Back from the Brink

by Emery Hayes

  The path sloped and curved, gradually so that it could go unnoticed. The way back would be easy. At an eighth of a mile the trees parted to a swath of brambles, and Nicole could see the black teardrops that were forming into berries. And just beyond that the lake. There was very little shore here, and what was exposed was strewn with rock and detritus. A tree closest to the water had broken at the knees and fallen into the lake, its branches perpendicular to the sky. The dock was sturdy, weathered to a shiny gray. Two brilliant orange cones topped the pylons—not unusual, if you expected company.

  Nicole walked to the end of it. The lake moved beneath her and slapped the boards. The water was dark, and the closest floe was a football field away—enough free flow a boat could have idled up and dropped off or picked up passengers, legal or otherwise. A maneuver that could have been quickly executed, given the position of the dock and the clear water.

  Problem was, most of the private docks along the lake offered the same opportunity. She turned and looked toward shore. In this older section, the houses were situated on acre plots, sometimes densely wooded. She saw roof peaks and boat houses. Next door, a Quest was moored and bobbing on the current. A little early for sailboats to put in, but not outside reason. There were few craft active on the water now, and the scene of investigation was too far southeast of where she stood to glimpse any of it. As far as she could tell, nothing here was amiss.

  She turned and left the dock. The path was an easy climb, as expected. She was almost back to the house when she heard it again. The mewling of a cat. It was soft, as far as complaints went, and distant. Feral cats were not uncommon, and spring was a birthing season. Still, the sound struck a chord with her. Not quite the cry of a baby, was it? But there was none of the predatory curl at the end of the cry, the way it scratched at the air, sharp and insistent with wild cats. She quickened her steps, rounded the curve, and the house with the new gray paint came into view. Mr. Embry sat on the back porch, iced tea in hand. Not at all moved, as she was, by the cries.

  Nicole approached him and asked, “Did you hear that, Mr. Embry?”

  “The cats?” he asked.

  “A newborn has a particular cry,” Nicole told him.

  “I know it,” he said. “I have three sons. All grown, of course. But I walked each of them through the darkest hours of night.”

  “That’s the cry of a newborn,” she asserted.

  “In the woods?” he said.

  “Are you hiding a woman and child, Mr. Embry?”

  The cry grew louder, changed so that it sounded like a shriek. Embry nodded toward the woods, and Nicole turned. Kittens, mottled in color, tumbled out of the tree line and onto the plush grass. There were three of them, but only one was raising its voice in a yowl.

  “They sound like a baby, don’t they?” he said. He lifted a hand toward the pitcher of tea and an empty glass he had placed on the table. “If you can sit for a while, Sheriff.”

  Her gaze returned to the kittens wrestling in the grass, pouncing on each other and nipping at a neck or a tail. It did not feel right. And yet, beyond the kittens, the air was silent. She turned back to the house. The music continued to play, but he had turned it down, and behind him the curtains shifted with the breeze. There was a hushed quiet. She shook her head. “Not today, Mr. Embry. But I’ll be back.”

  She turned then to leave, but thought better of it.

  “The cones you have on the dock—are you expecting company?”

  “This weekend,” he said. “The reason we’ve been sprucing up. My youngest and his crew will be coming. I expect we’ll be using the kayaks plenty, and maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Weather’s supposed to be almost tropical.”

  Plenty of melt, and Nicole wondered what else might float to the surface.

  10

  The house was small, with a screened porch out back and a path that led downhill toward the lake. Lars had looked in the garage windows as he passed them. A blue pickup truck with a custom back-windshield decal of Old Glory, her stripes waving, was parked inside. There were tools hanging on the walls, a sit-on lawn mower, and several bikes, two of which belonged to kids. But the house was quiet. There hadn’t been an answer to his knocking and the windows there were covered in curtains. The screened porch contained a mud area for shoes, and he’d noticed two pairs of men’s boots on the mat. There was a long picnic table covered in a plastic cloth with a snowflake motif, but no dishes. He thought about following the path to the lake. They were short on time, but if he located the owner at the dock, then a return visit could probably be eliminated.

