Marathon

by Brian Freeman

  “There!” Cat called. “There’s the sign!”

  Serena spotted a hand-painted sign on the highway shoulder near the scenic bypass toward Two Harbors. She couldn’t help but remember that this was the marathon route, leading along the lakeshore between the two towns. On Saturday, she’d run past this very spot. She could still feel the drizzle on her face and hear the in-and-out of her breath and see the midnight blue of the lake sticking by her like a friend.

  The sign on the highway said in stencil:

  CRAFT BEER

  And below it, scrawled in heavy marker:

  Yes, we are OPEN!

  Serena turned onto the road that led toward Brighton Beach. She followed it until the trees opened up at the sun-swept lake, where waves bubbled against a tiny strip of rocky beach. From this angle, the city was invisible, making the lake look endless. She parked her Mustang between a Subaru Forester camper and a Prius. On the beach, two children splashed in the cold water, and a woman about her own age lounged on the rocks with a paperback book. Beyond the family, she could see two men farther along the beach, drinking from red Solo cups. They stood beside a kid in a yellow canvas chair that was planted a foot deep into the lake.

  Curt Dickes.

  “Hey, Curt!” Cat shouted. Serena didn’t like the excitement she heard in the girl’s voice.

  The teenager ran for the beach, and Curt, recognizing her, nearly toppled backward in his chair as he scrambled to get up. Serena followed, with her badge clearly visible on her belt. As she neared the water, the two beer drinkers spotted the badge and did a quick-march back toward the Prius.

  Curt splashed from the water and hugged Cat. He was surrounded by half a dozen coolers of various sizes and colors, and two giant bags of plastic cups dangled from the arms of his canvas chair.

  “Serena!” Curt said to her with a big smile. “Or should I say Mrs. Stride? Congrats on the big wedding! Mazel tov!”

  Serena tried not to laugh. The strange thing about Curt was that he always seemed genuinely happy to see the police, even when they were about to bust him.

  He was twenty-six years old and built like a stalk of skinny asparagus. His black hair was greased back and hung down to his shoulders. His skin oozed musk cologne that somehow overpowered all the fresh smells of the lake. He wore baggy jean shorts and nothing else, other than a wolf tattoo on his forearm and piercings through both nipples.

  “So what’s with all the coolers, Curt?” Serena asked.

  “Craft beer! I make it myself. Really good stuff, really strong.”

  “You make it yourself?” she said skeptically. “I never thought of you as a Dave Hoops kind of guy.”

  Curt began flipping up the lids of his coolers to reveal dozens of growlers. “Oh, yeah! I’ve got jalapeno IPA, Elton John Island Girl stout, piss-it-away lager, Mauer’s Tripel Belgian ale, and a honey-wheat beer that I call Lesbian Honey because it tastes just like—well, never mind. You want to try something?”

  “No, thanks,” Serena said.

  Cat held up a growler of Lesbian Honey. “I’ll try it!”

  “No, you won’t,” Serena told her. “I know it’s a waste of time to ask, Curt, but do you have a license to sell alcoholic beverages? Because I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

  “License? Come on, Serena. I’m a libertarian guy. Live and let live. Down with government bureaucracy.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “How are sales going?” Cat asked.

  Curt gave a thumbs-up. “Couldn’t be better. Most of the liquor stores are still closed, so I’m here with all the provisions people need for a week at the cabin.”

  “Leave it to you to make money off this tragedy, Curt,” Serena said.

  His smiled vanished, and he looked genuinely hurt. “Now that’s not fair. I want to see you catch this guy as much as anybody. I’m a Duluth boy, born and raised. Nobody messes with our marathon.”

  Serena sighed. She couldn’t deny that Curt had an odd, incorrigible charm.

  “Okay, I’m sorry to insult your reputation as an ambassador of the Zenith City, but the growler party’s over. When we leave, you leave—got it? And you get a free pass today, but next time, the beer goes into the lake.”

  Curt frowned but didn’t protest. “Yeah, yeah, okay. So what do you guys need, anyway?”

