by Steven James
More than a dozen broad-antlered whitetail deer heads and one elk head had been mounted on the walls of the restaurant. Tessa, to put it mildly, was not an advocate of sport hunting, and I could only imagine her reaction walking into a place like this. I remembered the two trophy bucks mounted in Sean’s living room and wondered how I was going to navigate that situation if she did end up making it over here, but then I saw Amber seated alone near a window at the far end of the restaurant, and my thoughts of how to deal with Tessa’s potential reaction to mounted deer heads disappeared.
Amber had glanced down at her menu, and the sunlight from the window warmed her face, giving her a soft, warm glow, making her seem almost otherworldly. Angelic.
She hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her three years ago. Amber was thirty-three now but looked at least five years younger. I’d never thought of her as beautiful in the way that a movie starlet or a model is-with perfect features smoothed over with careful layers of makeup. Rather, she made up for her relatively anonymous looks with an infectious vitality, a contagious love for life, and a disarming flirtiness that she tended to weave, without realizing it, into her frequent and endearing smiles.
She set the menu aside and looked around. When she saw me, her eyes lit up. “Pat!” I gave her a small wave and made my way to her table. She’d already stood to greet me by the time I arrived.
And then she was in my arms. Surprisingly, she still wore the same perfume-gentle and delicate and femininely alluring. The scent seemed so familiar to me. I backed away just as she turned her cheek for me to give her a kiss of greeting. Though it might have been impolite, I refrained, said instead, “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
I gestured for her to have a seat, but she hesitated slightly, and we ended up sitting down almost simultaneously, as if we’d planned it that way. This brought a light smile from her.
“Well.” She placed both of her hands palm-down on the table as if she were accentuating that we were officially beginning our conversation. Her coral fingernail polish looked freshly touched up. “We have a lot of catching up to do. Where to begin?”
“I’m not sure.” I looked around the restaurant, even though I’d already scanned it when I walked in. “Is Sean here?”
“He’s coming. Should be here any minute.”
“Okay.”
“You look good, Pat.”
“So do you.” The compliment was out before I realized that it might not have been the wisest thing to say.
“Thank you,” Amber replied. A small grin. “I like your jacket.”
“Thanks. It’s new.”
“I see.”
A server appeared, an anxious-looking woman in her late twenties. Her eyes darted around the room like tiny trapped sparrows. “Welcome to the Northwoods Supper Club.” As she spoke, she tapped incessantly with her thumb and forefinger at her stack of menus. “Do you know what you want?” Her name tag read “Nan.”
“I’ll take a menu,” I said.
She laid one on the table for me. I was going to ask for another for Sean, but Amber cut in. “Two coffees,” she told Nan. “Specialty roast. And kindly bring some cream.” She caught my eye. “And honey.”
She remembered.
“Yes.” Nan backed away. “Okay.” Turned. Disappeared.
“Honey and cream,” I said to her.
“That’s still how you take it?”
“It is.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have chanced drinking coffee at a restaurant like this. Undoubtably roasted and ground months ago. Canned. Stored. Stale. More than likely brewed without using filtered water and with no real concern for the number of tablespoons of beans per six ounces of water. Trying not to think about all that, I changed the subject. “Your pharmacy. How’s it going?”
“They opened a Walgreens in town, so that hasn’t helped. But we’re hanging in there. And you’re still in Denver?”
I was ashamed she would even have to ask such a question. It underlined how poorly I’d stayed in touch with her and Sean. I decided to take the “you” in the plural sense. “We’re still in Denver. Yes.”
“And Tessa? How is she?”
“She’s doing okay. Considering.”
Amber had sent her condolences and spoken with Tessa on the phone several times after her father’s death last summer. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said softly. “I’ve been praying for her.”
Okay, that was a side of Amber I’d never seen before.
“That means a lot. Thank you.”
“Is she going to make it up here?”
“Actually, no. I was worried about the snow and told her to stay in the Cities for a couple extra days. Hopefully, though, we can arrange a visit sometime soon.”
“That’ll be nice.”
Seeing Amber, being with her alone at a restaurant again, made me realize my feelings for her had never completely gone away, and that made things all the more uncomfortable.
This was one time I wished I could just turn off my emotions, but it’s never worked that way with me. Sometimes my feelings come uninvited, when I don’t want them to; sometimes they leave despite my best attempts at hanging on to them. It can be disconcerting.
She smiled again in her free and affectionate way, and I wished she hadn’t. It brought too much back.
Sean, where are you?
“It’s possible we’ll be moving to DC,” I commented. “There’s an opening at the Academy, and they’re asking if I’d be interested in teaching again.”
“Would that keep you out of the field?”
“The Bureau wants its instructors to keep working cases every week.”
“To stay sharp.”
“Yes.”
I looked away, first toward the door to see if Sean might have arrived, then to Nan, who was bringing our coffee.
“Now,” Amber warned her, “he’ll tell you if this coffee is any good.”
