Free Cold Quiet Country by Clayton Lindemuth Page B

cigarette until the cherry glowed.
    Gwen backed away.
    “That’s right, lezzie.” The dark-haired girl grabbed her crotch like a rutting boy.
    Gwen navigated the two right-angle turns and backed into the hallway. Liz grabbed her books from Gwen’s arms and they hurried around the corner and sixty feet farther to their lockers, on opposite sides of the hallway.
    “Okay,” Gwen said. “Right out the front door.”
    Liz stared through her. “You need to tell me how you killed them.”
    * * *
    They reached the street and turned left, toward town, and then crossed to the west side. After a quarter mile they’d pass Sheriff Bittersmith’s station and then the Main Street businesses. On the concrete bridge that crossed Mill Creek, Gwen stopped and leaned over the side. A storm the night before had swollen Mill Creek’s waters; the stream rushed with muddy runoff and over-spilled its banks.
    Liz came beside her and looked over the edge. “Think about being swept away,” she said.
    “It doesn’t work like you think,” Gwen said. “I can’t just see someone and make him die.”
    “It would be nice if you could.”
    “The first was my grandfather. I saw him and heard funeral music, and the next day my mother said he was dead. Eight months later I saw my grandmother. I tried to warn her; I tried to reach into the picture; I said her name but she didn’t know I was with her. She had her eyes fixed on the Devil, I think. She was looking down.”
    “What happened?”
    “I went into the kitchen and called her on the phone. I let it ring for a few minutes, and when I gave up, my mother came out, and she tried calling, and Grandma never answered.”
    “She was already dead…”
    “That’s what I thought,” Gwen said. “But she wasn’t. Not when I called.”
    “What?”
    “They found her on the floor, sprawled out, dead…she’d been crawling to the phone.”

CHAPTER TEN
    I climb the steps sideways, carrying a chunk of salted venison on a fork while it drips into a Mason jar. I want to be on my way before law enforcement follows my footprints from Burt Haudesert’s blood to this front porch. More pressing is the likelihood a platoon of Wyoming Militia will storm the house riding thirty snowmobiles through the drifts, right across the lake.
    It would be nice to know when the storm is going to be over, but unless I can find a radio and batteries, I won’t know until I spot dripping icicles. There is such a thing as snow so deep a snowmobile will bog down, but until I know how the storm is shaping, I won’t fathom how to survive any of it—the blizzard, the police, or the militiamen.
    The room with the rifles overlooks the fields toward the road, about two hundred yards off.
    I rub my bunched-up wool sleeve against the frost on the window. The road is hard to see, a gray line that traces all the way from left to right. I’ve been on that road, and seeing it and knowing the lake is behind me helps put my location in context. In fact, I passed by this place last summer working for Burt Haudesert.
    The gun cabinets are locked, but the glass doors display their contents. I feel along the crown of the first, and then the second cabinet, and find a ring with a pair of keys.
    I shot a lot of squirrel with Mister Sharps’s .22, and lining up the open sights and holding a steady bead is my strong suit. If a bullet comes out the other end, I’ll hit what I’m pointing at. I choose the rifle with the longest barrel and examine the top of the breech for a stamp.
    .30-06.
    It’s a bolt action, something I’m familiar with. Good for shooters, Mister Sharps said, because the bolt won’t wiggle.
    If that’s what it takes, I said.
    Two cabinet doors and three drawers sit below the rifles. I pull the top and find boxes of bullets. Fat boxes with shotgun shells. Long skinny boxes for rifles. I locate one that has .30-06 on the side, made by a company called Federal. There are smaller boxes and out of curiosity I open one.