Ted Wood - Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

"Was that the only reason, do you think?" It was a guess, but this was turning into an unusual case. I wondered if one of the C.L.A.W. people had been a closet gay, resentful about his leanings, carrying on the ancient sport of fag-bashing.

Carl went back to his cognac and took a solid bite out of it. "I think the man was enjoying himself," he said simply.

"I'll try to get them all," I promised. "I saw skidoo tracks outside, just point which way they went and I'll follow."

He came to the door with me as I zipped up my parka and pulled down the flaps on my fur hat. It was savagely cold at his door but he stood there in his light jacket without shivering as he pointed out the direction they had taken. I admire that little guy. As I got on the machine he called out, "They went thataway!" and laughed.

I laughed and started my skidoo. I didn't need to be an Australian bushman to follow the trail. Once he had told me which way was coming and which one going, I followed the overlapping belt tracks at close to thirty miles an hour. It seemed to me there were only two tracks. One person must have been riding pillion. On the machine it was almost calm as I ran with the wind at my back. The tracks were still crisp and fresh, only beginning now to drift in.

Within two hundred yards they left the roadway and turned up over the rocks that loomed bare red in the headlights, swept clear of snow by the relentless wind. I followed up through the trees and onto an old logging trail that had been recleared that fall for snowmobiling. It was all part of the Reeve's plan for winter fun and games. He hadn't counted on its being used as a getaway road. But maybe the escapers hadn't reckoned on my following them, so I wound up the throttle and pushed on as fast as I could in the flat footprint of the machine ahead. The track led to a small open shelter in a clearing. It's not fancy-three walls and a roof with a stone fireplace. It's not worth vandalizing, and it's stood up for a few years now of snowmobiler rendezvous. The tracks turned into the front of it and I pulled in just behind, where they had obviously stopped. There was a welter of footprints and unmistakable evidence that a man had relieved himself, outside the shelter, out of sight. That meant Carl was right. At least one of the party was a man.

I checked the ground and decided that the two machines had met up with a third. It was hard to examine the footprints in the snow with a flashlight, but it seemed that two other people had been waiting here. That meant I had five of them to worry about. I flashed the light around the shelter, but whoever it was had not whiled away the time carving their initials or leaving their wallets, so I was no further ahead. There was nothing to do but get back on my machine and follow the triple track further on down another branch of the trail.

I could tell from a sudden dip that I must be nearing the lake, but was still surprised to burst suddenly out of the trees through one long snowdrift which had fortunately been beaten down enough by the people ahead that my machine didn't flounder. I gasped with cold as a long-bow wave of snow flung itself back over me, and I craned up tall to see over the windshield. The machine was not new and the windshield was scratched. With the loose snow on it, I couldn't see through. And now I needed to. The surface of the lake was frozen a foot thick, but on top of the ice the old snow had thawed in our bright January sunshine and refrozen until it was mirror slick. There were clear patches like this one all over the lake. Where the snow had clung it would be easy to follow the skidoo tracks, but here with new snow blowing, dry as sand over the smooth surface, I had to count on luck.

I slowed my speed to just above walking pace, finding the beam of my light picking up dimples on the surface where falling snow had been crimped under the belts of the machines ahead and had stood long enough to sculpt its own tiny drifts. As I went on, my head stuck out to the side of the windshield, I gradually picked up the pace to perhaps half the speed the others would be making, moving surely to a destination somewhere on the lake. I had worked out that much. They had no other reason for heading north as they were doing, away from the highway. And that meant I was within six or seven miles of them, perhaps of the missing girl. I might even wrap up this case and make it home by midnight.

And so I drove on, warmed by my own cleverness behind my single cone of light that picked up a million driven sparks of snow and the tiny crusted remains of a track in front of me.

At the very limit of my vision I saw something dark and square edged, low to the ice. I slowed a fraction before the geometry made sense. It was an ice-fishing hut out over the deep shoals in mid-channel where the big pickerel spend their winter. There is a village of them out there, from late December until March, when I would start handing out warnings to bring them in before the breakup.

A second hut came in view, and then a third, and then something so startling I let go of the handles of the machine to rub my eyes. The machine slowed to a stop on its deadman's throttle and I started out again slowly, not sure what I had seen. It was tall and white, flashing even whiter than the merciless snow. I wondered if it was an albino deer, and then my headlight caught it again and I drove up as fast as I could to the running woman, naked as the day she was born, screaming in a long formless wail.

I slammed the machine to a stop alongside her but she turned away, leaping over the surface as if the ice were hot instead of killing cold. Bundled up as I was in a parka and skidoo boots over my regular indoor uniform, I could not move fast and it took me thirty yards to catch up with her. I had to tackle her and drag her down like a rugby player. She screamed and fought, but I tore my parka off and bundled it around her and suddenly she stopped struggling and crouched there, whimpering like a child.

I picked her up, clear of the frozen surface. She pulled up her legs, trying to snuggle them out of the wind inside my short parka as I struggled to the skidoo and sat her in front of me behind the windshield. "Sit still," I ordered over the noise of the wind and the ticking motor.

I got on behind her, pulling her against me with my left hand as I opened the throttle, searching ahead for the closest fishing hut. I knew she would never make it to the mainland without freezing, probably losing both feet to frostbite. I had to get her under cover where it was warm.

I found a hut and stopped. "Stay put," I shouted, and went to the door. It was locked on a flimsy hasp, but I kicked it once and it opened. I went back for the woman, picking her up and carrying her into the hut. Her teeth were chattering like typewriter keys and she was shuddering so hard she shook in my arms. I knelt at the door and pushed her in. Then I pulled out my flashlight and followed her. It was the standard local hut, made from sheets of plywood lying on their sides, four feet apart. The roof was made of two more sheets and the ends were the same, cut to shape with a door one end, a window the other. Inside was a hole in the ice, bathtub sized, a bare wooden bench eighteen inches wide, and a tiny homemade stove about the size of one of the tins cookies came in when I was a kid. I helped her onto the seat and bent to the stove. There was a pile of wood chips beside it. I pulled my gloves off and took out my pocket knife. Working as quickly as I could I split one chip into slivers, then reached in my pocket for my notebook and ripped out a handful of pages. I crumpled them and put them in the stove, then the slivers on top. I always carry emergency matches in a waterproof tobacco can and I took it out and lit the fire. Within thirty seconds it had taken hold and I fed in more wood, slowly at first, then half filling the stove. The wind outside sucked the flames up around the raw wood and in another minute the hut was beginning to warm.