I was pulling out of the Clarity Ice Company parking lot as David was arriving. He waved to me, uncertain of his next move. But we did manage to pull up next to each other, windows down in the frigid air. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Lance sent me,” David answered. “He thought you might be here. But he couldn’t get away from the office . . . something about waiting for a call from the mayor.”
“He worries too much,” I said.
“Get used to it,” David chided. “He asked me to check on you. Said you were snooping too much.”
“He’ll have to get used to it,” I answered back. “It’s part of my job.”
“I guess this just comes with the engagement,” David said. “But Lance did want me to tell you that he wants you to drop by the precinct. Something more he found out about the strike.”
“What strike?” I asked.
“I thought you knew,” David said. “I found out that the Clarity workers were trying to unionize a few months ago, but they couldn’t get the votes. There’ve been a lot of changes in the company.”
I considered what Milt had told me . . . and what he had protected. Perhaps I was too close to the heat to see the ice melting around me. “How do you know this?” I asked.
“I have friends,” David answered. “And people talk in this town if you put your ear to the rail. You were doing another funeral . . . so I told Lance. You should have listened a little longer. He’s worried.”
I ramped up the heat coming from the car vents and glanced back at the ice company. “I guess the coroner is always the last to know,” I told David.
“What’s that?”
“Never mind,” I said, reaching into my pocket to remove the vial of melting ice I’d removed from the monster. I lifted the plastic container so that David could see it, our breaths twining and untwining momentarily in a ghost-like dance in the space between us. “David . . . I wonder if you have time to do me a little favor?”
“Sure.”
I reached across the brief chasm between our cars and handed him the sample. “Take good care of this,” I told him. “And get it over to the forensic lab ASAP. Blanch is the lady you’ll want to see. She’s a little ragged around the edges, probably find her outside having a smoke. But Cory is on vacation and so she’ll take care of this.”
David grasped the vial and I watched him closely until he placed it inside his coat pocket. “Certainly,” he said. “Any instructions?”
“Just tell her it’s from me . . . and ask her to analyze that sample same as the others. Tell her to get back to me as soon as she can. Preferably today. I need to know what she finds.”
I could tell that David was on the cusp of cracking a joke about the sample vial, but I said, “Gotta go,” before he could get the words out. I rolled up my car window, waited for David to pull away.
Before I could shift into drive, a couple of other cars pulled into the Clarity lot and, as far as I could tell, they were employees—truck drivers most likely—who were arriving a bit late for their shift. The day had worn on, the sun beginning to leak from above the clouds like a sieve, a light drain on the energies and emotions. The clouds were like strands of paste in the sky, thick and exceedingly straight, almost painted on. I noted how the cold seemed to mitigate everything, including the outcomes or our imaginations, and I was swept up once again into the idea that someone was trying to freeze me out of certain discoveries.
I wondered who might be watching us, how the rest of the day might play out. I shifted into drive and eased out onto the road. I angled back along the railroad tracks toward the precinct offices, uncertain if I were leaving certain dangers behind or heading into them.