  Cat leaned over to examine the piercings through Curt’s nipples with an unhealthy curiosity. Curt showed a similar interest in the mocha-skinned cleavage visible through the top of Cat’s marathon T-shirt.

  “You seen Eagle lately?” Cat asked him.

  “Eagle? No, not since last week.”

  “When exactly was that?” Serena asked. “Do you remember the day?”

  “Wednesday, I think. I picked up a scone at the 3rd Street Bakery, and I spotted Eagle in an alley down the block.”

  Cat cocked her head. “Sober?”

  “No, I almost called 911, because he was so out of it. Looked like he’d gone through a few liters of booze.”

  “Damn,” Cat said.

  “Any idea where we can find him now?” Serena asked.

  Curt dragged an Island Girl growler from the ice. He poured a cup, took a drink, and wiped foam from his mouth. “Eagle? No, good luck with that. I hear he sneaks into the old Nopeming Sanatorium sometimes if he can hitch a ride up to Midway. Or he gets into the downtown basements where it’s warm. Or he just finds a porch or an open window to do a sleepover at somebody’s house, and he’s gone before they wake up. Nobody finds Eagle unless he wants to be found.”

  “I told you,” Cat said to Serena. She flicked one of the miniature silver barbells on Curt’s chest. “So did it hurt a lot to have that done?”

  Serena spoke up before Curt could answer. “I’m sure it hurt so much that no human being would ever want to do that to themselves.”

  Cat smirked. “I didn’t say I wanted them. I was just curious.”

  “Yeah, let’s keep it that way.” Serena didn’t want to think about the day when Jonny spotted Cat with new accessories under her shirt. “Curt, we really need to find Eagle. Help us out.”

  “Well, most people would buy a growler for a favor like that,” Curt replied, winking.

  “I’m not most people,” Serena replied.

  “Oh, fine, fine. For the wife of the Lieutenant, it’s free. Look, I meant it when I said you’re not going to find Eagle yourself, but I can put the word out. If anybody spots him, they call me, and I call Cat. Okay?”

  “You call me,” Serena told him. “This girl here, she’s like plutonium. Very, very radioactive. Understood?”

  “Yeah, message received loud and clear,” he replied with a salute.

  “Don’t worry, Curt,” Cat said, rolling her eyes. “Serena’s just being Mom.”

  It was amazing how Cat could always find ways to throw Serena off-balance, in good ways and bad ways. This was a good way. Serena had never, ever heard Cat use the word Mom to describe her, and the way it had simply rolled off the girl’s tongue hit Serena with an emotional punch she hadn’t expected. She liked it.

  “We need to go,” she murmured with a catch in her voice.

  “Growler for the road?” Curt asked, sitting back down in his canvas chair. “Bring one home for Stride?”

  “Don’t push it,” she told him.

  “Yeah, okay. What do you want with Eagle, anyway?”

  “There was an incident at Duluth Outdoor Company last Tuesday,” Serena said. “Eagle had some kind of breakdown. I want to find out more about it. Do you know anything?”

  “Duluth Outdoor Company? You mean, where the bomb went off?”

  Curt was many things, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “That’s right,” Serena said.

  Curt rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He sipped his beer and dangled his other hand in the water.

  “Why, does that mean something to you?” Serena asked.

  “Well, I did notice something on Wednesday when I saw Eagle. I don’t know if it’s imp
ortant or not.”

  “What?”

  Curt pointed at his bare feet. “Eagle had new shoes. Nothing’s ever new about Eagle, but instead of his usual ratty sneakers, he had brand-new, right-out-of-the-box hiking boots. And speaking as someone who spends a lot of time in Canal Park, I can guarantee you, they were from Duluth Outdoor Company.”

  27

  The luxury SUV carrying Dawn Basch stopped in front of an old two-story house across from the UMD campus. The driver ran around to the rear of the vehicle to open the back door for her. Two security men climbed out of the backseat before her. She smoothed her red skirt and fluffed her curly hair.

  “Now this is a gorgeous day, boys, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they replied in unison.

