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Cold Snap: Chapter 3

Cold Snap by Grant Riley

3.

Four sets of eyes turned to Gus in disbelief. “Seriously?” Burt asked.

“Who is it?” Jack inquired.

“How are you just now remembering?” Kyle asked.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Gus said and held up his hands to stop the barrage of questions. “It’s just the Bradley boy. Jared Bradley. I hired him a few weeks ago as a stock boy. My wife made me do it as a favor to her friend. I forgot he was even here because he just comes in and goes straight to the back room. Pretty much all he does back there is play video games and smoke dope.” Gus held and obvious contempt for Jared Bradley. He’d been adamant in his oppotion to hire the seventeen year old, but his wife screeched, hollered, and yelled enough to break his will.“Where is he now?” Jack asked, but he was already on his way to the far end of the bar and the swinging metal door which led to the stockroom. Kyle, Burt, and Gus followed him.

The stockroom was a large concrete room lit with a few bare light bulbs and filled with racks of liquor and boxes lining the floor. The racks blocked the view of the entire room so Jack called out, “Jared?” There was no answer. “Jared Bradley?” he called again as he walked toward the aisle that ran between the racks. There was no gn of the boy down the first two aisles. By the time they reached the third Jack noticed a sweet, potent smell to the air that he immediately recognized. Gus wasn’t joking about the boy spending his time smoking dope. He found a half-smoked joint on the floor of the third aisle.

“Well, we know he’s been here.” Burt waved his hand in front of his face to clear the air. He could already feel the acrid fumes playing on his asthma.

“So where’d he go?” Kyle asked aloud. He turned to Gus. “Is there any other way out of here bedes through the bar?”

“Sure,” Gus said. “Got a back door right over there.” He hitched his thumb behind him. At the other end of the wall was a door that led to the alley between The Dive and the jewelry store next door. Kyle led the way to the door. It was a blue, metal door that opened by way of a crash bar. “Looks like it he didn’t get out this way,” Gus said. “It’s locked from the inde.” He pointed out a small metal pin pushed into the crash bar which would prevent the door from being opened.

“Where did he go then?” Kyle inquired.

“Do you think he ran out when the power went out?” Burt asked.

“There wouldn’t have been time. And, if he did, we would have heard him or hear the door open or something.”

“I don’t believe this.” Burt rubbed his thin mustache with his finger tips. Like Jack’s running his hands through his hair, this was Burt’s nervous tick. “This whole tuation is just…freaking me out. I gotta get out of here.” He turned back the way they’d come. “This room gives me the creeps.”

“And it’s better out there with a dead body?” Kyle snorted and he and Gus fell in step with Burt. Jack stuck around, standing in front of the door.

Gus noticed him staying back. “What are you doing, Jack?” He could see the look in the young man’s eyes. It was that look a man gets when he doesn’t want to do something, but knows he has to. Like the curioty was just eating away at him. Jack drew the pin out of the door’s lock and pushed the door open.

Cold wind blasted Jack in the face, parting his beard, whipping his hair back, and practically freezing his lungs as he breathed in the air. Still, he held the door open. “What are you doing?” Gus said again, this time having to yell to be heard over the howling winds.

“I have to know,” Jack yelled back and stepped into the blizzard.

“What’s he doing?” Burt shouted. “He’s gonna die out there!”

“Or he’s trying to get away,” Kyle said. He and Burt ran back to the door. Beyond the doorway the world was nothing, but a swirling white. Jack couldn’t be seen, he’d disappeared. “Jack!” Kyle shouted. Burt joined in, both of them shouted, but hearing nothing in return but the wind.

“He ran away” Kyle shook his head in disbelief. “He killed that guy in the bar and he just got away.”

Gus was behind them now and growled. “That rat bast-“ A form materialized out of the snowy haze before he could finish his insult. It was Jack, his hair and beard completely white with snow.

“You need to see this,” he told the men.

“What is it?” Burt asked. “I ain’t going out there, I’ll freeze to death.”

Jack rolled his eyes. He was fed of with the man's cowardice. “Gus, I need you to come with me.”

“Yeah,” Gus mumbled. He stepped through Kyle and Burt and joined Jack outde in the freezing cold. He could instantly feel the cold cut straight through to the bone and play hell on his arthritis. “What do you want out here?”

