Marathon

by Brian Freeman

  “Yeah,” Travis replied again, no louder than a whisper.

  “Where’s Joni? Is she with you?”

  “Joni? No, man. I—I just got here.”

  “She must be in the cafeteria or something. I’ve been asleep pretty much all day. Whenever I wake up, the nurse tells me to rest. TV’s unplugged. Somebody put on ocean noises to help me relax. I dreamed about our vacation in Key West. Man, that’s the place to be. If you’ve got the money.”

  Travis gave him a cracked smile. “You bet.”

  Wade lifted up the collar of his hospital gown and winced as the incisions in his skin tugged with the shifting of his muscles. He could see bandages taped to his abdomen, and red stains seeped through the gauze.

  “I’m a mess,” he said. He studied his hands and his bare wrists. “Hey, where’s my Fitbit? And my phone? Shit, I hope I didn’t lose them. What’s the point of running a marathon if you can’t see all the steps, right? Can you check the closet or something?”

  Travis pointed to a plastic bag on the window ledge. “It’s all in there. Phone, clothes, Fitbit, shoes.”

  “Good.” He added, “Did I make it across the finish line? I can’t even remember.”

  “I don’t think so, man. Sorry.”

  “Sucks. Nobody cares if you run twenty-six-point-one miles, huh?”

  “No.”

  Wade was confused. He was missing something. He didn’t know what it was.

  “I figured you’d be dead,” he told Travis. “How come you’re not dead?”

  “It was a tree,” Travis told him.

  “Huh?”

  “I was in front of a tree when the thing blew up behind me. Blast hit the tree trunk and missed me. I barely got a scratch.”

  “Wow. Lucky.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “How’s Shelly?” Wade asked. “She okay?”

  Travis didn’t answer. He wandered over to the window and leaned his elbows on the ledge and chewed on the cuticle of one thumb. He was young. A year younger than Joni, seven years younger than Wade. He had big arms, big legs, and a baseball cap planted backward on his head. He had a Fu Manchu mustache and a silver stud through his lower lip. He wore a Bug Zappers T-shirt and paint-smudged sweatpants.

  In high school, Travis had been the kind of guy Wade hated. A bully. Cocky and full of himself. Always a stash of pills and weed. That worked in school but not in the real world. Travis went straight from high school to a job on a garbage truck, the kind of job where you had to shower before you went home because you always smelled like four-month-old cheese. Travis dumped trash bins during the days and drank beer and screamed at the UFC fights on the bar’s TV in the evenings. He went nowhere in life, until his sister Shelly, who was Wade’s accountant, suggested that Wade hire Travis to grow the business. More clients, more dead bugs, meant more money. That was four years ago.

  On the job, they got along okay. Wade had a vintage Mustang he’d restored in an old storage locker. A speedboat. And Joni. All of it impressed Travis, who was usually a month away from having his truck repossessed and crashed on Shelly’s couch most nights.

  “Travis?” Wade said again. “How’s Shelly?”

  “She’s in surgery. Been there for hours. They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Shit. No wonder you’re upset.”

  “Her legs were a mess. I saw it. A real mess. Bones sticking out. One foot, man, it was like hanging by a thread.”

  Wade closed his eyes. He tried to swallow, but acid burned in his throat. “That sucks.”

  Travis breathed through his mouth, like a fish. “Yeah.”

  “What about Joni? Can you ask the nurse where she is? I mean, is she in the cafeteria, or did she go home to get some sleep?”

  Travis turned away from the window. His eyes looked as if they’d sunk back into his skull. “I—I don’t know, man.”

  “Well, can you find out? Come on, Travis.”

  “Sure. I’ll ask somebody. You get some sleep or something.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” Wade said. “I’ve been sleeping all day. I want to see my wife.”

  “I guess she must be around here,” Travis said.

  There it was again. Something in his voice. Something in his face.

  “Travis?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Joni’s okay, right?”

