Tales from The Dark Snow

Introduction

Thanks for purchasing and eventually reading this, a collection of what I like to call my Owen Taylor stories. Starting with The Dark Snow, I’ve written six lengthy short stories about Owen Taylor, a former government black ops expert who’s desperately trying to live a quiet retirement, first in a small New Hampshire town and then an even smaller Maine town. But Owen tends to get involved in some dangerous areas, especially when it impacts his friends and his new community, and he always skates close to being arrested and sent away for a long, long time.

This character and these short stories have garnered a lot of critical praise and attention over the years, and many readers have asked me if there was one place where all of these stories appeared in a single collection. Until now, the answer was no, but I’m so pleased to now have all of my Owen Taylor adventures in one place. Four of these stories appeared in Playboy magazine, one appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the last story, The High Ground, has never before been published. So congratulations, you’re one of the first to read it.

Will there be more Owen Taylor adventures? Probably, though I don’t want to fall into what mystery writers call the Jessica Fletcher trap, meaning so many crimes and dastardly deeds popping up in one small community, whether it’s Pinette, Maine, or Cabot Cove, Maine.

But stick around. I like to think of Owen Taylor at his small Maine home, either enjoying lazy summer days or deep winter nights, recalling his adventures and perhaps hungering for a few more.

The Dark Snow

When I get to the steps of my lakeside home, the door is open. I slowly walk in, my hand reaching for the phantom weapon at my side, everything about me extending and tingling as I enter the strange place that used to be my home. I step through the small kitchen, my boots crunching the broken glassware and dishes on the tile floor. Inside the living room with its cathedral ceiling the furniture has been upended, as if an earthquake had suddenly struck.

I pause for a second in the living room, looking out the large windows and past the enclosed porch and down to the frozen waters of Lake Marie, and off in the far distance, the snow-covered peaks of the White Mountains. I wait, trembling, my hand still curvng for that elusive weapon. They are gone. My house is empty.

But their handiwork remains. The living room is a jumble of furniture, torn books and magazines, shattered pictures and frames. On one clear white plaster wall, right next to the fireplace, two words have been written in what looks to be ketchup: GO HOME.

This is my home. I turn over a chair and drag it to the windows. I sit and look out at the crisp winter landscape, legs stretched out, holding both hands quite still in my lap, which is quite a feat.

For my hands at that moment want to be wrapped around someone's throat.

After a long time wandering I came to Nansen, New Hampshire, in the late summer, and purchased a house right along the shoreline of Lake Marie. I didn't waste much time and I didn't haggle or bargain. I found a place I wanted and made an offer that was about a thousand dollars less than the asking price, and in less than a month it belonged to me.

At first I didn't know what to do with it. I had never had a residence that was actually mine. Everything else had been apartments, hotel rooms or temporary officer's quarters. The first few nights I couldn't sleep inside and I would go outside to the long dock that extends into the deep blue waters of the lake. I bundled myself up in a sleeping bag and rested on a thin foam mattress, and lay back and stared up at the stars, and listened to the cries and howls of the loons, getting ready for their long winter trip. The loons don't necessarily fly south; the ones here go out to the cold Atlantic and float with the waves and currents, not once touching land for the entire winter.

I snuggled in my bag and thought that was a good analogy for what I'd been doing. I had drifted for too long. It was time to come back to dry land.

After getting the power and other utilities up and running and moving in the few boxes of stuff that belonged to me, I checked the bulky envelope that accompanied my retirement and pulled out an envelope with a doctor's name. Inside the envelope were official papers that directed me to talk to him, and I shrugged and decided it was better than sitting here in an empty house, getting drunk, and so I phoned him and got an appointment for the next day.

His name is Ron Longley and he works in Manchester, the state's largest city and about an hour's drive south from Lake Marie. His office is in one of those refurbished brick buildings that are along the banks of the rushing Merrimack River, and I imagined I can still smell the sweat and toil of the French-Canadians who had worked here for so many years in the shoe, textile and leather mills, until their distant cousins in Georgia and Alabama took their jobs away.

I wasn't too sure what to make of Ron during our first session. He showed me some similar documents that made him a Department of Defense contractor and gave his current classification level, and then after signing the usual insurance nonsense, we got right down to it. He's about ten years younger than me, with a moustache and merry grin, and not much hair on top. He wore jeans and a light blue shirt and a tie that looked like about six tubes of paint had been squirted onto it, and he said, Well, here we are.

That we are, I said. And would you believe that I've already forgotten if you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist?

