Cold Crossover

by T. R. Kelly

  Chapter Ten

  3:30 p.m., Thursday, February 3, 1982

  When Harvey hadn’t returned after a half-hour with the DA, I left. I figured I’d tour two new listings on the Sauk River submitted over the weekend by a Darrington agency. A couple of old flycaster friends of my dad would probably make offers if the roofs didn’t leak and the septic systems passed county inspection.

  I ducked into Tony’s and jumped on the pay phone. The dark cubby between the bar and the restaurant was like a second office. I’d often reported box scores and offered game quotes to newspapers on Friday nights while a cold mug of beer sat precariously perched above the coin slot. I made appointments to preview new listings and held heated discussions over counteroffers with fellow agents. Then there were the late nights I dialed home just to listen to Cathy’s rendition of a Hank Williams tune she’d left as a message while visiting her folks. “Hey, good lookin’, what’s you got cookin’?” I hadn’t thought of a good reason to erase it.

  I dialed information and got the number for the Montlake Gym. The way I figured it, his teammates were the last ones to see Linn Oliver before he headed to the ferry.

  “Cheese Oliver?” said the gym manager, above the din of players demanding equipment. “The guy can still shoot it. You should have seen him last week. Man could not miss. He probably--”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I’m on a pay phone. Can you tell me the name of his team?”

  “Let’s see,” the speaker said. I could hear shuffling papers and then a muffled “shit!” when an object apparently crashed to the floor. “Yeah, he’s with Fool’s Gold. That league runs Tuesday and Thursday nights. Elite Division.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What time are those games?”

  “Got one at seven and another after that, usually around eight-thirty. Schedule says Fool’s Gold goes at seven tonight.”

  “Great,” I said. “Is there a team contact person?”

  “Lemme look. Says here, captain’s Garcia. Ronnie Garcia.”

  “Really?” I mumbled. “Gotta number for him?”

  A moment later I dialed but hung up after a dozen rings.

  Chapter Eleven

  5 p.m., Thursday, February 3, 1982

  Barbara Sylanski slouched into their corner booth at Tony’s, watching shivering boaters glide under the Division Street Bridge. The “their” had suddenly become frighteningly singular now that Linn Oliver was missing. Her once-perpetual smile made fewer appearances. Her gentle face attempted to hide a profound sadness and invited sympathy. She’d grown tall and athletic, and now had to downplay a figure that never had an extra inch anywhere. The ends of a classic bob cut curled above a charcoal cable sweater.

  “Thanks for taking the time to see me,” I said. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  A smile played at the corners of her mouth. The gray eyes lacked their usual sparkle. It became clear there had been no romantic getaways to Canadian ski slopes or elegant downtown hotels.

  “It’s been so hard, Coach. It really has ... just not knowing. I mean, I’ve looked everywhere the past two days. And his Subaru on the ferry? I woke up last night just screaming. I get these images of Linn’s body washing up on some isolated beach.” She removed an embroidered beige handkerchief from her sleeve and interrupted a falling tear. “I can’t remember ever being lonelier or more scared.”

  The rumors of Linn’s disappearance, now confirmed in the news and by local law enforcement, stunned the entire town. For his long-time girl, inquisitive eyes locked on her everywhere she went. People stared and whispered.

  Barbara stirred a diet soda with a pink swizzle stick and waited for her Crab Louie, the restaurant’s blue-plate lunch special for February. She’d spent countless hours in the popular gathering place over the years; dinner with Linn after Fighting Crabs games, the occasional brunch following Mass at St. Brendan’s. The early dinner buffet tables overflowed with several varieties of pizza, steaming stainless steel trays jammed with fresh vegetables, Italian sausage, pasta primavera, eggplant parmesan, and wicker baskets lined with white linen and loaded with sourdough rolls. Barbara chose to order off the menu.

  George Berrettoni balanced a salad on a brown oval tray and strutted through his bar and into the restaurant. His father, Romeo, still frisky at seventy-seven, shuffled a few steps behind, his white smock tied around his ample middle. Two waitresses in white hats remained near the tent-like oven hood, pairing huge squares of Romeo’s homemade lasagna with dripping slabs of hot garlic bread for an off-site catered banquet.

