“Don’t talk,” he said. “This is wrong.”
“The hell it is.”
He mustn’t quit on her. Brenda kept him close, measuring her steps to his. “I mean, it is. Of course, all of it. But, Charlie, that’s why the rules aren’t for this. The rules are for something else.”
“No, they’re for everything.” He shook his head, rejecting what she had said. But still he was matching his steps to hers.
“Not for this. And don’t you back out on me, because I will say you weren’t there, Charlie. I mean it. I’ll tell them what happened and then this Lester, this sheriff will be stuck. And so will Marion. I mean it, I’ll do it.”
“I see you mean it,” he said.
“You and Marion went to the hotel. When you came back, we did this, what we’re doing right now. We went up and over, down to Rainy Lake. For Heather. You knew it was hopeless, but you humored me. We heard something and when we got there, we saw whatever it is. Say yes.”
“All right.”
“We don’t know what happened. When we got to the Canadian side, that’s when we knew.” When they passed the gravel path to the lookout site, she made him stop. “We should look, Charlie. We wouldn’t make this walk and not look down.”
He was letting her decide now, walking passively. Every time their eyes met, Charlie’s had a look about them. Discovery, suspicion. But he had decided, and he now followed her through the narrow funnel in the foliage, bright at the end. She remembered how it had been, a railed deck twenty feet square, braced above the falls. But you could see to the dock from the north side. As they approached, Brenda turned and blocked the way.
“Don’t do anything, Charlie. Stay off the north side. We have to be careful. All we want is to see what’s in Rainy Lake. We’re looking for Heather.”
He nodded. They passed out onto the bright platform, quickly stepped to the railing and looked down. It fumed below—massive boulders and tree trunks in a brothy haze. She felt again the power of movement under her feet, a hypnotic tumble of brown water falling, drifting down. Bearing no resemblance to anything else, the hull of the Stratos, bottom up, glistened below. It appeared to be intact. She did not see bodies.
“One thing, Charlie—”
Hands on the railing, looking down, after several seconds he turned to her. She saw he was going to make her do all of it, seeing again the mix of interest and disgust about his eyes and mouth. Some of the thousand-plus muscles in the human face were eloquently letting her know what he was thinking, as he waited for the one thing.
“Did we see your boat from here or not? Had it already gone over, or later?”
“Later. Otherwise, he didn’t have enough time after we left.”
“To do what?”
“You tell me.”
“He was paralyzed. I got the keys from him to raise the motor.”
“It could have already been raised.”
“An autopsy would show his wounds made it impossible for him to get up and untie the boat.” She looked at Charlie’s hand on the rail. “He was a klutz. A fuckup. He tied the ropes wrong, they came loose. I didn’t do it, you didn’t, he tied a granny knot and it came loose.”
She wanted them to be together, united. Nothing changed in his face.
“Don’t make this harder, Charlie. You don’t know what he planned.” Brenda remembered. “God, the house, something about blowing her house, and seventy-two hours. This is not everything. But I made a decision, Charlie, no one should have to go through what was coming. This is a bad thing that needs to be done. You have to help.”
He looked back out. For the first time, following his gaze she saw fishermen, three boats clustered at one end of a small island. It was a painting, Hudson River school. Everything below was bathed in fresh light, a watery maze of islands and shore, perfectly blue water.
Holding her hair back, Brenda now looked straight down. She felt shock and disgust. She had killed someone, and now she was seeing a painting. But there was no sign of others below, no curiosity seekers near the falls.
Looking back out, she saw the three boats were at anchor, two people in each. One man made a cast, then a second man. The two graceful, whip-like gestures came close together—men lost in thought or talk, watching their lures, reeling in. It filled her with hope, a sense of victory. Half a mile from the violence of the falls, sportsmen were enjoying themselves, oblivious.
It would work. She felt ashamed, but it would work. She had killed someone, Jerry Lomak had not been dead until she untied the ropes and sent him over the falls. And it didn’t matter that he had seemed to say he wanted her to do it. Wanted his hair on right and his cap, for his last big scene.
