“I know that, Gus.”
“No, you don’t know. There were only two bullets-the one he found in the tree, and the one in the snowmobile.”
“What about Blackburn’s head?”
I stood. “Write your stories. You’ll hear from me.”
“I’d better.”
The coming storm had turned the afternoon to dusk. The state police cruisers now were parked at either end of Main. As I crossed, exhaust plumed from the back of one car. Don’t hurry yet, I told myself.
The bells on the door jangled as I stepped into the Pilot. Tillie was out. I turned around and reached up and tore the bells off in one staple-popping rip. I stuffed them in my pocket. At my desk I stopped for a fresh notebook and two pens. Tillie had left me another message from Trenton. URGENT, it said. I tossed it in a wastebasket on my way out the back.
Outside, snow had begun to fall again. I tied the bells to the radio antenna on my truck, hopped in, turned the key, and swung out onto South Street toward the lake. I checked the rearview mirrors for state cops. None yet. I smiled when the truck hit a pothole and the bells jangled. I thought of the photo of Gordie Howe in Audrey’s. He was winding up to shoot on a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. The goalie was one of the best ever. During the 1940s, he won two Stanley Cups and made the NHL All-Star team six times. He once went 309 minutes, including four entire games, without giving up a goal. His name was William “Bill” Durnan.
At the lake I turned left on Beach Drive. Walls of snow closed me in on both sides. I flicked my brights on. I’d hoped to get half an hour’s head start before it dawned on Superior that I hadn’t ratted my source out after all. But as the road crested just before Mom’s yellow house, headlights blinked in my rearview mirror. They were fuzzy pinpoints, probably a mile back but gaining. Passing Mom’s, I felt an urge to pull over and surrender. Instead I tapped the horn twice.
The headlights in my rearview had closed to half a mile when I spied another pair behind them. Without slowing, I veered left onto Jitters Trail. The back of the truck fishtailed on the snow, so I gave it a little gas and it swung back straight. The road dipped and swerved to the right and I had to slow down so I wouldn’t miss the narrow opening in the trees. The two-track road burrowed through a canopy of snow-laden pines. As I slowed to turn, I saw the twin sets of headlights weaving erratically toward me. First one, then the other turned on the red- and-blue flashers. As the sirens began to wail I felt a surge of adrenaline like I’d felt a thousand times when a shooter bore down on me, alone in my goal.
My truck crashed down to Jitters Creek, the axles hammering the ground, my head banging off the cab ceiling as I bounced along. The sirens grew louder. Just short of the creek bank, I hit the brakes, put the truck in park, and left it running. Jitters Creek flowed too fast to freeze thick. At this spot, not far from where Darlene’s bike had floated away, the water was deep enough to sink a pickup truck.
I reached into my glove box for the roll of hockey tape I kept there. The engine revved as I taped the gas pedal as far down as it would go. I didn’t really know what I was doing; I’d seen it on TV. The grinding engine drowned out the sirens for a few seconds, but then I could hear them again, nearer still. The cops were probably having trouble getting their cars down the snowy two-track. I was hoping they’d have even more trouble getting back up.
I should have felt desperate. I should have felt afraid. Instead I felt calm and in control. It was like my best nights in goal, when everything was chaos around me, shooters flying back and forth, the puck zipping at me from every direction, and I could slow it all down to where the skaters looked like they were running underwater and the puck grew as big as a Frisbee and no matter where I looked through the tangle of legs and arms and torsos in front of me, I could always find it and stop it. I grabbed the sandwiches off the dash, stepped out of the truck, and snatched the duffel bag I’d packed out of the flatbed. I hadn’t pictured myself leaving Starvation Lake this way. I was about to throw the truck into drive when I glimpsed Eggo on the passenger seat. The glove barely fit into the duffel bag.