  Dawn slid her large sunglasses off her face and secreted them in a case inside her shoulder purse. With a toothy smile, she marched in her high heels onto the sidewalk in front of the house and examined the exterior with her hands on her hips. It was a small house but well maintained. The siding was beige, and the roof was covered in red shingles. Leafy hedges obscured most of the downstairs windows. Two side-by-side windows on the second floor looked out on the street, and she could see several young men crowded at the glass, staring out at her.

  “Is this the place?” she asked one of the guards.

  The retired Marine with the red crew cut nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  “You’re absolutely sure? There’s no sign outside.”

  “This is it, ma’am. I confirmed it this morning.”

  “Excellent.”

  The front door of the house opened. A Somali man, no more than twenty years old, stepped out onto the porch. He wore a kufi, a paisley shirt, and jeans, with open sandals on his feet. His face was grim.

  Dawn waved cheerily.

  She took out a selfie stick from her purse and snapped her phone into the plastic frame. Ignoring the men at the upstairs windows and the man on the porch, she undid the joints of the metal stick and extended it to its full length. She unlocked the phone, switched to the front camera, and turned around so that her back was to the house. She extended the selfie stick in front of her and squeezed the button to snap a photo.

  When she was done, Dawn checked her phone. Her smile was wide in the photograph—she always had a good smile—but her eyes were half-closed, and the house was partly cut off below the roof by the angle of the photo. She extended the selfie stick to try again.

  “Hey!” a voice called.

  Dawn turned around. The Somali man came down off the porch and marched down the house’s front walk toward her. Her security guards edged closer, ready to step between them.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” the man called to her.

  “I’m exercising my free-speech rights, young man.”

  He pointed at the camera. “You can’t take pictures here.”

  “Oh, but I can,” she replied with a sunny smile. “Maybe in your country, you could stop me, but this is the United States of America, and I will take pictures of whatever I want, and there is nothing you or your terrorist friends can do about it.”

  The man shouted over his shoulder. “Call Haq!”

  Dawn returned her attention to her selfie stick. She propped it higher, but with the camera five feet away from her face, she couldn’t see well enough to figure out whether she was using a better angle. “Mark, I’m totally blind here,” she told the red-haired guard. “Can you see if this looks right?”

  He ducked behind her shoulder. “You’re only getting the second floor.”

  “How about now?” she said, nudging the stick downward.

  “Better.”

  Dawn squeezed the button again, but her hand jiggled as she tried to keep the stick steady, and the photo was blurry. She shook her head. “No, that’s no good. I’m so bad at this.”

  “Hey!” she heard again.

  Three more young men joined the Somali youth on the front lawn of the small house. Two looked Arabic. One looked Southeast Asian. The taller Arabic man, who had thick dark hair, a large nose, and black-as-coal eyebrows, folded his arms across his chest.

  “You’re Dawn Basch, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re a racist, you know that? You call all Muslims terrorists.”

  “You’re right, that’s what I do, and I’m proud of it.”

  “What gives you the right?” he demanded.

  “It’s a little document called the Constitution, sir. If I want to get on my knees and draw a chalk painting of Muhammad taking a dump on the sidewalk right here, well, I can do that, too. I don’t care if it offends you.”

  “You are a disgusting human being.”

  “No, the Muslims who blow up bombs and throw people off buildings and cut off heads are disgusting human beings,” Dawn replied.

  The Somali youth took an angry step toward her, and one of her guards swiftly intervened and pulled aside the flap of his jacket to reveal a handgun in a holster. The Somali man stopped and backed up.

  “This is our property! Get off our property!”

  “No, actually, the sidewalk is not your property; it’s public property. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to figure out this silly selfie stick.”

  “Would you like me to just take the picture for you, ma’am?” the redheaded guard asked.

  Dawn laughed. “Well, Mark, that is why I keep you around. You’re so much smarter than me. Here I am wasting my time with this thing, and there you are to save me all the trouble.”

