Snowblind (3 page)

So maybe you don’t. Tuck away in a parking lot for an hour. Who’ll notice, out in this?
And it was true. If he got a call and had to respond, he could do that. But an hour of rest with a big hot cup of Heavenly’s coffee would make him more alert and better able to do his job—at least that was what he told himself. Trying to peer through the clear parts of the windshield and the hypnotic swipe of the wipers had him halfway to falling asleep as it was.

The lure of coffee drew him into the parking lot and almost immediately he started having second thoughts. There hadn’t been a plow by in a while; there had to be three inches of snow in the lot and more was falling by the minute. What if he fell asleep and got snowed in to the lot? Better to keep moving.

Still … a café mocha would be bliss.

He ran one big hand over his bristly blond buzz cut, hesitating only a second before he slid the cruiser into the drive-through lane, frowning as he spotted a single truck parked in the lot, more than half a foot of snow already accumulated on top of it. Rolling down his window, he waited at the big menu board. A terrible feeling washed over him. Something was wrong, here.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer. Not even static. Troubled, he took his foot off the brake and let the patrol car roll around the corner of the building, tapping the accelerator. But it was only as he rolled up to the window and saw the gloomy shadows inside that he understood the crisis at hand: Heavenly Donuts had closed up early because of the storm. There would be no coffee.

Bummed, Keenan started mentally mapping out his distance to other coffee shops. Coventry had a Starbucks and three Dunkin’ Donuts, but the nearest of the four was miles away and there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t all have shut down as well. Not that he could blame them: there weren’t many customers braving the streets tonight.

With a sigh, he pulled out of the lot, figuring he might as well drive over to the nearest Dunkin’, especially considering how quiet his radio had become. During the evening commute he’d responded to five different accidents. It was a part of living in New England he had never understood. These people saw snow every winter, but somehow every summer they seemed to forget how to drive in it.

Now, though, going on ten
P.M.
, pretty much everyone was home safe and sound except for an unfortunate handful, like plow drivers and rookie cops.

Driving along South Main Street, Keenan realized he’d screwed up, so distracted by the unfulfilled desire for coffee that he’d forgotten to clean off the windshield. The wipers were starting to stick, so he hit the lights and started to pull over to the curb, the swirling blue making strange ghosts in the storm and tinting the flakes on the glass.

With a loud crump, the car struck something that rocked it violently to the left. He slammed on the brakes, arms rigid on the wheel, so tense that he was unable to muster a single profanity. His heart thundered in his chest and he felt it in his eardrums and temples—worried for a moment that he might be having a heart attack and thinking about cutting back his Oreo intake—and then the car skidded to a shuddering halt and he exhaled.

He slammed the patrol car into Park.

“Motherfucker,” he said, just to assure himself that his capacity for profanity had not suffered any injury.

Popping the door, he climbed out and took in the strange, silent landscape of Coventry under siege by winter. Power lines hung low and heavy. Shop windows were caked with blowing snow. Drifts had begun to form. The blue glow from his light bar spun all around, painting it all in ghostly shapes that waxed and waned without a whisper.

Boots crunching in the snow, Keenan stepped back and scanned the driver’s side for damage. Finding nothing amiss, he made his way around the front and was happy to see both headlights in working order. Since the moment of impact he’d been running through a catalog of things he might have hit—parked car, dog, deer, person—but he didn’t think it had been any of those. The wet snow had crusted thickly on his windshield, but the wipers were still clearing enough of a span that he would have seen anything as large as that. His headlights and the streetlamps might not cut very deeply into the storm, but they were still working.

Still, he’d hit
something,
and as he came around to the passenger’s side, he saw that he had the dent to prove it. He searched the street and glanced over at the sidewalk but saw no sign of whatever it had been. Following his tire tracks thirty feet back the way he’d come, he saw no other tracks. No prints. No blood in the snow or evidence that there had been anything at all. It was easy to make out where the impact had occurred by studying the way the tire tracks jagged so abruptly to the left.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

Keenan walked back to the car, confounded by the dent. How could he have hit something when there had been nothing to hit? He crouched by the car and wiped off the snowflakes that had started to adhere to the dent. He’d catch hell for this and would never be able to explain it, but he was going to solve the puzzle by freezing his ass off while the storm whited out any evidence.

