A Cold White Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

sharp enough not only to penetrate the man’s flesh, but also to go through two layers of fabric, including the thick wool of the coat. Nor did I see any bruising that would be expected from being hurled against a dash. Rather, the hole was perfectly round, about the diameter of my baby finger, with the edges puckered and blackened. A few scattered fibres were stuck to the edges of the wound. Redness radiated out from the hole.
    â€œAre you sure he was injured in a car accident?” I asked.
    â€œYes.” Professor’s unwavering amber gaze stared back at me, as if daring me to challenge him.
    So I bit my tongue and kept my opinion to myself. Although my experience was limited, I was convinced it was a bullet hole. This, of course, led to the obvious questions. Who had shot him, and why? And more importantly, why pretend it hadn’t happened?
    I shivered from more than just the cold. The room had grown darker, the shadows deeper. Through the window only sightless black. The wind had ratcheted up several notches and changed direction. The agony of the pines filled the room. The snow no longer scraped the den window, but from the kitchen its scratching came loud and clear.
    I was worried about Jid. At least the tightly packed evergreens of the forest would protect him from the worst of the blizzard. If the snow became too deep, he knew enough to burrow under the protection of spruce boughs and wait until the worst was over. It would mean that he wouldn’t be alerting the police. But that was okay. It was more important that he remained safe.
    Ever since Sergei had found him passed out from a drug overdose in an abandoned shack on my land, I’d had a special place in my heart for this orphan boy with the elfin grin. Small for his age, he’d looked so forlorn and lost and in need of love. I soon learned, though, that he’d plenty of love from his kòkomis , who was doing the best she could to raise her great-grandson despite her blindness and her poverty. It was a very sad day for all of us when she died.
    Jid and I had developed a special relationship. He would often come to Three Deer Point to play with his buddy Sergei and to talk to me. Keenly curious, he would ask me endless questions about the broader world beyond the reserve, while at the same time he would help expand my knowledge of Algonquin ways. His grandmother had been a highly respected elder within the community and did her best to follow the traditional ways. But sometimes they collided with the modern world. Rather than ridiculing them and tossing them aside, as any child his age would do, Jid, knowing how much they meant to his grandmother, would find a place for them in the modern life he wanted to lead.
    I remembered the time he came down with strep throat. Kòkomis, who had little trust in modern medicine, threw away the antibiotics the nurse had given him and brought in a shaman to heal him properly. His face flushed, his eyelids heavy from fever, Jid had calmly lain back and accepted the ministrations of the medicine man and the healing powers of the tobacco tie. But as I left the room, he winked and surreptitiously showed me the bottle of antibiotics retrieved from the garbage.
    It wouldn’t matter if the boy were delayed in reaching Will. I still had Aunt Aggie’s phone. I watched the tattooed man take another long drink of his rye and ginger and settle farther into the comfortable chair. The glass was almost empty. If he continued drinking at this rate, he would hopefully pass out, and I would be able to call without fear of being caught. I only had to keep him in an amenable state until then.
    For the moment I had a bigger problem. I might not know much about gunshot wounds, but I did know that where there was a bullet hole, there would be a bullet. Unless the bullet had passed straight through Larry’s body, it was still inside him, somewhere in his abdomen. I also knew that it couldn’t stay. It had