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Ernie grunted like an old dog in response.
The truck was already well into its descent, nosing down the other side of the pass, and Ernie turned his attention to making sure his baby wasn’t going to end up a forty-ton chrome and steel toboggan, heading for Silver the short way, straight down the cliff.
The heater was being a bitch. They’d been in the cab with the doors shut now for at least ten minutes, and Ernie could still see his breath. If this carried on he’d have to stop in Silver when he let his passenger out, get the thing fixed himself, or stop over until he could find someone who could.
He shifted down a gear, as he felt a slight give under the front wheels.
‘Are there many Indians in Silver?’
Ernie didn’t enjoy the last exchange about Indians. He wished he’d never brought the subject up. ‘Yeah. One or two.’
‘Assiniboine, Kinchuinick or Blackfoot?’
‘Kinchuinick mostly, I think. Hey, I don’t know, buddy. Do I look like Professor of Native North American Studies at Princeton?’
The road, which hadn’t seen a snowplough for hours, was having one last go at slowing up Ernie Legat and his seafood, boasting a drift of at least three feet across the last serious bend before the run out to town. Ernie could see the lights of Silver just starting to poke through the blizzard, and decided to ram the sucker. Without touching the brakes, he slammed the eighteen-wheeler into the snow bank and hoped it was only this high for a few feet.
Somewhere in one of the back axles, a set of wheels complained enough to shove the rig alarmingly to the left, but the truck held on and ten feet later they were clear. Silver twinkled ahead. Ernie knew his was the last thing on wheels that would get through that for a while. The ploughs wouldn’t even look at this until the storm calmed down and nothing he could see was hinting at that. He would drop his passenger and head for the truck stop at Maidston Creek, five miles down the valley. It looked like he’d have to sit out this tempest for a day or two.
‘Well, that weren’t too tidy, but we made it okay. Where d’you want off?’
‘Town boundary’ll do fine.’
They crawled up to the edge of town and the hydraulic brakes started hissing and puffing as soon as Ernie caught sight of the aluminium sign that read through a thin sheath of snow Welcome to Silver. Ski a bit of history!
‘Sure this is it?’ asked Ernie as the truck stopped by the sign.
‘Yeah. This is where I need to be. Thanks Ernie.’
He put the cushion he had held for the last few miles on the seat beside him, opened the door and hopped out, still holding the clutch-handle.
‘And don’t drive too long that you need Amy’s cushion now, hear?’ He shut the door and moved off into the darkness.
Ernie smiled at that. He picked up the cushion to put it back on the dash. He dropped it quickly back onto the seat. It was frozen into a solid, kidney-shaped block of ice.
A blast of hot air from the heater hit Ernie in the face. Seemed it was working again in a big way, and the sudden rush of heat gave him goosebumps, then something approaching a flush.
Suddenly Ernie Legat’s heart started to beat a little too fast. How did that guy know Amy made that cushion? How did he even know her name? He hadn’t said anything about it at all. Couldn’t explain that one from an I.D. in the cab.
And there was something else, something at the very back of Ernie’s mind that had bothered him all the way down the pass, but he couldn’t get a handle on it. What the hell was it?
He threw the truck into gear and started to move off, grateful, though he couldn’t say why, that the stranger had been swallowed up by the dark and the blizzard.
It was three miles out of Silver that Ernie had it. Even though the cab had been colder than a whore’s heart, it was only Ernie’s breath that clouded. He didn’t like to think about that. So he didn’t.
It was twenty minutes after two in the morning that Staff Sergeant Craig McGee stood at the edge of the Trans-Canada highway, looking at the single set of truck tracks already filled with snow, and realized that his sergeant, Joe Reader, was in big trouble.
Joe had been due back around ten, after a routine call to Stoke, on the other side of Wolf Pass. The guys at the store in Stoke who’d called him said he’d left around nine, and since there was a radio in the pick-up, he’d have called for help if he’d gotten stuck in the snow.
Craig didn’t like this. Joe was a radio junkie. He’d call up his boss just to say he’d seen an elk in the road, and if he was out there in a drift, Craig would have had an irritating call every two minutes plotting the exact minute-by-minute progress of his entrapment. Of course the radio could be down, which meant that Joe had a cold night ahead, but the truck tracks were evidence that something had got through the pass in the last two hours. If that were so, why hadn’t Joe clambered from some trucker’s cab hours ago and shambled into the office with a sheepish grin? A trucker wasn’t going to ignore a stranded pick-up, especially not one with the RCMP logo painted on the doors and blue and red lights on its roof.
