The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens

  Max tucked and kicked, turning his fall into a roll. At the same time, he grabbed the grip of his 9 mm holstered on his right side. He pulled the gun as he landed hard on his back. He saw a flash of fire as Ianna shot a third bullet into the ground above Max's head. Max pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet missed the mark, but the second tore into Ianna's throat, opening a ragged hole in the back of her neck.

  Ianna fell back, the gun bouncing out of her hand. She clutched at the blood spurting from her throat. Max stood and walked up to her, his gun still trained on her. She looked up at him with eyes wide with fear. She had to know she was dying. She tried to speak, but no words issued forth—her mouth simply opened and closed like a fish. She kicked at the ground with her heels, inching her body across the dead earth.

  Max picked up the gun, its long barrel and silencer familiar from the shootout at the hotel. He ran to the cabin, holding his left arm tight against his body to ease the pain.

  Alexander lay on his left side, his back against the refrigerator, his hands clutching his stomach. Max ran to his brother and lifted him off the floor enough to slide in beside him and hold him. Max pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

  “Is Sheriff Voight on duty?” Max hurried the words even though he fought to remain calm.

  “He's on call. What's your emergency?”

  “I need an ambulance and squads at the Rupert cabin on Torch Lake. It's the dirt turnoff just past mile marker eight on County Road Twelve. Sheriff Voight knows where it is. I'm Detective Max Rupert of Minneapolis. I have an officer down and two civilians dead. Get the call out.” Max laid the phone down and propped his brother in his arms.

  “I fucked up,” Alexander whispered. His words came with great effort and a deep wheezing.

  “Hang on, Alexander. Help's on the way.” Max used his good arm to put pressure on the wound. Alexander's shirt was soaked with blood.

  “She…shot me. She has…the flash…”

  “She's dead,” Max said.

  “Good.”

  Max leaned his head back, a tear trickling from the corner of his eye and down his cheek. He looked at the face of Drago Basta lying dead at their feet. “You got Basta,” Max said. “They're going to throw you a fucking parade, Festus.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Max held his brother and looked out into the darkness, hoping to see emergency lights coming down the trail. The trees swayed in the night air, the fur of their needles giving a hushed voice to the breeze. He felt Alexander grow heavy and limp. He shook Alexander—screamed his name—but Alexander was dead.

  Max waited in the silence, knowing that the emergency vehicles would arrive too late. There would be no rescue. There was nothing they could do. Alexander was dead, and Ianna was…

  Max told Alexander that Ianna was dead, but he didn't know that to be true. She had a life-ending hole in her neck, but she was still breathing when he left her. Max could hear the whistle of a squad car in the distance. If they arrived in time, they might save Ianna. She would be saved by Max's call for help, but Alexander would not.

  Max gently laid his brother's body on the floor and walked out of the cabin to find Ianna Markova.

  Ianna had moved about four feet from where she had fallen. She pushed against the earth with her heels, her body twisting in the pain. But she was still alive. Max could hear the sirens getting closer.

  Ianna looked up at Max, but she couldn't speak. The blood drained from her neck in a ripple that kept time with her weakening heartbeat. She beckoned Max with pleading eyes. He shook his head “no,” and watched as the last trickle of her life drained away.

  Max broke the seal on a bottle of scotch that had been collecting dust in his cupboard for the better part of a decade. Alexander had given him that bottle as a gift for making detective. It remained untouched, sitting in the back of a cupboard, because Max had never found the right occasion to break the seal. Now, he decided that the time had come. He took a sip, and it warmed the back of his tongue as it passed. His next drink was a large swallow that toasted his whole chest.

  “That'll do just fine,” he said to himself.

  He hadn't bothered to change out of his dress uniform and the shiny black shoes that he wore in the procession. His white gloves draped the brim of his service cap, which lay upside down on the couch beside him. Alexander's funeral had been the third he had attended in as many days.

