I told Paula, “I think we might have to hunker down in Hannah’s cottage tonight.”
She was looking at it, sadly, like watching the Titanic leave port. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Hannah’s place seemed to be as close to the lake as physically possible. A good storm, and the waves might actually slap against the sides. It was set at an angle, and judging from the others, it would have a large picture window facing the shore and a narrow screened-in deck facing the beach, literally inches away from the bottom step. The usually hard, rocky beach was heaped with snow, and the waves on Superior pushed more slush and mighty-big ice chunks on top of that.
We walked down the path to the cottage, me right behind Paula. Neither of us noticed until it was too late — perhaps due to the whole soft, yellow lights and idyllic snow-covered roofs motif — that the lights were on in Hannah’s cottage. It hadn’t struck me as odd. For all I knew Paula had been here earlier to turn on the heat and prepare for our visit. But when she stopped dead only a few feet before the front door and I bumped into her, things suddenly spiraled out of control.
The door was open. It hadn’t been forced, but it was cracked open, the wind pushing it farther and farther still. I stepped in front of Paula, put my finger to my lips, and gave the door my shoulder. Quietly. Stepped into the main room, which had been wrecked. Papers all over the floors, furniture flipped upside-down, ripped, feathers and other fillings still swirling in the air.
Nearly swallowed my tongue when I heard voices from somewhere deeper in the cottage, one of the bedrooms.
A man’s voice. “Did you hear something?”
A different man’s voice. “Wind.”
“No, like, the door?”
They went quiet again. I froze. Paula froze at my shoulder.
A white bald head appeared from the bedroom door. Eyes. Blinked a few times. Then the whole man emerged. Thick. Black leather coat, flannel shirt, jeans. Didn’t bother to take his boots off in a dead woman’s home. Right behind him, a red-headed man of about fifty with a mustache that would have seemed more at home in the Wild West. Made sense. We were in a High Noon stand-off.
How long? You know how it goes: seconds felt like minutes.
I held up my hand, a slow rise. “Easy. I’m a police officer. Let’s everyone be calm. Other officers will be here any moment.”
The redhead tapped the bald one on the shoulder. “Them’s the ones.”
I shouted “Run!” and shoved Paula back, before he’d even finished his sentence and the thick bald bastard lunged at us. I slammed the door in his face and took off behind her, straight down to the beach. The fucking beach. Shit. Not the bright warm lodge hotel. Not the car. Fear can fuck up common sense, can’t it?
I ran after her, realizing we needed to make the most of the slammed door ——before they caught up. Seconds at best. I scrabbled at my back, trying to get my parka over my gun so I could pull the fucking thing out, but shit shit shit the one time I carry the fucker shit shit shit the one time I actually had time to think and try to pull it shit shit shit.
Lungs burning, the ice on the rocks slippery as fuck, both Paula and I had a hard time staying up. I grabbed her round the waist and braced — goddamn, heavier than me! — to keep her from going head first into a big one.
“Come on, come on, Jesus fuck, please!”
I glanced back, my hood flopping in the way. I reached up and pushed it back. There they were, bulldozing right for us.
Slip-slippery-slip-slippery-slip-slip. A fucking ice rink. Somehow I got traction and pulled Paula forward, but all I could grab was her fur coat and she slipped right out of that. For a breathless second she hung in mid-air, wearing nothing but a deep-red dress. Then she slipped and collapsed on the ice. I started back for her, but these fuckers were nearly on us, so I pivoted, lurched off the treacherous path into deeper snow, took a few long strides on steadier legs and just kept going. Threw the fur coat behind me, hoping it would hit one of them.
Paula shouted for help until I heard one of the men attack her. More shouting. Lost in the wind, every word. I didn’t know how far behind me the other one was, but I couldn’t afford to find out. Pumping, holding my breath, everything I had going into my legs.
