by Eskens,Allen
Rusty’s was one of those long, narrow saloons with tin ceilings and pock-marked hardwood floors. The plumbing and duct work crisscrossed in the open spaces above the lights, and no seat in the house sported a cushion of any kind. Nothing fancy, with its long row of taps lining the cherry-wood bar, Rusty’s could feel a bit sticky on the elbows at times, but again, it never pretended to be anything else.
I found Niki in one of only three booths. The old, Hamm’s clock on the wall had just ticked on five o’clock, and already Rusty’s was half full. She had a bottle of Grain Belt waiting for me. I tapped the neck of my bottle against the neck of hers and took a long pull.
“Did Fireball confess?” she asked.
“No. He did the blame-it-on-the-gangs thing,” I said. “His explanation is all over the place. Tried to make it out as a car-jacking gone bad, as if that P.O.S. minivan was a hot commodity at the chop shops.”
“You gave him a day to come up with a story and that’s the best he could do?”
“I know. I am deeply disappointed in our Deputy Chief of Staff.”
“You want to see something that’ll make you even more disappointed in him?”
Niki lifted a laptop from the bench beside her and placed it on the table between us. She had the surveillance footage from the Holiday station cued up and ready to go. She hit the mouse pad and turned the screen toward me.
The camera angle was downward facing, framing a bay between two sets of gas pumps. The bay was empty for a few seconds before a white minivan pulled up to one of the pumps. I could see the front of the vehicle, and there was no one in the passenger seat. Already Fireball’s story was wrong.
Orton got out and walked around to the passenger side, slid a credit card through the slot, plugged the nozzle into the gas tank, and started pumping. Then he went back to the driver’s side, got in, and waited.
“So where’s Pippa?” I asked.
“Wait for it.”
After a few minutes, I saw a window get lowered—back seat passenger side. Orton exited the minivan and walked back around to the pump. He looked over the hood of the car toward the store and the clerk. Then he pulled the nozzle from the gas tank and stuck it through the open window. I could not see into the back seat, but I had no doubt that Pippa Stafford lay dead beneath the spray of gasoline.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, shaking my head. “He doused her with gas right there at the station.”
“Can you imagine the drive from there to the turnaround on First Street—in a car filled with gasoline? He had to be choking the whole way.”
“And the whole way, his clothes were absorbing the gas fumes. How did he not see the problem?”
Orton held the nozzle through the window for about thirty seconds, his arm jerking as if spraying as much of the interior as he could reach, before returning the nozzle to the pump. Then he pushed a couple buttons on the pump, waited, and pulled his receipt, slipping it into his wallet as he walked back to the driver’s seat.
“I don’t see any gang members, do you?” I said.
“Not in this angle.”
Niki popped open the tray and handed me the CD.
I rotated the disc in my hand, the lights sparkling off the readable surface, radiance covering the ugliness within. “I can’t wait to talk to Fireball about this,” I said. “See if he can explain where the black gangbangers disappeared to.”
“Do we tell Briggs? He’s going to be pestering us again tomorrow. We can’t dodge him forever.”
“I want to have a chat with Orton in the morning. That should button this case up. Get the confession so there’re no loose ends. Then we can hand it to Briggs all tied in a ribbon. He won’t be able to do much with it after that.”
“Have you figured out his interest in this case yet?”
“Not yet. I was thinking of talking to Commander Walker about it tomorrow.”
“Is that wise?”
“Walker and I go way back. He trained me when I first came to Homicide. He’s not like Briggs. In fact, the only reason that Briggs made Lieutenant is because Chief Murphy pushed it. If Walker had his druthers, Briggs would never have become his second in command.”
“Who would have? You?”
I smiled and shrugged, remembering the conversation Commander Walker and I had where he tried to ease my disappointment for not getting a job that I didn’t want in the first place. “Let’s hold off telling Briggs anything until I either get a confession from Orton or I talk to Walker.”
“Not a problem. What’s one more day on the dark side?”
I tipped my beer in her direction and took another pull.
Over Niki’s shoulder, a young couple at a stand-up table caught my attention. They looked to be in their mid-twenties. He wore a Vikings cap over a closely shaved head, and his coat fit snug across his broad shoulders. What drew my attention was the anger in his face when he talked to—or rather talked at his female companion. I could not hear his words over the din, but he pointed his finger in her face when he spoke, and his other hand rested on the table in a tight fist.
For her part, she didn’t look up until after his outburst ended. When she talked back, she’d only get a few words out before he would interrupt her again. They each had a beer and a shot in front of them. He downed his shot and pointed at the shot in front of the girl. She shook her head no, and he went back to berating her.
“Max?”
Niki had been talking, but I lost track of the conversation. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
“I was saying that I’m going to start wearing pinwheels in my hair, so maybe I can keep your attention for more than a few seconds at a time.”
“That’d be a good look for you. I’m in favor.”
“You really can zone out sometimes, you know that?”
