by Nick Petrie
“Oh, no. Definitely not.”
“Why don’t you stop at Don’s on the way.” Don was a therapist in Springfield who’d given him some tools for working with the static. “Maybe he can help with the dreams.”
Peter tugged at her arm and the camisole fell down. “Sure thing,” he murmured. “You bet.” He kissed his way along the freckles on the top of her chest.
“Mmm. You’d agree to pretty much anything right now, wouldn’t you?”
In response, he cupped her bare breast in one wide, knuckly hand and ran his rough thumb across her nipple. Her breath caught and he felt a shudder pass through her body.
“You’ll come back to me.” It wasn’t a question. “I need you to promise.” She shivered and raised her arms as he tugged the camisole over her head. “This conversation isn’t over, Marine.”
Peter scooped her up into his lap. “Can it be over for a few minutes?”
She grabbed him by the ear, pulled him close, and bit his lip. “Shit, Marine. This better take more than a few goddamn minutes.”
He felt her smile against his. “Woman, will you please stop talking?”
“Never.” She laughed her low, bubbling laugh. “How would you know what to do next?”
9
Peter never made it to Death Valley. He never even made it to Springfield.
He was on I-84 headed west from Hood River, low dry hills to his left, the Columbia River wide and shining on his right, when his phone rang again.
It was Tom Wetzel. Peter considered letting it go to voicemail. Instead he turned up the volume to hear Wetzel’s voice over the rumble of the big V-8. Wetzel was so wound up, he didn’t even say hello.
“There’s a woman coming to see you. She’s on a plane right now.”
“Wetzel, I’m not doing it. I told you already.”
“You’ll have to tell her yourself. She lands in Portland in forty minutes.”
“Wetzel. Whatever it is, I’m not doing it. I have other plans.”
“Fine. Tell her that. After you listen to her story.”
“Was this your idea?”
“Listen to her story, Peter. Then call me back.”
“I thought you weren’t giving me details without a non-disclosure.”
“For now, I’ll trust you. We’ll talk after, okay? She’ll meet wherever you like.”
Peter sighed. “There’s a place called Lardo in Portland, corner of Southeast Twelfth and Hawthorne.”
“Corporate money and you pick a place called Lardo?”
“You called me, remember?”
* * *
—
Peter got off the freeway at Glisan, drove west through the rain past Voodoo Donuts on Sandy, then turned south on SE 11th toward Hawthorne. Portland was where the hipsters had moved when they got priced out of Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Seattle. He counted construction cranes between swipes of his wipers and wondered where the hipsters would go once they were priced out of Portland.
Hawthorne was an evolving neighborhood east of the Willamette River. Modest older houses and commercial buildings mixed with new mid-rise condos that looked the same as new mid-rise condos everywhere else. Soon, Peter figured, every town that used to be interesting would be homogenized by the relentless planet-wide flow of money. Somebody’s version of progress, he supposed.
Lardo still looked like the Portland he remembered. A low-key, pork-oriented sandwich place set in a funky corner building across from a gas station and one of the few remaining food cart lots. Along with a dozen sandwiches, Lardo served local beer on tap and dirty fries made with jalapenos and parmesan and crispy chunks of pork belly. It also had wide windows that helped tamp down the static, even on a dark and wet winter afternoon where the clouded sun had already fallen past the horizon.
Passing the place in search of parking, Peter saw a black sedan at the curb, a thin plume of exhaust curling from the tailpipe. An angular man in a black suit stood on the sidewalk under a wide umbrella, watching Peter’s truck as it drove by.
Peter left the Chevy around the corner and walked back in the rain.
On Lardo’s covered patio, its empty tables and chairs padlocked together for the cold season, a woman waited. Slim and poised, she wore a long, tailored coat the color of midnight, unbuttoned to the weather. Beneath it he could see a single strand of pearls as big as marbles.
She stood with her back to the interior light. Rain hammered on the patio cover. He couldn’t see her shadowed face. “Mr. Ash?”
