Envy the Night

by Michael Koryta

  When the door finally opened again, the cop who entered wasn’t one he’d seen before. Even before the guy settled into a chair across the table and introduced himself, Frank knew he was an outsider. He was about fifty, with a receding hairline and weathered skin, bony shoulders poking at his shirt. When he looked at Frank, one eye drifted just a touch, seemed to gaze off to the left and up.

  “Mr. Temple, my name is Ron Atkins. Feel free to call me Ron. How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” Frank said. “Who are you with?”

  Atkins raised an eyebrow. “You imply I’m from a different agency than the one that brought you here.”

  “I do.”

  “What makes you think that, might I ask?”

  “You don’t look excited.”

  Atkins considered Frank for a long moment after that, then gave him a few slow nods. “Interesting observation, Mr. Temple. No, I am not excited. There’s nothing exciting about what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Rest of the cops seem to think so.”

  “Agreed. That’ll pass with time.”

  “So who are you with?”

  The repeated question seemed to irritate Atkins, causing a quick, hard flicker of his eyes before he answered.

  “I’m with the FBI, Mr. Temple.”

  “Milwaukee?”

  Atkins’s eyebrow went up again. “No, Wausau. We maintain a small field office there.”

  Frank nodded. If Atkins had come in from Milwaukee already, that would have told him something, suggested that the cops here were already getting a sense of things, maybe knew something about who these guys really were. Nobody from the FBI responded to a murder otherwise. But if he’d just made the hour-long drive from Wausau, maybe it wasn’t quite as strange. There weren’t a lot of homicides up here, certainly not of this nature, and Frank guessed the FBI office in Wausau wasn’t swamped. Probably welcomed the chance to step in, give this one a look.

  “Not a real good start to your weekend, is what I’m hearing,” Atkins said. “First you had this trouble yesterday in which, according to what I’ve been told, you performed quite admirably. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you found a murder victim in the same building.”

  Atkins cocked his head at Frank. “No way to start a vacation, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you are here on vacation?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what brings most people here. Most people, though, they don’t have a string of bad luck like you’re experiencing.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” Even this early in the conversation, Frank had reached two conclusions about Atkins: First, he was smart, and deserving of respect. Second, Frank didn’t like him.

  “You rent a cabin up here, is that it?”

  “Own one.”

  “Really? Very nice. Out there on the Willow Flowage, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you come into possession of the cabin, might I ask?”

  Here was the reason Frank didn’t like him, drifting out in these casual questions. The man had come here to ask about Frank’s father. Either he knew the name, or somebody had done the homework.

  “It was in the family,” Frank said. “But I don’t see what relevance that has to the poor bastard we found with his leg broken and his throat cut, Mr. Atkins. Ron.”

  “I understand that. I’m going to ask you for a little patience. See, I may find relevance in places you don’t.”

  “Tell you what,” Frank said, “let’s go ahead and talk about my dad.”

  Atkins pursed his lips into a little smile but looked at the tabletop instead of Frank. “Your father. Yes, I’ve heard about him.”

  “A lot of people have. And, hate to tell you this, but he’s been dead for seven years. Tough to blame him for this one.”

  “I’ve heard a few terms used concerning your father—”

  “I’ve used a few of them myself.”

  “I believe it. But I’m talking about his, uh, entrepreneurship, you see. Because the man didn’t just kill people. He made money doing it, for a while. One of those terms that people use is ‘hit man.’ ”

  “I’ve heard it.”

  “Right. So—and I understand how frustrating this has to be for you, trust me—when a cop ends up beaten half to death outside of a body shop on a Friday and another man ends up killed in the same body shop on a Saturday, and the key witness to both events is, well, the son of a hit man . . .”

  “This is what brings the FBI up from Wausau,” Frank said.

  Atkins nodded with a theatrical sense of apology. “Like I said, Mr. Temple, I understand this may not be fair to you, but sometimes we have to endure a little extra suffering along the line just because of our families. That happens to everybody, in one way or another.”

  I could tell you some of the ways, Frank thought. Could tell you what it’s like to be seventeen years old and fooling around with your girlfriend, biggest concern in the world just trying to get her shirt off, when your father comes home and walks into your bedroom. And for a minute, Mr. Atkins, you’re still worried about the girl and about his reaction and this all seems like a major crisis. Seems like that until he says, Son, we’re going to need to be alone right now, and something in his eyes tells you that the pending conversation has nothing to do with anything as innocent as you and the girl.

  “So I understand, is what I’m trying to say,” Atkins said. “But I’ve still got to ask the questions.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “I kind of figured you would.”

  “Right off the bat, I’m curious about this: I was told you were wearing a gun when the police got down to the body shop. A gun, I might add, with your father’s initials stamped into the stock. FT II would be him, right? You’re FT III?”

  Frank nodded.

  “You always carry the gun?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Then you come up here on vacation, a fishing trip, and you think, yeah, this seems like the time and place to pack a pistol?”