The bells jangled one last time as my truck plunged into Jitters Creek. I heard the cops screaming from up the hill, “Stop right there, you’re under arrest.” The truck listed on its left side and began to sink, burbling. The bells came unfurled and drifted away. A cop cried out, “Oh, Jesus, he’s in the river,” but by then I was scrambling down the bank with my bag under an arm, ducking beneath pine boughs for cover. I followed the bank until it swerved right. I veered left and angled my body into the hill, sidestepping upward as fast as I could in the snow. I crested a ridge atop a meadow of untrammeled snowdrifts. I had to get to the other side of the meadow and then it would be a short dash to my destination. The cops probably didn’t know these woods as well as I did, but I couldn’t take chances, so instead of crossing the meadow I skirted it to stay in the trees. On the other side I stood behind an oak and surveyed where I’d come from. There were no cops in sight, but I could see the glow of their flashers blinking against the sky.
On the roof of Dad’s garage the tree house was invisible beneath snow. As I approached the side door, I automatically reached for my keys, but they weren’t there. They were in my truck ignition at the bottom of Jitters Creek. I grabbed the doorknob, knowing I’d locked it when I’d come to start the car on Sunday. It refused to turn. “Dumb shit,” I said aloud, and for the first time that afternoon I felt a twinge of fear. I hurried around the garage and looked back again at where I’d come from. Still nothing but trees and falling snow. “OK,” I said to myself. I snapped a branch off a dead tree and poked it through the lower left corner of the window. Delicately I brushed the glass shards away then reached in and unlocked the door.
I raised the big garage door and climbed into the Bonneville. It started easily. In the rearview mirror I saw my escape route buried in a foot of snow. How would the Bonnie plow through that? I didn’t have time to shovel the entire driveway, but I hoped I could clear enough snow to give the Bonnie a chance. I grabbed a snow shovel hanging on a pegboard and cleared two parallel tracks extending about thirty feet from the garage. That would have to be enough.
I tossed the duffel bag in the backseat and got back behind the steering wheel. I had to gather enough momentum before I hit the downslope so the big fat Bonnie might make it over the fifty yards to the plowed road below. And I had to do it in reverse. At least that meant the rear-drive wheels would be going down first. I slipped the car into gear and eased the back wheels out of the garage. I twisted my body around to see out the back and slammed my foot down on the accelerator.
The Bonnie leaped out, gathering speed. Dad had told me many times that it was loaded with power, but I hadn’t really understood until now. I clung to the steering wheel to keep the car on the tracks I’d dug before it plowed into the deeper snow. The two-track dipped down and the Bonnie plunged down with it, churning snow left and right, the roof scraping against pine branches. “Come on, baby, you can do it,” I yelled. I let up a little on the accelerator, then punched it, then let up again, trying to keep the car moving without setting the wheels to spinning in the snow. Out the rear window I could see Horvath Road. The county plows had cut an opening there where the snow was shaved down to just a few inches deep. If I could just get there, I’d be out.
“Come on!” I screamed. With twenty feet to go, I felt the left rear tire sink and grab and then spin in the snow. The Bonnie lurched out of my control and swerved left until the car was perpendicular to the two-track. I hit the brakes, rammed the gearshift into drive, and jammed the accelerator as I swung the steering wheel to the right. The Bonnie pitched forward a few feet and stopped, the left rear tire whirring.
I was stuck.
Leaving the car running, I stepped out and looked up and down Horvath Road, barely ten feet away. Nothing. But the cops wouldn’t be long.
The Bonnie’s front wheels had made the snow shallower, but the left rear tire spun in the deeper stuff when I tapped the accelerator. The right rear wheel had fetched up on a bump that gave it some purchase. I’d been stuck like this before and escaped by rocking the car between drive and reverse. A push helped. But there was no one to push. I squatted next to the left tire. If I had something solid to stick beneath it, it might give me enough traction to get unstuck. On hands and knees I dug out as much snow as I could from under the stuck tire.
I retrieved Eggo from my duffel bag. For old times’ sake I slipped my hand inside and waggled the glove as I had so many times. Then I jammed it under the tire until it was wedged tightly between rubber and packed snow. “Sorry, old pal,” I said. “One more save, OK?”
As the Bonnie popped out onto Horvath Road, I saw my glove fly up behind the car in shreds. I thought about going back for it, but only for a second. The snow was falling harder. The road was slick. I pushed the speed to thirty-five and hung on. Whenever the Bonnie started to fishtail, I dropped my speed a little and tapped my brakes
