Ice Run by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

the carpet.
    “What the hell,” I said. I bent down and picked it up.
    “That’s the hat he was wearing, right? The old man downstairs?”
    “It is. But why?”
    “Wait a minute,” she said. “Is there something else inside there?”
    She was right. I reached into the frozen mess and pulled out a piece of paper. It was the hotel stationery, and there were five words written in capital letters with an unsteady hand.
    “What does it say?” she said.
    I didn’t say anything. I just turned the piece of paper around and showed it to her.
    I KNOW WHO YOU ARE !

Chapter Four
    I took the hat with me to Jackie’s place the next day. I had come home that morning to plow the road again, having spent the night with Natalie on a strange hotel bed, after finding the hat with the ice and snow in it, along with the note, after going downstairs to look for the old man and then going out into the snowy night. I had come back to the room and we had talked about it.
    “Are you sure you’ve never seen him before?” she had asked.
    “I’m positive,” I said. “I don’t know the man.”
    “Well, he didn’t leave it for me. I told you, I’ve never even been in this town before.”
    “He might be confused,” I said. “Hell, maybe he has Alzheimer’s. That’s another reason to find him.”
    So I had gone downstairs again. Nobody had seen the man, or even knew who he was. There was no sign of the doorman, either. The woman at the desk seemed to think he had gone out to look for the man. But she wasn’t sure.
    I came back upstairs and found Natalie already in bed. When I lay down next to her, she told me she was feeling a little strange. “Just being here,” she had said. “In this place. It feels like it’s so far away from home.”
    I couldn’t blame her. “Do you want to leave?”
    “No,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.” Then she proved it to me. The streetlamp below our window cast a dim light on the ceiling, just enough for me to see her face as we came together. It felt different this time, whether it was just the place and the circumstances I couldn’t say.
    The next morning, we left the hotel early, going our separate ways. I didn’t even check out at the desk. I just took the bill that had been slid under the door and left.
    I took the hat with me. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I thought it would help me figure out who the man was.
    If we had stayed there a little longer, if we had gone downstairs and had breakfast, then we might have heard about the discovery down the street. But we didn’t. We left before they found him.
    Now I sat there at the bar and looked at the hat, rotating it in my hands. It had obviously cost some money, way back when. It was gray with a slightly darker band. The lining felt like satin. The crease ran perfectly across the top. It was in excellent condition except for the new stains on it. As the stains dried, they left the pale residue of salt.
    “What’s with the hat?” Jackie said. “Ashamed of that dye job you’re walking around with?”
    “I told you, Jackie. I was just trying to rinse out some gray hair.”
    “For this woman, I know. You did it for Natasha.”
    “Her name is Natalie.”
    “Let me see that hat,” he said. He looked at the label. “Borsalino, Milan and New York. This was a nice hat. What happened to it?”
    I gave him the quick version of the story.
    “You gotta be kidding me,” he said, turning the hat around. “Some old bird ruins a great old hat just to let you know he recognized you?”
    “What would you call that, a fedora?”
    “This is a homburg,” he said, trying it on. It fit him perfectly. “See how the brim is turned up all the way around? My father used to have one, back when men actually wore hats.”
    “I’m gonna call the hotel,” I said. “See if they know anything more.”
    “Hell of a thing,” he said, taking the hat off. “Doing this to a good homburg.”
    He kept fooling with it while I called the hotel. He