William Krueger - Copper River

Nothing.

Which was understandable. It had been a late night for them both. He walked around to the front, saw that the door was open. He climbed the crumbling set of concrete steps and peeked through the screen.

He’d been inside hundreds of times over the years and the place was always a mess. This morning it looked even worse than usual. Way worse. As if Charlie’s father had gone on a drunken rampage and tried to break everything he hadn’t already broken. Christ, how could Charlie stand it?

Ren didn’t like the idea of disturbing Mr. Miller, but the place looked so bad, he was worried about Charlie. If she’d come home while her old man was going crazy…

“Hello?” Ren called timidly. “Mr. Miller? Charlie?”

The day was sunny and still. The clarity of the Huron Mountains in the distance was softened by a blue haze. Ren watched a stray dog squeeze through a hole in the lumberyard fence, look his way, then trot off in the other direction. This was all so normal, yet Ren sensed that something wasn’t right.

A long moment of uncertainty passed, then he decided.

He eased the door open and stepped inside. Immediately, his nose was assaulted by the same raw odor that had hit him when he opened the door of the car where Cork O’Connor had bled heavily after he was shot. Ren would have turned around and got the hell out of there except he was afraid for Charlie.

Although the trailer was full of broken debris, it felt empty. Ren made his way toward Charlie’s bedroom. As he approached the threshold, part of the room was revealed and what he saw stopped him cold.

Charlie’s walls were powder blue. The wall that Ren could see was splashed with a different color. As he stood there, unable to make himself move ahead, the artist in him tried to find form in what he saw. Numbly he thought that the splatter resembled a jellyfish with many long tentacles.

A big red jellyfish.

Cork offered to share his breakfast with Dina. She accepted a bit of his coffee and a piece of toast. She sat at the cabin table, hunched over her half-filled coffee cup. She’d removed the forest green jacket she’d been wearing. Underneath was a tan sweater. Below were khakis and hiking boots.

“For a city girl who never learned much about the woods, you look pretty good here. Pretty natural,” Cork said, speaking from his bunk.

With her thumb she flicked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Deep-cover training.”

“You haven’t talked to Jo, right?”

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

It was, but he was dying to know how they were doing, to be assured that they were fine. And he wanted them to know they shouldn’t be worried about him.

“The less they know, the safer they are. They’re of no use to Jacoby,” he said.

Dina used Cork’s butter knife to brush some char from her toast. “You know, I never believed cops and families were a good idea. You get hurt, killed, it’s not just you who suffers.”

“If cops didn’t have families, where would little cops come from?” He smiled. She didn’t. “Is that the reason you don’t have a boyfriend?”

She leveled her green eyes on him and said dourly, “Boyfriend?” She picked up her coffee with both hands. “I haven’t had a boyfriend since high school. I have lovers.”

“Anyone special?”

“Special gets complicated and leads to things like families.” She gave her attention to the coffee.

Cork lifted the tray on which Ren had delivered breakfast. He tried to move it out of his way, twisted his leg, and grunted in pain. Dina got up, came over, took the tray from him, and carried it to the table. She came back, lifted the sheet, and looked at his wounds.

“Hurt much?”

“Only when the drugs wear off. Or I think about it. Ever been shot?”

“That’s a pleasure I’ve missed.” Her eyes moved from his leg to his face, then slid away quickly. “You were lucky.”

“I know.”

She let the sheet drop. “Is this really the kind of thing you want to put your family through?”

“Maybe when all this is over I’ll go back to running the hamburger stand. Except I got shot doing that, too.”

“Maybe guys like you just attract trouble.”

“What about people like you?”

“Like me?”

“Who make a living pulling other people’s keisters out of the fire.”

“I’m not making a nickel off you.”

He laughed softly. “You can use me as a reference.” He reached out and took her hand. “Thanks for coming, Dina.”

She glanced at her fingers, small in his palm. “What was I going to do? Leave you to the wolves?”

“Some would.”

“In my shoes, what would you do?”

“Deep down, we’re the same kind of people, you know. Except with you, it comes in a nicer package.” He laughed easily, jesting.

“And with you, it comes with a family.” She slid her hand from his easy grip, walked back to the table, and sat down with her coffee.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

“Forget it.”

“Look, all I meant was-”

“I said forget it, okay?”

“No. I want to get this straight.”

“It couldn’t be any straighter. You’re married. Happily. The perfect family. End of story. I get it.”

For a while it was quiet in the cabin. Cork stared out the window at the square of sky and tree branch he could see from the bunk. “Wish I knew how the investigations are going.”

“Like I said, the Winnetka police are playing dumb. Won’t answer any of my questions. Maybe your people in Aurora know something.”

“Got a cell phone I can use?”

“What happened to yours?”

Cork grabbed his shattered unit from the windowsill and held it up. “Took a bullet in the parking lot in Kenosha.”

Dina finally smiled, then something seemed to dawn on her. “When you talked to Jo before the goons ambushed you at the motel, did you tell her where you were staying?”

“I didn’t think so, but I must have. How else would they have known where I was?”

“Did you pay for the room with a credit card?”

“Cash, from the roll you gave me.”

“But you used the cell phone to call her?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me see it.”

Cork handed it over.

“When did you buy this?”

“Couple of months ago. Replacement for the one that got broken when we busted a meth lab near Yellow Lake.”

She popped the face off the phone, studied the guts, and said, “Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“I think I know how they found you. E911 capable.”

E911. Cork understood. Many new cell phones were equipped with a chip that, when the unit was turned on, broadcast a continuous GPS signal that was accessible if you knew the phone’s unique chip code. This allowed emergency personnel to locate someone who either didn’t know where they were or couldn’t relay that information. It had other, less publicized uses. It was possible for law enforcement to track suspects or known criminals using the chip’s signal. Also, some cell phone companies documented their customers’ activities on a continuous basis, logging information that might be of interest to a corporation wanting to know, for example, how many Starbucks someone hit in the course of a normal week. Anyone with the right money and proper connections would have had no trouble at all tracking Cork to a dingy motel in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“Christ, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Have you used the phone up here at all?” Dina asked.

He shook his head. “The bullet killed it.”

“Good.”

She tossed it to him and he set it back on the windowsill. “Here.” She took a cell from the pocket of her jacket and gave it to him. “Use this.”