Chill Factor

It was difficult to keep the smile out of his voice. “Marilee, I need you to come to the store right away.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’ve got customers. Important customers,” he said in an undertone. “Two FBI agents. They were waiting in their car when I got here. They’re meeting with Dutch to discuss the Gunn girl’s disappearance. I should offer them breakfast, and as you know, Linda can’t get here.”

“I don’t know how to use that stove.”

“How hard can it be? You’ll figure it out. Don’t dawdle. I need you here now. I called Wes—”

“Why Wes?”

“As head of the city council, I thought he should know about this. Anyway, he’s already on his way. How soon can you get here?”

“Give me ten minutes.”

William hung up, with a smirk and a snuffle of self-satisfaction.

• • •

The bell above the door jingled when Dutch walked into the drugstore. The merry sound set his teeth on edge.

With a death grip on Cal Hawkins’s elbow, Dutch half-dragged him to the lunch counter and unceremoniously plunked him onto a stool, hoping the sudden motion would jar the cretin awake.

“Get him some coffee, please,” he said to William Ritt, whose cheerful smile was as annoying as that stupid bell above his door. “Make it black and strong. Same for me.”

“Coming up.” Ritt motioned toward the burbling coffeemaker.

Unsurprisingly, Hawkins had not been up and raring to go when Dutch arrived at his ramshackle house. Hawkins didn’t answer the knock, so Dutch let himself in. The place was so full of junk it was a fire hazard. It stank of backed-up plumbing and sour milk. He’d found Hawkins sleeping fully dressed in a bed that a mangy dog wouldn’t be caught dead in. He hauled him off it and propelled him through the house and out to his waiting Bronco.

During the drive downtown, he’d reiterated to Hawkins how vital it was that he pull himself together and get his sanding truck up the mountain. Even though Hawkins had responded to everything he’d said with a nod and a grunt, Dutch wasn’t convinced he was completely conscious.

And, as if dealing with Hawkins wasn’t bad enough, he had to make nice with the freaking FBI. It was his least favorite thing to do anytime, but it was going to be especially irksome after the night he’d had.

After dropping Wes at his house, he hadn’t gone straight to headquarters. It had been very late when he got there, and by way of greeting, the dispatcher had handed him dozens of call memos.

All were complaints he could do nothing about until the weather improved, like the frozen fountain in front of the bank building, a missing milk cow, and a tree branch that had broken off from the weight of the ice and snow. It had fallen onto the owner’s outdoor hot tub and cracked the cover.

And this was his problem, why?

Then there was a call from Mrs. Kramer, who had more money than God from Coca-Cola stock a wise great-grandfather had bought cheap. But you would never meet a meaner and more miserly old bat. She’d called to report a prowler in her front yard. Dutch reread the message as written down by his dispatcher. “Does this say Scott H.?”

“Yeah. The Hamer kid. She says he was strolling past her house like it was an evening in May. Up to no good, if you ask her.”

“Well, I didn’t ask,” Dutch had said, “and anyway she’s delusional. I was at the Hamers’ house. Scott was holed up in his room with the stereo blaring. Besides, Wes wouldn’t let him go out on a night like this.”

The dispatcher raised his bulky shoulders in a shrug and didn’t take his eyes off the John Wayne shoot-’em-up he was watching on a black-and-white TV. “What do you expect from a crackpot whose hobby is digging in trash cans?” Mrs. Kramer was known to pull on Rubbermaid gloves and scavenge through trash cans under cover of darkness. Go figure.

Dutch balled up the memo and shot it into the overflowing wastebasket. He put the other memos in his shirt pocket to deal with later, but only after Lilly was safely down from Cleary Peak. That was all he was interested in this morning—getting Cal Hawkins to drive his sanding truck up the mountain to rescue her.

True, it was still snowing like a son of a bitch. True, beneath the snow was a layer of ice an inch thick. Those were the objections that Hawkins was sober enough to raise, and they were valid. But it wouldn’t be as difficult as last night, when they’d had darkness working against them. At least that was what Dutch argued.

Catching his reflection in the mirror along the soda fountain’s back wall, he saw what the FBI agents would see—a loser, a burnout. He’d catnapped in his desk chair until dawn, his sleep frequently interrupted by disturbing thoughts of Lilly and what she might be doing at any given moment. What Ben Tierney was doing. What they were doing together.

Before leaving headquarters, he had washed up and shaved in the men’s restroom, using a dull razor, bar soap, and tepid water in a shallow basin. Had he known sooner that he was going to come under FBI scrutiny, he would have gone home to shower and put on a fresh uniform.

No help for it now.

“How’s that coffee coming?” he asked Ritt.