  The hinges on the back door were oiled but still gave a soft squeak. Lars turned toward the sound. A man had emerged from the house. He wore a Border Patrol uniform and firearm, was tall and about his own age.

  Lars walked toward him, meeting the man at half point, some twenty feet from the patio door. “You’re on the job,” he said.

  “I am. What are you doing here?”

  “Door-to-door,” Lars said. “What’s your name?”

  “Luke Franks, field agent, BP.”

  Lars had never heard the name, but he recognized the face. They had never met formally but perhaps come across each other as a matter of overlapping jurisdiction somewhere in the past. Frank’s face was stern, his lips pressed tightly over any words that managed to escape.

  The man radiated a lot of tension.

  “You’ve been in touch with command?” Lars asked. “You know why we’re out looking?”

  “A woman and child,” the agent said.

  “A baby,” Lars said. “Newborn. The woman is young, eighteen, if that.”

  “And you think they might be here?”

  “We think they might be somewhere along the lake.”

  “So, alive?” Franks said, and Lars noticed a subtle shift in the man’s shoulders, a loosening of his facial features. Relief or something close to it. “You wouldn’t be looking at houses; you’d be looking at wash-up otherwise.”

  “We hope so.”

  “And you didn’t come here special?” The man pushed his cap back on his head. “You weren’t sent to roust me?”

  “Sent by whom?”

  “My boss, maybe.”

  “I don’t work for BP.”

  He considered that. “No, you don’t. Where’s Cobain?”

  But Lars ignored the question. “You leaving for shift or just coming back?”

  “Leaving.”

  “You work yesterday?”

  “I’ve been out sick.”

  “Yeah? How long?”

  “I’ve seen you before,” the agent said. “You and Cobain.”

  “That’s not unusual.”

  “I’m wondering where she is now.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s been nothing on the news about a change in lead.”

  “You worried she’s going to take over?”

  “I’m hoping she will.”

  Franks had a problem with Green, that much was clear.

  “Why’s that?”

  From inside came a low thud, not footsteps but maybe an object fallen to the floor. Lars turned his head and surveyed the windows, but neither curtain fluttered; there was no movement behind the sliding door. The screened patio was empty.

  “You home alone?”

  “Never. That’s our retired German shepherd, Roxy.”

  Retired as in a former working member of the BP.

  “Our?”

  “My wife teaches at the elementary school.”

  “The same one your kids attend?”

  “That’s right. How do you know that?”

  “Two bikes in the garage—purple and pink, baskets and bells.”

  He nodded. “My daughters. Third and fifth grades.”

  “They’re not home from school yet?”

  “School’s out,” he returned. “But there’s dance and gymnastics, stopping at the grocery store. My wife schedules it all
so she doesn’t have to go back out.”

  So why wasn’t Roxy’s nose pressed against the slider? There had been no barking upon his arrival, not so much as a whimper.

  Lars shook his head and met the man’s gaze. “There’s no dog inside,” he said.

  “I’m not lying.” He raised an arm and pointed out the doghouse under a shade tree.

  “That proves nothing. I haven’t heard a single bark. Not a whimper to join his master’s side.”

  “The dog is trained to listen to commands,” the agent pointed out.

  Lars met that with silence. He was content to wait, but Franks wasn’t.

  “You think I have the woman and baby inside? I don’t,” Franks assured him.

  “Then let me take a look for myself.”

  But the agent shook his head. “That would take a search warrant, for which you have no cause.”

  “Sounds like you have something to hide,” Lars returned.

  “You would let BP trample through your house?” Franks raised his chin in challenge, but Lars ignored it.

