Seven Shoes

by Mark Davis

  Bowie studied her, curious about the call, his canine instincts as active as ever. Elizabeth turned away from him and focused on her response to Freyja. She resolved to take a minute to think. Don’t try to reason with Freyja, just talk to her psyche.

  The line was not moving yet, so it was natural for Elizabeth to move a few yards to the side for privacy.

  “I must admit, I have gone up against you only to learn how second rate I really am compared to a player like you,” Elizabeth said. “You really took me down. I am being sent home, disgraced, kicked off the investigation for good as you must surely know by now.”

  “Yes, I am sorry the way things have turned out.”

  “Remember what I said about taking pictures,” Bowie said loudly. Elizabeth hunched over, hoping that his voice didn’t carry.

  “I think along the way I’ve acquired quite a lot of respect for you. For your intellect, your perceptiveness. I know now that you really care about people, that you’ve only been trying to help me.”

  “Why thank you, Elizabeth. That means a lot coming from you.”

  “It would be a gesture of supreme magnanimity for you to send Max to the nearest train station … so he can …” she felt her breath slip out of sync, inhalations somehow failing to fill her lungs. It was as if Freyja was there, watching with her pitiless, unearthly eyes as her victim started to beg. Elizabeth’s legs felt weak and she went down to the tarmac on her knees.

  “… so he can join his mother and we can go home together.”

  The pitch of her voice had risen almost to a squeak. She hated herself for losing control.

  Elizabeth looked up. Bowie was standing over her now. She nodded at him, smiled weakly, as if to say situation normal, which must have looked ridiculous.

  “Oh Elizabeth, that is a lovely vision. Max insists that you come to us first.”

  “Please do this one thing for me.”

  “Relax, dear, we can finally meet in the flesh and talk everything out, just us two girls. Here’s what Max and I want you to do. Rent a car and we shall send you directions. Do not alert Lars, or Nasrin, or may the gods forbid, Charlie Bowie, or any other stupid policeman. Just come alone. If you do, I promise—I swear on all that is sacred—Max will be joining you on a flight home tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth was almost on all fours now, one hand on the rough, black surface, the other clutching the phone to her face.

  “Please be truthful with me, just this once.”

  Bowie looked away, embarrassed by the scene she was making.

  “Once you have our directions, input them into the GPS of your rental and pull the battery out of your phone. This will ensure a discreet meeting. Don’t you want to see me in the flesh, as Max is doing now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are stronger than you think, Elizabeth. See you soon.”

  The face of the smartphone went dark.

  Elizabeth took Charlie Bowie’s outstretched hand to pull herself up.

  “What is going on? Do you need a doctor?”

  “No. Devastating medical news, for a friend. I guess I am still weak from the … you know.”

  Elizabeth slipped her phone into her pocket and took her place back in line. Bowie studied her intently. The three CIA agents were locked on to her like retrievers following a falling duck.

  “Really, just bad news from home and some wobbliness from the hospital. Once I get settled into a seat on that jet, well, I will have a good nap all the way home. You can rest easy, now, Charlie.”

  Bowie nodded slowly, not believing anything she said. The three CIA agents behind him scanned her face intently, wondering who this problem child could be.

  The line began to move, people climbing the stair ramp to the open door at the front of the plane.

  “Is there anything you need to tell me?”

  “No, just a family matter.”

  “Goodbye,” Bowie said.

  When it was Elizabeth’s turn to put a foot on the steel staircase, she turned, attempted a natural smile and said goodbye. She tried to say it as firmly, as definitively as possible. Maybe it would make Charlie Bowie leave.

  She willed herself up the metal stairs, reluctance weighing down her feet with every step. There was no one to welcome her. The charter plane showed its age, cracks in the plastic interior, the hiss of air nozzles and whine of electrical systems louder than in the smaller jet. There was open seating, with most seats empty, so Elizabeth took an aisle seat near the open door. The CIA woman gave her a sharp glance and took a seat directly behind her.

