Ted Wood: Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

The phone ring was a relief. I picked it up at once. That's my arrangement with the woman who answers the extension for me while I'm away. I take it when I'm at home or after ten o'clock at night.

"Police Department."

"Reid. Come right away. They've been here. They took all my film. All my goddamn film. Everything." Carl Simmonds was almost soprano in his anger. I told him to wait there and hung up.

Val looked up, waiting instructions. I said, "I want you to stay and make sure our visitor doesn't come to any harm. I have to go to see the photographer."

"Does he have something for you-a clue?"

"Yes," I lied. "Meantime, make yourself comfortable. There's blankets under the counter if you need them. Bunk down in the spare cell and snooze. I'll leave Sam minding the store."

Two minutes later they were both in cells, one locked, one unlocked, and I was on the station skidoo heading for Carl's cottage. It had taken me most of the two minutes to get out of the garage past the snowdrift. I'd ended up trampling it solid at one end so it would bear the weight of the machine. As a result, I was soaked with perspiration but cooling in the relentless wind, still flushing snow at me as if it would never end.

I have never worked out why city people buy snowmobiles and ride them for fun. Up here they're a tool, a vehicle that does the work of a dog team, without the fighting. But they're no fun to ride, especially on a night like this one.

By the time I got to Carl's place I could feel the beginnings of frostbite. There was almost no sensation in my cheeks and nose. I stood and pounded on his front door and pounded my frozen face with alternate hands until he opened up for me. I wished he would hurry. There were skidoo tracks on the road but I had no idea which way to follow them, and no idea who to look for if the tracks led to a crowd like there was at the Lakeside or the Legion. I needed some quick details from Carl and I could go after whoever had taken his film.

I had never been in Carl's house before but had expected taste and elegance. Yesterday, things probably were that way. Tomorrow for sure, but tonight there was a welter of furniture, magazines, books, pictures, all tossed anyhow into the center of the living room. Carl was still wearing the clothes he'd had on at the Legion Hall, but the pockets in the jacket had been cut away raggedly.

He said nothing to me as I entered, but stood there for me to check the damage and whistle.

"Were they looking for the photographs you took at the Ball?"

"That's what they said." He tossed his head to throw back his long blonde hair and waved his hands despairingly. "For a couple of lousy negatives they did this."

I moved further into the room, stepping over the rubble, stooping to pick up a book. I closed it, noting automatically the title Out of Africa. "How many were there?"

"Three of them, all wearing blue skidoo suits, one-piece jobs like the kind they sell in Canadian Tire. They all had red ski masks over their faces."

"All dressed identically?"

He nodded. "And very bloody tacky they looked, too."

"Were they men, women, how tall, how heavy? I need anything you noticed, I want a handle on this thing."

He was bending down to pick up an ebony carving that must have been some kind of fertility symbol. He noticed me watching him and went a little red, dropping the statue and straightening up, wiping his palms on his thighs. "Okay. I'm wasting time. Let me get a drink and I'll sit and concentrate."

I didn't need a drink, but I wanted his concentration so I said nothing. He set a small sideboard back on its legs. It looked as if it cost as much as my house. He opened the front and swore once as liquor from a smashed bottle ran out onto his rug, a sand-colored Moslem carpet of some kind. He pulled out a bottle of Hennessy and two glasses, one of them snapped off at the stem. He poured about four ounces into each and handed the complete one to me. I nodded thanks and took it. I needed his memory. He was a photographer, he used his eyes better than most people.

"What happened was I was working in the darkroom when they came in. The door at the side was locked, they smashed a pane of glass and let themselves in that way." He took a sip of his cognac and sat down, cross-legged among the ruined books and paintings. "I came out of the darkroom when I heard the noise."

Now he straightened up suddenly, importantly, and walked to the back entrance to the room. "I was standing here and I said, 'What the hell is going on?' Something like that. Then the leader said. 'Give us the negatives, faggot.'"

"The leader?" I prodded quickly.

He shrugged. "Seemed to be. He was the only one to speak the whole time they were here. The others did as he told them. He had the authority, I suppose you'd say."

"You're sure it was a man?"

He cocked his head toward me, surprised. "Of course, why?"

I gave him a little of the detail about C.L.A.W. that the prisoner had told me. "It's some kind of feminist movement. There may be men in it but they don't figure prominently so far."

He sipped his cognac, then stood swirling it in the broken-stemmed glass. From his gesture this might have been an ordinary night and he would have been listening to Mozart on his stereo and having a nightcap in comfort. I felt sorry for him, but I was even more sorry for the girl at the motel and beginning to feel sorry for the Carmichael kid.

"Let me replay this, if you don't mind," he said at last. I waved one hand in silence and he went out, scrunching over the debris, to the back door of his summer kitchen. He paused as he came back, balancing his glass on top of a plant pot that was still standing in the window.

Now he advanced to the center of the room, stood still for a moment, backed off, advanced again, knelt down to his right side, covering his head with his left hand, then stood up.

"The man was in front. He was close to your height, maybe five-eleven, well built. He was right-handed." He paused and thought for a moment. "He was the one who hit me and then showed the others how to shake the place down like this. He's the sonofabitch I hope you catch."

"What color were his eyes?" I asked quietly.

"Brown," Carl said without hesitation. "So were the eyes of the second person-slim hips, might have been a woman or a small man. I couldn't tell, he or she didn't move around much." He hissed, suddenly angry. "If he-she had moved much I would have known. You can always tell if it's a man by the articulation of the legs. Queens don't fool anybody."

"What about the third one? What color eyes, any hair showing, what?"

Carl put his hand to his chin, then clasped the other hand across his chest to lock the elbow. It was the move Jack Benny used to make on TV when the world was younger and warmer and things other than pain and humiliation were worth a laugh.

"Undoubtedly a woman," he decided. "Not much in the boobies department, rather heavier in the hips, about five-four, perhaps one-thirty." He stopped for so long I was about to ask him another question before he said, "And she had brown eyes with seven gold flecks in the left pupil."

"You're kidding!" I almost laughed. To stand in the wreckage of your home and take notice of that kind of detail called for a toughness of spirit most people don't have.

"Absolutely true," he said, throwing up his hands. "I know you're going to catch her and when you do, I'll identify her for you."

"So. Okay. What exactly happened after he hit you?" I was scribbling the descriptions in my book as I talked and he paused a moment to let me catch up.

"They looked for the negatives of the film I had shot at the Ball. They got them right away, I hadn't even had time to print them up. Then, just to be sure, I guess, they did all this."