Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

‘What did you tell him?’

Serena didn’t answer. She turned and stared at him. It had been a long time since he watched her green eyes. ‘I stayed with Claire while I was there,’ she added.

‘Okay.’

Stride remembered Claire. In the short time he’d spent with Serena in Las Vegas, they had become enmeshed in a case involving a serial killer and an old-line mob family. Claire, whose father ran one of the city’s largest casinos, became a target, and Serena had been the cop assigned to protect her. Along the way, Claire fell in love with her. The relationship had awakened confused sexual feelings in Serena, and Stride had thought he might lose her.

‘Claire asked me to take a job as head of security at her new casino,’ Serena said. She gave a little ironic smile. ‘And live with her, of course. She has a mansion in Lake Las Vegas. Really nice.’

‘So what did you decide?’

‘I told them both no,’ she said.

‘Why?’

Serena shook her head without explaining. ‘Your turn, Jonny. Tell me about you.’

The superstructure of the ore boat glided like a graceful giant under the span of the lift bridge. ‘I’m sure you heard that my relationship with Maggie went nowhere,’ he said.

‘I did.’

‘She said she was tired of living with a ghost, and she didn’t mean Cindy. She knew I still loved you.’

‘I guess I should say I’m sorry.’

‘That’s the last thing you should say. I’m the one who’s sorry.’

Serena brushed a strand of black hair from her eyes. ‘You said you were sorry months ago. I said I forgave you. I nearly fell in love with Claire a few years ago, and you forgave me. We’re not perfect. I don’t expect us to be. As angry as I was, I never doubted that you were still in love with me.’

‘But?’

‘But it’s not about that anymore.’

‘Then what is it about?’

‘I won’t be in love with a stranger, Jonny.’

‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ he said.

Serena took a breath before she went on, as if she wanted to get each word exactly right. ‘Maybe not, but it felt that way last fall. You were a million miles away from me, and I couldn’t reach you. I know we were both at fault. I know I closed myself off, too, but that’s over. I’m done running from my past. No shame. No apologies. This is me.’ Her voice rose, and it quivered as she talked louder. ‘I came back from Las Vegas for one reason. Not for a job. Not for a home. I came back because I still love you. But that’s not enough, not when I don’t know if you’ll shut me out again the next time things get bad. If you still want me, if you really want me, then you’re going to have to come get me, and you better be prepared to let me inside. All the way. No more secrets.’

He’d never seen this side of her. She’d always been tough, but toughness meant stringing up barbed wire around her soul. This was different. Now she was holding out a hand for him to join her, and he didn’t know how to take the first step.

Someone hit the horn behind them.

He looked up and saw that the bridge was back down, and the traffic in front of him had cleared. He drove into Duluth.

*

Twenty miles south of the city, near the exit to the Black Bear Casino, traffic stalled as orange pylons blocked the right lane. Stride put an emergency light on the hood of his truck and steered onto the gravel shoulder. He drove a half-mile and stopped near a paving truck where a band of highway workers jackhammered the asphalt. One of the men, fat and round, with a ponytail dangling from his hard hat, was William Green.

Drizzle spattered the windshield. Stride removed his gun from the holster inside his jacket and locked it inside his glove compartment.

‘What are you doing?’ Serena asked.

‘I’d prefer not to shoot him,’ he said.

‘Good thinking.’

They got out of the truck. Six feet away, on the other side of the ribbon of cones, traffic whipped by with a surge of air pressure. The noise was deafening, and the ground shook under their feet.

Green saw them, and Stride crooked his finger, beckoning the man closer. The highway worker made a slashing motion across his throat to the other men, and the jackhammer went silent. He marched closer, only inches from the speeding cars. When he reached Stride, he took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow.

‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I’m busy. Frost heaves blew out the lane overnight. We need to patch it up.’

‘This won’t take long,’ Stride said.

He introduced Serena, and Green checked out her body with a quick glance. So did the other workers behind him. He thought they would have wolf-whistled if she hadn’t been a cop.

‘Where were you last night, Mr. Green?’ Stride said.

‘Home.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Watching the Wolves and the Heat. Drinking beer. Why?’

‘Was your wife with you?’

‘No, we had a fight after you left. She stayed at her sister’s in Cloquet.’

‘Did you talk to anyone? See anyone?’

‘Just LeBron.’

An SUV passed, close enough to clip one of the traffic cones and send it spiraling into the air. It flew close to Green’s head, but the man didn’t flinch. He gestured at one of the workers to retrieve it, and he shoved his hands into his baggy pockets. Behind them, other cars braked as the cone rolled into the lane.

‘You ought to give that son of a bitch a ticket,’ he told Stride. ‘Do something useful instead of leaning on me.’

‘I’m just getting started.’

‘What does that mean?’ Green asked. ‘What is this about?’

‘It means we talked to Cat about you.’

‘Yeah? So?’

‘She says you liked to beat her up.’

Green wiped rain from his nose, leaving a smear of dirt on his face. ‘Whatever she told you, it’s not true. I never laid a hand on her.’

Stride tried to calm himself, but the thumping vibration and rush of air with each speeding car fed his adrenaline. ‘Remember what I told you yesterday, Mr. Green? I made you a promise.’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘I’ll be watching you,’ Stride told him.

‘I bet you will.’

Serena physically stepped between the two men. ‘I have some questions for you, Mr. Green. It’s about Margot Huizenfelt.’

‘Who?’

‘She’s a reporter. She’s missing.’

‘Huizenfelt. Yeah. Okay, sure, I saw it on TV. What about her?’

‘The day before she disappeared, she was looking for Cat. Did she talk to you?’

Green didn’t answer immediately. The dust of crushed rock blew in their faces. ‘I don’t remember.’

Serena and Stride exchanged a glance. She rubbed dust off her skin. The passing cars felt huge and dangerous.

‘Maybe your neighbors remember her, Mr. Green,’ she said. ‘We could talk to all of them. We could ask them about you and Cat, too. Or how about your co-workers over there? Most of them are parents. I wonder what they’d think if they knew you liked to take out your anger on a teenage girl.’

Green glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘Shit, all right,’ he hissed. ‘It’s no big deal. This reporter came to the house on a Saturday afternoon. She asked me how she could find Cat. I didn’t know where the hell she was, and that’s what I told her.’

‘Margot wrote an article about Cat a few months ago. Did she talk to you back then?’

‘She tried. I told her to get lost.’

‘What time did she show up at your house on that Saturday?’

Green shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Four, five, something like that. Sophie was going to be back any minute, and I wanted that bitch out of there before she got home. I told her if she wanted to find Cat, she should try the usual places. The shelter. The graffiti graveyard. Lake Place Park. Wherever the runaways hang out.’