The Deep Dark Descending

by Eskens,Allen

  “I didn’t know you were a fan,” Niki said.

  “Huge fan. Fireball had two tickets and didn’t go.”

  “Got sidetracked I guess.”

  “I also found a receipt in his wallet. Looks like he bought some gas this morning—at 6:28. It’s from the Holiday on Sixth Avenue North.”

  “Not far from the funeral pyre,” she said.

  “Close in both time and place. Can you call Holiday and have them preserve the security footage for me?”

  “Seems like Orton did just about everything he could to get caught.”

  “All our cases should be this easy.”

  “While you were over getting the warrant, I did some cyber stalking. Orton and Pippa Stafford were an item, at least according to Orton’s Facebook.”

  “Didn’t have time to change his status after he killed her?”

  “Apparently it slipped his mind. She’s a loan officer at U.S. Bank. No criminal record. Not even a ticket. As white bread as they come.”

  “Lover’s spat?”

  “It’s as good a theory as anything else right now. Is Fireball able to talk yet?”

  “Still sedated. I have his phone. I’ll have forensics dig through it, maybe get some text messages to give us a motive. Who knows.”

  “I’ll order up the surveillance footage from Holiday. Want to meet for lunch and compare notes?”

  “I . . . uh . . . I have an errand to run. I’ll have to catch up with you later.”

  “Is that errand named Farrah?”

  “What?”

  “She called back on your office phone. Wanted to tell you that she was running a few minutes late. So, you got something you want to tell me?”

  “Fine . . . I admit it . . . I’m really not a Toby Keith fan.”

  “I’m not kidding Max. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, I just have some things I need to take care of.”

  “Things that have nothing to do with Fireball?”

  “Believe it or not, I have interests outside of my job.”

  “And as I recall, the last time you got caught up in those interests . . .” Niki paused as if weighing her words carefully. “Things didn’t turn out so great. You almost lost your job and I almost lost a partner. I just want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “I don’t need a mother.” I responded a little angrier than I had intended. “I have everything under control.”

  “You may not need a mother, but you do need a friend.”

  I could think of nothing to say that would not hurt Niki, so the phone connection filled with silence. Then I said, “I got to go. The doctor’s here. I’ll catch you after lunch.” I hung up before she could respond. I needed time to come up with a lie, something plausible enough that Niki would pretend to believe it. I needed to keep her clear of this avalanche.

  I put my phone in my pocket and turned to Fuller. “You don’t have to stay here any longer,” I said.

  “What if he wakes up and tries to leave?”

  “If he leaves, he’ll probably die of an infection. I don’t think even he’s that stupid.”

  I looked at my watch and saw noon was approaching and I wanted to be at the Hen House early. I wanted time to think about things before Ms. McKinney arrived. McKinney was an interpreter. How did that fit into my wife’s death? Maybe it didn’t. But then again, this was all about looking at things with fresh eyes. Jenni didn’t die because of someone I had arrested. She died because of something she knew. Somewhere out in the farthest outskirts of my mind, the notion of an interpreter being involved made sense, but I still felt as though I was looking though a lens smeared with Vaseline.

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 9

  The Hen House was a street-level restaurant that offered more ways to eat an egg than there were colors in a big box of crayons, the kind of place that preferred the clatter of plates and cups over the soothing tones of violin music. I took a seat at the lunch counter where I could keep an eye on the door, and ordered a coffee. The waitress brought it with a smile that seemed to be working hard to hide a hangover. The restaurant was starting to fill up, so I asked the hostess to hold a table open for when my companion arrived. I then took a seat at the counter.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to see a text from Niki. We need to talk, was all it read.

  I was about to call back when, a woman with a bright-yellow ski parka walked into the Hen House, stopping at the door to scan the room. I put my phone away and walked toward her. When she saw me she smiled a broad smile and waved. I hadn’t shown her my badge or gun, but she seemed to recognize me. She slipped the hood of her parka down, revealing light brown hair, curly and highlighted; it had a bounce to it as she walked. Despite the cold, she wore ripped jeans tucked into brown leather boots with buckles around the ankles.

  “Farrah?” I held out my hand to her and she shook it. “I’m Max Rupert.”

  “I know,” she said. And there it was—that look of condolence that flashed across the faces of people when they remembered that I was a widower. The hostess brought us to a table near the window where we could watch the brittle winter swirl by. Nothing moved outside except the occasional newspaper page or plastic bag skidding down the street. Inner-city tumble weeds.

  “It’s supposed to be warming up,” she said.

  “Really? I hadn’t heard.” I said.

  “Yeah, a heat wave. May even get up as high as ten above.”

  “Time to break out the tee shirts,” I said. My lame attempt at humor received an obligatory smile from Farrah. I picked up my menu to have something to do with my hands. I had so many things I wanted to say, to ask, but I still hadn’t organized my thoughts. The awkwardness at our table hung thick in the air. Finally I asked the question that seemed to be blocking all others.

  “Have we met?” I said. “When you walked in, you acted like you knew me already.”

