Dead of Winter Read online

  Hurley turns off the engine and looks over at me. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Ready as I can be,” I say.

  * * *

  We get out and walk up onto the porch. Hurley is about to ring the bell when the front door swings open, revealing a short man who looks to be in his late forties or early fifties. He has a paunch that he is trying to hide by wearing a tailed flannel shirt untucked over his jeans. His round face is pale and shiny; his hair is dark and pulled back into a small ponytail. He smiles at us, but it strikes me as a purely perfunctory response because it doesn’t appear to be reflected in his eyes, which are a pale shade of blue that looks cold as ice.

  “Mr. Stevens?” he says with an inquiring look, and Hurley nods. “Come on in.”

  Our host steps aside as we enter the house, walking into a living area that is cozy and warm. A fire is crackling in the fireplace, and there is a scent of cinnamon in the air, which makes me want to fix a cup of hot cocoa and curl up in front of the hearth. Instead, I turn and face the erstwhile doctor.

  “I’m Stanley Lowe,” he says, looking at me with a hint of a frown.

  I don’t say a word. I assume I’m supposed to be a working girl, brought here under the insistence of my pimp, played by Hurley. So I stay silent and try to look uncomfortable, not a difficult task since I’m genuinely nervous.

  “This is Bambi,” Hurley says. “The one Sully . . . Mr. Sullivan called you about.”

  Lowe proffers a hand. “Let me take your coats.”

  Hurley and I doff our coats and hand them over.

  Lowe hangs them on hooks on the wall and then turns back to us. He eyes me once more, his gaze settling on my stomach. “Didn’t Sully tell you that the girls need to be no further along than four months?”

  “She’s only three months gone,” Hurley says.

  Lowe arches his eyebrows at this and looks pointedly at my midsection. “That tummy looks more like five months to me,” he says.

  Belatedly I try to suck in my gut while I silently curse Lowe with some choice words and the threat of a plague. Hurley glances over at me, and I can tell he’s trying to suppress a laugh. I shoot lasers at him with my eyes.

  “She’s naturally a bit round,” Hurley says. “Some men like that.” He gives me a wink and a swat on the butt that’s hard enough to make me take a half step forward and glare at him. “I swear to you she’s barely three months along.”

  Lowe looks at me. “Is that correct?” he asks, and I nod. His eyes narrow, and he looks unconvinced. “When was your last menstrual period?”

  Fortunately, I anticipated this question, since it’s a standard one asked in any medical situation involving something like this. I’d asked it of patients hundreds of times when I was working in the ER, and was already doing the math in my head. “November nineteenth,” I say. Since it is now mid-February, this answer satisfies Lowe.

  He nods, and tells us to follow him, leading us to his kitchen and then to a door that goes down into his basement. We follow along dutifully, Hurley appearing as cool and calm as the proverbial cucumber. I, on the other hand, am conjuring up scenes from any number of horror movies I’ve watched where the characters follow someone into a basement, and I then yell at the screen to let them know what stupid morons they are, ultimately declaring their idiotic decisions an example of Darwinism in action.

  Lowe’s cellar looks like any other basement in Wisconsin: a large open room with concrete walls that holds a washer, a dryer, and a wooden table. There are several other rooms opening off this one, including a smaller canning room, a workshop, a storage area, and a mechanical room for the furnace, water heater, and water softener. Lowe heads for the workshop area, where I feel certain he will use his chisels, hammers, and power saws to kill and dismember us both. Instead, he walks over to a bookcase and reaches into it. A second later, the entire bookcase swings aside silently, revealing a gleaming surgical suite.

  I’m admittedly impressed. Lowe has managed to outfit his little operating room with all the latest equipment. The bed, trays, overhead lamp, and side tables look to be the same make and models as the ones that were used in the hospital OR when I worked there. There is an autoclave off to one side, and trays of wrapped surgical instruments appropriately labeled with a date. There is also a suction machine, several oxygen tanks, and a small cart with a monitor defibrillator on top and several drawers, which I suspect contain airways, drugs, and other emergency equipment. A portable heart monitor that can also measure blood pressure and oxygen levels stands near the bed. And in a glass cabinet hanging on one wall, I see a supply of drugs, all carefully labeled, most of them sedatives of some sort.

