Frostbite

Susan is the center of a chilling investigation, as her past collides with the present.

Frostbite

          The heat in Susan Hill's apartment flickered weakly, doing little to combat the winter weather on the inside, decades of cold cemented in her bones. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her sweet purple puppy, a small rescue she'd named Lucy, nuzzling into her side. The dog's fur was the same shade as the peppermint pig Susan kept on her windowsill, a trinket from her prison days. A stupid thing to cling to but it was all she had left of the woman she used to be.

          The landline rang at 10:17 p.m., its shrillness slicing through the silence. Susan hesitated. She knew that number. Daniel Peters. The angry middle-aged man across the hall, whose complaints about her had filled police files like confetti at a funeral. "Drug use," he'd claimed once, though she'd never touched a thing. "Suspicious behavior," he'd muttered another time, as if breathing while Black in low-income housing was a crime.

          She let it ring. Let it go to voicemail. Let it ring again.

          But Lucy whined, her ears perking up. The line buzzed a third time, and Susan snatched it, her voice a hiss. "What?"

          "Susan," Daniel croaked, his breath ragged. "You--there's--God, help me--" The line crackled. A gunshot. A thud. Then static.

          Susan dropped the phone. Lucy barked, pacing the room. The door to 3B was ajar. Through the peephole, Susan saw lights flashing. Police boots thudded inside Daniel's apartment. A scream--his scream--echoed down the hall.

          By the time officers knocked on her door, Susan had draped Lucy in a sweater to muffle her trembling. "We're not leaving," she told the dog, though she wasn't sure who the words were for.

          The lead officer, a woman with a scar above her brow, frowned at Susan's hands. "You're the one who called it in?"

          "She did," said a younger cop, checking his notes. "Said she heard a struggle, then a gunshot. But the call dropped before we could patch through."

          "It wasn't me," Susan said, voice steady. "I was here with Lucy."

          "She's just a dog," the older officer muttered, eyeing Lucy's matted fur. "Could've been trained to bark at--"

          "Officer," Susan cut in, "you can check the security cameras in the lobby. I work at Kroger. My shift ends at 10." She pointed to the Kroger lanyard hanging by her door. "Ask Manager Hart. I was bagging frozen veggies until the snowstorm knocked out the freezer."

          The officers exchanged glances. Behind them, Daniel lay sprawled on his living room floor, a pool of blood blooming around his leg. He was alive--barely--a jagged tear in his pant leg revealing a gash that looked more like a peppermint than a wound.

          Back in her apartment, the officers searched for weapons. Found nothing but old case files tied up in a shoebox and Lucy's bed, stained with pee but no blood. "Clean," the younger police officer muttered, though his face was tight.

          Susan didn't flinch when they asked about the pig on her windowsill. "It's a stress toy," she said. "Prison issued. You think I'd keep a weapon that obvious?"

          The lead officer lingered by Daniel's door, her jaw set. The room smelled like gunpowder and peppermint. On the coffee table lay a shattered pill bottle labeled Xanax, and a photo of Daniel with a younger, sunnier version of himself, arm slung around a woman with purple hair.

          Susan didn't sleep that night. She held Lucy close, listening to sirens wail through the snow. By dawn, the rumor mill in the housing complex had turned to whispers: That murderer shot him.

          But Lucy knew. The puppy's paws still trembled from the sound of Daniel crashing into his own hall closet, from the scuffle of a second voice--higher-pitched, panicked--before the shot. And in the morgue, the "peppermint" wound would reveal something odd: the bullet had been fired from a child's cap gun.

          A prank weapon.

          But by then, Susan would be gone, vanishing like the woman in the photo, leaving only a note for tomorrow's judge:

          "Some winters never thaw."

Word count: 682
Prompt: Peppermint pig, sweet purple puppy, angry middle-aged man, winter weather on the inside.