Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page

Ice Lake isn’t very big. Carved out of the Pocono Mountain’s ubiquitous forest of conifers and scrub oaks, it’s short of two miles around and is circled with a line of lakeside properties, a road, and another ring of roadside properties. It is spectacularly peaceful. The Ice Lake Association allows no motorized boats on the lake – only rowboats, canoes, and sailboats. They won’t even allow those tiny five horsepower electric trolling motors that the old fishermen use on other lakes. As Leo Carter said years ago at a meeting of the Ice Lake Rod & Gun Club, “If you’re too old to row 300 yards you shouldn’t be out on the lake by yourself.”

Ice Lake began its life as the name suggests – as an ice lake. Ebenezer Dinklocker dug out the lake in 1863 to harvest ice blocks in the winter. The frozen water was then stored in special barns with double walls filled with sawdust. These Ice Houses would keep the ice frozen all summer when Dinklocker made a good living delivering blocks to the iceboxes of most of the people in the tri-county area. That was until refrigeration was invented and the ice industry melted.

Harry pulled into the only commercial enterprise on the lake. Its official name was the Ice Lake Café but the locals just called it the Store. To call it a grocery store would have been an injustice to grocery stores everywhere – including ones in blockaded war-torn communist countries. To the left of a cooler containing milk, Coke, and eggs was an almost-empty shelf peppered with bread, Spam, and Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies. Across the room a lunch counter sported a coffee maker and a pile of donuts under a clear plastic dome. A sign said: “HELP YOURSELF AND LEAVE A DONATION (OR AN IOU) IN THE CHAMBER POT.”

“Hello?” Harry called out.

A groan and then heavy footsteps preceded the arrival of a 70-ish-year-old man wearing a wife-beater T-shirt and two-day old white stubble.

“What’s your problem?” he asked.

“Hi,” Harry offered, as lightly as he could. “You still serving breakfast?”

“Uh huh,” the old guy said pointing to the glass case. “Coffee and donuts – breakfast of champions.” He started walking back to the upstairs door. “Leave the money in the chamber pot.”

“Ah, how much?”

The old guy turned and for the first time properly looked at Harry. “What do you pay at Starbucks for your none-y fatty amaretto latte cappuccino?”

“I pay about four bucks for my regular latte.”

“How much do they charge for donuts?”

“I don’t usually eat donuts.”

“Well today will be a treat for ya. Leave five bucks in the pot.”

“You’re a trusting soul.”

“Look around you, mister. If somebody came in here and cleaned the place out – including the Mr Coffee machine – they’d get maybe a hundred and twenty bucks worth of stuff. I have better things to do than guard three dozen eggs and two gallons of milk.”

“And Spam. Don’t forget that.”

The old guy leaned one elbow on his counter. “And what is wrong with Spam?”

“Other than it’s Spam?”

“Listen you, Spam is good food. Have you ever had a fried Spam and cheese sandwich on white?”

“Sounds great,” Harry said. “Do you serve that here?”

“I have decided I don’t like you,” he said as he turned to leave.

“I have a feeling you don’t like many people.”

Just before the old guy began his clump up the stairs, Harry heard him say: “That’s no lie.”

* * *

Sitting alone at the counter Harry felt as if he had broken into a stranger’s empty house. He placed a fiver into the chamber pot and helped himself to a coffee and a donut. The donut was fresh and delicious. The old guy had been right about one thing – it was a treat.

The door opened behind him. Harry noticed that there was no bell like in most establishments but of course a bell would just disturb this proprietor. A tall man, in his mid-50s with thin but still flaming-red hair, walked up to the counter, dropped a dollar in the pot and helped himself to a coffee.

Harry looked into the pot and said: “I guess I paid tourist rates.”

“What’d he get you for?” the redhead asked.

“Five bucks for a coffee and a donut.”

The man walked to the steps and shouted, “Todd, get down here.”

They both waited for any sound to come from upstairs. Eventually the slow clump heralded the arrival of the old man. “What da you want?”

“Did you charge this man five bucks for a coffee and a donut?” the redhead asked.

“No, I asked this nice New Yorker—”

“I’m from Philadelphia,” Harry interrupted.