  What is missing is any sort of anesthesia equipment, but it isn’t necessary to use full anesthesia during an abortion. A little something to sedate the patient and take the edge off the pain is often sufficient, and if the sedation proves a little too effective, it appears that Lowe has the appropriate reversal agents and the necessary resuscitative equipment close at hand.

  “This is where it will be done,” Lowe says. “You will have the procedure here, and after a brief recovery time, you will need to have someone take you home and stay with you for the next twelve hours or so.”

  “I have that covered,” Hurley says.

  “Do you do the procedure yourself?” I ask.

  “I’m the only medical person involved with the procedure, but I have a woman who serves as an assistant.” He looks at Hurley and adds, “She’s very trustworthy. She’s been with me for years.”

  “Will I be asleep? Or knocked out in some way?” While I’m impressed with Lowe’s setup, it’s clearly not an official setting for such procedures.

  “I don’t use anesthesia,” Lowe says. “But I will give you a drug that will calm you and cause some retrograde amnesia, so you won’t remember anything.”

  I’m familiar with the types of drugs he’s talking about, as we used them all the time when I worked at the hospital. But any time we sedated a patient, we always had several staff members on hand in case things went wrong. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was often more than one medically trained person could safely handle.

  “What do you do if something goes wrong?” I ask, looking around the room wide-eyed. “What if I start to bleed heavily, or something like that? I’ve heard it can happen.”

  “I’ve never had any problems with any of my patients,” Lowe says, niftily avoiding an actual answer to my question. “And I’m quite capable of handling any emergencies, should one arise.”

  This isn’t true. There are any number of things that could go wrong, some of them potentially fatal, and I’m certain Lowe knows this. But admitting that I also know it would raise questions as to how it is I possess that knowledge, questions I’m not prepared to answer at the moment.

  Hurley nods and says, “Looks good. Are we set for doing this in the morning?”

  “I can fit you in,” Lowe says. “There is the matter of compensation still to discuss.”

  “What is your going rate?” Hurley asks.

  “I thought Sully would have told you that,” Lowe says, narrowing his eyes at Hurley.

  Hurley shrugs. “If he did, I don’t recall the amount.”

  “Five K,” Lowe says after a moment’s hesitation. “If there are any complications, the rate doubles automatically.”

  “Five K for a simple abortion?” Hurley says, wrinkling his face in distaste. “That seems rather high.”

  “It’s not simple,” Lowe says. “You are paying for both my expertise and my discretion.”

  This is all Hurley needs to hear. Hurley reaches into his pocket, takes out his badge, and shows it to Lowe, giving him a moment to absorb it.

  “Are you kidding me?” Lowe says with a roll of his eyes. “I’m being busted by some small-town local yokel?”

  Hurley tips his head down toward his chest and says, “Did you get it all?” He then raises a hand to one ear, where I see that my decapitated
earbud is firmly nestled in place. Hurley looks down at the floor for a second before saying, “Great. Good work.” He looks at Lowe and smiles, his eyebrows raised suggestively. I’m sure I look as shocked as Lowe does right now, since I know Hurley isn’t wired.

  Seconds pass as the two men engage in a stare-off, and then Lowe looks heavenward and mouths something unrepeatable. He looks at me, his expression annoyed. “I take it you don’t need a D and C?” he asks.

  “I do not,” I say.

  “I should have known,” Lowe says with distaste. “You’re not the right type.”

  “For what?” I ask, feeling oddly insulted.

  “Am I under arrest?” Lowe asks, ignoring my question and turning his attention back to Hurley. He takes a cell phone from his pocket and proceeds to start tapping at the screen. “I need to call my lawyer.”

  Hurley reaches over and places a hand over the top of Lowe’s phone. “I’m not here to arrest you, though I will if you don’t help me.”

  “Help you with what?” Lowe asks, looking suspicious but hopeful.

  Hurley takes out his cell phone, taps at the screen, and then shows Lowe a picture of Liesel. “I’m looking for this girl,” he says.

