Howl of a Thousand Winds Read online

  "People do strange things in stressful moments," Micah said, not arguing, simply offering an observation.

  "I would agree," Reever said. "But it's more than that. I just got back from the medical examiner's office. They asked me to stop by and pick up two things. The first was the autopsy report. In that report, it mentioned that frost particles were found in the lung and chest cavity."

  "I remember," Micah answered. "That sounds normal, to find ice in the lungs after breathing in frozen air for an extended period during a snow storm."

  "It's not. Mr. Roaz, I've been a paramedic for better than a decade. I've plucked my share of bodies out of the snow. What you usually find is water in the lungs. Anything frozen warms and melts once inside the body for more than a few seconds. Remember, it's nearly a hundred degrees in there. But it's more than that. Notice they found it in the chest cavity and the lung, singular. Dad was a fireman, 40 years, which means he suffered from the Fireman's Curse: four packs of Pall Malls a day and four decades of fighting fires, most of them without a Scott pack," Reever said, referring to the breathing gear now worn by modern firefighters. "Notice the report said they found the particles in the right lung, and the left chest cavity. That's because dad didn't have a left lung."

  Micah stopped to consider this.

  "Then how do you suppose the ice particles got in there?" the reporter asked.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, one that seemed to go on for so long that Micah was about to ask if the man was still there.

  "I believe it was forced down his throat by whoever killed him," Reever said.

  "Why do you believe that?" Micah asked, grabbing his reporter pad and a pen from his desk as he began taking notes for the first time since the conversation began.

  "Two reasons," Reever continued. "First, when they took dad's left lung in 1998, they cauterized the bronchial tube to seal it shut. According to the autopsy, the end of that bronchial tube had been blown open. That's how the ice got in there. You know how much pressure it would take to rupture a bronchial tube? Five guys giving CPR simultaneously with a garden hose couldn't do it. The second reason is the other item I brought home from the medical examiner."

  "Which was?" Micah asked.

  "His portable oxygen concentrator," Reever said, his voice breaking slightly. "They said it was still running, cannula still up his nose when they found him. Mr. Roaz, I don't believe dad voluntarily took a single breath of fresh air, frozen or otherwise, right up to the second he died."

  While Micah continued filling the narrow page of the notepad, one of his female colleagues knocked on the metal edge of his cubicle. When he looked up, she pointed at him with her right hand, formed an "L" with her thumb and forefinger, then made a peace sign with the same hand.

  There was a call for him on line two.

  "Mr. Reever, could I have your number?" Micah said, nodding at his colleague as she moved on. "I want to check on a few things, then get back with you."

  After disconnecting, he jotted down the phone number at the bottom of the page while the phone rested on his shoulder. He then flipped to a fresh page in the pad, put down his pen long enough to rub his face with his hands in an attempt to clear his mind and prepare for a new conversation, then put the phone to his ear and pushed another blinking button.

  "Micah Roaz," Micah said.

  "I have been told you are a man worthy of old secrets," said a raspy, aged voice.

  "I am honored and humbled that one would bestow such faith in me," Micah replied, using a formal-sounding response that had the familiar ring of similar words he had often heard in his childhood.

  "Noon, at the center," the old man said, followed by a click.

  Chapter Five

  Three Die In Winter Storm

  Special to Nevada Appeal

  Friday, Nov. 16

  (VIRGINIA CITY, NV) -- A winter storm claimed the lives of a Virginia City couple and a motorist on Sunday.

  According to Storey County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Rob Everett, Joseph and Miriam Hendley died after the unexpected snowstorm damaged their isolated home located two miles off Six Mile Canyon Road.

  The storm, which packed recorded wind gusts of nearly 50 miles per hour, knocked out power to Virginia City and Gold Hill around 10 p.m. on Thursday.

  Everett confirmed that deputies found the couple in their living room, where the storm had toppled a large tree in their front yard which crashed through the roof and into the room.