“Like there’s a difference. I merely asked this Philly boy what he usually pays for coffee and recommended that he donate accordingly. You see, I don’t sell things here, Mayor. If I did, you would charge me commercial taxes.”

“Did Todd inform you that the fiver was a voluntary contribution?”

Harry had no intention of getting in the middle of a local inter-governmental squabble. “Ah, he may have. I don’t rightly recall.”

The mayor took the fiver out of the pot and handed it back to Harry then opened his wallet and replaced it with a couple of bills. “Two bucks is fair; consider it a welcome gift to a newcomer.”

“Is there anything else you want?” old Todd asked the mayor.

“No.”

The old guy turned to Harry. “Do you get offended by foul language?”

“No, not usually.”

“Good,” Todd said as he shuffled back to the stairway. “Fuck you, Mayor.”

“And good morning to you, Todd,” the mayor replied.

“Are you the mayor that dabbles in real estate?” Harry asked.

“I’m the real estate agent that dabbles in being a mayor. You must be Mr Cull; Trooper Cirba told me to keep an eye out for you.”

“Harry,” Harry said extending a hand.

“Charlie Boyce,” the mayor said, shaking it. “So, you a cop?”

“No.”

“So, how do you know Cirba?”

“We’re drinking buddies.”

“Oh, right. I got it all wrong then. I thought you were up here helping with the murder investigation.”

“I heard something about a murder. Who was it?”

Charlie sighed and shook his head. “Local kid; actually, he wasn’t a kid. I just knew him for a long time. He used to work for me in winter. He was a good guy but always seemed to wind up with a bad crowd. You know?”

“What happened to him?”

“They found him in the woods. Paper says he was shot.” Charlie thought for a moment then shook off the mood. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. People ’round here are real nice, and that’s no lie.”

“Except for Todd, of course,” Harry said.

The mayor laughed. “See, you’re getting to know the place already. I’ve got a sweet little lakeside cottage for you. If you’re finished with your coffee I’ll take you over.”

On the way out the door the mayor picked up a loaf of bread, a half a dozen eggs and a pint of milk, stuffed them in a bag and handed them to Harry. “Now that’s worth a fiver.”

Harry added a tin of Spam and a bag of cookies to his shopping and dropped twenty into the pot. He didn’t want to give old Todd anymore reason to dislike him.

* * *

Harry followed the mayor on the potholed lake road that was only wide enough to let two medium-sized cars squeeze past each other. The mayor strictly obeyed the fifteen miles per hour speed limit – when you’re the mayor you have to.

The slow pace gave Harry the chance to take in his surroundings. The houses around the lake were an eclectic mix. At one end of the spectrum were the old A-frames. An A-frame house was available mail order, just four long pieces of wood stuck in the ground like a big triangle, with pitch roofing tiles nailed to the sides. It gave you one large room with sloping walls downstairs and a cosy little bedroom upstairs. Back in the fifties some families of eight would spend the entire summer in one of them and they would get to know each other – very well. These days most of them had a more modern extension tacked on.

In between there was a variety of different sized homes all the way up to proper multi-storey luxury hunting/skiing lodges built by New Yorkers who spent their Wall Street money on a mountain dream.

Harry parked his car next to Charlie’s in the driveway of one of the in-between-sized houses and went inside. It was a quaint bungalow with comfortable furnishings and an oldfashioned kitchen that could be described as clean but not gleaming.

“Now before you decide whether you like it or not,” Charlie said as he searched for the rope that operated the curtain that covered the length of the living room wall, “check this out.”

The curtain opened to reveal that the entire side of the room was glass with a doublesliding door in the middle. Beyond it was a sloping lawn ending with a small wooden dock that jutted out onto the glorious Ice Lake. It was the kind of vista that forced one to say “wow” and that’s just what Harry said.

“Ah the view always gets ’em,” Charlie said with a real estate agent’s grin. He walked back to the kitchen. “There’s a coffee maker and a little coffee, tea, and sugar in the cupboard. My number is in here,” he said lifting a folder from the counter. “Questions about the house, like the water heater and such are in here too. Please, read it before you call me. When the phone rings in the night it drives my wife loopy. Well loopier. Especially when the answer’s in here.”

“I’ll study it thoroughly.”

