Chill Factor

“I just want peace. I want you.”

“Me you have,” she whispered and folded her arms around his head.

• • •

“Can you believe this?”

“Shh, Dutch. You’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

“So what? I don’t give a damn who hears me now. We’re screwed.” He slammed one fist into the palm of his other gloved hand. “I can’t buy a break.”

Wes shared Dutch’s exasperation, but one of them had to hold it together, and it wasn’t going to be Dutch. The guy had been clinging to his reason by his fingernails. This most recent obstacle just might cause him to lose it altogether.

Wes couldn’t let that happen. He needed Dutch. He needed the authority of Dutch’s badge even more. It was imperative they get up that goddamn mountain and arrest Tierney. Better yet, kill him. For reasons of his own, Wes had become as dedicated to that goal as his pal Dutch was.

Now they’d been dealt a setback, but it didn’t have to be as catastrophic as Dutch was making it out to be.

As arranged, they’d met at the school bus garage at four-thirty, both of them bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, jazzed on caffeine, and freezing their nuts off even though they were dressed like Eskimos.

The snowmobiles were where Wes had last seen them, parked out of the way in a far corner of the garage, covered with dark green tarpaulins. So far so good.

It was when they began looking for the keys to them that they ran into difficulty. They turned the garage office inside out but couldn’t find them. The keys to all the vehicles belonging to the Cleary ISD were labeled by license number. There were no keys for the snowmobiles.

Finally Wes gave up the search. “If they’re here, they’re well hidden, and we’re wasting time looking. We’ve got no choice but to go ask Morris where the hell the keys to these things are.”

Karl Morris was president of Cleary’s only bank. “At this hour?”

Wes said, “You have between here and his house to think up a convincing story, Chief. Create an emergency that couldn’t wait for daylight.”

They’d had to knock on the door several times before it was answered by Mrs. Morris, who was wrapped chin to ankles in some kind of horse blanket–looking thing, the ugliest robe Wes had ever seen. She had a face to match, made even uglier by her inhospitable scowl.

Dutch begged her forgiveness for the intrusion, saying they had to speak to Mr. Morris immediately. It was an emergency. She closed the door and went to get her husband, leaving Dutch and Wes to wait on the porch in the frigid temperature.

Eventually Morris came to the door, looking no more cordial than his wife. Dutch told a tale about some family being stranded in their car and how he desperately needed to use the snowmobiles the bank had repossessed from Cal Hawkins.

“I’d be glad to let you use them, Chief Burton. If they still belonged to the bank. We sold them, hmm . . . let’s see. Before Christmas, if I remember. We posted a notice about the auction of repos. Guess you missed it.”

“Guess so. Who bought them?”

“William Ritt. He got permission to leave them there in the school bus garage until he could move them, but he took the keys along with the bill of sale.”

They apologized again for getting him out of bed and thanked him for the information.

Now, as they were wading through the snow back to Dutch’s Bronco, he was in a high snit.

Wes’s patience with Dutch’s chronic pessimism had worn thin. “For crying out loud, Dutch, would you get a grip? This doesn’t have to be the end of it. We go to Ritt.”

“Right. Cleary’s information highway of renown.”

They climbed into the Bronco, and Dutch revved the motor, which he’d kept idling. “What choice do you have?” Wes asked. “Other than letting Special Agent in Charge Begley steal your suspect along with your thunder?”

Cursing, Dutch put the truck in reverse and backed out of the banker’s driveway.

They arrived at the drugstore five minutes later. There were no lights on inside, of course, but William’s car was parked in a slot at the curb next to Marilee’s, which had been there overnight. “Told you he’d be here,” Wes remarked.

The bell above the door jingled merrily. William was behind the lunch counter, boiling a pan of water on the propane stove. The only sources of light were the blue flame beneath the pan and a votive candle William had placed on the counter. It smelled like apples.

He greeted them with a cheery good morning. “You two are the only other people I’ve seen out this morning. Would you like some coffee? It’s freeze dried, but that’s the best I can do.”