  “Mr. Hendley was killed by a part of the tree which struck him when it fell through the roof,” Everett stated on Monday. “Mrs. Hendley died of exposure while apparently trying to assist her injured husband. Without electricity and with the hole in the roof allowing the cold and snow into the house, deputies said the room experienced sub-freezing temperatures for a protracted amount of time.”

  Everett also confirmed that phone lines to the house were damaged by the falling tree, which may have prevented the woman from calling for help.

  According to a neighbor who made the 911 call from her cell phone following the tragedy, a detached branch from the tree impaled Joseph Hendley.

  Route 341 and other roads throughout the county were impassable on Friday morning after the storm dumped a record-setting 16 inches of snow on the area in less than 12 hours. There were reports of property damage to six homes caused by the wind, and at least nine traffic accidents attributed to the storm.

  One of those accidents claimed the life of a man visiting from Phoenix. According to SCSD, the man died of an apparent heart attack after his car skidded off Route 342 early Friday morning on the steep road just north of Gold Hill. The Sheriff’s Department has not released the name of the victim, pending notification of family.

  * * *

  Ridley, Pennsylvania

  Monday

  November 19, 2012

  By ten o’clock Monday night, Brad Connerman had been politely asked to leave The Grille, a restaurant and sports bar located two blocks from the courthouse where his world had collapsed earlier that day. He wasn’t a mean drunk, just an obvious one. The mouth that effortlessly used words like “indemnity” and “coverage” by day, now had trouble keeping three or four extra “S’s” from invading his request for another Goldschlager. In the light of day, it had been a conscious choice to choose unconsciousness, and the 87-proof cinnamon schnapps seemed the perfect express train to that painless dark place. By the time the first barroom candles had been lit, the lineup of waiting shot glasses had become more of a fascination with the little gold flakes that floated in the thick, clear liquid than a specific conduit toward inebriation.

  Earlier that day, the district court had assigned $24,000 of that to a woman who would no longer share his bed. This evening, Brad donated another $100 to The Grille. At $7 a shot, his inebriation was pricier than a prescription for Xanax, but the $20 tip to the pour-spout doctor behind the bar was a lot cheaper than a visit to his D.O. He soddenly chuckled at the idea of trying to find a way to file a claim with Blue Cross and Blue Shield for this evening’s liquid therapy session.

  The key found its way into the lock of the pickup truck on the fourth try, leaving little scratches in the door with each miss. After pulling himself into the driver’s seat, Brad had to pause and let the world stop spinning long enough to remember the proper sequence of gas pedal-ignition-gear shift. He managed to work his way to the exit, his mind blurred to the irony of leaving a parking lot next to a court of law, in an illegally intoxicated condition.

  Brad was a big guy, which kept other wary drinkers at bay who might otherwise have struck up a conversation. Contrary to his gregarious nature, he gave off a "leave me alone" vibe while drinking that was as clear as a fluorescent "Do Not Disturb" door hanger swinging from the doorknob of a hotel room.

  His size had been a blessing while playing center on the offensive line with his football team at Chamberlain College, a small school in Lancaster named for a Union hero in
the Battle of Gettysburg. In a lot of ways, the position suited his nature. The role is that of the dirty-shirted assistant quarterback, calling signals and yelling blocking assignments at the line to his fellow warthogs while the QB calls play audibles behind him. More importantly, unlike defensive linemen or linebackers with the Sabres who were known year in and year out in Division III for their head-hunting savagery, or a strong-armed quarterback or ball carrier seeking individual ground gaining glory, it was in Brad’s nature to protect, which is essentially the job of a center in a passing offense. In fact, during long bus rides back from games, he would occasionally engage in good-natured philosophical arguments, claiming that the guys on his side of the ball should actually be considered the “defense,” since their job was to defend the quarterback and running backs, and the crazed lunatics on the other side trying to claw their way through the line should be called the offense. The argument usually devolved into shouting and even some light in-seat shoving when Brad would complete his theory by pointing out just how "offensive" his cross-scrimmage line teammates could be, particularly in the areas of smell and deportment.

