The Deep Dark Descending

by Eskens,Allen

  “Poor Mikhail.”

  “No, I swear on my mother’s life. I swear on anything you want. They pushed me out. About five years ago, Whitton and Ana came to me and said that they didn’t need me anymore. They had my contacts in Canada and Belarus. They had Reece inside the police to watch things. Ana ran the girls for me anyway, so why did they need me. They told me that they were taking over the operation and that they would pay me what I had been paying to Whitton. I would be the front man for the cleaning company, but Ana took over day-to-day operations.”

  “You had the video of Whitton. If he turned on you, you could destroy him.”

  “No I couldn’t. Don’t you see? Without Ana on my side, what good would that footage be? If Ana says it’s an act—a married couple doing some role playing—it becomes worthless. It’s a husband and wife getting a little dark. That’s all.”

  “Why are you lying?” I ask. My head hurts. My whole body hurts. The hunger in my stomach burns, and my arms feel as thin as tissue paper. I turn the auger, but I’m not sure it’s digging down.

  “I’m not lying. I swear, I haven’t been the boss of the operation for years.”

  “You’re going to make me kill you aren’t you?”

  “No! I’m telling you the truth.”

  “In a little while you’re going to change your story again, and you’re going to beg me to forgive you. You’ll add a little more to your confession—who knows, maybe the next story will be the truth. But it won’t matter, it’ll be too late. Every time you make up another lie, you force my hand. I’ll have no choice because you’ve given me no choice. In the end you’ll repent and swear that you’re a changed man, that you’ll never harm anyone again. But I won’t believe you. You’re giving me no choice.”

  “I’m not lying! You don’t have to kill me. I wasn’t the one who killed your wife. Ana did it. It was Ana who ordered the hit. Ana was the boss.”

  I stop drilling, clench my fists, and scream, “GOD DAMMIT, SHUT UP!”

  The lake goes silent except for the wind. The sun has closed its eyes to my little undertaking, and to the east, a full moon slips out from behind the billow of clouds, its light dressing the snowy surface of the lake in a sparkle of blue. Not far away, expanding ice sends up a moan, which almost makes me think that the lake itself is baying. Such a beautiful night for such an ugly endeavor. I’m almost through to the lake on hole-number seven. I start turning the auger again.

  “You can’t kill me,” Mikhail says. “I’m not the one you want. Ana killed your wife. She’s the one who ordered it. I didn’t know about it until after the fact. I only knew about it because they told me.”

  “They told you about it?”

  “I swear. I told them both to get out. I didn’t want anything to do with no murder. That’s why I didn’t know what you were talking about. They never told me the details. I never knew who they murdered. All they said was they had to kill a social worker because one of the girls was running her mouth. That’s all I knew. I swear to God.”

  I break through to the lake. I only have one hole left to drill. I take a moment to chip ice from the tops of earlier holes, which have frozen over. As I do so, I lay Mikhail’s latest story over what I already know. He’s done a pretty good job of filling in blanks and explaining things, but, as with all lies, there are still gaps, mistakes. His fast thinking failed to account for one big hole: if Ana was behind all this, why would she kill her sister? Also, he doesn’t know what Ana told me that morning. I will tell him soon, and by then, it will be too late.

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 38

  Ana fell asleep around two in the morning and slept through my stopping in Duluth to top off the gas tank—paid in cash. I let her sleep until I turned onto the Gunflint Trail, heading west out of Grand Marais.

  “Where are we?” she asked, in a groggy voice.

  “Gunflint Trail.”

  She rubbed her eyes and looked around as if to get her bearing, but there were no landmarks to speak of. The Trail, a two-lane blacktop road, snaked west for sixty miles into the heart of the Superior National Forest, running more-or-less parallel to the Canadian border. Driving Gunflint was akin to passing through a tunnel. Pine and birch rose like walls of a canyon on either side of us. And with the snow choking the headlights and the dark sky pressing down from above, the whole world seemed as small as the inside of a box car. At times I felt dizzy and a little claustrophobic.

