The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  Hank eased the kayak a little closer.

  Hank said, “Had breakfast?”

  “Thought you were bringing me some.”

  “Got some MREs in my kit.”

  “You call that breakfast? Why should we eat that shit now that we’re out?”

  “Because it’s all I got,” Hank said.

  “You been gone a while,” Lee said. “I thought you were finished with this place.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible, Lee. Not for me. Not for you.”

  “Frenchie called you, huh?”

  “Frenchie and Red.” Hank wanted Lee to know they were both involved and nearby.

  Hank studied the man in the water. Didn’t look threatening. Looked calm. Didn’t look like a throat-slashing kid killer. But he knew Frenchie had contacted him; must have had a reason to think that. Still, Frenchie might be wrong. After all, no witnesses.

  It shouldn’t have been a languid moment, but it turned into one. They were just floating there on the glassy, sparkling bay, Hank rocking gently in the kayak, Lee on his back, moving his arms and legs like a willow in a breeze. The sunlight spread over them like a fine warm oil. A lazy warmth, the kind that tempts turtles and snakes out onto the rocks and puts them right to sleep. A slight offshore breeze wafted over them, carrying the scent of white pine, red cedar, and other essences of the north. Swept away were the alien experiences that had shattered their friendship.

  “I remember we were out here two days after you hit that walk-off against Bay City,” Hank said. “Just floatin’ on inner tubes, mindin’ our own business. Red grillin’ hot dogs on the beach.”

  They began to chat about old things, about pre-9/11, prewar things. It went on for a while, just a reunion of two old friends gabbing away and laughing at events recalled.

  “Doesn’t seem possible that it was just fifteen years ago,” Hank said.

  “It wasn’t fifteen years ago,” Lee said. “It was a million years ago.”

  “Amen, brother, amen.” A million years ago. A million years ago and a war ago and maybe a murder ago, Hank thought. But there was no point in pressing Lee. Hank thought of it as similar to a hostage negotiation. If they’re talking, you’re winning. And he had the drop.

  “So you were hanging out at Scarecrow, huh?” Hank asked.

  “Yeah. Had a camp at the mouth of the Euphrates on the south side of Squaw Bay but it got overrun.”

  Hank almost laughed and said that the Euphrates was six thousand miles away, then saw it for what it was: the first signal of delusion. He became cautious with his words.

  “Overrun by who?”

  “Can’t be sure, there’s so many splinter groups around here.” Lee’s face darkened. His movements in the water became jerky, agitated. “They get inside the perimeter. Them and the ash borer. Killing everything. You seen the ash?”

  “Yeah, damn shame. They’re a huge chunk of the park.”

  “Not just the park. Of the whole country,” Lee said, his voice rising. “Fifty million trees so far.”

  It looked to Hank like a paranoid episode was on the way. They were hard to deal with under the best of circumstances. How you deal with one from a kayak he had no clue. He tried to take control.

  “Lee, why don’t we talk this over on the beach. Why don’t you start swimming for the beach.”

  “And if I don’t, you gonna blow me in half right here in the bay?”

  “Now why would you say that?”

  “Because I figure you’ve got a nine-millimeter or a forty-five handy in the cockpit there.”

  “Believe me, Lee, I’m here to help you . . . Come on, why don’t you keep going like you were—straight to the beach.”

  “Hell, Hank, you’re not taking me to the beach. You’re taking me somewhere a hell of a lot farther away than that.”

  Hank straightened up in the boat. “Lee, stop jawing and start swimming.”

  Lee kept treading water. He turned his face into the water and turned back spitting out a narrow stream. “You can taste the Euphrates,” he said. “Everything’s changing.” He slipped out of the loose dragline attached to the stowfloat bag. “Hey, Hank?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it a nine or a forty-five?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not really, ’cause holdin’ a gun on somebody only works if they give a shit.”