  “Our best salad for our prettiest girl,” George said. He swirled the chilled dish in front of her. “May I sit and finish my lemonade with you?”

  “Of course, George,” Barbara said. “And, I am so honored to be served by the proprietor. Will Mister Berrettoni consider spending a few minutes, too?”

  Romeo beamed at Barbara, twirled his thick mustache, and slid in next to his son. A freckled-face waitress with a tight-curled perm instantly appeared with Romeo’s iced tea. George waved off an offer for a lemonade.

  The two Berrettonis had always considered the Sylanski women as family, particularly since the loss of Barbara’s father. Ross Sylanski was a gregarious, third-generation crab fisherman who worked the Alaska king season from October through January out of Dutch Harbor. He came home just in time for the prep basketball playoff tournaments in February, then fished for Dungeness in Puget Sound during the summer months. A small-time car nut and mechanic, he cherished the navy blue ’57 Chevy Bel Air two-door hardtop that took up half the space in his spotless garage. Ross swapped George Berrettoni fresh crab for pizza and salad at Tony’s and usually delivered the crab in the Chevy so George could again remind him how badly he wanted the car. This continuing arrangement allowed Barbara, her sister, and mother to dine for no charge in the restaurant at any time. The meals came in handy, especially when Ross was at sea.

  In the winter of 1980, Ross Sylanski did not come home from the Alaska King Crab season. His 86-foot boat Shamrock began listing in twenty-two-foot swells in the Bering Sea after he radioed a mayday message to the Coast Guard station at Cold Bay. The bodies of the five crew members were never found. His death hit me like an uppercut. Ross taught me the tricks of the crab trade—how to work the afternoon flood tide, where to snag free salmon heads for bait, the proper way to position the pot on a sandy, grassy bottom. To countless crabbers who tried to guard their favorite locations like fishermen who protect their favorite stream, Ross Sylanski always offered a rhyme that locals recalled every time they cracked a fresh Dungeness:

  “A secret crab hole keeps for only a day;

  Because your buoys always give it away.”

  “How’s your lovely mother?” Romeo said. “She hasn’t been in for more than two weeks. Please tell her that I miss seeing her here.”

  “I will do that, sir,” Barbara said. “And thank you. You are one of my mother’s favorite people. She’s taking some time away to visit my aunt down in Oregon. She’s been in Bend and loving the sun.”

  We quickly covered the obvious topics. George groused over the week’s weather. Romeo bemoaned the high school’s dwindling basketball playoff chances. Both recalled Barbara’s athletic passion had been cross country, and she still ran long distances on weekends. She picked at a chunk of crab. She dropped the folk and lifted her napkin, then shyly looked away and dabbed the corners of her mouth. Clutching the linen in her hand, she spoke softly. “Mr. Johnston came to my home today,” said Barbara, holding back tears. “He said he simply doesn’t know much about Tuesday night. Nor has anyone turned up to say that Linn lent him his car and that they just walked off the ferry and forgot about it. There’s been no sign of Linn’s clothing, gym bag, wallet, turning up anywhere.” She took a deep breath and interlaced her fingers on the table like a schoolgirl instructed to sit up straight and tall. “I went to the Montlake Gym Tuesday night.”

  I could feel my mouth open. What else didn’t I kn
ow?

  “Mr. Johnston was quite interested to hear that, but I’m certainly not trying to hide anything. The truth is, it was the first anybody asked me about it.”

  Romeo’s charcoal eyebrows arched skyward, like two small Cs capitalizing.

  “Sweet one, what did you talk about?” Romeo asked. “Did Linn seem out of sorts in any way?”

  “That’s just it,” Barbara said. “I never got to see him. One of his teammates told me Linn had another game he wanted to play. He left the Montlake game early and took off.” She dipped her shoulders and glanced briefly out the window to the river. Her deep sigh seemed rooted in frustration and confusion. I wondered why the couple hadn’t coordinated. Barbara seemed to know what I was thinking. “Earlier Tuesday, we had an awkward conversation. He’d called me from the pay phone at Mountain Market, and it turned into more of an argument. I decided later to go to the gym to see if we could get things sorted out.”

