by P. J. Tracy
“Could have been a rabbit,” the tech said, but it was too damn much blood for anything that small and he knew it.
Marla had been missing for only a few hours, but out here, there were no time limits on reporting a missing person. This was Marla. They all knew her, like they knew every person in their district, and they knew she would have called her dad if she was going to be late for dinner.
A deputy approached Walt and tipped his brown plastic-covered hat. “Mr. Gustafson, is that Marla’s vehicle?”
Walt hesitated because no one ever called him Mr. Gustafson. “It is.”
The deputy sighed and looked down. “We’ll find her, sir. Don’t you worry.”
“Appreciate it.”
Jacob was here, too, coming out of the woods now, his face a frozen, unreadable mask. He’d been the first to arrive, getting here so soon after Walt had phoned him that he worried about how fast the boy had been driving, and how carelessly. He’d been sweet on Marla damn near forever, and was the one person in this world who was as panicked as Walt, trying hard not to show it. He was sheriff now, like his daddy before him, but he was more than that.
“How are you doing, Walt?”
“Not so good. Just like you.”
Jacob scuffed his boot through the agate stones scattered in the turnaround near Marla’s car. Harry Michaelson’s bluetick hounds started baying in the far distance, the first dogs on-site long before the patrol brought in their own hounds.
Jacob looked in the general direction of the sound as if he could see through the black of the woods beyond the lights, and looked back at Walt’s face. It was partly in shadow, and he looked younger than his seventy-odd years, with his teeth clenched and his jaw muscles bulging as he looked toward the baying sound, too. His pupils were dilated so wide, they ate nearly all of the blue of his eyes, and Jacob knew the man had to be dying inside at this moment. What had the dogs found? The seconds ticked by with interminable slowness before his shoulder unit squelched.
“Coons,” a voice came from the other end. “A whole mess of ’em.”
Walt took his first breath in a while and released a shaky exhale.
He’s in hell, Jacob thought, just like he’d been ever since he had gotten the call. “Sorry, Walt. Damn blueticks. The Highway Patrol dogs should be here any minute, and they don’t sound at a goddamned coon.”
Walt nodded, took another breath. He bobbed his head toward the Explorer without looking at it. “Maybe she broke down.”
Jacob shook his head. “Keys are still in it. It started right up. Tires are all okay.”
“Still, maybe it broke down earlier and just fixed itself sitting there. Maybe Marla . . . I don’t know, started walking, got tired, fell asleep somewhere, she works so hard, you know. . . .” His voice faded as he pressed a hand hard over his gut, because the agony was eating at him from the inside out.
Jacob looked away, pretended he didn’t hear the absolute desperation in Walt’s speculation, pretended he didn’t see anything but a lot of people, a lot of lights, and an empty car.
Nightmare. Jesus God, I’ll do anything, just let her be safe. . . .
“What’s on your mind, Jacob?”
“Walt, the hounds picked up a clear trail in the woods. It ended in a washed-out gully near the creek.”
“What does that mean?”
Jacob reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag. “I found this at the base of a tree in the gully.”
Walt took a sharp breath. “That’s Marla’s ring. The ring you gave her in high school.”
“I think she left it for us, Walt.”
ONE
Life was weird in unquantifiable ways: One day you were an urban depressive, living in the emotionally burned-out shell of a house you had once shared with your philandering ex-wife, watching unremarkable years slowly ooze by like cooling lava. The next, you were living on a tranquil lake an hour outside the city with a baby on the way, carried by the mercurial woman who had owned your heart since the first, combative encounter. Of course, back then she’d been a person of interest in a string of serial murders he’d been working, and who wouldn’t get a little prickly over something like that?
But Minneapolis homicide detective Leo Magozzi was pragmatic and cynical above all, and certainly no idiot—as over-the-moon as he was with the prospect of first-time fatherhood, he harbored no illusions about a traditional coupling with a complicated soul like Grace MacBride. There might never be a sentimental march down the aisle, maybe not even a happily ever after, although it was his fervent wish. Sometimes he thought such things of permanence were as antithetical to her nature as vegetarianism to a tiger.
But babies were about as permanent as you could get, and Grace seemed to be flourishing as a pregnant woman; a happy side effect of that was she seemed to be opening the door for him just a little. Not more than a crack, but it was marked progress by previous standards and something he could work with.
For instance, she occasionally touched his arm in public—a shocking development if there ever was one. Even more shocking was the fact that lately, they were spending a couple of nights a week together. And those little things allowed him to be guardedly optimistic about the trajectory of things in the future. His situation still wasn’t free of uncertainties, but he was finally okay with that—he and Grace were now forever tethered by a miraculous little human that they had created together.
He suddenly thought of his grandfather, years dead now—a curmudgeonly man fond of dispensing coarse nuggets of realism whether you wanted to hear them or not. Magozzi had spent a lot of time with him during his formative years and he was truly the one who had prepared him for a perfectly imperfect life, had taught him that nothing was simple or preordained.
