Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Moving faster, she pushed through swinging doors into a catering facility, which was an obstacle course of shelves stacked with glassware and pots. Her arm brushed against something cool and metallic, and she panicked, lurching away. As she did, she collided with a wheeled cart, sending a column of stainless steel plate covers toppling to the floor. The clatter was ungodly loud. She bolted from the kitchen, found herself in another hallway, and ran again, spilling through double doors.

The world opened up around her.

She was on the performance floor of a large arena. The floor under her feet was varnished smooth and went on like a football field from one end to the other. Above the arena walls, dozens of steep rows of bleacher seats climbed for the ceiling. She wandered into the center of the floor, hearing the click of her heels. There was no light anywhere except the glow of emergency exit signs dotting the doorways. Crowds could have been in the seats, watching her, and she wouldn’t have seen them. She could feel them anyway, frowning at her, judging her.

She didn’t know where to go or what to do. She’d run as far as she could run. She sank to the floor and wished for everything to be over. Her mother was dead. Her father had killed her. She wanted to join them. If she could go back, she would slither out from under the porch and tramp through the packed snow to confront him. Here I am. Kill me, too.

Tears fell. Rivers of tears. Her chest heaved silently. She closed her eyes. It was just like it was in her dreams, with the disconnected voices.

Marty, no! Please! Think of Cat. Don’t do this!

Fucking whore!

Don’t do this, oh God, stop, stop, stop, no, no, no!

I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you.

Where’s the girl?

Cat’s eyes flew open. She couldn’t breathe.

Where’s the girl? Where’s the girl?

She clapped her hands over her ears, but the gun went off in her brain, the way it had all those years ago. One loud bang, louder than the screams, and then an awful silence. A silence in which nothing would be the same, nothing good would ever come again.

Cat? Where are you, Cat? I’ll protect you.

In the empty arena, Cat scrambled to her feet. She wiped away her tears. Beyond the doors, where she’d come, someone kicked one of the metal lids strewn across the commissary floor, and the jangling noise rippled through the wall like a warning. He was coming for her.

She could make out square columns underneath the bleachers and she took cover behind one of them. Her breathing sounded loud. Her wet hair dripped on the floor, and she could hear the splashes. She squatted and reached inside her boot; the knife she’d taken was still there. She drew it out into her hand and clutched it in front of her chest.

Cat? Where are you, Cat?

‘I’m right here,’ she whispered.

*

Stride didn’t want to count the stab wounds; there were too many. Each one made a red river, flooding the ivory carpet beneath Kim Dehne. Mercifully, her eyes were closed. Her face was at peace, as if, after all the pain, she’d finally lost consciousness as the blood drained from her body. She’d slept before she died.

She looked like Michaela.

‘This is my fault,’ he murmured.

Maggie overheard. ‘That’s bullshit.’

‘I should have had a cop stay with Cat. Not a civilian like Kim. She didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Get a cop to babysit a sixteen-year-old girl? Come on. You heard K-2. There was no crime.’

‘Well, there’s a crime now,’ Stride said.

He retreated down the hallway and took the winding staircase. In the foyer, he headed outside, where the damp chill got inside his bones. Maggie followed. The night was alive with the lights of squad cars. The crime scene team came and went from their van. He leaned against the light post in the front yard.

‘Did you find a cell number for Bob Dehne?’ he asked.

‘I did. You want me to make the call?’

‘No, I should do it.’

‘Any luck finding Cat?’ Maggie asked.

‘Not yet.’

It had been two hours. They’d started the search on the Point, and then they’d widened the circle to Canal Park and the areas bordering the harbor. Bayfront Park. The railroad tracks and the ship yards. The graffiti graveyard. Lake Place, where the homeless slept. Cat had vanished.

‘So?’ Stride asked, nodding at the house. ‘Have you figured out how it went down?’

‘We’re still piecing it together,’ Maggie told him. ‘We don’t have the murder weapon or much of anything else. We got a call from a family whose daughter saw Cat on the beach, but the girl couldn’t really tell us anything.’

‘Talk to the neighbors near my place,’ Stride said. ‘This guy may have been watching my house.’

‘You think he knew that Cat was with you?’

He nodded. ‘Curt Dickes knew. The Greens knew. So did Brandy.’

Maggie’s face twisted into an uncomfortable position. ‘Not to piss you off, but are we absolutely sure a third party was involved?’

‘You mean, maybe Cat stabbed Kim and then ran?’

‘So far, the crime scene guys can’t prove someone else was there.’

‘Someone was there,’ Stride told her flatly. ‘I went up in the lift bridge. Their cameras have Cat on tape, running across the bridge, and then a car coming after her off the Point. Looks like a black Charger.’

‘You’re certain the car was chasing her?’

‘We got the plate, and the registration doesn’t match the vehicle. We’ve also got a report on a black Charger stolen from a casino parking lot in Hinckley a month ago. Does that sound like a coincidence to you?’

‘No, it doesn’t. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a bitch about this.’

Stride shrugged. ‘I put an ATL on the vehicle.’

Maggie said nothing. She looked as if she wanted an argument, but he was too exhausted to find anything else to say. ‘Do you have that cell number?’ he asked her. ‘I need to get hold of Kim’s husband.’

‘Yeah.’

She handed him a piece of paper. He took it without saying anything more and headed for his Expedition, which was parked across the street. He felt her eyes watching him go. Inside, in the silence of his truck, he made the call, but there was no answer. It was almost a relief, but all it did was postpone the tragedy. He left a message asking Bob Dehne to call him immediately.

Stride leaned his head back. He closed his eyes for only a second, but in that second weariness won out and he slept. His dreams were violent, but they fled when he awoke to someone banging on the truck window. He shook himself and realized he’d been asleep for nearly an hour.

It was Maggie. He opened the door and she stood in the rain, her golden face drained of color, her hair wet and stringy.

‘Guppo just called,’ she told him. ‘He’s at the DECC. They found the body of a teenage girl.’

Serena Dial couldn’t sleep.

Her eyes stared into the bedroom shadows. Outside, oak tree branches scratched like fingers on the wire screen, as if they wanted to creep inside and crawl into bed beside her. Spatters of mist blew through the open window onto her skin, stroking her bare breasts like the touch of a lover. The sensation unnerved her, but she’d grown addicted to fresh air, even on the bitterest nights. That was Stride’s influence. She was a desert girl, but he’d taught her to love the cold.

‘ It’s me .’

She heard his voice again. She’d spent an hour replaying his message in her head. Finally, when sleep continued to elude her, she got out of bed in frustration and decided to go downstairs to the kitchen.