Castle Danger--Woman on Ice

by Anthony Neil Smith

  I had to ask. “How do you know me?”

  “I know people who know you. They’ve been keeping me up to date on your investigation. And, really, truly, I am sorry for what happened to you at the hands of my two beauties here.” He waved a professorial hand between Luce and Jelly. “They were supposed to warn you, not, well, not abuse you the way they did.”

  Jelly shrugged. “I don’t know my own strength.”

  The professor shushed her. Then, “I take full responsibility.”

  I said, “Took you long enough. I could’ve used that back in the hospital.”

  Another sad smile. “Well …”

  He rubbed his feet and laced his fingers in his lap, quiet, as if he had nothing else to say.

  Some news reports I’d seen, maybe a couple of articles on the News Tribune website, not sure how, but I remembered this guy’s name. “Daniel Raske. Raske, Mender, and Pol. That’s it.”

  “They told me you were smart.”

  “Not smart enough?”

  “If you had really figured it all out by now, I think someone would’ve reached out to offer you a deal you could not refuse. The fact that you’re still on the run, and busting into a stranger’s home at four in the morning, suggests to me that, no, maybe you still aren’t as smart as you think you are.”

  I glanced at him sideways, like my head had gotten too heavy on the left. Like I was suddenly Horatio Caine, that douchebag with the sunglasses from CSI: Miami. Wasn’t quite a match for his investigative genius, though. “You’re protected. This place isn’t as secret as … then, who would be willing to … I don’t get it.”

  “Exactly. Because you think small. You think rationally, except, I see, for your coming out, which I’d like to think I had a hand in. But no, otherwise, you don’t believe in conspiracies because there’s always a rational explanation.”

  “Because there is.”

  “Until there isn’t! Look around you!” Another wave of his hands, abracadabra, the flair! “I prefer a world where I don’t need protection. I prefer a world where the barn is just another nightclub that no one fears or hates. I prefer safety, and, thanks to my arrangements, I sleep very soundly at night, as do my girls. It’s you that makes waves, demands answers as if someone owes you, while all the time hiding who you really are. You’re a hypocrite. Me, I’m just bending the rules until there are new rules.”

  I turned to Joel. “I’m getting tired of this Bond-villain bullshit.”

  He nodded and lifted his gun again. “Give the word.”

  Jelly shot straight off the bed. Luce held in a laugh, snorted instead. Raske lifted his palms, eyes towards the ceiling, angelic. “Come on, come on, we know no one is dying tonight. Not in this room, not on this property.”

  I gestured for Joel to cool down, then turned back to Raske. “So, arrangements? You’ve got some help keeping this place from getting raided, is that right?”

  A cold grin. “Let’s just say I have a guardian angel.”

  “Did you know about Hans? About what he’d found out?”

  “You mean Hannah?”

  “You know I mean — Hannah.”

  “Because Hans was only a disguise.”

  “Thanks for clarifying that after I figured it out myself. What I want to know now, though, is: did her brother know?”

  “Sure, we all knew. She wouldn’t shut up about it. Kept wondering how her life might have been different if she hadn’t been forced into a secret sex change. Of course I told her that her life would have been tens of thousands of times worse had she not received this gift of a life. Her parents, rich Republicans? Bush-esque? They already knew she was … not a ladies’ man. I suspect they knew about her Hannah identity, too, not that it wasn’t a little embarrassing. Hans was the one who raised the money. He was the enforcer, Andrew was the nice one. It was a team effort. Then Hannah became obsessed about who she was and where she came from. Worse still, she insisted on finally living her truth.”

  “There’s a ‘but’ here, isn’t there?”

  “If she had come out to the world as Hannah, her brother’s career would have been smashed. Nothing wrong with being a bit open-minded and on the gay’s side, but who would vote for the brother of a grotesque freak? Andrew knew that, as well as Hannah, and so did the men with the money. They knew who voted Republican, and they weren’t going to let some weekend tranny flip the table.”

