Free Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock

caught the shadows of footprints across the road’s new snow, and Helen pulled to the shoulder. The gravel sky looked heavy, the woods flanking Pentland Road lost in a fog of flurries. The footprints disappeared through a gap in the brambles. The girl, Jocey Dempsy, hadn’t come home from school, had been gone over a day. Nobody in town had seen or heard from her. Her folks said she often took walks in these woods. Helen retrieved the holster and pistol from the seat beside her. She turned the cruiser’s spotlight on the tree line, but could not see through the falling snow. She shut off the engine. The motor ticked in the dark quiet, wet snow piling upon the windshield.
    Christmas Eve, 2007: Helen glimpsed her reflection in the door’s glass, her battered eye bulged like a stone had risen on her face. Snow curled up the porch steps and over her boots. The door opened. There stood Connie Dempsy wearing a red sweater with snowflakes embroidered in silver thread. She did not say hello, but stepped aside for Helen to pass.
    The front hall smelled like popcorn, like cinnamon. A little girl in pajamas, a smiling bear on her belly, hid behind Connie’s leg. She was Jocey’s baby sister and looked like her. Warm light fell into the hall from the kitchen, and then David was in the light, wiping his hands on an apron. Helen didn’t know where to stand. There was no doormat and she did not want to track snow into their house.
    “Merry Christmas,” she said.
    Connie lifted the girl into her arms, would not look at Helen.
    “Would you like something to eat?” David asked, still down the hall in the kitchen doorway.
    A puddle had formed on the tiles beneath her boots. “I don’t have any news,” Helen said. They said nothing. Helen held out the pie box, and another package wrapped in green paper with a white ribbon. “Here’s one of Freely’s pies. And I got something for the girl. It ain’t much of anything, but it’s something.”
    They went into the family room, an upright piano in the corner, the tree beside it, tiny colored lights flashing. Helen had removed her boots and was afraid her feet stank; she’d worn the same wool socks five straight days. But all she smelled was popcorn and cinnamon. The family sat on a sofa, the girl in the middle. Helen faced them in a high-back wooden chair, her gun belt awkward against the ar did not tear the paper like most kids. She picked at the tape, her mother helping, and carmrest.
    The little girlefully unfolded the wrapping to reveal a box. Inside was a tiny pink shirt. Across the front were a golden star and the words JUNIOR DEPUTY, KRAFTON POLICE. Connie and David glanced at each other. Light glinted off the silver thread in Connie’s sweater. The apron hung down between David’s legs. The little girl wrinkled her nose and stared at Helen’s face, and Helen was sure she’d ask about her swollen eye.
    Helen crossed one socked foot over the other. She looked at Connie. “It ain’t much,” she said. “I didn’t know what to give a child.”
    December 19, 2007: Helen crossed Pentland Road and pushed through brambles and into the woods. Her flashlight created a tunnel of light, inside of which were the arms of catbrier and low-slung limbs and the occasional shallows of footprints. She pulled her stocking cap to her brow. She felt the immense silence. Helen trudged on, and deeper in, where gray dusk lit the bench above her, she saw tracks of black soil where the snow had been disturbed. Helen climbed, her feet slipping as she scaled the slope, and stopped up on the ridge to examine a scuttle of boot prints.
    Slivers of pink broached the flurries in the western sky. She paused, breathing heavily, and stared down over the valley. A black stream cut the mottled white, powdered trees hunched on their hummocks. In one distant corner of the prairie the last of daylight glinted off a tin roof.
    Some gentle movement in her periphery made her notice the near trees. Far below, a