Brian Freeman: The Cold Nowhere

Cat clasped her fists in front of her face and stared in despair at the harbor below her. Then she did the only thing she could do.

She flung herself off the ship into the ice-strewn water.

Jonathan Stride knew he wasn’t alone.

He arrived at his cottage on Park Point at two in the morning and realized that something was wrong. It was instinct; nothing looked out of place on the street. There were no cars in the neighborhood that he didn’t recognize. His eyes flicked across the trees and shadows around the house, but he saw nothing to alarm him. When he listened, he heard only the intermittent roar of Lake Superior beyond the crest of the dunes. Even so, as he locked his Ford Expedition and headed for his front porch, he went so far as to slide his gun into his hand.

Instinct.

Nearing the house, he spotted footprints in the snow. The prints were small, maybe size seven, and whoever made them was in a hurry, not trying to hide their approach. He tracked the running prints across his lawn and along the dirt driveway that led to the back of the house. He examined the cottage windows from the yard but saw no lights. If anyone was inside, they were waiting for him in the dark.

Stride headed for the rear door of his house, near the grassy trail that led to the beach. He let himself inside onto the screened porch. He eased his leather jacket off his shoulders and draped it over the garage sale sofa he kept out back. He shook snow out of his wavy hair. Leading with his gun, he opened the inner door that led to his kitchen.

The house was colder than usual. He heard a whistle of wind. He left the lights off and walked quietly, but the floor timbers in the 1880s cottage were never silent. They groaned with each step, announcing his arrival. It didn’t matter.

‘I know you’re here,’ he called.

No one replied.

He followed the kitchen into the dining room and eased around the corner into the living room. The cold fireplace and his red leather armchair were on his right. Sofas and throw rugs took up the middle of the room, near steps that led to the unfinished attic. The open space was empty. The room was dark. He heard the wind again, loud and agitated, blowing curtains in a spare bedroom immediately across from him. He rarely used that room; it was filled with dusty bookshelves and notes on cold cases. He crossed through the threshold into the bedroom, where the old floor slanted downward, like a corridor in a fun house. He spied a broken window, with glass littering the floor and lacy fabric billowing in and out of the night air like a ghost.

The bedroom was deserted. Using a penlight on his keychain he studied the glass and saw a spatter of blood on the shards.

‘You’re hurt,’ he said aloud.

He went back to the living room and eyed the doorway to his own bedroom on the opposite wall. She was hiding there. He’d already decided it was a woman, based on the footprints. There were other rooms in the house — another small bedroom in the corner facing the street, the attic, the tiny bathroom — but he could make out damp tracks on the carpet leading toward his room. Halfway across the floor, he saw beige cowboy boots that matched the tracks in the snow.

‘I’m coming in, okay?’ he said.

Still nothing.

He examined his bedroom. The comforter had been yanked off his bed. The space on either side of the bed was empty, but his closet door was closed and latched. It usually swung shut by itself because of the slight tilt of the house, but he never actually pushed it all the way closed. He turned the antique metal door knob and pulled hard. The closet door opened with a shriek.

He turned his light to the floor and saw a huddled body wrapped tightly in the blanket from his bed. All he could see was her face. Not a woman. A girl. A teenager. She stared up at him, eyes wide with fright. Her long brown hair was soaking wet, plastered to her face. She was wracked with trembling, and her skin was blue with cold.

Stride holstered his gun. He turned on the closet light and the girl’s eyes squeezed shut.

‘My name’s Stride,’ he told her. ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a lieutenant with the Duluth Police.’

Without opening her eyes, she nodded. She already knew who he was. The blanket slipped, and he saw bony bare shoulders.

Stride squatted in front of her. ‘What’s your name?’

She opened her eyes now and he could see how brown and perfect they were. ‘Cat,’ she said.

‘Hello, Cat. Can you tell me why you’re here?’

She didn’t answer right away but he could feel her reaching out to him across the dusty space. He could feel her fear and loneliness and he knew without her saying so that she had nowhere else in the world to go. Finally, she whispered to him, as if it were a secret to keep hidden.

‘Someone’s trying to kill me,’ she said.

*

The flannel shirt he’d given her draped almost to her knees. She wore a pair of Stride’s white athletic socks and roomy shorts. Her hair was dry now, and her skin was pink and clean from the bath. She clutched a mug of tea with both hands as they sat at his dining room table. One of her fingers was bandaged where she’d cut it on the broken window.

‘Sorry about the shirt,’ Stride told her, smiling. ‘The woman who used to live here, Serena, she’s a lot taller than you.’

Cat shrugged. ‘It’s okay. I like it. It smells good.’

The girl stared into her tea. He had a chance to study her features. Teenagers always had the prettiness of youth, and Hispanic women were particularly attractive, but Stride thought that Cat was one of the most beautiful young girls he had ever seen. Her bone structure was like a sculpture, with high cheekbones and a chin that made a sharp V. Her face was small; so was her body. Her chestnut hair tumbled in broad waves to the middle of her chest, and he could see a gold chain glinting between the buttons of the shirt. He hadn’t seen her smile, but he could tell by the way her lips turned upward that she would have a pretty smile when she used it. She had a petite, slightly rounded nose and dark eyebrows that were arched in innocent surprise.

Even so, she wasn’t innocent. He knew that. The ravages of street life were already creeping into her face. He could practically measure in months how long she’d been hanging out in the industrial areas and near the graffiti graveyard under the freeway overpass. She was malnourished; he could see that in the dark circles under her eyes and in the way she’d devoured the turkey sandwich he made for her. He’d smelled alcohol on her breath, and he assumed she used drugs. Probably synthetics, which were the street drug of choice. Her expression was melancholy, and in a few more months it would become cynical. She was still young now, but she would soon be old.

‘I’d really like you to go to the hospital, Cat,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I left a message for my partner, Maggie, to come over here right away. She and I can take you there.’

The girl shook her head emphatically. ‘No! I told you: no way, no hospital. He’ll find me. He always knows where I am.’

‘I’m concerned about you. You should be checked out.’

‘I want to stay here. I’m safe here. I’m fine.’

He didn’t push her. She was skittish, and he was afraid she would run. ‘Listen, a buddy of mine named Steve Garske runs a clinic in Lakeside. We go back a lot of years. He’s my own doctor. Can I have him take a look at you in the morning?’

Her eyes brightened. ‘Dr. Steve?’

‘You know him?’

‘He volunteers at the youth shelter downtown. I’ve seen him a couple times. He’s sweet.’