Chapter 1. Ice Jam
Canaan, Vermont, Friday morning, mid-January, 1982
"One, two . . . bang! bang! That's one way to shut up a bitch!" Monty spoke to himself as his ears continued to ring from the screaming and gunshots. Set against his height and muscular upper body, the 20-gauge double-barreled shotgun in his gloved hands looked like a giant's toy. He hesitated before re-racking the gun below the other two and letting his gray eyes adjust to the snow- enhanced sunlight splashing through the east-facing window. He surveyed the furniture and blue paisley wallpaper. There were clues to this bedroom's other uses in its filing cabinet, bookshelves, and fly-tying ensemble complete with table, vice, glue, black twine, and menagerie of feathers. But Monty could care less. He glanced back at the warm living room and listened nervously for any change in pattern. Other than his inward ringing, the house was reassuringly still. Monty felt his shoulder and neck muscles loosen slightly.
The most odious task was complete. There would be hard physical work ahead and many tracks to cover, but now there would be no rush, no resistance. He knew it was time to return to the numbers...the old man's step-by-step plan could work, but his next moves needed to be exceedingly careful or this killing would be for nothing. Well, maybe not for nothing. Apart from the old man's schemes, Monty did see some personal advantage to this murder. Either way, the tedious task ahead would result in a completely convincing pattern of clues. He could smell the acrid gun smoke that his insulated white coveralls had helped carry upward from the basement. Its aroma had trailed him through the kitchen and living room into the smaller corner bedroom where the gun was normally stored. The smell intensified after he thumbed the gun's toplever, opened the action, and pocketed the spent yellow cartridges. He chuckled as he gently closed the action and mounted the gun in its rack. And where there's smoke . . . he let the phrase dangle in his mind for a satisfying moment. With the old man's plan, he knew that the fire that was certain to follow would be the gun owner's problem and not his own.
The following morning
The fur ruff on Reilly Bostwick's parka tickled his neck as he scraped frost from the bedroom window. The outdoor thermometer read fifteen below. Could be worse, he thought. Just before leaving the room, he carefully lifted the brown barrel 12-gauge shotgun from its rack and pocketed six cartridges. His felt-lined boots echoed his walk across the living room and kitchen then beat a deeper tune on his frigid back porch. Reilly strapped on his snowshoes and awkwardly walked the shoveled path before climbing the snowbank, ready for his morning hike.
He stepped into the deep snow and paused, studying the gentle hillside with meditating eyes. He stooped to scoop a sample of the loose powder. As he put the snow in his mouth, he slowly closed his eyes. He liked to begin each solo hunt or hike with a unique rite of season. He paused to take stock of his senses and more fully appreciate the patterns within nature's tapestry. The Vermont woods had gradually become his chapel of choice. Although he sometimes described himself as a "Home Baptist," this was a ruse. He couldn't put his deeper thoughts into words even for his friends. These ceremonies remained secret. Lately, Reilly had found a measure of wholeness within nature's unfeeling beauty. He stood with anticipation, waiting for the last errant thought to scamper from his mind. When he felt centered, he opened his eyes, stepped forward, and let his sensory world blossom.
Reilly's eyes sketched in blue, brown, green, gray and white . . . mostly white. His mind's canvas framed the geometric lines of shadows amidst the asymmetry of glacial boulders and the echoing shapes of balsam needles, branches, and trees. These sensations expanded with the smell of cedar, the song of chickadees, and the taste of snow.
He preferred to make his own path, edging parallel to his and Amy's toboggan trail. He welcomed the physical challenge of deep snow. His snowshoes squeaked at the bottom of each uncertain step. In the deep fluff, no surface was firm and the clues to stability were confused: more like balancing on a loose wire than walking a trail. With each step, Reilly sunk a foot or more. He had to lift his legs high to move forward and higher yet to cross drifts and adjust to the upward slope of the hill. Without his wood-and-leather Tubbs, he would have been leg-bound and hip-high in three feet of loosely packed powder. The sky was sliding to overcast, but it was still bright enough to print his eyes with the afterimage of boulders and trees just passed. Occasionally he would misstep, list to one side, and fall in a twisted lurch. This is authentic North Country fun, he mused. Reilly liked metaphors, and moving ahead in this border village was a snowshoeing experience. It entailed much energy and more than a little thrashing. He smiled as he trudged slowly into the shadows of spruce trees at the edge of the woods.
