Darkness the Color of Snow

 

DEDICATION

To Richard Shelton,
and in memory of Lois.

 

CONTENTS

 

CHAPTER 1

P
ATROLMAN
R
ONALD
F
ORBERT
sits in cruiser four, starting and restarting the ten-­year-­old Crown Victoria to keep the cabin warm. It will run for five minutes before it stalls out. He's just on the outskirts of Lydell, half a mile from the Citgo and two miles from the state line. It snowed early in the day, then melted, and now the melt is refreezing into black ice on the highway. He's on duty partly to hang paper on the drivers speeding to or from the Indian casino twelve miles away, and partly to slow down drivers who aren't aware of the icy conditions.

He sees the one-­headlight car come over a hill a few hundred yards to the east, then disappear. He turns the cruiser back on and waits for the vehicle to come over the hill just east of him that hides him from view. When the car crests the hill, he lights it up with the radar gun, drops the cruiser into gear, and hits the light bar. As the car, a beater Jeep Cherokee, goes by, he recognizes it. “Shit.”

He pulls out behind the Cherokee, his rear wheels spinning a bit as they slide over the ice and onto dry pavement, and begins to follow. When the Cherokee shows no signs of slowing down, he blips the siren a ­couple of times until it slows and moves to the right and off the pavement. He sees it fishtail just a bit before it straightens and comes to a stop.

He checks the radar. Sixty-­eight in a forty-­five-­mile-­an-­hour zone. He calls it in to dispatch, gathers his book and Maglite, gets out and walks to the driver's-­side door. He shines the light into the interior. There are four of them. Matt Laferiere is back to operating at full strength.

H
E TAPS THE
driver's window with the flashlight. “Roll down your window. Keep your hands where I can see them.” He shines the light into the car through the open window, causing Matt Laferiere, the driver, to shut and shield his eyes. Next to him is Paul Stablein, always riding shotgun, and in back Bobby Cabella and a kid he doesn't know, the “virgie.”

“Gentlemen,” he begins.

“Forbert.”

“Be nice to him,” Paul Stablein says mockingly. “He called you a ‘gentleman.' When has that ever happened? Good evening, Officer Forbert.”

“You have a right front headlight out.”

“OK. I'll fix it.”

“And you were running sixty-­eight in a forty-­five-­mile zone. We have black ice tonight. That constitutes a pretty dangerous situation.”

“Thank you for informing us of that, Officer.”

“You been drinking, Matt?”

“Of course not, Officer.” Laferiere keeps hitting the “Officer” hard, in case anyone misses the sarcasm.

“Yeah, ‘of course not.' I can smell it on you.” He steps back and shines his light into the back. A busted thirty-­can carton of Natty Lights is on the backseat. “You have an open container, and you're driving in the Cherokee. Of course you're drinking.”

“Aw, Jesus. Come on, man. Leave us alone. We were on our way home. I'll fix the headlight tomorrow.”

“License and registration,” Forbert says.

“Oh, come on, Forbert. Nobody does forty-­five on this road. That's not for locals.”

There is something to what Laferiere says. Locals don't get papered for fifty, even sixty on this road. Warnings are the standard, and that is what Forbert is thinking now, even though sixty-­eight pushed the standard pretty hard.

“Do you have any weapons in the car? Guns, knives, anything like that?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You tell me you don't have any, but if I find one, you're in a lot of trouble.”

“Fuck you,” Laferiere says. He leans over and fishes in his pocket for his license, then reaches over to the glove box.

“Let Stablein get it.”

“You afraid there's a gun in there?”

“Wouldn't be unusual.”

“If there was a gun in there, you'd be dead,” Laferiere says. “You fucking loser.”

“You threatening me, Matt?”

Paul Stablein opens the glove box, rifles through it, extracts the registration, and hands it to Laferiere, who hands it to Forbert. “Stick it up your ass,” Laferiere says.

“Watch your mouth. I'm a police officer.”

“You're a pussy loser with a badge, and we both know it.”

Forbert lets that go and lights up the kid in the back. “What's your name?”

“Sammy.”

“Sammy what?”

“Colvington. Sammy Colvington.”

“Sam Colvington Junior?” The kid nods. “How old are you, Sammy?”

“Twenty-­two.”

“Yeah, right.” Forbert puts the kid at sixteen, maybe eighteen, tops. “Where are you guys headed?”

“Home,” Stablein says. “We're going home.” Laferiere stares straight ahead, his jaw set.

The license and registration are both current. “I guess you'd prefer I didn't check for outstanding warrants?”

“I don't give a fuck what you do.”

Stablein reaches over and pats Laferiere's arm. “Let it go, man. Let's just deal with Officer Forbert here, then go home.” Then, to Forbert, “It would be cool, man, if you'd just let us be on our way. I'm not shitting you. We're on our way home.”

“He been drinking?” Forbert nods toward Laferiere.

Stablein raises his hand and wiggles it from side to side. “You know.”

“Yeah. I know. How about you?”

“Less, man. Less.”

Forbert shakes his head. “Speeding, DUI.” He shines a light on the kid, Sammy. “Providing alcohol to a minor, and you've got a headlight out. I should put you all in jail.”

“That is fucking
it,
” Laferiere says, throwing a big stress on the “it.” “Give me a beer.”

Cabella looks at Stablein, who shakes his head no.

“Now, goddamn it.”

“Don't do it,” Forbert says. “Don't get in deeper than you are.”

Laferiere turns and reaches to the backseat. “Did you fucking hear me? Give me a beer. Now.”

Cabella pulls a beer from the cardboard case and hands it to Laferiere.

“Don't be stupid,” Forbert says.

Laferiere pops the top of the can and takes a long swallow, gulping until he drains it, then throws the can out the window.

