Free Murder on Ice by Ted Wood

raised to the propane light on the wall. He lit the mantle and the room filled with light, soft and white and kind, seeming to help the warmth of the room soak into my face. The man lowered his hands and turned. It was Nighswander. He looked indolent, unafraid. I wondered if he was alone here or whether one of his friends was asleep in another room waiting to come to his assistance. Not that he would need much, not if he tackled me now. I was too stiff to react to an attack. He could break me like a china cup.
    I decided to try a little bluff. It might buy me enough time to make my arms and legs supple again in the glorious warmth of the stove.
    "Hey. Mr. Nighswander, right? Sorry about breaking in. I didn't know anybody was home." He looked about to speak but I pressed on, almost babbling. "You remember me from the Tavern, eh? I'm the p'lice chief. I don't generally go breaking windows but I gotta problem." I poured on all the northern Ontario roughness of accent. I wanted him to think I was a useless hayseed. Overconfidence on his part was the only break I could hope for if he swung at me. "Yeah, I gotta civilian out on the ice with a problem, came off his machine and broke his leg, it looks like."
    He was still holding the match, letting it burn down almost to his fingers. Now he blew it out with a deliberate little puff. He turned and dropped the dead match on top of the stove, a square airtight Fisher. I edged closer, not into his striking circle but closer to the stove with its miraculous, softening heat.
    "What happened to your parka?" He asked it in an amused tone, as if rehearsing the way he would tell the story to his friends later over white wine and squid and New Wave music.
    "Shock. First aid, you know. I wrapped the guy up in it and came over to the nearest place to see if there's anything I can wrap him in, anything in the way of first aid stuff."
    As I jabbered I was weighing up the room as a potential battleground. It gave me no advantages. There were couches along two of the walls and one armchair set close to the stove. Except for a bare coffee table and bookshelves, that was it. There was nothing to shove in his way, nothing heavy to throw, not even a rug under his feet that I could pull away. I looked him over, still grinning my big foolish grin. He was dressed as he had been in the Tavern, and I knew how he could move. His build was slim but square and hard. He worked out regularly, probably in a karate class. And besides, his muscles and joints were loose and limber. He would be hard to beat without the use of my gun, a quarter of a mile away in the ice hut.
    I was about to go on but he held up his hand imperiously. "That's enough. I don't want to hear any more of this nonsense. I know why you're here. You're looking for the Carmichael woman."
    "Howdya mean?" Being dumb was buying time and warmth. A high isolated corner of my mind considered his describing a seventeen-year-old as a woman and I decided I had been right. He had nothing to do with women.
    "She's not here," he said. "But on the other hand, you are. You weren't supposed to get this far, Mr. Bennett. I'm going to have to stop you."
    Slowly he took up his karate stance, moving as deliberately as if he were under water. I wondered if he was psyching himself to kill me.
    I dropped the hayseed impression. "Stop me the way you stopped Katie?"
    His pose slackened in surprise. "How did you find your way to her?"
    "Easy. I just checked your room at the motel."
    He sneered at me, as if I were slow. "I booked no room at the motel. I'm staying here."
    "Well, somebody called Nighswander booked a room at the Muskellunge Motel, took a girl there, and killed her with a chop in the throat."
    I was watching him but he gave no reaction. Instead he drew himself slowly up into the karate stance and nodded curtly to me.
    "Don't try that judo crap," I warned him. "I'll shoot you."
    He took a tiny step toward me. "Before you can draw your clumsy gun you will be