Charlie straightened and moved quickly toward the tunnel of foliage. Brenda followed. She thought he saw it now. Right or wrong, he understood and agreed with her.
“We came here,” she said. “We looked down and didn’t see anything—”
Moving behind him, she glanced down again at his shoes. They had no laces, and she saw Jerry Lomak jumping, his shoe catching. She would see it forever. Charlie kept moving and didn’t answer. But his own idea was now part of the plan—they had not seen his boat from the lookout.
“Brittany, this is Mrs. Ross. Yes, hi, please put Carrie on…”
By the time Brenda and Charlie reached the hotel, Marion had regained her take-charge self. She had been questioned by Sheriff Gertz, and as Gertz questioned the two of them, Marion had reached her husband in London. He and Jay would leave on an afternoon flight. Now, Marion was calling Carrie.
“Brittany, I can’t talk about the trip now, please get Carrie…. She what? Walked home when? Clean clothes? She had plenty of clothes…”
Seated in the hotel’s dining room, Brenda now stood.
“Dammit, never mind, put your mother on, I… Shopping, of course, that’s perfect, that’s all she’s ever done in her whole life, what’s her cell number…” Brenda crossed quickly to the lobby. “Brittany, how the hell can you not know your own mother’s cell number!”
She took the phone. “Hi, Brittany, this is Brenda Contay, Mrs. Ross’s friend.”
“Stupid girl!” Marion glared at her, looking trapped.
“Did I do something wrong?” the girl asked. “I mean she just walked home, I don’t—”
“No, Brittany, she’s not mad at you, she’s just worried—” Marion was staring at something, seeing something. Her face now seemed to lose shape and collapse. Her shoulders dropped, and she began heaving for breath.
“Just a second.” Brenda put down the handset and wrapped her arms around her friend. Marion was now hyperventilating, and it was scary.
“I see it! I see everything!”
“Please, Mar, Carrie’s fine, she just walked home, it’s nothing.”
“I know exactly how he thinks, I see it! That’s what Lomak meant—”
Marion was now struggling to get free. “I have to go, I have to get there! Let go of me!” Brenda held on, hearing and feeling the most capable person she knew going to pieces. Seated at another table, Sheriff Gertz and Charlie got up and now came from the dining room.
“Damn you, let go, you don’t see it, you don’t understand—”
“See what?” Marion was twisting, pushing.
“You said seventy-two hours—let me go! You said seventy-two hours, you said there’s someone else.”
“He was crazy, he’s dead, Marion, he can’t hurt anyone now.”
She let go and Marion spun away, blocked now by the two men. She began shaking her head. “There’s no one else,” she said. “It’s all him, no one else, it’s all Lomak. I know what he did, I see it, I know him.” Wild-eyed, head still shaking, Marion was again seeing something in her mind’s eye.
“Space station.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You told us he said something about a space station.”
“He was babbling, he was fantasizing about writing a book.”
Marion’
s chest rose and fell. She looked at all three of them, but now glared at Gertz. “It’s part of his plan, it’s how a loser wins, you can’t see it. Lomak worked for the gas company, before he snaked out sewers he worked for MichCon. God!”
Between them, the two men began helping her to the door leading to the hotel porch. “You have to find my daughter, she went to the house, he planned everything!”
The door opened and closed, but Brenda could still hear Marion’s voice—shouting, pleading. She remembered Lomak humped in front of the outboard motor. Get an agent, seventy-two hours, fucking space station…The last thing had made no sense to her, but everything else did—the talk of a book, sending postcards from prison. Brenda watched her friend through the lobby window being led down the stairs—remembered the phone, and picked it up.
“Brittany, it’s me again. Mrs. Ross isn’t sick,” she said. “There may be a problem at the Rosses’ house, that’s why she’s concerned about Carrie.”
“She left like maybe a half hour ago.”
“I see. Okay, Brittany, tell your mom to call when she comes in, will you do that?”
“Sure, but—”
“And Brittany, this is important. Do not go near the Ross house, stay where you are.”