  Lee exploded straight up out of the water almost to his thighs. He came down with a tremendous splash and from the white spray launched a thrashing, powerful butterfly straight toward the kayak, closing the distance like a killer whale speeding toward its prey. Hank froze for just an instant. He grabbed for his Smith but hesitated, saw Lee dead, saw Red crying, and in those few short seconds Lee reached the kayak, latching onto the stern and easily flipping the slim arrow of a boat.

  Hank saw the sky spin and found himself hanging upside down, choking in cold water, his lower body jammed into the boat. As he tried to slide out, he saw Lee swimming toward him like a ghost, a combat Bowie in his hand. His face was flat and unemotional, a death mask. Then a strong arm had Hank in a steel-like hammerlock, pulling him down where it was deeper and darker. His life didn’t flash before his eyes. What flashed was the simple understanding that he’d never used a kayak to land a man before and had done the whole thing all wrong. His lungs gave out in a white bubbly cloud.

  Hank rose through a cylinder of blackness until all was light, coming to in a coughing, gagging cloud of confusion. Completely disoriented, he turned on his side and kept coughing up water. His throat was raw. He was freezing. The August sun was a godsend. He was on the beach, barely out of the water.

  Red was leaning over him. Her shirt was off and Hank realized it was draped over him. He remembered Lee coming for him, felt his arm around his neck.

  “Lee?” he rasped.

  Red straightened up, tugging at a strap of her black sports bra. She nodded toward the lake. Close to shore in shallow water the kayak was floating unevenly, its bow forced skyward by the weight of the body draped over the stern. Bronzed shoulders gleamed in the sun.

  “I came out of the woods,” Red said. “Lee had you laid over the boat. I called to him to move away from you but he pulled a knife. I had no choice.”

  Hank nodded. He was hazy but he knew the water where Lee had attacked him was much farther out, well over their heads. For the boat and Lee to be this close to shore Lee would have had to be bringing him in. But Red wouldn’t have known that.

  Hank looked at the boat and the body. It wasn’t really suicide by cop. It was something a hell of a lot more personal than that.

  His throat was burning. He looked at Red. Her face was distraught but she was dry-eyed. Her father had been walking home from Vietnam until the day he died. Would she be walking away from this until the day she died? He didn’t think so. Red was tough, knew how to stay within herself. Frenchie had taught her that.

  Red fumbled in her pocket for her phone. “I haven’t called Frenchie,” she said, her hands shaking. “There wasn’t time. We have to get you to the ER. Bad things can happen the first few hours after near drowning.”

  Hank looked out at Lee, the gentle waves washing away the dust from someone else’s desert. That’s where Lee would want to stay, as far away from the desert as he could get. Not a part of Negwegon exactly, but close enough. Hank put his hand on Red’s and squeezed gently, stopping the call.

  “Let’s not call Frenchie just yet,” he said.

  DAN BEVACQUA

  The Human Variable

  FROM The Literary Review

  This part of Northern California was too dark, Ted felt. It freaked him out. Without a moon, the lack of streetlights gave everything a creepy redneck vibe. Driving with his high beams on reminded him of certain back roads in Vermont—little pit-stop towns he used to speed through when he was a teenager and first had his license. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ventured this far out of San Francisco. Palo Alto for work at the startup, yes
. Oakland to visit friends. But those places weren’t like wherever he was now. The overwhelming, almost chemical smell of the pines blew in through the open car window. At a stoplight, he heard a coyote howl. The old, dense forest was otherwise silent, and Ted flinched when the console in the Prius beeped and the Bluetooth said, “Incoming.”

  “Boo!” Kathy said.

  “Hey.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ted stared at the GPS. “I’m just a red dot on a blank screen.”

  “Well, find out,” his wife said.

  He pulled over at a gas station. Standing out front near the bug light was an incredibly tall, incredibly thin man with an orange beard. He had the word SELF tattooed above his right eyebrow. MADE was above the left. Ted asked him.

  “Liberty.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yut,” SELF MADE said, as if he were offended by language, as if it had done something horrible to him as a child.

  Ted got back in the car and locked the door.

