Miles Lindgren's Arc

Chapter 3 of 13

The road out to the old ice works ran past the last plowed street in town and turned into packed snow, rutted from truck tires. It was the kind of road that made the car shudder every few seconds over a frozen ridge. Chase drove with both hands on the wheel, slower than the road really required. Miles sat with the case notes closed on his knee and watched the trees thin out. Spaced pines gave way to nothing at all, just white ground and grey sky and the old roofline finally cresting the ridge in the distance, sagging in the middle the way it always had. He'd been out here as a kid. Twice, maybe three times. Always with Dani. Always because one of them had dared the other to walk out onto the loading platform and look down into the ice pit where the blocks used to be stored. He could still remember the smell of it back then, cold and metallic and faintly like rust, and the way Dani had grabbed his sleeve the second time they went. Not because she was scared. She'd have died before admitting that. The wind had picked up, and she'd wanted an excuse to stand closer to someone. He didn't say any of that out loud. Chase wouldn't have known what to do with it, and Miles wasn't sure he wanted to hand it over yet. Not here. Not with an audience about to show up. Chase parked at the edge of what used to be a gravel lot, now just a wide flat stretch of snow, and killed the engine. Neither of them moved for a second. "You want a minute?" Chase asked. "No." Miles unclipped his seatbelt. "Let's just get it done." They unloaded the gear in silence. The cold was sharp enough that Miles could feel it in his teeth when he breathed in too fast. Chase set up the tripod near the edge of the taped-off area, checking the light, adjusting the angle once, while Miles walked the perimeter, boots crunching over crusted snow. Yellow tape sagged between two wooden stakes near what had once been the loading door. Past it, three small evidence markers sat clustered together where the floor of the ice house had rotted through to the ground beneath. "Okay," Chase said, straightening up from the viewfinder. "Whenever you're ready." Miles hated how professional Chase sounded now, how cleanly he could switch off whatever was left between them. Miles took a breath that fogged white in front of his face and walked back over. Chase caught his hand before he'd even reached the mark, fingers lacing through his, easy, familiar. Miles felt the shift happen in his own body the way it always did, some old muscle memory taking the wheel without asking permission first. The ease of it irritated him, how quickly he could still fall into the version of himself Chase expected. "Rolling," Chase said, and didn't bother counting down. "This is the site," Miles said, gesturing behind him at the sagging roofline, his voice warmer, easier than it had been thirty seconds ago. "Cutter's Bend's old ice-cutting operation, shut down for decades. Last week, a contractor doing a structural survey found human remains buried in what used to be cold storage." Chase squeezed his hand once, grounding, and let their joined hands swing lightly between them. "Which is why we're here first," he said, warm, easy. "Before we talk to anyone in town, before we dig into anything else, we wanted to see this place ourselves." "It's strange being back here," Miles said. It wasn't a lie, exactly, even if the version of strange he meant wasn't the version the camera would read. "I used to come out here as a kid." "We're going to walk you through everything we learn, as we learn it," Chase said to the lens. "No holding back on this one." "Got it," Chase said a moment later, lowering the camera slightly. "That was clean. We don't need another take." Miles let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Some part of him was surprised at how easy it had felt, how little effort it had taken to sound like a man who wasn't standing twenty feet from where his best friend might have died. A cruiser crested the ridge before Chase had finished breaking down the shot. The sheriff who climbed out moved unhurried, boots finding solid footing before he committed his weight, the same careful way he'd moved at seventeen on the school's icy sidewalks. "Miles Lindgren." Dale stopped on the near side of the tape, hands loose at his sides, posture unchanged from the way he used to lean against lockers. "Heard you two were in town." "Dale." Miles felt Chase's hand settle at his back, off camera, just present. "Good to see you." "Wish it were different circumstances." Dale's eyes moved to the sagging roofline behind them, then back. "This place always did look like it was one bad winter from falling in on itself. Guess it finally decided to give something up." "Feels like it's been holding its breath longer than that," Miles said. "Feels that way about most of this