  The door remained opened. Within a minute or two, a flight attendant would close it.

  Elizabeth lifted the window shade. Charlie Bowie stood on the tarmac, briefcase on the ground, staring at the 757. He was not going to leave until he saw a steward lock and arm the door and the plane begin to roll.

  Her racing mind slowed. An idea.

  Elizabeth opened her purse, fished out her wallet and removed her driver’s license, credit cards and insurance cards, and slipped them into her jeans pocket. She retrieved her passport and put it into her other pocket, under her smartphone. Elizabeth rose, turned and smiled at the CIA agent behind her. The woman looked at Elizabeth as if she might be a jihadist ready to explode.

  “I forgot to tell Charlie something important. Would you mind holding on to my purse for a moment? I’ll meet him on the stairs and be back in a jiff.”

  The CIA agent nodded. Elizabeth handed the woman her empty purse and went to the airplane door. She glanced to her side on the way out and saw that the woman had put her head down, texting something.

  As Elizabeth descended, Charlie Bowie looked down at his phone, studying the rippling ellipses that announced that a message was coming through from his fellow agent in the plane. While he waited and read, Elizabeth quickly bounded down the stairs. She always wore flexible walking shoes whenever she traveled and was now supremely grateful for that fact.

  As she hit the bottom step, Bowie’s head snapped up, his eyes contracted, mouth drawn in fury.

  Elizabeth doubled back under the ramp and the belly of the plane. A baggage handler shouted a protest in Norwegian. She ran past the nose of the craft and along the side of a fuel truck. Out the corner of one eye, she caught a glimpse of Bowie chugging around the ramp. Behind him a figure bolted forward, a woman in a turtleneck sweater and blue jeans.

  It was the CIA agent who had been sitting behind her, ready for just such a surprise. The woman was all angles, sharp elbows and pumping knees.

  Elizabeth sprinted toward the small lounge of the private airport, pushed through the doors and continued at speed past the counter, weaving to avoid passengers milling about.

  She did not have to look back. She could see from the startled looks of the desk agents that someone was on her heels.

  Elizabeth raced to the entrance doors.

  There was a single taxi, just emptied of passengers. Elizabeth opened the door of the cab, slid inside, shut the door and depressed the lock.

  “Main terminal,” she shouted.

  A second later, the agent was on the taxi door, rattling it, banging her palms on the roof.

  “What is this?” The driver was a portly man of sixty with droopy mustache and bulging eyes. “Do I need to call the police?”

  “No, she just doesn’t want me to leave her. Lover’s quarrel.”

  The driver smiled at the thought and gently eased forward. Elizabeth looked back. The agent planted her hands on her hips, a gesture that gave Elizabeth a tickle of satisfaction. A second later, Charlie Bowie came bounding behind her, his tie flapping and shirttail twisting as he ran.

  “Actually, take me to the rental cars.”

  Elizabeth realized that she was drawing satisfaction from getting away from two people who could help her so she could deliver herself into the hands of a psychopathic murderer.

  She could think of nothing else to do.

 
___________

  Elizabeth picked one of the premium American car rental companies, showed her passport and a credit card, and ordered a Jeep Cherokee with GPS.

  While the rental agent scanned her computer, Elizabeth checked her phone. Nothing new.

  Then a ping.

  >Nice escape<

  Then,

  >Odda to Tyssedal, 4834 Skjeggedal,

  up Hardangerfjord Trail,

  1.8 k to Old Cabin Trail<

  The Jeep Cherokee was dark blue with khaki-colored leather interior. Elizabeth settled into the driver’s seat and took a few minutes to get the feel of the car. The impulse to quickly text Lars or Nasrin was almost overwhelming, but she forced herself to stay with the fact that Freyja would instantly know if she did. And then what would the crazy bitch do to Max?

  Besides, she still didn’t know if the directions told her exactly where Freyja was holding Max.

