Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

‘Oh, sure.’

People rarely said no to Brooke. She was relentless about fundraising. She was sexy, too, which was a plus with middle-aged men who had money to burn.

Maggie had known Brooke since she’d graduated from UMD. She’d started at the front desk of The Praying Hands, doing intake for kids walking in the door, and six years later she’d taken over as the director. She knew every kid by name, and she knew their stories. The shelter was her crusade.

Brooke nodded at Maggie’s Avalanche, which was parked in front of Sammy’s. ‘Couldn’t you get a Corolla or something, babe? Every time you come down here, you scare the kids.’

‘Little cop, big truck,’ Maggie said.

‘I think you’re overcompensating.’

‘You’re not the first to say so.’

Brooke led them across the street to the shelter, where conversations froze as the two of them walked inside. No one made eye contact with Maggie. Runaway teens shared an instinctive guilt, even if they weren’t doing anything wrong. When you saw a cop, you didn’t invite attention.

Maggie followed Brooke into a stairwell that smelled of vomit. They took the stairs to her second-floor office. The two windows looking toward the street were dirty and cracked, and a loud fan kept air moving, even during the winter. Brooke sat down behind her battered oak desk and casually rolled up a months-old People magazine to swat a cockroach on the window ledge.

‘So how are you, Maggie?’ Brooke asked, dumping the dead bug in her wastebasket. ‘How are the new offices? Must be nice, right? Flat screen TVs, sushi in the cafeteria, personal masseur on call.’

‘Ha ha,’ Maggie said.

The Duluth Police had been headquartered in the City Hall building for as long as Maggie had been on the force, but they’d recently moved to a new facility that they shared with the St. Louis County authorities. The modern building was a step-up from their downtown space, but it was in the flatlands near the airport, far from the center of town.

‘I still don’t know how K-2 got the Council to spend the money,’ Brooke said. ‘When I’m looking for a grant, they always tell me the city’s broke.’

‘Well, Stride beat a rat to death in the men’s room with a baton. When he dropped it on the chief’s desk, they got serious about a new building.’

‘We’ve got plenty of rats around here,’ Brooke said.

‘Yeah, I know. Are you keeping your head above water?’

Brooke folded her hands together. Her red fingernails were long and neat. She looked elegantly out of place against a backdrop of posters on meth, STDs, and family planning. ‘This isn’t Hazelden,’ she said. ‘We don’t have a line-up of wealthy celebs handing us money. We’re lucky to get a donation here and there and a few bucks from Medicaid.’

‘That’s recession economics. Demand goes up, funding goes down.’

‘Well, God forbid we should ask any of our millionaire CEOs to drop an extra dollar in the tax bucket,’ she said sourly.

‘Don’t you hate rich people?’ Maggie asked, winking.

‘Hey, you’re my favorite rich person and you know it. I just wish you’d let us put your name on something. You give twice as much as that son of a bitch Lowball Lenny, and I’ve got to suck up to him at every Council meeting and invite him to donor dinners to meet the kids. What a hypocrite.’

‘I hear you.’

‘Sorry. I get frustrated sometimes. I see kids who have nothing, and I can barely scrape together enough dollars to help them without getting on my knees for these rich bastards.’ She plastered a smile on her face. ‘Anyway, I’m grateful for people like you. What can I do for you, Maggie?’

‘It’s about that girl I mentioned on the phone. Catalina Mateo.’

Brooke nodded. ‘Okay. What’s going on?’

‘She says someone is trying to kill her,’ Maggie said.

‘Is this for real?’ Brooke asked, with a dubious furrow in her brow. ‘I mean, you know how it is with these girls. You can’t always take what they say at face value.’

‘Exactly. That’s what worries me. You know all about Cat’s family background, right? You know what happened to her parents?’

‘Of course. It’s awful what she went through. Unfortunately, awful is the ticket of admission around here.’

‘What can you tell me about her?’

Brooke rocked back in her chair and fiddled with a ballpoint pen. ‘Look, Maggie, I want to help, but I can’t talk about what’s going on with any of these girls without their permission. They have legal rights. I won’t put them in jeopardy.’

‘I realize that but I’m not trying to bust Cat for anything. Stride’s got a signed release from her, too. If you need it, I can fax it over here.’

Brooke looked uncomfortable. ‘Fine. Okay. I’ll tell you what I can, but that’s not much.’

‘How long have you known her?’

‘About two years. Her aunt, Dory, was one of my best friends at UMD before she dropped out. Dory brought Cat to the shelter when she started running away. Cat sleeps here off and on, but it’s been a couple weeks now since I’ve seen her. If something’s going on, I haven’t heard about it.’

‘She says someone almost ran her down a block away.’

‘Here?’ Brooke asked. ‘That’s news to me.’

‘It happened in the middle of the night.’

‘Maybe so, but stories like that get around.’

Maggie leaned across the desk and lowered her voice. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Brooke. Something about this girl bothers me. I want to get inside her head. Is she paranoid, or do you think it’s something more than that?’

Brooke frowned. ‘It’s hard to be sure. Most of the kids who come here, they’re on the streets for a reason. Their problems are intractable. You’re talking about severe abuse and emotional dysfunction. This is life or death every day, it’s not “my mommy didn’t love me”. Next thing you know, they’re deep into prostitution and drugs.’

‘I know that.’

‘It’s funny, I remember writing a paper in college about legalizing prostitution. Make it legal and safe and regulate the hell out of it. I was pretty self-righteous. If a woman wants to use her body as a business, why should the government care? I figured, no harm, no foul, right?’

‘A lot of cops feel that way,’ Maggie said.

‘Yes, believe me, I know they do. Cops look the other way all the time. Everybody does. Unfortunately, you can dress it up any way you like, it’s still abuse. I don’t care whether it’s fifty dollars in some doorway or a thousand dollars in a Minneapolis hotel room. These girls are being permanently damaged. It messes with their heads for ever. I wish I’d known that back in school.’

Maggie heard the emotion in her voice. ‘I’m on your side, Brooke, but what does this have to do with Cat? Is she one of the really messed-up ones?’

‘Well, there’s obviously ugly stuff in her head.’

‘That doesn’t help me.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t really know anything more.’

‘Come on, Brooke. I know you. You’re not telling me everything. What’s going on?’

Brooke screwed up her pretty mouth, as if she were chewing on sour candy. ‘It’s a suspicion, nothing more. I can’t prove it. Besides, I don’t like to drag up old ghosts.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Vincent Roslak,’ Brooke said.

Maggie frowned and put the pieces together. ‘The psychologist who was murdered in Minneapolis? What does he have to do with this? I remember he had a connection to the shelter.’

‘Roslak was a psych volunteer,’ Brooke acknowledged. ‘Honestly, at the time, we were thrilled to have him. We needed a counselor and he had great credentials. We can deal with the physical needs these kids have, but if we ignore their mental and emotional problems, we’re never going to make any real difference in their lives.’