Hard Cold Winter Read Online Free PDF

the table. There was another flaking patch of it, just under the base of the open door. And on the floor, pushed almost against the wall by the door, lay a Glock handgun.
    I lay down to put my nose near it. The smell of burned powder in the barrel was strong enough to make out over the fog of decay.
    9mm Parabellum, I was pretty sure. Easily enough punch to be the murder weapon. And from this new sprinkling of blood, I guessed that Elana wasn’t the only victim.
    No sign of the bear outside. I walked over to check the man’s body, what there was of it. The animal had left his chest alone, finding the belly easier picking. There were no gunshot wounds on his front.
    Birds or something else had been at his face and eyes. I knelt to try and get a look at the underside of his head, where his cheek lay against the earth. His right temple was blackened, in sharp contrast with the pallor of his skin. The thick red-brown curls over his ear were fried as black and stubby as candlewicks.
    The shot had been so close, it had lit his hair on fire.
    Was it self-inflicted? I could make that fit what was here. Kend standing at the open door. Elana sitting at the table. He shoots her twice, then puts the gun to his temple. Dead so fast that he barely bleeds at all. Unlike his woman, whose wings would still be spreading on the wall when his body hit the floor.
    He had something in his front pocket. I took it out, very carefully avoiding the flecks of torn flesh. A money clip. Kendrick Haymes’s driver license was at the top of a stack of credit cards, along with maybe three hundred in cash. The photo on his license was handsome in its awkwardness, from the mop of curls to the crooked smile. I put the clip back.
    The wind kicked up a little, and the sudden icy prickle on my face and ears made me realize I was flushed. And sweating.
    Come on, Shaw. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies, a lot of them worse looking than these two. I knew what to do. Take my memories of the girl, and put them in a box at the back of my mind. There would be time enough for her later.
    Had they been alone? At least two other people had been at the cabin recently, in the sports car and the dually. Had they all left before the shooting started? Or fled after it happened?
    I wondered how long Kend and Elana had been dead in the cabin, before the bear had picked up their rising scent on the wind. Longenough at least for smaller creatures to brave the interior, to get at their faces and fingers.
    Willard. I’d have to tell him. I went back inside the cabin. Maybe Haymes had kept a satellite phone, for emergencies.
    A backpack lay on the bed against the right wall, a big blue High Sierra with aluminum frame, for camping trips. It was open and half of its contents spread out messily on the bed. Men’s boxers and shirts and thick books on sports history. A yellowed copy of The Boys of Summer , and a collection of essays on boxing from the fifties. Like stuff my grandfather might have read, if he had given a damn for American sports.
    I looked under the bed. No other backpacks. Willard had said Elana only planned to be gone overnight. But there didn’t seem to be so much as a toothbrush here. Maybe Elana’s bag was still out in the Volvo.
    Kend’s cell phone lay on the bed. I picked it up with the bandanna. No signal here, of course. Before I set the phone back, I copied the numbers of the friends Kend called most often into my own phone. Somebody would have to tell them about Kend’s and Elana’s deaths. If Luce knew any of them, maybe the news would be better coming from her.
    I found Elana’s phone in her shoulder bag. Unlike Kend’s, her phone had a security lock. I didn’t want to risk fingerprints or breaking it to mess around with beating the code. Kend’s friends would have to be enough. I put it back.
    Then I looked at the table again. Elana’s head, still at rest.
    But nothing else on the table’s surface. Huh.
    I looked at the squat wood stove again. The