Steve Hamilton - Ice Run

The line was busy.

I let him sit over there by the fire for a few minutes while I waited to try again. The line was still busy.

Grant got to his feet just as I was hanging up again. He didn’t say a word. He just walked out the door.

I watched him go out, then looked over at Jackie and Vinnie. They were as confused as I was. When I headed for the door myself, Vinnie tried to follow me. I told him to go sit back down. I was just going to see what the hell Grant was doing.

When I opened the door, I saw Grant pacing back and forth next to my truck. It was snowing harder now. There was already a thin white layer on Grant’s head.

“What are you doing out here?” I said. I had brought the hat out with me.

“There was no answer when you called her?”

“The line was busy.”

“Both times?”

“Yeah, both times.”

“I tell you,” he said. He started pacing back and forth. “I got a real bad feeling about this. I think we should go out there.”

“Are you serious?”

“Come on, you gotta help me. You gotta take me out to her house.”

“You are serious.”

“Yes,” he said. “Aren’t you worried?”

“I can’t believe this…” I looked up at the falling snow. Truth was, I was getting just as worried as he was, no matter how things stood between Natalie and me.

“Please, McKnight. I’m begging you.”

“Hold on,” I said.

I went back inside and called her one more time. The line was still busy. I told Jackie and Vinnie what I had to do. Jackie yelled at me. Vinnie just shook his head. Then I went back outside.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m driving.”

“Okay,” he said. He got in and we took off toward the Soo.

We weren’t even out of Paradise yet when I happened to look over at him. He was holding the hat in his lap and rocking his head back and forth, ever so slightly. It looked like he was wound tighter than piano wire. Then for one quick moment I looked down and spotted something gray and metallic in his coat pocket.

“Hey, look at that,” I said, pointing out his side window.

“What?”

I jammed on the brakes and sent him flying into the dashboard. As he was bouncing back, I reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the gun. I had it pointed right at his head before he knew it was gone.

“What the hell’s going on?” I said to him. “What were you gonna do with this?”

He caught his breath and looked at me. The gun was two inches from his forehead.

Something was wrong. The gun didn’t feel right. It was way too light.

“What the hell?” I said, pulling it away from his head.

“It’s not real,” he said.

“It’s plastic,” I said. “It’s a cheap plastic toy. What the hell are you doing with a toy gun in your pocket?”

He started to say something. He gave up and shrugged his shoulders.

“Was this gonna be for me? In case I didn’t help you?”

He didn’t look at me. He picked the hat off the floor of the truck and brushed it off. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I should just beat the living shit out of you right now,” I said. “You were gonna pull a toy gun on me?”

“I never would have used a real one. Give me that much.”

“Could you be any more of a jackass?” I took my foot off the brake and headed down the road again. “A toy gun. What were you gonna do when we got to customs?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Look, I told you I’m worried sick. My brother never disappeared before, okay? I wasn’t thinking straight.”

I shook my head and kept driving. Grant stayed quiet for a while. The snow started to come down harder. I began to worry about making it all the way out to Blind River. “I don’t know why you’re doing this now,” he finally said. “But I appreciate it.”

“Just shut the hell up,” I said. “I’m not doing it for you. If your stupid brother is over at her house, or if anything has happened to Natalie, I swear I’m gonna go after all three of you guys, one by one.”

He nodded his head slowly. “Fair enough.”

I rolled down the window, letting in an icy blast of air. “I’m gonna throw this away, if you don’t mind. If the customs guy sees it, he might not be amused.”

I threw it into the snowbank, then rolled up my window.

“I hate real guns,” he said. “All my life, since I was a little kid. Never went hunting with my father or anything. That was always Marty.”

“I’m not too fond of guns, either.”

I picked up the cell phone and called Natalie again. The line was still busy. That didn’t make sense to me. She wasn’t the type of person to sit around talking on the phone all day.

“So tell me,” I said, putting the phone down, “if your father said the devil lived in Blind River, I’m thinking that had to be Natalie’s father, Jean Reynaud. You ever hear that name?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just heard the last name.”

“You’ve got no idea what might have happened between them? Your father and Jean Reynaud?”

“I really don’t. Like I said, he might have told Marty something. He was the favorite son, after all.”

I picked up on the bitterness in his voice, but I wasn’t about to pursue it.

“What about New Year’s Eve?” I said. “Did your father ever say anything about that?”

He looked at me. “Which one?”

“There was a party over at the Ojibway, New Year’s Eve, 1973. You think your father might have been there?”

“I was a teenager,” he said. “I don’t remember it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was there. My father knew everybody.”

“Think he might have taken Natalie’s father outside and shot him in the back of the head?”

“God, what are you saying?”

“Is it possible?”

Grant just shook his head slowly.

“Let’s say he did,” I said. “Of course, first he made him take off his hat.”

Grant looked down at the hat in his hands.

“You’re saying this was the devil’s hat?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe we’re about to find out.”

I kept driving. The snow kept coming down. The wind picked up and drove the snow sideways. Grant didn’t say anything for a long time. He sat there and looked at the hat.

We went over the International Bridge. I sure as hell didn’t think I’d be coming back this way so soon. This time, the wind and the blowing snow made it downright scary. When I stopped to pay the toll, the man asked me how bad it was, and told me they’d probably be closing the bridge until the wind let up. Then we rolled through Canadian customs and answered the questions, the man taking a hard look at our faces.

“What happened to you guys?” he said. “You both look like something the cat brought in.”

“A little disagreement,” I said. “We got carried away.”

He pressed us a little more, asked us where we were going, how long we’d be in Canada. I told him we were going to the clubs. Eventually, he let us go through.

We followed a snowplow for a few miles through town. When we hit the open road, I passed him and settled in for the long stretch to Blind River. It was still blowing hard.

“By the way,” I finally said, “everything your nephew told you, that whole business about me contacting your father, making him come out that night to the hotel, making him go back outside… You know he was just covering his ass because he lost track of the poor guy, right?”

“I’m open to that possibility now. I’ll say that much.”

“Afterward, I was just trying to find out what had happened. That’s why I came to the funeral.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “when you were getting worked over behind the church, that was me who was telling those guys to cool it.”