Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Both Myrna and Howard had been interviewed three or four times during the investigation, by local police, a city detective and then by members of a state police missing persons team. Each time the procedure had been the same: the officers arrived and had asked to speak with Howard; Myrna had shown them to the manager’s office. And after an hour or two, one or more of them had come back to the lobby and invited her to join them. Howard always shot her a glance as he sidled past to take up her position at the teller window. Invariably, Myrna was offered Howard’s chair and made comfortable before the interrogation began. Always the same questions:

Had Steven ever spoken of enemies, people who disliked him or those from whom he had borrowed money?

No.

Had Steven changed dramatically after meeting Hannah Sorenson?

No more than any twenty-eight-year old who finds someone he cares about.

Hadn’t Myrna studied in Mark Jenkins’ class at Idaho Springs High School?

Yes, history.

Had he ever given her the impression that he had extreme political beliefs?

No.

Had Steven?

Steven didn’t have political beliefs.

What did Steven and Mark do in their free time?

Climbed, went biking, they did some distance running, and Mr Jenkins was a swimmer.

Did Steven swim, too?

Do you really think he might be off swimming somewhere? All this time?

Just answer the question, please.

No, Steven was not a swimmer.

Was Mark Jenkins in love with Hannah Sorenson?

I don’t know.

Could there have been bad blood between them after Hannah came into Steven’s life?

They went climbing that Saturday. It snowed that day.

Were they gay?

Why are you talking about them in the past tense and how is their sexual preference going to help you find them?

Just answer the question, please.

No.

Have you climbed Decatur Peak?

No.

Have you climbed with Mark and Steven?

No.

The questions had gone on, a rhythmless poem of point and counterpoint, until one of the officers had thanked Myrna for her time and encouraged her to call if she thought of something or remembered something, as if Steven’s political beliefs or his preference for peanut butter over cream cheese or Mark’s swimming in the town pool would help locate them under seventeen feet of mountain snow.

Now Myrna wasn’t sure which was worse: the fact that the police had asked the same pointless questions so often, or that they had stopped entirely. She remembered the morning the Clear Creek County Gazette quoted state officials saying the search along the Decatur Peak trail would be suspended until spring. If they were up there, they were dead. Howard had given a cry, a muted bark that had been half frustration and half rage before running, his squat form at once both comical and tragic, to the town office of the local paper. He had been gone for thirty minutes before Myrna watched him sulk back down Miner Street to Owen’s. Finding it locked, at 8.50 in the morning, he had turned and walked home, never sparing the First National Bank of Idaho Springs a second glance.

This morning, Howard was in his office. He was in a foul mood again and Myrna needed a break; she had been running the bank on her own for the past month and she refused to allow his depression to ruin her anticipation. It was a special day, not just because of her planned weekend, but because she had received her federal financial aid forms. She could finally get to college, leave the canyon and move to Fort Collins. She felt a sudden pang of guilt that Mr Jenkins – after all this time she still struggled to call him Mark – was not around to help her with the application and grant forms. He had promised he would talk her through the paperwork. Myrna said a quiet prayer that the boys would be found before she left for university.

As she started on the forms – her social security number, her income, her mother’s maiden name, and so on – Myrna was distracted for a moment by the piece of paper she kept safe under the glass sheet across her desk. On it was drawn a series of circles in different coloured ink, measuring diameter lengths around each circumference. Pi. Steven had caught her drawing the sketches the afternoon he had first met Hannah Sorenson. Myrna had never taken the time to ask him how he knew that Egyptian architects The small bell above the lobby door rang, waking Myrna from her daydream; she quickly shuffled her financial aid paperwork to one side.

A police officer crossed the lobby with a purposeful stride: not here to open an account, she thought. More questions, terrific. Perhaps he would start with Howard and she could get a few pages done.

‘Good morning,’ she said, not really surprised to be ignored. When he reached the old pine countertop, Myrna realised he wasn’t from Idaho Springs. The patch stitched across his shoulder read Charleston City Police. Unnerved at his silence, and somewhat disturbed by what appeared to be dry blood caked in his ear and across the lobe, Myrna nevertheless offered her most hospitable smile.

‘A bit out of your jurisdiction this morning, aren’t you, Officer?’ Men pay attention to women who have a pulse, she thought, and waited for the young man to respond.

A distressing feeling, like sudden tunnel vision, overtook Myrna Kessler. Still trying to be polite, she tried to discreetly shake the weird feeling, closing her eyes and tossing her head sharply. She didn’t want to embarrass herself further in front of the out-of-town police officer – he might have news of Steven and Mark – Myrna ignored the sudden itch on her left wrist. She swallowed hard, trying, with her last breath, to maintain the professional integrity of the First National Bank of Idaho Springs.

‘Officer? Can I help-?’

‘I want Steven Taylor,’ the policeman said before crumpling to the floor. He struck his chin on the countertop hard enough to split the wood.

Myrna reached through the slatted window and ran her fingers along the fissure. A black, festering wound opened on her left wrist and without even trying to scream, she let herself go. The splintered edge of the broken countertop was the last sensation she felt before spiralling away.

Myrna stood up, stepped into the bank lobby and crossed to David Mantegna’s discarded form lying on the floor. With an unexpectedly vicious kick to the ribs she turned Mantegna’s body over, then bent down and withdrew the officer’s 9mm pistol from the leather holster in his belt. She rooted around in his pockets until she found a pouch of chewing tobacco, which she stuffed into her blazer pocket.

Without looking back she walked out into Miner Street and the brilliant, snow-blinding morning.

‘Myrna?’ Howard called from his office. He leaned to one side to see if he could catch a glimpse of the young teller without getting out of his chair. ‘Myrna?’ he shouted again, listening in vain for the sound of her footsteps, or the soft hum of a receipt gliding through her desktop computer. Nothing.

‘Shit, Myrna, you’re supposed to tell me before you go to the can.’ As he got up to attend the teller window he glanced along the narrow hall, past Steven’s silent office. The bathroom door was open and the light switched off. ‘Where the hell did she go?’ he growled. ‘Goddamnit, if I’ve told-’

Howard’s gaze fell on the broken section of pine countertop outside Myrna’s slatted window. Reaching through to feel the fractured edge, he felt wetness: a shallow pool of what appeared to be dark blood.

‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed, and hustled through the connecting door, stopping abruptly as the sight of the dead body of the Charleston City Police Officer. Kneeling beside the young man, Howard searched for a pulse, and, feeling nothing, tried a few uncertain thumps where he thought the breastbone was. Still nothing.