Pending the nondisclosure agreement, Peter didn’t know her name. He held out his hand. “Please, call me Peter.”
She took it, and didn’t let go. Her hand was thin, its bones feeling somehow loose under the skin. For all that, her grip was strong and tight, like that of a pond skater fallen through the ice. “I’m Catherine Price.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for meeting me.”
He smiled. “Tom Wetzel is very persuasive.” Her face was still hidden in the darkness. “Shall we go in?”
Catherine Price hesitated, gripping his hand in both of hers. A car came around the corner, sweeping the patio with its merciless headlights, and now he saw her ravaged face. Lines of grief carved deep as canyons, heavy bags under her eyes that carried everything her invisible makeup and elegant clothes tried to hide. She’d been a classic beauty once, until some unfathomable disaster had crash-landed into her life.
The disaster she’d come a long way to tell Peter about.
She didn’t waste any time.
“Twelve months ago, my son-in-law murdered my daughter and abducted my grandson,” she said. “They’ve never been found. The boy is now eight years old. His name is Óskar.”
Behind her, the restaurant glowed with warmth and light. Couples sat across from each other, holding hands.
Three minutes before, Peter had wanted nothing more than a cold beer and a hot sandwich and to get back on the road. To reach the campground outside of Springfield before his sleepless night caught up to him. Now, though, he found himself missing June Cassidy more than he’d ever thought possible. He couldn’t remember why he was headed for Death Valley. Her farmhouse on the dry side of the mountains was only a few hours away. He could get there before she’d gotten into her PJs. They could walk through the orchard together under the star-washed sky. They could lie in his hammock, wrapped in a down comforter, and keep each other warm.
Instead, he said to Catherine Price, “Let’s talk in your car.”
He owed her that much, at the very least.
10
The angular man with the black umbrella opened the back door for Catherine Price, eyeballing Peter as he walked around to the far side of the enormous sedan. Peter opened his own door. The man with the umbrella stayed outside in the rain.
Inside, it was warm and dark, lit only by the instrument panel and the streetlights outside. It smelled of damp wool and rich leather. The back seat was bigger than Peter’s childhood bedroom. He felt the unruly static slowly begin to rise in the enclosed space. He wanted to find a reason to turn her down. “Tell me about it,” he said.
Catherine Price seemed smaller in the car. She pulled her coat around herself more tightly. A black satchel handbag sat open beside her like a hole on the seat.
She stared across the seatback at something he couldn’t imagine. Her profile in the dim amber light was the timeless profile of anyone caught by the meat grinder of war, the murderous vagaries of weather, or the vast cruelty of the sea.
“Do you have any children, Mr. Ash?”
“No.”
“Once upon a time,” she said, “I had two.”
He saw it then, the bottomless ocean of grief only held back by her last reserves of self-control.
She took a breath like someone diving into the deep end of a pool. “William, my oldest, died four years ago,” she
said. “Black ice on the highway, his car went through a guardrail. His wife was with him. She died, too. She was pregnant.” A vein pulsed in her forehead. “A year ago, I lost Sarah, my daughter, at the hands of her husband, Erik.” She turned to look at Peter, her face sidelit, spooky. “But it’s possible I haven’t yet lost my grandson.”
“Surely, the police,” Peter said.
“The D.C. detectives tell me they believe my son-in-law took my daughter’s life. They have physical evidence and no other suspects. He left the country almost immediately, taking my grandson. He bought two one-way tickets to Iceland. He grew up there, has family there. And the D.C. police have no jurisdiction.”
“But the Icelandic police,” he said. “Interpol—”
“They can’t find him. It’s possible his family is protecting him. They say he hasn’t left the country. We asked a Norwegian private security firm to investigate, but their person spent weeks in Iceland and got nowhere. He filed his final report after he was injured badly enough to end up in the hospital. That was ten months ago.”
“Something new happened,” Peter said. “That’s why you’re here now.”