  “It is a long way down this road,” Ana said. She leaned up against the dash, her gaze scanning the glow of my headlights.

  I could see the impression of tire tracks under the new snow. There were tracks going in both directions, so I knew that we weren’t the only ones crazy enough to challenge the storm. Somewhere under my tires were the tracks laid down by Mikhail—unless he had the good sense to pull over at a motel. I would know soon enough.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  “It is a small path. It will go this way.” She swam her hand to the right.

  “Are there any signs?”

  “I think so, but I can’t remember. “I’ve only been there two times.”

  “You’ve been there twice?”

  “I went there when Mikhail brought me to America. I told you about that. I went there a second time, four years ago. I didn’t understand the reason then. Reece told me that we were going there to get closer. He was acting like he wanted to be my husband, not just my owner. He called it a belated honeymoon. I should have suspected the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “I hated Reece Whitton. I loathed him. I was with him because of Mikhail and he knew it. There was no marriage—not in my eyes and not in his. I went where he told me to go and did what he told me to do, but we had no marriage, so there would be no honeymoon. He brought me to the cabin to keep me from hearing about Zoya.”

  I started to understand. “Her death was in the news,” I said. “We posted her picture on television. We were hoping someone might identify her.”

  Ana nodded her head. “That is what I assume. When I saw the file you had on Zoya, I understood why Reece brought me to the cabin. There is no television there. No newspapers. He kept me there for six weeks. I did not understand why. Now I know. They needed me in the dark until the story about Zoya’s death faded away.”

  “You didn’t know that your sister went missing? That was four years ago. What did you think happened to her?”

  “At first, when Mikhail offered to bring Reece into the operation, Reece did not agree. He saw how the path could only lead to his destruction. But he also saw few alternatives. In the end Reece agreed to Mikhail’s proposition, but only if Mikhail gave me to him as part of the deal. I would become his wife on paper, a title that exaggerated my true role.

  “I told Mikhail that I did not want to go. That’s when Mikhail told me that he was bringing Zoya to America. The trip had already been arranged. Mikhail would do to Zoya what he did to me. I begged Mikhail not to bring her here. I promise him that I would go with Reece if he would send Zoya back to Belarus. I did not want her to suffer what I had suffered.

  “Mikhail agreed. He said that if I went with Reece, he would send Zoya home. I could never talk to her again, but she would be safe. He knew that my love for Zoya was my final strength. Mikhail knew that if he deceived me on that score, I would turn on him.”

  “I believed him when he made that promise. But Mikhail Vetrov is not a man of honor. He brought my sister here and did not tell me. I was told that she went back to Belarus to be with our mother. She sent me a letter. I believed it. But I know now that her letter was a lie. They must have made her write it—probably from the same locked room at the cabin where he kept me prisoner. Mikhail’s people mailed the letter from Lida, but she was here in America, being murdered.”

  “You never tried to contact her?”

  “I am not permitted to have contact with my family. I am not permitted to use the internet. My phone does not have data. Reece
spied on me for Mikhail, but it was not necessary. I promised to obey Mikhail if he sent Zoya back to Belarus. I kept my promise. Mikhail did not.”

  I slowed the car as I saw a set of tire tracks diverging down a narrow path to the right, their faint outline barely visible beneath the fresh snow. There were still other tracks that continued straight.

  “Is that it?” I asked, coming to a stop at the mouth of the turn.

  Ana sat up straight and looked down the trail studying it for a good ten seconds. “No, that is not it. It is farther ahead.”

  At ten minutes before six a.m., the night still maintained its dark cloak, but it wouldn’t be long before lighter shades of gray began to filter into the sky. We were running out of time. I lowered my window to let in some fresh air. I needed to wake up.

