The Snow Factory

A triple homicide leads to a strange investigation at the city's mysterious snow factory.....

There was a punishing snowfall that night in Gateland. The city normally accumulates a good deal of snow, but the inches are spread out over the entire winter, until the very last day when the remaining inches fall all at once in a nightmarish hellscape of white. If we get a blizzard or a snowstorm at any point before that, concerns arise. The exact, or I should exacting, proportions are just enough, or should be just enough, to give our lives an equal amount of leisure and convenience.

That night, though, the people behind the weather, whoever they were, had other ideals in mind. The snow was disrupting every little honest thing going on in the city. The ski hills had closed, the sledding tracks were shuttered up, the outlet shops at all the shopping malls had put down their security gates. The roads were abandoned, even the ones leading out to the forest, where everyone liked to go no matter what time of year. I’m 41 and I’ve lived in Gateland my entire life, and I’ve never seen emptiness and like I saw that night. Gateland was hollowed out by that snow, and that was extremely concerning.

I remember thinking Maybe they’re starting the nightmare early. But even then I had a hunch as to the real reason why. And I should have followed it.

It was around 9:30pm, and I was standing outside the open door to the Hopping Mouse club, a dive joint just outside the main shopping areas. I’d come to the Hopping Mouse to talk to a criminal, a no-gooder named Barely Jolley. Of course, Barely wasn’t his real name; I think it was something like Jack or Drew. He called himself Barely because he wanted to, and that was it. Petty people like Barely were one of many reasons why I was the only criminal investigator left in Gateland; all of the “serious” investigators had moved on to other cities, to the “promised land” as they called it. Most of them referred to Gateland as “the dimestore funhouse,” like the whole place was beneath them.

I took three consecutive, toxin-filled drags on my cigar and watched the smoke curl up and float towards the gutter. I could barely see it. The snow was falling in thick, puffy clumps, at times hitting my face with such force that I wondered if it was trying to make me angry.

A big laugh belched out of the open door to the Hopping Mouse. I remember thinking that’s Barely, hands down. Barely could always laugh the sound out of a room. The snow crunched under the sole of his tall leather boots. He wore a snow-leopard fur coat that covered him from neck to ankle, or I should say, from royal crown-to-royal feet, since a king in robes is exactly what he looked like. He stepped out into the frosty cold, bouncing his shoulders up and down, dancing his whole upper body around and around, as if he’d just done somebody a huge favor. It didn’t take him long to stop and realize he wasn’t alone.

He flashed a snow-melting grin right at me, but didn’t laugh. “Well, well, if it isn’t the sterling shoelace himself.”

Every criminal in Gateland had a different nickname for me. “Knock it off, Barely. How was your Christmas?”

“Eventful. And yours?”

“The same,” I lied, without thinking. “I trust you were pretty busy Christmas day?”

“I take it you were too?”

“I was just asking you a question.”

“I was just asking you one.”

“Come on, Barely, you know why I’m here.”

“Then why don’t you say it?”

I didn’t know. I still don’t know why it took me so long. It was strange.

“There was a triple homicide out in the forest Christmas day,” I said, throwing my cigar in the snow. “The clues all point to someone in the Three Gs, but no one has stepped forward. I figure they’re waiting for someone to ask, which is pretty weird. They’ve never been attention hawks. Do you know where I might speak to someone in the organization?”

“Sure, I guess, if your motive is honest. Vonnie Horcate. Works the night shift down at the arena, I believe.” Barely turned to face me directly. “Do you want to know where that triple homicide occurred?”

The three bodies had been dumped in the forest, but their conditions and their injuries hinted that they had been long dead by that point. I suspected the murders had happened elsewhere, probably someplace in the city. “Sure, tell me the truth,” I said to Barely.

“Believe it or not, it happened during second shift. At the snow factory.”

“The snow factory?” I repeated back. I thought someplace in the city, yeah, but not there.

Barely chuckled, and even that was impossibly boisterous. “Not the most ideal place to commit three murders, I know.”

I looked straight at him. “Was it you Barely?”

He looked straight back at me. “It was not, and if you think I know, I don’t.”

I got the feeling that he was being somewhat dishonest, but who was I to accuse when I hadn’t been fully honest with him? My Christmas had actually been more than eventful. My daughter had gone to the hospital for food poisoning. My wife was still threatening to leave me, so neither one of us had shopped for the other. None of our parents had visited, though they had called, late in the day. I was supposed to tell Barely all this, but for some reason I held back. This was unusual.