  “Liberty,” he told Kathy.

  “Keep going north,” she said. “Another twenty miles. You’ll see a condemned Mexican restaurant called Señor Mister. Pull into the lot and then text me.” Ted drove on through the darkness of Liberty, SELF MADE shrinking in his rearview, and considered once again the fact that he needed $350,000 by tomorrow. Without it, MicroWeather.com, his baby, was finished. He’d lose his house too. His wife probably. But what should he say when he got to the weed farmer’s? How should he act? As if it were a regular business meeting? More casual? He had no prior experience interacting with marijuana kingpins. He bought an eighth sometimes. That was it. It would last him a month. It was a Friday-night, smoke-a-joint-out-on-the-patio kind of thing. He wasn’t the guy for this.

  “Be your normal self,” Kathy had said that afternoon. “He’s from New Hampshire. He’s New England. Like you. Be New England together.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Ted asked his wife.

  They were in the offices of MicroWeather.com, which took up half a floor in a once-industrial building on the outskirts of Palo Alto. To the south, out the floor-to-ceiling windows, was the promised land: Google, Facebook, various other big ideas that had turned people into billionaires. MicroWeather.com was five geeks Ted knew from Caltech and his wife. The company was seven desks, seven chairs, and a very large room, basically. The geeks were out to lunch.

  “How do you even know him?” Ted asked.

  His wife was thirty-five and beautiful. She had long, straight blond hair, an MBA from Stanford, and ran four miles every other day. But there was a tattoo of a unicorn on her inner thigh that told a story of forgotten dreams. Only the month before, she’d disappeared to Chicago for the weekend in order to catch the final three Grateful Dead shows. Her first ever email address had been indigochild79@hotmail.com. She knew how to roll a blunt.

  “I know him from the old days,” Kathy said. “The rave scene. He was around.”

  “And you just called him?”

  “I just called him,” Kathy said. “I explained the situation.”

  “The whole situation?”

  “The whole situation. I told him about the bank. How this was all very time-sensitive,” Kathy said. “But Ted, he’s a businessman. He’s not going to give us the money out of the kindness of his heart. He’s willing to hear the pitch. But please, sweetie, do me one favor.”

  “What’s that?” Ted asked.

  “Make it sound cool,” Kathy said.

  Like its founder, “cool” had always been a problem for the company. While at Caltech, Ted, and every other grad student who cared about these sorts of things, noticed how localized weather websites and apps were becoming all the rage. He also noticed that they were all terrible. They relied on National Weather Service info combined with wonky algorithms. For months Ted thought about the problem, the inefficiency, and the ways in which, as an engineer, science had taken over his life, but then one day he looked at his iPhone. Radio waves streamed in and out of it 24/7. He could map the waves and chart the way they flowed inside the pressure systems. With enough subscribers, with enough data pinging back and forth, the information would domino. Essentially, the future—whether it would rain, sleet, or snow—would always be known, and down to the square inch. No more surprise storms. No more Whoops, here comes a tsunami! How many cell phones were in the world? Seven billion? More? That’s an accurate forecast, Ted thought. That’s the new weather.

  “But it is cool,” he said to Kathy. “It’s totally cool.”

  “I know it is, honey. I believe that, really,” Kathy said. “Just don’t, you know, overdo it on the algorithms.”

  Kathy was the cool one, Ted knew. Everybody thought so. Friends said it to his face all the time, like it didn’t hurt, like he didn’t know what that made him—the uncool one. There wasn’t room for two cools in a marriage. He understood that. There could be only one, like in Highlander. The same was true for business. But that meant his wife should be the spouse/business partner pulling into Señor Mister’s empty parking lot. She should be the one texting her. But instead Kathy was out to dinner with the loan officer, trying to flirt out a few extra days on the repayment, and Ted was texting to his cool wife: I’m here, Kath!! Now what? Now what do I do?!?

  She sent the reply and then smiled back at the red, drunk face of Mr. White.

