Snowblind Read Free Page B

freeze like concrete.
    Bent over the wheel to peer out through his windshield, speedometer dropping under twenty miles per hour, he mentally corrected himself. He’d lived in Coventry his whole life, and in his experience there were no nights like this. His parents and aunt and uncles talked about the Blizzard of ’78 with this weird combination of fear and reverence and even fondness, but this storm was starting to rage seriously. Apparently, back in 1978 the blizzard had stalled, the conditions just right to keep it spinning on top of the greater Boston area for days. Tonight’s blizzard wasn’t likely to hang around that long, but if the sexy, doe-eyed weather girl from channel 5 had been right this morning, it would be remembered with some fear and reverence of its own.
    Keenan turned on the heater. He hated to run it because something had broken off or been jammed inside and the blowing air caused an annoying clicking sound, not to mention that some drunk kid had puked in the back the week before and the smell lingered no matter what efforts were made to clean the seat and floor. The heat only made it worse.
    “This is bullshit,” he whispered, as if someone might overhear, and he glanced at his own blue eyes in the rearview mirror for reassurance. His mirror image agreed with him.
    He flicked on his right-turn signal, though nobody was on the road to notice. Coming off the bridge, he saw the gleam of the Heavenly Donuts sign and felt a little spark of happiness in his chest. He desperately needed a coffee. He’d park and sip it for a few minutes and drain away the tension that had built up from all the time he’d spent with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. He hated driving in storms.
    So maybe you don’t. Tuck away in a parking lot for an hour. Who’ll notice, out in this? And it was true. If he got a call and had to respond, he could do that. But an hour of rest with a big hot cup of Heavenly’s coffee would make him more alert and better able to do his job—at least that was what he told himself. Trying to peer through the clear parts of the windshield and the hypnotic swipe of the wipers had him halfway to falling asleep as it was.
    The lure of coffee drew him into the parking lot and almost immediately he started having second thoughts. There hadn’t been a plow by in a while; there had to be three inches of snow in the lot and more was falling by the minute. What if he fell asleep and got snowed in to the lot? Better to keep moving.
    Still … a café mocha would be bliss.
    He ran one big hand over his bristly blond buzz cut, hesitating only a second before he slid the cruiser into the drive-through lane, frowning as he spotted a single truck parked in the lot, more than half a foot of snow already accumulated on top of it. Rolling down his window, he waited at the big menu board. A terrible feeling washed over him. Something was wrong, here.
    “Hello?” he called.
    No answer. Not even static. Troubled, he took his foot off the brake and let the patrol car roll around the corner of the building, tapping the accelerator. But it was only as he rolled up to the window and saw the gloomy shadows inside that he understood the crisis at hand: Heavenly Donuts had closed up early because of the storm. There would be no coffee.
    Bummed, Keenan started mentally mapping out his distance to other coffee shops. Coventry had a Starbucks and three Dunkin’ Donuts, but the nearest of the four was miles away and there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t all have shut down as well. Not that he could blame them: there weren’t many customers braving the streets tonight.
    With a sigh, he pulled out of the lot, figuring he might as well drive over to the nearest Dunkin’, especially considering how quiet his radio had become. During the evening commute he’d responded to five different accidents. It was a part of living in New England he had never understood. These people saw snow every winter, but