive.
 
Daddy got it for me because it’s good in the snow.
 
And after Lorraine was born—“

“Whose idea—”
 
Norman came to the bathroom door.
 
She looked toward him.
 
He had the green turtleneck shirt in his hands.
 
Light fell across his bare shoulders.
 
“Whose idea was it to name her Lorraine?”

 
“I don’t know.
 
Mine.
 
You don’t like it?”

He seemed embarrassed all of a sudden.
 
“No, it’s fine.”
 
He raised his arms and pulled the turtleneck down over his head.

“I’ll hold off reporting the Isuzu missing,” she said.
 
“That should give you enough time to get out of the U. P.”

“I don’t know.”
 
Norman came into the room, where he picked up his gray sweater from the bureau and pulled it on over the turtleneck.
 
“Then they’d know I had come here.
 
It would only make trouble for you.”
 

She was afraid of what was coming, so she said, “You can’t see her.
 
I leave her with Daddy when I work nights here and you can’t go near him.
 
You know that.”

Norman went to the other bed, sat down and began pulling on his boots.
 
“Warren, how does he treat her?”

“At first, when she was small, he was all right with her.
 
As things got worse between us he ignored her mostly.
 
Unless she cries, then he tells me to shut her up.”
 
She thought that was enough, but it wasn’t everything, and she decided to tell him the rest.
 
“When it got to the point where I started telling him I wanted him out of the apartment, he was more upset about losing Lorraine.
 
He’s very possessive.”

 
“I know,” Norman said.
 
“He’s never given up anything in his life.
 
Never.”

“Look, I mean it about my car.”

“I know.
 
Thanks.”
 
He finished tying his laces and straightened up.
 
“I don’t want your Isuzu.”
 
He was going to continue, but he didn’t.
 
She knew he wanted to but couldn’t.

She went over to the bed and sat next to him.
 
“Say it,” she said.

“What’s the point?”

“Because you want to.”

“It doesn’t make it any good.”

“But say it, Norman.
 
Just
say
it.”

“Okay.
 
I wish you and Lorraine could come with me.”

“No, that’s not it.”
 
She kept her eyes on his bootlaces.
 
They were brown with flecks of green.
 
“That’s not what you want.”

“All right.
 
I want you and Lorraine to come with me.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Eight

The snow had stopped.
 
At first Del told himself that he was just driving around, checking for storm damage.
 
Even when he was on Route 28, headed into Marquette.
 
After his divorce eight years ago, he’d gotten into the habit of cruising at night.
 
Karen had moved to Green Bay, four hours south; when she remarried a year later she and her new husband moved to Georgia.
 
He was a dentist and she said he was a nice guy, and that seemed to explain everything.
 
He was a nice guy dentist and he got her out of the cold.
 
Del had only been south of Chicago a few times.
 
He still lived in the log kit house he and Karen had built on ten acres in the late seventies.
 
At this point in his life he had expected the house to be full, with Karen and pets and several teenaged kids.
 
But since the last of his dogs died the house had been empty.
 
He’d had two long-term relationships with women, but both withered and ended quietly after a few years.
 
The past year or so he hadn’t had a date, nor had he really wanted one.
 
What he had, what mattered was work.
 
The long winter months he was at the station early, and he seldom left before Monty, who had a family and tried to be home most nights for dinner.
 
Ordinarily there was no official night shift in Yellow Dog Township.
 
If someone had a problem, they called Del out at the house.
 
In most cases it could wait till morning.

•

It was not yet daylight outside her hospital room when Liesl saw Del Maki through her opened door.
 
As he stood in the hallway talking to the nurse, he kept both hands buried in the pockets of his overcoat.
 
He remained perfectly still while she spoke, and it was this stillness that Liesl found interesting.
 
She realized that it was designed to get people to say more than they wanted, because they knew he was really considering what they were telling him.
 
It must be a useful trait for a constable, to get people to talk.

When he came into the room he was almost smiling, and she was certain that for him that was a rare thing.
 
“They’re releasing you this morning and I was wondering if you need a lift home,” he said.

She decided not to answer.
 
See just how still he could get.

In the ceiling there was a metal track for the privacy curtain that could be pulled around the bed.
 
She knew this track as well as any sculpture she’d ever done.
 
Dull metal that curved above the end of the bed.
 
When she was on the pain medication she’d thought of it as the tracks of a miniature train.

Del moved into the room until he was standing at the end of the bed.
 
She kept her eyes on the track in the ceiling.
 
He didn’t move and they remained that way for some time.
 
She wondered if he knew what she was doing, if he were on to her game.
 
She glanced at him finally, and then returned her gaze to the ceiling.
 
Hard to tell.
 
His face was slightly flushed from being out in the cold, and his eyes seemed determined to make some impartial assessment.
 
Like she was a drunk he’d pulled over on the road.
 
“Would you rather not go home yet?” he asked.

“How long have I been in here?”

“Overnight.”

“It feels a lot longer.”
 
She closed her eyes and after a moment said, “It seems like I’ve been in this hospital bed for weeks.
 
I’d like nothing better than to go home.
 
Besides, my cabin isn’t like modern houses.
 
It needs constant attention—wood stove fires, for instance.”

“I’ll take you, if you’d like.
 
I’ve arranged to have your driveway plowed by a county truck so we can get in.”
 
He waited and finally she opened her eyes, though she only stared at his left shoulder.
 
“You should have someone stay with you at first—”
 
He shifted his weight so that his chest was in line with her gaze.
 
She raised her eyes just enough to see his chin.
 
Firm, broad, unshaven for a day or two.
 
She liked the way that looked on some men.
 
On him.
 
The faint shadow of a beard, but not enough to obscure the line of his jaw.
 
“There someone who can come in and help you out?”