The Man on Little Sweden

by Sam Harding

  “Rick, is it?” She asks, her surprisingly deep voice echoing off the foyer walls.

  “Yes ma’am,” the guard says, straightening up from his fighting stance.

  “Are my eyes deceiving me, or are you about to pick a fight with the man who’s come to help my father?”

  It is now that I can make out the slight hint of a posh accent; the result of lots of money, private schooling, and a general hate for the greater public. Or so I would assume. Either way, I can’t help but smile inwardly.

  “He’s got a pistol, ma’am.”

  Kathryn rolls her eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he even showed me –"

  “No, you idiot, I mean, are you serious that’s what this is all about?”

  “Ma’am,” Rick tries, obviously confused as to why Kathryn’s anger is directed towards him and not myself. “He has a gun –”

  “I don’t care if he has a bloody fucking rocket launcher,” Kathryn says sharply. “Detective Donovan is here because my father needs his help, which means if I so much as catch you or your buddies looking at him sideways, I will see to it your job is ended and you aren’t paid a single cent. Am I clear? This is the second time you’ve had to be warned for something, Rick.”

  I can tell in Rick’s expression that he badly wants to tell this rich girl where to stick it, but like the professional he is, he chooses the wiser path of biting his tongue. I realize that maybe Rick isn’t such a dipshit after all.

  “Come on up, Mr. Donovan,” Kathryn says, her angry expression now replaced with a warm smile. “I promise there are no more guards once you get up the stairs.”

  I nod politely and walk past a smoldering Rick, who’s giving me his best death stare. I avoid the center of the room and decide to take the stairs on the left side. When I get to the first step I turn around and look at the guard.

  “Hey,” I say, getting the big man’s attention. When he looks at me, I flip him off. “Fuck you, Rick.”

  When I make it to the top of the stairs, Kathryn Shultz is waiting for me with her hands on her hips. There’s a slight mischievous smile on her face that causes my heart to jump in my chest like some freshman getting winked at by the senior cheer captain. She extends her hand and I take it, hoping to God mine’s not as clammy as I suspect it is.

  “It’s good to see you, Detective,” she says.

  “You too. Please, call me Micah.” I notice a hint of lavender coming from Kathryn, most likely the scent of an ultra-expensive perfume.

  She releases my hand and glances over the railing at Rick. “Were you really about to go toe-to-toe with an ex-Ranger?”

  “He was only a Ranger?” I ask, pretending to play it off. “I thought he was former Special Forces or a SEAL. You should have just let me fight him.” I’m surprised at myself for the comment. This is the first time I’ve really joked around with anyone without it being just blatant grumpy sarcasm. I especially didn’t expect to be cracking jokes in this house of all places.

  She smiles even bigger now, and God help me, it reminds me of Dani. The face, the hair, the shape of her body -- stop it, Micah. Fucking stop it.

  She makes a slight jerk with her head, indicating she wants me to follow her. She takes off down a large hallway adorned with Renaissance-era paintings, mostly well-done copies of Da Vinci and Michelangelo. At least, I think they’re copies. At the end of the hallway, there is a spiral staircase which leads us up to the top floor of the tower situated at the center of the mansion.

  The stairs terminate at a massive office / lounge area. There are floor-to-ceiling windows making up every wall except for one, allowing in a plethora of natural light. The floor is a dark wood, and the furniture is made almost entirely of expensive leather. In the far corner of the room is a large desk, reminding me of the President’s desk in the Oval Office from photos I’ve seen. In the center of the room there is an open fireplace feeding into a grate in the ceiling, the flames from the large fire are more than enough to keep the entire space warm.

  “Please, take a seat,” Kathryn says, leading me to a sitting area between the fireplace and a large flat screen on the one wall not made up entirely of windows.

  She takes a seat in an old leather arm chair facing the wall and I take a seat in a nearly identical chair opposite a glass coffee table from where she sits. I watch her as she crosses one leg over another and then leans forward with her hands delicately placed in her lap. The flames behind her dance wildly in the fireplace, framing her in an almost angelic like scene.

  Angels aren’t framed in fire, Micah, I remind myself, painfully aware I’m again acting like that freshman in front of the cheerleader. I need to pull myself together. One minute I’m terrified of being back in this house, and the next minute I’m drooling over my client’s daughter.

  “Have you ever been to this part of the house?” Kathryn asks.

  “No,” I say. “I never made it passed the first floor.”

  She nods and then sighs. Her mischievous smile is now gone and a bit of sadness make their way to her green eyes. I remember the gruesome image of her brother Simon’s eyes – they were also green. “That was the worst day of my life,” she says.

  I nod, once again wishing I had a cigarette. “It was one of mine too, Ms. Shultz.”

  Kathryn shook her head. “If I get to call you Micah, you have to call me Kate.”

  “Fair enough, Kate.” I look around the room for a moment and then ask, “I’m sorry to be rude, but I’m here to see your father –”

  Kate nods and points at the wall behind me. “He’s in the shower now. He’ll be out in a bit.”