That made for a good laugh and a casual wave of the hands, and he said, Makes no difference. What would you like to talk about?

What should I talk about?

A casual shrug, one of many I would eventually see. Whatever's on your mind.

Really? I said, not bothering to hide the challenge in my voice. Try this one on then, doc. I'm wondering what I'm doing here, and I know it's just because of the agreement I signed when I left. No doctor's visits, no monthly check. And another thing I'm wondering is all that nice paperwork you have. Are you going to be making a report down south on how I do? You working under some deadline, some pressure?

His hands were on his belly, and still, he had that smile. Nope.

Not at all?

Not at all, he said. If you want to come in here and talk baseball for fifty minutes, then that's fine with me.

I looked at him and those eyes and maybe it's my change of view since retirement, but there was something trusting about him, something that I've long ago learned to pick up. This time it was my turn to shrug and I said, You know what's really on my mind?

No, but I'd like to know.

My new house, I said. It's great. It's on a big lake and there aren't any close neighbors, and I can just sit on the dock at night and see stars I haven't seen in a long time. But I've been having problems sleeping at night.

Why's that? he asked, and I was glad he wasn't one of those stereotypical head docs, the ones that have to take a lot of notes.

Weapons.

Weapons?

I nodded. Yeah, I miss my weapons. A deep breath. Look, you've seen my files, you know the places and the jobs that Uncle Sam has sent me to do. All those years, I had pistols or rifles or heavy weapons, always at my side, under my bed or in a closet. They helped me sleep. But when I moved in and started living in that house, well, I don't have them any more. I wanted to start fresh. So they aren't there.

How does that make you feel? and even though the question was friendly, I knew it was a real doc question, and not a friendly end-of-the-barstool type question.

I rubbed my hands. I feel glad, that they're not there. I really feel like I'm changing my ways. But damn it...

Yes?

I smiled. I sure could use a good night's sleep.

Well, as I drove back home, I recalled what I said and think, hell, it's only a little white lie.

The fact is, I do have my weapons.

It's just that they are locked up in the little basement, in strongboxes with heavy combination locks. I can't get to them quickly, but I certainly haven't tossed them away.

It's a bit of progress, and it has to be considered as such, for I wasn't fibbing when I told Ron that I couldn't sleep. That part is entirely true.

But there was another fib that gnawed at me a bit, as I drove up the dirt road to my house and scared a possum, scuttling along the side of the dirt and gravel. There was another problem in living at my new home, and one that's so slight that I was embarrassed to bring it up.

It was the noise.

I am living in a rural paradise, with clean air, clean water, and views of the woods and the lake and mountains that almost break my heart each time I climb out of bed, stiff with old dreams and old scars. The long days are filled with work and activities that I'd never had the time for. Cutting old brush and trimming off dead branches. Planting annual bulbs for the next spring. Clearing my tiny beach of dead leaves and other debris. Filling up bird feeders. And long evenings on the front porch or on the dock, reading thick history books that I can really sink my teeth into.

But one night after dinner -- and I'm surprising myself at finding that I'm beginning to enjoy cooking -- I was out on the dock, sitting in one of those 1950's-era web lawn chairs, a glass of red wine in my hand and a history of the Apollo space program in my lap. It was dusk and out along the shorelines of Lake Marie, I could see lights of the cottages and other homes. Every night there were fewer and fewer lights, as more of the summer people boarded up their places and head back to suburbia and whatever the hell kind of life they have that they think is better than being on this lake.

So I was enjoying my wine and the book and the slight breeze, but there was also a distraction: three high-powered speedboats, racing around on the lake and tossing up great spumes of spray and noise. They were dragging people along the rear in inner tubes and I guess they were having fun, but it was hard to concentrate on my book. After a while the engines slowed down and I was hoping that they were heading back to their docks, but the boats drifted together and ropes were exchanged, and soon, they were a large raft. A couple of grills were set up, and there were more hoots and yells, and then a sound system kicked in, with rock music and a heavy bass that echoed among the hills.

It was then too dark to read and I'd lost interest in the wine and I was sitting there, arms folded tight against my chest, trying hard to breath. The noise got louder and I gave up and retreated into my new house, where the heavy thump-thump of the bass followed me in. If I had a boat -- a purchase for next year I suppose -- I could have gone out and asked them politely to turn it down, but that would have meant talking to many people and putting myself in the way, and I didn't want to do that.