  Frank looked at Atkins for a long time before he said, “It had started to seem like a dangerous town.”

  Atkins nodded. “Almost from the moment you arrived.”

  19

  __________

  This couldn’t be her life. The longer Nora thought about it, the less sense it made. Hit men, tracking devices, murder? No, they didn’t fit. None of those things belonged.

  Yet there they were, the reality hammered home by the parade of police interviewers. Can you describe . . . they’d say, time and time again. Of course she could describe it. Jerry had been murdered. Try seeing that and forgetting it. She’d be able to describe that scene for a long time, far longer than any of the things she wanted to remember. The way his head had hung at that unnatural angle, the way the bone had bulged from his thigh . . . this couldn’t be her life.

  She’d gone through a few rounds of interviews and one short talk with some sort of grief counselor who’d left a card and told her something about the pain of those left behind lingering longer than the pain of those who suffered. What that meant, Nora had no clue. The idea seemed to be that Nora would suffer more than Jerry, but the grief counselor hadn’t seen Jerry’s leg.

  The only thing that stood out in all the talking was the lead cop’s disclosure that no tracking device had been found in the locker. He wanted to know if it could have been left somewhere else, and she gave them permission—as if they needed it at this point—to search the whole shop, but she knew it was gone. That’s what they’d come for, and now it was gone. The only physical link she’d had to them was missing.

  The last visitor was a man in an ill-fitting brown suit who showed his badge almost immediately, the only person who’d done so all day. FBI, it said. That surprised and comforted her. About time somebody like this was involved.

  The reassurance his presence provided didn’t last long. After some of the same preliminary questions, his focus shifted to Frank Temple and stayed the
re. How long had she known Mr. Temple? Just a day, huh? Was she aware of his father’s story? Oh, Mr. Temple had already offered that. Interesting. What else had he said?

  That’s how it went for more than an hour. One thing was settled—she didn’t need to do that Internet research to verify Frank’s story. Mr. Atkins of the FBI did a fine job of that.

  “You seem to be suspicious of Frank,” she said. “Is that my imagination?”

  “Suspicious?” Atkins leaned away from the table and hooked one ankle over his knee. “That’s getting ahead of the game, Ms. Stafford. I’m just gathering information.”

  His words reeked of insincerity, though, and she felt instantly sorry for Frank. This was the price he paid for the family he’d been born into. When she walked through the streets of Tomahawk, people stopped her and told her stories about how wonderful her father was, asked after his condition; strangers gave her hugs on a regular basis simply because of her father’s history in the town. Frank’s experience was quite different.

  “I understand you need to gather information,” she said, “but Frank was nothing but a help. I’ve already told you what he did yesterday.”

  “Yes, I know. But when you consider his background, Ms. Stafford, you can surely understand any heightened curiosity we might have.”

  Heightened curiosity? Now, there was a good FBI phrase. A minute ago he’d denied being suspicious of Frank, but now he admitted to heightened curiosity. Huge difference, clearly.

  “Whatever his father did when Frank was essentially a child really seems insignificant to this situation,” she said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You disagree?”

  “Let me ask you this—has Mr. Temple told you anything of what he’s been doing for the past seven years?”

  “I just met him yesterday. Obviously I don’t know his life story.”

  “That’s a no, then?”

  “He told me he’s been a student.”

  “He’s been enrolled in school for a grand total of six semesters in seven years. Those six semesters were scattered among five different schools, in five different states. He has lived in at least ten different states for short times. His highest level of employment is as a bartender, his longest stint at that five months, yet he’s paid his rent, bills, and tuition in full and on time.”

  “Wonderful. So your point is that he’s a model citizen?”

  Atkins gave her a long, unpleasant stare. Things were becoming contentious, and she knew part of her defensiveness was a product of guilt. She’d basically berated Frank as they’d driven back to town, dismissing his concerns and suspecting him of lies. Then there was Jerry, a terrible but undeniable support for Frank’s story. His concern had clearly been genuine and well founded.

  “My point,” Atkins said, “is that there are many unknowns about Frank Temple the Third. He leads a nomadic lifestyle, maintains few connections to his past, and somehow generates a steady cash flow. It is a pattern, Ms. Stafford, not unlike many of the men in his father’s profession.”

  She pulled her head back and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m making observations, not accusations.”

  “Well, I made an observation myself today, and that’s that Frank doesn’t like to talk about his father and is very ashamed of what the man did.”

  “Shame is one reason to avoid talking about his father. There are other possibilities.”

  “You’re suggesting he followed in his footsteps? Frank was seventeen when his father died. I’ve never heard of a seventeen-year-old assassin.”

  Atkins just looked at her, studying her face, silent.

  “Why aren’t you asking about Vaughn?” she said.

  “This is the man who drove the Lexus?”

  “Yes. He’s the one who caused all of this. He’s the one who brought these murderers into my shop.”

