P Tracy - Snow Blind

‘Maybe somebody’s trying to tell you something.’

‘That doesn’t even dignify a response.’ He turned to his computer and started typing.

‘What are you doing? You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?’

‘Relax. I’m just checking my mail.’

‘You’re finished working for the day, aren’t you?’

‘It’s Saturday. I might have a hot date.’

‘Then I’m going home.’

‘You’re not biking home in this weather.’

‘Why not? It’ll be good exercise. Besides, it stopped snowing.’

‘It’s not going to stop snowing for another day. Look it up.’

Roadrunner pouted at his computer screen. ‘I’ll take a cab, then.’

‘Don’t be a jackass. I’ll give you a ride… Just hang on a minute.’

Roadrunner knew that ‘a minute’ in Harley’s lexicon could end up being an hour, so he started surfing the websites of the local news channels, looking for weather reports. What he found instead were streaming video footage and photos from Theodore Wirth Park, and damned if he didn’t catch a glimpse of Magozzi and Gino standing in the background of one of the stills.

‘Harley. We’ve gotta turn on the TV.’

Across the Mississippi in a different world, Magozzi pulled the unmarked into a broad driveway carved between two fresh snowbanks and shut it down. He and Gino looked at Tommy Deaton’s house through the windshield, one of the prewar brick two-stories that peppered the back streets of Minneapolis, especially near the lakes. Neither one of them made a move to get out of the car.

‘Ten years ago this neighborhood was right in the toilet,’ Gino said.

‘I remember. Wonder what these houses go for now?’

‘This close to the lake? Quarter of a mil, at least, and all thanks to the MPD. Bump up the patrols, pull the dirt-balls off the street, pretty soon you have cops living in the neighborhood and property values skyrocket. You ask me, the department oughta get a percentage. Isn’t that Polish butcher shop around here somewhere?’

‘Kramarczuk’s? Not even close.’

‘Kramarczuk’s could be a thousand miles away, and it’s still close enough. Man, you don’t get sausage like that anywhere else in the country. I bring home a package from that place, and as far as Angela’s concerned, I can do no wrong for about a week. We gotta make a run over there one of these days.’

Magozzi released his seat belt, but didn’t make any move to get out of the car. ‘I can’t believe we’re sitting out here freezing our tails off talking about some goddamn stupid sausage.’

Gino sighed. ‘We do this every time we have to make a notification. Last time we spent five minutes in the driveway talking about lawn fertilizer runoff.’

‘We did?’

‘Anything to keep from going in there. You notice the driveway? Somebody did a real nice job with the blower on this one.’

Magozzi nodded and finally lifted the door handle. ‘Maybe a service. Or maybe Mrs Deaton. We should ask about that.’

‘Yeah, and isn’t that a nice touch? “Gee, Mrs Deaton, I’m sorry to tell you your husband is dead, but on a lighter note, who cleared your driveway?” Christ. It’s a damn miracle these people don’t pull out a gun and shoot us.’

It took a long time for Tommy Deaton’s wife to answer the front door, and the moment he saw her, Magozzi understood why. She was a tiny thing with bruised and blackened eyes, a swollen face, and a big white bandage over her nose. She examined their badges very carefully before letting them inside, and then their expressions as they tried not to stare at her ruined face. She was a cop’s wife, and knew what they were thinking. ‘New nose,’ she explained with a quick, embarrassed smile. ‘Thirtieth-birthday present from my husband.’

Magozzi’s thoughts went off on a side track, wondering what the world was coming to when husbands gave their young wives plastic surgery for their birthday. What the hell kind of statement was that? Happy birthday, honey, and, for Chrissake, go get your face fixed.

Tommy Deaton’s wife was looking at him with polite uncertainty, probably wondering why they were there. She collapsed on the foyer rug when they told her.

After she came around, Gino and Magozzi helped her make some phone calls, then had about fifteen minutes to ask all the terrible questions they had to ask, while Mary Deaton sat ramrod straight on the sofa, tears running down her face, but answering everything. She knew the drill.

The normally smart-mouthed, hard-nosed Gino was tender with her, as he always was when he did this kind of thing, his heart sticking out all over the place. ‘So you had no reason to worry when Tommy didn’t come home last night?’

‘No. Like I said, he was crazy for cross-country skiing. Him and Toby both, and they’d been waiting months for a decent snow. Tommy said he’d probably spend the night at Toby’s. He lives a lot closer to the park, and those two like a few beers after they ski. Tommy’s a real stickler about driving after he’s had a drink, so he stays over at Toby’s a lot in the winter.’

‘A real responsible fellow.’ Gino smiled at her.

‘Yes, he is.’

She kept talking about him in the present tense, which always made Magozzi uncomfortable when he was talking to surviving family members. It wasn’t really denial. Sometimes it just took a long time for death to trickle down into speech patterns.

Gino chuckled softly. ‘You know, I stay out all night, even when I’m on the job, and my wife’s all over me on the cell the next morning. Where am I, what am I doing, when am I getting home… that sort of thing.’

Mary Deaton looked at him as if she’d never heard of such behavior. ‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

She almost smiled. ‘Tommy wouldn’t like it one bit if I tried to check up on him like that. He’s pretty much his own man, you know what I mean?’

‘I do.’

Mary Deaton’s parents arrived then and made a beeline for their daughter, eliciting a fresh gush of tears and the pathetic, quiet wailing of a full-grown woman slipping immediately back to childhood when the arms of a parent could protect you against almost anything. Magozzi and Gino moved well back, looking anywhere but at the clustered three-some, trying not to listen to that first flush of shared grief that could drown the hardest cop after a while if he let himself hear it.

Eventually the father broke away and walked over, introduced himself as Bill Warner, and shook both their hands. He was taller than Gino, shorter than Magozzi, with a gray brush cut, a well-lined face, and a trim body he carried in a very familiar way.

Gino took one look at him and said, ‘You’re on the job.’

Bill Warner gave him a sad smile. ‘Was. Twenty years with MPD. Retired two years now, but glad to hear it still shows. Mary says you’ve been real nice to her. I thank you for that. Did you have a chance to ask her what you needed to?’

‘All we need for now,’ Magozzi replied. ‘There may be more later.’

Mr Warner nodded. ‘There always is. Anything we can do. Any of us.’ He took a card out of his wallet and handed it to him. ‘Alice and I are going to take Mary home with us today. Home number’s there, and my cell. Any chance you can give me something about what really went down? All Mary can say is he’s gone, and so far the news is just a bunch of talking heads trying to reword the same old bullshit. I’ve got purple prose coming out of my ears and I only had fifteen minutes to listen to it on the way over here. Goddamn vultures just keep harping about all the traumatized kids, like that was the only tragedy here…’ He stopped himself and took a breath, and cooled down the red in his face a couple of shades. ‘Sorry. I’m reacting all wrong. It’s just that we didn’t even hear two cops had been murdered until Mary called. The news just keeps yammering about the goddamned snowmen getting knocked down…’ He almost lost it again, and apologized again.