“It should be.” Nan looked concerned. “They just made it.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.” I took the cup, added a touch of cream and honey, but before I could try it Nan asked me urgently, “Have you decided what you want?”
“Well, there’s one more person in our party.”
Amber waved her hand dismissively. “Sean told me to just go ahead and order. I’m not sure if he’ll be eating anything or not.” She tapped the menu and told me, “The Reuben’s good.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to look over the menu. “Well, I’m a cheeseburger guy at heart,” I replied. Then to Nan, “Give it the works, except-”
“Hold the mustard and pickles,” Amber interrupted.
“Yes. Hold the mustard and pickles.”
Nan wrote it down.
“I’ll go for the Reuben,” Amber told her.
“Fries or chips?” The question was directed at both of us.
“Fries,” I said.
“Fries for me too,” Amber told her.
Nan left for the kitchen, scribbling notes to herself as if her life, or at least her job, depended on correctly writing down word-for-word our rather unremarkable order.
Amber watched me expectantly. I braced myself and took a sip of my coffee.
Wow.
Nice.
“Well?”
Though I wasn’t a big fan of flavored coffee, this wasn’t bad. “I like it,” I replied. “Air roasted. Mexican beans. They added undertones of caramel, a hint of butterscotch. Graceful acidity, respectable body.”
She smiled. “It’s called Highlander Grog. There’s a roaster down in Watertown. Berres Brothers. They do mostly internet orders. This is the only local place that uses their coffee.”
A thought.
“That’s why you suggested we meet here.”
She held up her hands in fake surrender. “You got me.”
Sean entered the front door, stowed his snowmobile helmet and gloves in one of the wooden cubicles just inside the entryway. Thank goodness.
Amber tried some of her coffee. “I can hardly believe you knew the country of origin from just one sip.”
Sean was weaving between the tables on his way toward us.
“Maybe I was making that up,” I said.
“I doubt that.”
Then Sean arrived.
21
My brother had grown a thick beard since the last time I saw him. Wild brown hair. Dark retrospective eyes. Decades of fishing and hunting trips had left the skin around his eyes tough and weathered. He’d always seemed like the kind of guy who would’ve been at home in frontier times forging his way west through the untamed wilderness.
We’ve seen each other twice in the last three years-once at my wedding and once at Christie’s funeral. He likes to bowl, volunteers with the Jaycees, enjoys relaxing in his jon boat with a six-pack of ice-cold Old Style, and we never talk on the phone because we never seem to have anything to say.
“Good to see you, Pat.” He shook my hand. Brisk. Firm.
“You too.”
“Hey, Amber,” he said with a quick look in her direction.
“Hello, sweetie.”
Sean was two years older than I was and had been married once before. His wife left him, though, eight years ago, taking their son with her. She’d moved to Phoenix and only let Andy visit Sean for a few weeks every summer. Andy was nine now. Sean preferred not speaking about that part of his life, and I knew better than to bring it up.
He took a seat beside Amber, then drew in a heavy breath. “I gotta say: terrible thing, though. You having to come in under these circumstances.”
There was no good way to reply to that. “It’s heartbreaking what happened.”
“I knew ’em, Pat. Donnie and his wife.” He shifted his gaze to the window. “And Lizzie.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“We used to go out muskie fishing on Tomahawk Lake, Donnie and I.”
I noticed that he was referring to Donnie in the past tense. “How long have you known him?” I tried to frame my question in the present tense.
“Eight, ten years, I guess. I just can’t see him doing something like that. Not Donnie.”
Whether or not Donnie had anything to do with the killings, Sean’s words didn’t surprise me. Over the years, every killer, every rapist, every arsonist I’ve caught has been friends with somebody, trusted by somebody, loved by somebody. Then, after the facts came out about the crimes, those people are shocked and dismayed. Family members, lovers, friends, none of them can believe what the offender did.
For a moment I thought about pointing this out to Sean, telling him that you can never really know someone, not really; that at times every one of us acts in ways that are inconceivable to others and, in retrospect, unthinkable to ourselves; that, in essence, no one lives up to his own convictions or aspirations. But from past experience I realized that bringing any of that up at the moment wasn’t going to help.
“We really don’t know who’s responsible for the murders,” I said as tactfully as I could. “Until we find Donnie, it’s best to avoid assuming too much. He might be all right. There’s still a lot to figure out.”
Sean looked at me oddly. “Aren’t most domestic homicides committed by husbands and lovers?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s missing.”
“Yes, he is.”
“The logical conclusion is it’s him.”
“We lack confirmatory evidence, and the logical conclusion when you lack evidence is to suspend judgment.” The words had a cold and impatient professionalism to them, and I immediately regretted saying them. I tried to tone things down. “I’m just trying to say I think it’s a little early to conclude anything.”
He looked like he was going to respond, but held back.
When Nan arrived with our food, Sean went ahead and ordered a bratwurst. Soon she brought that too, and the conversation during the meal felt stiff and forced, the past-both my history with Sean and my history with his wife-weighing down every word.
