Ted Wood - Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

The first thing I saw were feet. Then the foreshortened length of a man's body lying head down on the staircase. I could see nothing moving beyond. It didn't mean he was alone. I stood up, still crouching carefully, and ran down the stairs. There was a handgun, some kind of automatic, lying beside the body. I booted it away but did not stop until I was through the doorway at the bottom and had rolled sideways against the bar.

I crouched, listening. The only sound was the creaking of the building under the northeast wind and the sand-storm rustle of the tiny brittle snowflakes against the windows. I switched on my flashlight and flicked it over the room. It seemed empty. Moving carefully, I went back to the doorway and found the light switch.

The lights fluttered for a moment, then settled down, and I could see that the place was empty. Gun in hand, I searched the rest of the lower level. It was deserted. There was a bottle on the counter and a half-filled glass. I looked at it in disbelief. My gunman had been relaxing over a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. Jesus! They don't make hoodlums like they used to. He was trained enough or scared enough to keep the lights off so nobody could see him in the bar. Perhaps he had been expecting me. Well. Now we'd met.

I went back to him, first switching on the stairway light. He was lying as I had left him. One bullet had caught him through the chest. That must have been my first shot at the muzzle flash. The second had hit him in the left eye. He had no pulse in his throat. I had closed off any chance of getting information from him, even though he might have been as useless as Elliot back at the other cottage with the C.L.A.W. women.

I picked up his handgun. It was a Walther P.38. I slipped it into my pocket and went back to Nancy's room. As I entered and switched on the light she squirmed with fear, then relaxed as she recognized me. I took out my pocket knife and cut the scarf from her mouth. Words poured out of her instantly. "Did you shoot him? Did you?"

"He's dead, Nancy." I cut the two belts that held her wrists to the bedposts, then the stockings that tied her ankles. She sat up, sobbing. "It was awful. Gross."

"Did he molest you sexually?"

She put her hands over her pretty mouth, pressing her lips against her teeth, speaking through clenched fingers. "He raped me. He made me… do things. It was terrible." She ran out of words and sobbed helplessly.

"Come to the bathroom." I handed her a blanket and she stumbled to her feet and came with me, tugging the blanket around her shoulders. I took a handful of tissues from the dispenser. "Wipe your mouth out with these." She did it, not looking at me, not knowing what I was doing, then hunched over the sink and vomited dry bile. I handed her a bottle of Scope. "Use this." While she was busy I folded the tissues she had given me and put them in my tunic pocket. Her blanket had slipped but she did not care. I wasn't a man. I was an act of God, blind as the snowstorm that raged around the Tavern, keeping me from driving her fifty miles to the nearest hospital and the help she needed.

When she had gargled and spat a couple of times she straightened up and looked at me. I told her, "It's important that you wipe yourself inside and save the tissues. Can you do that for me?"

She looked at me blankly, not replying, but I handed her more tissues, then closed the door and waited. I had never felt so inadequate in all my life. She needed a doctor to check her, a woman to comfort her. I was neither. I was a rough-and-ready copper trying to compensate for the crime and the criminal ugliness of the weather.

I looked around the room for something to put the swabs into. Without going through her luggage there was nothing obvious. I called through the door, "Save the swab. I'm going downstairs," and I went down, stepping over the body without looking down at it.

I searched the place again from end to end to make sure there was nobody hiding in a beer cooler or behind empty crates. When I was sure, I went to the bar and took down the Black Velvet. It had never tasted better. The purity of the taste thrilled me and it went down like soft fire, spreading out through my whole body. Then I picked up some foil wrap from the kitchen and went back up.

She answered nervously when I knocked. "Who is it?"

"Chief Bennett."

She opened the door for me and stood back, not speaking.

She was wearing the bottom half of a brown pants suit and a white brassiere. I said, "I'll wait outside while you dress," but she shook her head silently so I picked up the swab she had left on the dresser and wrapped it in some of the foil. Then I took out the other and wrapped it. The move was probably unnecessary. The guy on the stairs was most likely the culprit. But if he weren't, we would need this evidence when I brought the guy in, and I intended to. Rape is the worst crime in the book, for my money. I asked her, "Do you have a lipstick I can borrow?"

She looked at me in surprise, wondering if she had heard right, and I tried a tiny laugh to let her know that the world was still rotating on its axis despite what had happened to her tonight.

"Not for me-I doubt you have my shade. I just want to mark these."

She said, "Oh," in a faint voice, and looked in her purse. The lipstick was very pale but it marked on the foil. I marked the appropriate one "Oral" and put both in my breast pocket.

She was fully dressed by now, in a fawn sweater and the jacket of her pants suit. I sat down on the bed and gestured for her to take the chair. She did, and I told her what had to happen.

"You can't stay here alone. What I'm proposing is that I take you back to the station. There's a policewoman there and you'll be safe until your parents get there. I guess they're still at the dance."

She began to weep silently, only the movement of her shoulders giving away what was happening. I stood up and squeezed her shoulder. "It's all over. You're going to be okay. Tomorrow morning, soon as the snow is cleared, your folks will take you to the hospital in Sunbridge. If they prefer they can ship you right down to Toronto on one of your dad's helicopters."

She snuffled quietly and I told her, "First off, you'll need your outdoor clothes. I've got a snowmobile just up the road. It's cold outside."

She stood up automatically and looked for her boots. They were lying beside the bed. So were her other clothes-blue jeans, the Irish sweater, and her underwear. The panties were torn. I picked them up and put them in my pocket with the swabs. More evidence. She watched me without speaking. I didn't like that. She was in shock and I didn't want her going catatonic on me. I was glad Val would be waiting at the station.

"Get your coat and we'll go." Her coat was on the back of the door on a hanger. It was raccoon, but made from lush pelts sewn in a chevron pattern. It was as expensive as most mink coats but without the pretension.

"That's good. You'll be snug in that. Put a scarf over your head and we'll go."

She came out of the room and I locked it. Anyone who chose could slip the lock in a moment as I had, but it was the closest I could come to sealing the crime scene for forensic investigation later. Nancy was taller in her boots, but frail-seeming and timid. I took her by the elbow and checked her for a moment.

"Nancy, the man I shot is lying on the stairs. He can't hurt you any more, so don't be afraid. I'll take your arm. When we get to him, tell me if he was the guy who assaulted you."

She looked at me wide-eyed, as if I were speaking a foreign language. I gave her a little nod. "Come on, now, be brave." I held her elbow and walked one step ahead of her down the stairs to the body. When we reached it I asked her, "Is he the one?"

She burst into tears, nodding her head over and over, wordlessly.