by Bryan Devore
9
AS SARAH PULLED her jeep into the two-car parking area behind Kurt’s house, the headlights shot through the low chain-link fence, casting a prisonlike shadow that moved across the back of the small white house. The dark neighborhood was quiet, especially in this snowy back alley she had just driven down. She held a big metal flashlight but didn’t turn it on for fear of being seen. It hardly mattered, though, for anyone within earshot would have heard the metallic shriek as she pushed the gate open. Using the spare key that Kurt had given her at Christmas only a month ago, she opened the back door and entered her dead brother’s house.
The inside looked different somehow, as if someone had been here since Kurt’s death. Moving through the darkness, she used her cell phone’s display to cast a low blue light across the kitchen. She still wasn’t comfortable using the heavy flashlight or turning on the house lights. Her pupils had adjusted to the sparse lighting, and using anything brighter would make it impossible for her to see out the windows, and very easy for anyone outside see her. In the darkness, she felt safe.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, but it was clear that Kurt had recently found something while working at the accounting firm. He had only one computer—the one assigned to him by the accounting firm—so anything he had kept on it would be out of reach because the firm had reclaimed it. Her only hope was that any information he may have found was hidden somewhere in this house.
As she moved through the dark house, the cell phone’s soft blue light captured the outlines of objects tied to her memories. On the wall was a triumphant shot of her and Kurt with five friends at the snowy summit of Kilimanjaro, taken two years ago. On the coffee table was a small plastic Statue of Liberty she had given him as a joke during her first year at Columbia, to remind him that he still had never been to New York City. She wanted to take these things with her, for they were now remnants, mementos, of who her brother was to her.
Her brother and she had always shared a sense of responsibility to be at the top of whatever careers they chose—in light of their parents’ professional successes, how could they do less? And they had been well on their way. She had felt a balance in her life as her journalism career progressed almost as she had imagined. But now, with Kurt’s death shaking her beliefs, her life felt off balance and out of her control for the first time.
She forced herself to push aside the pain and anger and disbelief so she could get on with the search for answers. She checked his desk first. Holding her phone an inch away, she scanned each paper in the desk but found nothing relating to his work. Then she moved to the bookshelves, passing the phone’s light across the spines. As a kid, Kurt had sometimes taped things inside books, so she pulled every one from the shelf and flipped through it, searching with fingers as well as eyes for any little thing. It took her fifteen minutes, and she found nothing.
Outside, a dog started barking. A car passed, flooding the room with light, and dropping instinctively, she felt a stab of fear when a human silhouette filled in the window, distorted by the moving light. But once the car had passed, the object seemed to vanish.
She remained motionless, crouched on the floor in the dark and staring with wide eyes at the window across the room for thirty seconds before telling herself it was nothing more than an illusion, a trick of the eye and her own fears.
When she moved back through the dark living room and into the back half of the house, it hit her. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it until now. The little house had a one-room cellar beneath the kitchen, accessible only through a hidden staircase under a floor hatch that Kurt covered with a rug. If he had wanted to hide anything in the house, it would be the perfect place.
She went to the kitchen and pulled the rug aside, revealing the four slits in the floor that outlined the entrance to the little tornado shelter beneath the house. She grabbed the recessed ring handle and pulled the trapdoor up. As it opened, the two-by-four hinged to the bottom of the door banged against the side of the entrance. It seemed as loud as a gunshot.
After the fright passed, she put a hand on either side of the open square in the kitchen floor and carefully stepped down onto the steps into the pitch-black void below. The open-tread wooden stairs creaked and bent with every step until, at last, she touched the hard concrete floor at bottom. She had left the heavy trapdoor propped open above her for fear that closing it might somehow trap her under the house. Now, down here, she could use the heavy four-cell Mag flashlight. She found herself in a six-by-ten concrete cubicle, something like a prison cell, containing the water heater for the house, and a rickety unsanded wooden shelf along one wall. The concrete walls reached only five feet up before opening to a large crawl space that ran beneath the rest of the house. Pointing the flashlight beam onto the bookshelf, she saw a dozen finance and accounting books with hundreds of colored legal flags sticking out between the pages. Bingo.
She reached for the nearest three-ring binder on the shelf, but before her fingers touched it she heard a sudden creak from somewhere above in the house. The jolt of fear made her bobble the flashlight, nearly dropping it in her haste to flip it off. She crouched in the darkness under the stairs, listening and waiting. A heavy creak came from the wooden floor above her . . . then another. There was definitely someone else in the house with her.
She had never checked the bedroom. She had been so anxious to check this storage space, she had made the terrible mistake of not checking every room in the house before cornering herself in the cellar.
The creaking stopped at the top of the stairs. Whoever it was now stood at the open trapdoor directly above her. She could feel eyes peering down into the darkness. She froze, terrified that her slightest move would give her away.