  Elizabeth turned the ignition, waited for the GPS to illuminate, selected English and pecked in directions with an index finger. She clicked her seatbelt and slid the SUV out of its stall.

  It was 10:30 a.m.

  The GPS told her it was a three-hour drive to her destination. She resolved to make better time than that but was grateful for a few quiet hours to think.

  Elizabeth had a lifetime of experience working with troubled people. How to get to Freyja before she could harm her son? Assuming she hadn’t done something to Max already.

  Approach her with a calm mind. Talk to her psyche but don’t patronize or beg like you did on the tarmac.

  A winning approach would depend on guessing the identity of the psychopath hiding behind the Freyja mask before they met, so Elizabeth would have time to exploit her weaknesses. But who?

  Lionel Jacobson? That’s what Nasrin thought.

  But Elizabeth knew that Freyja was an American.

  Sandra Armstrong?

  Maybe brain disease had already begun to make her insane. Or Ken Woods? Hard to picture, but not out of the question.

  She had forgotten something. Elizabeth pulled over, pulled her smartphone from her pocket and removed the batteries. She put both together in her right front pocket and began to drive again. She was going to do this by the book, Freyja’s book, so the goddess would have nothing to hold against her.

  The road cut through the outskirts of Bergen. Elizabeth had two lanes to herself, the opposing traffic divided by a greenway. The road moved inland, taking her into highlands and giving her a glimpse of mountains and bright glaciers. It was some of the most scenic land on earth, but it might as well have been a featureless desert.

  “Okay,” she said out loud, “so I don’t know who she is yet, but what do I know?”

  Freyja gets her reward from manipulating strong people and breaking them. What’s the motivation for doing that? Anger at elites? A desire to humble people who are more successful than she is?

  No, this feels like something beyond class envy, though there seems to be an element of that. This is a rage emanating out of a deep wound. Why a goddess? The underlying grievance is spiritual, a metaphysical protest of the ways things are. Deep hurt mixed with disappointment.

  Disappointment with what?

  Her mind played the angles. Elizabeth debated the points aloud, working through those whose bodies had not been recovered. More likely than not, however, Freyja was someone else, someone she didn’t know, a squalid Internet troll who had been at this game for a long time. Elizabeth’s eyes and hands controlled the car, freeing her mind to chew on the problem. She was lost in thought while making the prescribed turns around Odda when the GPS told her to do so, gliding up sharp hills and pumping the brakes on the downhills, so that when she finally arrived at Tyssedal in just under 2 hours and 45 minutes, it came as a surprise.

  A tourist would be awed by Tyssedal set deep in a fjord, facing a giant plug of a mountain reflected in a serpentine lake of deep blue. On the undulating highlands above were glimpses of alpine forest. There was a concrete arch dam where a helicopter with the royal seal had landed on its roadway. The city had a large smelter of some sort and a hydroelectric plant, but the industrial side of town was offset by plank board homes and churches, all painted bright red.

  She had no time for any of it. The GPS led her on the road above town, then down a side road between Tyssedal and an incline that led into Hordaland, a national forest. The GPS told her to make a right onto a gravel road where several other cars were parked at the beginning of a hiking trail.

  A sign, “Gamle Hytte Stien.”

  Elizabeth reinserted her batteries back into her phone and translated it. “Old Cabin Trail.”

  Elizabeth locked her car and started up the trail, using the phone to track her movements so she would know when she had reached 1.8 kilometers. She periodically checked to see if Freyja or Max had sent her a new message, but there were none.

  The trail led through humid lowland forest. As Elizabeth’s shoes crackled on the gravel trail she glanced through breaks in the trees at fields of heather and tall hyacinth, purple against the bright green forest floor. She moved in and out of the shade of tall elms and aspens.

  The grass glistened with dew. Sunlight transformed spider webs into brilliant filigrees of glow diamonds. On the trail, the sun was harsh in the gaps between the trees. Deep in the forest, Elizabeth could see dark, cooler places, perfect dwellings for trolls and nisse.

