The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen

by Steven James

  With roots in the radical Deep Ecology movement popularized by Edward Abbey’s novel The Monkey Wrench Gang in the seventies, and then sharpened by the radical ecological writings of Derrick Jensen, Eco-Tech pulled no punches in making their agenda clear: global population control, income redistribution, drastic carbon emission reduction, and most importantly, nuclear disarmament. Their motto said it all: “A New Breed of Green—Dialogue When Possible, Action When Necessary.”

  A new breed of green.

  Hacktivism.

  As their website put it:

  Human greed and selfishness have caused irreparable damage to the biosphere. The only chance for the long-term stability of the planet is a radical change of attitude and action, and despite the currently fashionable “Green Movement,” that change is not going to come simply from people replacing their lightbulbs or carpooling to work.

  To love your children you must leave them more than the legacy of your self-indulgence, the devastation of a world raped of its dignity to make your life more comfortable, more convenient, more consumer-friendly. We are committed to leaving the next generation a planet well cared for, a garden well tended. That is what we strive for. That is why we act.

  Despite their muddied philosophical roots and alleged hacktivism, Eco-Tech’s goal was certainly noble—fighting for more sustainable lifestyles and more conscientious, environmentally friendly corporate and political policies.

  At first Alexei wondered if maybe they were here to combat logging of old growth forests in the area, but he found confirmation online that virgin forests in Wisconsin were now pretty much all part of national forest land and weren’t logged at all.

  Still, something had to be here in this area or else Valkyrie would not have hired him to get access codes from Rear Admiral Colberg, would not have assigned him to come here to the middle of nowhere to deliver two million dollars.

  In preparation for his meeting, Alexei slipped the one weapon he carried, his specially modified spring-loaded bone injection gun, into his pocket.

  For close-quarters combat the device was one of the most useful weapons he’d found.

  Not much larger than a Mini Maglite flashlight, the bone gun was typically used by paramedics to quickly start IVs, especially in patients in cardiac arrest or with difficult-to-locate veins. Because of the amount of force generated at the tip, it easily perforates bone and is used to implant a needle into the marrow, usually below the kneecap. After removing the needle, a catheter is left behind and then used to administer the appropriate drug.

  However, Alexei didn’t typically use his bone gun to implant a catheter to administer medication. These days, when circumstances dictated it, he used it on adversaries to break bones, and in some cases, shatter them entirely.

  His bone gun had been modified so that if used properly it could cripple, or even kill—although he had never gone that far with it. But he had used it twice on the C7 vertebral prominence, once while on an assignment in Amman, another time in New Delhi.

  That vertebra was low enough to allow the subject to continue to breathe on his own, but that was about all he would ever be able to do on his own again. After six months both men on whom he had used the bone gun in this manner were still alive. Thinking of them in that condition had been unpleasant for Alexei, and he had anonymously paid for both men’s medical bills.

  Now, on his laptop, he pulled up satellite images of the region surrounding the Schoenberg Inn and got started connecting the uplink from the transmitter in the bag to the GPS tracking device.

  Unfortunately, fifteen minutes ago when Patrick called her, Tessa was already on her way to Wisconsin.

  She’d decided not to bring that up.

  The Walker Art Center had been closed for some sort of renovation, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized she wanted to see Sean, whom she almost never spent time with, and at least get a chance to finally meet her stepaunt. It’d be nice, after all, to connect a little more with Patrick’s family, the only one she had left.

  Maybe she could even find out why Patrick and his brother didn’t exactly get on famously with each other. She’d always been curious about that.

  Besides, she knew that Patrick wanted to see her, and she figured she’d have time to cruise around the Cities a little on Sunday before flying back home to Denver in the evening.

  A little while ago it had started to snow, but the roads looked good to her.

  Only a dusting so far.

  Even if the trip took a little longer than four hours, as long as the snow didn’t slow her down too much, she would arrive in plenty of time for supper.

  Tessa merged onto I-35 and headed north.

  20

  As Jake drove away, I walked up the snow-packed path toward the historic Northwoods Supper Club.

  I wore my new camouflage coat, the only jacket the combination gas station/convenience store/gift shop had in my size. I didn’t really want to think about what Tessa might have to say about how stylin’ I was.

  On the way here Amber had called to confirm the time, and when I asked about the location, she’d launched into a short history of the place: the site of the Northwoods Supper Club had been used as a lumberjack mess hall nearly one hundred years ago before it burned down in the 1970s. The current restaurant had emerged from the ashes and had benefited from the nostalgia of the site’s past.

  A large vinyl sign hung out front with a picture of a man dressed in a blaze orange jacket eyeing down the barrel of a gun. Bold lettering announced “Welcome Hunters.” I wondered which hunting season was open in the middle of January. Bear maybe. Possibly small game—squirrels, rabbits.

  I pressed the door open and stepped inside.

  Huge pine logs formed the walls, and stout handmade oak tables and chairs filled the restaurant. A bar, peppered with a few customers in snowmobile suit overalls and flannel shirts, took up most of the west wall. Though I doubted it was still legal to smoke in the restaurant, the residual smell of years of cigarette smoke lingered in the air.