A dark boot lowered gently onto the top step. Then the other boot took the next step. And there they stopped. Wellingtons—suede, maybe—with jeans stacked low over the instep. How many blows would she get in with the Maglite before the guy overpowered her? She fitted her right hand around the lens section, designed to double as a club handle. On the next step, slip out right and swing the heavier, battery-weighted end into his shin—catch him above the boot top. If the blow sent him tumbling to the concrete floor, find the head and knock him senseless or worse. And if he didn’t fall, the pain reaction would bring his head down close enough for a piñata swing to smash his nose, blinding him with his tears. Then yank the bottom foot to send him sprawling, clamber up onto the steps from the side, get the hell out, drop the trapdoor, and pray he came alone . . . Shaking from the adrenaline, she felt the immediate reality of mortal danger—something she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
The live threat took the next two steps, then hesitated. This was it. She couldn’t believe this was really going to happen.
“Sarah?” a voice whispered. “You down here?”
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, fuck, man!” She stepped out from under the stairs and flipped the flashlight beam onto his face. He looked as terrified as she felt. “Holy crap, Andy! I almost beat your head in with this! In fact, I think I just might, God damn it!”
Andy stuck his hands out. “What? You called and asked me to come over here.”
She shook her head. “I asked you to park on the street and watch for anything as I came in the back. Neighbors, police—anything. You were supposed to be like a lookout, a backup, while I entered the house.”
“I thought I was supposed to come in when I got here.”
“No,” she said, the tension falling off her in great waves of relief.
“This is a cool room,” he said, taking the rest of the stairs. “Little creepy at night, though.”
“Christ, my heart’s still racing!” she said, taking a deep breath. She pointed the beam of light toward the bookshelf. “Well, since you’re here, you can help me carry this stuff up to my car. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.”
“What is it?” he asked.
>
“A bunch of accounting books Kurt flagged. Those look like they’re about fraud. And it looks like he’s put some stuff in those three-ring binders. He must have spent a lot of time on it, and he obviously wanted to keep it hidden.”
“Well let’s get it and go,” Andy said. “This place is creeping me out.”
They carried everything up the wooden steps and made three stacks on the kitchen floor, then lugged it all out to the car. All the while, Sarah felt like a grave robber, stealing from the dead. But as Andy dropped the last stack on the backseat, her guilt morphed into anger at her brother for not being careful enough to avoid whatever killed him. Then her rage seemed to feel around until it found its true object: Kurt’s killer. And somewhere in this pile of neatly flagged financial documents lay a clue to just who that was.
10
SATURDAY NIGHT, MICHAEL was sitting on his balcony drinking a beer. The city lights below him expanded toward the dark horizon, like a luminescent reef in an otherwise dark ocean. He had been thinking about the information on Cooley and White he was compiling for Glazier, and also Kurt’s unorthodox testing order at X-Tronic. He had just gotten back from Kurt’s funeral in Boulder only hours ago, and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that his friend had been doing some strange things at X-Tronic.
Taking a long swig of beer, he felt the vibration of his cell phone and answered. He could hear loud electronic music in the background.
“Hey! Remember me?”
His pulse quickened as he recognized Alaska’s voice. “Hi! Of course!”
“I’m at a club called the Rise. Come try to find me.” Then the phone went dead.
The Rise was by Coors Field in lower downtown, only a couple of miles from his apartment. He needed to get his mind off everything that was stressing him out, and this mysterious, quirky, gorgeous woman was a godsend.
Twenty minutes later, Michael was standing in the growing line outside the Rise. The three-story building’s exterior was smooth concrete, with huge panes of dark glass outlined by blue neon lights. The faint, thumping techno bass beat blared suddenly louder every time one of the three burly bouncers opened the doors to let someone in.
Inside, he checked his jacket and made his way out to the main dance floor without even stopping at the bar. He searched the bobbing, swaying strobe-lit faces in the dark, then walked through both levels of the club, but she was gone—left before he could arrive, or perhaps was lying the whole time.
Feeling like a sap, he made his way to the bar and got a vodka tonic. Then, drink in hand, he walked past a wall of distorting mirrors toward the main dance floor. Though miffed that she had suckered him with a false tryst, he was still determined to get his twenty dollars’ worth. He stepped into the crowd, wending his way to the center of the floor.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning around, he found himself staring into her eyes. She had been here all along, watching him.
“I couldn’t find you!” he yelled over the music, as if they were a hundred miles apart.
She reached up, cupped the back of his neck, and pulled his lips to her. Then she slid her mouth past his cheek until he felt her warm breath just below his ear. “You told me you have an amazing view of the city from your apartment.”
He nodded as his eyes gazed out at the dark shadows and silhouettes pulsing under the strobe light behind her.
“Show me.”
Michael’s hands moved across Alaska’s pale-silk skin. He would let her moan softly for a moment before kissing her lips, silencing her again. In the dim glow of city lights through the window, her soft breasts shrank as she stretched her arms above her head to grab the headboard.
Kissing her, he forgot what she looked like and who she was; he could think only of how her body felt. Her aggressiveness excited him. She had come on to him so quickly . . . everything happening so fast. He loved it, and the consequences be damned.
