Ronald Malfi - Snow

“What’s going on, Todd?” It was Fred Wilkinson now, standing outside the Cherokee. He blew into his hands. “Everything all right?”

Todd gave Fred a thumbs-up, then turned to Kate. “Get Mr. Clement into the car before he freezes to death.”

“What about my daughter?”

“We’ll find her,” he promised the man. “But you need to get yourself warm right now. This is Kate Jansen. Follow her to the car.”

Finally—blessedly—Eddie Clement dropped his big meaty hands from Todd’s forearms, leaving behind dull aches in their wake. The son of a bitch had probably bruised him down to the muscle by the feel of things, and Todd was almost certain there were red finger-shaped splotches impressed on his flesh.

Kate put a hand on Eddie’s broad flannel back and led him to the Cherokee. Todd noticed two rips in the fabric of Eddie Clement’s flannel coat, one at each shoulder blade, each one perhaps five inches long. The fabric around each slit looked frayed. As they reached the Cherokee, Kate peered back at Todd from over her shoulder, as if to shoot him her thoughts through invisible magic rays. Vaguely, Todd wondered if Eddie Clement made her feel as uneasy as he had felt when Eddie had had his wide, stumpy fingers digging into his arms.

Still blowing into his hands, Fred Wilkinson came up alongside him. “What’s the story?”

“Guy’s been wandering out here for God knows how long. Says his car broke down a mile or so down the highway.” He rubbed his hands down his face, suddenly aware that his nose was growing numb. “He says his eight-year-old daughter is out here somewhere. Lost.”

“Are you serious?” Fred Wilkinson looked instantly ill.

“Well, that’s what he says… ”

“But you don’t believe him?”

In truth, it hadn’t occurred to him that maybe Eddie Clement wasn’t being completely truthful until just now. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Why would he lie?”

Todd shrugged and stuffed his hands back beneath his armpits for warmth. “I have no clue. But he said he’s been out here walking around for maybe an hour.”

The skepticism on Fred’s face only reinforced Todd’s own. “In these temperatures? He’d be a popsicle in under thirty minutes.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

“Then of course, if there is a little girl out here somewhere…” Fred’s voice trailed off. He turned and looked out over the vast terrain—the mounds of snow rising up on either side of the highway and the looming forest of pine trees all around them, so tall they looked capable of poking holes in the sky. “So what’s the game plan?”

Todd considered. “Well, hoping the goddamn car’s not fucked from running into that snowbank, I say we keep driving until we find Mr. Clement’s car. If a little girl disappeared from it, there may be some sign, some clue.”

“Footprints in the snow,” Fred suggested.

“Right. Or maybe she’ll be there when we find the car.” But this last thought had caused something hideous to surface in his mind: the little girl’s body stripped naked and disemboweled, blood soaking into the seats and pooling on the floor, constellations of blood spattered in frozen gems across the windshield, a sodden pair of panties partially buried in the snow.

Perhaps Fred Wilkinson was thinking this, too; his eyes shifted haltingly in Todd’s direction, then retreated back to the canopy of stars high above the treetops.

Both men began trudging back to the Cherokee.

“Fred,” Todd said. “Just help me keep an eye on this guy, all right?”

Fred clapped him on the back, his eyes streaming tears from the cold; they froze before they reached the swells of his cheeks.

“You bet,” he told Todd. “You bet.”

CHAPTER FOUR

It took Todd, Fred, and Kate leaning against the front grille of the Cherokee while Nan Wilkinson gunned the accelerator in reverse to excavate the vehicle from the snowbank. It withdrew with a desperate crunching sound, broken bits of glass and metal showering the icy roadway. The tires squealed and Fred held up one hand to instruct his wife to let up off the accelerator.

Todd dropped to his knees and swiped two fingers through a spill of green liquid glistening on the surface of the ice.

“Radiator fluid,” Fred said from over his shoulder.

Kate, who was already shivering from the cold, said, “That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Ain’t good,” Fred replied, noncommittal.

“There’s a town about three miles up the road,” Todd said, standing up and wiping his fingers down the length of his jeans. “If it’s not leaking too badly we can make it there and assess the damage.”

“And what if it is leaking too badly?” said Kate.

Todd was at a loss for words. Thankfully, Fred Wilkinson intervened, putting a fatherly arm around each of them. “We’ll deal with that when we come to it. I think we’ll be all right.”

“Let’s go,” Todd said, and they all climbed back into the Jeep.

Nan volunteered to sit in the roomy hatchback compartment with their bags. She rested her head on the oversized stuffed bear Todd had bought back at the airport and hugged herself for warmth. Todd eased the Cherokee along the roadway, his line of sight cockeyed now, owing to the missing headlight. In the passenger seat beside him, Kate sat facing the backseat, where Fred Wilkinson was attempting to examine Eddie Clement’s vital signs. Fred pressed a thumb beneath each of Eddie’s eyes and pulled the reddened lids down.

“Look up,” Fred instructed him.

Eddie Clement looked up. “You a doctor?”

“A veterinarian.”

“I look like a cocker spaniel to you?”

“He’s trying to help you,” Kate interjected. Todd thought she’d been offended by the stranger’s inconsideration.

Fred ignored the comment completely. “Let me see your hands. Palms up.”

Eddie Clement obliged. Todd glanced up in the rearview and caught Eddie staring just past Fred Wilkinson’s head as Fred examined his hands. He was looking, Todd thought, at Nan.

“Where you from, Eddie?” Todd asked him.

“Originally? Baton Rogue.”

“I meant where were you coming from when your car broke down?”

“Oh. Westover Hills.”

“That in Iowa?”

“Oh, sure.”

Something about him is wrong, Todd thought. I can’t put my finger on it, but something is slightly out of whack.

Kate, who must have felt the discomfort as well, turned back around and faced forward. She fished her cell phone from her purse and tried without success to locate a signal.

“It was just you and your daughter in the car, Eddie?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think she would have run off like that?”

“Sometimes she plays games. Just like I said.”

“It’s twenty below out there,” Todd said. “A bit cold for games.”

“Her name’s Emily.”

The rest of them were silent. For one horrible second, Todd was overcome by the feeling that this man was playing with them, toying with them. Like a cat batting around a mouse, just before the final blow.

“There,” said Kate, pointing.

Todd nodded. “I see it.”

Kate’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What the hell?”

It was a car, all right—stranded on the shoulder of the road, just as Eddie had promised. However, had it not been for the driver’s side door sticking straight out into the roadway, Todd would have driven right past it. The whole thing was literally blanketed in snow, causing it to blend almost seamlessly with the packed mounds of snow running along the embankment. Except for the car’s radio antenna, it looked like an igloo.