Snowblind(52)

Headlights washed across the living room, casting his surroundings in an unearthly glow. Keenan glanced up from his book, listening for the scrape of a plow, but this engine was too quiet for one of those lumbering metal beasts.

Folding the page of his book, he set it on the coffee table and rose, going to the window. The snow fell so heavily that he could barely make out the snow-covered vehicle parked at an angle in front of the snowbank at the bottom of his driveway. Then the blue lights turned on, strobing the blacked-out houses up and down the street, and he saw the driver step out. The officer was a giant, and as he made his way through the sixteen inches or more of snow already on the ground, Keenan knew who he was long before he reached the front steps.

The detective didn't wait for the cop to knock. He pulled open the door.

"Evening, Harley," Keenan said. "Not much warmer in here than it is out there, but come on in."

Officer Talbot stepped inside and stomped the snow off of his boots and Keenan swung the door shut behind him.

"Better get your coat, Joe," Harley said. "I kept trying your numbers but the landlines are tied up and your cell is all static. The storm is messing with everything."

"Shit," Keenan muttered.

All through this storm he had been unable to avoid thinking of the blizzard twelve years past and all those lives lost. Sitting alone in his cold, dark house, he had been grateful that he would not be the one to respond first if something awful happened. Yet here was Harley, dragging him out into the snow, and he wondered if the night would be any less terrible simply because he hadn't been first on the scene.

"What's goin' on?" Keenan asked. "Don't tell me we got a homicide in the middle of this."

Harley narrowed his eyes. "No. It's nothin' official, actually. Nothing I wanted to call in."

Keenan had grabbed his boots from the spot by the door where he'd left them to dry, but now he paused to shoot Harley a curious look.

"What's that mean?" he asked.

"Remember how I said Jake had been acting weird?"

"Jake Schapiro?" Keenan said, pulling on his boots.

Harley frowned. "Yeah. Who else? I went-"

"Up to his door, right? You thought he had a girl inside."

Harley looked queasy, like whatever thoughts were in his head had made him sick.

"He had someone inside," Harley said. "But it wasn't a girl."

Keenan had knelt to tie one boot, but he snapped his head around to look up at Harley. A little tug of suspicion pulled at his gut, but he didn't want to believe it.

"Whatever you're trying to say, I wish you'd spit it out."

"He had cards in his hand when he came to the door," Harley said, his nose wrinkling in disgust or perhaps dismay, the words coming reluctantly to his lips. "I thought they were playing cards, man. But a little earlier, I realized they were something else. I recognized them, Joe. The guy was holding a bunch of Pokémon cards."

Keenan's gut gave a sickening twist. "You're saying he's hiding a kid out there?"

Harley only stared at him, jaw grimly set.

"You think it's Zachary Stroud," Keenan said.

"I think it could be," Harley admitted. "But if we report that and we're wrong, Jake'll never live it down. Never mind forgive us. He's my friend, Detective."

"And if he snatched a lost kid whose parents were just killed?" Keenan asked.

"Then that isn't my friend out there in that farmhouse. It's a damn monster."

Keenan finished tying his second boot, then grabbed his jacket and gloves and hat from the chair by the door.

"Let's go find out."





Allie sat in silence in the passenger seat of Miri's rental car, wondering where Niko had gone. Swaddled in her white down coat, she huddled into herself, constantly checking her peripheral vision for ghosts. Stop, she told herself, but she couldn't deny the chill that danced along her spine. No man had ever been as kind to her as Niko Ristani. She had loved Jake and Isaac's father but they had married because she had gotten pregnant with Jake and just assumed that true intimacy would come in time. That had never happened; the army had kept him away from her more than he was with her, and then he had been killed in action. Allie had never really understood what it meant to be in love before Niko, never felt as if her heart had set sail from her body. Allie had lost him and grieved for that loss ever since, had wished for just one more day, one chance to tell him what he truly meant to her.

But not like this.

