Cat’s brown eyes welled with tears. She stuck a finger in her mouth and chewed a nail.
‘I don’t talk about it a lot,’ Serena went on, ‘but I live with it now. You will, too.’
Cat swallowed hard. Her hair fell across her face. She danced on her feet, and without saying a word, she turned and ran through the kitchen. Serena winced, as if she’d breathed on a house of cards and made it fall. He heard her swear at herself under her breath.
Stride followed Cat and found her on the musty sofa on the rear porch. He sat down next to her. The young girl stared at the completed puzzle of the lift bridge, its pieces knitted together. She continued to chew a nail. One tear made a glossy line on her cheek.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
Cat shrugged her shoulders.
‘You don’t have to deal with any of this alone,’ he said. ‘Serena knows what it’s like. She can help. So can I.’
Cat still said nothing. Her stare was blank. He felt her pushing him away.
‘Serena and I have to go out for a while,’ he told her. ‘I have a police officer coming to stay with you while we’re gone. We won’t leave until he gets here.’
Stride stood up, and Cat turned and threw her arms around his waist. He didn’t move. She clung to him silently, and when she finally let go, she wiped her face and ducked her chin into her neck. He reached out and stroked her hair.
‘Hey, Stride?’ Cat murmured, as he turned to leave.
He stared down at her. ‘What is it?’
‘I like her.’
27
They drove in Stride’s Expedition. Neither one of them spoke.
As he came out of the S-curve on the Point near the canal, he spotted an ore boat in the harbor heading toward the lake. The lift bridge was already closed. Five cars waited in line, and he pulled in behind them and shut off the engine. The radio, which had been playing a Patty Loveless bluegrass song, went quiet.
He opened the driver’s door and cold air blew inside. There was no rain, but the streets and sidewalks were wet.
‘I’m not sure what to say to you,’ he admitted.
‘You don’t have to say anything, Jonny.’
Across the short space of the truck, he could smell her perfume. Her fragrance hadn’t changed. She wore the emerald earrings he’d given her.
‘That was sweet of Valerie and Callie to send me that jigsaw puzzle for Christmas,’ he said. ‘Are you still living with them?’
‘I am.’
‘I’m glad you stayed close by.’
Serena looked out the window. ‘I went back to Las Vegas for a week in January. I wanted to see if there was anything still there for me.’
‘Was there?’
‘My old partner, Cordy, he said they wanted me back on Metro. All I had to do was say yes.’
‘What did you tell him?’
Serena didn’t answer. She turned and stared at him. It had been a long time since he watched her green eyes. ‘I stayed with Claire while I was there,’ she added.
‘Okay.’
Stride remembered Claire. In the short time he’d spent with Serena in Las Vegas, they had become enmeshed in a case involving a serial killer and an old-line mob family. Claire, whose father ran one of the city’s largest casinos, became a target, and Serena had been the cop assigned to protect her. Along the way, Claire fell in love with her. The relationship had awakened confused sexual feelings in Serena, and Stride had thought he might lose her.
‘Claire asked me to take a job as head of security at her new casino,’ Serena said. She gave a little ironic smile. ‘And live with her, of course. She has a mansion in Lake Las Vegas. Really nice.’
‘So what did you decide?’
‘I told them both no,’ she said.
‘Why?’
Serena shook her head without explaining. ‘Your turn, Jonny. Tell me about you.’
The superstructure of the ore boat glided like a graceful giant under the span of the lift bridge. ‘I’m sure you heard that my relationship with Maggie went nowhere,’ he said.
‘I did.’
‘She said she was tired of living with a ghost, and she didn’t mean Cindy. She knew I still loved you.’
‘I guess I should say I’m sorry.’
‘That’s the last thing you should say. I’m the one who’s sorry.’
Serena brushed a strand of black hair from her eyes. ‘You said you were sorry months ago. I said I forgave you. I nearly fell in love with Claire a few years ago, and you forgave me. We’re not perfect. I don’t expect us to be. As angry as I was, I never doubted that you were still in love with me.’
‘But?’
‘But it’s not about that anymore.’
