He stalked out of the restaurant. I tossed cash on the table and followed him to the parking lot. He reached for his door handle, I twirled him to face me and stuck my finger in his chest. “You stay away from Spirit Lake.”
He was strong enough to twist out of my grasp but I stayed with him, my face in his. “If anything happens to my brother I will hunt you down.” He stepped back and I wasn’t sure if he was scared of me or of returning to prison.
The waitress stood in the doorway holding up a slip of paper. “You left too much money.”
“Keep it.” I waved her away.
She bit her lip. “You want me to wrap up your BLT?” To her, the scene probably looked like I was attacking an innocent kid.
Not taking my eyes off him, I said. “No. Thanks.”
“You sure?”
I turned to her and he jumped into his truck, laying rubber when his tires hit the asphalt. I considered following but let him go. As far as I was concerned, it was mission accomplished. I had gotten Matthew to show who he really was. He didn’t confess to attacking Lars, but as much as admitted he could have.
***
Little snoozed in a chair by Lars’ bedside. I changed the water in vases of flowers sent by well-wishers, tossed out deflated balloon bouquets and told Lars Norwegian vs. Swede jokes, hoping he’d wake up and crack a smile. Late afternoon, Nurse Connie wheeled him out for more tests. Jerry followed to stand guard and we returned to the waiting room.
Sarah answered emails and talked to her office in Chicago, Little had turned into a stone and I paced, until Dr. Fromm came toward us from the corridor an hour later. Slightly less grim than before, he said, “The swelling in his brain is down. We can bring him out of the coma tomorrow.”
Little shuddered. He’d been holding on, waiting to hear those words. The three of us hugged each other. This was the first good news since the beating and it had been a long time coming.
Dr. Fromm said, “You should get some sleep in your own beds tonight. This is far from over and he’ll need you at your best.”
A shower and stretching out on a real bed sounded great to me. Little wanted to spend a few minutes with Lars before leaving for the night, and Sarah was on the phone with their older sister in St. Paul sharing the hopeful news. I let Wilcox know that we would both be sleeping at Little’s. He said he’d have another deputy watch Lars and send Jerry to the restaurant.
***
The staff gathered around as my brother told them about Lars, and then they headed back to their duties. Chum whispered to Little, they huddled for a moment and went to the kitchen. I asked Chloe what that was about. Her lips made a straight line. “Customers grumble that Chum’s cooking isn’t as good as Little’s and it hurts his feelings. We’ve been trying to keep Little from worrying and now Chum’s in there whining to him.” She started to say something more but bit her lip.
“What else, Chloe?
She blurted it out. “The customers want Little’s cooking and Lars’ personality. We can’t duplicate that. Business is down.”
A late coffee-drinker raised his cup. Chloe threw an apologetic look at me, grabbed the coffee and headed to his table. Knowing Chloe wouldn’t think of complaining unless the situation was really bad had me worried. We were all at the brink.
Little had already gone to the back. I stepped out into the night to tell Jerry I’d be bringing out the dogs. Puffy eyes looked back at me. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He wiped a hand across his face. “Elise is ready for me to come home. The boys are getting hard for her to handle.”
I tried for an encouraging smile. “I know, it’s been a long haul.”
He half-heartedly snorted. “We’ll be happy for the overtime pay at Christmas anyway.”
I circled around back, feeling like an anvil was crushing my shoulders.
Little stood at the back door, frowning. “I thought you said Rock and Knute were here. Did you mean the cabin?”
He saw the look on my face.
“They’re not at the cabin, are they?”
Chapter 16
I ran to the woods and back to the garage calling to Rock and Knute. Jerry hurried toward me. “What happened?”
My legs continued pumping, arms flung out in a wide circle. “My dogs are gone!”
He kept up with me. “I’ve been watching both front and back and checking inside all evening. He’d have to have been really fast.”