  Luce said, “Careful, Danny. How much do they really know?”

  He patted her feet on the comforter, then rubbed his own. All that foot-rubbing was getting on my nerves. “Seeing as they’re here, I suspect they know a lot. Just not all.”

  I just blurted it out. He was smooth, manipulative. I wanted to impress him, show him I was smart. “I know he was bought. No, bred! I know Mrs. Marquette didn’t have him. I have the paper trail; I have all the evidence. And he was going to tell the world, wasn’t he?”

  Raske nodded along. “Like you, he didn’t see the bigger picture. If it hadn’t been Hannah’s, it might have been someone else’s marrow in Andrew’s bones. If it hadn’t been for Hannah’s … how would you say, re-discovery? Yes, if not for that, perhaps Andrew’s interests in politics would have developed another way. Instead, we now have a truly progressive Republican — a man in favor of gay marriage, trans rights, civil rights, better health care, on and on.”

  “Hannah didn’t care.”

  He sighed. “That’s not true. It was just … she wanted too much too fast. She wanted all the years back that she had to spend hiding in the shadow of her own public self. She was not rational, not even when Andrew came to her with a compromise. The party knew they had lost on gay marriage, but trans rights? Wasn’t that a bridge too far? Andrew tried to explain, it would have to be a gradual change. Slow and steady.

  “But that was the line. She felt Andrew was betraying her. It was personal. That was all that mattered to her. I don’t even think she spoke with her parents about it. She had already endured decades in the wrong body, in the wrong sex, and yet was willing to repress her anger over that if her brother would just support the greater good. But there he was backing down.”

  I glared at them, one at a time. “She could have ruined all you had built up here.” The joke about the Bond-villain wasn’t so funny anymore. Raske sat there, flanked by his girls, obviously pretty comfortable with the whole situation, while I was feeling more and more uneasy. Raske had a very strong interest in keeping this barn a secret. He also had a very strong interest in letting Andrew have his ways, slow and steady as he mentioned. Hannah had not only threatened Andrew’s career but Raske’s whole existence! She could have worked things out with her brother, maybe, but what if there hadn’t been enough time?

  “So you killed her.”

  The three of them exchanged looks. Jelly started crying. The full works, sniffles, sobs, and snots. Raske reached over and grasped her hand. “They don’t know, honey, it’s okay. They can’t know.”

  Dammit! Know what?

  Raske turned back to me. “I knew you didn’t have the whole story. Then again, neither do we. We had almost hoped we were wrong, and that you would tell us.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Jelly shouted, “She was our friend! For fuck’s sake, we wanted her to come to her senses, but we would never, ever … Jesus, how the fuck can you even think …” She flexed her fingers, balled them into fists, stomped, then growled. “Fuck you, you jumped up little hobby whore!”

  “Please, Jelly, darling.” Raske, reaching to rub her arm, all light touches and sleazy tutting.

  She slapped him away. “Who the fuck does he think he is?”

  “She.” I stepped forward.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who the fuck does she think she is.” It felt good, saying that. But did I mean it? Or was I just getting carried away with my disguise like some amateur method actor — no, actress? I’d never thought that dressing up as a wizard on Halloween made me know magic, so either way this was out o
f character for me. Jelly seemed to sense it, too, because after giving me the once over, she closed her mouth and swallowed whatever insult she’d lined up for me. Before she could change her mind, I pressed my advantage and went on. “Someone is getting a free pass right now, and it’s not fair.”

  “No, no, I see. You’re right.” Raske shook his head.

  “But you really don’t know who killed her?”

  Raske’s lips were pursed as though he was about to pour more poison in the ears of his concubines. But when he spoke, it was molten steel. “Listen, young man. No, I didn’t want that bitch to tell the world who she really was. Maybe our Club’s not exactly legal. Maybe we don’t have the right liquor license or the proper business zoning, and maybe some people sell particular services here, their own God-given bodies.” A deep breath. “But at least it’s tolerated, and I want it to stay that way! But kill her? Are you serious? I wanted to bring her to her senses, not to her grave. Because a dead tranny politician isn’t exactly the best way to keep things ‘even Steven’, don’t you understand? I would never jeopardize the Club that way.

