In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

train bed to underneath the bridge. A lot of people would rather get there by driving the trail instead of risking the climb down.”
    “I can’t help think there must be more comfortable places to have a drink,” she said. Her breath hung in the air, glowing in the reflected light of her flashlight.
    “Oh, yeah,” he said, ducking to avoid a snow-heavy branch. “But Napoli’s Discount Liquors and the infamous Dew Drop Inn are less than a mile up the road, offering a last crack at booze before you cross the town line into Cossayaharie. Which is one of the last dry towns in New York State.”
    “So the good people of Cossayaharie drink here in the park instead?”
    “Don’t know if I’d say the
good
people, but—”
    Clare slipped where the trail took a downward turn, and Russ caught her arm, steadying her. She added boots with serious treads to her growing list of things to buy.
    “Watch it,” he said, pointing his light to the left. The land sloped steeply down to the half-frozen edge of the river, visible between tangled bushes and slim stands of trees. “You don’t want to fall in in this weather.” She nodded and walked more slowly, staying between the tire tracks, emulating Russ’s steady tread. “I remember last year, some idiot came out here to jack deer, fell in the kill instead, and nearly died from the hypothermia. ’Course, it didn’t help that he’d been keeping himself entertained with blackberry brandy.”
    “Jack deer?” She caught a flash of something dark and gleaming near the water. A deer? She aimed her flashlight toward the thicket it might be hiding in.
    “Poaching. At night. If you shine a light into a deer’s eyes you can freeze it long enough to shoot.”
    The gleam looked funny, familiar but out of place. She moved the beam of light to the right. And saw a hand, barely distinguishable from the snow it rested on. The dark gleam, that was hair. That was someone’s long, dark—
    “Russ,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Russ,” she repeated. She pointed, part of her amazed at how steadily she was holding the flashlight. “Down there.”
    “Oh my God!” he said. He scrambled down the slope, falling and sliding and catching at trees. “Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus, no.” He yanked a bush almost out of the ground, stopping his headlong descent before he plunged into the water. Clare held her light tightly. She wasn’t sure if she could move it at this point. Russ squatted in the snow and bent over the… her mind tried to slide over the word “body.”
    “Oh no. Oh, Jesus, oh no.” He hunkered down for a moment. She could see him backlit by the glow of his flashlight, shaking his head over and over. Then he straightened, wiped his face. Turned toward her. “It’s a girl. She’s dead.”
     
     
     
CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    Clare pressed her gloved fist against her mouth. Her flashlight never wavered. Russ pointed his light up at her, making her eyes sting and blink. “Clare? Are you okay?”
    She nodded. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him looking at her, realized he might not see the small movement.
    “Yes. I’m okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
    “Can you make it back up the trail to the car and call for help? I’m going to have to secure the area now, see if I can find anything before—before they get here to take her out.”
    “Turn on the radio and ask for Harlene?”
    “Yeah. Tell her we’ve found a body off the trail, about a quarter mile upstream from Payson’s Park. Can you do that?” She nodded again. “Good girl,” he said.
    Clare couldn’t stop herself from looking at that hand once more, so pale and still it might have been carved out of snow. Snow on snow, the old hymn went. Snow on snow. She could make out some kind of sleeve, disappearing into the tangled brush. Whoever it was must be half in the water. Did she jump? Had she changed her mind and tried to crawl out? Clare blinked the blurriness out of her eyes and