  Now, nearly seven years out of school, some of the muscle had become pliable and his sandy blonde hair had begun to thin and turn an unremarkable brown with age. He wasn’t unattractive, but women weren't taking numbers for the chance to jump his bones.

  With his size, he could have been an intimidating force in some social circles, but his temperament wouldn’t allow it. He was thoughtful, sometimes even contemplative, which unfortunately earned him the tag of being moody among those closest to him.

  It was one of the words Sharon had used repeatedly as a verbal truncheon during the last six months, referring to the trait with disdain instead of the endearment of “being sensitive” she often claimed when they had wed six years ago.

  The truth was that Brad wasn’t moody or brooding. He was simply blessed (or cursed) with a brain that just wouldn't switch off. Had he ever bothered to have an EEG or a single-photon emission computerized tomography, known as a “SPECT” scan, doctors would have discovered his brain activity was nearly off the charts. In some children, such high-level brain activity is misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder. Brad didn’t have a problem with focusing; he sometimes had trouble un-focusing.

  When he was a kid, he would sometimes get in trouble for failing to complete his chores. It wasn't laziness. It was usually because his brain was on overload as it processed billions of thoughts about the current job at hand and the infinite ways of doing the job better or more efficiently, resulting in the job not getting done at all. The simple act of sweeping the basement floor in the old family home, one of the chores for which he was responsible at a young age, could spiral into a crushing world of thoughts, improvements, and possibilities.

  The menial tasks frequently engendered a protracted barrage of thoughts that often bordered on genius.

  On one such occasion, the tedious activity began simply enough with ideas about the efficacy of using longer bristles on the broom, and how a wider broom would have increased the amount of floor to be cleaned with a single sweep, not the normal thought arc of a pre-teen.

  While continuing to push the broom around the concrete floor, the thoughts expanded to the subject of his sweeping, namely the dirt and dust that an old house collects. He thought about where the dust came from, recalling a conversation he had heard between his mother and father over dinner about a study that claimed a lot of household dust actually consisted of dead skin cells which the body sloughed off every day.

  Those thoughts lurched ever outward, gaining speed as Brad began considering the macabre notion that some of the skin cells he was currently sweeping might belong to previous occupants of the 40-year-old house. He began to wonder about those unmet people, whether any of them had died in that very basement.

  While those notions were advanced concepts for a child, it didn’t take long before his nine-year-old imagination began offering its influence. He realized that this dust might be the last physical link between former residents and the place they had once called home. He didn’t know anything about the family who lived in the house before him, or the family before that. But he knew that some people found it hard to leave the places they loved.

  He considered the idea that the dead skin-dust was actually the logical, scientific link so often lacking in horror stories and campfire tales of ghosts, a physical manifestation usually overlooked when discussing the supernatural. After all, so many ghost stories involved dusty, broken-down haunted houses or dirt-filled cemeteries.

  Brad knew a little about DNA and the ability of a single cell to contain the blueprint for an entire human being from his time in front of the TV watching crime shows and the movie Jurassic Park. His contemplation gained in enthusiasm and sense, as the thought of a dead skin cell holding the entirety of a breathing human’s genome created an easy leap to the possibility of a spirit containing a dead person’s history and record of suffering, even the building blocks necessary to re-create a willowy image of that person past.

  The sweeping had slowed considerably but had not stopped as his mind turned the myriad thoughts over and over in his head. Soon, he began examining the floor with a closer eye, wondering if a dark spot on the aged concrete floor was actually a drop of dried blood. The dim basement of the old house offered the perfect canvas for his imagination to explore the dark corners.