“Oh, if all my renters were as good as you, my life would be harmonious – and that’s no lie. I’ll leave you to your view.”

Harry walked him to the door.

As he was getting into the car he called back, “Feel free to call me if you need anything.”

“As long as it’s not in the folder,” Harry said.

Charlie touched his nose and then pointed with a smile.

* * *

Harry had a good snoop around his new abode. The bedroom was down a hallway from the living area. It was a pleasant size and featured a brass bed that was a bit softer and definitely squeakier than he liked. No matter, Harry thought with a sigh, it’s not like I’m going to be disturbing the neighbours with any extra-curricular bedspring squeaking.

In the kitchen Harry found an old teapot high on a shelf. The owners had probably only bought it as an ornament but as Harry’s old Irish mother always said: “A home’s not a home unless it has a hot teapot in it.”

He set water to boil and cleaned off the years of dust from the pot. Then just as his mother had taught him, he warmed it with boiling water and added three tea bags and just-boiled water. Then he wrapped the pot with a tea towel to keep it warm and set up a tray with a cup, a little milk pitcher, and some of old Todd’s cookies.

He carried it all outside, left it on the picnic table to brew up strong like he liked it and approached the water’s edge. It really was, as Trooper Cirba had said, “a little corner of paradise”. At less than two miles around you could almost see the whole lake from where he stood. To his right a light breeze danced on the water making the sunlight sparkle on the surface. To the left the lake thinned and dog-legged around a corner. There it was darker and less inviting, hemmed in by knurled trees and water filled with dark green lily pads. Harry could make out ducks in the distance and then a little splash at his feet brought his attention to several small fish swimming in the crystal-clear water. He couldn’t resist kicking off his shoes, rolling up his trouser legs and dipping his toes in. The water from the underground springs that fed the lake was initially freezing but it didn’t take long to get used to it. The little fish who moments before had been scared away came back to see what the white monoliths were. One even kissed at his toes like in one of those fancy fish pedicure places.

Harry returned to his tea. As he poured he asked himself the question that almost everyone who rents a house at Ice Lake asks – “Why do I live in the city?”

“Gosh, I don’t think I have ever had a neighbour who serves himself high tea,” said a voice from behind him.

Harry was initially annoyed at the intrusion on his solitude, but that was before he turned and saw the gorgeous, thirtyish, brunette standing behind him wearing a pink scrub top and white nurse’s trousers.

“Hi,” Harry said trying to free himself from the picnic table. “Can I get you a cup?”

“No, thank you.”

“How about a Milano cookie?”

She laughed and her little turned-up nose crinkled in a way that Harry thought was the cutest thing he had ever seen.

“Ah, I see you’ve been shopping at our local superstore.”

“Yes indeed. Would you like a Spam sandwich, Miss?”

She predictably shook her head, extended her hand and said: “I’m Meredith Keller but everyone calls me MK.”

“I’m Harry. Harry Cull. It is a pleasure to meet you Nurse or Doctor Keller?”

“Actually I’m a stripagram. I have an unusual midweek lunchtime bachelor party today.”

“Well, he’s a lucky groom.”

She smiled and it was very nice.

Harry’s sliding doors opened and out popped the six-and-a-half-foot form of Ed Cirba. He wore the full Pennsylvania State Police uniform: the black boots, the light grey shirt with a black tie and black epaulettes, the dark grey trousers with a black stripe running along the outside edge were held up by a black belt clipped to a four-inch-thick utility belt sporting a black holster containing a .45-calibre pistol. Also hanging from the belt were handcuffs, expandable baton, a walkie-talkie, and two leather cases, one holding a flashlight, the other pepper spray. On top of all this was his twelve-inch diameter wide-brimmed hat, just like the one Ranger Smith wore in the Yogi Bear cartoons. Cirba was an impressive human being in civvies but, in uniform, he was downright intimidating.

“There you are,” he shouted.

Cirba bounded down to the high tea in less than four strides and said: “Mr Cull, it’s good to see you again.” He shook Harry’s hand and then drew him into an all-engulfing bear hug. “And hello, MK.”

“Hiya, Ed,” she said standing on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“I take it you know each other?”

“MK’s an emergency room nurse at Wilkes Barrie County Hospital. We see each other often but not usually under such pleasant circumstances.”

