Where I Can See You

by Larry D. Sweazy

  “At the Emporium?” Moran said.

  Hud had never called it the Emporium. None of the locals did. It was just “the shop”; always had been, always would be, the way he saw it. “It was my grandfather’s place. My grandmother, Gee, kept it going after he died.”

  “I think I still have a T-shirt I bought there.”

  “We sold a lot of things over the years. Souvenirs, T-shirts, blow-up floaties for the kids. That was one of my jobs. Blow up the inflatable ducks, sea serpents, giant fish, then hang them out on the line to draw attention. That junk fed us for a lot of years.”

  “Must have been cool to live next to the Dip.”

  “Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think I can still hear the lion roar,” Hud said, then plodded down to the abandoned building.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes, your mother. You rarely talked about your time with her.”

  “I was eight when she disappeared. It was a long time ago. She’s nothing more than a ghost in my memory now.”

  “Describe her in one word.”

  “Beautiful.”

  The mist had turned to rain, and an angry wind whistled down from the north with a ferocity usually reserved for the winter months. A gray soup surrounded Hud and Moran as they eased up to the Dip. The sign, a large ice-cream cone bordered in neon, looked like food for some kind of invisible rust-eating insect. It swung wildly and threatened to fall to the ground with a direct burst of the cold air.

  “Come on,” Hud said to Moran, as he holstered his .45 and took out the little flashlight he carried. The sudden beam cut through the dim light about as well as a butter knife cut through a tough steak, but it was enough to see a few feet ahead of them.

  The smell of ancient feces, of the presence of animals, immediately assaulted Hud’s nose as he pushed into the first cage. No amount of moisture could tamp down the smell of death.

  Moran stopped at the door. “Was this the lion’s cage?”

  Hud shook his head. “Ostriches. The lion’s cage is the farthest one back. Or it was. There was a den made of chunks of limestone, but I wanted to check here first.” His voice was low, and he flashed the light on a collection of old tires, crates, and barrels that looked like they had been sitting there since the place had been first built. He pulled back when he was certain that the boy was not there.

  “I think this is a wild goose chase,” Moran said.

  “You have any better ideas?”

  Rain dripped down her stoic face. “Wait for a positive ID. You’re trusting an old woman who might not know what she’s talking about.”

  “That could take a little while. She was certain it was the girl.”

  Moran shrugged. Hud pushed by her and headed toward the vacant lion’s cage. He stopped about ten feet from it, froze as if he had just walked into an invisible wall, and couldn’t go another step farther.

  “What’s the matter?” Moran stopped next to him, her Glock aimed straight at the cage.

  He looked over at the young deputy, whose face was soaked with rain. “I was sure that my mother was here after she disappeared, that Fred Myerson had cut her up and fed her to the lion after he was done with her.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because he always looked at her like she was an ice-cream cone. All of the men did.”

  “She was a looker?”

  “She was.”

  “But she wasn’t here? It wasn’t true?”

  “I don’t know; it could be true. We never found a trace of her. My grandmother thought she ran off and started a new life. Simple as that. Just up and left us one day. It was easier for her to think that. Rejection of the brutal terror that I dreamed of, saw everywhere around me. It wasn’t hard for her to believe that my mother would do that, that she was irresponsible. It was easier than believing she was dead.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eight. I was eight.” The rain drenched his face. His skull felt wet, soaked, like it would collapse any second.

  “But you never believed that she ran off, that she just left you?”

  “Would you?”

  Moran didn’t say anything, just stared at Hud, her face hard to read. He wasn’t sure if he saw compassion or disbelief. Either way, it didn’t matter. “I could always feel her here,” he said. “It was the last place we had a good time; we shared an ice-cream cone, laughed about the ostriches together.”

  “And that’s why you left? Went to Detroit?”

  Hud walked through the invisible wall, to the back of the property. The cage was overgrown with briars and a thicket of wild raspberry. “You’re good at questions, Moran, there’s no doubt about that,” he said, looking for a way inside the lion’s cage.

