enough to make them suspicious. It would be a mystery, something they'd shake their heads over, nothing more. Unless, of course, the plane were discovered before it snowed. There would be the snowmobile's tracks then, the footprints leading into the park. There would be signs of a scuffle alongside the road.
I glanced up at the sky. It was continuing to clear with a startling rapidity. There was a wide expanse of blue now, sun streaming down through the branches of the trees, the air cold and crisp. What clouds remained were fair-weather clouds, white and fluffy. There was no sign of impending snow.
The closer I got to the edge of the park and the bridge beyond it, the harder I had to work to keep my mind fixed on my plan. Other thoughts crept in. It began with the physical sensation of Pederson's body against my chest. His head was nestled beneath my chin. I could smell his hair tonic through his hat. His body itself was compact, dense. It didn't feel at all like I would've expected it to. It felt like it ought to be alive.
And as soon as I thought this -- that Pederson was dead, that I had killed him, smothered the life out of him with my own hands -- my heart fluttered heavily up into my throat. I realized that I'd crossed a boundary, done something abhorrent, brutal, something I never would have imagined myself capable of. I'd taken another man's life.
This thought bewildered me, set my mind tumbling backward and forward, rationalizing, justifying, denying, and it was only with an extreme effort of will that I regained control. I shut myself down, pulled back, forced my mind to concentrate on nothing except what was going to occur in the next fifteen minutes. I continued on toward the eastern edge of the park, my arms supporting Pederson's body, guiding the snowmobile through the trees, half my brain occupied with thoughts of the bridge and Jacob and the sheriff, the other half desperately trying to fight off a strange, horribly threatening sensation -- that I was doomed now, trapped, that the rest of my life would pivot somehow off this single act, that in trying to save Jacob, I'd damned us both.
THE PARK'S southeast corner went right up to the foot of the cement bridge.
I paused at the edge of the woods, making sure no one was in sight. The creek was about fifteen yards wide here. It was frozen solid, the ice covered with a thin layer of snow. Pederson's farm was behind me, down the road. There were fields across the creek, empty to the horizon. Jacob hadn't arrived yet.
I eased the snowmobile out alongside the road, the engine rumbling beneath me. I looked to the east, then back to the west. There were no cars in sight. I could see the old man's house now, just visible around the edge of the trees. It was closer than I'd thought. I could make out its windows, could see the collie sitting on the top step of its porch. If someone had been standing there watching, they'd have been able to see me, too.
I gunned the engine, maneuvering the machine up onto the bank of plowed snow, moving slowly along it until I reached the center of the bridge. There was a ten-foot drop there from the roadway to the ice. The guardrail was buried in snow.
I put Pederson's hand on the throttle, adjusted his body in the seat, sliding him back a bit, planting his boots on the footrests. I slung his rifle over his shoulder, pulled his hat down on his ears, wrapped his scarf tightly around his face. The motor coughed a little, stuttering, and I gave it some gas.
I glanced up and down the road again. There were no cars, no movement whatsoever. The collie was still sitting on Pederson's porch. It would've been impossible to tell, of course, whether someone was watching from a window there, but I quickly scanned them all the same. They reflected the sky back at me, the bare branches of the trees surrounding the house. I turned the snowmobile's skis toward the creek and eased it slowly forward, until it hung partway over the ice, balancing on the edge of the snowbank.
I tried to think if I was forgetting something, shutting my eyes, but my mind refused to help me. I could think of nothing.
The collie barked, once.
I stepped down onto the roadway, braced my feet against the pavement, and pushed the snowmobile forward with my shoulder. It went over with surprising ease. First it was there, and then it was gone. There was a tremendous crash when it hit the ice, and the engine shut itself off.
I climbed back up onto the bank to see.
The snowmobile had rolled over in midair, landing on Pederson, crushing him beneath its weight. The ice was cracked, but not collapsed, forming a bowl-shaped depression around the old man and his machine. The creek was seeping slowly in, covering his body. His hat had fallen off again, and his gray hair floated out away from his head in the icy water. His scarf was tight around his face, clinging to it like a gag. One of his arms was pinned beneath the snowmobile. The other was thrown palm upward to the side, as if he'd died struggling to free himself.
JACOB arrived a few minutes later, from the east. He slowed the car to a stop beside me, and I climbed inside. As we sped away, I glanced back at the bridge. The old man's body was just visible beneath it, a splash of orange on the ice.
We drove by the Pederson place for the second time that day. The collie barked at us again, but Mary Beth, lying curled up in a ball on the backseat, didn't seem to notice. I'd been right earlier, there was smoke coming out of the chimney. That meant the old man's wife was there, sitting beside a fire in the parlor, awaiting his return. The thought of this made my chest tighten.
When we passed the spot where the fox had crossed the road, I heard Jacob give a sharp intake of breath.
'Jesus,' he said.
I looked out the window. There were tracks everywhere -- the fox's, the dog's, Jacob's, Lou's, mine. There was a gash in the snowbank from Jacob's truck and, crossing the road, tread marks from Pederson's snowmobile. It was a mess, the whole thing, impossible to miss. The tracks seemed to converge as they disappeared into the woods, as if to form an arrow, pointing straight toward the plane.
Jacob started to cry again, very softly. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips began to quiver.
When I spoke, I made my voice sound very calm. 'It's all right,' I said. 'It's going to snow. As soon as it snows, that'll all be gone.'
Jacob didn't say anything. He started making hiccoughing sounds in his chest.
'Stop it,' I said. 'It's working out. We're getting away with it.'
He wiped at his cheeks. The dog tried to lean over the seat and lick his face, as if to comfort him, but Jacob pushed him away.
'Everything's okay,' I said. 'As soon as it snows, everything'll be okay.'
He took a deep breath. Then he nodded.
'You can't react like that, Jacob. The only way we'll get caught is if we fall apart somehow. We have to stay calm.'
He nodded again. His eyes were red and puffy.
'In control.'
'I'm just tired, Hank,' he said. His voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. He looked out the window, blinked his eyes. His nose had stopped bleeding, but he hadn't wiped off the dark smear from above his mouth. It gave his face the look of a fat Charlie Chaplin.
'I was up too late last night, and now I'm tired.'
I HAD Jacob drive us all the way around the park. We headed back toward town along its northern edge, on Taft Road.
The nature preserve looked exactly the same on this side as it had on the other. It was just woods -- sycamores, buckeyes, maples, a few evergreens, the occasional white curve of a birch. Some of the pines were still dusted with snow from Tuesday's storm. There were birds every now and then, flashes of movement among the bare branches, but no signs of any other wildlife, no rabbits or deer, no raccoons or possums or foxes. It seemed strange to think that the plane was in there -- the bag full of money, the dead pilot -- and that beyond the wreck, on the other side of the park, was Pederson, whom I'd smothered, lying there in the icy water of Anders Creek.
I'd never pictured Jacob and myself as men capable of violence. My brother had gotten into fights at school, of course, but always because he'd been trapped, teased to the point where he had no choice but to lash out. He