I slowed to a walk and Little caught up to us. I said, “Rock wouldn’t have willingly gone with a stranger. What if one of the staff went to that bedroom you use to store supplies, stepped out back for a cigarette or to make a call and left the door open?”
Little said, “You think they got out and went to the cabin?”
My SUV was parked in front of Little’s garage. I fished the car keys from my pocket and jumped in. “I’m heading there now.”
Little hurried toward the restaurant, talking over his shoulder. “I’ll ask the staff about the storeroom.”
Jerry put up a hand to stop me but his job was to watch Little and the restaurant. He said, “Let me know right away if you find them. I don’t want to get Wilcox out here for no reason.”
I took the corners on two wheels to my cabin and went through the same routine—racing into the woods, back to the lake, across the road and calling until I was hoarse—but they didn’t come. I walked to my front door with legs filled with lead. The cabin was locked as I’d left it. I went in. No letters from the killer on my desk this time. I re-locked the house and scanned the woods from the porch knowing they were gone, but yelled one last time, my voice echoing in the trees. “Rock, Knute!”
Slumped over the steering wheel of my SUV, I called Wilcox and Jerry, trying not to picture the creatures hanging in the bistro that horrible morning five days ago, then drove back to Little’s.
Seth pulled up at the restaurant the same time I did and we went inside together. “The sheriff’s on his way. I would have been here sooner, but I was on a domestic dispute. It’s crazy busy in the summer.”
“Did Jerry tell you what happened here?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about your dogs. He wants me to contact the staff.”
Everyone but the clean-up crew had gone home. His hand trembling, Little wrote down all the info on his contact list and handed it to Seth. “That’s everybody who was on today, first and second shift.”
Wilcox found no evidence of a break-in. He, Little, Jerry and I sat at a table near the kitchen. Jerry said, “Seth questioned the staff. Chloe let out the dogs mid-afternoon, they did their business, then she locked them back inside and fed them.”
Wilcox flipped through his notes. “No one heard anything suspicious. No one went to the back for supplies. They insisted no one could have slipped through the kitchen and into the guys’ apartment without being seen.”
I said, “But they were focused on cooking or picking up or delivering food to tables and bringing in tubs of dirty dishes. How could they be so sure?” I turned to Jerry. “An intruder couldn’t have gotten in without the dogs barking.”
He scratched his head. “The deputy might not have heard it.”
Little gestured toward the kitchen and dining room. “The dishwasher, people talking, music playing in the background, traffic.”
I turned to Wilcox. “He took a big chance getting the dogs into a vehicle. Someone could have seen him.”
He shoved his cowboy hat back from his forehead. “He might have sedated them.”
I shook my head. “Sedated, Knute would be difficult to get into a car.”
Jerry said, “He could have monitored my routine and calculated how much time he’d need to get the job done.”
“Sheriff, the guy would have had to pull into the garage driveway or on the street, walk several yards to the back door, get the dogs into the car and leave before Jerry made his rounds and returned.”
Eyebrows knit together, Wil
cox looked into the distance as if trying to visualize the abduction and not having any success.
Even though my voice was calm, my body vibrated. I could only think about getting this demon who had infiltrated our lives. I asked, “What are we going to do, Sheriff?”
“We?” Wilcox started his usual lecture about my not being law enforcement and to let his team handle it, but I put my hand up. “Don’t.”
We stared hard at each other. He broke eye contact. “I’ll find out if Matthew has an alibi for this one. We’ve already asked everyone up and down the street if they saw him, but you know, this time of year all shop owners see is the customers and all they care about hearing is their cash registers ringing.” He clamped his hat down on his head.
Little touched my elbow. “I can’t be here. I have to be with Lars.”
Wilcox asked, “You’re both staying at the hospital tonight after all?”
We nodded.
“Good.” Wilcox’s back crackled when he stood up. “Seth will follow you.”
