by Eskens,Allen
“What were you doing out there?” she asks. “You scared me to death. I thought it was Mikhail coming back.”
I can’t talk. I feel like my body is starting to shut down. I’m not sure what I would say if I could speak. I can’t tell her the truth. Finally I manage to say. “Mikhail’s gone.” I won’t explain what that means. For all she knows, Mikhail made it into Canada and is on his way to some other country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Ana leads me up a staircase and to the main room of the cabin. She guides my shoulders until I am sitting on a large sofa. She kneels at my feet and tugs at the frozen laces of my boots. I want to shoo her away but I know that my fingers would never be able to grip something as small as a bootlace. My feet scream to life as she slides the boots off. Then she gently peels my sock off of my swollen feet. She lifts each foot to inspect it. Then she reaches up and unbuckles both my snow pants and my jeans.
“Take off your clothes,” she orders and walks to the kitchen. I can see her putting water into a kettle as I start stripping down. She reaches into a cupboard and pulls out a fist full of tea bags, opening the kettle and dropping them all in. Then she retrieves a spice jar and adds several spoons full of something red to the concoction.
I wriggle out of my coat and shirt. I have to lay down to get out of my snow pants. They are so stiff they can stand on their own. My jeans are also wet, and cold, but not frozen. When I am in my underwear I begin to shake violently. I fall onto the couch and Ana is at my side again, tucking a thick, down comforter around me. My shivering tugs at my shoulders and back. My jaw rattles and the muscles in my neck cramp up.
Ana climbs under the comforter and wraps her arms around my chest. She lays her head on my cheek and twines her legs around mine. She stays there until the shivering stops. Neither of us say a word. When my breathing returns to normal, she looks up at me and smiles.
The whistle on the kettle shrieks to life and she slips off the couch. She pours the boiling mixture into a large pot, the kind that can hold a dozen roasting ears or more, and adds tap water, sticking her finger in occasionally to test the temperature. When she seems satisfied, she carries the bowl to the couch, laying it on the floor.
“Sit up,” she says.
I do, and she lifts my feet into the bowl. The warm water hurts and I clench my teeth to bare it. I ask, “What is this?”
“It is tea and cayenne pepper. It will shrink the swelling and help with the healing.”
The chemicals in the water swirl around my toes and I start to feel sensation—painful at first—but sensation nonetheless. She folds the comforter around my chest, making sure that no part of my skin is exposed to the air other than my ankles and my face. I lean my head back and close my eyes.
I can hear her moving around the kitchen again, opening cupboard doors and shuffling things around, all in a muffled attempt to be quiet, probably for my benefit. I must have fallen asleep briefly because the next thing I know, she’s nudging me awake. She has a bowl of soup in her one hand and a glass of water in the other.
“You need to eat,” she says.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Shhhh.”
I drink almost the entire glass of water and put the remainder on a small table beside me. I place the soup bowl on my lap and lift the first spoonful to my lips. Chicken-noodle soup. The salty, hot liquid rolls down my throat like some miraculous elixir, healing the burn and bringing life back to parts of my body that had shriveled to dust over those many hours on the lake.As I eat, Ana lifts my feet from the warm bath she had created, drying each with a towel.
She has a tube of something and squeezes a dollop of the lotion onto her hands, rubbing her palms together. Then she starts massaging the lotion onto my feet, paying particular attention to my toes.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Aloe. You have blisters from frostbite.”
Her touch is soft and comforting. A warm bliss inches up my legs and into my chest. She wraps my feet in gauze and strips of a cotton tee shirt. When she is finished with the bandages, I hand her the soup bowl and lay back on the couch. I wait for her to come back. I expect that she will want to know what happened to Mikhail. I close my eyes to think of something to say, and I promptly fall asleep.
I awaken in a darkness splintered by spikes of moonlight riffling through the naked shoots of the birch outside, the rays tipping the walls and furniture into crooked angles. I rise onto my elbows to look around and am reminded that I am in Mikhail Vetrov’s cabin. Everything comes rushing back to me.
I wonder if there had been a dream that jolted me awake, some night terror that sent me scurrying back to consciousness before the pain became too much to bear. Had I been visited by Jenni, or the wolves? Or had some new memory, a vestige of my day on the ice and my unspeakable deed come in the night to haunt me. I touch my temple and feel no sweat. No heart palpitations. No remnant of a nightmare. This time, I had simply awakened for no reason, good or bad.
I stare at the unfamiliar shapes and shadows amassed around me, and wait for the wave of regret. I am in his house, lying on his couch. His bandages bind my wounds. His food nourishes my broken body. And he is dead at my hands. I looked him in the eye and I executed him. I should be torn apart by this fact, rending my clothing and sweating with guilt, but there is nothing there. I do not feel sad. I search for it as a child may search for that one talisman of comfort, the teddy bear, the favorite blanket, that touchstone that calms them in their darkest moments. I search for my remorse, the proof of my own virtue, but find nothing.
It is the absence of the thing that makes me sad. I know what I should be feeling, but it is not there. There is no grain of regret to be conjured, despite my best efforts. I didn’t expect this. I had braced myself for a maelstrom of emotional repercussions, but no such violence has come. I feel fine.