  “What did they tell you?” Travis asked. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone said, don’t worry, just sleep. The thing is, Joni was standing right next to Shelly, wasn’t she? I mean, right next to her, Travis. I saw her. If Shelly’s so bad off, how could Joni be okay? She wasn’t in front of a tree like you, Travis.”

  Travis came and stood over the bed. Tears poured down his face. “No, no tree.”

  “She was right next to Shelly,” Wade said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me the truth, man.”

  “Hey, you’ve been through a lot, Wade. Just close your eyes, buddy. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “Tell me the truth, man.”

  Travis sank down by the bed and gathered up Wade’s hand in his bear paw. The kid didn’t know his own strength. “I’m sorry, man. I’m so sorry. Joni’s gone. She died out there on the street. The bastards killed her.”

  Wade closed his eyes and said nothing at all.

  He’d known all along.

  SUNDAY

  11

  “I’m here to express my solidarity with the people of Duluth,” Dawn Basch told the crowd in the ballroom of the downtown Radisson Hotel. No one would mistake her accent for a “ja sure, you betcha” Minnesotan’s. Her voice made her sound like one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

  “Yesterday, terrorists tried to silence the voices of freedom-loving people in this city, just as they’ve done in so many other places around the world. Well, I have a message for them. You won’t succeed.”

  Stride watched from the back of the room. Basch stood at a podium with two beefy private security guards on either side of her. He had his own police officers just outside the room, at the elevators, in the lobby of the hotel, and on Superior Street. He wasn’t taking any chances with more violence, but what bothered him was that violence was exactly what Basch wanted.

  Violence brought publicity. Attention. Credibility.

  Violence sold tickets to her conferences.

  Violence rang up sales of bumper stickers, T-shirts, and hats.

  Worse, the media played right along with her. The ballroom overflowed with television reporters who’d arrived to cover the marathon bombing. Basch gave them the raw meat that drove up ratings, and ratings trumped journalism every time. She was live on CNN, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

  “Special Agent Maloney says that he can’t draw any conclusions yet about yesterday’s bombing, but I believe the American people have made it clear that they are sick of political correctness in the face of terrorism. So let me just say what we all know. This horrible event was almost certainly committed by the Islamic extremists who have been protesting this free-speech conference since I arrived in Duluth. I’ve received dozens of death threats, and we’ve made those e-mails available to the FBI. Somewhere among those radical Islamists, I’m sure they will find whoever perpetrated these outrageous, senseless murders. In the meantime, I hope that the entire city of Duluth will act as a kind of Neighborhood Watch to help the authorities locate these murderers before they do more harm. These people must be stopped, and all of you can play your part.”

  Stride swore under his breath. A city of vigilantes was the last thing they needed, but Basch was the kind of person who played with matches at a gas station.

  She was fifty years old, trying and failing to look forty. She had long, dark hair that fell into a tornado of messy curls at her shoulders. She was tall and bird-thin. Her smile was slightly misshapen, and she used overly bright lipstick. Her skin had a lumpy, masklike quality, as if it had been shaped in Play-Doh and then painted with cray
ons. Her long eyelashes and dark mascara made her eyes look like two vampire bats, flapping their wings as she blinked. She wore a red jacket and a tapered black skirt.

  “Naturally, I’m seeing my usual attackers in the liberal press,” Basch went on. “The New York Times calls me a reckless provocateur, and you know what? I am. I’m proud of it. When it comes to free speech, I say No Exceptions. I don’t care who I offend. If somebody wants to make a movie about Muhammad cutting the heads off Barbie dolls, I say, go right ahead. In this country, we have an absolute right to make fun of anything we want, and if you don’t like it, you can go somewhere else. Of course, it’s rather ironic, because the media ‘experts’ who say we can’t jump to conclusions are also blaming me for creating a culture of violence by offending Muslims. Obviously, they know I’m right about who’s behind this crime. And as for causing offense, I don’t negotiate my First Amendment rights at the barrel of a gun. We can talk about civility as soon as the other side stops blowing people up.”