  “We argued, of course. So self-righteous, that nasty …” Another breath, as if he was keeping chest pains at bay. When he spoke again, the heat had gone from his voice. “I didn’t kill her. And if I were you, I would stop asking who did and why. Let it go.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Not anymore.”

  “Titus said you were stubborn. Please, listen. There are things that should remain unsaid. Maybe even unthought. You are in no position to take this any further. Walk away, Manny.”

  If he had wanted to intimidate me, he was winning on that count. What was he afraid of? Raske was a powerful lawyer, widely known and respected for supporting transsexual rights. Could the Marquettes crush him like an ant? Or was it someone else, someone keeping his Club alive at a steep price? Enough to cover up a murder?

  Luce climbed out from beneath her sheet and gently wrapped her arms around his shoulders, as Jelly stepped over and sat beside him, rubbing his leg with one hand, squeezing his hand with her other. They looked … victorious. They’d gotten their mojo back, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to hurt them. So smug. So beguiling. Like they were getting off on my powerlessness.

  But I believed them. I believed they really hadn’t wanted Hannah to die for her supposed sins, but the girls were afraid to say who had wanted her dead and Raske wouldn’t risk it. Like a house of cards, the killer king holding up the entire structure. Bump him just a little bit … it all goes flat.

  Unfortunately, he was beyond my reach, so I needed to find the queen.

  “Where can I find Paula?”

  6

  Paula, probably Hannah’s closest friend, was in the wind. They had no idea what had happened to her … except for one detail. She had called Raske and the girls after the police incident on the shore. They claimed they didn’t know where she went, but at least we knew she hadn’t been arrested. As for where she’d taken flight to, no idea.

  What were they holding back? I took a guess.

  “Titus is with her, isn’t he?”

  Raske went pale, suddenly a frail old man. “Of course he is.”

  Of course. How else would Paula have known how to get in touch with me in the first place? Of course Titus was infatuated with Paula. Of course Titus had told her that I could be trusted to keep digging, literally, right under the noses of his dad and the police. Was that why he’d let those two women beat me so bad? If he couldn’t convince me to go along with honey, he’d have to let me get stung instead.

  Despite this final admission, though, we left that nauseating threesome with almost nothing.

  Well, they’d confirmed what we already knew, but I was more confused than before. Raske wanted Hannah quiet, but I didn’t believe any of them wanted her dead. There was a missing link, and Raske’s reaction told me that, at least for now, Paula and Titus held the keys to this mystery. But still we would get zero help from those three, because they didn’t want us to find them, and they would not discuss who might have killed Hannah because they did not want us to confront the person either. That much was now clear to me — it had been one person. So maybe we left with a little something after all.

  They did not want us to confront whoever was behind this, even if leaving it alone might mean leaving the murder of a true friend unsolved.

  I think we were all a little stunned as we piled back into the car and drove away, not sure where to go. Too early for the sunrise, when the cops watching us would probably realize something was wrong. Could we sneak back into our respective apartments? Maybe Joel and Robin could, but I was screwed. Could we turn ourselves in, tell the cops what we knew? It sounded reasonable. The info Hannah had buried could work as a ‘Get Out of Jail’ card.

  But that also meant someone out there, someone who was obviously in a high enough position of authority to silence a whole group of people who, I swear, were as hard as Chinese arithmetic, could turn it all against us. Especially in Duluth. I remembered Chief Bosack telling me: I can’t protect you anymore. Was it a warning? A plain-as-day fact? A hint? Or just some sort of concern?

  My crotch itched. The panty hose were irritating the hell out of me down there. I would need to shave what little pubic hair remained after the fire to stop all this catching and pulling. I would eventually get used to it, I hoped. Maybe, maybe, I would never go any further than what I was doing tonight. Or maybe I should think about taking off what was left and starting over as a woman. It all seemed unreal. Still like playing dress-up. I could be any woman I wanted by night yet still be Manny by day. Was that so wrong? Hell, I could even dress up as Hannah. Might even fool a few people, since they never found her body.

