Brian Freeman - Marathon

“You were there, too? Why didn’t you come over?”

The girl shrugged. “I’m not ready.”

“Drew said to make sure you know you’re welcome.”

“I know that.”

Serena didn’t push her. The more she pushed Cat about anything, the more the girl dug in her heels. That was another way in which they were alike. Cat had to make peace with giving up her child in her own way and in her own time.

“Was your tutoring session cancelled?” Serena asked.

“Yeah. Everything’s cancelled. Everybody’s staying home.”

Cat was a year behind other high school students her age — she’d be a junior in the fall, rather than a senior — but she had a flair for math, and she was already a tutor for students older than she was. When she set her mind to anything, she was whip-smart about it. The trick was keeping her focused.

She’d had a successful year at school after giving birth to Michael. She aced every class. The one thing she hadn’t done was make friends. She’d already seen more life and death than other kids her age, which made it hard to do normal things with normal girls. She’d had a boyfriend, Al, but she’d broken up with him at the start of the school year, because she said she couldn’t handle classes and Al at the same time. Serena thought the real reason was that she was afraid of any relationship getting serious.

The strange thing was, she knew that Cat missed her old life. Living on the street was what she knew; it was what she was good at. Without it, she didn’t know where she belonged.

“Listen, I need your help with something,” Serena told her.

“With what?”

Serena handed her a mug shot of a bearded, middle-aged man. “Do you recognize him?”

“Sure, that’s Eagle. Everybody knows Eagle.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s like a lot of the older men on the street,” Cat said. “He had a normal life until his drinking took over. Eventually, he drank his way out of his marriage, his house, his job. I liked him. He was smart, like me. He was always bugging me about school. Sometimes he would make up puzzles I had to solve, and he’d quiz me until I got it right. That was when he was sober, though, which wasn’t too often.”

“Have you seen him around the city recently?” Serena asked.

“No. Eagle’s a hider.”

“What’s that mean?”

“If he doesn’t want you to find him, you won’t. A lot of the homeless hang out in the same places all the time. Once you know their spot, you can usually find them there. Not Eagle. He knows how to slip into places he’s not supposed to be, and he’s usually in a different place every night. He was the one who told me how easy it is to get inside the DECC after dark because there’s almost always an open door.”

“Does he steal to get money?” Serena asked.

Cat gave her a thin smile. “No, he’s not one of those. Not like me. And he isn’t much for handouts, either. Usually, he’ll make a couple bucks mowing a lawn or shoveling somebody’s driveway, and then he’ll drink until the money is gone. Why are you asking about him, anyway?”

“Eagle was in the Duluth Outdoor Company shop last week,” Serena told her. “He had some kind of episode, and they called 911, but he left before the police got there.”

Cat frowned. “That’s weird.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just that Eagle doesn’t like going near Canal Park. He hates tourists. It bugs him the way everybody looks down on him, you know?”

“Can you think of a reason he’d go to the shop, then?”

“I can’t,” Cat said. “Hey, you don’t think Eagle had something to do with the bombing, do you? That’s not his style. He’s harmless.”

“No, I don’t think that,” Serena said.

“Then why do you care?”

Serena kicked the sand at her feet and asked herself the same question. She had no reason to believe that Eagle’s behavior at the shop was important, but for some reason, she couldn’t let it go. When her instincts grabbed hold of something, she’d learned to listen.

“If I want to talk to Eagle, how do I find him?” Serena asked. “Given that you say he’s pretty good at not being found.”

Cat grinned. “You can’t find him, but I can.”

“How?”

“I can check in with some of my friends,” Cat said.

Serena shook her head. “No.”

“Hey, you can try to do it yourself, but they won’t talk to you. Not a cop.”

“I’m not letting you go back into that world,” Serena told her.

“Well, then, come with me. We can do it together.”

Serena studied the girl’s face. She didn’t like the idea of Cat having anything to do with people from her old life, but she also knew that asking for Cat’s help was giving the girl something that mattered. Everybody needed a purpose in life.

“Okay,” Serena said. “You win.”

Cat looked pleased with herself. She knelt on the beach and let some sand slip through her fingers. A gentle wave lapped at her feet. She turned and looked back at Serena. “So what are you going to say to Eagle when we find him?”

“I want to know why he went to the shop that day,” she replied. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get him into trouble.”

“What do you think he knows?” Cat asked.

“I have no idea. Probably nothing.”

The girl squinted into the sunshine and shook her head. She knew Serena too well. “Come on, you must have a hunch. You always say your gut knows the truth before you do.”

Serena bent over her and smiled. She pushed some of the loose strands of hair out of Cat’s face. “Honestly? You’re right. I don’t know why, but my gut tells me that Eagle knows who the bomber is.”

Maggie parked her Avalanche at the Cloquet airport, which was in the middle of flat fields west of town, surrounded by acres of woods. Among the handful of cars in the parking lot, she spotted an Escalade with the license plate MM.

Michael Malville.

She heard the whine of a small plane engine overhead. It dipped for a landing, its wings waggling in the breeze. The plane made a touchdown on the runway, but rather than slowing down, it accelerated into another takeoff and began a lazy arc into the sky. Someone was taking flight lessons.

Maggie’s boyfriend, Troy, had his pilot’s license, so she’d spent a lot of time in small airports over the past year. It said a lot for her faith in Troy that she would climb into a plane with him, because she was deathly afraid of flying. She still screamed at every updraft, and she refused to go up into anything but cloudless skies. Even so, she’d begun to appreciate the freedom that Troy felt in the air.

She found Michael Malville prepping a Cirrus SR22 for flight. It was a beautiful single-engine propeller plane, and it looked brand-new, with a dazzling midnight-blue coat of paint. Malville, like Troy, looked at home with his aircraft. He stopped what he was doing when he saw Maggie approaching him, and he folded his arms across his chest. His head was shaved bald and had a pink glow from too much time in the sun. He wore a red polo shirt, khaki shorts, and Ray-Ban’s over his eyes.

“How did you find me?” Malville asked her.

“Your wife told me you were here.”

He opened the cockpit door and reached in to grab a silver travel mug. He took a sip of coffee and wiped his mouth. “Well, what can I do for you?”

“For starters, you can tell me what the hell you were thinking last night when you posted that tweet,” Maggie said, letting her anger show in her voice.

“I didn’t break any laws,” he retorted.

“I’m not talking about laws. I’m talking about common sense. You could have called me. You could have called the tip line. You could have called 911. Instead, you had to show off and try to look like a hero for your Twitter friends.”