  Basch was smooth. No doubt about it. She had the gift of every demagogue to wrap up her prejudice in a pretty package, so you couldn’t see the ugliness within. Stride didn’t even believe that her basic message was wrong. Between protecting free speech and avoiding offense, free speech always won. Even so, he had no respect for people who threw insults simply because the Constitution said they could. He hated painting a diverse community of faith with a single brush, because his own experience of Duluth’s Muslims was that they were honorable people who worked hard, loved their families, and wanted to live in peace.

  He also knew, as he’d told Haq Al-Masri, that the Muslim community had more than its share of dragons. And a single dragon could burn down a whole town.

  As Basch began to take questions, Stride ducked out of the ballroom. He exited the hotel on Superior Street, across from the downtown library. The Sunday streets were deserted. Businesses were closed. Only the police and media patrolled the city. He waved away a handful of reporters and walked alone down Fifth Avenue past the Depot.

  This was his home. He’d grown up here. Gone to school here. Lost his parents here. Lost his first wife, Cindy, here. There was something about loss that bound you to a place forever. Most outsiders saw Duluth only through the lens of its brutal winters, but to Stride, it was also ore boats and icebreakers. It was folk bands at Amazing Grace. It was Bent Paddle ales. It was the Curling Club. It was the famous Christmas lights display at the home of his neighbor Marcia Hales. It was the marathon. He’d seen highs and lows in this city in his fifty years, from recessions to floods, but nothing drove Duluthians away. They were a tough breed.

  He made his way to the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center, which the FBI had taken over as a staging ground for evidence collected from Canal Park. The sheer scope of the operation impressed him. If there was one thing the FBI did well, it was to organize and sift through massive amounts of data. He knew he was seeing only the tip of the iceberg here at the convention center. Across the county, hundreds of agents were analyzing photographs, video footage, e-mails, phone records, bank records, call-in tips, website search histories, and social media posts, looking for any kind of connection to the marathon bombing.

  Someone had researched how to make a bomb.

  Someone had bought the components for a bomb.

  Someone had assembled a bomb.

  Someone had brought the bomb to the Duluth Outdoor Company and detonated it.

  Every one of those steps left electronic footprints, if you knew where to look and how to recognize what you were seeing.

  Stride found Special Agent Maloney in an office borrowed from the DECC director, surrounded by laptops and whiteboards. The agent hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, but he looked none the worse for wear. His suit showed no wrinkles. His tie was perfectly knotted and snug against his neck. Stride was tall, but Maloney was an inch taller, and he was thin to the point of being gaunt.

  Maloney wasn’t a friend, but their paths had crossed regularly on investigations over the past twenty years, since Stride had been a young Duluth detective.

  “I was just over at the Dawn Basch press conference,” he told Maloney.

  “Yes, I saw it on CNN. Don’t worry, I’ve already got Agent Durkin putting to bed this Neighborhood Watch concept.”

  “Good,” Stride replied.

  “We’re asking people to stay out of the downtown area today. The mayor and governor are talking about whether to ask businesses to close again tomorrow, depending on how the investigation unfolds.”

  “Do we have any more details on the device?” Stride asked.

  “Some. Sifting through the remains of hundreds of shredded backpacks hasn’t made the process easier, but the team thinks the source backpack was navy blue. We also know that the triggering mechanism was a cell phone. So the detonation could have been done by radio signal at close range, or the bomber could have called it in and watched the thing blow up on TV.”

  “In other words, we can’t be sure he was even in Canal Park?” Stride asked.

  “Yes, except someone had to be there to place the backpack itself,” Maloney replied. “Durkin asked one of your officers to talk to the owner of the store to see if we can find out more about how and when the placement could have been made.”

  “Yes, Serena and I know Drew Olson, who runs the camping store. He’ll help if he can.” Stride added, “About Agent Durkin . . .”

  One of Maloney’s trimmed gray eyebrows twitched, which was his only hint of surprise. “Is there a problem?”

  “I already have one bull in my china shop, thanks to Dawn Basch,” Stride said. “I don’t need two.”