Afterward, she turned away from him. They were exhausted and satisfied, but with the heated excitement over, they found they had nothing left; they were strangers again. Michael tried to be sensitive, gently stroking her back, but she didn’t respond, ignoring him even when he asked her a question. She pretended to be asleep. Warm women sleep close to a new lover; cold women turn away. He wondered what secrets she was keeping, and this made him think of his own. At last, she turned and rolled toward him to nestle in his arms. It was as if she had read his mind, as if she knew him better than he knew himself.
11
SUNDAY MORNING, AND it felt strange to have someone sleeping beside him in his apartment. He had been so buried in work, it had been a while since he brought a woman here.
Standing in the doorway to his bedroom, he watched the slow rise and fall of Alaska’s naked back. Now, with the fevered urgency of first sex behind them, he found himself wanting to learn everything he could about her. He hoped he could convince her to spend at least part of the day with him.
Leaving the doorway to step out on the apartment’s sunlit balcony, he couldn’t help feeling impatient for Alaska to wake up and join him in the cool air outside.
Michael watched as Alaska wielded the brush over the big canvas in bold, waving strokes. They had spent much of the day together, rambling in the city and learning about each other. She had brought him to a friend’s small gallery on Santa Fe, in Denver’s art district, to show him the space upstairs where she was allowed to work. She repeated the movement over and over until he saw the developing outline of a weeping willow on an otherwise desolate snow-swept mountainside. The scene was unrealistic, of course—not even a bristlecone could survive in such a harsh environment. But he loved the image.
“Where’s that supposed to be?” he asked.
“Near Aspen. North of my dad’s house.”
“You said he was a folk singer, right?” Michael asked, grinning.
“Careful,” she said, her eyes still on the painting. “He’s not, and he’d kill you for saying such a thing. In fact, I might do it for him. I said he was in a metal band in the late seventies and early eighties.”
“Did they have any success?”
“Moderate success. A few albums that sold okay. Had some groupies, did some U.S. tours, but nothing huge. That’s how he met my mother. Made some good cake back then, but my parents went through money pretty fast. They were young—I think a lot of people would have made the same mistakes in their situation.”
Michael was silent. Considering his family’s own past, he didn’t have a lot of room to criticize someone else’s fall from grace. Looking at that graceful willow gamely sticking it out on a freezing, snow-covered crag, he found himself imagining the source of her inspiration.
“Your pop seen any of these paintings?”
She turned away from the canvas. “He hasn’t seen any of my paintings in years—lost his sight when I was fifteen.”
“Aw, Jesus . . . I’m sorry. What happened?”
“He used to love working on cars. He was under the hood of his ’seventy-seven Firebird one afternoon when the battery exploded. Sprayed battery acid in his face and blinded both eyes.”
“That’s horrible . . . I can’t begin to imagine it.”
“Yeah, it’s been really tough on him,” she said.
“Hard on everyone, I’d think. You, your mother.”
“Actually, my mom divorced him before the accident. I was ten when she left us. The band had all but vanished by then, and so had most of the money. She’s remarried now with two kids and lives with her new family in France. So she’s basically out of the picture. I’ve only seen her once in the past ten years. I think she’s embarrassed of her old life. And now it’s been too long since she was part of our life. Seeing her again would be difficult for everyone.”
She had grown up witnessing her father’s continual decline. Michael got it, knowing what he did of his own grandfather’s downward arc.
“How about you?” she said. “You’ve heard my depressing life history; now it’s y
our turn.”
Michael smiled. “How about I tell you over dinner?”
“Only if it’s sushi,” she said, lifting the brush and dabbing it in the palette.
“I know a place,” he replied.
Watching her so quickly reabsorbed in her work, he was captivated. Alaska was the antithesis of all the hard-edged, business- and career-obsessed women Michael met every day. She lived outside the world that most people were happy to strap themselves into. She was alive, exotic, free.
With everything he was trying to do for Glazier, Michael knew that one of the stupidest things he could do right now was fall into a serious relationship. It’s just for a day, he told himself. But he was tired of waiting for the happiness that ought to be in his life by now. He was ready to fall in love with someone—really ready, for the first time, to open up his life and make room in it for someone. Few people could imagine how crazy things had been these past four years, and it would take a special woman indeed to accept him for the life he had chosen after all was revealed. And Alaska just might be that woman in a million who could accept what he really was.
“Like it?” she asked, putting the brush down on the palette.
“No . . . I love it. You’re amazing.”
Be smart, he told himself. Just one day.
12
SARAH MATTHEWS SAT in her cubicle, staring blankly into her computer. It was early Sunday evening at the Post. There hadn’t been many people on the newsroom floor all day as she finished scanning through the accounting books and binders from Kurt’s house. She had been reviewing them all weekend, pausing only Saturday afternoon to go to Boulder for the funeral. Seeing the pale, lifeless face in the casket had been the bucket of cold water waking her up to a world without her brother in it. She had hated being exposed to everyone at the funeral. She wanted only privacy to deal with the loss she still could not comprehend. After a few hours with extended family at her parents’ house after the funeral, she had excused herself—“not feeling well”—and driven directly back to the Post to continue her work.