“Don’t you want—”
“No, please, Brittany, don’t do anything and stay where you are. The police will handle it. So whatever you do, stay where you are, and have your mom call the number I’m going to give you, got a pencil?”
She waited. At the base of the porch stairs, sobbing and broken, a different Marion was being supported on the front drive. Gertz was using his cell phone. It was awful, a strong person needing others to help her and tell her what to do. Like Doreen Taylor.
She gave the hotel number, handwritten on a piece of tape someone had stuck to the cradle of the old-style phone. She looked again to the window, and as she repeated the number, a pickup truck appeared.
She said goodbye as the truck came to a stop. The men guided Marion to the open door.
Watching her get in, Brenda thought of the Ross house. It was spacious and refined, a thing of beauty. She saw Carrie Ross going up the graceful staircase to her room. You’ve seen it, Brenda thought. A teenager’s room full of rock posters and stuffed animals. Last year, a gas explosion had caused six houses to blow up on a street in a Detroit suburb. All but one of the houses had been empty. But a young mother, and two children she was home-schooling had been killed. An ugly story, the street cordoned off, littered with toys and bricks, pieces of furniture. They didn’t put such images on local news broadcasts—not yet—but someone had posted to YouTube a photo of a child’s severed foot in a shoe. It was the kind of story she had covered before leaving tabloid TV.
Gertz slammed the pickup’s door, and the truck moved off toward the road to the dock. Brenda crossed the lobby and stepped out. The sheriff and Charlie were talking now. Gertz nodded, and Charlie started jogging across the lawn. A good sign. He had asked permission to do something, and Gertz had said yes. The sheriff watched him a moment, then turned and crossed to the stairs.
“He’s going down and help with the second recovery.” Gertz came up.
“Someone’s taking Marion to the landing?”
“Right now, there’s a boat waiting. They got an EMS back there, they’ll give her something.”
Brenda raised her pack of Marlboros. He nodded—more permission—then went inside. She lit up and watched through the window as he sat again at a table in the dining room. He raised his phone, and resumed writing on a legal pad.
Maybe it’s nothing, Brenda thought, watching him. Maybe it’s only this up here. All this insanity, and Marion’s just lost it. Except Marion knew Lomak. So did she, in a way. Just for ten or fifteen minutes, but she’d seen him in action, heard him—an actor, a poseur playing cowboy, impressing the ladies…
She turned away and moved to the handrail. Two men were scrubbing awnings on the sunny lawn. One said something, and his partner looked to the hotel. On hands and knees, he dropped his head and mumbled an answer. Both men were using wooden brushes, dipping them in buckets of frothy water. No, she thought. Boys in their teens, not men. Working on a weekday in early May probably meant they were dropouts. But what did she know about it? Or anything else here? School in northern Minnesota might have a different calendar.
Please let Carrie Ross live—
She realized what she was doing. Praying. Please let Carrie Ross live. She never prayed. Ever. It was hypocritical and empty of her to pray, but that’s what she was doing, please keep Carrie safe—
She lit a cigarette, feeling chilly in the shade of the battleship-gray porch. Something would happen in seventy-two hours. But seventy-two hours beginning when? If the time started on Friday, that meant whatever Lomak had planned was meant to take place today. While he was on his way out of the country.
Again Brenda turned. Framed in the lounge window, Sheriff Gertz was still talking on his phone. Nodding. Waiting.
Everyone called him Sheriff, or Lester. He had sat opposite in a rocker with his legal pad, a booted foot on his knee, asking questions as they repeated their story. The two men clearly knew each other, but that had not made Brenda confident. Seated next to Charlie on a worn leather couch in the lounge, she had fought hard to not look at him. If she did, Gertz would glance up from his legal pad, see she was seeking support, and immediately know she was lying.
Now, what she had done seemed unimportant. Trivial. As the sheriff talked inside, Brenda studied his profile. Gertz no longer looked like a local yokel to her. He looked deceptive. Intelligent. With a fleshy face you sometimes saw on thin men. Maybe Charlie would tell him his own made-up version later, when she was gone. She imagined the two alone at the table inside, Charlie leaning on his elbows, starting in on his fake confession. Local to local.
