Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

That was what she’d been running from. That was where it had started.

‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said.

He felt disembodied, as if he could see himself and watch what he was doing. Coldness descended on him. His muscles tensed into knots. He stepped outside into the sweet air and took a deep breath, but it failed to defuse his rage. He descended from the porch and saw the propped-open hood of the Coupe de Ville and heard the clamor of tools. He stepped inside the garage. The space was dimly lit under a curly fluorescent bulb. A static-filled FM station played Poison from a boom box.

William Green looked around the hood angrily. ‘What the-?’

The man blanched when he saw Stride. His hands were greasy, and he wiped them on an old towel. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have a message for you, Mr. Green.’

‘What? What message?’

Stride came up to him, close enough to smell beer and smoke on the man’s breath. Green stumbled backwards until he bumped against the peg board on the rear wall of the garage. Stride studied the tools and removed a hack saw from its hook and held it in his hand, running a finger over the jagged teeth of the blade. When he was angry, Stride channeled his rage into the calmness of his voice. He spoke as calmly as he ever had in his life.

‘Let me explain something to you, Mr. Green. If you ever lay a finger on Cat again, I’ll be back here. If you ever even think about touching her or your wife again, you better see my face in your head, because I will be back here. I will leave my badge at home, and I will come visit you in the night. Do you understand me?’

‘Hey, listen, I don’t know what-’

‘ Do you understand me? ’

Green didn’t take his eyes off the saw. ‘Yeah. Fuck, yeah.’

Stride let the saw drop from his hand and clatter to the ground. He turned around and walked through the garage and stood in the driveway until the roaring in his head subsided. When he could breathe again, he headed for the street. He realized that Cat was right and he was wrong. It would have been a mistake to bring her back here. She was better off with Kim Dehne, as far away from this house as possible. When he saw Cat, he wanted to tell her that, for the first time in a long time, things were going to be all right. He was never going to let William Green get near her again.

He looked up at Cat’s bedroom window on the side of the house. It was twelve feet from the sash to the ground, but she said she could jump it, particularly during the winter, when the snow cushioned her landing. That was her escape route. She’d used it dozens of times.

One time, three weeks ago, someone had been waiting for her.

Stride shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the corner, where he sat on a yellow fire hydrant. He stared at the weedy cracks in the pavement and at the slope leading up toward the railroad tracks. The street looked empty, but if anyone wanted to watch Cat there were plenty of places to hide. The shaggy trees. The dead end road on the other side of 62nd Avenue. The foreclosed rambler with the broken windows.

He noticed a STOP sign that had been defaced by graffiti. Someone had painted the word ‘Me’ in drippy green letters, so now the sign said: STOP ME. The paint looked fresh. The message felt like a warning: Stop me, stop me, stop me, stop me .

He didn’t like it.

Stride got back into his Expedition. When he turned on the engine, warm air blew into his face. He was running out of time and daylight. He needed to find Curt Dickes and the other teenage runaway, Brandy. One of them might be able to help him figure out who was hunting Cat. And why.

He also couldn’t get another name out of his head.

Vincent Roslak.

Brooke Hahne was late.

Maggie stood outside Sammy’s Pizza downtown, across the street from The Praying Hands. Runaways, drug addicts, prostitutes and abused teens all wound up at the shelter’s door. Some kids needed medical help. Some needed tips on jobs. Some simply needed a hot meal and a safe place to sleep.

The street corner opposite The Praying Hands was deserted on Saturday afternoon. Usually, a dozen teens hung out there, but everyone recognized Maggie’s yellow Avalanche in the central Hillside area, and everyone knew she was a cop. When she showed up, the teens melted away like ice cream on an August sidewalk.

Inside the pizza joint, a cook in a greasy apron waved through the store window. She was a regular at Sammy’s. So was Stride. The restaurant had served as the weekly hangout for her, Stride, and Serena; it was the place where they talked about open cases over garlic bread and sausage pizza. They hadn’t done that since the break-up. When she ate Sammy’s pizza now, it was usually a late-night delivery to her condo. Alone. With a beer.

Serena.

Maggie hadn’t seen Serena Dial in months, since before the long winter. They weren’t friends anymore. Serena had moved out of Stride’s cottage in November and joined the sheriff’s department in the lake town of Grand Rapids an hour away. She was a name on Itasca County bulletins now. When updates about the Margot Huizenfelt case came up at the morning meeting, Serena was the contact. Other than that, she was a ghost who never showed up in Duluth. Maggie missed her, but she had no one to blame for the split but herself.

Her affair with Stride had begun after his near-death fall from the Blatnik Bridge, which had triggered debilitating flashbacks that left him emotionally numb. Like strangers, Stride and Serena had blocked each other out, unable to talk about the rift between them. At his lowest ebb, Maggie had found Stride on the floor of his cottage, cut and bleeding, dazed and suicidal. She’d cleaned him up. She’d put her arms around him. She’d listened to him talk about feeling dead inside. When he reached for her, not as a friend but as a lover, she’d reached back.

A mistake.

Her instincts had told her to run, but she stayed. They kissed. They made love. It should have been one time, it should have been their secret, but those kinds of secrets had a way of getting out. Stride couldn’t hide the truth from Serena. It was in his face. When he told her, the fissures in all of their relationships split open like cracks in the earth. There was no going back to the way they were.

Maggie climbed the hill past the restaurant with the fire escapes of the old brick building on her left. She crossed the street through a cloud of steam belching from the sewers. Near the next corner at Second Street, she stopped where Cat had told Stride that a car tried to run her down. She noticed a parking meter with a bent frame, as if a car had struck it. It could have happened the way Cat said, with a vehicle weaving on and off the sidewalk as part of a hit-and-run. Or the meter could have been damaged like that for months. She’d banged up a few meters herself over the years.

Maggie spotted a white Kia Rio parallel parking near Sammy’s. She recognized the car and saw Brooke Hahne get out and head toward The Praying Hands. Brooke, who probably made less money than a first-year teacher, was dressed in an above-the-knee black skirt and a burgundy blouse with gold buttons. Everything she wore was second-hand, but she made thrift shop specials look good. At thirty, she was cheerleader pretty, with long, straight blonde hair. Her high heels made her nearly six feet tall. She was as skinny as a praying mantis, which was what Duluth politicians often called her. She had a razor tongue about city budget cuts.

Brooke stopped and turned when Maggie called her name. They met on the street.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Brooke said. ‘I had a donor meeting in Grand Marais.’

‘Get the gift?’