‘Then what is it about?’
‘I won’t be in love with a stranger, Jonny.’
‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ he said.
Serena took a breath before she went on, as if she wanted to get each word exactly right. ‘Maybe not, but it felt that way last fall. You were a million miles away from me, and I couldn’t reach you. I know we were both at fault. I know I closed myself off, too, but that’s over. I’m done running from my past. No shame. No apologies. This is me.’ Her voice rose, and it quivered as she talked louder. ‘I came back from Las Vegas for one reason. Not for a job. Not for a home. I came back because I still love you. But that’s not enough, not when I don’t know if you’ll shut me out again the next time things get bad. If you still want me, if you really want me, then you’re going to have to come get me, and you better be prepared to let me inside. All the way. No more secrets.’
He’d never seen this side of her. She’d always been tough, but toughness meant stringing up barbed wire around her soul. This was different. Now she was holding out a hand for him to join her, and he didn’t know how to take the first step.
Someone hit the horn behind them.
He looked up and saw that the bridge was back down, and the traffic in front of him had cleared. He drove into Duluth.
*
Twenty miles south of the city, near the exit to the Black Bear Casino, traffic stalled as orange pylons blocked the right lane. Stride put an emergency light on the hood of his truck and steered onto the gravel shoulder. He drove a half-mile and stopped near a paving truck where a band of highway workers jackhammered the asphalt. One of the men, fat and round, with a ponytail dangling from his hard hat, was William Green.
Drizzle spattered the windshield. Stride removed his gun from the holster inside his jacket and locked it inside his glove compartment.
‘What are you doing?’ Serena asked.
‘I’d prefer not to shoot him,’ he said.
‘Good thinking.’
They got out of the truck. Six feet away, on the other side of the ribbon of cones, traffic whipped by with a surge of air pressure. The noise was deafening, and the ground shook under their feet.
Green saw them, and Stride crooked his finger, beckoning the man closer. The highway worker made a slashing motion across his throat to the other men, and the jackhammer went silent. He marched closer, only inches from the speeding cars. When he reached Stride, he took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I’m busy. Frost heaves blew out the lane overnight. We need to patch it up.’
‘This won’t take long,’ Stride said.
He introduced Serena, and Green checked out her body with a quick glance. So did the other workers behind him. He thought they would have wolf-whistled if she hadn’t been a cop.
‘Where were you last night, Mr. Green?’ Stride said.
‘Home.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Watching the Wolves and the Heat. Drinking beer. Why?’
‘Was your wife with you?’
‘No, we had a fight after you left. She stayed at her sister’s in Cloquet.’
‘Did you talk to anyone? See anyone?’
‘Just LeBron.’
An SUV passed, c
lose enough to clip one of the traffic cones and send it spiraling into the air. It flew close to Green’s head, but the man didn’t flinch. He gestured at one of the workers to retrieve it, and he shoved his hands into his baggy pockets. Behind them, other cars braked as the cone rolled into the lane.
‘You ought to give that son of a bitch a ticket,’ he told Stride. ‘Do something useful instead of leaning on me.’
‘I’m just getting started.’
‘What does that mean?’ Green asked. ‘What is this about?’
‘It means we talked to Cat about you.’
‘Yeah? So?’
‘She says you liked to beat her up.’
Green wiped rain from his nose, leaving a smear of dirt on his face. ‘Whatever she told you, it’s not true. I never laid a hand on her.’
Stride tried to calm himself, but the thumping vibration and rush of air with each speeding car fed his adrenaline. ‘Remember what I told you yesterday, Mr. Green? I made you a promise.’
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘I’ll be watching you,’ Stride told him.
‘I bet you will.’
Serena physically stepped between the two men. ‘I have some questions for you, Mr. Green. It’s about Margot Huizenfelt.’
‘Who?’
‘She’s a reporter. She’s missing.’
‘Huizenfelt. Yeah. Okay, sure, I saw it on TV. What about her?’
‘The day before she disappeared, she was looking for Cat. Did she talk to you?’