  “I know that Durkin speaks her mind. She can be difficult. If it makes you feel better, she was complaining about you, too. She wasn’t happy about being excluded from the meeting with your source.”

  “It’s a delicate relationship.”

  “Understood. You made the right call. Durkin is many things, but delicate isn’t one of them. However, she knows Duluth, and she’s one of my brightest agents, especially when it comes to reading people.”

  “She seems to have something to prove on this case,” Stride said.

  “Yes, she does. You know what happened to her, and you know I had her out in the cold for a year. This investigation is her way back in, but if she screws it up, she’ll be behind a desk for the rest of her career. She knows the stakes. Candidly, I hope she learns something from you and your team.”

  “Just so we’re on the same page,” Stride said.

  “We are.”

  “What about the name I gave her?” Stride asked. “Malik Noon.”

  Maloney smoothed his mustache and plucked a single sheet of paper from the encyclopedia-size pile of materials stacked on the surface of the desk. He knew exactly where everything was. “Noon is twenty-two years old. Engineering student at UMD. Born in Pakistan, parents live in Detroit. Mom is a radiologist; Dad is a thoracic surgeon. Smart kid, and no shortage of money. Has he shown up on your radar screen before now?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s not a fan of Dawn Basch,” Maloney went on. He grabbed another file and laid out three photographs one after another. They’d been taken at No Exceptions rallies in Bayfront Park. “Our boys found him here and here and here,” he said, jabbing a finger at faces in the photos.

  Stride studied the smiling picture of Malik Noon in his university student ID, then shifted his attention to the photos of Noon taken at the Dawn Basch speeches. He saw no smile, no hint of the easygoing, Americanized student attending the University of Minnesota at Duluth. The man at the rallies had an expression twisted darkly into hatred. His mouth was open as he shouted. He carried the same sign in each of the photos.

  It read: BREAKING DAWN.

  The image on the sign showed a digitally altered photograph of Dawn Basch with blood pouring out of knife and gunshot wounds in her head and body.

  “Have you been able to find him?” Stride asked.r />
  “No. In fact, I’d like you to talk to anyone who knew Malik Noon at UMD, and do it fast.”

  “Understood.”

  “And Stride?” Maloney went on. “This time, take Durkin with you.”

  12

  Serena watched Drew Olson push his eight-month-old son in a swing tied to a huge oak tree in his backyard. She knew a lot about the baby. His name was Michael, taken from the name of the baby’s grandmother, which was Michaela. He had thick black hair and a big, easy smile that never went away. He had a birthmark on his thigh in the shape of Florida. He’d been born at 4:07 a.m. on October 14 at St. Mary’s, with Jonny and her in the hospital room.

  He was Cat’s baby. Drew and Krista Olson had adopted him.

  Serena had met Drew almost a year earlier, when she’d gone into the Duluth Outdoor Company store in Canal Park to find out what she needed to begin training for the marathon. She’d liked him immediately. He was thirty years old and the kind of man who found twenty-five hours in every twenty-four-hour day. He and Krista ran. Kayaked. Skied. Volunteered at food shelves. Grew their own rhubarb and tomatoes. And all of that on top of two demanding full-time jobs.

  They were busy people who’d wanted to add a child to their busy lives, but none of their efforts to get pregnant had been successful. When they found out about Cat, they’d made a tear-filled pitch to be the ones to adopt her baby. It was Cat’s first decision as a mother, and it had turned out to be a good one.

  “This little guy is about the only thing that’s kept me going since yesterday,” Drew told Serena. “When something like this happens, you realize what you need to hold on to.”

  “I understand.”

  “Krista pulled an all-nighter in the ER. She’s sleeping now. She said the injuries she saw were horrific. Like something out of a war.”

  “Thank God for nurses like her.”

  “Yeah.” A little smile of pride played across Drew’s face. Then the smile washed away. “I lost two people at the store. Seth was just nineteen. Candice was twenty-one. Both of them the nicest, sweetest kids you could meet.”