  Lowe stares at the phone long enough to get a good look, then shakes his head. “I’m certain I’ve never seen her.”

  Hurley pulls his phone back, swipes at the screen, and then shows it to Lowe again. This time, the screen is displaying the enhanced picture of the man who brought Liesel to the ER. “How about this guy?” Hurley asks. “We think he might be with her.”

  Lowe is a terrible liar. The change in his face is subtle, but it gives him away nonetheless. One eyebrow arches slightly, and his eyes dart away from the screen for a nanosecond before going back to it. He licks his lips and looks at Hurley. “Don’t know him, either. Sorry.”

  With a laser stare, Hurley looks at the man. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, doesn’t move.

  After another very long, very pregnant pause, Hurley takes his phone back, removes a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket, and says, “Stanley Lowe, you are under arrest for—”

  “Hold on! I—I might have seen that guy,” Lowe says, talking fast. He licks his lips again. “Yes . . . yes . . . I remember now. He brought someone here once before, but it wasn’t that girl you showed me, I swear.”

  “Who is he?” Hurley asks.

  Lowe makes a pfft sound and gives Hurley a dismissive wave of one hand. “He’s a nobody. Some flunky errand boy.”

  “What’s his name?” Hurley asks, opening one of the handcuffs to punctuate the question.

  Lowe eyes the handcuff warily and licks his lips yet again. They are faintly rimmed in red, making me think this is a common nervous habit of his, and that he ought to invest in a few tubes of ChapStick. Wisconsin winters are notoriously hard on lips, hands, and skin in general.

  “All I know is his first name,” Lowe says. He looks at Hurley and pulls his head back a smidge, as if he is expecting to get hit for his answer. Judging from the look on Hurley’s face, I’d say the odds are pretty good. When Hurley doesn’t react immediately, Lowe tosses the name out there. “It’s Kirby.”

  It could have been worse, I tell myself. The guy could have had the name John, or Bill, or Tom, or any number of other names that are shared by thousands of men in Wisconsin alone. At least Kirby is a somewhat unique name. Plus, I’m pretty sure Lowe is lying about only knowing the man’s first name.

  “I need more and I think you’re holding out on me,” Hurley says in an ominous tone. “Who’s he a lackey for? Who pays the bills?”

  “Kirby does,” Lowe says, ignoring the first question. “He always pays in cash.”

  “Always?” Hurley repeats with a gotcha smile. His head moves closer to Lowe’s face, and Lowe, realizing his mistake, backs up a full step. “How many times has he been here?” There is a low, underlying growl to Hurley’s voice that is full of menace and threat.

  Lowe is starting to sweat. “Look,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. “The guy brings me a lot of business. If I give him up, I’m done for.”

  “If you go to prison for twenty to life, you’ll be done for,” Hurley counters.

  Lowe laughs this off, momentarily buoyed by bravado. “The penalty for what I do isn’t anywhere near that,” he scoffs.

  Hurley takes a step closer to Lowe, forcing the man to back up yet again. He now has his back to a wall, and his eyes dart around, looking for an escape. Hurley leans in and places his hands on the wall to either side of Lowe’s shoulders, the cuffs dangling from his right hand. Lowe realizes he is trapped, and he stares up at Hurley, frozen and bug-eyed, like a rat whose leg is caught in a trap and facing down a mean, hungry cat.

  “Listen to me, you slimy, snake-oil charlatan,” Hurley sneers. “I have an eighteen-year-old girl in my morgue, and this Kirby creep is responsible for her being there. If you don’t give me what I want, I will see to it that you are also connected to her death, whatever it takes. And I promise you, you won’t see the light of day for at least a quarter of a century, if ever. Got it?”

  Lowe nods, a spastic movement that makes him look like one of those bobblehead dolls.

  “But if you help me, I’m going to walk out of here and pretend I never came, that I have no idea what kind of horrible crap you’re doing here, and you’ll be free to go about your business. No one needs to know where my information came from. Understand?”

  Another spastic nod.

  “All right then,” Hurley says, straightening up and lowering his arms. “I’m sure you have some sort of contact information for this Kirby guy. I want it.”