As he started back around the front of the car, still bathed in those blue lights, a thought occurred to him. What if he hadn’t hit anything after all? What if something had hit
him
?

Keenan gritted his teeth against the cold and shook his head. It was a stupid idea and the semantics didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Even if a bear had come hurtling out of the storm and crashed into his car as he drove by, there would be some evidence of its presence. Blood. Fur. Tracks.

Unless the bear had wings, it hadn’t been a bear.

TWO

Pulling into the parking lot at Harpwell’s Garage, Doug Manning heard his stomach growl. The smell of Chinese food filled his car and he felt immensely grateful that the family that ran the Jade Panda lived above their restaurant, and so had stayed open as the snowfall totals mounted and the wind drove it into drifts. He hadn’t been as lucky finding an open liquor store, but he figured the guys had enough beer to last the night, and if not there were assorted, quarter-full bottles of booze in Timmy’s office.

Most people played it safe, stocked up on essentials at the supermarket and hunkered down for the storm with a movie or board games. Doug’s wife had wanted him to do exactly that, but the guys who worked at the garage had been planning to get together for the Bruins game tonight and if he had tried to back out because of a little snow—or a lot—he’d never have heard the end of it. So there’d be beer and Chinese and a lot of bitching about their wives. The Bruins were playing in Florida, the lucky bastards, so the storm wouldn’t have any impact on the game.

Doug parked and climbed out of his restored Mustang. Three steps from the car, blinking snowflakes out of his eyes, he slipped and bobbled the huge brown paper bag filled with steaming Chinese food. He clutched the bag, closing his eyes, and when he opened them a second later he was amazed to find himself still standing, bag still safe in his arms.

Heart pounding, he gave a little laugh. Timmy Harpwell paid a decent wage and Doug liked his job, but other than that, Doug and luck didn’t get along very well. There were people, his older brother included, who considered him a fuckup and there were a lot of days he would have agreed. If he’d dumped a hundred and fifty bucks worth of Chinese food in the parking lot, he’d have been better off climbing back into the Mustang and heading home to Cherie. The guys would have given him no end of shit. At least with Cherie he knew he could smile and apologize and make her a drink and she’d forgive him eventually. If he listened to her bitch enough, he might even find some makeup sex at the end of the rainbow.

But he hadn’t fucked up this time. No apologies would be necessary.

Careful as hell, he made his way across the snowy lot to the door. No matter how many inches fell, they’d have no problem getting out in the morning. Timmy Harpwell had a plow on his truck; tomorrow he’d be clearing senior citizens’ driveways and making a ton of cash, and that meant his own parking lot would be the first pavement he cleared. Doug might even be home before Cherie woke up in the morning. He could picture her bright orange hair spread across the pillow and imagine sliding in beside her, waking her with a kiss, and had to fight the temptation to just drop off the Chinese food and head home. Timmy Harpwell liked to hold court, and he didn’t employ guys who weren’t interested in kissing the ring now and again.

Half Korean, on his mother’s side, with her black hair and eyes so brown they might as well have been black, he had dealt with plenty of racist shit growing up in Coventry, both casual and malicious. Most of the malicious stuff had gone away when he’d topped six feet and two hundred pounds, but the casual, aren’t-we-buddies-just-busting-each-other’s-balls racism would never go away. He’d learned early on that if he wanted to keep working at Harpwell’s, he had to take whatever shit was dished out and try to find some way to give it back. The minute he showed how much it bothered him, or let on that he’d rather spend time with his wife than the boys at the garage, Timmy would stop giving him even part-time work, and he and Cherie couldn’t afford that.

Doug banged in through the door and snow blew in behind him as it whisked shut. The front office was empty so he made a beeline for the back room. There were nine guys sprawled on stained sofas and chairs arranged around the giant TV. Doug had missed half of the second period, but he’d lost a game of rock-paper-scissors with Franco over who would pick up the food. They had both been hired last year and were the two lowest guys on the totem pole, which meant they always got the scut work, but Doug didn’t mind.