  First, he stood in the back of the church as they eulogized Desiree Rupert. They found her body after examining her car's GPS and searching the location that served as the starting point for the journey north. In the investigation that followed, Max learned about her affair with Martin Edwards. She and Edwards had been texting their desire to one another, and Desi hadn't been able to delete that evidence before she was kidnapped. That information remained in the hands of a few homicide detectives so that her family would never think the lesser of her.

  After that, Max flew to New York and walked in a procession as they laid Detective Louise Rider to rest. The detectives and officers from the Tenth Precinct treated Max like a brother, inviting him to walk at the head of the procession. By the time they buried Billie, the story of the Putnam case and the arrest of Wayne Garland had been in the papers for two days. The New York Times had devoted most of its front page to the Putnam, Pope, and Ashton stories, along with a big picture of Wayne Garland crying like a child and doing a perp walk out of the headquarters of Patrio International.

  The third and last funeral was that of his brother, Alexander. Max began planning that funeral in those minutes that he stood over Ianna Markova and watched her die.

  He rewrote the events in his head, creating a version where Drago Basta shot all three of them, killing Alexander and Ianna Markova, and wounding him. The bullet Max fired into Ianna's neck passed through her throat and would never be found, nor would the casing that Max slipped into his pocket. All of the remaining bullets came from Basta's gun. Max fired Basta's gun once before the sheriff arrived, the bullet sailing over the lake. He dropped the casing where Basta would have been standing when he shot Ianna Markova. No one would question Max's account.

  Max's report detailed how Alexander's trip to the lake with Ianna came from a plan to get her to reveal the location of the flash drive—a plan that required Alexander to use his extensive undercover skills to convince Ianna Markova that they were running away together. It became necessary that he blow off the grand jury to give his story the needed credibility. And in the end, Max was able to produce the flash drive. What better proof could there be that Max was telling the truth? Their plan worked. The story fed to the press followed Max's script to the letter, and by the time they laid Alexander Rupert to rest, he had become a national hero.

  Alexander's funeral was enormous, with law-enforcement agencies throughout the state sending representatives to walk in parade formation to the cemetery. The evening news estimated that the number of attendees exceeded three thousand. Max walked alone behind the hearse, followed by the mayor, a cadre of commanders and detectives, and then a sea of uniformed police officers, all coming to pay their respects to Detective Alexander Rupert.

  Max now sat alone in the darkness of his living room and drank from a bottle of scotch that he never thought he would open. As the warm glow of the alcohol began to take effect, he walked to his television and inserted a DVD into the player. On the couch again, he pressed the start button, and the TV came to life with a home video shot by his wife, Jenni, while they were on vacation in Aruba, the only vacation he and Jenni ever took with Alexander and Desi.

  The scene jumped from their hotel room to the beach. He listened to the music in his wife's voice as she teased him and dared him to chase her into the ocean. Max could barely stand it as the voices and laughter of Alexander and Desi filled his dark house. He drank the scotch faster in the hopes that intoxication would overwhelm him and quiet the pain. He prayed that he might find enough relief from the memories to fall asleep—for the f
irst time in three nights.

  As the scotch numbed his senses, he felt the gentle touch of Jenni's fingertips against his temples, turning light circles on his skin. He could hear the sound of her voice coming from a place just beyond his reach, her words melting behind a veil of imperfect memory. She led him to a place where nothing existed outside of the sound of her voice and the touch of her fingertips. He followed her deeper into the darkness until he found the peace he needed to fall asleep.

  I would like to thank the best literary agent in the business, Amy Cloughley of Kimberley Cameron and Associates.

  I want to thank Dan Mayer, my editor at Seventh Street Books, for his steady guidance. I also want to thank the many people at Seventh Street Books and Penguin Random House for their faith and support. I know that my work is in the best of hands.

  A special thank you goes out to my beta readers, Alison Krehbiel, Nancy Rosin, and Matt Grochow, as well as my fellow writers at Seventh Street Books, Robert Rotstein and Lynne Raimondo, who swapped chapters with me and gave me great advice.

