Dead of Winter

the other channel, the sheriff’s department.

Edna silenced them all with a few words. “Hold all traffic. Loon-11?”

Louis wiped his face with his sleeve and looked down the empty road in the direction of the sirens. He raised the radio back to his mouth, lowering his head into his hand.

“Suspect is armed with a large-caliber…rifle. In a vehicle of unknown description…headed…headed east on Road 329.”

“Eleven!” Gibralter shouted. “What kind of description is that? What happened out there? Did you return fire? Where are you?”

“I don’t…affirmative, affirmative.”

The sirens were closer, the wails rising and falling on the wind. In his clouded head, they sounded almost human.

His fingers gripped the radio as his mind grappled to hold on to some sense of reality. He could smell the blood on his hands, strangely metallic. Ollie’s blood. He looked down at his hand. It was covered with blood. The radio was covered with blood. His pants legs were stained with blood. He stared at it in morbid curiosity. It was black…not red, black.

“Loon-11!” Gibralter yelled. “What’s happening out there?”

Something drifted into his dulled mind in that moment, something about the rifle. He keyed the radio. The words flooded forward on a wave of anger and he could not stop them.

“Coward!” he spat into the radio. “He’s a fucking coward! Lacey used a goddamn nightscope! He didn’t have a chance! Ollie didn’t have a chance!” Louis’s voice cracked into a sob and he gulped in a cold, icy breath.

“Kincaid!”

“We can’t catch him! We need help. Damn it, can’t you see that? We need help!”

“Loon-11, pull yourself together!”

Louis threw the radio down to the wet asphalt. It bounced and gave out a final burst of static. He lifted his face to the sky. He could feel the flakes settling on his face, feel each one, so terribly gentle.

CHAPTER 27

His teeth were chattering and he clenched them to make them stop. He looked up into the black sky, trying to find a place to store the vivid images that swam in his mind. And so many sounds. Wailing sirens. Radio static. Shouts. All these men shouting and he was doing nothing.

A door slammed and Louis spun around. Ambulance, just the ambulance. It pulled away slowly, with no sense of urgency.

Someone touched him and he turned. Jesse was a silhouette against the glare of the spotlights aimed at Ollie’s cruiser. For a second, the voices and sirens seemed muted.

Jesse reached for him. Louis stiffened, pulling back. But the need for touch, for human contact, was too strong. Slowly, he surrendered to Jesse’s embrace. He closed his eyes, lowering his head to the stiff nylon of Jesse’s jacket.

“Harrison!”

Jesse pulled back, leaving a void of cold wind. Louis blinked to focus on Gibralter’s silhouette as it came toward him.

“How did this happen?” Gibralter whispered hoarsely.

How did this happen? How did this happen? Louis’s eyes drifted to the spotlit cruiser, dark forms crawling around it, over it, in it.

“Kincaid! How did this happen?”

It happened because I let Lacey go. It happened because I went into the field and Ollie stayed by the cruiser. It happened because I couldn’t get back to Ollie in time. It happened because I didn’t react fast enough, I didn’t shoot straight enough, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t…

“I want your report tonight,” Gibralter said, bringing him back.

Did he say “Yes, sir,” or nod? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that Gibralter had turned away. In the glare of the lights, Louis was vaguely aware of Jesse hovering somewhere nearby. The sounds came to him again — the voices, the radios, the rush of noise that hurt his head.

“Damn it…damn it.”

It took him a moment to separate the words from the noise. It was Gibralter repeating the words to himself.

“Damn it…why him?”

The last two words made Louis look up. Why him? He looked over again at the cruiser and in his mind saw Ollie lying on the front seat, felt the warmth of Ollie’s blood as it pulsed against his hand. Why him?

He looked back to see Gibralter watching him. The words were unspoken but there in his eyes. Why not you?

Gibralter turned and walked away.

Louis moved woodenly back to Gibralter’s Bronco. He reached in the driver’s side and picked up a clipboard. He slowly unzipped his jacket and fumbled for a pen. His hand touched the rough nylon of the vest. For the first time, he became aware of its weight, became aware, too, of the dull ache above his kidney where the vest had stopped Lacey’s bullet.

He threw the clipboard to the seat and yanked off his jacket. He tore at the Velcro strips, pulled the vest over his head and threw it to the floor of the Bronco. He stood for a few moments, breathing heavily. He shut his eyes tight.

Stop, stop…stop! He opened his eyes to look at the shapes moving around him. State troopers, deputies, crime-scene techs. He saw the familiar blue parkas of his own department’s officers. He saw, far off in the snowy field, the play of flashlights as men searched for where Lacey had been hiding. The men were doing their jobs. He had to pull himself together to do his.

He picked up the clipboard and sat down on the edge of the passenger seat, pulling his jacket up over his shoulders. He faced away from the field and the lights.

Slowly, the words came. They came, the words that explained what had happened, pouring out onto the lined form. They were the words of his job, words like suspect, victim and pursuit and shots fired, words unweighted with emotion. Safe, efficient, unhuman words, and he found comfort in their blankness.

When he was done he set the report aside and leaned back in the seat. A huge wave of fatigue rolled slowly over him and he had to fight to keep his eyes open. He pushed himself up, put on his jacket and got out of the Bronco.

He searched the crowd for Gibralter, finally spotting him standing by the open door of Ollie’s cruiser. Louis walked over to him.

“The report is finished. What do you want me to do now?”

“Go home,” Gibralter said, not looking at him.

“Chief — ”

“I said go home.”

“I need to be here.”

“This isn’t about what you need, Kincaid. You’re on administrative leave pending psychiatric evaluation.”