  “You guys seemed to be good about hammering stuff out,” George said. “A lot of times, right here in this booth.”

  “This was different,” Barbara said. “I had seen Ronnie Garcia a few times. Linn evidently had gotten his nose out of joint about it.”

  Where was this going? Barbara and Ronnie? Linn and ... Holly? I could not remember seeing Barbara with a steady guy other than Linn Oliver. They went through stages when they were “just friends,” but most of the time they were so close that their classmates referred to them as “Cheese ‘n’ Cracker.” They giggled; big eyes, and bigger smiles, eating Romeo’s pepperoni pizza after games until the cook shooed them out at midnight. Linn talked of Huskies, Cornhuskers, and Blue Demons; Barbara passed along her dreams of exotic places. Her real dream was to own a used bookstore in a nearby storefront.

  A moment later, she lifted a reddish-brown notebook above the lip of the table and lightly brushed the magazine-size cover with the front of her hand. The back cover, with one corner missing, appeared stiff and discolored as if left out in the weather. As she carefully opened the book, I noticed that some of the pages were stuck together. The ones that remained separate and independent pages were brittle and faded and crinkled when she delicately turned them.

  “Linn and I found this diary under the trestle at the bottom of Brookens Gorge the night after we graduated from high school,” Barbara began. “It was the Senior Lockout, the last time a lot of us were together. The party was supposed to be on the lake, with pontoon and ski boats, but we got in a hassle at the boat launch before we could get started. We ended up lugging all the beer and food down into the gorge from the North Fork road and camping out. When Linn and some of the guys were digging a fire pit, setting up beach chairs, he hit this with a shovel.”

  She ran her fingers of her left hand over a slight indentation on the front cover while holding a place in the middle of the book with her right. “It belonged to a single mother in one of the logging camps,” Barbara continued. “She includes details about her daily chores, some of the possessions workers left behind at different sites, a hospital stay at the old clinic. Seems some pages are missing, from what I remember. Anyway, Linn and I promised ourselves we’d try to locate the old sites, but the years went by, and we never did. I put the book in Mom’s garage and forgot about it.”

  George shimmied closer to the table. “I know this is a personal matter and not really any of my business,” he said. “But how high on the jealousy scale was Linn regarding your involvement with Ronnie Garcia? I mean, you might want to think about how you present that to the cops. Envy always has a way of tweaking their interest.”

  Barbara tugged on her thin silver bracelet then spun it slowly. “Bart Knight and some of his bad-news friends have been harassing the Latinos. Knight’s guys had even been cruising the parking lots at Skagit Valley College, looking to pick fights when kids get out of class.”

  “So, what does all this have to do with the young mister Garcia?” Romeo asked. Both Berrettonis were good at interrogating. It must run in the family. I wondered if they were ever cops.

  “Ronnie wanted to organize a group to arm themselves and fight back,” Barbara said. “I told him it wasn’t a good idea. The last thing he’d want was to be known as a gang leader. Maybe Linn thought there was more to it than that. I just don’t know. If so, I hope he didn’t think it would push our relationship apart.”

  News of the taunts and fisticuffs did not seem surprising to the Berrettonis. “Brown-faced kids have always gotten the short end of the stick around here,” Romeo said. “Even some of the Italians kids have been called wetbacks, or worse. This guy Knight has always had a temper. Likes his Beefeaters, too. We’ve had to ask him to leave the bar more than once.”

  Barbara said tensions were escalating between Knight’s cronies and the Hispanics. “One of those jerks pulled a knife on a kid and sliced his baggy pants as he walked to his car. The boy wasn’t hurt, but he was afraid to tell the police, fearing more would be done the next time.” Barbara began folding the ends of her napkin on the table. She ironed the white triangle with her palm and spent an extra moment looking around the restaurant. “Mr. Johnston also asked some specific medical questions about Linn. I really didn’t know what to tell him. Linn simply wanted to play without pain. I think he’d accepted that his days as a star were over. He seemed desperate for an alternative to a second surgery—he wasn’t sure how much the first one actually helped.”

  The Berrettonis squirmed at “desperate.”