The blizzard was approaching nightmare force, and Craig McGee could hardly stand against the might of the wind and the stinging bullets of snow. He ran back to the Cherokee, sitting off-road with its engine still running, and climbed back into the driving seat. There was no way a chopper could fly in this and it would be crap in the dark anyway, even with the spots on. Nothing for it but to wait for dawn and hope that Joe’s wife Estelle didn’t go hysterical on him in the meantime.
Craig turned the patrol vehicle round and headed back into town.
The Indians called the gash in the rock that ran from the top of Wolf Pass down to the Silver Creek, Makwiochpeekin, the Wolf’s Tooth. Fifty feet from the bottom of the gully what was left of Joe Reader’s pick-up lay wedged in the fissure of rock like a broken filling in that tooth. Joe’s head was almost severed from its torso but a stubborn sinew kept it hanging there, banging against the bare metal of the cab where it dangled upside-down. The snow eddied round the remains of Sergeant Reader in tiny cyclones as the ragged, gaping holes in the vehicle allowed it access to the carnage.
Two crows perched on a tiny ledge on the cliff watched the meat hanging from its metal larder, swinging gently with the wind. Perhaps when they were sure it was safe, they would fly over there and explore.
But for now only the snow and the wind explored Joe and his vehicle, and from the look in his eyes, which were two frozen balls in his battered head, Joe Reader didn’t mind a bit.
7 (#ulink_2e19c0f3-a2e6-5eb3-ab23-c21fd06379d7)
When Katie Hunt’s phone rang, she jumped. She hoped it was Sam, and it was. Only two days back at work after his blackout and the ski company had sent him to Stoke for fencing in one of the worst blizzards she could remember. That seemed to Katie to be a slice of a raw deal, but the Hunt family had long since learned to lock away resentment at raw deals in a mental box marked Leave It.
Right now, she was just glad he was safe.
‘So where you going to spend the night, honey?’
Sam sounded tired. ‘Well it’s either the Stoke Hilton or I can bed down in the ticket office. I’m gonna go for the ticket office. Room service is quicker. Seems like I’m the only homeless one round here, so I get the place to myself. It sure beats the hell out of sleeping in the ski truck in a twelve-foot drift. You okay?’
‘Sure. You okay? No headaches?’
Katie heard Sam smile through his voice. ‘No. No headaches. No drooling down my chin like a lunatic. No writhing on the floor in a fit.’
Katie ignored his mockery of her concern. ‘When do you think you’ll make it home?’
‘If the blizzard lets up I guess the pass’ll be open by about noon tomorrow. You can wear my wool shirt if you get cold in bed without me.’
‘Sam?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too, babe.’
Billy yelled from the other room, and Katie said her goodbyes and hung up. Some chat show host was smarming through his front of show stand-up, while Billy Hunt ignored him in favour of a hand-held computer game. He yelled again as Katie came into the L-shaped room that was the biggest living space in the house.
‘Nine thousand, Mom! I got nine thousand! Yeees!’
Katie stood behind her son, and ran one thoughtful hand through his straight black hair. ‘Bed, Billy boy. Now.’
‘You said I could wait up and see Dad,’ he replied without taking his eyes off the grey plastic block in his hand.
‘Dad’s stranded in the storm over at Stoke. He’s coming home tomorrow, so that means bed for you, right now.’
She leaned over and switched off Billy’s game.
‘Aw Mom!’
‘I said now, Billy. Your hockey kit’s at the foot of your bed. You forget to put it in your bag again tomorrow, then you’re on your own, kid. I’m not driving round to school with it.’ She turned to leave the room.
‘Mom?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Dad won’t be at home tonight at all?’
Suddenly he looked worried. Katie went back and joined him on the sofa.
‘It’s okay. Like I said: he’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Can Bart sleep with me tonight?’
Katie tried to look hurt. ‘Oh, so Jess and I won’t do for company then? I keep forgetting, we’re just sappy girls.’
Billy put his hand in hers, and looked into her eyes with such concern she already regretted the joke. ‘You do fine. I just want Bart with me. It’s important.’
Katie squeezed his little hand. ‘Sure. If you can get him in. Good luck. You know what he’s been like.’
‘Great!’
‘Now go get ready for bed. I’ll be up in a minute.’
Her son bounced up and hopped on one foot to the door, singing as he went. His nine-year-old mind had already moved on to other matters. Likewise, Katie’s thirty-four-year-old mind had drifted back to her husband, worry and anxiety drilling into her. It was wrenched back to reality by the sound of Bart bounding up stairs with Billy, as the dog knocked over the frosted glass vase on the landing.