  Lowe weighs his options for a few seconds. “If I give you what you want, you swear you won’t bust me? You’ll leave me be?”

  “Promise,” Hurley says.

  I frown at this. Letting this hack continue providing illegal abortions seems wrong. While I will admit that he has a nice setup here—it’s leagues higher than most of the back-alley setups that still exist—it’s still several steps lower than your standard hospital setting. Of course, it isn’t the actual procedure that’s illegal, just the way it’s being done.

  “Fine,” Lowe says, clearly irritated but seeming resigned. He turns and heads back upstairs, makes his way down a hallway on the main floor to a back room, which is clearly being used as an office. I watch from the doorway as he goes over to what appears to be an electrical outlet in the wall. He pushes on the reset button at its center and the outlet pops out of the wall a couple of inches. Lowe reaches into the opening behind it and comes out with a key.

  Then he walks over to a safe built into the hardwood floor and hidden under the edge of a rug. As he unlocks the safe and reaches down into it, my mind envisions him coming up with a gun and shooting both of us dead. A quick, worried glance at Hurley assures me that he, too, has considered this possibility. He has his gun out and at the ready.

  “No funny stuff,” Hurley says.

  Lowe looks up at him and registers surprise at the sight of the gun. “I’m just taking out an address book,” he says, slowly raising the hand that has dipped into the safe while holding his other hand up in a gesture of transparent cooperation. Holding a book in one hand, Lowe slowly gets to his feet and walks over to the desk, never taking his eyes off Hurley.

  “Go stand over there,” Hurley says, waving his gun toward a corner of the room away from the desk and the safe. Once Lowe has obeyed, Hurley walks over and peers down into the open safe. A smile creeps over his face and he looks over at Lowe with disdain.

  “I’m glad you decided to play things smart,” Hurley says, kneeling and reaching into the safe with his free hand. He picks something up and my heart skips a beat when I see that it’s a handgun. “I’m betting this particular weapon isn’t registered to you, am I correct?”

  Lowe doesn’t answer, which in and of itself is an answer of sorts.

  Hurley moves over behind Lowe’s desk and opens the drawers. The
n he bends down and peers beneath the desktop. Satisfied, he shoves a pad and pen toward Lowe. “Give me Kirby’s contact information.”

  Lowe approaches the desk after Hurley backs away from it. He opens the book he is holding, flips through several pages, and then takes up the pen. After scribbling something down on the notepad, he tears the sheet off and holds it out to Hurley.

  “Mattie, can you get that?” Hurley says, keeping his gun aimed at Lowe.

  I step forward and take the proffered sheet of paper. Written on it is Kirby O’Keefe, and a phone number. I hold it up so Hurley can see it.

  “This name and number better produce some results,” Hurley says, holstering his own gun and then removing the clip from Lowe’s. He pockets the clip, ratchets back the slide to check the chamber, and removes the bullet he finds there, pocketing it as well. Then he tosses the empty gun into a nearby chair. “If it doesn’t,” he goes on, “if I find out you’ve tried to dupe me, I will be back. And I won’t be nearly as understanding next time. Understand?”

  Lowe glares at Hurley with a mixture of fear and contempt.

  “Do you understand?” Hurley repeats, and Lowe grudgingly nods.

  Hurley looks at me, nods toward the door, and says, “After you.”

  * * *

  We leave Lowe’s house at a quick pace and get back in Hurley’s truck. I glance over my shoulder a couple of times to see if Lowe is coming after us, but there is no sign of him. As we pull away, I see a curtain drop back into place in a window, and I imagine Lowe is breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Why the fake wire?” I say once we’re under way. “Why not do it for real? Shouldn’t we be busting this guy?”

  “Part of the deal I made with the undercover FBI contact who gave us Lowe’s name, location, and introduction was that I wouldn’t hurt the operation in any way. They’ve been monitoring him for nearly two years now, but as I explained earlier, they don’t want to arrest him or shut him down yet. Technically, the only law he’s breaking is practicing medicine without a license, and he’d most likely get a slap on the hands and a fine, and then be back at it somewhere else.”