  “It wouldn’t take much to convince a judge. Missing agents, a dead man or two, evidence of a break-in, and chase of a pregnant woman.” Lars watched Franks’s face grow grim. “Starting to sound pretty good, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” His eyes grew thoughtful as he considered Lars. “I’ve heard good things about you and Cobain. The kind of things I’m hoping I can trust.” He turned and walked toward the house but said over his shoulder, “I’ll call her out.”

  Lars followed his progress across the yard. Birds sang and squawked in the trees, frogs carried on closer to the lake. Nothing seemed off, but Lars felt the tension mount in his body and brought his hand up. The metal of his gun grip was cool and reassuring.

  Franks opened the slider and called into the house, “Roxy, come!” He whistled, short and sharp. And the dog came barreling out the door, skidded to a stop before she came to the end of the patio, looped back, and sat at Franks’s heels. She was still young, strong, with a shiny coat and alert eyes.

  “She’s retired?”

  “She pulled a kid out of a meth lab fire. You know what that does to a dog’s sense of smell? Wipes it out. Burns right through those mucus cells and they’re never the same.”

  Franks closed the slider and walked back to Lars. Roxy accompanied him.

  “You’re not going to let me inside?” Lars asked.

  “You know by now something’s not right inside BP?”

  “That’s what we’ve heard. Haven’t seen much yet to confirm.”

  “Heard from whom?” Franks wanted to know. “Green?” He shook his head. “You’ve got to go deeper. Sift through the ashes. Open some files. Take out the trash.”

  “You think Green is dirty?”

  “I’ve heard he’s warming up Monte, getting ready to serve him as the main dish,” Franks said. The man’s voice twisted with disdain.

  “And you don’t think he’s the way to go?”

  “Check out the man’s service record,” Franks suggested. “And look deeper into Green’s personal life. Beyond the surface, there are many layers.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know?” Lars suggested.

  “Earlier you said there was a break-in at the girl’s home. You said there was a dead man or two,” Franks said. “Are those connected?”

  “What do you know about it?” Lars returned.

  “I know about the ice man. We’ve been looking for him for weeks.”

  “Based on an anonymous tip,” Lars said.

  “Yes. But about the break-in,” Franks began again. “Was there a dead man at the house?”

  “You seem to think so.”

  “Was it a BP agent?”

  “You’ll know all about it as soon as you clock in.”

  That was met with silence, and it took Franks a moment to digest it. His nose flared as he drew an agitated breath and his shoulders tightened, but so did his lips. And Lars wondered what he knew, or suspected, and how heavy it must be to keep his mouth shut.

  “We’ll wait till then, I guess,” Franks said.

  “Because you have nothing more to say,” Lars pressed.

  Franks shook his head. “We’ll talk again,” he said. “Soon.”

  He walked back to the house, opened the slider, and let Roxy in. Then he cut through the yard, to the garage, opened the door, and climbed into his Silverado. He pulled out and idled in the driveway, waiting as Lars made his way to the street. Franks pulled up and stopped, rolled down his window. “Stay off my property, Solberg. Don’t come back around.”

  “You’re going to come find me, then?” Lars asked. “For that talk you mentioned.”

  Franks nodded. “It’s inevitable.”

  11

  Nicole arrived back at the Yukons just minutes before Lars. His face was a mix of sweat and possibility. She could tell he was still working through some thoughts and left him to it as she brought him up to date.

  “The others are finished and on their way back to the crime scene. The most interesting thing to come up was a few hijabs drying on a backyard clothesline. Calder questioned it. The occupants claimed they were left behind after a recent visit with friends and they were preparing to mail them.”

  “Calder was okay with that?”

  “She pursued it,” Nicole said. “They invited her to come back with a search warrant.”

  That raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like she hit a nerve.”

  “They had a cut-to-the-chase attitude, but she was fifty-fifty it went beyond that. Recently moved in from New York, thick East Coast accents and an eye on the clock.”

