Category:

He tries to picture the Loon, where he was sitting, Ronnie behind the bar. He recalls having words, though nothing too bad, with a couple of guys who might have been giving Ronnie a hard time. For some reason he remembers thinking they must have been from downstate, probably Detroit or thereabouts. There was a woman in an orange hoodie. Not much else is coming. He figures he'll call Ronnie as soon as she might be awake, she'll clear things up. But then he thinks, no, dumb shit, you have no phone.

He twists himself around and digs in the crack between the seat and the seat back. Nothing there. He clambers back into the front and tries those seats. Nothing in the driver's side, but his fingertips brush something solid on the passenger side. He pulls his arm out and yanks his coat and shirtsleeves up, then plunges back in and comes out with his phone. 'Son of a bitch,' he says, feeling something he hopes isn't blood caked on the casing. He tries to turn the phone on, but it's out of juice. Why would it have been jammed into the seat like that? Jimmy can't believe he would've put it there on his own. Unless he was trying to hide it. But why? From whom?

His right ring finger has gone numb from the cold. He starts the truck and pulls it into the garage. The stuff on the steering wheel feels like tar. Jimmy puts a palm to his face and sniffs. He used to think when he fought two or three times a week that he could smell the difference between his own blood and another guy's. That was bullshit, just like it was bullshit that beating people up would propel him to the National Hockey League.

He needs to clean the steering wheel and check the rest of the truck for blood, but he doesn't want to freeze to death, so he goes inside and rubs his gluey hands warm then plugs the cell into the outlet next to the fridge. He goes back to the sink to rinse his hands and checks his reflection in the kitchen window. He's gotta get some ice on that swollen cheek. People are going to ask about it. Which makes him wonder if he ought to call the cops.

For what, though? What's he gonna tell them? There's blood in my truck but I don't know why? I have no idea how I got this shiner? Or why my knuckles look like spaghetti? I had one drink and can't remember much else because my brain is a sieve?

No.

He takes an ice pack from the freezer and presses it onto his cheek. He decides he'll give the truck a onceover later, before heading to the rink. A little snooze, some cleaning up, and everything will be fine. He tells himself he must have gotten into it with somebody, they got the jump on him somehow, and now, here he is.

He goes to the front room and sits on the sofa, holding the ice pack to his face beneath the framed photos of Avery when she was three, six, eight, eleven. His favorite is eight, where she's standing in unruly pigtails at the end of the Bitterfrost pier at sundown, showing off a steelhead she pulled from Lake Michigan that's almost as big as her. The house is dark and quiet but for the tocking of an old grandfather clock across the room. Jimmy has to be up and rolling in less than two hours.

In his head he says his nightly prayers. For Mama, long gone. For Avery, of course, extra prayers for her, and even for Noelle. For the Richards family, especially Cory. And, tonight, a prayer for his bud Ronnie, who may have had a rough go at the Loon. It's still too early to call her, but maybe a text. He gets off the couch and goes into the kitchen for his phone, now at thirty-one percent power. There's a text from his pal Devyn that arrived at one fifty-three: Tell me you're not in trouble.

Jimmy swallows hard. 'Shit, Dev,' he says aloud.

He calls up his regular text string with Ronnie. He's about to start typing when he sees a text he does not recall sending. It left his phone at two forty-two: those two jagoff's won't be bothering you again.

CHAPTER TWO

Devyn doesn't see the guy right away, but she can feel him sneaking up from behind. It's Thursday night at the Bitterfrost hockey rink and Butch is at it again.

Devyn churns along the half-wall, puck cradled on her stick, as Butch angles at her from a face-off dot near the blue line. She probably stole the puck from him or bumped into him a little harder than he liked. Or, more likely, he's pissed off again that he has to share the ice with a girl a woman, actually even if she has faster feet and softer hands and better vision than him or most of the other guys out here. Or maybe because she does. Devyn is always dealing with this bullshit because she's always the only chick on the ice. She's also a Payne, something else that rankles Butch Dulaney.