  More than a dozen broad-antlered whitetail deer heads and one elk head had been mounted on the walls of the restaurant. Tessa, to put it mildly, was not an advocate of sport hunting, and I could only imagine her reaction walking into a place like this. I remembered the two trophy bucks mounted in Sean’s living room and wondered how I was going to navigate that situation if she did end up making it over here, but then I saw Amber seated alone near a window at the far end of the restaurant, and my thoughts of how to deal with Tessa’s potential reaction to mounted deer heads disappeared.

  Amber had glanced down at her menu, and the sunlight from the window warmed her face, giving her a soft, warm glow, making her seem almost otherworldly. Angelic.

  She hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her three years ago. Amber was thirty-three now but looked at least five years younger. I’d never thought of her as beautiful in the way that a movie starlet or a model is—with perfect features smoothed over with careful layers of makeup. Rather, she made up for her relatively anonymous looks with an infectious vitality, a contagious love for life, and a disarming flirtiness that she tended to weave, without realizing it, into her frequent and endearing smiles.

  She set the menu aside and looked around. When she saw me, her eyes lit up. “Pat!” I gave her a small wave and made my way to her table. She’d already stood to greet me by the time I arrived.

  And then she was in my arms. Surprisingly, she still wore the same perfume—gentle and delicate and femininely alluring. The scent seemed so familiar to me. I backed away just as she turned her cheek for me to give her a kiss of greeting. Though it might have been impolite, I refrained, said instead, “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too.”

  I gestured for her to have a seat, but she hesitated slightly, and we ended up sitting down almost simultaneously, as if we’d planned it that way. This brought a light smile from her.

  “Well.” She placed both of her han
ds palm-down on the table as if she were accentuating that we were officially beginning our conversation. Her coral fingernail polish looked freshly touched up. “We have a lot of catching up to do. Where to begin?”

  “I’m not sure.” I looked around the restaurant, even though I’d already scanned it when I walked in. “Is Sean here?”

  “He’s coming. Should be here any minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “You look good, Pat.”

  “So do you.” The compliment was out before I realized that it might not have been the wisest thing to say.

  “Thank you,” Amber replied. A small grin. “I like your jacket.”

  “Thanks. It’s new.”

  “I see.”

  A server appeared, an anxious-looking woman in her late twenties. Her eyes darted around the room like tiny trapped sparrows. “Welcome to the Northwoods Supper Club.” As she spoke, she tapped incessantly with her thumb and forefinger at her stack of menus. “Do you know what you want?” Her name tag read “Nan.”

  “I’ll take a menu,” I said.

  She laid one on the table for me. I was going to ask for another for Sean, but Amber cut in. “Two coffees,” she told Nan. “Specialty roast. And kindly bring some cream.” She caught my eye. “And honey.”

  She remembered.

  “Yes.” Nan backed away. “Okay.” Turned. Disappeared.

  “Honey and cream,” I said to her.

  “That’s still how you take it?”

  “It is.”

  Normally, I wouldn’t have chanced drinking coffee at a restaurant like this. Undoubtably roasted and ground months ago. Canned. Stored. Stale. More than likely brewed without using filtered water and with no real concern for the number of tablespoons of beans per six ounces of water. Trying not to think about all that, I changed the subject. “Your pharmacy. How’s it going?”

  “They opened a Walgreens in town, so that hasn’t helped. But we’re hanging in there. And you’re still in Denver?”

  I was ashamed she would even have to ask such a question. It underlined how poorly I’d stayed in touch with her and Sean. I decided to take the “you” in the plural sense. “We’re still in Denver. Yes.”

  “And Tessa? How is she?”

  “She’s doing okay. Considering.”

  Amber had sent her condolences and spoken with Tessa on the phone several times after her father’s death last summer. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said softly. “I’ve been praying for her.”

  Okay, that was a side of Amber I’d never seen before.

  “That means a lot. Thank you.”

  “Is she going to make it up here?”

  “Actually, no. I was worried about the snow and told her to stay in the Cities for a couple extra days. Hopefully, though, we can arrange a visit sometime soon.”

  “That’ll be nice.”

  Seeing Amber, being with her alone at a restaurant again, made me realize my feelings for her had never completely gone away, and that made things all the more uncomfortable.

  This was one time I wished I could just turn off my emotions, but it’s never worked that way with me. Sometimes my feelings come uninvited, when I don’t want them to; sometimes they leave despite my best attempts at hanging on to them. It can be disconcerting.

  She smiled again in her free and affectionate way, and I wished she hadn’t. It brought too much back.

  Sean, where are you?

  “It’s possible we’ll be moving to DC,” I commented. “There’s an opening at the Academy, and they’re asking if I’d be interested in teaching again.”

  “Would that keep you out of the field?”

  “The Bureau wants its instructors to keep working cases every week.”

  “To stay sharp.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked away, first toward the door to see if Sean might have arrived, then to Nan, who was bringing our coffee.

  “Now,” Amber warned her, “he’ll tell you if this coffee is any good.”