Instead, I retreated upstairs to my bedroom and shut the door and windows, and still, that thump-thump shook through the very wood and beams of the house. I lay down, staring up, pillow about my head, and tried not to think of what's in the basement.

Later that night I got up for a drink of water, and there was still noise and music. I walked out to the porch and could see movement out on the lake, and hear some laughter. On a tree near the dock is a spotlight that the previous owners had installed, and which I have rarely used, but at this hour in the morning, I went over and flipped on the switch. Some shouts and a shriek or two. Two powerboats, tied together, had drifted close to my shore. The light caught a young and muscular man, with a fierce black moustache, standing on the stern of his powerboat and urinating into the lake. His half dozen companions, male and female, yelled and cursed in my direction. The boats started up and two men and a young woman stumbled to one side of a boat and dropped their bathing suits, exposing their buttocks. A couple of others gave me a one-fingered salute, and there was a shower of beer bottles and cans tossed over the side as they sped away.

I spent the next hour on the porch, sitting on my hands, just looking out into the darkness.

The next day, I made two phone calls, to the town hall and the police department of Nansen. I made gentle and polite inquiries, and get the same answer from each office. There's no local or state law about coming to within a certain distance of shore with a boat. There's also no law about mooring together. Nansen being such a small town, there's also no noise ordinance

Home sweet home.

The next visit Ron was wearing a bowtie, and a discussion of necktie fashions rambled on before we got into the business at hand. Sometimes we never get to the business at hand -- last session we talked fifty minutes about a current political scandal involving the governor -- but this time, he said, Still having sleeping problems?

I was proud to be smiling. No, not at all.

Really?

Honest, I said.

And why's that?

It's fall, I said. The tourists have gone home, most of the cottages along the lake have been boarded up, and nobody takes out boats anymore. It's so quiet at night I can hear the house creak and settle.

That's good, that's really good, Ron said, and I smiled and changed the subject, and a half hour later, I was heading back to my new home in Nansen, thinking about another white lie I had just performed. Well, not really a lie. More of an oversight.

I hadn't told Ron about the hang-up phone calls. Or how every few days, trash was dumped in my dirt driveway. Or a week ago, when I was shopping, someone had drilled a bullet hole through one of the side windows. Maybe a hunting accident. Even though hunting season wasn't yet open, I knew that for some of the working men in this town, it doesn't really matter when the state allows them to do their shooting.

I just cleaned up the driveway, tried to shrug off the hang-up phone calls, and I cut away brush and saplings around the house, to eliminate any potential hiding spots for, um, hunters.

Still, I was beginning to love it here. I could sit out on the dock, a blanket around my legs and lap and a mug of tea in my hand, watching the sunset in the distance, the reddish pink highlighting the strong yellows, oranges and reds of the foliage. The water was a slate gray and though I missed the loons, the smell of the leaves and the distant tang of wood smoke from my house seem to settle in just fine.

It was easy not to think of what was in the basement.

As it grew colder, I began going to downtown Nansen for breakfast every few days. The center of Nansen could be Exhibit A on a presentation on typical New Hampshire small towns. Around the small green common -- with a Civil War statue in the center -- is a bank, real estate office, hardware store, two service stations, a general store, a small strip of stores that has everything from a plumber to a video rental place, and Gretchen's Kitchen. At Gretchen's I stopped by for lunch and occasional dinner, but have also enjoyed going to breakfast and reading a handful of papers while letting the morning drift by. I listened to the old timers sit at the counter and pontificate on the ills of the state, nation, and world, and I also enjoyed seeing the harried workers fly in, trying to grab a meal before their eight hours of misery. I usually took a corner booth by myself, and a waitress named Sandy later took some interest in me.

She was about twenty years younger than I am, with a pleasing body that filled out her regulation pink uniform, raven-dark hair and a wide smile. After a couple of weeks of serious flirting on her part and generous tips on my part, I actually asked her out, and when she said yes, I went out to my pickup truck and burst out laughing. A real date. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually had a real date.

The first date was dinner a couple of towns over in Montcalm, the second was dinner and a movie outside of Manchester, and the third was a homemade dinner at my house that was supposed to end with a rental movie in the living room, but managed to stumble into the bedroom. Along the way I learned that Sandy had always lived in Nansen, was divorced with two young boys, and was saving up her money so she could go back to school and become a legal aide. If you think I'm going to keep on slinging hash and waiting for Billy to remember to send his support check every week, then you're a damn fool, she said on our first date.

After a bedroom interlude that surprised me with its intensity -- well, at least on my part -- we ended up