“I was going for aloof and mysterious?
“Keep practicing—but you have obsessed down pat.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. That word can be so loaded, but in your case, it fits.”
“How so?”
“Your thoughts are dominated by one thing. They have been ever since I came on board here. Sure, it ebbs and flows. Some days are better than others. But your wife’s death is always there, just below the surface. It makes sense that you live, eat, and breathe that obsession now that there’s been a break.”
The man at the table behind Niki pounded his fist to make some point. The girl curled into herself, her hair falling to hide her face.
“Max, when it comes to solving a murder, you are the most observant man I’ve ever met. But you live in a tunnel. You have your job and you have your memories. Beyond that, there’s no room.”
Rusty’s had filled up pretty good. I looked at the door. No bouncer. Behind the bar, one female bartender on the far end served up beer as fast as she could. On the near side, an older guy, maybe early sixties, stood behind the bar chatting with another old-timer. Not much for backup.
“And no one can build a wall like you, Max Rupert,” Niki continued. “But sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we were friends, you know, off the job. It sounds weird when I say it out loud, so—”
The man grabbed the girl by the face, digging his fingers into her cheeks to raise her head up. He spit some more words at her and when she pulled away, he slapped her.
I jumped up from my booth and lunged at the man. I was on him in two steps. He wore a down coat, unzipped in the front. I turned him toward me and in a single motion, punched him as hard as I could in the stomach and yanked the collar of his coat over his head. I grabbed the back of his belt with one hand and the back of his coat with the other.
Now doubled over, he faced the door. I gave him a shove to get him moving in the right direction and ran him toward the exit. Just before we got there he started swinging. He was blind with his coat over his head, but he managed to land a pretty hard punch to my side. The crowd parted, clearing a path to the
door, and I used the man’s head to open it.
He fell to the sidewalk and immediately started to get up. Both his hands were balled into fists. I lifted my coat to show him the badge on my hip. “I’m a cop, Asshole! Just walk away!”
I could see that he was contemplating doing something stupid. We stood there for a few seconds before his girlfriend came bounding out the door, with Niki right behind her. The girlfriend looked at my badge, then at her boyfriend.
“Come on, Dave,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Dave wadded his face into a scowl and said, “Fuck you.” Then he turned and walked away, his girlfriend following a few steps behind. This would not be the end of it for them—for her. I wondered if I had only made things worse.
“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”
I unclipped my badge from my belt and walked back into Rusty’s, my badge held up so that the old-guy bartender could see it. He was on the phone, probably to 911. When he saw my badge, he hung up.
“He slapped his girlfriend,” I said to Niki. “It kind of pissed me off.”
“You want to give me a heads up, next time?”
We sat back down in our booth and both took a drink from our beers. “You were saying something about my living in a tunnel?” I said with a grin.
“Really? I open up to you and you’re going to give me shit?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I get fixated on Jenni. I can’t help it. Sometimes I feel like that part of my life just froze. I don’t know how to explain it, exactly.”
“You can’t move on until you resolve it. I understand.”
“There’s more to it than that.” I took another drink of my beer and then drained it, holding the empty bottle in both my hands in the middle of the table. I didn’t look at her as I put the words together. When I was ready, I said, “Jenni was pregnant when she was killed.”
I squeezed my eyes shut to try and block out the images that I knew were coming: Jenni lying naked in the guest room, the bracelet on her wrist, the Christmas trees with room for so many more presents, the blood on the floor of the parking garage.
At first Niki didn’t say a word. She just sat there looking shocked, then sad. Then she said, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Neither did I. I mean, I didn’t know until I learned about it from Dr. Hightower, after the autopsy.”
“So Jenni . . . she didn’t know?”
“No. I mean . . . I don’t think so. She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t acting any different than normal. No morning sickness. Nothing like that. The day she died was ordinary. I not only lost my wife that day, but I lost a child. They took everything from me. They killed my family. I can’t let this go.”
“Nor should you,” Niki said. “I meant what I said today, Max. I’m in for the full ride.”
“I know you are, Niki. But . . .”
“But the wall is still there.”
“Nobody knows what I’ve just told you. You’re the only person I trust right now. But there are places I need to go and you can’t follow. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
I expected Niki to look hurt, but she didn’t. Instead, she looked melancholy. She dropped her eyes and nodded her understanding. “Will you come back from . . . where you need to go?” she asked.
I picked at the label of my empty beer bottle and said, “If I can.”
Chapter 16: Up North
Chapter 16
Up North
The second hole in the ice goes slightly faster, as my technique has improved. I begin to count the turns of the auger, switching hands every twenty rotations. I also keep a cadence in my head, counting to a waltz rhythm like I’d seen dance teachers do in movies: one, two, three; two, two, three . . . The counting keeps me moving at a steady pace and, more importantly, it fills my head with noise, which helps to block out the voice of the man, as he continues to try to get under my skin.