  Hud’s trained vision paid off. A few low branches of the bramble were freshly broken, their inner flesh white and pure—the snapped ends of the plants glowed like distant Christmas lights. When he looked closer, Hud saw a worn pathway leading into the cage, one that might have been traversed over and over again by a troop of raccoons or opossums. Or it could have been a boy. A scared little boy.

  “I’m going in,” Hud said.

  Moran nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  In a matter of seconds, Hud was inside a tunnel, crawling to the one place he could never go as a boy, could never check for himself to satisfy his constant need to know the truth of what had happened to his mother. “Hello,” he called out. “Are you in here? Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.” He stopped and listened.

  A siren wailed in the distance, the wind pushed into every crook and crevice it could find, howling as it went, but under those sounds Hud was certain he heard footsteps scooting away from him.

  He shined the light deep into the manmade lion’s den, suddenly afraid that he might come face-to-face with the beast—or find a pile of human bones. The light reflected off a pair of eyes, but they were not the eyes of an animal. They belonged to a frightened little boy. The boy was trapped, running back and forth in the depth of the cage, looking for a way to escape the man coming after him.

  “I won’t hurt you, I promise,” Hud said, as he eased toward the boy.

  The child screamed like he had been slapped, then stopped and looked directly into the light. The boy’s head looked odd, bigger than it should have been, and it took Hud a long second to figure out what he was seeing. It was a man’s hat, green and worn, with a state emblem embroidered on it. Just like a CO would wear.

  Hud had called out to Moran to radio the crime scene to keep Sherman from leaving. The call had come too late. Somehow, the CO had managed to slip away unnoticed.

  The office was cold, but Hud didn’t mind. The walls were still bare, and the dust bunnies were safe in their places. The smell was gone, though. Maintenance had found a dead mouse in the ductwork and sprayed some kind of pine scent to kill the odor. It was a pleasant smell, and it reminded Hud of the stuff his grandmother used to mop the floors with.

  “Good job,” Burke said, standing in the doorway.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Hud said from his desk.

  “You have a suspect and an ID for the girl.”

  “It’s not a positive ID.”

  “It will be, and you know it.”

  Hud shrugged. “Next of kin still needs to get a look at her. The grandmother’s coming up from Texas.” Burke started to say something, but Hud cut him off before he could utter a syllable. “I’m not taking the kid to the morgue, so don’t even suggest it.”

  “You want a positive ID?”

  “I want to be able to live with myself,” Hud said.

  “Your call.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “That could’ve turned out a lot different.” Burke tapped the door frame with his fingers. “How’d you know to look for the kid at the Dip?”

  Hud sighed. “It’s where I’d go every time I got a chance. My mom would stand on the front porch and say
, ‘Don’t go any farther than where I can see you,’ but I always did. I’d sneak down there every chance I got. You know that; you were usually leading the way or hanging around when I got there.”

  “You going back there? It’d be good to have you as a neighbor again.” They had teased the lion together as boys. Burke had grown up in the cottage across the street from his grandmother’s souvenir shop.

  “To the house? No, I don’t think so. I’ll clean it up, sell it. Too much work needs done, too many memories to paint over. It needs new memories, and so do I.”

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Thanks.” Hud was surprised by the genuineness of Burke’s declaration.

  “You’re not so sure, are you?”

  Hud shrugged, then turned back to his computer, away from Burke. “Moran’s got good instincts,” he said. “You should consider her for a shield the next time a spot comes up.”

  “You need a partner?”

  “Not really. But backup’s nice to have on a rainy day.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll call you when the search warrant for Sherman’s house comes in,” Burke said. “I’ve got eyes on the house. So far, it’s quiet. No sign of him. His wife’s a little upset.”

  “I imagine she is.”

  “All right. Good job. We’ll catch this creep. It’s just a matter of time.” Burke walked away, his footsteps echoing down the hall at a steady pace.