I hit a slick spot and bam, down face first. Saved my nose but only by sacrificing my cheek. Scraped the fuck out of it. This had to stop. I couldn’t deal with it. And then all the air was squeezed from my lungs, when this thousand ton fucker dropped on top of me and began pounding my ribs. The thick coat was hardly any protection. I tried to scurry out from under him, kick at him, all the time struggling to get my fucking gun off my fucking back and act like a real fucking cop. But the coat, it wouldn’t. It just. I couldn’t. More blows to my ribs. The wind in my ears and eyes. No. No more. No. No. No. No.
I squinted down the beach. Redhead fucker had Paula’s arms behind her back, twisting, Paula yowling.
I gave up on my gun and tried to block the blows with my arms, still kicking, still scurrying.
The gunshot was louder than the wind and echoed three, five, twenty times, it seemed. The redhead lurched like he’d been struck by lightning, screaming. Through the snow, I saw him grab his shoulder, or what was left of it. Another shot and the bastard went down.
Joel. Motherfucker, thank you.
The bald fucker saw what had happened to his partner and ducked real low, reached inside his coat and brought out a pistol. A plain ol’ black Glock. Raising it in front of him he started looking for where the shot had come from. I wasn’t even thinking anymore. It was like a goddamn TV show. The good guys had guns, the bad guys had guns, sure, why not?
But his distraction gave me time to unzip my coat, finally reach my gun and two-fist the thing in his face shouting at the top of my lungs, “P’LICE GET DOWN GODDAMN P’LICE!”
He backed off but spun the gun to me. “Tell your friend to cease fire!”
“FUCKYOUP’LICE! P’LICE, I SAID!”
“I KNOW! ME TOO! MANNY, LISTEN! TELL JOEL TO STAND DOWN!”
What the fuck? Who is this guy? I’d never met him before. How did he know my name? Joel’s name? What the hell had I gotten us into?
He held up his free hand, slowly reached for his back pocket. I had him dead to rights. And vice versa. So I let him pull out his wallet. No, something else. He held it up. A cop’s shield.
I shouted, “I can’t see it! Closer!”
He shoved it closer, trying to watch his fallen partner and me at the same time, failing. But I read it. Special Agent, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA.
In spite of the snow, I felt a flash of heat from my temples to my guts. My head was swimming. Maybe it was a fake. Maybe it was a fake. Yeah, could be a fake.
I knew better. I’d seen Bureau badges before. This one was not a fake.
That was it, standoff over, sort of. He wasn’t done pointing that gun at me. “I’ve got to arrest you, Manny. Come on, don’t fuck up any more tonight. Let me get an ambulance for my partner, and you tell Joel to stand down, clear?”
I was numb. I nodded. I pushed myself off the rocks, reached for my phone, cut my finger on the broken screen. But it was still working. I texted Joel. You shot a cop. All while still pointing my pistol at the bald agent. He was doing the same, shouting “Man down” into his own phone, while pinning me with his gun.
I turned to the redhead. Guy named Brice from what I heard the bald agent shout into his phone. A fucking cop. Joel saving our lives by killing a motherfucking state cop.
Wait, if they were cops, had our lives really been in danger?
Brice was moving.
Seriously? Was I seriously seeing that?
Paula crawled over to him, pressed her hands over his shoulder. Shouted, “He’s alive! He’s alive!”
I sank to my knees. Stared at my gun.
They were going to arrest me. They were going to arrest Joel, if they could catch him. This was it for us, for the case, for our careers. Fuck it, this was i
t for us, period.
I stared at my gun some more.
I even thought about putting it in my mouth and aiming it at my brain. One trigger pull and no more worries.
But no, that wasn’t me.
By the time the night was over, Paula was gone, just gone, almost like she had vanished. Joel was being threatened with the charge of attempted murder of a police officer.
Me, I was suspended from the force.
Maybe I should’ve left Hannah’s memory beneath the ice with the rest of her.
But no. I wasn’t going to make this easy for them. I wasn’t going to shoot myself, and I wasn’t going to drop the case. Deep down, I might have been wishing I’d been born with one, but I was no pussy.