  “No, we haven’t met, but I’ve seen you before.” She paused as if her next statement were giving up a secret, then said, “I was at Jenni’s funeral.”

  “You were? I don’t recall.”

  “You had . . . other things on your mind.”

  “Were you and Jenni friends?”

  “No, I’d only met her once—the day she died.”

  The waitress came to take our orders, jotting down everything on a green pad of paper: “How do you like your eggs? Pancakes or toast? Sausage or bacon? Hash browns or breakfast potatoes? Juice? Milk?” I wanted to scream at her to leave, but I smiled instead and answered her questions politely. When the waitress was finally satisfied that every possible detail had been settled, she left.

  “You saw Jenni the day she died?”

  “I got a call to go to the emergency room at HCMC that morning. I’m fluent in five languages, but I specialize in Russian and Baltic states. Your wife had a patient who couldn’t speak English.”

  “Do you remember the patient? A name? Anything?”

  “I’m not sure it’s appropriate to talk about a patient.”

  “It might be very important. I need to find out what happened to Jenni.”

  “I thought she was killed in a car accident—a hit-and-run in the parking garage.”

  I hesitated before saying any more. The fewer people who knew the inner workings of my clock, the better. At the same time, I needed to hear what she had to say about Jenni’s last day on Earth. I decided I had little choice but to trust her with a couple of my bread crumbs. “Jenni’s death wasn’t random. It wasn’t an accident.”

  Farrah’s eyes narrowed as if searching for something in the past.

  “I need to know what was going on in Jenni’s life that day. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  Farrah looked out through the frozen window, biting her lower lip as she considered my request. Then she turned back to me and leaned into the table.

  “There was this girl. She was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen. I think she was a . . . I think she
was a prostitute. She had all this makeup on. It didn’t look right because she seemed so young.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “I think it was Zoya. I’ll have her name in my old files, but I believe it was Zoya.”

  “Why was she at the hospital?”

  “That’s why I remember this case so well. Your wife told me that a patrol officer found her stumbling down the street all cut up. She had been thrown through a window at a motel—a second story window. They found the room, but no one was there. Whoever did that to her also beat her up. Her face was swollen. She had cuts and bruises all over her body. The doctors said that two of her finger were broken, she was bleeding from her ears, and . . . well . . . your wife thought maybe she’d been raped.”

  “Was there an investigator there with you?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “When I first got there, it was just me and your wife. We talked to Zoya and she told us that she was scared. She didn’t want to tell us what happened. Your wife asked her if she had been raped. Zoya started crying. And then the investigator walked in and Zoya clammed up.”

  “Which investigator?”

  “I don’t remember his name. All I remember was that when he walked in Zoya’s eyes grew big and she stopped talking. She wouldn’t say another word.”

  “Did the cop say anything to Zoya to make her do that?”

  “No. He was polite. Very professional. Your wife said that sometimes victims of rape react that way to men so she took him out of the room and suggested that he listen from the hallway. But it didn’t work. Just the sight of a man put Zoya into like . . . shock. She just stared at the wall and cried.”

  “She was Russian?”

  “Belarusian. It’s a country between Russia and Poland.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Nothing really. I only spoke to her for a few minutes before she shut down. After about half an hour of trying to get her to talk again, your wife told that cop and me to leave. We’d try it again after Zoya settled down.”

  “And did you try it again?”

  “Well—”

  The waitress stepped up to the table with a tray full of plates. That kind of fast turn-around was one of the things I appreciated most about breakfast restaurants, but the interruption, as polite as it was, annoyed me. She skillfully placed the meals in front of us, getting everything correct. I had been hungry when I ordered my food, but now my stomach felt twisted and queasy. Farrah waited for the waitress to leave before she continued.

  “That’s the disturbing part of all this. Later that day, probably around lunchtime, she called me back. I didn’t answer—I can’t remember why—but she left a message. She said that Zoya was talking again. Your wife was recording it all in a notebook—writing it all down phonetically, but she had no idea what the girl was saying. She wanted me to come back in and try to get her statement. When I got the message, I called Jenni back and she asked me if I could be there at 3:30. I said sure.”

  “You had a meeting for 3:30 on the day Jenni died.”

  “Yes.”

  Farrah had been picking at her food as she spoke, but now put her fork down and turned her full attention to me, her eyes soft with sympathy. “When I got to the hospital, the parking garage on Eighth Street was shut down. I didn’t know what was going on. I went to your wife’s office and was there for about ten minutes before someone told me that she got hit by a car in the ramp. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “I appreciate that. I also appreciate that you came to her funeral even though it sounds like you didn’t know her all that well. That was nice of you.”

  “I could tell that she wanted to help that girl. Your wife really seemed dedicated to her clients. And I admired her for that . . . but . . .”

  Farrah poked at a piece of bacon and again bit at her lower lip, her eyes averting away from mine.

  “But what?”

  “But . . . that’s not why I went to the funeral—I mean that’s part of it, but there’s more.”

  I could tell that she was struggling to say something, so I let the conversation go silent and waited for her to fill the void.

