P. Parrish - Dead of Winter

She had pulled the shade back down and turned on the television. She sat hunched on the couch, backlit by the muddy amber light, puffing on her Pall Mall. Her hair spiked out around her head and her face was hid in shadows.

“Mrs. Cronk,” Louis called. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Millie turned her attention away from The Newlywed Game to look at him, all milky eyes, smoke and Medusa hair.

“You see Duane, you tell him to call me,” she said.

Louis stared at her.

She took a deep sucking drag on her cigarette, squinting back at the television through the smoke. “You talk to him, tell him I want my truck back, you hear?”

“I’ll tell him,” Louis said.

“Damn kid,” she muttered. She turned away and punched the remote-control button, filling the fetid room with canned laughter. Louis backed out, closing the door behind him.

Louis put on his glasses, crossed his legs on the bed and opened Lacey’s ID file. It was several inches thick. Bjork’s department had done a thorough job.

Lacey’s mug shot was on top. Louis stared at it but didn’t touch it. Finally, he brushed it aside and turned to the lengthy general report.

Lacey was born March 1, 1940, in Houghton, Michigan. He graduated from Houghton County High in 1959, held back a year in junior high. He was arrested in July of 1959 for joyriding and failure to stop for a police officer. The judge recommended the armed services. Lacey joined the army on August 5, 1959.

Louis paused, wiping his brow. The hotel room was hot and stuffy. He glanced at the heater, a long metal contraption under the window that seemed to have two settings: high and stifling. He rolled off the bed and went to crack the window. A stream of cold air slithered in. Louis reached out to the snowy window sill and snagged a can of Dr Pepper from the six-pack he had set out there earlier.

He returned to the bed, taking a long swig then pulled out Lacey’s military record.

After basic training, Lacey spent an uneventful couple of years in the army, returning home to Dollar Bay in 1962 only long enough to marry Helen Scully and father Johnny and Angela. He reenlisted before they were born, and Helen and the infant twins stayed with Millie.

In 1964, Lacey was shipped off to Vietnam where he was assigned to something identified only as LRRP. He had a special medal for marksmanship and he volunteered for a second tour of duty.

Lacey had achieved an E5 rank, buck sergeant. But by the time he left the army, he was an E4, a corporal. Louis searched through the rest of the information but there was nothing to explain it, just a notation that Lacey had been issued an Article 15 and got out on a general discharge in 1967.

Louis set the Dr Pepper aside. General? He thought there were only two ways out: honorable and dishonorable. Louis rubbed his chin in irritation. He was ignorant about the military and wasn’t sure who he could ask. Phillip…

Louis reached for the phone and dialed. Phillip Lawrence answered the phone after two rings.

“Hey, Phillip, it’s me,” Louis began. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Came back early.” Phillip paused. “So, what do you need?”

“Why you think I need something?” Louis asked.

“A visit and a phone call in the same week?” Phillip laughed. “Not your usual M.O.”

“Okay, okay, cut the sarcasm,” Louis said, laughing softly. “I’ll call more often, I promise.”

“Just busting your chops. How are you?”

Louis shifted the phone to his other ear, looking at his bandaged hand. “Fine. Getting a cold, I think.”

“I won’t tell Fran.”

“Good.”

Louis closed his eyes. For a second, he considered telling Phillip Lawrence the truth, that he was drinking too much, putting his fist into trees, finding Kotex pads in his locker, and jumping every time he heard the snap of a tree branch. But he couldn’t. And Phillip Lawrence knew he couldn’t.

“Listen, Phillip, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something,” he said.

“You’re asking me for help? That’s a switch.”

“It’s about the case. Remember I asked you about my suspect being military? Well, it turns out I was right. I have his military record and a couple things don’t make sense.”

“I’ll help if I can, Louis.”

Louis picked up the top paper. “What’s LRRP?”

“It stands for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. We called them lurps. Your guy was in Vietnam?”

“Yup.”

“The lurps were the guys dropped by helicopter behind enemy lines to scout, not kill. They were usually left in there a week, ten days, before being picked up. Real testosterone cases.”

“Tough on the nerves,” Louis said.

“You had to be half nuts to be a lurp. If you made it out alive you were completely nuts.”

Louis was making notes on the margins of the report. “This guy made sergeant, but was a corporal by the time he got out.”

“On a general, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’re never promoted to corporal, you’re demoted,” Phillip said. “He probably did something to piss of a superior.”

“He got something called an Article 15.”

“That’s a non-court martial punishment. Probably a refusal of orders. I knew a guy like that in Korea. He was a good soldier but he was getting short — near discharge time — and one day we were ordered to go into this village. Well, the guy refused. Just put down his gun and refused.”

Louis shook his head slowly. “But this man, he looked to be on a straight track. He made sergeant, got some citations….”

“The military changes men, Louis,” Phillip said. “Often for the better, but sometimes for the worse. Some guys just finally flip out. My C.O. called them cracked jugs. They’re okay, except for a tiny crack that you can’t see. You kept filling them up, pouring in more water and everything’s fine. Then one day, without warning, the crack gives way.” Phillip paused. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Louis, are you sure you’re all right up there?”

Louis leaned on the nightstand. “I’m okay.”

There was a pause.

“Louis?”

“I gotta go, Phillip.”

“Louis…be careful,” Phillip said.

“I will.” He hung up the phone and sat there for a moment. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A cracked jug.

A sudden vision of the advertisements in Lacey’s room came back to him. The infrared scopes. Long-range rifles. Had Lacey progressed from a shotgun to more sophisticated weapons? Were his days of walking up to his victims and killing them face-to-face over?

He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Louis got off the bed, grabbed a shoe and went to the heater. He banged on the gauge several times. The heater gave out a wheeze and a blast of hot air. Louis crawled back on the bed, turning back to Lacey’s personal history.

After his discharge, Lacey returned to Dollar Bay. Cole was born a year later. Here, Bjork had inserted her own notation that Lacey couldn’t find work and moved in with his mother, Millie. Louis thought of Millie’s gloomy little two-bedroom house in Dollar Bay. Three adults and three kids crammed into that dump. Who wouldn’t go crazy?

Louis read on. Back in Dollar Bay, Lacey resumed his criminal history. An arrest in a Houghton bar fight, an arrest for vandalizing the office of a Veteran’s Administration agent. Two years later, he assaulted a doctor at a VA hospital in Marquette. He served three days when charges were dropped by the local DA; the judge directed Lacey to remain on lithium.

Louis glanced at Lacey’s mug shot. Lacey’s eyes stared back, with the flat sheet of ball bearings. Louis went on reading.