Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

‘It’s okay, Cat.’

‘You found me there? Under the porch?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I wish I could remember that.’

He said nothing, but he was thinking that it was better if she remembered nothing at all. He’d been frantic. Heartsick. Mute with rage. He’d searched the whole house, which took no time at all. His panic had grown when he couldn’t find her. He’d gone outside and shined his flashlight under the porch, and at first he saw nothing, but when he shouldered his body all the way into the crawlspace, he found her squeezed into a corner. Her knees were tucked under her chin, eyes shut, face soaked by tears; she was paralyzed with fear. He’d eased her out and kept her in his arms, and she hadn’t said a word as he held her. She barely breathed.

Now here she was in front of him again. This teenager was the same little girl with whom he’d shared that awful moment. It felt like a lifetime ago.

‘You saved my life,’ she said.

‘I just found you.’

‘No, I think if you hadn’t come when you did, I’d be dead.’

‘Why do you think that?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know, but I think it’s true.’

‘We should go, Cat,’ he said softly.

‘Another minute, okay? I need to see her room. I need to see where it happened.’

‘Maybe it would be better if you didn’t.’

‘No, I need to do this. This place won’t be here much longer. If I don’t do it now, I never will.’

‘If that’s what you want.’

He moved to join her, but Cat held up her hand. ‘Could you let me do it by myself? Alone?’

‘I don’t like leaving you here.’

‘Please. Just for a minute.’

Stride hesitated. ‘One minute.’

He was about to leave, but she called after him. ‘Stride?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you really think someone else was here that night? Is it even possible?’

He nodded. ‘Possible? Sure, it is.’

‘Wouldn’t I remember?’

‘Maybe you do. You say you dream about it. Is there someone in your dreams?’

Her face was confused. ‘In my dreams, I always think about you.’

She turned toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. The floorboards shifted, as if they would sink through to the cold ground beneath them. He thought about following her, but instead, he backed through the open door to the porch. Serena stood at the railing, dwarfed by the forest surrounding the large lot. He came up beside her. She was right where Michaela had been so many times. Just as close. Just as attractive.

They stood next to each other in silence. There was no more sun, just shadows. April felt like December.

‘I was a little in love with Michaela,’ he admitted.

Serena gave him a sad smile. ‘Of course you were. It’s who you are.’

She slid her arms around his waist. They were face to face, an inch apart. Her eyes were two bright emeralds. She leaned into him, and he leaned into her, and they kissed, their cold lips turning soft and warm. His fingertips caressed the down on her neck. Her arms rose on his back, holding him tightly. It felt like months of ice melting. It felt like spring coming.

When their lips released each other, they stayed cheek to cheek. He felt her breath on his face and the caress of her hair. They didn’t move or speak; they just held each other and remembered how it felt. It was like listening to the notes of a song you once knew by heart, letting it become familiar to you all over again.

They didn’t even hear Cat.

She was there in the doorway when they finally broke apart. Her face was contorted in terror, her eyes wide and white. It was the face of a lost six-year-old child.

‘Cat, what is it?’ he called to her.

Her mouth dropped open. They could hear her panicked breathing. She shook her head over and over.

‘Where’s the girl?’ she said.

He didn’t understand. ‘What?’

Her jaw worked, but no words came out. Her lips formed an ‘O’ of fear. Like a startled rabbit she bolted forward and threw her arms around Stride, nearly launching them both off the deck.

‘That’s what he said,’ she cried. ‘That’s what the man said when he came inside to kill my father. Where’s the girl? ’

Maggie waited impatiently for the light to change at Hiawatha and 26th. She drummed her fingers on the Corvette wheel to the screaming thump of Def Leppard. Beside her, the light rail train blocked traffic. The trolley clanged south toward the airport, its chimes as placid as church bells, and when the barriers lifted at the tracks, she turned right onto the side street. She drove half a block to the house where Vincent Roslak had been stabbed to death eight months earlier.

It was a two-story concrete house that had been sub-divided into apartments. Five satellite antennas were mounted in a row on the flat roof, with wires draping down the front wall into windows. Hairline cracks ran through the concrete walls. The postage-stamp lot was fenced, and the unlocked gate hung askew. Maggie let herself in, and at the front door she pushed the buzzer for the manager’s apartment.

‘Mr. Walton?’ she said, when the man answered the door. ‘I’m Sergeant Maggie Bei. I called you about the Roslak place.’

‘Yeah, yeah, come in.’

Bennett Walton was in his late twenties, with thinning red hair and thick black glasses. He wore a long-sleeved jersey and athletic shorts. He was tall and had a basketball player’s physique, with square shoulders and knobby knees. He wore Converse sneakers with no socks, and Maggie could see his big toe sticking out the front of one of his shoes.

Walton led her into a hallway painted in dingy white. There was a staircase at the back, and they climbed to the second story.

‘So the place hasn’t been rented yet?’ she asked.

Walton shrugged. ‘Nah, nobody likes a murder scene, you know? People get creeped out.’

‘Do you own the building?’

‘My mom does. I keep the tenants from calling her night and day.’

He opened a door on his left, its loose knob rattling, and let her inside. Roslak’s apartment was a narrow studio, running the length of the house. A kitchenette was immediately on her right. Through the bay windows facing the street she could see her rented Corvette parked at the curb. The apartment was unfurnished, and it had been repainted and recarpeted.

‘You had to tear everything out?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Had to paint the ceiling downstairs, too. Blood soaked through. Pretty nasty.’

Maggie wandered toward the front of the apartment. ‘Who found the body?’

‘Me. People started complaining about the smell. It was July and really hot. When he didn’t answer, I let myself in. I nearly crapped my shorts.’

‘How was the body situated when you found it?’

‘He was on his back next to the sofa,’ Walton said, pointing at the floor. ‘Eyes open. Blood everywhere. Yuck.’

‘Did you see the knife that killed him?’

‘Nope.’

‘Any idea what he was doing when he was killed?’

‘Well, his pants were around his ankles, and his dick was hanging out. That give you any ideas?’

Maggie nodded. ‘I get it.’

‘What a way to go, huh?’ Walton told her, wincing as if someone were holding a pair of scissors to his testicles. ‘You’re getting busy, everything’s hot, and then the chick goes all Basic Instinct on you. Ouch.’

‘How well did you know Roslak?’ she asked.

‘I barely knew him. He paid the rent on time, that’s all I cared about.’

‘Did he have a lot of people coming and going from his place?’

‘Oh, yeah. All the time. At first, I thought, maybe he was a dealer, you know? Or a man whore. He was a sexy-looking guy, and it was mostly women coming to visit. Then somebody told me he was some kind of shrink.’