Sheryl Mott sat in the idling Nissan and watched Gator and Shank march off down the trail, past this sign of a stick figure on cross-country skis. Wearing those white-and-black patterned outfits. Kinda blending in with the scenery and blowing snow. So here she was. Sitting in a stolen vehicle. The guy walking alongside her boyfriend was a murderer on his way to work.
She looked again and they were gone, swallowed up in white.
Okay, they’d crept down the road to the green house with the tin roof and clocked it on the odometer-1.6 miles from the trail head. Hank made her write the number of the sign in the yard in ballpoint on her palm; the fire number, 629.
She cracked the windows, lit another Merit, and found herself thinking about the Las Vegas hooker’s observation that guys resembled their dicks. Shank, as near as she could remember, was white and bony, peeking out of a nest of wispy albino hair. And Gator, well, he had this sturdy handle. Get a good grip on him, and she felt she could move the world a little.
At least move a hundred pounds of ice. Fidgety, she extended her finger to the steamed windshield and traced “C10 H15 N” in the moisture, the chemical formula for methamphetamine…
Suddenly, like somebody had tapped the mute on a big remote, the wind stopped, the snow disappeared, and it was so quiet and still, she dialed the window all the way down. Leaned her head out, strained her ears to hear. How could pure silence be so…loud?
First she thought it was a radio playing, but the way the sound corkscrewed right down to the roots of the tiny hairs on the back of her neck told her, uh uh, that was fucking real, man. That was wild animals howling out there in the woods.
Ice. Snow. Trees everywhere, and now wolves. This place could use a few Burger King signs. She shivered and hugged herself, turned up the heater. Think about something else. Belize…
Didn’t work.
Shit, I hope we know what we’re doing…
“What happened?” Shank looked around. One minute there was snow like a burst featherbed. Then nothing.
“Lull,” Gator said. “Won’t last long.”
They trudged a few more steps, and Shank stopped again, head rotating around. “Hear that?”
“Yeah,” Gator kept walking. “Deer must be moving.”
“That ain’t deer.” Shank jogged to catch up.
Gator was starting to enjoy himself. The farther they got from a road, the more Shank, the heavy hitter, seemed to diminish in ferocity. Christ, they could see the lake through breaks in the trees. Houses.
“That ain’t deer,” Shank repeated.
“When a storm moves in, the deer do weird things. They can hunker down, or they can start moving. The deer move, the pack follows. Usually they stay farther north,” Gator explained like a guide on a nature walk.
“Yeah, the wolves,” Shank said. “Sheryl told me about that. They don’t attack people, right?”
“I read about this wolf in India. Some kids killed her cubs, and she went into this village and took forty kids, right out of the houses. They found this big pile of bones in the den. I don’t care what the tree huggers say. I wouldn’t want to be lying out in the woods bleeding, know what I mean.” Gator suddenly raised his hand. Stop. He pointed down the trail at a yellow No Trespassing sign. “We’re there.”
Shank checked his watch. “Not bad. Seventeen minutes.” He reached in his smock and took out his cell phone.
“Wait, let’s go in closer, so we can see the house,” Gator said. More cautious now, they followed the narrow connecting trail through the trees. Gator raised his hand again. “Hear that?”
“Yeah.” This clunky wood-on-metal sound.
“C’mon.” Gator lowered his voice and made a downward pushing motion with his palm. Time to go quiet. They moved forward in a crouch. The trees opened more, and they saw the source of the noise. A hundred yards away, a man wearing a brown jacket and a black cap was piling wood in the back of a green Toyota Tundra next to a garage. The garage was attached to a cabin, the siding painted green. It had a rusted tin roof and a deck wrapped around the back.
They scurried a few steps closer and hunkered next to a thick patch of low spruce. Shank dug in his pocket, brought out a small pair of Zeiss binoculars, and eased the snow-laded boughs aside. Lensed the guy.
“No shit, lookit,” he whispered. “It’s him. Right fuckin’ there.” He passed the binocs to Gator, who had a look and confirmed, “Yep, that’s him.”
“Right fuckin’ there, like low-hanging fruit,” Shank whispered. “It’d be easy, just walk up, say we’re lost or something. Whattaya say?”
Gator worried his lower lip between his lip. Not the plan. You hadda stick to the plan. “I ain’t supposed to be here when it-”
“Oh, shit, shit!” Shank moved up out of his crouch. The guy was getting in the truck, starting it. “He’s driving away. Sonofabitch.”
“Get down, be quiet, somebody could be in the house. What’s the time?” Gator said.
Shank pushed up his sleeve and checked his watch. “Almost two-thirty.”
“They only got the one truck. School’s out in an hour. Maybe earlier, with the storm moving in.” Gator thought about it, said, “He turned toward town, so he’s probably going to drop off that wood where he works, then pick up his kid.”
“How long?” Shank said.
“An hour, little longer.”
Then like a giant white mare rolling over above them, the wind squashed down on the trees and set them to rattling. The silence erupted into snowflakes.
Gator seized Shank’s shoulder and pointed with his other hand. “Check it out.”
A woman dressed in an oatmeal gray sweat suit appeared on the driveway beyond the house, walking toward the road. She tucked a red ponytail into her cap, paused to look up at the sky, then up and down the road. Then she pulled on gloves and started running. At the end of the drive, she turned right and ran down the road, in the same direction the truck had taken. Shank followed her with the binoculars.
“Bitch can run. She’s really moving,” he said, lowering the binocs. He turned to Gator. “Whattaya think?”
Gator looked up at the thickening snow. “This looks like the real thing. You up for hiking back to Sheryl, then coming back in while she takes me home?”
Shank glanced back toward the trail in the woods, then at the house.
Gator said, “You could go in the house, be waiting for them.”
Shank shook his head. “Nah, too messy, people showing up piecemeal. I want them all together when I go in. But let’s go have a look at the house, want an idea of the floor plan, the doors.” He took out his cell, removed his glove, and made a call. When it connected, he said, “You hear me all right?”
“Yeah, it’s starting to snow like hell, what’s up?” Sheryl said.
“We’re going to check around a few minutes here, then Gator’s coming back to the car. You run him home and get right back. Call me the minute you get back.”
“How much time are we talking?” Sheryl said.
“Nobody’s home. We’re all waiting. Maybe an hour and a half, tops.”
“Okay,” Sheryl said.
Shank ended the call, stood up, took out his pistol, and said, “Okay, this is it. Once you take off, I won’t see you for a while. Then in a month or so, we’ll get together in the Cities and talk some business.”
“I’m for that,” Gator said.
“But first, let’s go have a quick look before the bitch gets back.” Gator rose to his feet and removed the Luger from his fanny pack. Then he pulled his ski mask down, covering his face. Shank grinned and did the same. Guns at the ready, they jogged toward the house.