She nodded. “Three days ago.” She stopped, cleared her throat, started again. “Three days ago, Óskar’s school bag turned up in Reykjavík Harbor. It was a Lego backpack. He begged for that bag for months. Sarah bought it for him before he started first grade. He even slept with it. When it washed up in the harbor, it still held his favorite book and his stuffed bear and his collection of little Lego people. He kept them in a plastic peanut-butter jar with a lid, along with his membership card for the Lego Club. His name was on the card. The air in that jar is the only reason the backpack remained afloat in that frozen ocean.”
Her grief rose in her like a breaking wave. He watched her struggle for control. She went under for a moment. Then she reached out and grasped Peter’s hand and somehow pulled herself back to the surface.
“The day I heard, I called the security firm we had hired before. They were sympathetic, but instead of seeing a sign of hope, they saw it as a confirmation of my grandson’s death. His backpack appeared to have been in the water for quite some time. They felt Iceland was too empty, too wild, to find my Óskar. Or even to find his body. They suggested I simply accept what had happened, and try to move on.” She caught herself again. “I spoke with a dozen more security companies. Large international firms. None of them would do the job. They said there was no hope.” She shook her head, looking down at her hands. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I believe that he’s alive. I can feel it. I know it.”
She looked up at Peter. “Will you help me?”
“I’m not sure I can,” he said. “I don’t know what Tom Wetzel told you, but this isn’t what I do. Ma’am, I’m just a regular person.”
“Tom tells me you were a Marine officer, among the best. He says he’s seen what you can do.”
Peter closed his eyes. More than anything, he wanted not to do this. “I’m not qualified,” he said. “I have no credentials, no authority. I’m not a policeman.”
“I’ve tried all the policemen,” she said. “I need somebody else. Someone who will care enough to keep trying. Someone who won’t stop until he finds my Óskar.”
She took a rectangular package from her purse. It was a brown cardboard document folder with accordion folds and a flap cover that fastened with a string. She unwound the string and reached inside. She didn’t have to fish around to find the photograph. The heavy paper was soft at the corners and worn at the edges from where she’d held it many times before. It showed a serious, bearded man holding a smiling blond boy in his arms, a boy already looking for his next mud puddle.
“That’s my Óskar,” she said. “And the man who murdered my Sarah. Please bring little Óskar back to us.”
Peter put his knuckle on the picture. “That’s Erik?”
She nodded.
“I have to ask. Are you looking for revenge? I won’t kill him.”
He didn’t say that he didn’t kill people. He’d killed more than he could count, some for good reasons. It was the rest that haunted him.
“Dear God, no,” she said. “I just want to salvage something good from all this. I want you to find my Óskar, that’s all. Find him, contact the police, and I’ll do what’s needed to bring him home.”
She held out the folder. Her hand was shaking.
“My family has more money than we’ll ever need. My late first husband had a knack for it. I’ll give you whatever payment you want.” She pushed the envelope toward him. “This is fifty thousand dollars to start, in cash, along with a credit card for expenses. The card has no limit. Anything you need, buy it. If you need more cash, just ask. The police report is in here, along with everything from the other investigators. Start with his family. His family is the key.”
“Mrs. Price,” Peter said. “I really don’t—”
“Please.” Her voice cracked in the quiet car. Her eyes were luminous. “Just look at the police report, that’s all I ask. I’m fifty-nine years old. Both my children are dead and gone. I’ll never have another. And that man has taken my only grandchild.”
Peter watched as a tear slipped loose and slid down her ruined cheek. He wanted to brush it away, but he didn’t. Her grief was hers to carry. It might have been the only thing keeping her together. The only thing she had left to hold.
He thought of that child’s lonely backpack adrift in the bay. With only the air in a plastic jar of toys to keep it from sinking to the cold, rocky bottom.
“Mrs. Price, what’s your grandson’s favorite book? The one they found in his bag?” Peter kept his voice gentle. He made sure to speak of the boy in the present tense.