  We had been driving the Gunflint Trail for an hour and an half but had barely covered forty-five miles. That’s when we rounded a turn and came upon another thin road cutting to the north. Ana locked onto that road with the sharpness of a hunting dog approaching a pheasant. She held her hand into the air to signal me to slow.

  “This is it,” she whispered. “His cabin is down there, about a mile and an half. He will still be sleeping—or maybe he is getting ready to leave.” She looked to the east as if to gauge the rise of the sun. “I don’t think he’ll leave before the sun comes up. The trail is very dangerous in places. It is very steep. We can catch him by surprise.”

  I kept driving.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I let you come along to show me where to find him. That‘s all. Your part is done. I’m dropping you off up here a ways.”

  I’d been watching the signs for a resort call the Gunflint Lodge ever since we turned out of Grand Marais. The turnoff to Mikhail’s cabin was only ten miles from the resort. I needed a place to deposit Ana before I finished my hunt.

  “You cannot do this,” Ana shouted. “You have no right to do this.”

  “I can’t have you with me,” I said. “I’m going after Mikhail and you’re going to wait at this lodge up ahead. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I will not—”

  “This isn’t up for discussion. You’re not coming with me.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I’ll pick you up after—”

  “I will not be denied!” Ana screamed and grabbed for the steering wheel.

  I shoved her back into her seat, gripping the front of her coat and holding her at arm’s length. She tried to bite my wrist and I pulled my hand back.

  Her eyes blazed with hatred as she cursed at me in Belarussian. Then she said, “If you think you can get me out of this car you’re sadly mistaken. I will fight you. That man killed my sister.”

  “That man killed my wife!” I yelled.

  I had blurted the words out before I had time to think. Ana stopped her attack cold. What had been hatred and rage in her eyes now melted into confusion.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Mikhail killed your wife?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Please.” She reached across and laid her hand on my arm. “Please tell me.”

  I thought about the risk of opening myself up to this woman, a woman I’d known for a matter of hours. But then I thought about her tears as she told me about her life and about her love for her sister, Zoya, the girl who connected Mikhail to Jenni. In a way, I felt that Ana had earned the right to hear the truth. Somewhere in my sleep-deprived brain, it became important that I tell her about Jenni.

  “Not long before Zoya was killed, someone threw her through a plate glass window, sent her to the hospital. My wife, Jenni, was a social worker there. She took care of your sister, and Zoya told Jenni some things. She spoke in Belarussian so my wife didn’t know what she was saying. I know now that Zoya was trying to talk about Mikhail. I didn’t know who Mikhail was until tonight.”

  “Why do you say that Mikhail killed your wife? Do you have proof of this?”

  “Your husband and a man named Ray Kroll were instructed to kill her. They made it look like a hit-and-run, and that’s what we thought it was. But now I know the truth. Mikhail ordered her death and they carried it out. Reece is dead. Kroll is dead. And Mikhail . . . well he’s . . . I’m not going to let him make it to Canada.”

  Ana looked pale in the soft glow of the dashboard lights. She had sunk back into her seat, and all that fight she had a minute ago had drained away. I expected her to ask me questions, maybe demand proof of what I said, but she didn’t. Ana turned her face to the window on her door and didn’t make a sound.

  I pulled into Gunflint Lodge, a small complex of cabins and trails that funneled down the side of a hill to the main lodge at the edge of a lake. The soft light of morning had begun to bleed through the trees and spill out onto the frozen expanse that separated Minnesota from Canada. I parked the Durango and walked to the front door of the lodge where a dim, yellow light glowed its welcome. Ana waited until I had gone in before she followed.

  The door opened into a vestibule not much bigger than three paces each direction. I crossed the vestibule and tried the next door. Locked. I looked around for a phone or buzzer to call someone to come and let us in. Then I noticed a sign on the inside door that read “Open at 7: A.M.” I peered through the glass for any sign of life. Nothing.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. A topographical map of Superior National Forest hung on the wall and in the dim light, I found the tiny X that designated the lodge. I backtracked to the trail where Mikhail’s cabin lay and studied the terrain and distances to the Boundary Water’s Canoe Area, to the Canadian border and beyond, doing my best to commit it to memory.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, retrieving all of my cash. “Take this.” I shoved the money into Ana’s hands.

