Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

“I downloaded this stuff from Washington County: Cliff Stovall was a fifty-six-year-old white guy, a CPA. He died of exposure complicated by self-mutilation. .”

“So they’re set on this self-mutilation theory?” Broker said.

“There it is. The coroner made notes more about what was on the outside of Stovall’s body, than what he found inside.”

“What’d he find inside?” Broker sipped coffee.

“Traces of Antabuse and a lot of alcohol. Blood level out of sight.”

“Okay, give me the outside,” Broker said.

“Thirteen significant self-inflicted wounds caused by cutting and piercing going back over twenty years.” J.T. raised his eyebrows. “In a world of seriously fucked-up individuals, this guy was a standout.”

“Nothing about foul play?” Broker said.

“Nope. Self-mutilation,” J.T. reiterated. “I’m getting pictures sent of the pre-autopsy so I can show Shami the downside of body piercing. She wants to get a nose ring.”

“So this isn’t the coroner making a diagnosis?”

“No, they pulled this guy’s medical records. He wasn’t some teenage kid taking a roll-around in the tackle box. The coroner called him an aristocrat of the cutting culture. He was a regular inpatient at the St. Cloud VA on the neuropsychiatric ward.”

Broker frowned. “I don’t buy it.”

“You want to see all the reports?”

“Screw the reports; I don’t buy it.” Broker said.

J.T. leaned forward and poked the air with the stem of his pipe for emphasis as he read from his notes. “You’re just being contrary. Stovall was an alky on Antabuse. And he took Trazadone to go to sleep and Prozac to smooth him out in the morning. The record mentions severe childhood trauma complemented by post-traumatic stress disorder. And his wife left him and filed for divorce six months ago.”

“So what are they calling it?” Broker asked.

“Misadventure.”

“Jesus, not even suicide?”

“Uh-uh. See, the way they interpret this stuff, Stovall was a mass meeting of self-destructive disorders, so borderline and numbed out, the only way he could feel things was to cut and stick himself. They figure he fell off the wagon, drank his way though an Antabuse reaction-which is hard-core because Antabuse and alcohol are a recipe for projectile-vomiting like in The Exorcist -then he kept drinking and was playing dangerous games with a hammer and a spike.”

J.T. tapped a sheet of faxed paper on the desk. Broker recognized it as a police report. J.T. said, “July ninety-six, Washington County responded to a nine-one-one from Stovall’s wife. He’d gone off the wagon and nailed his wrist to the bathroom door in the basement of their home. Paramedics used a Wonder bar to get him free. Same wrist. Like this.”

J.T. picked up a pen and then positioned his left forearm on the counter, palm up, and then curled his wrist back, aligning his thumb and fingers so the pen pointed back into the hollow of his wrist. “They figured he was playing this kind of game again.”

J.T. pounded the pen down into his wrist with an imaginary hammer in his right hand. “He went a little too far and he got, pardon the pun, stuck in the woods with the weather turning bad, and he froze to death. Not suicide.”

Broker shook his head. “Well, thanks for the trouble.”

“No problem.” J.T. tossed the pages aside and said, tongue in cheek, “I know how you benefit from a steady hand when you go off on a tangent.”

Broker ignored the jab and rocked silently back and forth and stared out the picture window where the blackness had dissolved into pale streaks of purple and vermilion.

“So you really went for this thing; why is that?” J.T. asked.

“We were bringing Sommer out in the seaplane. And he started raving about telling Stovall to move the money. That’s what got me going after I saw the article about finding Stovall in the woods.”

“Raving, like in delirious?”

“Yeah, he was delirious. He was pissed at his wife. So he moved all his money into a trust where she can’t touch it. The alternate trustee was Stovall, who checks out the day after they discover that Hank Sommer’s health insurance has lapsed.”

J.T. stroked his chin. “Her lawyer is Milton Dane. She’s not without resources.”

Broker nodded. “True. Milt’s arranging for a nursing home, and he’s busting open the trust.”

“So she panicked and now she’s covered,” J.T. said. “You went with your gut and arrived at a conclusion and worked backward, trying to make events fit. Uh-huh. Typical Broker. You always were a prosecutor’s nightmare. But they put up with your bullshit because it helps to have someone around who’ll walk into the lion’s den with a pocketful of raw steak. That last bust, you bagged those National Guard guys selling machine guns all over the Midwest, that got a lot of people promoted. Not just at BCA, but at the Bureau and ATF. The word on the street was, they left you out there about five years too long.”

“You getting into giving speeches in your old age?” Broker said.

J.T. squinted. “Yeah, I’m into speeches and simple shit like knowing where my wife is. She’s in the kitchen eating Total Raisin Bran with my daughter, getting one hundred percent of her vitamins before she goes to work. And this is your problem we’re getting to.” J.T. leaned forward. “Can you tell me where your wife is? Where your kid is?”

Broker grimaced. “C’mon J.T.; not first thing in the morning.”

“You can’t, can you?” J.T. said. “ ’Cause you don’t even know. And you know why? Because you married yourself , you dumb shit. Only difference between you and Nina Pryce is she’s younger, so she’s got bigger balls.”

“Having fun, aren’t we?” Broker said.

“I’m just warming up. See, the way I have it figured out is those other women you knew bored you, and then here comes Nina who doesn’t bore you. And you actually thought that because she had your kid and married you, she’d toss off her Wonder Woman bracelets and stay home and knit.” J.T. rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Looks like she’s the one that got bored with you this time.” J.T. grinned.

“What is this? Tough love or shooting-wounded?” Broker asked.

“You tell me,” J.T. said. “Nina left your shit weak and some writer guy had to save your ass. And you’ve got yourself so turned around that you show up here looking like the poster boy for the Peter Pan Principle, with your snappy young nurse.”

Broker had to protest. “Peter Pan Principle? When did you stoop to psychobabble?”

“Actually it’s Denise’s term,” J.T. sniffed. “You know, for guys who never grow up.”

And then Amy, who had been standing in the doorway unobserved, nursing a cup of coffee, enunciated precisely: “That’s snappy young nurse- anesthetist .”

“Hmmm,” J.T. said, slightly deflated, coming off his roll.

Amy entered the room and said, “Okay, while you guys are solving the problems of the world I need to borrow a vehicle and do some early Christmas shopping.”

“Hmmmm,” J.T. said again.

“Right,” Broker said, glad to change the subject. “So where’s my truck?”

J.T. cleared his throat; wrinkles appeared on his neck as he drew his head back between his broad shoulders and tried to stand up and scratch his forehead. “I been meaning to talk to you.”

“My truck?” Broker insisted.

“It’s in the Quonset,” J.T. said, pulling on his coat and moving toward the door.

Broker and Amy followed J.T. back out into the cold and they tramped after him across the yard to the large equipment shed. J.T. pushed open the doors and flipped on a light. A tractor and a John Deere bailer were parked in the foreground. A bobcat sat beyond them, and parked in the rear was the shape of Broker’s sleek Ford Ranger, shrouded in a huge blue tarp.