  Hud looked around to make sure the chief was gone, that he was alone, then turned back to the flickering computer screen and clicked on the file that held all of the available information about his mother’s disappearance. A dialog box immediately popped up: Access Denied.

  Chapter Five

  The Demmie Lake Hotel sat inches from the shore and threatened to crumble into the shallow water if someone didn’t prop it up soon. It was a simple three-story wood-frame building that had been built in the early 1920s. Like most of the area hotels and roadhouses from that time, the Demmie had the unseemly history of having been a speakeasy during Prohibition. Everyone said Al Capone had slept and gambled there, but there was no actual proof of that. Just like there had been no proof that John Dillinger had ever robbed the local bank after his escape from the Crown Point jail. Those old rumors and stories appealed to the tourists and curiosity seekers, so there had never been any reason for the long string of owners of the Demmie or the local historians to deny the tales. Anything for a buck, anything to help bring in business and survive the season, whether it was true or not. Hud knew the huckster game. He’d lived the feast-and-famine roller coaster of the tourist season all of his early life. He was surprised someone hadn’t spotted a monster in the lake by now.

  There were twelve rooms to let in the creaky old hotel. Most all of them were on the second floor, with the office, restaurant, and bar below, and an open ballroom on the third floor, which was mostly used for storage these days. The restaurant was more of a small diner than a proper sit-down eatery, and it didn’t look like the plastic red-and-white checkered tablecloths, or anything else for that matter, had changed since Hud had been there as a boy. He’d liked the pancakes then. His grandmother always burnt them at home.

  The diner opened before sunrise to appeal to eager fishermen, and closed just after lunch, bypassing the lag of business once the heat of the day took over and drove those same fishermen back to their rental cottages for an afternoon nap. Dinner was served at Johnny Long’s Supper Club next door, another lakeside institution that had somehow weathered the years and the recent economic downturn. These days, onion rings, lake-perch sandwiches, and big-as-your-head tenderloins could be ordered from the grill in the hotel bar anytime—up until an hour before closing, which was three a.m. sharp. The bar drew a different, less formal crowd than the Supper Club. Most nights, the thump of the jukebox, and the smell of grease, lulled Hud to sleep in his room at the hotel.

  A set of unstable steps led up to the individual rooms on the outside of the hotel, accessible by a narrow wood plank walkway that skirted three sides of the Demmie. Views of the lake were available from every room except the ones that faced the front of the building—those were the cheap ones, accessible only by a narrow staircase on the first floor.

  The walkway looked like it had been there since the Al Capone days. Hud tried not to consider how shaky the planks were underneath his feet. He was just glad to be home. If it could be called that. His room was small, held a queen-size bed, a nicked up dresser with an old TV on it, and a bathroom a little bigger than the clothes closet. He could barely turn around in the standup shower, and the plumbing looked and acted as if it was original. Hot water was hard to come by at certain times of the day.

  Rent for the room was paid week-to-week, and sporadic, unpredictable maid service came with the deal, along with a just-as-sporadic Wi-Fi Internet connection. The room on the second floor of the Demmie was all he’d needed, at least until he figured out what he was going to do with his grandmother’s house.

  Night had fallen, and the room was dark. Out of habit, Hud stopped and flipped on the overhead light before stepping fully inside. He’d walked confidently into a dark room once, relying on his memory, on his instincts, and had come face-to-face with someone looking to settle a score. A young Detroit thug hadn’t taken kindly to being arrested for selling heroin, and he’d tracked Hud down after bailing out, intent on exacting revenge. Hud had collected a broken nose and a greater understanding of caution and paybacks out of that encounter; he’d been young, cocky, new to the badge. That injury was a far cry from the bullet wounds he carried now. The scars were still pink and itchy, a reminder that his mortality and his past mistakes were never far away.