  “Oh, I know,” Kathy said. “Believe me, I know. It’s a bubble. Only a matter of time.”

  She was glad he was old. Old and a little fat. Had he been young, it might have been a different story, one she didn’t want to think about.

  “I mean, theoretically, a bubble should never burst,” Mr. White said. “It should swell, sure. It should contract, yes. But it should never burst, not really.”

  She’d heard all this before. At Stanford. Regurgitated Friedman. The market will prevail. Live long and prosper. Have faith. At the time she’d believed it enough to have had two Republican boyfriends. Like that was okay. Like that was something people like her did. But it was her choice, Kathy reminded herself. She was the one who’d student-loaned her way into the club. She was the one who’d grown tired of being poor. Tired of having nothing. Tired of being tired.

  “But then people,” Kathy said.

  “But then people, yes,” Mr. White said. “The human variable.”

  “They’re unpredictable.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” he said.

  “What’s another?” she asked.

  “Foolish,” he said. “Delusional. Unrealistic.”

  Like an old pro, Mr. White quarter-turned the last of the Barbera into her glass. They were seated by the front window. To Kathy’s right, the dining room was awash in men and women eating alone. Everyone had a cell phone in one hand and a fork in the other.

  “Which of those am I?” Kathy asked. “Foolish, delusional, or unrealistic?”

  “If you’re one of them, you’re always all three,” Mr. White said.

  Kathy looked at the people in the restaurant—they were talking, texting, masticating—and thought of a diner in Fresno called the Chat ’n’ Chew. For years her mother had waitressed there.

  “We need two days,” Kathy said. “Two more days.”

  “What’s changed?” he asked.

  “We have an investor. Ted’s meeting with him now. But we need time for everything to clear.”

  “You’ve had eight months.”

  “I know that, Mr. White,” Kathy said. “So what’s two more days?”

  “Who is it?” he asked. “One of the hedge funds?”

  “No. It’s a small company. Privately owned.”

  “An angel investor then.”

  “Of a type,” she said.

  Kathy had left Rome (the weed farmer Ted was driving up a dark mountain road toward) because she’d had a revelation. She wasn’t going to be one of those women—one of those women like her mother—who didn’t live the life they wanted to. Sh
e refused to be among the legion of kept, kept down, or kept from. She’d loved Rome—and had loved the money that came along with him—but she couldn’t plan one more trip to Burning Man for their anniversary. Couldn’t host another end-of-the-season barbecue for the gutter punks who trimmed. Couldn’t be the weed king’s common-law. She’d begun storing up her fuck yous, hiding them away like Rome did duffel bags of cash, and she didn’t like the feel of it.

  “They believe in MicroWeather?” Mr. White asked. “And they know about the FCC, the FAA, the privacy lawsuits you’re sure to get?”

  “All of that’s hypothetical,” Kathy said. “None of that’s happened.”

  “It will,” Mr. White said. “Trust me.”

  “Maybe,” Kathy said. “Warning letters are only warning letters. MicroWeather doesn’t need to know if you’re cheating on your wife. It only needs to know if it’s raining where you are. Is it wrong to ask a stranger’s phone if the wind is blowing? If the temperature’s dropped? If it senses an earthquake two miles underground?”

  When in doubt, it was best to hit them with tragedy and disaster. You had to give their wives cancer, Kathy thought. Shoot their children in the street. Blow the world apart.

  “This is likely?” Mr. White asked. He was very, very serious now. “The investment?”

  Kathy didn’t know. But for the call she’d made to him that morning, she hadn’t spoken to Rome in five years. She’d caught him early, at six, before he’d had time to head out to the fields.

  “I know you’re married, Kath,” Rome had said over the phone. “I’m on Facebook. I know a lot of things about you.”

  Kathy knew a lot of things about him too. He was dating some woman named Monarch. She was young, and looked like a tramp. Her Twitter feed loved life. She Instagrammed horses.

  “How bad is it?” Rome asked. “The money?”

  “Bad,” she said.

  “And the idea? This Internet thing?”