  The incline rose and Elizabeth began to feel winded from the climb. As always, she knew, that if she pressed on her breathing would regularize and she would be in a strong rhythm to move upward with efficiency.

  She checked her phone.

  She had come 1.2 kilometers in twenty minutes. Almost there.

  Her heart began to hammer, not from the climb but from anticipation. Elizabeth would soon come face to face with Freyja and engage in contest of wills to free her son.

  Up ahead, she saw movement, a figure passing behind the trees, coming around the bend above her. Another figure. Two millennial hikers emerged on the road above her, a young man with a wispy beard and red bandanna, a young blond woman. Both wore hiking shorts, swinging walking sticks.

  They smiled as they approached her. Elizabeth smiled back.

  She checked her phone, but it had quit working. She guessed she had come more than 1.5 kilometers.

  Elizabeth took to the left side of the trail and walked cautiously toward the bend, which cut to her left. She looked up the trail and around the trees, seeing nothing … not that she necessarily would. She continued, this time taking the right side of the trail as it wove inward more steeply toward the higher land. She looked up to her right and saw a cabin.

  It was back on the left side of the road, where the land rose steadily but not treacherously. She doubled back far enough to where she was sure she would not be seen and crossed the trail into the forest.

  Elizabeth again removed the battery from her smartphone and stowed it in her jeans pocket. Moving upward through the forest was not easy. She stepped over mossy rocks that one could slip on, rotting limbs one could trip over. Despite her best efforts, she occasionally stumbled into a bramble and was rewarded with a slap on the face with a sweaty frond and a scratch on a cheek.

  The forest was wet and buzzing with fat horseflies that nipped at the corners of her eyes.

  Elizabeth walked slowly, stepping carefully to avoid making a sound.

  Her plan was simple. She would observe the cabin. Find out who Freyja was and see if she was armed. Locate Max and confirm he was okay. And then she would decide whether to confront Freyja or snap her battery back into her smartphone and call for help.

  She would turn the tables.

  The old cabin came into view between the trees. Elizabeth crept to the backside of it. The cabin had a small backyard patio with deck chairs that overlooked a clearing with a magnificent view.

  Elizabeth moved further around toward the back of the cabin.

&n
bsp; She waited and watched, no hurry, concern for her son feeding her patience.

  As her eyes adjusted to the harsh sun reflecting off glass windows, she noticed shadows moving inside the cabin. How many people were inside she could not tell.

  She heard a screen door yawn open and snap closed.

  An older man came bounding around the side of the cabin with an axe slung over one shoulder. He took off his shirt to reveal big shoulders and powerful arm muscles. He had a large, gray mustache. The man picked up a birch log, set it upright on a chopping block and split it neat.

  He cast the two pieces to the side, picked up another log and split it. He split another. He bent over to roll the logs into his strong arms and against his chest and turned toward the entrance of the cabin.

  The man stopped. He turned around. He looked out at the trees, observant, as if he had caught a glimpse of someone in the forest.

  Elizabeth froze, hoping the shadows and greenery would mask her.

  The man shrugged and turned and made a graceful dip to retrieve his shirt with a finger, while balancing the thinned logs. It wasn’t until he was almost gone that Elizabeth realized that she had been watching George.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  She retreated further into the forest and found a fallen tree to sit on.

  It made sense, in a way. In their last therapy session, George had revealed darkness in his life, the end of his marriage and loss of custody of his two daughters … the breakdown he suffered under the threats of a sociopathic killer.

  Still … George?

  If George was Freyja that meant he had humored her the first time she had taken DMT, sitting with her in the park, pretending to be concerned about her taking a narcotic that he had sent her.

  If George was Freyja, that meant that the second time he had given her a triple dose of DMT.

  If George was Freyja his claim to authorship of the paper would have him writing about himself, an act of recursive insanity.

  If George was Freyja, he had used all his skill and knowledge of the human psyche to lure seven people to their deaths.