town, some days." Dale glanced at the camera rig, then at Chase. "You two get what you needed?" "For the intro, yeah." Chase let a beat pass before he said the rest, easy, not pushy. "We were actually hoping you'd be willing to go on record. Nothing you haven't already told the paper, probably. Just enough for the show." Dale considered that, weighing it visibly. "Public information, sure. I can do that much. Anything past that, I'd rather keep off camera." "That works," Miles said. Chase brought the camera back up, and Dale squared his shoulders slightly, the posture of a man used to being recorded even if he didn't love it. "Sheriff Dale Pruitt," he said, when Chase gave him a nod. "Cutter's Bend Police Department. Last week, a contractor doing a structural inspection ahead of a possible demolition discovered skeletal remains at this location. The remains have been confirmed human and sent to the state lab for further analysis. Age and cause of death haven't been determined yet. We're treating this as an active investigation and asking anyone with information related to this site, or to the disappearance of Danielle Sorbo twelve years ago, to come forward." He delivered it clean, practiced, clearly not his first time saying something similar into a camera. Chase lowered the rig after a moment. "Appreciate that," Chase said. "That's the version for public consumption." Dale glanced toward the evidence markers, something in his posture loosening now that the lens was down. "Off the record, since you asked. Initial assessment came back subadult. That means a minor. I probably shouldn't have told you that yet, but you'd have found out inside a week anyway, and I'd rather you hear it straight from me." The word landed in Miles's chest like something physical. Subadult. A minor. He felt his hands go cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. "Do you have anything that would tell you if it's her," Miles asked. "Not yet." Dale's voice gentled slightly. "I know what you're hoping and what you're not hoping, probably both at once. I'm not going to guess out loud. Guessing is how the original case got handled sloppy the first time around, and I'm not interested in repeating that." "What do you mean, sloppy," Chase asked, careful. "I mean twelve years ago this town wanted an answer fast, and I think some corners got cut chasing one." Dale looked between them. "I wasn't in a position to do anything about it back then. I was barely out of school myself. I'm in a position now. That's the only difference I'm promising you." He didn't say anything else for a moment. "I'll call you the second we have anything solid," Dale said finally. "Not the department line. You, personally. That's more than I'm supposed to offer, so don't make it complicated for me." "We won't," Miles said. Dale nodded once, to both of them, and walked back toward the cruiser, boots crunching steady over the snow. Neither of them spoke until the engine turned over and the tires found the packed road again. Chase moved without saying anything, wrapping an arm around Miles's waist and pulling him in against his chest, chin resting lightly against the top of his head. There was no camera. There was no audience. Miles let himself lean into it anyway, into the solid warmth of it, into the particular relief of not having to hold himself up for a few seconds. Then he felt himself doing it, actually felt the moment his body gave in, and something in him recoiled from that as fast as he'd leaned into it. He stepped back, out of the circle of Chase's arm, putting a foot of cold air between them that hadn't been there a second ago. Chase didn't reach for him again. His hand dropped to his side, and something passed over his face too quickly to read. "You okay?" Chase asked, quieter now, careful in the way that meant he'd noticed exactly what had just happened and decided not to say anything about it. "A minor," Miles said, staring at the evidence markers instead of at Chase. "That's not just anyone. That's a kid." He didn't look at Chase. He couldn't risk seeing whatever expression Chase was wearing, whether it matched his own or didn't. "I know." "You don't have to keep doing that." Miles didn't soften the edge in his voice. "The hand on my back. The arm around me. There's no one out here." Chase was quiet for a second. "I wasn't doing it for anyone." Miles didn't know what to do with that, with sincerity from a man he'd spent two years teaching himself not to trust. The space between them felt familiar in the worst way, not sharp anymore, just constant, worn into a shape neither of them knew how to move around. "We should head back," Chase said eventually, stepping away first this time, giving Miles the distance he'd asked for. "Get you somewhere warm." Miles nodded and followed him to the car, and neither of them said anything else the whole drive back.