It hadn’t been an affair, at least not a physical one, but you can sleep with someone and never fall in love with her, and you can fall in love with someone without ever sleeping with her. From what I’ve seen, the second scenario is a lot harder to get over than the first.
And a lot harder to know how to deal with.
I’ve heard people throw around the term “emotional affair,” so maybe that’s what we’d had, but I’m not even sure what the phrase means. How many text messages or phone calls or smiles or secrets do you have to share before you’re having an emotional affair?
And is it something you should even admit? Do you go up to your brother and say, “Hey, five years ago I fell in love with your wife. But don’t worry, we never actually slept together”?
As far as I knew, Sean had no idea what had happened, and as time wore on, I could think of fewer and fewer reasons to bring it up. Contrary to the popular mantra of pop psychologists, I’ve always thought that when you apologize it shouldn’t be for your own benefit but for that of the other person. I don’t think you should ask someone to forgive you just so you can get something off your chest or quiet your guilty conscience. If an apology isn’t in the other person’s best interests, it’s not serving to reconcile anything. It’s just a subtle form of selfishness.
And in this case, I couldn’t see how my true confessions would serve Sean. After all, he’d had one marriage fall apart, and I would never forgive myself if I were the cause of his second one disintegrating.
But in truth, Amber wasn’t the only issue that stood between Sean and me.
My gaze shifted from her to the deer heads on the wall, and as Amber tried to navigate Sean and me through the conversation, I became lost in my thoughts.
Because a deer was what caused the rift between me and my brother.
Or maybe there was no deer at all.
22
It happened twenty years ago on New Year’s Eve when I was seventeen.
We were driving home from Amy Lassiter’s party.
A stark and cold and moonlit night.
Sean was behind the wheel and I’d closed my eyes, exhausted from cross-country skiing most of the afternoon.
I knew Sean had been drinking a little at the New Year’s Eve party, but we hadn’t been hanging out together and I wasn’t sure how much he’d had.
I never saw the deer.
He swerved, lost control of the car on the icy road, and we spun into the other lane, where an oncoming vehicle struck us, smashing into my side of the car and whipping us around toward the shoulder. We skidded toward the side of the road into a snowbank, which was probably the only thing that kept us from rolling over.
Sean and I both walked away from the crash, but the driver of the other car, a fifty-one-year-old woman named Nancy Everson, didn’t make it.
I never saw the deer.
At the time, the responding officers hadn’t questioned Sean’s story about why he swerved and, as far as I knew, hadn’t asked him if he’d been drinking at the party or done a Breathalyzer test. If they had, none of it raised any suspicions.
In the flickering swathes of emergency vehicle lights, I’d watched the paramedics roll the gurney with Mrs. Everson’s motionless body onto the ambulance. Then, troubled and deeply saddened, I looked away to the side of the road.
The moon was bright, and I expected to see deer tracks, but the field of snow looked pristine, unblemished.
Excusing myself for a moment from the paramedic who’d just checked Sean and was now approaching me, I walked closer to the side of the road.
No tracks.
I crossed the road and took some time to study the snow stretching beyond the other shoulder but saw no sign that a deer had recently fled across the field on that side either.
A week later, after Mrs. Everson’s funeral, I’d brought it up to Sean. “Which side of the road did you say the deer came from?”
“The right.”
“
The right.”
He looked at me oddly. “Yes. Why?”
My heart was racing. I had one more question, and though I didn’t want to ask it, I did. “How much did you have to drink that night, Sean?”
I could tell by his silence that he was reading all the subtext of my words, and for a long time he didn’t speak. When he did, his voice had turned cold. “I only had two beers.”
I hadn’t replied. What could I say?
Whatever else Sean might have known about what happened that night, he kept to himself.
But things were different between us after that. He retreated into himself, and his normally infrequent outbursts of anger became more common, more pronounced. Everyone else believed it was from unnecessary guilt about the accident, but I’d always wondered if maybe the guilt was deserved.
Since then, the two decades of unwieldy silences had only deepened the rift in our relationship.
“Pat?” Amber said.
Her word jarred me back to the moment. “I’m sorry?”
She and Sean were staring at me.
“I was telling Sean how you might be teaching at the Academy again.”
“Possibly,” I said absently, still caught up somewhat in my thoughts. “Yes. I might.”
We talked for a few minutes about the Academy and how the move to DC might affect Tessa, especially if we left Denver before the end of the school year.
“She tells me it doesn’t matter, that she’s cool with it if I want to go.”
“She might be saying that just because she wants you to be happy,” Sean observed.
“True,” I admitted, a bit reluctantly. “You might be right.”
At about ten minutes to 1:00, Jake interrupted by calling to tell me he was going into a meeting with Ellory and then had a phone interview with Director Wellington to brief her on what we knew. His press conference must have gone well; he sounded in high spirits. “I don’t think I can make it to the sawmill by 2:00. Maybe 2:15, 2:30 at the earliest.”
“Okay. I’ll get a ride over there. See you when you get there.”
After we hung up, Sean, who’d heard my side of the conversation, said, “No ride, huh?”