Her voice fluttered. “Where the Wild Things Are. By Maurice Sendak. Do you know it?”
Peter pulled in a deep breath, then let it out. He reached out and took the heavy folder from her hand.
“I do.”
* * *
—
When Peter got out of the car, the angular man with the umbrella walked around to meet him in the street. He had long narrow limbs and a pale hatchet face pocked with acne scars. “Are you going to do what she’s asking?”
The rain blew sideways and the gutters were ankle-deep in runoff. Peter tucked the folder under his coat. The static was happy to be outside.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably.”
“Another guy tried. It didn’t go well.”
“She told me.”
“You any good at this?”
Peter raised a shoulder. “Guess I’ll find out.”
The angular man leaned toward him almost imperceptibly. More a matter of attitude, a shift in weight, than a change in actual angle.
“I been with Mrs. Price almost ten years,” he said. “Before that I was twenty years a D.C. Metro street cop. Narcotics, gang task force, you name it. I’m just saying. So you know who you’re talking to.”
“I figured you’d been something like that,” Peter said. “That’s why you’re wearing a clip-on tie with that nice suit. You don’t want a noose on your neck for somebody to hang you with.”
The other man gave Peter a hard smile. “What I’m saying is, you better not just be taking her money.”
“I’m not taking any money,” Peter said. “Not yet. And if I do, it’ll just be for expenses.”
The angular man processed this information, gauging its truthfulness. “How come?”
“Somebody has to.” Peter walked past the other man. He didn’t mention the other reason. The simmer of static rising, thrilled at the prospect of being useful again. Another chance at atonement.
“Wait.”
Peter stopped.
The angular man held out a card between two fingers. “I’m Novak. You get in trouble, call me.”
Peter scratched his chin. �
�Does Mrs. Price always take you with her when she flies?”
Novak nodded. “Where she goes, I go.”
“You stay at the house with her?”
“There’s a guest apartment for security. But I’m full-time on Mrs. Price.”
Peter nodded, took the card, then turned and walked toward the restaurant, feeling the weight of the heavy brown folder under his arm, sheltered for the moment against the hard-blown rain.
He hadn’t even opened the folder and already he had questions.
Why did this guy, Erik, kill his wife?
Why did Catherine Price need a bodyguard?
And what the hell was he going to tell June?
11
Peter found a table in the rear where he could get his back against a wall, see all the exits, and had a good view out the wide windows to the street, to keep the static happy. Although the static would have been happier without the television replaying footage of the smoking tanker that had been bombed off the coast of Venezuela.
After the waiter took his order and brought back a Jubel Ale, Peter opened the folder and laid out the contents. Along with the worn photo of serious Erik and little Óskar, there were two thick sheaves of paper held together by purple binder clips and a fat yellow padded mailing envelope.
He upended the envelope over the table. Five banded stacks of crisp new hundreds spilled out, along with a matte-black credit card and a tiny thumb drive. He assumed the drive had the same information as the paperwork in digital form. The name on the credit card was Price Consulting.
At the next table, a young couple sat with their beers halfway to their mouths, staring at the neat stacks of money. Then their eyes turned to Peter in his knee-torn Carhartts and worn flannel shirt. They looked younger than Peter had ever remembered being. He smiled politely, reloaded the padded envelope, and tucked it back into the folder.
The first binder clip held police information about the murder of Sarah Price, at least a hundred pages. Skimming, Peter looked at the initial incident report from the first officer on the scene. The evidence inventory, which included a .44 caliber revolver with three spent shells and two intact rounds. Reports from the fingerprint and ballistics technicians. The coroner’s report. Interview notes and transcriptions. Purchase records for the revolver and the plane tickets. A statement from someone at Homeland Security to the effect that their records showed that Eiríkur Grímsson and Óskar Eiríksson had left the United States on Icelandair. Paperwork about frozen bank accounts and credit cards.
