Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

‘Cat!’ he shouted, but she didn’t hear him.

‘ Cat! ’

He grabbed her wrists. She erupted with ferocious strength, dislodging him and knocking the pillows and nightstand lamp to the floor. He held her again, wrapping his arms around her body as she battled to get free. Her chest was bathed in sweat. Her heart beat crazily. He didn’t think she was even awake. He whispered her name, and slowly, she ran out of struggle as he held her. Her cries died into whimpers. When he eased her back onto the bed her eyes sank shut and her body shrank into her chest. Her arms and legs squeezed into a fetal position. He retrieved the blanket and slid it over her. She murmured into the mattress, but he didn’t recognize what she said.

‘Jesus,’ Maggie whispered.

He left the bedroom door open as they left. Outside, he spoke softly.

‘Something’s happening to that girl,’ he said. ‘She needs help.’

‘She needs a shrink.’ Maggie’s face was grim.

‘After what she’s been through? Wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s not just that.’

Maggie held up something in front of his eyes. It was a butcher’s knife, long and sharp, dangling from her fingers. He recognized it. It was his knife, taken from the wooden block in the kitchen.

‘Where did you get that?’ Stride asked.

‘It was under her pillow. It fell when she fought back.’

‘Cat had it?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Did you know she took it?’

‘No, she must have gotten up during the night.’

‘She could have killed you with this.’

Stride didn’t say anything. Maggie handed him the knife and he stared at the blade, which had a sharp edge as deadly as a machete. She was right. It would have cut him open and run him through nearly to his spine. If Cat had attacked him, he would be on the floor now, bleeding.

Dying.

‘Be careful, boss,’ Maggie warned him. ‘I know you want to help, but you don’t know what’s going on in this girl’s head. She’s dangerous.’

A battered silver Hyundai parked on Superior Street across from the clinic in Lakeside. Its tailpipe popped like a gunshot. A short woman with dark skin and bottle blonde hair crossed toward the building in short, quick steps. She wore a down coat, torn blue jeans and black boots with high heels. Her sunglasses shielded her eyes, and she kept her head down as she came inside the waiting room.

Stride recognized her and met her at the door. ‘Dory?’

Dory Mateo, Michaela’s little sister, stripped off her sunglasses. Her eyes were bloodshot and tired; her skin was as worn as leather on old shoes. He knew she couldn’t be much more than thirty, but she looked fifteen years older.

‘I’m Jonathan Stride,’ he added.

‘I remember you,’ she replied. ‘You look the same. More gray hair, though.’

He smiled, because she was right, but he didn’t need the reminder. Her own hair was cut in a messy bob, and he saw black roots. Stride was lean and strong and over six feet tall, which made him nearly a foot taller than Dory. The Mateo women were all small.

‘Can we go outside?’ she asked. ‘I need a smoke.’

‘Sure.’

He followed her into the cold morning air. There was no sun, only slate clouds. It was Saturday morning and there was little traffic on the shop-lined street. Lakeside was a neighborhood on the north side of Duluth, a few blocks from the shore of Superior. It was quiet, without even a bar in town for the after-work crowd. If you wanted a drink, you went elsewhere.

Dory lit a cigarette and let out a raspy cough. ‘So is Cat in trouble?’

‘Why would you say that?’ he asked.

‘A cop calls me, I figure she’s in trouble.’ She eyed the clinic. ‘Is she okay? She’s not hurt, is she?’

‘She’s fine, but I’m having a doctor check her out.’

‘What happened?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out,’ Stride said. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘I don’t know. A couple weeks? She stayed with me for a few days but then she took off. She didn’t say where she was going.’

Dory’s face twitched. Stride could see that she was self-medicating. They picked up women like her off the downtown streets every night. Frostbitten. High. Often naked and beaten.

‘Cat says you rent a room at the Seaway,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah, so?’

‘Rough place.’

‘You think it’s by choice? I don’t want to be there. I had a house in the Hillside, but I lost it. Goddamn banks.’

‘You have a job?’ Stride asked.

‘Off and on. A girlfriend hooks me up for events in the Cities. You know, selling T-shirts and keychains and posters and shit like that for bands. I crash with her when I’m down there.’

‘T-shirts?’ Stride said dubiously. He doubted the merchandise was limited to clothes. Whatever a concertgoer wanted, someone was there to supply it. ‘Nothing under the table?’

‘Hey, what do you care? It’s Minneapolis, not Duluth. Anyway, I had a decent job for a while. I answered phones for a construction company until I got laid off. Since then, I take what I can get.’ Dory threw her cigarette on the ground, where it smoldered. She shivered and zipped her coat.

‘You want to go inside?’ Stride asked.

‘No, clinics freak me out.’

He gestured at a bench in the dormant garden beside the medical complex. They sat next to each other, and Dory stared at the gray sky. The wind was cold, mussing Stride’s hair. He couldn’t see much of Michaela in Dory’s face, unlike Cat, who echoed her mother like a mirror. The ten years since Michaela’s death had been hard on Dory, but she’d had a bad life long before her sister died. She’d been a chronic addict and runaway during her teen years, and Michaela had tried and failed to get Dory to reform herself.

Dory snuck a glance and saw him watching her. ‘You’re thinking about my sister,’ she said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Michaela liked you,’ she said.

‘I liked her, too.’

‘She talked about you a lot. Those pirate eyes of yours. She liked your eyes.’

He said nothing.

‘I still miss her. She never bailed on me, no matter how stupid I was. It’s not her fault I was a fuck-up. I didn’t want her help. I didn’t care about anything back then.’

‘How about now?’ Stride asked. ‘Has anything changed?’

‘I have ups and downs. Mostly downs lately.’

‘What about Cat?’

‘Hey, I’d do anything for that girl. Anything. I don’t want her to have the kind of life I’ve had.’

He thought she was sincere, not just mouthing the words. Whatever her other failings in life, Dory loved her niece, but love wasn’t necessarily enough to change anything. The two of them already shared the wrong kind of parallel lives. They’d both lost parents at a young age, and they’d both headed down bad roads as they got older.

‘Do you know she’s been hooking?’ he asked.

Dory’s face was stricken, but she nodded. ‘Yeah, I begged her not to do it. When I had money, I gave it to her. Not much, but it was something. Whenever she was with me, I made sure she stayed off the street, but I’m out of town a lot. And Cat, sometimes she just leaves and I don’t know where she is.’

‘What about the couple that took her in? Her guardians?’

‘Cat won’t say anything, but it’s not good there. I get it. It was the same for me bouncing in and out of foster homes as a teenager. I wish I could have taken her in myself back then, but you know what I was like. She was better off without me. I guess she still is.’

‘Did you try to get help for her?’

‘Sure, I did. I took her to see Brooke at the shelter downtown. Brooke’s a friend. I told Cat that if I wasn’t around, and she didn’t want to go home, she should go there. You know how it is, though. There are abusers everywhere who take advantage of these girls. And Cat, she’s so beautiful. That makes it worse. She’s a magnet with that face of hers.’