Steve Hamilton - Ice Run

I thought about it. “I remember somebody saying something like that, but I don’t remember anybody actually stopping the other two guys.”

“I know,” he said. “Like I say, for what it’s worth. Which ain’t much.”

“No.”

“We all go to trial in a couple of weeks. I had to put the garage up to make bail.”

“That hardly seems fair,” I said. “Me, I got a nice four-day vacation in the hospital.”

“I’m not saying we’re even, McKnight. But you did get your shots in the other day. I’m still feeling it.”

I let that one go. I picked up the cell phone and gave Natalie one more try. The line was still busy.

A few miles later, we came to our first accident. One car was right in the middle of the road, pointed sideways, another car pushed into the ditch. I rolled my window down to see if anyone needed some help, but there was nobody around. A hundred yards later, I saw a house, with smoke blowing sideways from the top of the chimney. I figured everybody was inside that house, instant neighbors, waiting for the tow truck to come. I kept driving.

The next accident was just outside Thessalon, another car off the road, this time all the way down a steep embankment. A tow truck was on the scene, the man holding his hand in front of his face to ward off the blowing snow as he hooked a chain to the car’s trailer hitch.

“Getting bad out here,” Grant said.

“I’m not turning around now.”

“The man said the bridge was closing anyway. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to.”

We came to Iron Bridge, saw a few more cars abandoned on the side of the road, already covered with six inches of new snow. We passed McKnight Road, but I didn’t smile at it this time. We passed the Mississauga Reserve. There was one more stretch of empty road until we finally reached Blind River. As we got closer to the town hall, we could see the trucks parked right on the road itself, next to a telephone pole that had fallen down across the entrance. A half-dozen men were hard at work, all of them wearing orange ski masks. With the lines down and the snow blowing harder than ever, the whole scene looked like the end of the world.

“Looks like the phones are out here,” Grant said. “You think that’s why her line’s been busy?”

“Could be,” I said. “Depending on when this pole went down.”

“Is her house coming up soon?”

“Couple more miles.”

“Okay, good.”

He was sitting up in his seat now, nervously turning the hat in his hands again. I was a little uptight myself, with no idea what we’d find at the house. When I got to the driveway, I put the plow down and pushed the snow off, all the way to the barn.

“I don’t see Marty’s truck here,” he said.

“Not at the moment,” I said. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t come out here.”

He opened his door and got out of the truck. I did the same, the driving snow stinging my face.

“God, this is painful,” he said. “What the hell are we doing? Is anybody even home?”

“Let’s go see.”

I went up the unshoveled walk to the front door, stepping carefully through the snow. It felt strange to be here now, with officially no relationship with the owner of this house, no good reason to be here beyond a general sense of dread. I wanted to know that Natalie was safe. That was all. After that, I never wanted to see this place again.

I tried the door. It was locked. I rang the bell and heard the faraway chiming in the empty house.

“What do we do now?” he said.

I looked around the place. The windows. If one of them is unlocked

…

Or wait. The back door. I led him around the house, working hard to get through the deep snow. There at the back, leading into the kitchen, was an old-fashioned Dutch door. The top section had a large window with nine separate panes. The lower-left pane, the one closest to the doorknob, was broken.

I turned the knob, wishing at that moment like all hell that I had a gun. A real one. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Grant followed. My stomach was starting to burn. What the hell was going on here?

When we were both inside, I closed the door behind us, shutting out most of the noise of the wind. I could feel a draft cutting in through the broken pane. The room was cold. The power must have been out.

I saw broken glass all over the kitchen floor. The phone hung from its cord.

“Oh man,” Grant said as he saw the scene. “What happened?”

I went through the kitchen, crunching through the broken glass. There was more glass in the dining room, with several liquor bottles on the table, one turned over. I did a quick run-through of the rest of the house. In the dim light I didn’t see any more signs of violence, but when I was upstairs I noticed that both the bed in the guest room and the bed in Natalie’s old room were unmade. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Natalie had told me that she had brought her mother back here, but out of nowhere the line from Goldilocks and the Three Bears flashed through my mind. Somebody has been sleeping in my bed. What a strange thing to think of at a time like this. The burning in my stomach was getting worse.

“God damn it,” I said softly. “God damn it to hell. Where are you, Natalie?”

I went back downstairs to see Grant hanging up the phone.

“It’s dead,” he said. “Now what do we do?”

“I’m checking the basement,” I said. I opened the door and hit the light switch like an idiot. I went back and started opening the kitchen drawers. Somewhere she had to have a flashlight. I opened the silverware drawer, the napkins and candles drawer, the junk drawer. I pushed the pens and pencils around, looking for a flashlight. Come on, I thought. Everyone has a goddamned flashlight.

The next drawer was full of tools. A hammer, screwdrivers, pliers

…

There. A flashlight.

I picked it up and turned it on. The beam was weak, but it would have to do.

I went back to the basement steps, shone the light down the wooden steps to the concrete floor at the bottom. I could barely see anything. Grant followed me.

I started going down, step by step. The boards creaked.

I’m going to buy her a flashlight, I thought. A good one.

Another step. The air got colder.

As soon as I see her again, I thought, we’re going flashlight shopping. And I’m glad I’ve got this to think about right now because otherwise I’d be scared to death of what I’m going to find down here.

“Natalie,” I said out loud, “please don’t be down here.”

I did a quick scan with the flashlight, through each room filled with the decades of old household items, magazines, newspapers, boxes, and tin cans. Grant followed me from one room to the next, until we finally came to the little closet where Natalie had found all the pictures. But this time there was something strange going on. All the clutter on the shelves had been thrown onto the floor, and the shelves themselves were all slanting away from the wall, like someone had tried to pull them all off at once.

No. That wasn’t it. I grabbed one of the shelves and pulled. The whole unit moved in one piece. It was like a door. You couldn’t see it before because of all the stuff on the shelves, and the fact that the surface of the door was painted gray, just like the walls.

I pulled it all the way open and looked inside.

“What is that?” Grant said as he came closer. “What’s in there?”

I saw something that looked like wax paper. I reached down and touched it. There was something hard underneath. I pulled it out and unwrapped it in the thin beam of the flashlight. The first thing I saw was a long black rifle barrel. I pulled off more of the paper, slick with gun oil.