Harry stepped back and admired the trooper and the nurse. “You know if I could find an Indian chief outfit, I’m sure we could win a Halloween competition somewhere.”

“As tempting as that sounds I have to go to work,” MK said. “But it’s just a half shift. Me and the girls are floating tonight about 5.30. We don’t usually allow boys, but I think we could make an exception for you two.”

“I can guarantee that Mrs Cirba won’t give me time off to float but I will try to get Harry back for it.”

“Good,” MK said as she walked back into the house next to Harry’s, “I’ll see you then. See ya later, Ed.”

“What’s floating?” Harry asked the trooper.

“Trust me, you’ll love it.” Ed took a cookie from the tray. “You settled in?”

“No.”

“Good, I’ll take you to the Horseshoe.”

“Is that a place for lunch?”

“No, that’s the murder scene.”

Chapter 3

If you turn right out of the lake and head east for five miles, you come to Ice Lake’s nearest town – Oaktree, PA. The Lakers call that stretch the Five Mile Road. If you go left to St Elizabeth’s, that road is called the Seven Mile Road. Collectively both roads are known as the Thirteen Mile Road. No one knows where the extra mile comes from. It’s a Pocono mystery.

Cirba drove Harry to the site of the other Pocono mystery. About two miles along the Five Mile Road they pulled left onto a gravel slip known as the Horseshoe. Its name refers to the fact that the road simply goes into the woods and comes out again in a semicircle. After five hundred yards Harry could see the police tape and another squad car in the distance. The young statie in the car was obviously asleep with his head back and his mouth open. That’s what it initially looked like but then Harry felt a horrible lurch in his stomach as the idea came to him that maybe he had been shot. The feeling didn’t last long. The young trooper snapped awake as they drew closer to the car.

The cop popped out of his vehicle and tried not to look as if he had just woken up. Cirba met him and tried to pretend he hadn’t seen him asleep. He was a cadet and had been on the overnight watch at the scene. Cirba sent him home and then started pulling the police tape off the trees.

“Is this no longer a crime scene?” Harry asked.

“We got all the information from here that we’re gonna get.”

“And what was that?”

Cirba broke the plastic tape, rolled it up and, for the want of a better place to put it, stuffed it into his pocket. The forest of scrub oaks in this part of Pennsylvania didn’t seem that dark from the road, Harry thought, but once you were in them it was hard to see more than a short way ahead. Together they walked up a dark path that opened into a glen. In the centre was a ring of stones surrounding a firepit that looked like it had been used recently. Scattered around were broken and unbroken beer bottles and empty rifle shells. A bit further up the hill was a mound of earth that looked as if it had been made by the push of a bulldozer. In front of the mound were pulverized cardboard boxes with silhouettes of deer and men, as well as years of broken bottles and perforated rusted beer cans. One of the target practice silhouettes on the ground portrayed a man in a turban.

“The vic, Bill Thomson,” Cirba said, pointing just downhill of the firepit, “was found here. He had shotgun wounds to both knees and a double-barrelled shot to the back of the head.”

“Ouch,” Harry said without trying to be funny.

“Yeah, nasty stuff. The leg wounds were pretty – close range – we found some stray shot in the dirt but not much. My theory is that the shooter was behind the vic and put a shot in the back of the knee to drop him. But instead the vic turned on him so he emptied the second barrel into his other knee from the front. The vic went down here,” Cirba said pointing to a patch of dirt just downhill of the firepit that still had dark stains on it, “then the perp reloaded and put both barrels in the back of his head.”

“Cold,” Harry said, “a pro hit?”

“It doesn’t feel like it. There were no bruises on the guy so I’m inclined to say that he knew the shooter and was walking in front of him without a care in the world. Also pros don’t usually use shotguns.”

“Effective though, wouldn’t you say? You can’t get ballistics from a shotgun, and I don’t suppose the shooter left any empty shells with his fingerprints on them?”

“This place was littered with shotgun shells when we first got here. This is the local shooting range. But there weren’t any around where the shooter must have been standing. We picked up all the empties but we won’t get anything out of them.

“Any forensics – footprints, tyre tracks?”

