It was Lance.
I opened the door and hugged him. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Did I frighten you?” I didn’t feel the cold, nothing but the warmth of his body, his uniform and muscle propping me up as the snow stirred around our feet.
“You scared me to death,” I said. “I thought . . . “
“I’m sorry,” Lance said. “I circled around the house, then cut through a neighbor’s yard. I angled back across the street. But it’s too cold to search much longer.”
I held him tightly.
“Let’s get out of the cold,” he said. “We can talk as we drive back home.”
He helped me into the car, shut the door, and in a moment he was at my side again behind the wheel, the engine purring and sputtering the initial hints of warmth across our arms and legs. We sat in the driveway for a couple of minutes, silent as sleepy children, and waited for our faces to warm before Lance threw the car in gear and backed out of the driveway.
“So?” I asked as we headed out of the Carringtons’ sub-division. “Did you see anyone?”
“No,” Lance answered. “But . . . “
“But what?”
“There were plenty of footprints. I know someone was watching us when we were inside the house.”
“Did you follow them to see where they led?”
“For a few hundred feet . . . out the back gate in the yard. But then the footprints trailed off across that open field over there.” Lance pointed to the undeveloped cal-de-sacs, the vacant roads.
“Are they a man’s or a woman’s footprint?”
“Couldn’t say,” Lance answered. “Smaller boot size, but prints in the snow look pretty much the same.”
“I saw a coyote over there just a few minutes ago,” I said as we exited onto the road and headed for home. “It looked thin. Very hungry.”
“Maybe he’ll have a nice meal tonight,” Lance said. “Whoever was watching us certainly isn’t afraid of the cold. It would be easy to get frostbite on a night like this.”
I didn’t say much as Lance drove through the night, my eyes heavy. Still, I didn’t want for Lance to fall asleep at the wheel. He needed my energy. I considered our options. “Why don’t we sleep at your house tonight?” I said. “It’s closer . . . and we could both use some extra sleep.”
Lance nodded in agreement. “Okay,” he said. “But I’m not making breakfast.”
The wipers on the patrol car had turned the snow to mush on the warm windshield but I could see that the precipitation was no match for the sub-zero temperature. Whatever melted would soon turn to ice. Any exposed skin could freeze. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the peeping Tom.
As we neared Lance’s house, I pondered a few theories in my mind, then asked Lance one question. “Do you think the Carringtons had enemies?”
Lance didn’t take his eyes off of the road. “You seem to think there’s probable cause to look for foul play in their house,” he said. “I hope you didn’t keep me up tonight just because you enjoy looking at stale fruitcakes and Christmas cookies.”
I gave an awkward laugh. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to pinpoint the source of their illnesses. I’m not sure it’s foul play . . . but it’s suspicious at least.”
Lance had a way of making me feel supported, even when he spoke his mind. “I don’t like the idea of you being the coroner, getting involved in these things, Mary. It’s one thing to pick up a body at the hospital morgue but quite another to conduct your own investigation so you can fill out a death certificate.”
I crossed my arms across my seat belt, pondered what Lance was telling me. But for some reason I was not afraid. In fact, these unexpected twists felt more like an out-of-body experience than reality—as if I were looking at myself from the vantage point of an omnipotent narrator, describing the scenes as I travelled along. Perhaps it was a self-preservation technique, a way of guarding my sanity, but I knew my father had experienced his work in much the same way. He had always told my mother that he didn’t touch corpses, but felt as if somebody else was doing the work and not himself. “Mary,” he used to tell me, “you have to stay one step removed from the tragedy, from death itself. You can touch it, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it in the door. Always take a step back . . . work from a distance. And you’ll be a great mortician.”
I didn’t know if Lance could understand such things, but if our love was for real I knew he would want to try. I had to help him. “I’m not as involved as you might think,” I said eventually, just yards from Lance’s driveway. “I don’t have to be inside the house . . . if you know what I mean.”
Lance squinted at the lit dashboard, reduced the heat. “I think you’re telling me you can remain emotionally and personally uninvolved.”
“Yes.”
“You’d make a great cop,” Lance said, winking at me as he edged the patrol car into his snow-littered driveway.
“Then you know what I’m talking about,” I answered.
“Yes,” Lance said. “I think I do.” He leaned over and kissed me.
We parked, exited the patrol car, and walked arm-in-arm up the freshly-covered sidewalk into the house, the sample kit tucked under my arm. Our hearts weren’t lusting after anything but sleep and, as soon as we hit the threshold of Lance’s bedroom, we both lunged and crumpled onto the bed, shoes on the floor but clothes on. I peeked at the red face of the alarm clock as Lance set it for an early morning wake-up, just hours away. It was a quarter past one.
We kissed one last time.
And then it was all either of us remembered at the close of a very long day.