After some indefinable time, a voice assaulted me, close by and too loud—disturbing. Slowly meaning penetrated: “Hey, you’re going to wreck that unit!”
The voice emerged from George, the security guard, standing at the open freezer door. His broad, open face was baffled and concerned, blue uniform tight across his belly, belt lost under its slope. “What the heck are you doing? The lights keep blinking; you gotta stop that. Hap doesn’t like anybody messing around in here.”
I mumbled something and staggered from a hunched crouch to my feet. My legs weren’t working right. George held my arm, protesting mildly and steadily, as I weaved to the laundry room. I found the thermostat and turned it up. The big heater hanging from the ceiling kicked on, and I stood shaking, facing the blast of warm air, inhaling it deep into my lungs. He shoved a chair under my rear and I sat back.
“Why’d you stay in there if you were so cold? I gotta put this in my report, you know.”
“Do what you need to do.” Muzzy intuition kept me from telling him the truth.
George dithered uneasily while my strength slowly returned. After several minutes, I was able to walk back to the freezer door, now closed—blank, inoffensive, normal. A door I saw and ignored every workday.
I found where a thin, tapered object might be inserted between the door and its frame to jam it. Hap’s heavy wooden-handled cleaver sat on the stainless steel work counter ten feet from the door.
At the sound of George’s electric cart, someone had pulled the cleaver out and vanished. George had saved my life simply by showing up. “George, did you see anybody when you came in here?” I looked around at the shadowy aisles.
“No. I didn’t see nobody. I went to get my Popsicle. Hap says I can have one a night. What were you doing in there, anyway?” His voice was querulous. George was best at dealing with the ordinary.
If I told him the truth, tomorrow Wallace would boot me out of the zoo, one accident too many, with Marcie’s and my parents’ full support. My plan was to resolve this situation later tonight, but I might need more time. And keeping this secret was the unexpected thing to do—I’d reported the previous accidents. Maybe it would give me some advantage over my opponent. “I lost something. I was looking for it. Thanks for…Nice to see you, George.” I turned the thermostat back down and started to walk, still shivering, out of the building. Craven and exhausted, I turned back. “George, will you run me to the parking lot?”
He was pleased to be helpful. “Sure. I guess I got time.”
I climbed in and we rode through the twilight to the employee parking lot. We saw no one.
The truck heater roaring, I drove around Vancouver in circles until I was sure no one was following me. I felt terrible, in many dimensions. Shoulders, breasts, arms, and butt all ached from physical abuse. A headache was drumming its way to life. My bones were immune to warmth, permafrost below the surface. I was so tired I could hardly drive. Panic crouched icy and intractable at my core. Only basic survival instincts were functioning. They said that refueling was mandatory.
At the back booth of a little café I’d never noticed before, I sat facing the door, adrenaline spiking each time it opened. The waitress brought a charred steak glazed with grease, a damp baked potato wrapped in aluminum foil with a glob of sour cream and another of butter, and overcooked green beans. I ate it all, plus the stale dinner roll, and asked for more coffee. The waitress failed on chocolate cake, but delivered an acceptable blackberry cobbler.
Now what?
I had Rick’s life insurance, a sizeable stake. My parents would help me pack the truck. I’d call the landlord and leave a check for the last month. Forget the cleaning deposit. What about Bessie Smith? Denny. She could go to Denny. I’d spend the night at the folks’, leave town tomorrow. Tell them I wanted to see some of the country. No permanent address for a while. Give it a couple of months, then settle down in some little town far away. Maybe find a job in landscape work or at an animal shelter.
I couldn’t bring Rick back, and there was no point in getting killed trying. I could still be sleeping in the freezer, beyond fear or obligation or responsibility.
The waitress orbited by with more coffee. I ordered the peach pie. Skip the à la mode. She removed the berry cobbler remnants—a fragment of crust and a smear of juice. The headache was gone and I seemed to be approaching 98.6 degrees throughout.
I could be safe again. No more looking over my shoulder, wondering what deadfall I was about to trigger. Just me and the dogs. I’d talk to Marcie and my parents by phone every week. Maybe Linda too. I could change my name, no law against it if I wasn’t defrauding anyone.
I yearned for this like a seedling straining toward a sunny window.
The peach pie vanished. Not in the same league as my mother’s, but not bad. Apple pie didn’t sound good. I sipped the last of the coffee and sighed. My waistband was tight, a comfy feel.
Turkey vultures circled over my new Eden, drawn by the smell of decay at the foundation. This new plan offered tenuous safety based on hiding, hiding from myself as well as any pursuer. Living with failure; betraying Rick’s love. A rotting base for a new life.
The problem was, I knew who had killed Rick and had come so close to killing me. I’d reconstructed my insights from the freezer. As soon as I asked the right question and believed what Spice showed me, the answer emerged again, like a trick image resolving out of a chaotic background. Once I knew who, then I knew where the tooth came from and why Rick died.
If I fled instead of sticking with my original plan for the evening, the killer was going to get away with two murders.