Nevada Barr - Winter Study

“It’s a still from a videotape.”

The voice was no more than six inches from her ear. Years of not responding to the machinations of people whose day she was ruining for one reason or another, Anna didn’t leap out of her skin, shrieking.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked.

Adam leaned down, looking at the photograph on the screen. He was shirtless. Heat radiated from his skin. Threads of long hair trailed across Anna’s neck like the tickle of spiderwebs walked through in the dark. Muscles at the corner of his jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.

Fear on men smelled sour. Adam smelled of molten iron and metal ice-cube trays, red coals and rocks brittle with cold.

Adam reeked with a distillation of rage.

Anna sat perfectly still, her eyes on the picture on the monitor, and waited for the scalding anger boiling off Adam to dissipate. The back of her chair moved fractionally, the oak creaking as Adam leaned on it hard, using it as a lame man would use a crutch to push himself upright. The palpable heat of the man moved away from Anna’s cheek and the sense of being on thin ice over a raging volcano abated. She clicked the BACK arrow, getting rid of the bloody photograph.

“I can’t imagine anything worse than what you had to go through,” she said. She didn’t have to pretend to be sincere. If he had killed his wife, by the look of the young man in the picture it hadn’t been nearly as much fun as he’d hoped.

“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Adam said.

“The coroner ruled it suicide,” Anna replied evenly. Adam was no longer breathing in her ear, his hair trailing over her shoulder, but he’d not stepped away either.

“Why are you looking at that?” Adam sounded more worried than angry at the breach of his privacy, or such privacy as remained in the instant-information era.

“Getting to know you,” Anna said. “Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends.” She didn’t take her eyes from the monitor, but she wasn’t seeing. Every pore was opening to sense Adam: where he stood, how he stood, if he was dangerous.

His breath puffed out on a dry cough. The closest thing to a laugh he was going to make.

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” he said and, rather than leaving, pulled up another straight-backed chair to sit next to her, scooting it up till his knees were less than a foot from hers. He put his long forearms down on his long thighs and leaned in till their faces were close enough, Anna could see the tiny red rivers of blood from broken vessels in his eyes. “Do you think I took Robin? Is that it?”

His breath was hot, residual fire from the fury, and smelled sweet, as if he’d chewed a mint leaf. Anna couldn’t back away from him without tipping her chair over.

“Adam,” she said wearily. “You’re crowding me. People crowd to intimidate. Could you either back off or do it in a more interesting way?”

Another cough of laughter. Anna considered whether or not she should go on the comedy circuit in the Catskills.

“Sorry,” he said, sat up straight and smiled. It was a good smile, full of healthy teeth, and it went all the way to his eyes crinkling the corners. Anna believed he was sorry, that he’d not meant to scare her. It didn’t mean he was a nice guy.

“Did you make Robin disappear?” she asked.

“Robin didn’t need to be here this winter. She should have stayed home or waited tables in St. Paul.” He rubbed his face. Both hands continued up until his fingers pushed his hair out in thick tresses. “We’ll start the search at first light?”

The question took Anna off guard. “Yeah, I guess. Will we find her?” she asked pointedly.

He smiled again. This time, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Who knows?” He rose and walked from the common room. A second later, Anna heard the door to his and Bob’s room opening and closing again.

She couldn’t tell if she’d just had an up-close-and-personal conversation with a backwoods John Wayne Gacy or not.

“Ted Bundy,” she corrected herself.

In the minutes spent drinking the essence of Adam from the air as he stood over her half dressed and burning, she’d not tasted the sour warp of a psychopath. But, then, one didn’t. That was why they got away with it.

Anna logged off. She wanted to rest, to sleep, but seemed to have lost the knack. She wanted to go outside, but she’d freeze to death in the dark. January’s paltry eight hours of daylight depressed her. It was just enough to remind a person they weren’t blind before it abandoned them for another winter’s night. Because she could think of nothing more productive to do, she went back into Katherine Huff’s room and stood staring at the simple dorm furniture. Two mediumsized duffel bags; all the personal gear any of them had been allowed to bring. There wasn’t a lot to dig through, but Anna did it. Dirty socks and underpants were her reward. Since she’d taken the laptop, the desk was empty but for the cell phone charger plugged into the same outlet the computer had been.

Everything was so ordinary, so expected, at first she didn’t realize what she was looking at. Modern conveniences had become as air; only when they weren’t there were they noticed.

Why would Katherine have a cell phone charger out and plugged in when there was no cell reception on the island? Anna unplugged the charger and carried it back to her room, locking the door behind her. Katherine’s cell phone was still in her day pack. She’d kept it, not as evidence but out of spite for Bob. Not particularly flattering but, as it happened, useful. Having plugged the charger into the wall, she connected the phone. A red light behind a dark blue plastic oval lit up. The oval had a star on it. Around the star, an elliptical circle was traced in silver.

It was a satellite phone. Katherine did have cell service. If she had it, Bob had it. Bob had been anxious to retrieve this phone. He’d said he’d have to replace it out of his own pocket if it wasn’t found. At the time, Anna’d merely been impressed with his callousness. Now she wondered if he’d wanted the phone so no one would notice it was a satellite phone, know they had access to the outside world and one another.

Why wouldn’t he want anyone to know that? Afraid they’d all make pests of themselves asking to borrow it? It wasn’t as if they didn’t know why he was on the island. Anna hit the CONTACTS button and scrolled down the list of names. None of them were familiar but Ridley’s, with his work number at Michigan Tech, the Park Service office in Houghton and Bob Menechinn.

Without thinking why, she did it; Anna clicked on Menechinn and hit SEND. The warble of a loon called through the house. Quickly she pushed END. If Bob woke, if he looked, if he checked for missed calls, he would know the phone had been found. For several minutes, she sat still as stone and listened. There was no sound of doors or feet. Bob must have slept through the ringing.

A loon. The call of a loon in January.

The night Katherine had gone missing, Anna was awakened by the call of a loon. Since there wouldn’t be any loons on the island for months, she’d thought it a dream, like the dream she’d had of coyotes on her mother’s ranch. The coyotes frolicked in dreamscape, but the loon had been of this world. Bob had been called the night Katherine died. Katherine had died with the satellite phone in her hand.

Anna found RECENT CALLS and opened it. The last call was to Bob Menechinn.

Maybe he’d slept through that one too. There was no way Anna could tell if the call had gone through or how long it had been but, even if Bob had missed it, presumably Katherine would have left him a message. Her last words. Bob never mentioned a message.