Although I do not subscribe to the philosophy, many people believe that everything happens for a reason. But that’s a strange view when one considers the ultimate outcome of our lives and that all things end in death and decay. However, I am a firm believer in serendipity—those small outcomes and actions, seemingly insignificant, that can often lead to larger discoveries or purposes.
And in the case of the Carringtons, there was something serendipitous about the business of ice and how it could lead to slipups. Driving out of the forensic lab late in the afternoon, my face pressed toward the pink setting sun, I wondered if the dichotomy of the cold and the heat of my pressure might create a combustion, of sorts. Though rarely in play, I felt that something was about to break or that, like a child walking across a thinly frozen pond, someone was flirting with disaster.
Milt came to mind.
But I was already on my way back to the ice factory to retrieve me cell phone—which was another reason I thought of him. Driving back across familiar ground, over railroad tracks and past the veiled poverties of the shotgun houses, I marveled at how, in just a few hours and days, lives and crossed and intersected in the aftermath of death. I pondered the incredible matrix—the intermingling of the living with the dead. And as I drove on through the encroaching darkness, I experienced an indescribable grace, a gratitude of sorts that could be nothing other than Christmas joy—the wonder of the gift of life, and love, and even laughter . . .
Hastening toward the ice factory, I warmed my hands against the heater vents, wiggled my toes inside my boots. I was tingling with anticipation.
When I pulled into the Clarity Ice parking lot, I noticed that all of the delivery trucks had already loaded and departed. The place looked vacant, but Milt’s car was still parked near the back door and there were outlines of light coming from inside the office. I sidled next to Milt’s car, shut off the engine, and rubbed my knees and elbows to get my circulation moving again.
I tightened my scarf and drew out of the car just as the security lights came on around the factory. The fresh light also drew my eye toward the horizon where the sun, now distant and alluring, was sinking low in the sky, a half-shell of orange distilled through the barren browns and drab, snow-covered white of the winter-scalded trees. There was beauty, but I didn’t want to linger in it . . .
Bounding up the concrete stairs, I was surprised to find the back door unlocked. But there was a light on in Milt’s office, though I could see, soon after entering the foyer, that he was not sitting at his desk. I came through the set of double-doors, allowed the warmth to fill my lungs, and then shouted, “Milt . . . anyone home?”
There was no answer, save my own faint echo of words. I stepped inside, feeling marginally like a trespasser, growing uncomfortable in the vacuous space of hallways and cubicles. But the work day was over and it was, of course, a Christmas break . . . and so I proceeded down the short hallway toward Milt’s office.
I stuck my head in, gave another greeting in hope of finding Milt, but again there was no answer. On the desk, a tiny reading lamp glowed with a forty-watt bulb, and the papers that Milt was working on earlier in the day lay strewn across the face of his desk. His office chair was angled toward the wall, as if he had risen and walked away from it.
Standing over his desk, I noticed the edge of my cell phone sticking out from underneath a sheaf of loose papers. Yes—I must have placed the phone on the desk and then it was covered over with papers. Not the first time I had misplaced the thing, but glad I had found it. I placed the phone in my pocket and then looked back down the darkened hallway toward the factory door. There was no one else in the office, but the light was still on in the accounting office as well.
I lingered at Milt’s threshold for a few minutes, hoping he might return from his check of the factory. Still, no sounds. The ice machine was not running, and all of the delivery trucks had left the property for their evening deliveries.
After a few minutes I decided to walk the short hallway to the factory entrance. I strode past the small cubicles and peered into the accounting office. Again, the lights were on but the beautiful accountant was not sitting at her desk. Beyond the factory door, with its tiny porthole window, I could hear the humming of the overhead fluorescent lights.
I opened the door and walked into the factory, the expansive warehouse only partially lit, the high windows fastened shut and the dock doors closed. I called out again for Milt, my voice rising and falling across the high walls and the stainless steel labyrinth of the ice maker.
I noted that the warehouse floor had been freshly cleaned, sprayed to a high gloss, and I took extra care as I began clicking across the cement toward the monster. I studied the shadows, hopeful to catch some movement somewhere in the dim recesses of the factory.
As I rounded the corner of the ice maker and the end of the conveyor line, I sensed a stirring beyond the door of the industrial freezer, the corner vault where the additional inventory was stored. I stepped across the floor, still wondering where Milt had gone.
I was about to turn back, return to the office.
But that’s when I noticed the blood on the floor.