  “You’re going to think I’m strange.” She folded her hands together on her lap, her eyes slowly rising to meet mine. “I went to the funeral to see you.”

  “To see me?”

  “To give you something.” Farrah seemed to be pulling hard on an old memory that made her sad. “When I got home, I felt so depressed and shocked. I’d never had someone die like that—just before we were supposed to meet. It unnerved me I guess. I went to clear my answering machine of voicemails and I heard her voice. I put my finger on the delete button, but stopped. It occurred to me that I had what was probably the last recording of your wife’s voice. I couldn’t bring myself to erase it. So, I downloaded it onto a thumb drive. I was going to give it to you at the funeral. I thought you might like to have it.”

  I could feel a lump growing in my throat. I swallowed it back and took a drink of lukewarm coffee to wash it down. “But you didn’t give it to me.”

  “No. You were so broken up. I didn’t have the nerve.” She went back to stirring her eggs with a fork.

  “I was in pretty bad shape,” I said.

  “I should have given it to you.”

  “It was a nice thought at least.”

  She looked up from her plate. “I think I may still have it. I’m not sure, but I could check if you’d like.”

  I turned my gaze to the frozen street, almost too afraid to hope. I’d watched every home movie Jenni and I had ever made—hundreds of times. I memorized her words and replayed them in my head. The sound of her voice gave her memory a presence in my world. Now, something as simple as an old voicemail, words that were never meant to be preserved, filled me with a surge of emotions. “I’d like that very much,” I said.

  “I’ll look when I get home. I have your number.”

  Let me give you my cell,” I said, writing my number on a napkin and handing it to her. “So, I take it you didn’t go speak with Zoya again?”

  “No. In fact, after I’d heard about what happened to your wife, well . . . it was kind of confusing. The whole ER was flipping out. People were crying and hugging each other. I thought I might be of some help, maybe explain to Zoya what had happened, so I went to her room. When I got there, she was gone. No one knew where she went. I think she just walked out in the middle of the confusion.”

  “Anything else you can think of that might identify her—in case she was using a false name?”

  “Well like I said, she looked young, dark hair, five foot five maybe, pretty under the bruising, I think. And oh yeah, she had a tattoo, right about here.” Farrah touched a spot of skin behind her left ear with two fingers. “Do you know what a ruble is?”

  “Russian money.”

  “She had the symbol for the ruble tattooed behind her ear.” Farrah reached into her purse and pulled out a pen. On a napkin she drew the ruble symbol, a capital P with a crossbar just below the loop of the P. She slid the napkin with the ₽ on it across the table to me.

  An old memory creaked open somewhere in the way-back of my brain. I stared at the symbol on the napkin, my mind digging deep, searching. I’d seen that tattoo before. But where? When? Then it came to me. Jane Doe. I had seen that symbol tattooed on the neck of a young woman found dead four years ago. I remember because hers was the first case I worked after my bereavement leave—a leave Commander Walker forced me to take. The case was never solved. What were the odds that two women would bare that same tattoo on the same part of their body?

  The waitress came with our check and I handed her a debit card.

  “Does that help?” Farrah asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. Whether it helps or not, I want to thank you for meeting with me. It means a lot to know that Jenni was trying to help someone the day she died.”

  “I’d take it a step further,” Farrah sa
id. “Your wife believed that Zoya was being trafficked, sexually. Jenni was hoping to get her out of that life. As I saw it, your wife was trying to save that girl’s life.”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket again. I pulled it out to see another text from Niki. I really need to talk to you, Max.

  “It’s my partner,” I said. “I need to get back to the office.” I texted back. On my way.

  My phone then buzzed again. Don’t come in. I’ll meet you out front. Text when you’re here.

  Chapter 10: Up North

  Chapter 10

  Up North

  I ride the snowmobile back to the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area—a buffer zone between Canada and Minnesota where motorized vehicles are not allowed. From here I walk. I only take a couple steps before a thought occurs to me. Later, on my trip back, I may be too exhausted to turn the snowmobile around. I go back to the sled and pick up the ass-end, heaving it in a semicircle until the machine faces back toward the cabin. Then I head north.

  About the time I start my third trek across the lake, something that the man said comes back to me. “Who are you?” he’d asked. At the time, it pissed me off. The gall of that man—to look me in the eye and pretend he doesn’t know exactly who I am. I didn’t answer him, and now I begin to wonder that maybe he took my silence as some kind agreement that he had no reason to know me.

  Is that the game he wants to play? Does he really think that if he denies everything he’ll put me to some burden of proof? If that’s the case, he’s made a grievous miscalculation. The man has a noose around his neck and he thinks we’re playing tug-o-war. He doesn’t realize that denial is more dangerous to him right now than any wolf or sub-zero night could ever be. His denials feed me. They put steel in my bones and warmth in my muscles. Go ahead. Pretend you’re innocent. Let’s see where that gets you.

  I stop walking when I get to a spot that seems to be the middle of the lake. I separate the rope from the tarp and shove the tarp into the snow so that a gust of wind can’t blow it away. I also drop the auger, which disappears beneath snow. Then I tuck the rope under my arm and start walking again.