“All right,” Forbert says. “I want everyone out of the vehicle. Now.” He hears a door open, and Stablein slides out the passenger's side. Then Cabella opens his door, steps out, and Sammy Colvington follows him. “Everyone's out, except you, Matt. Open the door and get out of the vehicle.”

Laferiere slams his shoulder into the door and pops it open, making it hit Forbert on the right hip and knocking him to the ground. Forbert falls hard, drops his flashlight, the license, and the registration. As his hands slide across the ice at the side of the road, he can feel the small stones tearing at his hands.

Laferiere starts to laugh. “Sorry, shithead. I didn't mean to do that. I mean, really.”

Forbert guesses that's true. The door of the Jeep does stick sometimes. He reaches down and feels his leg. His pants are torn, and he can feel blood dripping from his leg, as he starts to rise.

“You think this is funny, Matt? You think this is funny? You just assaulted a police officer.”

“Hold it, hold it,” Paul Stablein says, coming around the front of the Jeep. “Let's calm down. All of us.”

“You get back there,” Forbert says. “And sit down. All of you. You,” he says to Laferiere. “You are going to jail.”

“The fuck I am.”

“You want to add resisting arrest to it? Are you fucking nuts? Get your hands on top of the vehicle.”

Surprisingly, Laferiere does it, leaning into the Jeep with both hands on top of it. Forbert comes up behind him and takes Laferiere's right arm, pulling it down and snapping a cuff on it. Laferiere takes his left hand down, spins, and tries to backhand Forbert, who gets his left foot between Laferiere's feet and pulls Laferiere toward him as his body swings awkwardly, tripping him and sending him down, heavily, to the ground. Forbert lunges onto Laferiere's back and grabs the cuffed right wrist and tries to pull it back. Laferiere is bucking and trying to get traction with his feet.

Forbert hangs on to the right wrist and tries to get the left, but he has no leverage. Laferiere begins to crawl on his knees back down the road, away from the car, carrying Forbert with him. Finally, twisting in his heavy winter coat, Forbert slips off Laferiere's back. Laferiere struggles to rise, and Forbert comes up with him. Forbert is hanging on to the cuff on Laferiere's right wrist while Laferiere throws ineffective punches with his left hand. They are now playing a kind of tug-­of-­war with Laferiere's right arm. Laferiere is able to start Forbert struggling to his right. Forbert starts to move faster to his right, pulling Laferiere's arm hard across his chest.

Then they are doing a weird dance, moving in a circle, both of them with Laferiere's cuffed right wrist as the locus. They begin to move faster, each trying to wear the other down, until Forbert just lets go of Laferiere's wrist and sends him spinning, then stumbling across Forbert's outstretched leg and into the road where he slips and falls face-­first. Forbert is calculating his next move as Laferiere rises to his knees and is suddenly brightly lit.

The car that has just come over the rise hits Matt Laferiere a glancing blow from the back and sends him airborne. It seems like seconds after the shatter of glass that Forbert hears the dull thud as Laferiere is sent pinwheeling into the back of his own Jeep.

The white car spins and straightens, travels a hundred yards down the road before the brake lights come on. Then the brake lights are out and Forbert is standing there, trying to get a plate number. The car vanishes over another hill. He has a
J 6
. A New York plate, he's pretty sure.

Forbert walks over to where Matt Laferiere is semi-­kneeling at the back of the Jeep, his head canted upward and resting on the rear bumper, illuminated by the headlights of the cruiser. He reaches down to check Laferiere's pulse at the carotid artery when he realizes that Laferiere's head has been impaled on the Cherokee's trailer hitch and is split open. There's no need to check for a pulse. He's dead.

From behind him, he hears someone vomit, and then he's choking back vomit himself. The three others from the car have come up behind him to see what has happened. “Goddamn,” one says. Then, “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn” rising to a keening. There is nothing more to say.

“Back,” he says, turning. “Get back.”

“Dude,” Bobby Cabella says. “Is he dead?”

Forbert pushes Cabella back and turns to Stablein and Colvington, who are six feet behind him. “What did you see?”

“You killed him, man.”

“No. No. He fell.”

“That's right,” Stablein says. “I mean, I didn't really see it, but he fell. Out on the road. He's dead? Oh, fuck, man. Oh, fuck.”

Cabella says, “That's right. He fell. I know that. You were trying to arrest him, and he fell on the ice.”

Forbert switches on his shoulder mike. “Officer needs assistance. Route 417, mile eighty-­two. Hit and run with fatality. Repeat. Officer needs assistance. Fatal accident at Route 417, mile eighty-­two.” He turns to the three now gathered together behind him, lighting cigarettes. “I was trying to arrest him. He resisted.”

“Yeah,” Stablein says. “You were trying to handcuff him.”

Forbert looks back at the body. The right arm twisted behind Laferiere still has the cuff on it.

“It just happened, man. That's all. It happened.”

“Did you see the car?” Forbert asks.

“That hit him? Yeah. It was a Camry. A white Camry.”

“Maybe an Accord,” Cabella says. “Going like a hundred miles an hour. Right over the hill. Never stopped. Didn't even slow down.”

“White,” Forbert says. “It was white.”

“Yeah, man. White. For sure.”

“Anyone catch the plate?”

“We were back there, man. Didn't see it. Couldn't see it.”

“New York,” Forbert says. “It was New York. A
J
and a
6
.

“OK. You guys are witnesses. That's it. No charges. You're just witnesses.”

“That's cool. Witnesses. We saw it happen. It was really fast.”

Forbert hears the siren in the distance. It will be a ­couple of minutes before the car gets here. “Really fast,” he says. “Really fast.”