  She turned her back on the men on the lawn and disconnected her selfie stick. As she slid the device back into her purse, she spotted another man running toward them at a sprinter’s pace from the UMD campus. She knew him, and he knew her. They’d tangled repeatedly ever since Dawn arrived in Duluth.

  “Mr. Al-Masri,” Dawn said as the man skidded to a stop on the lawn of the house, prompting her guards to tense like dogs with their hackles raised. “Are you here to harass me again? It’s nice to know that the Council on American-Islamic Relations has its priorities in order after yet another Muslim bombing.”

  “Ms. Basch,” Haq replied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Right now, I’m trying and failing to take a decent picture, but I think Mark should be able to handle it for me.”

  She handed her phone to the guard, who lined her up in the frame.

  “Make sure you can see the whole house in the background,” Dawn told him. “The whole house. We don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Why are you taking a picture of this house?” Haq asked her. “This is the Muslim Student Center building.”

  Dawn smiled. Click.

  “Oh, take a few more, won’t you, Mark? I want to make sure we have a good one, and you know me, I always wind up with a funny expression.”

  “Ms. Basch?” Haq asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hang on, Mr. Al-Masri.”

  The guard took several more pictures. Click. Click. Click. He handed the phone back to Dawn, who scrolled through them.

  “Wonderful! These are much better. Thank you, Mark. You’re a lifesaver. We can move on to the next spot now.”

  “Ms. Basch, would you mind telling me why you’re taking these pictures?” Haq asked again.

  “I’m taking my Twitter followers on a little photo tour of Duluth,” she said.

  “What kind of tour?”

  “Oh, I’m just showing them places I think they should know about.”

  Haq’s face turned dark. “And why would your followers want to know the location of the Muslim Student Center building?”

  “It’s a cute little house. I like it. Everyone who comes to Duluth takes pictures of the lift bridge or the Enger Tower or Split Rock Lighthouse. I’m more interested in urban minutiae. It’s a hobby of mine.”

  “I know exactly what you’re doing. You’re encouraging vigilantes to harass the Muslim community in this city. You’re putting innoc
ent people at risk by deliberately inciting violence.”

  Dawn laughed. “A Muslim complaining about inciting violence? I’m sorry, Mr. Al-Masri. That’s rich. You’re a funny man.”

  She opened up her phone and fiddled with the screen. She selected the best photo from the pictures that Mark had taken, and then she found the Twitter app and typed a quick message. She flicked her thumb on the blue button.

  “There, all done. Tweet-tweet. Sorry to interrupt our conversation, Mr. Al-Masri, but I have more places that I need to go.”

  “What did you post?” Haq asked.

  “You can look it up yourself. You follow me, don’t you? I’m sure you do. Always know your enemy, right?”

  “We don’t have to be enemies, Ms. Basch,” Haq said.

  “You’re wrong about that,” Dawn replied. She gestured at the guards. “Come on, boys. We don’t have all day.”

  “Where are you going next?” Haq asked.

  “There’s a little bakery I want to check out. I think the name of it is Angels of London. Because it’s on London Road—that’s pretty cute, don’t you think? Do you know it?”

  Haq stared at her with a fierce expression. “Angels of London is a Muslim-owned bakery.”

  “Is it?” Dawn replied. “What a coincidence. Well, I’m sure they’ll like the publicity. Maybe I can drum up some new customers for them.”

  * * *

  @dawnbasch tweeted a photo:

  Greetings from #radicalduluth.

  #islamismurder

  #noexceptions

  * * *

  Travis Baker let himself into the garage at Wade’s farmhouse on Five Corners Road. The house and land doubled as the headquarters for Ralston Extermination. A big sign near the dirt road advertised THE BUG ZAPPERS. For Travis and Shelly, this was their home away from home. She did the accounting and scheduling out of an office in Wade’s basement. Travis and Wade were in and out of the garage for supplies during the workdays. Joni was the eye candy of the business. Wade liked showing her off. She appeared in all Wade’s newspaper ads, with her blond hair and her tight body suits. She was like a tattooed supermodel waging war against cockroaches.