  “You were with Mr. Temple and Vaughn at the same time,” Atkins said, switching tracks. “Although he called himself Dave O’Connor at the time, right?”

  “What do you know about him? Who is he?”

  Atkins ignored her. “Did you sense any familiarity between the two men?”

  “Frank and Vaughn?” She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I mean, they’d just gotten in an accident. So they had about twenty minutes of familiarity before I met them. That was as much as I sensed, too.”

  “You let the Lexus driver leave without seeing a driver’s license or insurance information?”

  “He gave me cash. I’ve explained that to everyone already. It was a mistake, but I can’t fix it now. I can’t fix any of this now.”

  “And you have no idea where he went?”

  She should answer that question, tell him about the island cabin and the car in the woods. That was the right thing to do, certainly, but she was remembering Frank’s reluctance to bring the police into this, the idea he had that it might make her even more of a threat to these men who had such evil ways of dealing with threats. The less involvement the better, right? Knowing nothing was better than knowing something. If you knew something, you were a loose end. Isn’t that what Frank had called her? A loose end. Just like Jerry. She wanted to be clueless again. Wanted to be a bystander. She was a bystander, damn it—and wouldn’t it be safer, ultimately, to stick to that role? She thought of that and of Jerry’s blood running into the floor drain, and she shook her head.

  “When he took my car he said he was going to Rhinelander.”

  She waited for him outside the police station as evening descended, the sky tinged with wispy purple clouds that stood stark against a backdrop of pinks and oranges. Down the street, loud music blared from speakers near the river, some sort of evening event commencing.

  Jerry was dead. He’d been a cantankerous, combative employee from day one, but he’d also been the only person she was close to in the entire town. Time with Jerry made up about ninety percent of her human interaction since she’d arrived in Tomahawk, and understanding that he was gone filled her with the chill of loss. With Jerry went the shop. She couldn’t run it alone. Running it with just the two of them had seemed impossible at first, but they’d made it work. The reason for that, she knew, was Jerry’s willingness to stick around. He might not have liked working for her, but he’d done it, and without him the shop that her grandfather had opened sixty-eight years earlier would have already been out of business.

  She was feeling the threatening rise of more tears when the door opened and Frank Temple stepped out of the station and came down the steps to join her. He held his jacket in his fist, and she saw for the first time that he was wearing a gun in a holster on the side of his chest.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Had it on when we left the cabin. Cops seemed to want to keep it, but I made a compelling case against that by pointing out that nobody was killed with a gun today.”

  There was a bristle to him she’d not seen before, a darkness in his voice. Atkins, probably. If he’d asked her so many questions about Frank’s past and his family, it could only have been worse for Frank.

  The door to the police station opened again, and two cops in uniform stepped out and stared at them.

  “Is your car still around?” Frank asked.

  “At the shop. They were going to give me a ride, but I wanted to wait for you.”

  “Let’s walk down there, then.”

  They started down the sidewalk, falling in step together quickly and silently.

  “The FBI was here,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was surprised . . . I mean, I’m glad that the police are getting help, but I was surprised by that.”

  He was looking at his feet and still holding the jacket in his hand, that gun open and obvious now, as if it were some sort of statement. “The question is whether I’m the only reason they’re involved.”

  She wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  “Because if I am,” he sai
d, “then it’s somewhat discouraging. I understand it, sure, but having the FBI investigate me is not going to help with this mess.”

  “He seemed pretty interested in you.”

  “Yeah, he did. As much as that pisses me off, it’s no shock. I just wonder if I’m the heart and soul of their interest, or if I’m part of a package.” He turned to face her. “Did Atkins say a word to you about Vaughn?”

  She thought about it, then shook her head. “Not until I brought him up. When I asked about him, Atkins just wanted to know whether you seemed familiar with Vaughn. Up until that point the only thing he’d wanted to talk about was . . .”

  “Me,” Frank said.

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s basically the same response I got, like Atkins was completely uninterested in Vaughn. Since he should be very interested in him, I’m going to guess that my wonderful, well-known name is not the only draw that attracted our VIP from Wausau. They’ve got something on Vaughn already. That Lexus rang some bells somewhere, down in Florida maybe, or on the FBI computers. They got excited about him, and then my name was an extra wild card in the deck. They don’t know what to make of it yet.”

  “And they don’t know where he is.”

  The look he gave her then was both knowing and intrigued. “You didn’t mention Ezra’s find?”

  “No. Did you?”

  He shook his head. “Figured it was your play, and if you told them, they’d be back around with more questions. When that didn’t happen, I assumed you’d decided not to say anything.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t,” she said. “I just . . . there was a lot going through my mind.”

  “You didn’t say anything because you saw what happened this afternoon.”

  Blunt, but true. There had been a lot going through her mind, yes, but it was the memory of that blood dripping into the floor drain that made the decision for her.

  “You remember what I said about loose ends?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I was thinking about that the whole time. That, and everything you said about the guy who owns the cabin, Devin, and how everyone around him is so . . .”