PART TWO
1
Flash-forward with me again. Remember when I started this story? All dressed up and no place to go but an interrogation room? This wood-paneling and cinder-block one, in particular, Haupt and Engebretsen grilling me?
Okay, not grilling. It was gentle. Those two give cops a good name. Seriously, highly recommended.
Anyway, everything had gone into a tizzy, and I guessed it was due to the officers finding out that the guy I had shot three times in the chest just before they’d shown up on the scene — Joel Skovgaard — was nowhere to be found. This same Joel Skovgaard they’d watched receiving emergency treatment from a team of EMTs, desperate to give him a fighting chance. This same Joel Skovgaard they’d watched being rushed into the back of an ambulance before it hurtled out of the parking lot towards, they had assumed, an emergency room.
Dude was gone.
I was left to myself during all their tizzying, so I did what anyone in my situation would’ve done.
I took a nap.
It was the first place I’d felt safe enough to do that in days, so even though I was wet and freezing, I hugged myself, crossed my ankles, and laid my forehead on the table, where I closed my eyes and thought about Joel. And about how he’d turned out to be more than an obligated partner. He was becoming good at saving my life.
And this was how I repaid him?
Maybe I had twenty minutes of napping, sort of, before these two great cop buddies of mine — really, just the best, these two — got back to me. They stood in the doorway, Engebretsen first, Haupt looking over his shoulder.
“Your partner. Well, he’s gone.”
“I figured.”
“So, would you … do you …” This was hard for him. He was biting back anger and humiliation, and trying hard to not start yelling. His fingers, still on the doorknob, kept flexing. “Is there anyone who would want to …”
I yawned and stretched. If they had offered some standard prison wear right then and there, I would’ve accepted. Glamorous people like myself weren’t meant for cold weather.
Haupt pushed forward. “What he’s saying is—”
“She knows what I’m saying.”
“Sure he does.”
“She. She. Just be nice.”
“Nice. Fuck.”
Engebretsen tossed a shush over his shoulder, then flinched like he’d hurt his neck. Back to me, he said, “What the hell, Manny?”
Okay. It was time to let them off the hook. I beckoned them in with my finger, told them to shut the door, which they did, and asked them to sit. Once we were all back in our normal spots, I leaned forward and whispered to them, “I know where he is.”
The detectives looked at each other. Then back at me. I’m sure my grin was one of those ‘dirty little secret’ brands. Haupt said, “Will you tell us, please, where Officer Skovgaard is?”
See? Nice guys, calling him “officer” and all. Respectful. I liked that.
Too bad I had to shake my head. “Oh, no. Not yet.”
A few days earlier …
The night before, Joel Skovgaard had received my text and got his ass right down to the beach, sans hunting rifle, but with his pistol on his hip. The guy from the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA, abso-fucking-lutely wanted to put him in cuffs. There was a shouting match. I cringed and waited for one of them to lose it, tug out his gun and blam blam blammo!
(It happens. And cops know they can get away with that shit time and time again.)
But everyone calmed the fuck down as soon as we heard the sirens, and Joel ran over to the ambulance and pointed the EMTs towards the agent he’d shot.
I lost Paula in the crowd sometime after that. She took care of the wounded man, the same one that had fucking assaulted her, right up until the EMTs started jabbing him with needles and a couple of other uniforms pulled her away. If baldy hadn’t kept getting in my face — Agent Thorn, it turned out — then maybe I would’ve been able to keep track. But once the crowd descended, I could only guess where she’d vanished. Maybe the cops had already bundled her into the back of a squad car. Maybe she’d slipped away right under our noses. Maybe in an invisible van full of rebel angels. I had no idea.
Then things got murky. I yelled. I bargained. My pistol was taken from me. I was led to an unmarked SUV. I was not allowed anywhere near Joel. Questions from a different agent, professionally handled, before I was taken downtown, a place I knew so well, but in a room I’d never seen before. Stayed there through two more rounds of questions and six cups of coffee. No, seven. The first six made me jumpy, but that seventh cup blissed me out nice and easy. Some sort of magic trick. I lost track of time. After that, I was taken to the Chief’s office, and was stunned to see early morning sunshine outside. They might as well have thrown me off the roof.