“All hail the conquering hero!” he announced as he entered, carrying the huge bag. “And nobody touch my fried dumplings.”

Most of the guys cheered and raised their beers, a couple of them rising to help him sort out the food. Not Timmy Harpwell, though. Sitting there with his carefully sculpted beard scruff and his perfect hair, the boss just snickered, shot a glance at Zack Koines, and shook his head.

“Don’t worry, Dougie,” Timmy said. “Nobody’s gonna touch your little dumplings.”

“I’d like to touch your wife’s dumplings, though,” Koines muttered.

“Oh fuck, Zack, you didn’t just,” Timmy said.

“Oh, I fucking did.”

The guys all laughed and Doug gave a dry chuckle, pretending he hadn’t taken offense, that it was all a big joke. He could feel the grin on his face and knew the guys would read it wrong, would think he was smiling instead of getting ready to tear out Koines’s throat.

Instead he laughed a bit louder.

“If that junkie Filipino hooker hadn’t shown up at your front door,” Doug said, “maybe you’d still have a wife of your own to go home to. Shit, your wife might even have let you stay if the hooker hadn’t been so fucking ugly. She musta taken one look at that bitch and thought, ‘You’d rather fuck this than me?’ No wonder she—”

“Doug!” Timmy Harpwell snapped.

“What? We’re all fucking jokers here, right?” Doug said, throwing his arms wide, gesturing to the others. “Just having a few beers, busting each other’s balls. Zack goes on twenty-four/seven about how much he wants to bang my wife, but he’s just kidding, right? It’s a big joke, I know. I just thought it might be funny to put it all in perspective.”

“Jesus,” Franco whispered.

Doug glanced around, but none of the guys would meet his gaze. None of them except Timmy and Koines, both of whom were staring at him.

Koines started for him but Timmy halted him with a gesture, then turned back to Doug.

“You’re fired,” the boss said. “Get the fuck out.”

Heart slamming in his chest, fists clenching and unclenching, Doug laughed again. “Are you kidding me? For that? We’re always busting each other’s—”

“Don’t,” Timmy said. “Let’s not pretend.”

Fury made Doug shake but he knew there was no argument to be made, and if he went after Koines he’d only end up out in the lot, bleeding in the snow. So he threw up his hands.

“Fine. You win. But your management style sucks, man.” He turned and started for the table where he’d set the bag of Chinese food.

“Leave it,” Timmy said.

“I put my twenty bucks in. My food’s in there.”

Timmy stared at him but said nothing. None of the guys dared to speak up for him.

Stomach growling, Doug gave a slow nod, then turned and headed back out into the front office. As he reached the door he heard Koines call out behind him.

“Asshole,” the son of a bitch said. “And you’re a shitty mechanic, too.”

Doug pushed open the door and stepped out into the storm, the wind and snow crashing into him. His skin felt so hot that he imagined he could feel the snow steaming as it touched him.

Cherie,
he thought.

But he couldn’t go home to her now. Couldn’t bear to tell her he’d lost his job. He fished his keys out of his pocket and headed for the Mustang, hoping that the Jade Panda would still be open and he could silence his growling belly with some food, then drown it in whiskey.

He started up the Mustang and hit the gas, roaring out of the lot, tires slushing through inches of snow.

Fucking storm. Fucking Koines,
he thought. But he knew what Cherie would say:
Your stupid mouth.

TJ Farrelly packed away his guitar in the hard-shell case he had been using since the age of fourteen. His parents had wanted him to use a soft case, a canvas thing that he could wear like a backpack, but in his mind those were for hippies who had to hitchhike from one gig to the next. The hard-shell case was old-fashioned, but he couldn’t help feeling that a proper musician—someone who loved his guitar—wouldn’t treat it like a backpack full of dirty shirts and spare socks. He did have a backpack, in which he carried a selection of harmonicas and the neck gear that went with them, but his guitar was precious to him. Its tone might as well have been the sound of his own voice.

“Wow,” Ella said from across the restaurant. “TJ, come have a look at this.”