We waited while Little gathered a change of clothes and toiletries. I followed his example and stopped at the cabin to fill a backpack with a few items. On the drive to Branson, Little glanced at me a couple of times.
“What?” I kept my eyes on the road watching for deer, a constant hazard on this forest-lined highway. Seth kept a steady pace behind us.
He asked, “Have you told Ben?”
My throat closed. “I’m going to get them back.” I couldn’t tell Ben I’d lost his aunt’s dog. Rock was our connection to Gert. Talking to him would make me feel better but wasn’t fair to him. He couldn’t do anything.
Seth peeled away when we walked through the hospital doors.
Little said, “I’m going to Lars.” He turned back at the corridor. “I’m so sorry, Britt.”
I nodded. “I can’t just sit here. Maybe Edgar can see what connects all this.”
Little frowned. “It’s eleven o’clock.”
“He likes to watch late night TV. He’ll be awake.”
That was the one argument that would get to my brother. He believed in the old blind guy’s reputation, but in my past experience, Edgar only saw enough of a situation to pull me in, then he let me figure out how to apply his cryptic comments. Last year he’d dreamed about crying girls on the reservation but he didn’t know where they were, or what they were crying about. I had to find that out on my own. Still, Edgar pointed me in the right direction.
“Keep in touch, Britt. I can’t be worrying about you, too.” Little’s eyes misted. “Really, I can’t.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “I’m not going to do anything foolish.”
Little thought I was going to Edgar’s and I intended to, only not right now. Guilt crept in and gave me a nudge, but right now I needed concrete information more than guidance. I pulled out of the hospital parking lot with one eye glued to the rearview mirror. No suspicious headlights came into view behind me, and I made it to Spirit Lake confident no one followed.
I parked the SUV on a side street up the street from Olafson’s and dug through the glove box for my SIG Sauer. I pulled my black hoodie from the bag of clean clothes I’d picked up earlier, zipped it over the camera hanging against my chest and hid my hair under the hood.
Gun in hand, I checked all directions, crossed to the Paul Bunyan Trail and sprinted the mile to my cabin with a sliver of moon to guide me.
I watched the cabin from behind a pine tree, sniffing its familiar scent, listening to the night. When on some silent and parched desert, I liked to recall the peaceful sound of waves lapping and breeze rustling in the birches, but the reality is that a night by the lake is anything but quiet.
The creatures were having a party in the marsh across the road. The cacophony of frogs and crickets, owls hooting and night creatures rooting for food used to seem joyous to me, but now I worried that it masked a killer’s footsteps. Trickles of fear raced up and down my spine. The killer could be watching me right now.
With a deep breath, I stepped from behind the tree and slid along the back of the cabin to the garage door. I stuck the gun in my back pocket and unlocked the deadbolt, the keys jangling like cymbals. The seldom-used door creaked on its hinges. Heart thumping, I slipped in and locked it behind me, then waited to let my eyes adjust to the blackness.
Holding the gun in front of me, I moved silently through the cabin. Small electronics beamed illumination from the rooms—the time flashing from the microwave display, a bathroom night light, the Bose in my bedroom winking its pale blue light.
I crossed to the kitchen and laundry room and unlocked that door, eased it open and peeked in. No movement, no scent out of place, except for the overripe apple on the counter. I moved the rack of clothes hiding the door to my secret office, fished the key from the detergent box and let myself in. I turned on the light in the cramped windowless space and booted up the computer. In a few minutes, I typed out my message to Sebastian.
—Can you see if there are any connections between Charley Patterson and my dad Jan Johansson, Rob Jenkins, Matthew Willard, World Church of the Creator, Jacob Lars Weinstein, Jan Johansson Jr. or me?
A minute later he pinged back.
—On it.
—If you get a chance, could you check on connections to these names too?
He said he could. I typed in the names, attached a photo and we signed off.
I closed the door to the cramped secret office, and made my way to the living room. I’d wait half an hour to see if Sebastian came up with anything.