Jack didn’t have to answer. Jack had only gone a few steps when Gus saw the reason he’d been called out. “Is that him?” Jack asked. Gus, in his shock, could only nod.

Jared Bradley’s body was kneeling on the ground, his arms hanging limp to his des. His skin was an awful shade of blue and his face was twisted in agony and fear. Gus’ stomach lurched and he stepped back from the body. “Oh, God…” he groaned. Jack took his arm and helped him back through the stockroom door, clong it behind him.

“What is it?” Burt asked when he saw Gus’ green face. He took off his tweed jacket and draped it over the man's shoulders and helped him down to t on a plastic crate. “What’s out there?”

“We found Jared,” Jack answered solemnly.“Out there?” Kyle asked in disbelief. “What would he be doing out there in this blizzard?”

"The dumpster's out there," Gus said numbly. "He musta been taking the trash and got stuck out there. Froze to death." The bartender was distant and nauseous. Shell shocked. Kyle and Burt stared at Gus in disbelief.

“He didn't get stuck out there,” Jack said grimly and held up the small pin in his hand. “He was locked out.”

“Who would do that?” Kyle eyed the pin dangling from Jack's fingers.

Burt took a cautious step away from Gus. “Who even knew he was here?” He said it as a question, but it was clearly an accusation. “How convenient that you 'forgot' he was even here.”

“What are you saying?” Gus' face was turning from green to red. He stood to his full height and threw Burt's coat to his face. “You saying I locked him out? That I killed him?”

“No one else even knew he was here,” Kyle said. He put up a hand when Gus turned his fiery eyes to him. “I'm sorry, Gus. I don't even want to think of anyone doing something like this, but I just have to look at the information available.”

“I didn't lock that kid out there,” he growled. “You probably think I killed Harold too, don't you?” Kyle's eyes told Gus that he thought it was posble that the old bartender had killed a kid and someone he'd thought of as family. “That's what I thought,” he grumbled and shoved passed Kyle to go back to her bar.

“Gus, hold on.” Kyle started after him.

“Hey, Jack,” Jack stopped and looked at Burt. They were all alone, but the squirrelly man talked barely above a whisper. “Do you think Gus really could've done these things?”

“I don't know what to think,” Jack answered with a shrug. They could hear Gus hollering before they even got out of the back room.

“I wouldn't do this! Why would I do this?”

“We're not saying you did,” Nigel said calmly."Oh, you clearly are.” Gus had stationed himself back behind the counter, his hands gripping the bar so tight his knuckles were white. The arthritis in his joints screamed at him to stop, but the pain helped him keep focused and keep from strangling one of the men around him. Nigel and Kyle stood just the other de of the bar trying to talk the man down. Bones was still leaning against the pool table. “You're saying that I waited till that Bradley boy was outde in the freezing cold and then I locked him out so he would freeze to death and then you're saying that I killed Harold with a screwdriver. That man was my friend.” He shoved a shaky finger at the dead man's body still lying face down on the bar. “He was like a brother to me and you're saying I took a screwdriver and stabbed it through his freaking skull!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “Even if I wanted to do that I couldn't. With my arthritis I couldn't grip a screwdriver tight enough to do that. Frankly, the only person that I see here that could actually do that is him." His accusng finger was pointed squarely at Larry "Bones" Dow.

"Here we go again," he growled. With a furious roar he swung the pool cue in his hand in a wide arc over his head and smashed it into the pool table. The stick split and sent splinters spraying in all directions. Larry turned to the bartender, brandishing the broken cue like a sword. “I told you I didn’t touch him!” he bellowed.

“You threatening me with that?” Gus reached under the bar and pulled out a double-barreled shotgun. Jack, Burt, Kyle, and Nigel all took a step back, not wanting to be between the gun or the fuming biker.

"Guys! Guys!" Jack tried to get there attention and stop prevent a bloodbath. Bones didn't heed the words or even care about the gun pointed as his face. He looked passed the gun and stared Gus in the eyes with a murderous glare, his teeth bared like a wild animal with foam dripping from his lips. As soon as he took a step toward the bartender the lights went out.

A gun blast exploded in the darkness.