See, in Gateland a person has to carve a long path through the wilderness if they want to find justice, truth and honesty. The best part is that justice, truth and honesty are fully findable. But first you have to do a lot of favors. This was the kind of mutual understanding that existed between the cops and criminals of Gateland. We all talked about each other’s families and friends. We all donated to charities and hunger drives, and helped beggars and the homeless. Justice and crime had a pact---if you could look your opponent in the eye and hold their gaze, your word would be taken as truth. No conditions, no hands raised. Even if you were lying.

Which is why when a brutal triple-homicide occurs and no one steps forward, things in Gateland become, well...

Un-normal.

“I gotta run, shoelace,” said Barely. “Home’s waiting.” He started walking in the opposite direction as me, strutting his big shoulders back and forth like pistons.

I remember thinking A pact is a pact. “Who murdered those three people, Barely?” I called after him.

He kept moving forward. He head didn’t move, his legs didn’t slow. Not one muscle twitched in acknowledgment. Nothing happened except the sound of his voice. “I don’t know, Gin.” He walked into the velvety curtain of falling snow, and vanished.

I remember thinking Why hadn’t he looked me in the eye?

–

Before I started, I needed to report my missing time in at headquarters. By “missing time”, I mean my investigative time, because in Gateland “investigating” doesn’t exist; “investigating” is a part of something else, so if you go off and “investigate” something without a larger reason, it’s considered missing time from your work hours. So I would have to go to headquarters and provide a vital reason I was at the Hopping Mouse talking to Barely.

I hadn’t taken two steps into the room before I heard Chief-of-Police Ussip shout from across the room, “Well, well, if it isn’t the sparkling gasphar.”

I rolled my eyes clear to the back of my head and emptied out my breath. Every cop in Gateland also had a different nickname for me. At least the criminals’ creativity hadn’t expired.

“Where’ve you been?” said Ussip. The Chief was the only other person still there, and he knew I had been out of the office as much as I had been in it that day.

“That triple homicide will get shut down if no one comes forward soon, so I went to talk to Barely to write a report.”

“Yeah, and where’ve you been?” said Ussip.

I sighed on the inside, wanting to omit that information. In hindsight I should have lied because I would have cut the head off a lot of problems early if I had. “The Hopping Mouse, sir,” I said, not breathing.

Ussip didn’t make a sound, a sign of bad things to come. The Chief and I were the only ones there at this time of night, and he knew I’d been working since 5am that morning, and the previous one. And the area the Hopping Mouse was in also had a lot of drug traffic, including some that I’d fallen in favor of when my marriage had started falling apart six months ago. “Everything okay at home?”

Ussip and I went way back, and that meant he knew too much about me and which buttons to push to try and mess me up. Despite everything we’d been through, it still amazed me how his lack of compassion could sometimes seem infinite.

“Killer, Chief,” I said. “I hit a dead end with Barely, but he gave me a lead. Said the homicides occurred at the snow factory, so once I file the report I’m going up there.”

I’d spent the car ride making a plan, and ultimately decided to skip talking to Vonnie Horcate and just go straight to the snow factory.

A trace of uneasiness passed over Ussip. “The snow factory? That’s extreme. There’s never been any murders there.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Awful long time to be buried in innocence, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?”

I briefly grabbed my throat. “I’ve had it up to here with these funny myths about the snow factory.” I also had a problem with all the missing negativity of the snow factory. Never a bad report of anything up there, never a problem, never a nothing; but I didn’t want to get too riled up and lively right then.

I let my hand fall limp. “I think it’s about time we see how real all these rumors are. This case could be the writing on the wall. Finally shine on a light on those vampires who run it.”

“I agree,” said Ussip. “I always feel like the uppities are trying to grease up those snow factory blowjobs. But be careful. That place is protected by a lot of powerful people. Plus, like you said, if someone doesn’t come forward by tomorrow, who knows what they’ll do to us. I don’t want the hammer coming down twice.”

I shuffled toward my desk. “I’ll make sure everything is taken care of. I’ll just write my report about the Hopping Mouse and then go.”

“Hang on,” said Ussip. “Where’s Sinome? I thought she was helping you with this case.”

Anais Sinome, Captain of the Forest Precinct and someone I often collaborated with, had been my partner on this case when it broke earlier that day.

“She’s not anymore,” I said, “and I don’t need her.” I want her to help though, I had almost said, but then stuck an imaginary finger down the throat of that thought and gagged it back down.

“I’m on my own,” I said.

I started scribbling my report, and then immediately crossed out the first sentence and started again. “What do you want me to put? That I was ‘patrolling the shopping area’?”

“Yeah,” said Ussip, sounding wary. “You got this handled okay?”

“Killing it, Chief.”

“I was talking about yourself, Gin. You got yourself handled okay?”

“Killing it, Chief. Promise.” I paraded the report to his desk then marched out the darkened door to my car.

On to the gates of the snow factory.

(C) Bryan Ritchey June 26th 2026