The Chief kept me waiting. Over an hour? Close to two? There was no wall clock in her office and my phone battery was dead. It was the next day, and I had been treated with the utmost respect the previous ten hours — no cuffs, no locked doors, as much coffee as I wanted, but not as many bathroom breaks as I needed.
Yes, there were questions. Yes, there were multiple officers from both Duluth and BCA, a union rep, a union attorney — who didn’t represent me, exactly, not yet anyway, but who listened and intervened to remind the cops of what they could and couldn’t ask — Captain Mauer, again on the periphery, and sure as hell not making eye-contact. I took that as a sign. A sign of unemployment.
But that all turned out to be foreplay. Waiting for the Chief, alone in her office, with a uniformed officer I didn’t know, I whiled away the tense boredom by staring at my shoes. Then someone radioed the cop, gibberish, and he radioed back with a mumble, and suddenly things started happening. The door swung open, Chief Donna-Ellen Bosack talking over her shoulder to someone, then just as quickly nodding at my watcher, dismissing him and closing the door, all with an economy of movement that suggested she’d been here before, seen it all before. Maybe that’s why she looked like the third cup of coffee I’d had — that kind of energy. She made straight for me and sat in the second visitor’s chair, instead of heading behind her desk. She sat on the edge, put her hand on my knee, and said, “How’re you holding up?”
Chief Bosack’s eyes, what was that, concern? Was this not going to go as bad as I’d feared?
I said, “Good. Thank you. Everyone’s been good to me.”
She patted my knee as if I was her own child and sat back, hands on the armrests. She looked like a dwarf on a throne. “You and me need to talk.”
You got that right, I thought.
Chief Bosack had charisma out the ass and then some. The rough-and-rowdy exterior hid a caring heart, like the aunt your mom didn’t want you spending time around. Whatever threat she posed wasn’t obvious at first. In fact, I thought I’d dodged a bullet … until it snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.
Not literally.
(By the way: the agent who didn’t dodge a bullet, literally, survived and eventually made a full recovery.)
The Chief asked what had happened, and I told her. I told her about Hans and Hannah, about Paula looking for the evidence, about why I was really beat up that night over a month ago, about getting Joel to back me up
, about the BCA guys chasing us out of the cottage.
Of course I told her all this. She was my Chief, she was the one who gave us pep talks in the morning, the one who had our backs when the press came sniffing around, or when the mayor or city council went tsk-tsk-tsk. She was our rock. She was our shield.
But when I was done, she turned her head to the side, a thin grin on her thoughtful face, and said, “I appreciate you waiving your right to remain silent. I’m sure you understand that your cooperation can go a long way with the grand jury.”
“Me? Grand Jury? What am I being accused of?”
“I thought you knew. Surely you knew. Trespassing, for one.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Accessory. Assault on a police officer. Loitering.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Are you sure about that?”
It had never even occurred to me.
I mean, the BCA, yeah, the state guys doing some dirty work for the politicians back in St. Paul; that made sense.
Here was me spilling my guts to my own guys in blue, thinking I was finally getting this shit out in the open where it belonged.
Instead, I had been digging my own grave, one mouthful at a time.
I told the Chief, “I need to call my lawyer.” I really meant sister, who knew some lawyers. Same difference.
The Chief gave me a nod, a sad one, and said, “There’ll be time for that, son. Right now, let’s come to an understanding. You and I. Trust me.”
Oh, you bitch.
“Let’s agree that this, well, this ‘investigation’ of yours is over. We appreciate that you wanted to help, but understand that, instead, you’ve gotten in the way.”
“Listen, please—”
“Hear me out, Manny. I get to see the big picture, you know? I know you only want to do a good job. I get that. But what you don’t get is that sometimes, doing nothing at all is the best thing you can do.”
She waited for it to sink in. It did.
I asked anyway. Made her say it. “What … what do you mean?”
Castle Danger--Woman on Ice Page 15