Everybody’s got problems, Leo, doesn’t matter how old you are, who you are, where you come from, or where you’re going. They get better, they get worse, but they stay with you until the day you die, so get used to it. And the minute you think you’ve got the world by the balls, think again. If you want a sure ticket, join the priesthood like your great-uncle Dom. Life will never surprise you if you’re wearing the cloth.
I don’t think I’m cut out for the priesthood, Grandpa.
Most of us aren’t. So ride the storm. Just because you got benched from the big Homecoming game and now Miss Jenny Perky Tits won’t give you the time of day doesn’t mean life is over. . . .
Grandpa! God . . .
Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, son.
Sorry.
Don’t tell me you’re sorry, tell your Lord. Ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers should cover it.
Her name is Shelly.
Shelly, Jenny, whatever. You’re only sixteen years old and you’re gonna go through a lot of Shellys and Jennys before you settle on one, so like I just said, ride the storm. Women will make a mess of you, but if you find the right one, she’ll put you back together again.
Magozzi cringed and smiled at the same time, remembering his deep distress over his grandfather’s scrutiny of his high school sweetheart’s anatomy, wondering why taking God’s name in vain was worse than using vulgar language to describe a woman’s breasts. It was only later that he’d learned his grandfather was beginning to suffer dementia. Apparently one of the symptoms was losing your filter for polite conversation.
He was thinking of these things as he lay sweating on the floor beneath a partially assembled crib, wondering why in the hell he hadn’t ponied up the extra thirty bucks to have the store put it together for him.
He rolled his head to the side, trying to release the crick in his neck, and got a good look at his partner Gino Rolseth’s white calves and Sperry Top-Siders, the only things visible of him from this position on the floor. He’d seen worse things in his life, but not by much. “Okay, Gino, I’m waiting for my logistical support. It’s eighty-eight degr
ees and I don’t have central air. It’s getting hot down here.”
“Count your blessings, you’re on the floor and heat rises. It’s fifteen degrees hotter up here and I’m only five-seven. I wouldn’t stand up if I were you.”
“Come on, let’s get this show on the road. What do I do next?”
“I’m working on it, but this damn instruction manual is written in Mongolian or something. This is purely interpretive work on my part.”
Magozzi sighed. “Then give me the drill, I’ll figure it out.”
“You don’t need a drill, says so right here in Figure 8. You need one of these nut-thingies.”
“What’s a nut-thingie?”
“This cheap tin piece of crap that’s supposed to tighten the nuts on the legs.” He tossed it under the crib. “Jesus, Leo, why didn’t you buy this thing already put together?”
“I was just thinking about that.”
“Yeah? So what did you come up with?”
“Real men don’t buy things preassembled.”
He heard Gino snuffle. “Yeah, I went down this very same road seventeen years ago when Angela was pregnant with Helen. ‘Let’s buy it assembled, Gino,’ she begged. ‘No, honey, it’ll be a piece of cake, I’ve got this covered,’ I reassured her. Well, guess what? We spent two days trying to put the damn crib together and we almost got divorced over it. Lesson number one—don’t ever argue with a pregnant woman, or she’ll take a pound of flesh, and it’s not the flesh a man wants to lose.”
Magozzi crawled out from under the crib. “That’s kind of a generous weight estimate, isn’t it?”
Gino smirked. “Speak for yourself. So, are you giving up already?”
“No, I’m going to get us some beer and we’re going to figure this out before I crawl back under there.”
“Let’s do it down on the dock and throw some lines in while we’re at it. Fishing is good for the thought process. Plus, it’s cooler down by the lake.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Gino looked around the spare bedroom that was slowly metamorphosing into what Magozzi apparently thought was a nursery, which meant there was an almost-crib in a bunch of empty space. “You’re going to need a changing table, a rocking chair, a dresser, stuff on the walls . . .”
“Why? Babies are born blind, right?”
“That’s kittens.” Gino narrowed his eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”
Magozzi gave him a noncommittal shrug.
“Please tell me you’re kidding. . . . Never mind. So what does Grace think of the green walls?”
“Desert Sage. And she hasn’t seen them yet.”
Gino frowned. “I thought she was pretty much living here.”
“Part-time. She stays here a couple nights a week, but she’s still got her house in the city, and the Monkeewrench office is only half a mile away.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s convenient for work, but how’s that going to fly once you two have the baby? I mean, that’s like shared custody, except between two houses instead of two people.”
And that was the problem with Gino. He saw everything in black and white. But with Grace MacBride, nothing was black and white. And Gino had a point, except the shared custody thing also entailed a third party—Monkeewrench. Harley, Annie, and Roadrunner, Grace’s business partners and the only family she had ever known. Their baby was going to have a whole lot of parents, which probably wasn’t such a bad thing. “We’ll figure it out, Gino. Come on, let’s get those beers and go fishing.”
“Yeah. Hey, just for the record, I like the green walls. Nice and neutral.”
“Desert Sage.”