  With nobody home and nothing but silence from the house above his head, his mind full of conjured images of departed souls who had once stood where he was now standing, Brad lowered his eyelids and concentrated at the northeast corner of the basement. It was a place where the light of a single naked bulb hanging from a floor joist overhead could barely reach, with that little bit of light clouded by the swirling dust particles his slowing broom had disturbed.

  He stared through squinted eyes, his mind exploding with a billion lighted embers from the fusillade of thoughts skyrocketing and bursting against a dark cerebral backdrop.

  While peering at the swirling motes, the disembodied face of a middle-aged man appeared just a few feet in front of him.

  Unlike the scary countenances that populated the horror movies he sometimes watched on TV, this face contained no malice, only sadness. And it looked straight at him.

  Brad’s eyes willed him forward for a closer look, but his shaking knees refused to budge, obeying the lack of commands from a terrified mind that was rapidly reaching its cognitive limit.

  The mouth on the aerially suspended face then opened and closed rhythmically. The face was trying to talk to him, but no sound came. The silence seemed to make the face even sadder, as if tears would soon follow had there been a scrap of moisture left in the apparition’s existence.

  His feet frozen in place, with none of the billion skyrocketing thoughts offering a single command to move or run, Brad thought his heart had stopped. Terrified yet mesmerized, he barely noticed the wooden handle of the broom leaving his hands.

  It clattered against the floor like a gunshot.

  The face vanished.

  Brad didn’t bother to pick up the lost broom or spare a single glance back to confirm the image’s existence or disappearance, his nine-year-old legs clearing two steps at a time as he raced upstairs and out the back door, where the shining sun would abide no shadow or even the hint of what the boy thought he had seen in the basement.

  The floor eventually got swept later in the day after his mother returned and the house was no longer empty. He didn’t mention to her what he thought he saw, his non-stop brain developing its own explanations for what he eventually settled on as a trick of the light. But the basement no longer held any allure as a place to play from that day forward.

  Chapter Six

  Fayette, Iowa

  Tuesday

  November 20, 2012

  The perfect landscape of white served as an ideal movie screen for the flood of colorful lights that danced across the hilled and pitted sc
ene. But even the virginal white couldn’t camouflage the inherent darkness of death.

  The snow had been beaten into a compacted ring circling the girl’s frozen body, as a half-dozen men had trod repeatedly around the perimeter in search of a better angle from which to view and photograph the lifeless form. The footprints had formed a round, icy pattern that might have looked like a miniature crop circle if viewed from above.

  In the center of the circle was a dead human being who would be given the impersonal surname of “victim” or “vic” for the next hour or so. It would be a name used repeatedly in preliminary police reports and eventually poured into the larger and more anonymous ocean known as a statistic. Later, after the medical examiner’s autopsy, the name “victim” would be amended with the prefix “freezing,” as if the two-word title could possibly sum up the horror that marked the end of this particular life.

  Later still, the corpse would reclaim its rightful moniker, just in time for the funeral home to publish an obituary that would invite the friends of Wahkanee “Connie” Cleary to a final gathering.

  Nearby, a reporter with a narrow pad jotted down quotes from a weary county sheriff tasked with doling out the sad yet sketchy details of another weather-related fatality.

  “It appears she went hiking when the snow started falling, then lost her bearings,” Sheriff Carl Kane said, offering more of a knee-jerk assessment garnered from years of seeing cases like this each winter rather than any collection of clues or facts.

  “Most of her tracks were covered over, but you can see from some of the dimples in the snow that it looks like she became disoriented and actually ran into that tree over there, then another one here,” the sheriff continued, pointing at two sturdy yet barren elm trees near the place she finally came to rest. “You can’t see it now because our guys have trampled all over it, but there were only two sets of footprints leading to the body. One set belonged to the hunter who found her, the other looked like hers. Again, the snow had filled in pretty good, so it’s not like we could match the tread pattern from her boots, but the general size looked about right for her. Anyway, the tracks kind of wandered in a circle, then stopped where you see her.”