I look for Ana and I find her lying at my side. She had lined up three cushions from another couch to make a small make-shift bed beside the sofa where I had fallen asleep.
I roll onto my side so I can see her better. In that soft blue luminescence, her face seems to radiate its own fine glow. Strands of her hair crisscross her eyes and the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she breathes is almost feline. I can see her sister’s features in her face, and it reminds me that the man I dropped through the hole in the ice drowned Zoya by shoving her face into a toilet. He pulled the strings when Reece Whitton pushed my wife into the path of an oncoming car.
I roll back over and stare at the patterns on the wall until I fall back asleep.
Chapter 44
Chapter 44
The next time I wake up, sunlight fills the cabin. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and sit up. Where Ana had been sleeping the night before lay my clothes, washed and folded. I can hear the muffled clacking of movement in the kitchen. Then Ana stands up on the other side of the island, a frying pan in her hand. She looks my way and smiles.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I was trying to be quiet.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost noon. You must have been very tired.”
“Noon?”
I stand in my underwear, a little wobbly on my tender feet, and began putting on my pants. Ana watches from the kitchen.
“There is very little food here,” she says. “Nothing fresh. Only canned goods and some fish in the freezer. Do you like fish?”
“Huh? Fish? Sure, I like fish.” I pull my flannel shirt over arms so sore that I can barely move them.
“Good because I have thawed some to have for breakfast.”
“You really don’t . . .” I start to beg my way out of breakfast but stop when I see the hint of disappointment in her eyes. I feel like I’m in a hurry, like I need to make an escape from the scene of the crime. I rethink my answer. I have nowhere to go. Not anymore. “You know, fish sounds perfect.”
I sit back down and unwrap the bandages from my feet. My toes are red and tender. I can’t feel anything in my left pinky toe
or in the tips of any of the others. My socks are warm and dry and feel like I’m dipping my foot into warm butter when I pull them on.
In the kitchen, Ana is wearing an oversized Vikings jersey and I think shorts, but I can only see her thighs. She’s also wearing men’s socks rolled down to her ankles to work as slippers. Walking to the kitchen, I’m about to make small talk about the fish when I see my gun on the island countertop.
“My . . . gun?” I pick it up and inspect it. There is still some moisture inside the barrel, but the rest of it looks as good as new. “Where . . .”
“I went out to where you were rutting around last night. It is much easier to find things in the daylight.”
“I thought I told you to stay at that lodge.”
She pours olive oil into the pan and sets it on a hot burner. “It was a nice day for a walk.” She gives me a sly smile to let me know that she is kidding and then turns back to her fish. “Besides, I needed to come here. You would not have understood.”
“I can be a very understanding man. Try me.”
She gives a glance over her shoulder, as if to size up my sincerity. The fish lay on a plate and she pats them dry with a paper towel. Then she leaves the kitchen, heading to a room that I can see is a bedroom. I think she is ignoring me. When she comes back out, she’s carrying a small paper sack. She hands the bag to me and returns to her cooking, lowering the fish into the hot oil.
In the bag, I find a stack of passports held together with a rubber band. I pull the top few from the stack and begin thumbing through them. Women—young girls really—all with Russian sounding names and Greek looking letters skittering across the papers.
“What are these?”
“They are Mikhail’s girls. They are the ones who wear his ruble tattoo behind their ears.”
I shuffle through a few more and find Zoya’s passport and then Ana’s. I count fifteen in all.
Ana turns to face me, letting the fish fry unattended. “If we have no passport, we cannot run away. We cannot go home. We are here illegally and must do as we are told.”
“What will you do with these?” I put the passports back into the bag and slide it to Ana.
“I will find the women. I will send them home—if they will go. I want to help them, if they will let me.”
“That’s very good of you,” I say.
“They will be like me and refuse to listen at first. They are here because of Mikhail. They will be loyal to him. They will not want me to interfere with their lives. But soon, they will come to realize that Mikhail is . . . gone. They will be fearful and they will feel alone. That is when I will be able to help them.”
“Do you need help? I know some people—”
“I will be okay. I am strong. I have been through much and it has made me strong. You have freed me, Max Rupert.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I—”
She turned back around to her fish, flipping them over and sprinkling basil and rosemary and garlic salt on them. The aroma filled the cabin, and my mouth watered its approval.
“And what will you do?” she asks. “You will go back and be a detective?”
“No,” I said. “I will not be going back.”
She looked surprised and a bit saddened by my answer. “Then where will you go?”
“I have a cabin north of Grand Rapids. It’s been in my family since before Minnesota was a state. I’ll take you back to the city and then I plan to go there and sit. I don’t know what’s going to happen beyond that, and I don’t care. I may just live out the rest of my life in that old cabin. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.”
Ana dishes up the fish. “You do not have to take me to Minneapolis. I will drive Mikhail’s car back and park it at his house. I will be careful to not be seen.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“I have. And before I leave, I will clean this cabin. I have experience in doing a proper job of cleaning. When I am finished, there will be no proof of our being here.” She looked at me with eyes chock full of complicity. “We never left Minneapolis, remember?”