She smiled, and went to play at being stern.
When dawn came on January tenth it revealed the best snow conditions Silver Ski Company had seen for fifteen seasons. It also brought Estelle Reader the worst day of her life.
When they brought back what was left of Joe around one-thirty, Craig had been first at Estelle’s door, his face a grey mask of grief. Craig thought about the kind of suffering you see in the movies, where widows thank the policeman, squeeze his hand, and sit quietly in a chair absorbing the news. He thought about it as Estelle fell to her knees gurgling like a pig being bled, clutching at Craig’s jacket with fists like claws. She writhed on the floor and tore at the rug, saliva running from her mouth as she grunted and panted in the pain of her despair, until Craig hooked his hands under her armpits and lifted her onto a chair.
Life wasn’t like the movies. In fact life in Silver over the last week had been real bad.
Two ski patrollers killed in a freak explosion, and now Joe. He would, of course, have to tell Estelle that Joe’s death hadn’t been an accident, but not now. Time for that later, and time was going to bring her more pain. She would have to suffer the wait before they could lay Joe in the ground, while an autopsy was performed on the grisly remains.
From what they recovered in the gorge, there wasn’t much left to fit in a coffin, and after the forensics had been at him, Craig suspected a Safeway’s bag would probably be big enough to bury his ex-sergeant decently.
He waited with the moaning shell of Estelle Reader until her sister got there, then left and headed back to work.
Half a mile from the office, Craig McGee pulled off the highway into a back road, stopped the engine and cried like a baby. He would be all right in half an hour. Right now, he was broken up.
‘No kidding? Well if it’s a problem we can send a car to the airport to bring her luggage separately.’
Pasqual Weaver watched her own reflection in the office window as she spoke. An elegant, if angular, woman in her thirties looked back, the grey fleece zippered top with the Silver Ski Company logo embroidered on the left breast doing its best to undermine her executive status.
The hand unoccupied by the telephone played with the zipper at her neck.
‘Sure, we want her to be real comfortable. And can I say we’re already over the moon she’s even considering it.’
Eric entered the room and Pasqual mimed at him to sit down.
‘Okay James, you put those things to her and get back to us when you have an answer, but please tell her from us that we’re all huge fans and are really hoping she can make it. Okay, you too. Take care.’ She hung up, and gave the phone her middle finger. ‘Jesus. The fucking old bitch is acting like she’s still a star. Make my day, Eric. Tell me you’ve come to persuade me this celebrity ski week idea is a crock of shit.’
Eric Sindon had not come to say any such thing. ‘You’ve heard about the accident?’
Pasqual’s body changed shape. No longer lounging in her leather chair, it was now sitting forward like a cat watching its prey before striking.
‘Tell me.’
‘Craig’s side-kick. His truck went over the gorge on Wolf’s Pass last night.’
Pasqual sat back in her chair with relief. ‘Fuck. Don’t give me scares like that. I thought we’d had a fatality on the slopes. I think we can live with a cop in an auto accident.’
Eric looked at his boss with distaste. ‘It’s the third death in Silver in a week. I’m getting rumours that there’s more to it than just an automobile accident.’
Pasqual opened her top drawer and fished around until she found a packet of M&Ms.
‘Want one?’ She tossed the packet over the desk to Eric after filling her mouth with chocolate.
‘No. Look, I’m telling you this because I think it will have a negative effect on the resort. Skiers don’t get off on reading about death when they should be reading about snow reports.’
‘Eric, I think our visitors are big enough boys and girls to cope with the fact that sometimes people die in cars.’
‘What about Lenny and Jim?’
‘Accidents happen. They were patrollers for Christ’s sake.’
Eric looked at her and she knew that look. Pasqual stood up and turned her back to him, looking out of the window at the last of the die-hard skiers stepping out of their bindings beside the lodge after stealing the last run of the day.
‘What do you see out there, Eric?’
‘A lodge that needs a re-clad and a nursery area that needs two extra tows.’
She laughed, and threw another chocolate peanut into her mouth. ‘Well, maybe so, but I see the best fucking snow we’ve had in years, and a season that’s going to do business like a cold beer stall in Hell.’ She turned back to him. ‘Now what exactly are you worried about?’
‘Someone has to.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you shouldn’t underestimate negative vibes in a fun resort, Pasqual.’
She sat down and smiled a wicked cat grin at him. ‘Are you telling me my job, Mr Sindon?’
Eric sighed. ‘Okay, forget it. Just thought it was worth mentioning.’
‘Thank you.’