  The room looked just like he’d left it. The bed was rumpled and unmade, the top dresser drawer stood open, and his bath towel lay on the floor outside the bathroom door where he’d dropped it. He’d been running late for work, and the last thing Hud had been concerned with was tidying up after himself. Burke had no tolerance for tardiness—he found it disrespectful. Hud understood that and didn’t want to draw the chief’s wrath any sooner than necessary. He really wanted to remain on his new-hire honeymoon for as long as possible, but being on time had always been a problem for him, so it was just a matter of time before the shit hit the fan.

  Hud could have chided himself for being overly cautious. This wasn’t Detroit and no one held a grudge against him or had a reason to come after him, at least that he knew of, but old habits were hard to break. Just because this was his boyhood home didn’t mean he knew where he was at.

  “Gee wore flowery housedresses most of the time. She was a big woman. My height plus a hundred pounds. There was usually a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, and she had this hard, raspy Lauren Bacall voice that could stop a rabid dog in its tracks. But that’s how I want to remember her. The pictures of her when she was young were different. My mother got her looks from Gee. As a girl, Gee was statuesque, could’ve been a movie star if she’d taken off for California instead of marrying my grandfather. But after bearing five kids—only three lived—life kind of took over. Changed her. She didn’t take shit from anybody. But that was pretty obvious.”

  “It was just you two after your mother . . . ?”

  “. . . Disappeared.”

  “Okay, disappeared.”

  “Yes, it was just us. If there was a man in her life, I didn’t know about it. I wouldn’t have noticed anyway. I was lost in my own confusion, grief, and little-boy rage. She focused on me, wanted me to turn out all right. I was Gee’s soft spot.”

  “Are you still lost?”

  “I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”

  The bar was nearly empty. Two people, one woman and one man, sat at a table in the corner, just beyond the pool table, huddled over their drinks, keeping to themselves. Neither of them looked immediately familiar, though it would have been hard to tell from where Hud stood. The corner was full of thick shadows, and
he wasn’t interested in another encounter like he’d had with Harriet Danvers.

  A low and mournful George Jones ballad played from a radio behind the bar. The jukebox opposite it stood silently waiting, like everything else, for the next tourist season to begin. The music machine, a Wurlitzer still loaded with old 45 rpm records, flashed all of its red, blue, and yellow lights relentlessly, beckoning anyone with a quarter, but there were no takers. The pair in the corner obviously liked the happy hour beer and free music.

  The smell of grease was distant from lack of use, further announcing the slowness of the off-season. Clyde Evans looked up from behind the bar when Hud walked in. Clyde was the bartender, chief bottle-washer, grill cook, and the only server, at least through the week and sometimes on the weekends, especially in the depth of January and all the way through to Memorial Day. Then there were at least three girls working the floor.

  Everybody called Clyde “Tilt” because he was as tall and lithe as a willow tree, and he’d been a world-class slalom waterski champion in the 1960s. Tilt could lean to within an inch of the water and skim it with his elbow, shooting a rooster tail of water fifteen feet to the side like it was child’s play. Rows of dusty trophies sat on a shelf behind the bar, along with a collection of black-and-white pictures of Tilt’s glory days: speedboats, bathing beauties, and a hale and hearty young man ready to take on the world. Out of habit, Hud scanned the photographs for a glimpse of his mother. He didn’t see her, but in the dim light it would be difficult to pick her out at that distance.

  Tilt had been bartender at the Demmie Grill for nearly as long as anyone could remember—his championship days were long past him, but he still got out on a ski every chance he could, which had served him well. He was tanned and fit, though his skin was leathery from the long days under the sun, and his pure white hair and mustache always shone as if a spotlight was aimed directly on them. A faded blue tattoo on his right forearm hinted at his navy service during the Vietnam War, but that period of his life was never spoken about. Tilt demurred if someone brought it up. But the thing that most intrigued Hud about Tilt was the steel trap he had for a mind. Tilt Evans never forgot a face or a name, was a strong opponent on any trivia game, and was as reliable a person at remembering important dates and obscure events around the lake as could be found. Bartenders like Tilt came in handy, and Hud had made it his business to ingratiate himself with Tilt as quickly as he could.