Seated in a dark corner with the gun pointed at the door, I half-hoped the killer would come. I’d make him tell me what he’d done with my dogs and why he killed Charley and nearly killed Lars, and then I would shoot the rabid beast between the eyes.
I hadn’t slept except for brief moments of dozing at the hospital and on Little’s sofa, but my system was used to sleep deprivation. It was part of my job—I stayed awake and on the story until I got the shot. I put down the gun, unzipped my hoodie and reached for my camera. The familiar shape in my hands steadied my heartbeat. For a couple of years I’d substituted holding a glass of vodka for comfort. Most of the time now, I didn’t miss the alcohol other than to wonder how I had gotten so dependent, how easily it had escalated until my life spun completely out of control. Or was it the other way, my life got out of control with a bad marriage, I became a workaholic to keep from dealing with it and then drank to blot it all out?
I put the unwanted thoughts away, zipped the camera back under my hoodie and picked up the gun. This time I wanted a different kind of shot.
A tapping noise that wasn’t the wind blowing branches against the roof had me out of my chair and pulling the curtain back just enough to peek out the front window. After sitting in the dark cabin, the crescent moon shone like a spotlight as my gaze swept across the yard and driveway. The wind had picked up causing the waves to slap harder against the dock and shore, but nothing caught my attention.
I moved through the cabin, checking every window, then stood watch out the sliding door in my bedroom, straining to hear. Curious, and unwilling to feel like a scared rabbit trapped in its warren, I slid the door open and stepped onto my deck, gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Cool night air washed over me. It had been stifling in there.
Frogs with their nightly din, waves, birch leaves rustling were all familiar but they obscured a sound I couldn’t place. Listening hard, I stepped into the yard.
A rhythmic bumping came from the dock, like a boat knocking against it. But there was no boat. I walked along the wooden planks to the T-shaped end and the bumping sound became louder. The teak chairs and table were stable, umbrella snapped closed.
A gust of wind caused the sound to speed up. I looked down at the water and saw what was making the sound. A trapped chunk of wood banged against the dock. My breath came out in a whoosh. I put the gun in my jeans, squatted and pulled up the wood.
It wasn’t a loose
chunk of driftwood. A slab of old barn wood was attached by a chain that looped around a boat tie-up. Its rounded top reminded me of fake grave markers dotting lawns at Halloween. Something was written on the wood. I unhooked it and brought it closer, training the flashlight beam on the words.
RIP was carved in the top section. Under the RIP were the names, Rock and Knute. He had stapled their collars to the bottom of the marker. I fell to my knees. On my knees clutching the marker to my aching chest. “Oh, God, no.” My gaze took in the expanse of lake. His message was that they were out there somewhere.
I leaped up, planted my feet wide apart, faced the woods and raised the grave marker, my rage ricocheting off the trees. “If you’re out there watching me, know this. I’ll get you.”
With quaking hands, I called Ben. My cell phone weighed a hundred pounds. The call went to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. Next, I called Wilcox.
“Get back in the cabin and lock the door. We’re on the way.” His voice sounded urgent, but I couldn’t move.
I was still on the dock when he arrived. He pried the wood marker from my arms and helped me to my feet. The sheriff studied it for a long moment, shoved his cowboy hat back and shivered in the pre-dawn mist. “What a sick sonofabitch.”
He tried to tell me it could be a trick, the dogs might still be alive, but neither of us believed it. He said, “Why don’t you sit down over there?” and guided me to the cabin. I sat on the porch with my back against the front door, legs splayed in front of me, needing to be anchored to something solid.
Thor showed up shortly after Wilcox. He showed her the marker. She ran over and threw her arms around me. “This just sucks.”
Wilcox coughed. She ducked her head and grabbed her case. “I’d better bag that thing.” Thor took her flashlight and equipment and crossed the yard. Later, I saw her light moving through the trees.
Close Up on Murder Page 14