  Allen Eskens is the author of The Life We Bury, which won Left Coast Crime's Rosebud Award for Best Debut Mystery and was a finalist for both the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel and the Minnesota Book Award. A criminal defense attorney for twenty years, Eskens is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime.

  Turn the page to read the first chapter of

  THE LIFE WE BURY

  the debut novel by Allen Eskens

  Available wherever books are sold

  http://seventhstreetbooks.com/LifeWeBury.html

  I remember being pestered by a sense of dread as I walked to my car that day, pressed down by a wave of foreboding that swirled around my head and broke against the evening in small ripples. There are people in this world who would call that kind of feeling a premonition, a warning from some internal third eye that can see around the curve of time. I've never been one to buy into such things. But I will confess that there have been times when I think back to that day and wonder: if the fates had truly whispered in my ear—if I had known how that drive would change so many things—would I have taken a safer path? Would I turn left where before I had turned right? Or would I still travel the path that led me to Carl Iverson?

  My Minnesota Twins were scheduled to play the Cleveland Indians that cool September evening in a game to crown the central-division champion. Soon the lights of Target Field would flood the western horizon of Minneapolis, shooting up into the night like rays of glory, but I would not be there to see it. Just one more thing I couldn't afford on my college-student budget. Instead, I would be working the door at Molly's Pub, stealing glances at the game on the television above the bar as I inspected driver's licenses and tamped down drunken arguments— not my career of choice, but it paid the rent.

  Oddly enough, my high-school guidance counselor never mentioned the word “college” in any of our meetings. Maybe she could smell the funk of hopelessness that clung to my second-hand clothing. Maybe she had heard that I started working at a dive bar called the Piedmont Club the day after I turned eighteen. Or—and this is where I'd place my bet—maybe she knew who my mother was and figured that no one can change the sound of an echo. Regardless, I didn't blame her for not seeing me as college material. Truth is, I felt more comfortable in the dinge of a bar than I did in the marbled halls of academia, where I stumbled along as though I wore my shoes on the wrong feet.

  I jumped into my car that day—a twenty-year-old, rusted Honda Accord—dropped it into gear and headed south from campus, merging with a stream of rush-hour traffic on I-35 and listening to Alicia Keys on blown Japanese speakers. As I hit the Crosstown, I reached over to the passenger seat and fumbled through my backpack, eventually finding the piece of paper with the address of the old folks' home. “Don't call it an old folks' home,” I mumbled to myself. “It's a retirement village or senior center or something like that.”

  I navigated the confusing streets of suburban Richfield, eventually finding the sign at the entrance to Hillview Manor, my destination. The name ceded to that place had to be some kind of a prank. It viewed no hills and lacked the slightest hint of grandeur suggested by the word “manor.” The view from the front was of a busy four-lane boulevard, and the back of the building faced the butt end of a rickety, old apartment complex. The bad name, however, may have been the cheeriest thing about Hillview Manor, with its gray brick walls streaked green with moss, its raggedy shrubs run amok, and its mold, the color of oxidized copper, encasing the soft wood of every window sash. The place squatted on its foundation like a football tackle and seemed equally formidable.

  As I stepped into the lobby, a wave of stale air, laden with the pungent aroma of antiseptic cream and urine, flicked at my nose, causing my eyes to water. An old woman wearing a crooked wig sat in a wheelchair, staring past me as if expecting some long-ago suitor to emerge from the parking lot and sweep her away. She smiled as I passed, but not at me. I didn't exist in her world, no more than the ghosts of her memory existed in mine.

  I paused before approaching the reception desk, listening one last time to those second thoughts that had been whispering in my ear, petulant thoughts that told me to drop that English class before it was too late and replace it with something more sensible like geology or history. A month earlier, I'd left my home in Austin, Minnesota, sneaking off like a boy running away to join a circus. No arguments with my mother, no chance for her to try and change my mind. I just packed a bag, told my younger brother that I was leaving, and left a note for my mom. By the time I made it to the registrar's office at the university, all the decent English classes had been filled, so I signed up for a biography class, one that would force me to interview a complete stranger. Deep down I knew that the clammy sweat that pimpled my temples as I loitered in the lobby came from that homework assignment, an assignment I had avoided starting for far too long. I just knew the assignment was going to suck.