  Yeah, sure, it was that simple.

  Hold on …

  “They never recovered the body.”

  “Jesus, what?”

  I’d startled Joel and Robin by poking my head between the seats and interrupting their little domestic with my apropos of nothing statement.

  “They never found her. They found Gerard, but they never found Hannah, and they never found the snowmobile they think she went under on.”

  Robin twisted her lips, propped her jaw with her knuckles. “So? Yeah?”

  “Maybe she’s not dead.”

  Joel said, “Aw, fuck,” and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, threw the car into park, and rounded on me so fast I thought it might be a fist heading towards my nose. I flinched. But it was a finger. Joel’s big fat finger wagging in my face. “How the fuck did you drag me into this? And now you’re saying the dude is not even dead?”

  “Not a dude.”

  “Dude, not a dude, dude. Just, fucking not dead?”

  Robin pushed Joel’s finger out of my face. “Listen, alright?”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “I know what I saw. She is absolutely fucking dead, okay? Hannah is gone. Maybe she’ll turn up again when the ice melts, but I doubt it. What I’m saying is that there was only a handful of us who saw her. The cop shop worked really hard to make sure the photos I took and the eyewitness accounts stayed off the radar. Most of the state thinks a young woman was out partying with a drunk guy on a snowmobile, and it fell through the ice, and she just happened to get caught by a fisherman before falling back in.”

  “I know. I know all that, I get it. Just, to the fucking point already, please.”

  “I bet a lot of people who know Hannah don’t even know she’s dead. Maybe they just haven’t seen her for a while. This was just her vacation home.”

  Robin caught on. “The Cities. And that’s where the woman you’re looking for went, I’ll bet.”

  “I think so. Or at least we might be able to flush her out, and I think I know how.”

  “Okay, and?” Joel had turned back around, looking straight ahead, tapping on the steering wheel.

  “And this. Call me Hannah, guys. Nice to meet you.”

  We had to stop for gas and coffee. It w
ould have been around a quarter to eight in the morning when we hit the Minneapolis city limits. I texted my mom, not sure if she would get it so early, asking if I could drop by the new place. A half-hour away from town, she texted back and said: Sure. But so early???

  I texted back: Urgent. She gave me a thumbs up.

  Parked a few blocks away, walked to the condos. Mom buzzed us in.

  I knocked on her door. She opened it, squinted, then very much not squinted.

  “Hi, Mom!”

  “Ahhh!”

  “Lots to talk about.” I started in, kissed her on the cheek. “That’s Joel and Robin. Have you made coffee yet?”

  I heard Robin say, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  Mom didn’t respond. I turned around. She was staring at me, jaw dropped.

  I twirled like a Price is Right model. “Ta da!”

  She cleared her throat. “Are you … undercover?”

  I smiled. Eased back to her, hoping not to scare her off. Then wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Another kiss on the cheek as she started to cry. A lot of crying going on this morning.

  I answered, “Maybe not anymore.”

  ‘The talk’ …

  You probably know it by heart. You’ve probably been on the receiving end of the outing, or you’ve outed yourself. Either way, aren’t the beats similar?

  “I had no idea,” becomes “Well, I had some idea.”

  “Are you sure?” becomes “This can’t be,” becomes, “I guess I’ll learn to live with it.”

  My mom asked, “Have you told your father?”

  My mom said, “Your sister should’ve told me.”

  My mom accused, “You burned yourself on purpose, didn’t you? You tried to burn it off!”

  My mom cried. “I tried to be a good mother … what did I do wrong? How could I have stopped this?”

  She laughed. “There are worse things in the world. As long as you are happy and healthy … you are healthy, right? Oh my god, are you sick?”

  She got mad. “Is this how you punish me for leaving your father? That’s it, isn’t it?”