Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

I was on leave, for God’s sake. Should be on a beach somewhere, relaxed and breathing easy.

But there I was, running up a mountain in the dead of winter, in total body agony and breathing like a steam engine...

I had no good answer for myself.

Something about turning over a new leaf, though. Making myself over. Becoming — I don’t know — a little less self-indulgent, a little more self-denying; a little less content with things as they were, a little more willing to risk what I was — or something.

The Winter of Virginiak’s Discontent?

No good answer, like I said, but...

It had something to do with Sandy.

I could never kid myself for very long about anything, and this was the no-mercy truth of it, even if I couldn’t find the words to make the connection between what I was doing to myself and...

Never mind!

I kept running.

Focused my eyes hard on the road at my feet, ignored the stitches in my back and side, the heaviness in my thighs, the stinging in my lungs, and kept moving, feeling the sweat start to puddle inside my clothes, thinking I was probably daring pneumonia, but knowing I wasn’t going to stop until...

The lookout loomed on my left, and I crossed the road to give the snowman a closer look because it had been well done and because it would take my mind off the pain for a second or two. Dawn was just beginning to break over Mount Hood in the east, and that in itself was worth a look. I was ten feet away from the bench when it finally hit me.

This was no snowman.

I came to a breath-heaving stop, took a moment to gather myself, then walked around to the front of the bench, squatted down, and peered up into the snow-frosted face of a dead man.

After a short, silent debate, I jogged back down to the ranger station to call the police. It was a bit closer than my cabin, and an easier run. There were a couple of houses in the general area, but there seemed no pressing reason to disturb anyone else’s early morning — the dead man was in no need of immediate attention.

So the ranger station it was. I made the call, then hiked back up to the lookout where the body still waited, its head tilted in a questioning attitude, and I waited with it, wondering what the question could have been.

Ten minutes later, a large black Land Rover sporting the logo of the Big Pine County Sheriff’s Department turned off the highway and stopped, and a deputy sheriff got out.

He noted the body, took a brief statement from me, asked a few short questions, told me I’d have to wait for the sheriff, then called for help, which arrived a little less quickly — another Land Rover, with more deputies and the black sedan of the county coroner, who began a lightfingered examination of the body.

I was asked a few more questions — actually the same ones — by one of the new deputies. A few more cars arrived — a reporter and a couple of gawkers — so the deputies left me alone and busied themselves keeping those people back, and then an ambulance pulled in and another sedan with four more deputies.

One of them cordoned off the area of the lookout with crime scene tape; one took pictures of the body, the bench, and the general area; one began a more heavy-handed examination of the corpse; and one asked me the same questions I’d answered twice before.

I was feeling chilled by then, and was getting a little irritated. I wanted to leave, but when I said so to the deputy, he said I’d have to wait for the sheriff, who was on the way, sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.

Which left me stamping my feet and shivering and getting even more irritated for nearly half an hour.

I was just about to tell them I was leaving and the hell with it when somebody said, “Here’s the sheriff now.”

I looked where everyone else looked and saw a black, tinted window Trans Am turn into the lookout, pull over beside the ambulance, gun its engine once, and stop.

Finally!

The driver’s side door sprang open, and after a second or two, a tall woman wearing a black Stetson, sunglasses, a wool parka, bluejeans, and brown alligator cowboy boots got out and looked straight at me.

I came away from the lookout rail where I’d been standing and took a couple of steps in her direction because I wanted to get this over with fast, but stopped when she took off her glasses and grinned at me.

“Mr. Virginiak?” she said.

I gave her a face-placing frown — blonde, blue-eyed, tanned, freckled, mid-thirtyish face, good straight features. I took a step closer, then I had her name. “Captain Dilly!” I said with a laugh.

She came over to where I stood, and we shook hands.

“I’ll be damned,” she told me. “Small world.”

“It is that,” I agreed. “It’s good to see you.”

Dilly, Loretta, Captain, USAR.

Nearly three years now since I’d seen her last, and she looked quite the same except for the change of uniform.

Which was pretty damned good, actually.