Up again. Then he was slipping and falling down the longest cascading flight of rugged wooden stairs he had ever seen, out in the middle of nowhere.
With a silent pop-the ice gray day mushroomed into Snow City.
Tom’s white tortured breath exploded. A million snowflakes filled the world and dropped a gauzy net of sticky flakes. Every surface-coated. The mangy undergrowth had its Cinderella moment, transformed. Delicate white- encrusted coral lines graced the hillsides. Even Tom was struck with the gentle sorcery of first snow.
Soon a white, soft silent cushion absorbed the thud of his shoes. All he heard was the blast of his own breath. And the muted torrent up ahead. Then he breasted the slope, passed an observation platform of stout timbers and saw the falls below. The Brule growled, hidden beneath a petticoat of ice that pitched down a fifty-foot drop.
Granite boulders divided the river into two channels. To the right, the solid ice sheet masked the falls. But on the left the ice was open. The left channel spun on the brink, spiraled in a tight roller-coaster turn and boiled like a runaway black sprocket between the glassy skirts. Down, out of sight, into a granite cavern.
Seeing it, Tom believed it was bottomless.
And he saw Caren. A pale, blue denim figure
poised-dangerously-on the huge slippery boulder that divided the river. He saw how. She’d crossed an ice bridge that linked smaller boulders to the shore. Through breaks in that ice Tom could see the streaking white water mark the velocity of the current as it rammed the boulder. Bare-headed, ghostly in the thick snow and mist, snowflakes sequined in her black hair, she stared into the exposed pothole.
Intent on the raging water, she tugged at her wedding ring.
Tom threw one look over his shoulder. Nothing but the snow and trees. He scrambled down the slope to the ice bridge and forced himself to cross it fast. She saw him then 118 / CHUCK LOGAN
and stopped tugging and held up the ring hand for his inspection.
“He proposed to me here, you know,” she yelled in a hollow voice. Tom James couldn’t hear. He was dizzy with the power of the place. The moment.
“I talked to Broker, he doesn’t think you should go into Witness Protection. He has a better idea,” he shouted.
She smiled. Beamed. “How is he? Does he look well?”
“He gave me something for you.” He wondered if it hurt, her face beat up like that and smiling so much.
A crooked trident of chain lightning connected the snowy forest to the Armageddon clouds. Thunder ricocheted off the boulders. Dazzle. Witchery. The snow was a frenzy of drunken killer bees.
“Thunder snow,” yelled Caren happily.
“Yes.” Tom floated. Maybe the boulder pulsed red beneath them.
For the first time in his life, he experienced the electric current of perfectly merged thought and action. Rockets ignited in his arms. Fired into his hands. He extended his arms stiffly, almost ceremonially, and felt the jolt of her sternum under his palms. Wide-eyed, in total surprise, Caren flew backward. For a second, her shoes slithered for purchase on the lip of rock. No blood, no struggle, no mess. Almost an accident.
Her jacketed arms protested in manic circles. Her feet pumped in a desperate uphill sprint through midair. The eerie scream ended abruptly when she was sucked out of sight in the blowing snow and the wind, into the foaming pit.
Time spun its wheels, grinding adrenal sparks that wove him a hot new skin. His right fist extended over his head.
He half expected more waves of thunder and lightning.
Huh?
She was still screaming? Over the sound of the wind and the water. Tom felt the surge of new survival instincts. He turned. And hey-it wasn’t her screaming…
Through chattering fevers of snow he saw Keith Angland, overcoat flapping, sprinting down the trail. A berserker’s rage quavered from his hideously open mouth.
Angland’s powerful quarterback’s right arm shot out and threw sparkles from a black pistol. Particles of granite spattered Tom, beads of blood bloomed on his right wrist, stinging through his glove.
A fast zipper of wet, red hurt slit the trouser along his left calf. He growled, amazed, baptized and born again in a fiery Jordan of pain.
Common sense jerked him. He ran like hell.
Instead of chasing him, Angland went to the spot where Caren had stood on the snow-swept boulder. Tom watched, panting, from the trees and waited to see if Keith would continue the chase. He took off his gloves, pressed them against the wet rip in his trouser leg.
Angland scrambled out of sight, down into the ice-girded rock face around the pothole. Tom was paralyzed with doubt.
What if she hadn’t gone in? Was down there, and Keith was going to her.
No, no. He’d seen her disappear.
After a full minute, when Keith didn’t reappear, he shook off the shock and staggered through the stunted pines, marveling at the brilliant, delicate red stipple of his own blood on the fresh new snow. Smeared on his bare hands. Thinking clearer now. Being shot would make it more believable. Still had the magic going for him. He circled back around the falls, emerged from the pines and started back down the trail, lurching alongside Keith’s faint filling-in shoe prints. It was time to do some reporting.
He took out the cell phone and called 911. Nothing happened. Get higher on the ridge. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled up the slope, slipping and falling, crawling on all fours. Finally he stood above it all, under the furious sky. He called again. A voice answered. “Help!” he screamed.
“He killed her. He pushed her in. He shot me.”
“Where are you, if you’re calling cellular I can’t track you,”
the urgent controlled voice said back.
“In the woods. In the woods.” Despite the throbbing pain, Tom covered his mouth with his shaking hand to keep from laughing. In the woods. What a great 911 one-liner in northern Minnesota.
“Where in the woods?” yelled the voice.
Tom James collapsed in the snow and realized he couldn’t remember the name of the river rushing in the gorge below him. The clerk had said…
“Sir. Sir…” squawked the telephone in his bloody hand.
“There’s a waterfall up a trail from the highway,” he blurted.
“What waterfall is that?” The operator came back.
For the first time, Tom registered the reality of the wound in his leg. His own blood was leaking from his body. The new, hot, runny adrenaline garment he’d discovered deserted him in the cold wind. A hydraulic press squeezed his lungs.
Shock. He began to shake. Then, like a miracle, he saw two tiny police officers below him, running in the snow, coming up the lower trail.
“I see them,” he yelled into the phone.
One carried a long gun in both hands, swinging in front.
He disconnected 911. With great concentration, he pulled out his wallet. His numb wet fingers fumbled among the business cards. He found the one he wanted, stabbed the number in the phone, and as it rang he laughed, giddy. It was perfect after all.
“FBI,” said the cool omnipotent voice from faraway, inside a marble air conditioner.
“It’s Tom James,” he gasped. “Angland killed her. He shot me. Where’s Garrison.” Tom heard them tipping over chairs.
Yelling.
“Wait one,” shouted the agent in a controlled voice. “I have to patch you through. He’s in Duluth.”
Time plodded. Tom watched the cops climb. Maybe a minute. C’mon. C’mon.
Garrison’s voice was on the line. “Right here, Tom. Tell me exactly what happened and where you are.”
