Free Ice Cap by Chris Knopf

fallen in love with the buttery, mashed-potato-like stuff.
    â€œTwenty years is a long time to work for anybody,” I said. “Was Saline here the whole time?”
    â€œSaline was here first. Freddy come a few years after that. I think of them as built into the house. Like they been here since the farm grew out of the ground. It’s not up to me, no matter what I think.”
    â€œThough you own it all now,” I said. “It’s entirely up to you.”
    She dropped her head back on the couch and slid her right hand across the upper part of her chest, as if bracing against imminent emotional threats.
    â€œI don’t know what to do,” she said. “It’s all so strange.”
    I drank some of the tea. It was thick and bitter.
    â€œI’m sorry, Zina. I know what it’s like to have a dead husband. It’s so damn permanent.”
    She uncurled herself from the couch, stood up, and stretched in fully natural feline fashion, then settled back down, feet on the floor.
    â€œIf he’s going to leave you, maybe this is the best way,” she said. “At least no one else can have him.”
    She didn’t exactly tell me the interview was over, but the climate in the living room took on a seasonal chill. I put down the tea and thanked her for talking to me, which she acknowledged with a lazy wave of her hand, and left.

 
    6
    When I got back outside, it was still a brilliant, frigid day. I was glad to get what I could from Zina, though the conversation left me feeling more than a little disquieted. I looked around for Freddy but didn’t see him. There were tire tracks in the snow leading away from the house down an extension of the driveway that connected to another, smaller, house, where Franco, Saline, and Freddy all lived, if my recollections from family gatherings were correct. I was tempted to go that way, but after the talk with Zina, I didn’t feel up to it.
    Instead, I drove back toward the road, stopping at the big pergola. The area off the driveway that Dayna had plowed was only slightly covered in new snow, so I pulled in and put the running Volvo in park. I got out and retraced the lumpy, well-trod path under the pergola and over to the picnic table. The area looked larger and the table smaller in the daylight. The only telltale sign of the night’s events was a balled-up wad of yellow police tape. I put it in my pocket and followed the path up the grade to Hamburger Hill.
    I tried to read the snowed-over disturbances in the snow, but it was too chaotic. I guessed right on where Franco found the body, brushing aside the top layer to reveal the bloody ice underneath. But I could only imagine where the CSIs found the big chunk of ice. I looked at the tracks that led into the scene from the opposite direction, where Franco had first approached, and then went back again to get the blue tarp. I tried to count the footsteps as I had that night, but realized after all the new rain and snow, it was now nearly impossible.
    Hamburger Hill also loomed larger in the harsh sunlight. I looked up and saw two of the lateral members of the sprinkler mobile, one to either side of the scene. The heat of the sun on the burnished metal had apparently melted off any snow that might have collected. So I could see they were basically long, crumpled pipes with boxes at the ends where the water sprayed out.
    Not what you’d call a stunning work of art, but I’d seen uglier things in the Guggenheim Museum.
    Even under ideal circumstances, crime scenes rarely tell you exactly what happened, as good as the CSIs are these days. But I always felt that science wasn’t the only way to communicate with these places. It was probably all spooky imaginings based on what had happened there, yet I usually had the sense that if you just tried to listen, it would tell you something.
    So I stood there until the arctic breeze began to burn off my nose, but nothing spoke to me