Green didn’t answer immediately. The dust of crushed rock blew in their faces. ‘I don’t remember.’
Serena and Stride exchanged a glance. She rubbed dust off her skin. The passing cars felt huge and dangerous.
‘Maybe your neighbors remember her, Mr. Green,’ she said. ‘We could talk to all of them. We could ask them about you and Cat, too. Or how about your co-workers over there? Most of them are parents. I wonder what they’d think if they knew you liked to take out your anger on a teenage girl.’
Green glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘Shit, all right,’ he hissed. ‘It’s no big deal. This reporter came to the house on a Saturday afternoon. She asked me how she could find Cat. I didn’t know where the hell she was, and that’s what I told her.’
‘Margot wrote an article about Cat a few months ago. Did she talk to you back then?’
‘She tried. I told her to get lost.’
‘What time did she show up at your house on that Saturday?’
Green shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Four, five, something like that. Sophie was going to be back any minute, and I wanted that bitch out of there before she got home. I told her if she wanted to find Cat, she should try the usual places. The shelter. The graffiti graveyard. Lake Place Park. Wherever the runaways hang out.’
‘Did she say why she wanted to find her?’
‘No.’
‘She must have said something,’ Serena insisted.
‘She wanted to know about Cat and her parents. What did I know about Michaela and Marty. Shit like that.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I told her Marty was a son of a bitch! What the hell else would I say? Whenever he was drunk, he beat the shit out of whoever was closest to him. Usually, that was me.’ Green pointed at a two-inch white scar high on his forehead. ‘He gave me that one in December that last winter. I’ve got more.’
‘Anything else?’ Serena asked. ‘Did Margot want to know about anyone else?’
‘Yeah, she asked about Dory,’ Green replied. ‘She wasn’t just looking for Cat. She was trying to find Dory, too.’
28
Brooke Hahne sat in the basement cafe known as Amazing Grace. It was a college hang-out, but Brooke came here several times a week. Sometimes she kept an eye open for kids who needed help. Sometimes she hid in a corner and nursed a chai latte as she wrote grant proposals for The Praying Hands. Sometimes, like tonight, she came for the band.
Steve Garske’s band was called Doc of the Bay. That was cute.
Steve was no Brad Paisley on the guitar, but he could lay down a good riff on songs like ‘One More Last Chance’. He had a mellow voice that made for a good cover of Vince Gill, who was one of Brooke’s favorites. She liked the old-style, twangy country music. Prison songs. Raspy, bourbon-soaked voices. Lots of steel. She was probably the only George Jones fan who had just turned thirty.
On stage, Steve’s fingers flew like a pro. She saw a sheen of sweat on his brow under the hot lights. As he wrapped up his solo, the crammed cafe erupted in applause, and he bowed with a shy grin, pushing back his blond hair. Brooke toasted him with her latte. Steve winked at her.
She examined the crowd squeezed around the handful of weathered wooden tables. Most of them were under twenty-five, except for a handful of aging ex-hippies in hemp sweaters. She had a tiny circular table to herself, but a dozen people stood over her. When the music stopped, a college kid squatted next to her. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He was cute and gangly, with a shaggy haircut that went out with the Monkees, and he didn’t even look old enough to shave. College boys had no sense of a woman’s age.
‘Hey, you alone?’ he asked.
‘I’m waiting for someone,’ Brooke said.
‘Well, how about I wait with you?’
Brooke rolled her eyes. Tall, skinny, fit blonds drew boys like mosquitoes. Usually, they wilted away with a simple brush-off that dented their egos. Others, the cocky ones, needed a firmer rejection.
‘I’m involved,’ she said.
‘Yeah? With who?’
She gestured at Steve Garske, who gulped bottled water on stage as they geared up for the second set. ‘Him. The singer.’
The boy’s hair almost dangled in Brooke’s drink. ‘He’s like a million years old.’
‘What can I say? I’m a groupie.’
‘What’s he got that I ain’t got?’
Brooke cupped her hands by his ear. The kid’s face scrunched up with disbelief. ‘No way,’ he said.
Brooke took her index fingers and slowly spread them apart.