“Whatever.” A goofy grin suddenly gobbled up Gino’s face. “This is so awesome, Leo. A few months and your life is going to take on a whole new meaning.”
“It’s beyond awesome. I’m the first man in the history of the planet to father a child.”
“It feels that way, doesn’t it?”
“You mean I’m not?”
“There were a few trillion before you, but who’s counting?”
In the kitchen, Magozzi splashed his face with cold water, then grabbed two frosty bottles of beer from the fridge while Gino wandered into the living room. There was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked woods and the lake beyond.
“You really scored with this place, Leo, you know that? It was the real estate deal of the century.”
“Tell me about it. If there hadn’t been a double murder here in December, I never could have afforded it.”
“Yeah, I can see how that might make some potential buyers a little skittish.”
“One of the perks of being a homicide cop, I guess.”
“Any bites on your place in town?”
“The realtor had a couple open houses, but no offers yet. He gave me a list of staging suggestions he thinks will help it show better. Pictures on the wall, new hardware on the kitchen cabinets, plants, stuff like that.”
“What’s wrong with the hardware on your kitchen cabinets?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”
“Yeah, but some of it’s ridiculous. There’s a limit to how much time I’m willing to piss away arranging flowers and folding the throw on my sofa just right. I’ve got enough to do with this place.”
“You’re heading into town tonight, right?”
“To have dinner with Grace, not to stage my house.”
“So leave a half hour early, stop somewhere on the way, and pick up a couple of ferns or something. Hopefully you’ll sell the house before you can kill them.” Gino wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “You really need to look into central air. It’s barely June, what do you think it’s going to be like in July?”
“This is an anomaly. It’ll probably be snowing next week. It might even be snowing in July.”
TWO
Aside from an occasional workout routine in the basement of her Minneapolis home, Grace MacBride never exercised—she’d always thought it to be a deplorable waste of time. But she’d been genetically blessed—for all her thirty-odd years, she had been thin, toned, and unreasonably healthy for a woman who spent most of her time sitting in front of a computer.
She was still toned and healthy, according to her doctor visit two weeks ago, but the thin part had gone out the window a while ago. She still did double takes whenever she passed a mirror and saw her burgeoning belly awkwardly fused onto an otherwise svelte body. Grace thought it looked hysterically funny and absolutely fantastic.
She’d chosen a doctor on a whim, through an online referral service. He was only the second she’d been to in her adult life. He turned out to be a kind, elderly gentleman who had probably surpassed retirement age by several years. He smelled of antiseptic soap and cigarette smoke and had been befuddled by her lack of history. And later, probably a little terrified by it.
I can’t find your records in the database, Ms. MacBride.
I don’t have any records.
You’ve never been to a doctor?
Once. I had to have a physical to get into college.
And yet I find no record of that visit.
I was using a different name then.
Perhaps I could try that . . . um . . . alternative name.
That person doesn’t exist anymore.
Oh . . . I see. Then perhaps you could tell me a little about your family history.
I don’t have a family history, either. I never knew my parents.
Well, then. Right. So let’s deal with the present, shall we? What I can tell you right now is that you seem to be in excellent physical condition and so does your baby, at least as far as I can determine without an ultrasound, which I recommend you schedule soon. Do you exercise?
I still go to the shooting range every week, does t
hat count?
She smiled, remembering the expression on the doctor’s face. The poor man. In retrospect, she probably could have been more tactful, but that was another thing she considered a deplorable waste of time.
Magozzi stirred next to her and sighed in his sleep. Bars of early sun were beginning to seep through the partially open blinds, laying strips of warm light across his dark, wavy hair. For some reason, she wanted to reach out and touch it, but she didn’t.
Grace didn’t particularly like to share her bed. Sex, yes, cuddling in sleep, not really. She and Magozzi slept together occasionally—obviously, she thought, drawing a hand over her belly—but the truth was that her history sometimes made the sudden touch of another human being during sleep terrifying.
Magozzi wasn’t terribly happy about her aversion to closeness. All his life he’d dreamed of a fairy-tale marriage complete with a white picket fence and a baby carriage. And as it turned out, he was getting the baby carriage without the rest of it. But he never pried too hard, never pushed too hard, this man whose stock-in-trade was getting people to tell the truth. He was endlessly patient and respected her boundaries, which was probably a big part of why she loved him, although he wasn’t in short supply of other admirable characteristics.
But things had started changing gradually, and now, six months into this pregnancy, she found herself wanting to feel him next to her at night. She had spent a lot of time ruminating over this disturbing shift in her persona and finally rationalized that some biological dominion mandated she have a protector in her vulnerable condition. Some animals did it, and humans were nothing if not animals, albeit in some cases, a much poorer version.
“I can hear you thinking,” she heard Magozzi’s sleep-thick voice talking into his pillow.
“You’re still sleeping. It’s just a dream.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m awake.”
“Okay, so what am I thinking?”
“That you want me to make you French toast for breakfast.” He rolled over and gave her a sleepy, lopsided smile.
“I don’t like French toast.”