  I turn in my chair to see a door built into the wall. It’s nearly seamless, the wood of the door perfectly matching that of the wall. Before Kate had pointed it out, I’d missed it entirely. “How’s he doing?” I ask.

  Again, the sadness returns to Kate’s otherwise beautiful face. “He has good days and bad days. The poor man has lost so much weight, though – I hardly recognize him anymore. It’s such a shame.”

  “He’s been through a lot.”

  “Haven’t we all?” She replies, reaching her right hand into the boot still planted on the floor. As she digs inside the leathery sleeve, she says, “Especially you and dad. You two have hard enough lives as it is living with your ghosts.”

  Kate’s blunt words hit me like a thunderbolt and I think of my conversations with my dead wife. My first instinct is to be offended by the choice of words, but on second thought, I realize there’s no point in taking offense when the words are completely accurate.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate says, withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from her boot. “That was rude of me – I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I say, delighted to be reaching for my own pack of smokes. “I can’t justifiably be upset with the truth when I hear it.”

  “What is the truth, Micah?” Kate pulls out a long slim cigarette from her pack and puts it between her red lips.

  “I’m sorry?” Her question causes me to pause halfway into fishing out my own Marlboro Red.

  “Did you really almost have him? The killer.”

  I swallow hard, trying to force the three-year-old images from my mind’s eye. “Uh – no. No, he actually had me. I was tied down. I was helpless.” I’ve hardly spoken to anyone about that day, and I don’t particularly feel like opening up to Kathryn Shultz about it – although for some reason, I feel if she pried hard enough, I’d tell her anything.

  “I meant before that,” she said. “I’m told he came after you only after you’d almost captured him.”

  I shrug. “I had a few leads. None of them panned out.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looks away. “Fuck, I’m stupid. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why –”

  “It’s okay. You’ve lived the nearly the same nightmare I have. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you’ve never spoken about any of this to anyone before.”

 
“Only to my father,” she says, taking a long drag from her slender cigarette. “And you’re wrong, our nightmares are not the same. Yours are far worse, I’m sure.”

  “No –”

  “Yes. How can they not be? I lost my baby brother, Micah. But you – you lost your wife and a literal part of yourself. I am in so much pain having lost my baby brother, but I cannot imagine the pain you must feel. And for that, I am so sorry.”

  Now it’s my turn to take a long drag from my cigarette. I feel my chest grow heavy with a sudden wave of emotion and I can feel my eyes mist over. This is so strange, here I am going against my baser instincts, sharing the darkest parts of my soul with a stranger – no, I realize – not a stranger – a fellow survivor. If I can’t talk to the sister of Simon Shultz about this particular nightmare, then there’s really nobody else I can talk to other than her father. But from the sounds of things, he won’t be available to talk to for much longer.

  I suddenly realize this is the first time I’ve even considered talking about my loss. Up until this very moment, I have lived with the events of what had happened in silence, not even sharing them with my closest friends, or even my own mother who lives only a county south from where I do. It’s just been too painful to talk about, and the idea of seeing a shrink turns me off even more than discussing the matter with the few people somewhat close to me. But now, with Kathryn, it’s different. Even though I don’t know her, it’s like I can maybe actually speak with her for the sole purpose of the fact she had lived her own version of the nightmare, too.

  “Mind if I ask you about your leg?” She asks the question as if making a point to not sound as blunt as she had before.

  I nod. “What about it?”

  “Does it hurt still?”

  “Sometimes. The doctors did a really good job, though.”

  “I don’t notice a limp when you walk, and you climbed the stairs with no issues that I could see. I’m kind of surprised.”

  “I’m fortunate enough that my injury is below the knee. It’s a whole different game for those who lose their legs above the knee.”

  “I hear you went with the osseointegration route as opposed to the traditional prosthetics?”

  I nod, not bothering to ask her where she’d heard that from. “Someone paid for my surgery – at least, they covered what my insurance couldn’t. I don’t know who it was, but I do know osseointegration is a whole lot better than having to wear the socket like most people do.”

  “I’m truly glad to see you’re on your feet.”

  “Thank you,” I reply sincerely.

  “My father is going to ask you to pick up the case again,” Kate says, changing the subject. “It’s his dying wish.”

  “I know,” I say softly.

  “Are you here to accept or to reject his offer?”

  I take a drag from my cigarette. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t plan to accept.”

  “What happens if you find him? What will you do if you figure out who took our loved ones?”

  I’m silent for a moment, quietly debating whether or not I should tell Kathryn the truth. Another drag from my cigarette helps me reach my final verdict. “If I find him, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Kate takes another drag from her own cigarette and the faint traces of a crooked smile tug at her red lips. “Good.”