‘Holy shit,’ the kid said. He left her alone and she saw him talking frantically to three of his buddies.
Brooke smiled to herself. The truth was that she was dating no one, but an imaginary boyfriend spared her an evening of come-ons. Poor Steve. She couldn’t remember him dating a soul in the years she’d known him. He always claimed to be too busy for sex, between his medical practice and his band. After tonight, he’d probably wonder why women were clamoring for his attention.
She liked Steve. The fact that he was as asexual as she was made her feel comfortable around him. He’d never made a salacious comment of any kind about her, and that was rare. Most men, married or unmarried, didn’t wait five minutes to comment on her looks. Donors to the shelter were the worst. With other men, she simply shot them down, but with donors, she had to play the game, as dirty as it made her feel.
Brooke hadn’t slept with a man in five years. Her last relationship, with an intellectual property attorney from Minneapolis, had ended after their first night together. She didn’t blame him. She was frozen in bed, not even mustering a pretense of excitement. To her, sex was a chore. Since then, she’d routinely turned down dates, because she was tired of faking interest. She wasn’t gay, but she loathed men. Rich or poor, young or old, handsome or ugly, they were all the same. Abusers. Manipulators. Predators.
Her cell phone vibrated on the table. She picked it up and read the incoming text.
I’m outside.
Brooke drained the last drops of her coffee drink and stood up. Her table was immediately swarmed. She climbed onto the stage and marched in her black heels up to Steve, who was draped over a wooden chair that was too small for him. His face was flushed, and he laughed as he chatted with his bandmates. She bent down and practically had to shout.
‘I have to go. I’m meeting someone.’
Steve wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘You�
�re going to miss “House of Gold” if you bug out.’
‘My favorite.’
‘I know.’
‘Rain check for the next gig,’ Brooke said. She didn’t think she could hear the song tonight anyway. It always made her cry.
When she turned away, Steve tugged on the sleeve of her blouse. He eyed the front row of women in the crowd, who were giggling to each other and sneaking glances at him. ‘Hey, is it just me, or are the gals looking at me funny?’
Brooke smiled. ‘It’s just you.’
She left the stage and pushed through the mass of bodies in the cafe. When she reached the door, she broke out into the cool air and climbed the steps to the street. She had a jacket over her arm, and she slipped into it. The lake wind cut through her tapered black slacks. She reached behind her head and bundled her long hair and expertly tied it into a ponytail.
On the other side of the park, near the ship canal, she saw the foggy blur of the lighthouse towers. She crossed Buchanan Street into the crowded parking lot, where the neon sign for Grandma’s Restaurant glowed behind the cars. Her Kia was parked in the first row.
She saw someone sitting on her bumper.
‘Dory,’ Brooke said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Dory Mateo scrambled to her feet. She was smoking a cigarette. Under the streetlight, her skin looked white enough to see veins. ‘Brooke. Hey, how are you?’
‘I’m okay. How about you?’
‘How do I look?’ Dory asked.
‘Not too good, sweetheart.’
Dory’s mouth carved out a faint smile. ‘Yeah.’
‘Can I do anything?’
‘No, I just need to talk.’
Brooke opened the car doors, and Dory crushed her cigarette on the wet ground. They got inside. Dory carried a smell of smoke with her, and Brooke cracked both windows to let in the lake air. Before the dome light went off, she saw the sunken half-moons under Dory’s eyes. Dory’s fingers shook.
‘I’m going to drive you to the hospital,’ Brooke said.
‘No! No doctors.’
‘Dory, you need help.’
‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.’
Brooke had seen Dory at the bottom of some black holes in her life, but she’d never seen her like this. The two of them went back for years. She’d met Dory in her freshman year at UMD, where they quickly became inseparable. They moved into a crappy studio apartment together, and they shared sob stories about money, men, sex and families. They vowed to help each other make it in the big bad world, but it didn’t work out that way. Dory lasted only one year at UMD before dropping out. She burnt through thousands of dollars on drugs. Watching Dory spiral out of control, Brooke became cynical about what it took to survive in the world.
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