  Not unusual. Many of the residents of Blue Mesa were from anywhere but Montana. They were a popular community, tucked into the mesas just a rambling toss from the foothills of Glacier National Park. The beauty here was boundless, the air so clean and clear it left you breathless. It took transplants a year or two to release the grip of the outside world, relax into the rhythms of small-town living, establish relationships with their neighbors.

  “How ’bout you?”

  “No woman and baby,” he said. “But I did run into Luke Franks, BP agent.”

  “No kidding?”

  Lars nodded. “And he asked if we’d found a dead man at the house.”

  “He didn’t know?”

  “He’s been out sick,” Lars said. “Seemed to know only what the news was reporting.”

  “He say anything else?”

  “He wondered if the dead man was a BP agent.”

  That made Nicole’s pulse kick up a notch. “He thought it was possible,” she said, “that a BP agent was in the house.”

  “Puts a slant on things, doesn’t it?” Lars said.

  “That, and he seems cut off from the crew,” Nicole said. “Something this big going down—two fellow agents missing—you’d think he’d at least call in, get the details.”

  “Or show up at the scene to pitch in,” Lars agreed.

  Solidarity. Brotherhood. “He’s outside the loop.”

  “Maybe not a bad thing,” Lars pointed out. “He said we should take a close look at Green.”

  “Yeah? I’d like to hear more about that.”

  “Me too.”

  “We’ll go back. Put a little pressure on him.”

  “That’s going to need to wait,” Lars said. “He was on his way to work when I left.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said. If she didn’t bump into the man when they returned to the lake.

  Nicole switched gears.

  “Kittens ever sound like a crying baby to you?”

  “Always,” Lars assured her.

  She nodded. “I heard it a few times. I was almost convinced there was a baby in the woods, but then a tangle of kittens tumbled out of the tree line. I was looking right at one when it lifted its head and yowled.”

  “And it sounded like a baby?”

  She nodded.

  “But you’re not sure?”
/>   “No.”

  “So we go back.”

  “Probably. But we have two missing agents and a murder victim. Two. No time for a wild-goose chase.”

  It was probably no more than what she’d seen—a litter of wrestling kittens.

  “Green called for a briefing at five thirty,” Nicole told him. The call had come just as she was finishing up her sweep. “He figures they’ll be ready to clear the scene then.”

  “Any new information?”

  “Seems so.” They hadn’t had the chance to talk before diving into the canvass, so Nicole began by telling Lars about the missing evidence at BP and the suspicion that the two agents were romantically involved. “Green seems to think it’s possible.”

  “Monte?” Lars shook his head. “Never got that feel off of him.”

  The kind of guy who would corrupt justice, sleep with an underagent, and steal away into the night? No, Nicole agreed. Monte hadn’t built up those kinds of calluses.

  “His wife died four years ago. Green said it’s grasping at wind, but if there’s a reason, that would be as good as any.”

  “Monte was vulnerable,” Lars said. “So we keep it in mind.”

  “I’d like to see Monte’s notes, going back the last month or two at least,” Nicole said. All agents kept a notebook, whether digital or paper, of quickly jotted hunches and leads, of trails they had followed that presumably led nowhere, of questions, suspicions, and possible avenues of investigation.

  “You ask Green?”

  “I’m going to.”

  “He’s been open to help.”

  “Marginally,” she said. “And not sure who he can trust in his own office.”

  They moved toward their Yukons. “I’m stopping at Blondie’s,” Lars said. “Want something?”

  Lunch should have been hours ago, and she hadn’t stopped for breakfast. Someone had handed her a cup of coffee and a bear claw soon after light, while the body in ice was being cut out and brought ashore and the search boats were trolling.

  It seemed days ago rather than hours that Lake Maria had become a crime scene. From 2:37, when Monte called and reported the ice man, till now—it was nearing five o’clock—fourteen hours had elapsed, and so far what they’d learned could fit inside a thimble. Two dead, a pregnant woman, some rotting flesh in the BP field office. Those were the sure things. A romantic relationship that defied regulations and Syrian refugees were promising threads to follow.