  The receptionist at Hillview, a square-faced woman with strong cheeks, tight hair, and deep set eyes that gave her the appearance of a gulag matron, leaned over the countertop and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean, I hope so. Is your manager here?”

  “We don't allow solicitations,” she said, her face becoming brittle as she narrowed her focus on me.

  “Solicitations?” I gave her a forced chuckle and held out my hands in an imploring gesture. “Ma'am,” I said. “I couldn't sell fire to a caveman.”

  “Well, you're not a resident here, and you're no visitor, and you sure don't work here. So, what's left?”

  “My name's Joe Talbert. I'm a student at the University of Minnesota.”

  “And?”

  I glanced at her name tag. “And…Janet…I'd like to talk to your manager about a project I have to do.”

  “We don't have a manager,” Janet said through her squint. “We have a director, Mrs. Lorngren.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said, trying to maintain my pleasant façade. “Can I talk to your director?”

  “Mrs. Lorngren's a very busy lady, and it's suppertime—”

  “It'll only take a minute.”

  “Why don't you run your project by me, and I'll decide if it's worth disturbing Mrs. Lorngren.”

  “It's an assignment I'm doing for school,” I said, “for my English class. I have to interview an old person—I mean an elderly person and write a biography about them. You know, tell about the struggles and forks in the road that made them who they are.”

  “You're a writer?” Janet looked me up and down as if my appearance might answer that question. I straightened up to the full extent of my five-foot, ten-inch height. I was twenty-one years old and had accepted that I was as tall as I was ever going to be—thank you Joe Talbert Senior, wherever the hell you are. And while it was true that I worked as a bouncer, I wasn't the big meat you normally see at the door of a bar; in fact, as bouncers go, I was on the puny side.

  “No,” I said. “Not
a writer, just a student.”

  “And they're making you write a whole book for school?”

  “No. It's a mix of writing and outline.” I said with a smile. “Some of the chapters have to be written out, like the beginning and the ending and any important turning points. But mostly, it'll be a summary. It's a pretty big project.”

  Janet wrinkled her pug nose and shook her head. Then, apparently persuaded that I had nothing to sell, she picked up the phone and spoke in a lowered voice. Soon a woman in a green suit approached from a hallway beyond the reception desk and took up a position next to Janet.

  “I'm Director Lorngren,” the woman announced, her head held erect and steady as if she were balancing a tea cup on it. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.” I took a deep breath and ran through it all again.

  Mrs. Lorngren chewed over my explanation with a puzzled look on her face and then said, “Why did you come here? Don't you have a parent or grandparent you can interview?”

  “I don't have any relatives nearby,” I said.

  That was a lie. My mother and my brother lived two hours south of the Twin Cities, but even a brief visit to my mom's place could be like a walk through a thistle patch. I never met my father and had no idea if he still stained the Earth. I knew his name though. My mom came up with the brilliant idea of naming me after him in the hope that it might guilt Joe Talbert Senior into staying around awhile, maybe marrying her and supporting her and little Joey Jr. It didn't work out. Mom tried the same thing when my younger brother, Jeremy, was born—to the same end. I grew up having to explain that my mother's name was Kathy Nelson, my name was Joe Talbert, and my brother's name was Jeremy Naylor.

  As for my grandparents, the only one I ever met was my mom's father, my Grandpa Bill—a man I loved. He was a quiet man who could command attention with a simple glance or nod, a man who possessed equal parts strength and gentleness and wore them, not in layers, but blended like fine leather. There were days when I sought out his memory, when I needed his wisdom to deal with the tidal swells in my life. There were nights, however, when the sound of rain splashing against a windowpane would seep into my subconscious, and he would visit me in my dreams—dreams that would end with me bolting upright in my bed, my body covered in a cold sweat and my hands trembling from the memory of watching him die.