  “It should be.” Nan looked concerned. “They just made it.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine.” I took the cup, added a touch of cream and honey, but before I could try it Nan asked me urgently, “Have you decided what you want?”

  “Well, there’s one more person in our party.”

  Amber waved her hand dismissively. “Sean told me to just go ahead and order. I’m not sure if he’ll be eating anything or not.” She tapped the menu and told me, “The Reuben’s good.”

  I hadn’t even had a chance to look over the menu. “Well, I’m a cheeseburger guy at heart,” I replied. Then to Nan, “Give it the works, except—”

  “Hold the mustard and pickles,” Amber interrupted.

  “Yes. Hold the mustard and pickles.”

  Nan wrote it down.

  “I’ll go for the Reuben,” Amber told her.

  “Fries or chips?” The question was directed at both of us.

  “Fries,” I said.

  “Fries for me too,” Amber told her.

  Nan left for the kitchen, scribbling notes to herself as if her life, or at least her job, depended on correctly writing down word-for-word our rather unremarkable order.

  Amber watched me expectantly. I braced myself and took a sip of my coffee.

  Wow.

  Nice.

  “Well?”

  Though I wasn’t a big fan of flavored coffee, this wasn’t bad. “I like it,” I replied. “Air roasted. Mexican beans. They added undertones of caramel, a hint of butterscotch. Graceful acidity, respectable body.”

  She smiled. “It’s called Highlander Grog. There’s a roaster down in Watertown. Berres Brothers. They do mostly internet orders. This is the only local place that uses their coffee.”

  A thought.

  “That’s why you suggested we meet here.”

  She held up her hands in fake surrender. “You got me.”

  Sean entered the front door, stowed his snowmobile helmet and gloves in one of the wooden cubicles just inside the entryway. Thank goodness.

  Amber tried some of her coffee. “I can hardly believe you knew the country of origin from just one sip.”

  Sean was weaving between the tables on his way toward us.

  “Maybe I was making that up,” I said.

  “I doubt that.”

  Then Sean arrived.

  21

  My brother had grown a thick beard since the last time I saw him. Wild brown hair. Dark retrospective eyes. Decades of fishing and hunting trips had left the skin around his eyes tough and weathered. He’d always seemed like the kind of guy who would’ve been at home in frontier times forging his way west through the untamed wilderness.

  We’ve seen each other twice in the last three years—once at my wedding and once at Christie’s funeral. He likes to bowl, volunteers with the Jaycees, enjoys relaxing in his jon boat with a six-pack of ice-cold Old Style, and we never talk on the phone because we never seem to have anything to say.

  “Good to see you, Pat.” He shook my hand. Brisk. Firm.

  “You too.”

  “Hey, Amber,” he said with a quick look in her direction.

  “Hello, sweetie.”

  Sean was two years older than I was and had been married once before. His wife left him, though, eight years ago, taking their son with her. She’d moved to Phoenix and only let Andy visit Sean for a few weeks every summer. Andy was nine now. Sean preferred not speaking about that part of his life, and I knew better than to bring it up.

  He took a seat beside Amber, then drew in a heavy breath. “I gotta say: terrible thing, though. You having to come in under these circumstances.”

  There was no good way to reply to that. “It’s heartbreaking what happened.”

  “I knew ’em, Pat. Donnie and his wife.” He shifted his gaze to the window. “And Lizzie.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “We used to go out muskie fishing on Tomahawk Lake, Donnie and I.”

  I noticed th
at he was referring to Donnie in the past tense. “How long have you known him?” I tried to frame my question in the present tense.

  “Eight, ten years, I guess. I just can’t see him doing something like that. Not Donnie.”

  Whether or not Donnie had anything to do with the killings, Sean’s words didn’t surprise me. Over the years, every killer, every rapist, every arsonist I’ve caught has been friends with somebody, trusted by somebody, loved by somebody. Then, after the facts came out about the crimes, those people are shocked and dismayed. Family members, lovers, friends, none of them can believe what the offender did.

  For a moment I thought about pointing this out to Sean, telling him that you can never really know someone, not really; that at times every one of us acts in ways that are inconceivable to others and, in retrospect, unthinkable to ourselves; that, in essence, no one lives up to his own convictions or aspirations. But from past experience I realized that bringing any of that up at the moment wasn’t going to help.

  “We really don’t know who’s responsible for the murders,” I said as tactfully as I could. “Until we find Donnie, it’s best to avoid assuming too much. He might be all right. There’s still a lot to figure out.”

  Sean looked at me oddly. “Aren’t most domestic homicides committed by husbands and lovers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s missing.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “The logical conclusion is it’s him.”

  “We lack confirmatory evidence, and the logical conclusion when you lack evidence is to suspend judgment.” The words had a cold and impatient professionalism to them, and I immediately regretted saying them. I tried to tone things down. “I’m just trying to say I think it’s a little early to conclude anything.”

  He looked like he was going to respond, but held back.

  When Nan arrived with our food, Sean went ahead and ordered a bratwurst. Soon she brought that too, and the conversation during the meal felt stiff and forced, the past—both my history with Sean and my history with his wife—weighing down every word.