Despite my improved technique, the auger shaves its way down at a snail’s pace, and soon other thoughts—memories—find their way in. I think about a morning when Jenni and I were lying in bed listening to rain fall against the bedroom window in an easy patter, like finger tips tapping against leather. We had just made love and neither of us had a reason to get out of bed, so we didn’t. That had been a month or two before she died—before he killed her. And as I think of that morning, I wonder if that was the day that we conceived our child.
We had wanted a baby for so long. Early in our marriage, it seemed a game. Behind every flirtation pranced the lure of having sex with a woman whom I loved more than anything else in the world. But those flirtations also carried the possibility of starting a family—the prize at the bottom of the Cracker-Jack box.
After she made up her mind—that day she seduced me in the guest room—we became serious, tackling the endeavor with books and research, even indulging in a few old-wives tales. From there came the doctor visits and the mine field of conversations that we would eventually learned to avoid, simple conversations about things like parks or toys or the room that was to become a nursery. Those conversations now touched bruises that never seemed to heal. Officially we were still trying; neither of us had given up. Yet there were times when I could see in her eyes a loneliness that I knew I would never be able to end on my own.
I’m just beyond the halfway point on the second hole when I stop to catch my breath. It is then that I hear a ruffling sound behind me. At first I ignore it and start pulling slush from the hole. When I hear the ruffling sound again, it seems a little bit quieter, more distant. I turn and look at the man. He has managed to push his body about thirty feet away from my circle. His feet are still tied together, but he is able to bend his knees, dig his heels in and push his torso through the snow. I’m not sure how far he expects to get; it has to be a quarter mile to the nearest shore—and then what?
When he sees me looking at him, the man stops his effort and says, “Fuck you.”
I walk over and reach for the rope tied around his calves. When I do, he rears back and punches his bound heels at me. It is a futile attack, and I swat his legs to the side. I take off my gloves, grab the tail of the rope and start to drag him back to the circle. As I do, he screams like a wounded animal. I assume that the act of dragging him puts new pressure on his broken arm because he’s twisting to lift that elbow off the ground. When I drop his legs onto the ice, he bares his teeth like a dog and yells, “God damn you!” It’s the first time he’s unleashed the rage that I know he has under the surface.
“No,” I say politely. “God damn you.”
I walk back to get my gloves and when I turn around, he’s pushing himself through the snow again. He’s found a new game, a stall tactic to slow down my progress.
I walk to his feet again and reach for the rope, but I’m careless. I get too close and I’m bent over. He rears back and shoves both his heels into the side of my head. I stumble back, as a jolt of pain shoots through my skull. For a moment I can’t hear out of my right ear.
“God dammit!” I shout through gritted teeth.
He’s trying to squirm his way over to kick me again. I spy the ax handle at the edge of the nest, go pick it up, and step toward the man. His legs are cocked and ready. I swing the ax handle at his knee, but at the last second I alter the trajectory. If I hit his knee, I’ll break it and that injury will be the focus of his attention. That won’t do. Instead, I hit the side on his calf and he yelps and turns over onto his side. He’s in pain, but that pain will pass.
He curses me in great detail, as I ponder on how to stop him from pushing away again. I could tie his ankles to his thighs or ball him up like a roped calf, but then he’d be too crooked to fit through the hole. I need to lock his knees straight somehow. I look at the ax handle in my hand. I don’t need it as a weapon anymore. An idea forms in my mind.
The man is writhing in pain as I bend down and grab his good arm turning him the rest of the way onto his stomach. When I do th
is, he shrieks and bucks. His face is buried in snow, which muffles his ranting a bit. I pull the fillet knife out of my boot and cut a slit in the hip of his expensive snow pants. Then I quickly slide the ax handle down the leg before he can think to bend his knee. The handle hits up against the man’s boot.
I keep my body on his legs to hold them down as he kicks and twists. I pull his belt from my coat pocket and wrap it around his thigh twice, buckling it to hold the wood in place, creating a splint against his knee that locks his leg straight. He won’t be able to push away now, and more importantly, he won’t be able to bend his knees to stop me from sliding him through the hole in the ice when the time comes.
When I’m done, I turn him back over, his face full of snow and anger.
“I’m going to kill you!” he screams. “You think you’re coming out of this alive?”
Now we’re getting somewhere. I stay on my knees, next to him, and brush some of the snow off his face, giving him a moment to ponder his impotency. The muscles in his face harden, but he controls the outburst that seethes just below the surface.
“You think you are tough?” the man says. “You’re not tough. You don’t know tough. Untie me and I’ll kick your ass, even with a broken arm. You could never beat me in a fair fight, and you know it.”
“A fair fight? Like the one we had over there?” I nod in the direction of the Canadian shore.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks, his voice now shaking with emotion. He’s switching his tack. “There’s no point to your cruelty. At least tell me what it is that you think I did.”
“You know what you did.”
“No. You’re wrong. I’ve done nothing to you. I’m innocent. You have the wrong—”