Ted Wood - Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

At least that was my guess, and it made me sure that the Carmichael kid was dead if I didn't get her back tonight.

I asked how C.L.A.W. had reacted to the news that Nancy had done everything to blow security short of writing an editorial for the college paper. Apparently like all democratically run lunatic fringes they had taken a vote and decided to proceed. They had counted on the Guard group to give them what Margaret described cryptically as "firepower."

The dead girl at the highway had struck up a romance with one of the Guard people, I couldn't find out which one, and that had intensified the complications.

"Doesn't it bother you that this Katie is dead? And the same guys who killed her now have another member, young Nancy? Don't you care?"

Margaret Sumner looked at me with something like amusement. "No," she said.

The other girl protested. "We don't want anybody harmed, we're a peaceful group." But Margaret Sumner had the last word.

"We don't care," she said.

I gave up and asked the last, hopeless question. "Why did you set this particular heist up? What have you got against Carmichael that you'd put his daughter in this kind of danger?"

She looked at me impassively, the true believer talking to the heretic. "You don't need to know. It's personal."

I gave up. None of them knew enough about this Tom character to suit me. He was the wild card in the deck, unknown even to the kid who had fired at me. I wondered what kind of zealot he was. These Guard groups spring up from time to time, mostly made up of spoiled rich kids doing something about their Oedipus complexes by opposing the church or corporate profits, anything, right or wrong, with more seniority than they've got. Mostly they just march and sing. They're harmless and their members grow up to be teachers and newspaper columnists who vote Socialist.

But this man sounded different. Elliot's description of him was the key. He had described him as "around thirty-five." By that age he should have shucked his activism along with his acne. I was worried, but too tired and stretched to know what to do about it.

In the end I left them all there. There was no way to take them back in. If I put them on another skidoo in front of mine they could break for it. I didn't want to waste time chasing them down. It was even too much of a problem to bring in Elliot, so I handcuffed him and left him nude except for his towel. It would prevent his getting dressed, which meant he wouldn't be bothering me before the weather warmed up. I'd be back by then. In the meantime I would be free to chase down the skidoo tracks that led away from here.

I considered tying up the women, but instead immobilized them by taking all their outdoor clothing and the plug lead from the snowmobile outside. I also tore the phone out of the wall. It was primitive and illegal but I had no choice. Two men who had killed before were outside somewhere, waiting for me. I didn't want them to be reinforced or even warned from here.

I took the outdoor clothes with me out to my snow machine, which was covered with snow by now. Fortunately it started easily, and I headed out behind the cabin onto the roadway. It was drifted in and I had to curtsey around the edges of the worst drifts, but I could see the track of another machine ahead of me. I followed it, pulling my face down into my collar, longing for a chance to curl up in a corner out of the snow and sleep like a dog.

The bite of the snowflakes that fluttered around the windshield kept me from dozing. I drove along the stale track up to the edge of Murphy's Harbour proper, around the curve that matches the curve of the bay, past the bait store and past the point where the track turned off, toward the side door of the Lakeside Tavern.

I was wide awake now, but I didn't pull in. Instead I did the clever thing, winding up the throttle and passing the place at a roar, heading up and over the hump beside the bridge above the lock and around the first corner toward the police station.

That's where I stopped, slipped on my snowshoes, and tramped back, keeping off the center of the road although the light on the bridge was so obscured by flying snow that nobody could have seen me from the Tavern. The side door was locked, but this is a small town. Irv Whiteside once showed me where he kept the key, in a coffee can under one of the beams that supports the side of the Tavern on pilings over the water. I think he left it there in case any friends want liquor. They took what they wanted and paid him on Monday when he opened again. That way he wasn't bootlegging-they were breaking in.

I took the key and opened the side door, very softly. My snowshoes were propped outside in a drift. It's an old building and it creaks in the wind. I hoped the wind would cover the sound of my entrance. There is another door sealing off the inside so that my entrance wouldn't be announced by a blast of cold snowy air.

I went up the stairs. I knew Irv had a couple of rooms he rented, two he used for himself. I tried his room first. It was locked, of course, but the simple Yale slipped in a moment to my knife blade. I squatted low to the floor and shone my flashlight around. The room was neat. There was a TV set and some comfortable furniture, including a double bed, but nothing more. The adjacent room was filled with stores, mostly liquor. I went back out, locking the door again.

The next door was also locked and I went through the same procedure. A quick search showed it was the room occupied by Nancy's parents. It was empty except for their clothes and toiletries.

As I touched the third door I heard a low sound inside, muffled, half scream, half burble. It made the hair prickle on the back of my neck. It sounded as if someone had a woman held hostage, one hand over her mouth, the other very probably holding a gun that would be pointed at the door. I stood to one side of the door frame as I slipped the lock with my left hand, eased the door open with my right. When I had it open a millimeter past the catch point I drew my gun and hurled myself inside, rolling away from the door as I landed. I collided with the end of the bed, but not hard enough to bother me. I lay perfectly still for a half second. The sound persisted but there was no scuffling of feet, nothing to indicate a struggle, only the squeaking and rocking of the bedstead against my shoulder.

I crouched, moving a pace to the left and holding my flashlight over my head at what must have looked like chest height. Nobody fired at me. I flashed it over the bed. In the beam I saw the shifting pattern on the bed, white flesh and black shadows writhing like snakes. I scuttled around the bed and into the bathroom. There was nobody there. Only then did I come back into the bedroom, still wary, and switch on the light.

Nancy Carmichael was tied to the wooden bedstead. She was naked and spread-eagled, her ankles and wrists tied to the corners. She had a scarf around her head, the folded thickness of it jammed into her open mouth. Her eyes were rolled toward me like those of a frightened horse. I went to the bed and patted her ankle. "I'll be back, I have to search the place."

She moaned again. I could read the anguish but I had to be sure there was nobody downstairs, and I believed there was. There had been no tracks away from the building.

I turned off the light so I wouldn't be silhouetted, then advanced, gun drawn, to the head of the stairs. I was crouching automatically, as I've crouched a thousand times in enemy areas.

It saved my life again. As I reached the top of the stairs a bullet came out of the darkness, an inch high over my head instead of through my throat. I fired at once down the muzzle flash, then again, lower, not even stopping to think.

I heard the rushing collapse of a falling body and the clatter of a dropped gun. I fell to the floor and held my light above me, shining it down the stairs.