She felt as if she ought to be thankful, but instead she was terrified, pins and needles all over her skin, unable to catch her breath as she looked for some sign that the ghost might be in the car with them. It-he-had vanished into the storm the moment they had left Allie's house, but had said he would be with them. Allie felt something in the car, an unsettling frisson in the air that might have been the presence of the dead or simply a prickling fear that would be with her for the rest of her life.

"You okay?" Miri asked.

Allie jerked in her seat, turning to stare a moment at Niko's beautiful, grown-up girl. She uttered an anxious laugh.

"Are you kidding?"

Miri frowned, hands tight on the wheel, driving so carefully in the storm as the wind buffeted the car.

"You're afraid of him? He'd never do anything to hurt you."

Allie shuddered and covered her face with her hands. "I know. I do know that."

Miri said nothing. After a moment, Allie dropped her hands and looked over to see a tear sliding down her otherwise expressionless face.

"I'm afraid, too," Miri said. "I don't want to be, but I can't … "

Allie lowered her voice to a whisper. "He's dead, Miri. He's not supposed to be here. People  …  we're just not meant to know the dead."

If Niko's ghost was in the car with them, it gave no sign of having heard. Still, Allie felt his presence, felt a chill that the car's heater could never drive away. As Miri turned onto Bridle Path Road, trying to keep her tires in the tracks of other cars that had passed through the inches of snow that had fallen since the last plow had passed that way, the two women fell into a wary, fearful silence.

I'm sorry, Allie thought, knowing she should speak the words aloud. Her fear felt like a betrayal.

"Check it out," Miri said. "Gustafson's got company."

Allie had told her the story of Eric Gustafson crashing his car into others in the drop-off line in front of the school on Monday and the way Gustafson had behaved, the way he'd cried while confessing that he had no idea how to drive a car. When Niko had been talking about the return of those killed that awful night, her thoughts had gone immediately to the city councilman and the frightened, childlike look in his eyes that morning.
     
 

     

Now they pulled up in front of his house to find that they were not his first visitors. A police car sat in Gustafson's driveway, only a fresh dusting of snow on the windshield-it hadn't been there very long.

Miri put on the car's hazard lights and they climbed out, instantly assaulted by the freezing white savagery of the storm. Bent against the wind, they trudged up the driveway, calf-deep in snow. Allie kept glancing around to see if Niko's ghost would appear but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"Weird," Miri said. "The cop just plowed in here. No way he's getting out."

Allie looked at the police car and understood immediately. The driver had plunged his vehicle into the unplowed driveway and must already have been lodged there in the entire blizzard's depth of snow.

"Let's be careful," she said.

"And ready to run," Miri replied.

They went up the steps and rang the bell. Councilman Gustafson's neighborhood was one of the few they'd passed through where the power was still on, but though there were plenty of lights burning within, the bell brought no reply. Allie rapped hard several times, and then again. They didn't have time to be polite. Niko's ghost had said they needed to warn all the spirits of the dead who had escaped the hell the ice men had made for them, and she was willing, but not until after she had seen that Jake was safe and learned whether Isaac's spirit had found its way to his brother's house.

And what then? she thought. Will you be afraid of him, too? Of your baby boy?

Allie knocked again, even harder. She had agreed to this first stop because she had seen Gustafson with her own eyes and because the house was practically on the way to Jake's.

"Forget it," Miri said. "Let's just-"

The door opened, but it wasn't Mr. Gustafson who greeted them. The policeman who'd so deeply committed his car to the snowed-in driveway stood staring at them. His name tag read TORRES.

"Can I help you?" Officer Torres asked.

"Is everything all right, Officer?" Allie asked. "Is Mr. Gustafson-"

"Who the hell are you people?" the cop said, his eyes narrowing.

"We need to talk to Mr. Gustafson," Miri said. "And I'm wondering if maybe we need to have a talk with you as well."

Allie saw the suspicion with which Miri and Officer Torres regarded each other and suddenly understood what Miri was suggesting. It all seemed so unreal to her that if she had not seen Niko's ghost for herself she have thought that Miri had lost her mind, and if she was wrong about this cop they might both end up in handcuffs.

"My name is Allie Schapiro," she said. "Mr. Gustafson's daughter is a student at the school where I teach. I need to speak to him."