After our lunch she gathered the dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher, then shoved the bedding we’d used into the washing machine and started it. For my part, I paced around the cabin trying to think of what I might be overlooking. When I was satisfied that I had accounted for every trace of my being there, I put on my coat and folded my snow pants over my arm.
“I’m going now,” I said.
Ana walked with me to the front door, tucking her hair behind her ear like a school girl as we stopped to say our goodbye.
“Thank you for what you did for me last night,” I said. “You may have saved my life.”
“If I saved your life, then we are even,” she said. She reached up and cupped her hand on my cheek. “Maybe someday . . . if we ever see each other again . . .”
I let my eyes fall to the floor. I could feel the wilt of her palm against my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot who I am.”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s not that at all. Please.” I held her hand in mine and brought it to my lips. “I have to be alone. That’s all. I’m no good right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be good again. I need to be by myself for a while to . . . to figure things out. After that—well who knows. Maybe we’ll find each other again.”
“I would like that,” she said.
I lift her face and kiss her softly on the lips. It is the first time that I’ve kissed a woman since Jenni’s death. I’d forgotten how sweet and soft a woman’s lips could be. I let the kiss linger longer than I had intended, but without regret. Then I kissed her again, this time on her forehead. I nodded and left.
Chapter 45
Chapter 45
I don’t turn my phone back on until I am within a mile of my family’s cabin, a Lincoln-log hovel compared to the palace Mikhail Vetrov called a cabin. The logging road that leads to my place is invisible under the snow, and a four foot ridge of crushed ice lines the side of the highway, left there by the county plows. I can’t make it back to the cabin in the Durango, but I am pretty sure I can jam the car far enough into the snow bank to be off the pavement. I line the Durango up crossways on the highway and make a run at it with all the Durango can muster. I hear plastic crunching as my nose shoots up, the snow exploding around me.
I lay on the accelerator until movement is replaced by the high whine of spinning tires. I’m far enough off the highway to be out of the way, and I call my friend, Sheriff Voight, the man tasked to keep the peace in this sleepy part of the woods, and tell him I’m at the cabin. I don’t need him sending someone out to investigate my abandoned SUV.
I had stopped by a grocery store in Grand Rapids and loaded up on supplies, enough to last a few months, maybe longer if the fishing goes well. It takes me a couple hours to haul everything down the logging trail and to my cabin. I light a fire in the fireplace and watch as the flames grow and dance around the pine logs.
I wait until the cabin is warm before I check my phone. I find eight text messages and three voice mails from Niki. I also see two missed calls from Chief Murphy. I decide to call him first. He doesn’t answer—a stroke of luck.
“Chief, it’s Max Rupert. I guess you’re probably wondering where I am. Sorry I missed my shift. I needed some time off to think. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years, but I am calling to let you know that I am resigning. I’ll make arrangements to turn in my badge, gun, and car. I’m sorry for the short notice, but . . . I need to call it a day.” I hang up.
I go to the text messages from Niki.
WTF. Whitton committed suicide last night. Call me.
Where are you? Things blowing up here.
You’re late. U OK?
Murphy’s looking for you. He’s not happy. Call me.
Starting to worry. What’s going on?
Please call me. Are U OK?
Murphy’s pissed. FYI. I’m getting sca
red. Call me ASAP!
Went by your house 1 a.m. where are you?
I didn’t bother listening to the voicemails. I know what they will say. I hit Niki’s name on my phone and send the call.
“So you are alive,” she says when she answers. “Where the hell you been. Murphy’s threatening to hang you from the rafters.”
“If he wants to hang me, he’ll have to come up to the cabin to do it.”
“The cabin? In January? What’s going on?”
“Niki, I just called Chief Murphy and turned in my resignation. I quit.”
The phone goes silent. I waited.
“Why would you do that?” Her tone holds a far-away sadness, the questioning of someone who didn’t see the punch coming.
“I had to quit Niki. I know you don’t understand, but I had no choice.” I should have better prepared for this conversation. “I need to step out of that world. I don’t belong there anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I . . . I can’t . . .” I shake my head and pull it together. “Nothing happened. It’s time for me to do something else, that’s all.”
“Does this have anything to do with Whitton jumping off the top of a parking ramp?”
I don’t answer.
“It’s a mess here. A million rumors floating around.”
“Just keep your head down and let the rumors swirl. It’ll pass.”
“Max?” She pauses as if trying to find the words she wants to say. Then: “Will I ever see you again?”
“I don’t know.” I’m pretty sure I’m lying to her.
“Are you . . . content?”
“Content?”
I know what she’s asking. She wants to know if I tracked down Jenni’s killer. She wants to know if I found a way to put to rest those ghosts that have been haunting me for the past four and a half years. “Yes,” I said. “I am content.”
She doesn’t ask any further.
“I’m going to miss you, Max.”
“Back at you Niki.”
I want to say so much more. I want to tell her how important she has become to me, how, after all that I had lost, she is the one person still there for me. I want to say all that and more, but instead I say. “I gotta go. Goodbye Niki.”
