Castillo Linda - Outsider

“Hi, Adam,” I say.

“Katie.”

Remembrance flickers in his eyes. The hint of a smile on a mouth that doesn’t seem to quite remember how to do it. Even after all these years, I still see the boy he once was. The one who could talk a blue moon. The one I’d locked in the corn crib until he cried.…

“I hear you have an injured motorist on your hands,” I say.

“Found her when we were out for a sleigh ride. Looks like she wrecked out. I think she’s hurt. There’s blood.”

“We thought she was dead,” the boy says with a tad too much enthusiasm, “but Datt said she was just cold.”

Adam addresses his son. “ Hohla die shveshtahs. Fazayla eena zu kumma inseid. ” Fetch your sisters. Tell them to come inside.

Giving me a lingering look, the boy leaves us, his stocking feet echoing as he runs down the hall.

I start toward the cot, but Adam stops me. “ Sie katt en bix, Katie.” She had a gun. “ Sie gedroit mich mitt es. ” She threatened me with it.

“Where’s the gun?” I ask in Deitsch.

Frowning, he reaches into his coat pocket and produces a Sig Sauer P320. It’s a nine-millimeter. Polymer grip.

“Where’s the clip?” I ask.

He reaches into his other pocket and pulls it out. It’s a typical magazine that holds seventeen rounds. I take the weapon, check the chamber, find it empty, drop it into my own coat pocket, the clip in the other.

“Did she say anything?” I ask.

“Not much.”

“Did she give you her name?” I’ll run her through LEADS to check for a record or an active warrant.

He shakes his head. “She was in and out. Delirious from the cold, I think.”

I’m ruminating the presence of the gun and the fact that he brought her here in spite of it. Another cop might have questioned his judgment, especially with three young children in tow. But having been born and raised Amish, I understand the mind-set. You don’t leave anyone, including an outsider, to the elements, especially if they’re hurt.

My eyes move past Adam to the woman on the cot. She’s bundled in a tattered quilt that’s pulled halfway over her face, damp hair sticking to her cheek. Even from several feet away, I see her shivering violently, which is a good sign if she’s hypothermic. Wet leather boots on the floor beneath the cot. A sopping coat hung on a chair back, water dripping. A smear of blood mars the wood plank floor next to the cot.

“Stay here,” I say to Adam, and start toward the woman. “Ma’am?” I begin. “I’m a police officer. I need to see your—”

The woman lifts her head and looks at me. The slap of recognition stops me in my tracks, cuts my words short. I haven’t seen Gina Colorosa in ten years. Once upon a time we’d been friends. We attended the police academy together. Graduated from the same class. We shared an apartment. Shared a hell of a lot more than that—all the trials and tribulations of young women finding their place in the world. If it hadn’t been for Gina, I probably wouldn’t have found my way into law enforcement.

“Damn. Kate Burkholder. Took you long enough to get here.”

Her voice is rougher than I remember. Weak despite the echo of the old attitude I used to admire back when I was too young, too naive, to know better. I don’t know what to say to her. Or how to feel. I can’t stop looking at her. I can’t believe she’s here in Painters Mill. That we didn’t part on good terms adds an uncomfortable dimension to all of it.

Her entire body quakes beneath the quilt. Her teeth chatter uncontrollably. Her complexion is shockingly pale, her lips tinged with blue. Her hair is wet. My EMT training kicks in. I look at Adam. “We need blankets. A dry towel. And hot tea, if you have it.”

Nodding, he leaves the room.

“Get me … electric blanket,” she says.

“How long were you out in the cold?” I ask.

“Not sure. A few hours. Too damn long.”

“You’re hypothermic. I’ll get you warmed up and then we need to get you to the hospital.”

“No … hospital,” she says between bursts of shivering.

I look down at the smear of blood on the floor. “You’re bleeding. Were you injured in the crash? How badly are you hurt?” In the back of my mind I acknowledge the possibility that if she’s seriously hypothermic, she may not know or remember. Confusion is a common manifestation of hypothermia.

“Airbag got me in the face, gave me a bloody nose,” she says. “That’s all. I’m fine.”

Something in the way she’s looking at me gives me pause, gives credence to the odd sense that something isn’t quite right with all this.

“We’ve got serious weather on the way,” I tell her. “Ambulances won’t be running long. I can get you to the hospital, but we need to leave now. I suggest you take me up on the offer because we may not be able to get out later.”

“Kate, I’m fine.” When I don’t respond, she musters a weak grin. “For God’s sake … I just … need to warm up.”

I turn to see Adam standing at the door, several folded blankets and a ratty bath towel in his arms. “The girls are making hot tea,” he tells me, his eyes flicking to Gina.

“Good. Thanks.” I take the blankets. As I drape them over Gina, I try not to notice the way her arms and legs are shaking beneath the quilt. The unsettling blue hue of her lips. The way she keeps clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Hair’s wet,” I tell her. “We need to get you dry. Are your clothes dry?”

“They’re … fine.”

“Can you sit up?”

“Yep.” Face contorting as if she’s in pain, she manages and reaches for the towel. “I can do it.”

I let her, trying not to notice the paleness of her hand, that she’s weak and doing her damnedest to pretend otherwise.

While she scrubs her hair dry with the towel, I tuck the blankets beneath her legs and layer yet another over her. “So what happened?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”

“I didn’t know we were in for this kind of weather. It was dark and snowing like crazy. I couldn’t see. Ran off the damn road and hit a tree.”

“Airbags deployed?”

“I told you they did.”

I nod. “Where were you headed?”

She hands me the towel. “To see you.”

“A heads-up would have been nice.”

“Yeah, well, hindsight.”

We stare at each other a full minute, minds working, neither of us speaking. “Are you still with Columbus Division of Police?” I ask.

“Last time I checked.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

The old wiliness flickers in her eyes. “Where’s my gun?”

“You mean the gun you pointed at the unarmed Amish man who was with his children and trying to help you?”

“That would be the one.” Sighing, she sinks back into the mattress. “Look, I’m sorry. I barely remember. I mean, I was in and out by that point. I’d been in the snow a long time.” She shrugs. “I didn’t know who he was or what he was up to.”

A quiet alarm starts to simmer at the back of my brain. Not a clanging bell warning me of impending danger, but a more subtle hum that stirs when someone’s not being up front. I’m well versed in the symptoms of hypothermia. I’ve seen a dozen cases in the years I’ve been a cop. The hunter that fell through the ice on Painters Creek a couple years ago. The kid who plunged through the ice on Miller’s Pond last winter. Confusion is common. Is that the case here? Or is there something else going on?

“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask.

“It was sort of a last-minute decision.”

“Why is that?”

“Let’s just say it was unplanned.”

A youngster’s voice in the hall draws my attention. I turn to see Adam taking a mug from a girl of about seven. She’s curious, her inquisitive eyes probing the mysterious Englischer woman. Her datt is on to her and he’s quick to send her on her way.