“This is also the big teenage party spot. The vic seemed to have been cleaning it up. We found a plastic bag of bottles and cans with his prints on ’em. Word has it that there was a shindig up here three nights ago. So there are zillions of tyre treads. The local boy that found the vic came up to target practice. He drove over any tracks that would have been there, as did the local cops when they got here.”

“When was he shot?”

“Two days ago, just before midday. He was still a little warm when the boy found him.”

“Anybody hear anything?”

“Nobody around to hear. The only building close enough is the strip club but nobody would be there before noon.”

“A strip club you say? I think we need to investigate. Wouldn’t be called Nirvana by any chance?”

Cirba shook his head, walked over to a tree and removed the last remaining bit of crowd control tape. “There will be no investigating in any strip clubs. When you see the place, you’ll see that this is not Vegas – and that’s no lie. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you mentioned Nirvana again.”

“Oops. So who was the vic?”

Cirba sat down at one of the makeshift benches by the firepit. “He was a local guy named William Thomson – everybody called him Big Bill. Just turned thirty, been in trouble all his younger years, almost flunked out of high school, got busted for selling pot and for some graffiti stuff when he was a minor. I arrested him myself for joyriding, but his dad knew the man whose car he stole, so he got off. I knew his father, he was a really good guy. I’m glad he’s gone – this would’a killed him. Actually, Bill was a good kid. He got in trouble but he had that bad kid charm that made it so you couldn’t get mad at him. You know the type?”

Harry nodded. “The mayor said he worked for him.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. Bill hadn’t been in trouble for years. His brother, Frank, inherited his dad’s old construction company. In the summer he worked for him, and in the winter he helped out as the handyman/super at the mayor’s ski condos where he had a basement apartment. We searched the place but there wasn’t much in it – a real bachelor pad. There were a lot of the mayor’s real estate books, weights for lifting, and a laptop. The laptop and the no-contract phone he was wearing when he got shot were both password-protected. They’re with the crime lab now.” The trooper took off his hat and wiped his brow.

“So who wanted him dead?”

“Don’t know but they tell me it’s my job to find out. In his younger days he used to hang out with a character that Narco’ thinks is cooking most of the crystal meth in the area. Feel like meeting the local freelance pharmacist?”

“Sure,” Harry said. “Then can we go to the strip club?”

* * *

There is a winding stretch on the Five Mile Road that has a series of banked s-turns. Legend has it that the road was originally an Algonquin hunting path – this bunch of turns is known locally as the Drunken Indians. People from all over, especially ones with new sports cars, make a trip here to speed through the racetrack-like bends. It’s not unusual to find Dom Barowski, the local Oaktree cop, sitting in a hidden spot at the end of the Drunken Indians with his speed camera. Two hours a day there pretty much funds Dom’s full salary.

Cirba took the Drunken Indians at high speed as Harry held on to the handle above his head. He honked and waved at Dom as he shot out of the last turn.

“I see the local constabulary doesn’t mind you busting up their speed limits,” Harry said as he straightened back up in his seat.

“Professional courtesy,” Cirba said.

“Are there any other turns like that between here and Oaktree or can I throw up now?”

“Throw up in my squad car and I’ll arrest you, Harry.”

“For what?”

“For throwing up in my squad car.”

“The taxi driver in Vegas was cool when you threw up out his—”

“Seriously, will you stop talking about that night?”

They turned onto a back road before entering town and ended up in a section that wasn’t in the brochure produced by the Oaktree Chamber of Commerce. Ed slowed to a crawl while negotiating the potholes. The sides of the road were strewn with litter, bottles, and the occasional roadkill. They passed white wooden houses, one after another, all desperately needing paint jobs and lawn mowing. Behind chain-link fences in almost every yard, a large dog barked so loud that Harry had to raise his voice a bit.

“They don’t seem to like you.”

“I used to be a dog lover before I took this job,” Cirba said. “I think some of these hillbillies have actually trained their dogs to attack anyone in a state police uniform.”

“How would they do that?”

“I don’t know but listen to them.”

Cirba slowed past another house, this one in better shape than the rest. The grass was still high and there was a bumperless body of an old Chevy Impala on the lawn but the house was newly painted, with modern windows behind metal security grates. Cirba drove by and said: “How about some lunch?”