  “This is difficult, sweetheart, I know it is,” George said. “Tell me only if you feel like it ... But do you think Linn was to a point where he could have possibly taken his own life?”

  Barbara eyed me warily and said she’d lost sleep mulling the same question. “When I spoke to him on the phone, his knee had been bothering him,” Barbara said. “He was down about that. He twisted it again moving some old material on the Dolan property.” She swayed and frowned. “But his outlook on life was consistently positive after he returned from Mexico. The trip changed him. I think the heart-to-heart meeting in Scottsdale with his father after the stroke also had a big influence.”

  Robert Oliver once mentioned the same thing to me about the Mexican trip on the phone, but I had yet to hear details.

  “Doctor Oliver tried to make Linn’s games,” Romeo said. “But I don’t think he had lot of time for anything else but work.”

  Barbara nodded slowly. “Much was said at his parents’ home in Arizona that never had been said before. It was the last quality time I know that they had together. Something clicked. He telephoned me saying he wanted to return home, get a job, and make plans to get married. He also asked me if I remembered the old diary we found. You should read it. There are some great images and names from the logging days.” She stopped sadly and looked down. “The only wild card for me was if one of those Seattle doctors he was seeing prescribed a different drug. Something that would affect his mood, personality.”

  I felt uneasy and considered the possibility of a new mix of drugs jostling around in Linn’s body—and mind.

  “Linn just seemed to be exhausted all the time,” Barbara said. “Working too much at the service station, playing in I don’t know how many rec leagues, making that drive to the lake in all sorts of weather. I’ve never seen Linn really out of sorts, yet I do know that some drug combinations can make some people crazy. They do things they normally would never do.”

  Chapter Twelve

  10 a.m., Wednesday, April 23, 1879

  Mikko Kurri cradled the delicate porcelain teapot like a newborn child. A similar glazed piece highlighted his grandmother’s mantel in his homeland, thousands of miles and now two years away. The young Finn grew restless stocking the counters and towering shelves that lined the MacTavish & Oliver Mercantile. He preferred the heavy lifting in the company’s barn, where the fifty-pound sacks of feed, flour, and salt brought needed exercise for his imposing frame. Still, he was grateful to have a job. Like many newly arrived Scandinavians promise
d employment at the shipyard adjacent to the sawmill on Bainbridge Island, he’d become frustrated and gone broke waiting for the heavy European machinery the yard needed to open.

  “I never expected so many trained shipwrights to become farmers and fishermen,” Kurri said. “It could be another year—maybe more—before that yard opens. It’s time we put our efforts in the land.”

  “We will make a list of the provisions you will need,” Henry Oliver said. “You can repay the store when you are able. I’ve seen what you can do, and I’ll take your word for your food and supplies.”

  At Oliver’s suggestion, Kurri obtained a homestead for a hundred-acre parcel a few miles northeast of the tiny outpost of McMurray, one of the new clusters of activity springing up south of North Fork that was soon served by railroad.

  Kurri cleared a portion in the southwest corner and built a cabin from local cedar and fir with the help of his cousin Anders Gustaffson, who continued as a deliveryman at MacTavish & Oliver Mercantile. Soon after the home was completed, they set out to find the source of the steady creek that had been providing them with water, fish, and soothing comfort for tired limbs after long days of building and farming. Directed by Wilhelmina, their neighbor and daughter of a German pioneer woman and a native Sauk chief, Anders and Mikko followed the creek bed for three hours and discovered a gleaming lake several times the size of their homestead and rimmed to the south by a steep ridge covered with fir.

  To the east rose several Cascade peaks. The northern wind, coupled with the natural movement of the lake toward its only outlet, had created a sweeping crescent sandspit on the northwest shore. The outlet converged with several creeks and streams from nearby hills and tumbled west through valleys meadows, and fields, including the Kurri homestead. The idyllic lake and sandspit beach were ideal for camping, swimming, and fishing, and were only a few hours’ trek from their home. The Finns named the enchanting place Lake Wilhelmina in honor of their Indian friend—her name was also a German word for “protection”—and the stream that ran through their homestead was named Minnie Creek.