Again Brenda turned and faced the lawn. She had a strong impulse to step down and talk to the two boys, anything for distraction. No, she mustn’t, that would lead to questions. Everyone knew everyone here, the parks and rec people, the deputy with Gertz. All of them were potential sources of information about the redhead with Charlie Schmidt.
Smoking, and perhaps for that reason, Brenda now thought of the husband in his garage, Brian Senior back in Milwaukee. He raised his safety goggles and turned off the table saw as someone began telling him the news. He too was smoking, and very deliberately stubbed out his cigarette in the smokeless ashtray.
The door opened behind her. Gertz stepped out, put on his broad hat and closed the door. “Your friend’s on her way to the landing,” he said. “We got a second boat coming in now, to take you. Gustofson put someone on that houseboat, it’s underway, too.”
“Our friend is on it,” she said. “Tina Bostwick. If it’s all right, I’d like to go back with her.”
“That’ll work, and it’ll be better if what else we need to do gets done back there.” Gertz shouldered into his brown Eisenhower jacket. He came forward, and waited for her to take the steps before following. “By then we may have the second recovery. Stevie?”
One of the awning scrubbers looked up. “Wyan’t you get that other pickup and drive this lady down to the dock. Can you do that, please?”
The boy stood and waved. He ran forward shaking soapy water from his hands. During the interview, one of the Canadians had come up and talked to Lester about grappling hooks. They had found Lomak’s body, but not Heather’s, and the idea was gruesome to her—dragging Rainy Lake with hooks. What seemed the most respectful, the most humane thing would be to leave Heather Reese to return to the elements. It was how Tina Bostwick had imagined her own death, before changing her mind.
“I would think you want to make some calls yourself,” Gertz said. “That’ll be easier from the landing.” He walked with her along the path, head down. “Now, Mrs. Ross will fly home, and you’ll follow with your vehicle tomorrow.”
“If that’s allowed,” Brenda said.
“Gus will help
you on that, getting to Milwaukee.”
“If that’s all right.”
“Can’t be sure just yet, but where we are now, I don’t see a problem. But you and Mrs. Ross will need to come back, say in a week or ten days.”
“I understand.”
“There’ll be the paperwork, and the state troopers will have something to say, but they’ll mostly rely on me.”
They waited in silence on the sunny drive. Add nothing, Brenda thought. Volunteer nothing.
“The Birmingham police say a Doreen Taylor died Friday night,” Gertz said. “She was Lomak’s girlfriend. He burned her house, she died from the smoke. Your Oakland County people faxed Lomak’s sheet. He was up for sentencing this week.”
“Marion said it was this Thursday.”
“It could happen a lot more than it does,” Gertz said. “Going after the lawyer. Why wasn’t he in the county lockup?”
“I think it was his first offense.”
“Too bad. If they’d of looked at his Navy discharge, maybe this wouldn’t of happened. Well—”
A second pickup came from behind the hotel. “You just go on now with Stevie. I’ll see you sometime this afternoon.” He touched his hat, and began walking back toward the hotel. The truck was crossing the lawn, tire tracks a darker green marking its progress.
“Miss Contay? Just one more thing.”
He was waiting at the base of the stairs. Heart pounding, Brenda walked back toward Gertz, studying his face. He had delayed until she was alone, to throw her off and build false confidence. Now, Gertz would tell her he knew she was lying. She stopped in front of him.
“I talked to the chief in Birmingham, I told him what Mrs. Ross thinks Lomak might’ve done. It sort of fits with the house he torched. Birmingham police and fire are coordinating, they’re getting a bomb detail ready.”
“What about Carrie? The daughter?”
“Well,” Gertz said, “she’s in the house or she isn’t. By the time Mrs. Ross gets to the landing, someone should have more.” He touched his hat again, and went up the stairs.
Deep North (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 2) Page 24