  A part of me wants to ask her what she would do if she caught the man who killed her brother, but the door behind me swings open, interrupting the conversation. I turn in my seat just as Dr. Heinrich Shultz steps into the room.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Welcome Back to Hell

  Although I see Dr. Shultz coming through the doorway, I don’t want to believe it’s him. The man I’d first seen on TV, the man on all the book and magazine covers, the famous “Man on Little Sweden,” had been a smiling, joyous, and even slightly overweight man who’d brought so much good to the world by his vow to help those in need. But now, Dr. Heinrich Shultz has withered down to nearly nothing. He must be half the weight he was the last time I saw him, looking more like a frail skeleton than a man now. His skin is a pasty, almost translucent white, and his eyes are sunken in like that of a corpse. His nose seems even longer than it had been before, and his chin is more pointed. The once full head of white hair has dwindled down to thin strands, not nearly thick enough to hide his liver-spotted scalp. His steps are short and unsure, and his once perfect posture now reminds me of a question mark on wobbly legs. The years of stress and the losing fight with stomach cancer has taken its toll, and I can see there aren’t going to be many years left. If any at all.

  Despite all this, the doctor is impeccably dressed. His wool black three-piece-suit looks expensive, and the red bowtie around his neck is firmly in place. It’s as if he’s giving me the subtle message that he’s much more than just some sick old man, and I can’t help but feel incredibly underdressed and slightly intimidated.

  “You may not believe me,” Dr. Shultz says, his voice still deep and commanding, the once thick German accent now carrying what seems to be a mixture of both an American and British twang. “but if you two don’t get rid of your damned cigarettes, I will beat you with the fireplace poker and take them from your limp hands.”

  I suddenly feel incredibly stupid. The man already has stomach cancer, no sense in adding lung cancer to the list as well. I hop up from the chair and move passed Kathryn, who has yet to get up, and quickly toss my nearly smoked cigarette into the fireplace. When I turn back around, Kate is still seated in her chair, but her right hand is held high, her smoking cigarette between her index and middle finger. She looks at me and smiles.

  “Would you mind disposing of mine as well?”

  “Uh – sure.” I take the slim cigarette from her fingers and notice the red lipstick on the filter just before flicking it into the flames.

  “Thank you, Micah.” She winks at me.

  “Micah?” Dr. Shultz says amusingly. He grabs the back of a leather couch for support next to the chairs his daughter and I occupy and slowly begins making his way around towards the front. “I see you two have made it to first-name-terms rather quickly.”

  I move away from the fireplace towards Shultz, intending to help him get to his seat, but the old man holds up a bony finger and shakes it at me.

  “Don’t you dare, young man. I can feed myself, I can bathe myself, I can dress myself in a suit and tie a bowtie, and I can most bloody-well seat myself. I appreciate the gesture, but just go and sit back down on your chair there.”

  I nod politely, somewhat embarrassed to be talked to like a kid in front of Kate, and move back to my chair. I ease myself back into the leather and cross my good leg over my bad one and politely wait the few moments it takes for Dr. Shultz to get situated on the couch.

  Finally, the old man looks at me with tired blue eyes and says, “Thank you so much for coming, Detective.”

  “It’s my pleasure. And please, sir, just call me Micah.”

  “I don’t believe you, Micah.”

  “Sir?” His abrupt bluntness leaves no question as to where Kate gets her personality from.

  “I very much doubt this is a pleasure for you. If I were to wager a guess, I would say this is nothing short of a nightmare for you. As a matter of fact, I imagine when Henry told you I was in need of your services, your initial response was to tell him no.”

  I find myself squirming in my seat, the heat from the fire seemingly to have gone up by about a hundred degrees. “To be honest, sir –”

  “Heinrich.” A friendly smile cracks at his pale lips.

  “To be honest, Heinrich –” for some reason calling him by his first name doesn’t seem right, but I don’t dare make a big deal of it. “To deny what you just said, would be a lie. I didn’t want to come here, and I most definitely didn’t want this case. All I’ve ever wanted is for this nightmare to end.”

  “Then, my boy, why
are you here?”

  It’s an honest question, and I consider it for a second before answering. “Because, I’m afraid if I didn’t come, then the nightmare will never end.”

  Shultz nodded thoughtfully. “And so here you are.”

  “And so here I am.”

  “Indeed,” he pauses again as if for dramatic effect. Then unexpectedly, he raises what I can only perceive to be a playful eyebrow. “How did you fair against my new security upgrade?”

  “I – uh,” I look to Kathryn, somewhat expecting her to field that question, but like her father, she only stares at me. “Rick – he seems great.” Not even five minutes into the conversation with the richest man in Eastern Washington, and I’ve already broken out my sarcasm.

  “He’s a bloody buffoon, is what he is.” Shultz makes a frustrated growling noise deep in his throat. “The little shit tried to kill one of my elks.”

  I’m reminded of the large bull elk I saw on my drive in and it becomes suddenly clear to me as to what had spooked it. Rick was surely not the only guard on the premises, and I get the inkling that what had spooked the elk, had done so watching me from behind the scope of a rifle.

  “He then tried to disarm Micah,” Kate adds with a coy look on her face. “Micah nearly got into a fist fight over it.”

  “You almost fought an ex-Army Ranger in the foyer of my home?” Shultz tries to sound serious but the twinkle in his eyes betrays him. “You must really like your weapon.”