  “No. I don’t—”

  “I don’t have time to argue,” I said. “You can stay here. They open at seven. It’s heated here in the vestibule. When they let you in, get a room. I’ll come back for you when I’m . . . just stay here.”

  I started to leave but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “Wait,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

  “I have to go. He’s getting away.”

  “Please, listen.”

  “What?” I snapped.

  Her eyes looked up at me, beseeching me to listen to her. “I know about your wife’s death. I know what happened to her. I did not know she was your wife—I promise—not until just now. I know what they did to your wife. I need to tell you. You must know this before you go.”

  Ana eased me onto the pine bench by the wall, and there she proceeded to tell me the details of Jenni’s death.

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 39

  The trail leading to Mikhail’s cabin still held the faint impression of tire tracks under the snow. I drove to the turnoff with my headlights extinguished. The sun was close enough to the horizon to give relief from the darkness, but the snow fell in a thick, cottony wave that made it seem like I was driving through a curtain.

  I parked at the entrance to the trail and slipped into my snow pants, removing my gun from its holster and putting it into my coat pocket so I could zip the pants shut. My boots and coat were high-end, but old, and I seemed to recall that one of my boots had a hole in it. Walmart-quality gloves and stocking cap finished my ensemble.

  As I started down the hill the snow thickened into a flurry so heavy I could barely see twenty yards, but I could see the dip of the tire tracks at my feet well enough to follow them. Soon the tracks turned and disappeared into the forest. Through the trees I could make out the faint outline of a structure—and lights. He was there.

  I moved into the tree line, crouching low to creep beneath the branches. The snow rose above my knees and each step required effort to keep from tipping over. Ahead was the trace outline of the cabin, the pallid gold of a rough-hewn pine exterior filtered through t
he wall of snow. I removed the glove from my right hand and drew my gun out of my coat pocket.

  I could hear a motor running. The sound seemed to be coming from the far side of the cabin. I entered a clearing and side-stepped my way along the trees until I came to a tool shed at the edge of the property. The door was open, so I peeked inside, my gun leading the way. It was empty except for the clutter of random items you’d expect in such a shack: life jackets, canoe paddles, rope, an ice auger, and gardening tools.

  I moved down-slope and rounded the back side of the cabin. This was not a cabin like my little hovel in the woods north of Grand Rapids. Through the snow, I could see a deck jutting out beneath on A-Frame wall of glass, which rose up a good twenty feet, the sparkle of electric light making the whole facade glow in the burgeoning dawn. On any other day, this might have been the perfect setting for a Christmas card.

  I followed the sound of the running engine along the back of the cabin, leveling my gun in that direction. I hadn’t had my glove off for all that long, but already I could feel the cold filling the spaces in my knuckles.

  Like an iceberg emerging from a fogbank, the source of the engine noise came into view. A snowmobile. I took a few more steps and could see that it stood idling, unmanned. Someone had started it to let it warm up for a trip. A helmet lay on the seat, and the light dusting of snow on top of the helmet meant that Mikhail had laid it on there within the past few minutes.

  Suddenly, I sensed movement in my periphery. Before I could turn to look, a wedge of pine firewood smashed into the back of my wrist. Pain exploded in my arm shooting needles of fire and ice up my neck, and sending my gun sailing, disappearing into a haze of white.

  I turned to see a second log heading for my face. I lurched backward to dodge it, my legs getting twisted in the deep snow, and I fell back. Mikhail stood at the back of the house next to a stack of firewood where he picked up a third log and flung it at me. This one I was ready for and knocked it down just before it hit my chest. He picked up a fourth and chucked it blindly in my general direction as he began a mad dash for the snowmobile.