Cold Love: A Cillian Canter Mystery (Cillian Cantor Book 1)

by Conell, Zach

  “Is that German? I couldn’t understand that line.”

  “Yes it is, which immediately struck me as odd, since my father and I never communicated in German. My mother was from America, and we always lived here, so all of us just sort of stuck to English.”

  Cillian wanted to ask her why Rose’s parents had not brought her up with both languages but decided it was not the time to focus on a detail like this. “So what does it mean?” he asked instead.

  “All the best and please send greetings to your big brother in the library,” she translated. “Another reference to Orwell’s novel.”

  Cillian now remembered how Rose had herself referenced the book when they were in Asgard.

  “Big Brother is watching you,” he said in a low, ominous voice similar to the tone Rose had used earlier that evening.

  “Exactly!” She laughed at his imitation of her. “My father and I were both big fans of Orwell’s work.”

  “Wait a moment,” Cillian whispered, looking all serious at once. He nodded in the direction of the river. Someone was passing by behind them. Rose didn’t look back, but upon hearing the footsteps of the passerby, she gently pushed back Cillian’s torso and set down on his lap. Cillian reflected that to the average observer they probably resembled a young couple on one of their first dates. Nothing could be further from the truth. When the footsteps were no longer audible, Rose got back up again.

  “So, as I was saying…”

  “I got it! ‘The university library!” Cillian interrupted her, barely managing to keep his voice down in his excitement. “Your father must have left a clue in one of the editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four at the university library. That’s why he referred to it both in his fake ‘literature recommendation’ and in the reference to Big Brother!”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.” Rose smiled. “Glad that we’re finally on the same page. Seeing as he didn’t specify, he probably meant the central library.”

  “Yes, I think so too. What time does it open?” Cillian asked impatiently, forgetting for an instant that he used to spend entire days at that library when he was a student. “At eight a.m.,” he answered his own question. “I remember now, I used to go there quite often to study.”

  “Yes, I think it should be eight. I looked…”

  “Great,” Cillian cut her off again. “So what if we meet there tomorrow morning? I’m in, by the way. I’ll take your case, if you still want me to.” As had happened with most other important decisions in his life—including his proposal to Amanda—Cillian made up his mind impulsively, feeling somehow that it was the right thing to do. He was going to help Rose, because she needed him. This case needed him. Or maybe he needed this case. Either way, he was far too curious now to just walk away from it.

  Chapter Six

  It was in the dead of night when Cillian returned to his concrete coffin of an apartment. As he fell down on the bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, the weary-eyed detective imagined Rose going to bed alone in a dirty, damp room inside a rundown hotel. He half regretted not being in the room next to hers right now, like she had proposed. She had told him that she would stay in a hotel for the time being because she feared that the person or people who were behind her father’s death might be watching her apartment. She warned Cillian that they could be watching him as well and had therefore proposed to rent a room for him in the same hotel where she was going to stay. Despite agreeing with her judgment of better being safe than sorry, he had flat out refused her offer with the excuse that if their investigation was going to expose them to any kind of danger—which seemed quite likely if Rose’s father really had been murdered—he needed to get his gun from his apartment.

  “Are you telling me that you went to meet a stranger in an obscure bar without bringing a weapon?” Rose had asked in disbelief. “Isn’t that rather irresponsible in your line of work?”

  “I’m an unlicensed detective—I don’t officially have a line of work. And frankly, I couldn’t really care less about being ‘irresponsible’ when it comes to my personal safety. Due to certain unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances preceding my return to this crime-ridden and drug-infested city, I currently don’t stand to lose much anyhow.” His answer had been more cynical than he’d intended, but it reflected how he had often felt since his return to Chicago.

  Rose placed her hand on his arm, seemingly in an attempt to reassure him.

  “Cillian.” She tried to look him in the eye, but he had everted his gaze. “I know what happened. I…”

  “Of course you do,” he bluntly cut her off. “Anyone who bothers to do an elaborate web search of my name can find out almost everything about me. As a journalist in a small town like Riverside, it’s easy to attain near-celebrity status, especially if your fiancée disappears. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But Cillian…”

  “Do you want me to escort you to your hotel?” he had asked in a slightly patronizing manner.

  “No, I’ll be fine, mister,” she responded with resignation in her voice, while opening her handbag to him to show him the compact revolver she kept inside a concealed pocket. “Unlike you, I don’t like to gamble with my life, however empty it may appear to me sometimes. If you really want the case, meet me at the fountain in front of the university library at a quarter to eight. Just make sure you aren’t followed. Good night.”

  Cillian had felt like an ass, watching Rose walk away without looking back once. Probably it was for the better, he tried to convince himself now. He wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into with this case and especially with this strong, enchanting woman. But as he switched off the light and turned on his side, he made up his mind on one thing: if he was going to follow through on his promise to help Rose out—and he had every intention of doing so—he had to make sure to keep her at a distance. No good could ever come of getting emotionally involved with a client.

  Amanda looked more beautiful than ever as she lay down on the grass scattered with the colorful leaves of a red maple tree, the only tree standing tall in the center of the field.

  “Come, my dearest betrothed,” she said in a joking voice while holding her hand out to him. Her green eyes sparked with joy. “Let’s roll in the leaves!”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline, my Almond,” he replied in a similar voice, taking her hand but not sitting down. “I try to avoid getting maple leaves in my hair. I don’t want to risk people taking me for a Canadian.”

  “Oh, but this isn’t just any ordinary maple,” Amanda continued in the same playful manner. “No sir, we are in the distinguished presence of none other than Dr. Red Maple.” As she tugged his hand, he willingly fell down next to her on his side.

  “And yet another touchdown for the Riverside Raccoons. Cantor is on fire!” Cillian roared with the passion of a stadium announcer, once he had rolled on his back.

  “That joke is getting old, Sea,” Amanda teased as she laid her head on his chest. He placed one hand in the hollow of her back, while using the other to caress her head.

  “Eventually we all do,” Cillian said, running his fingers through her thick chestnut hair.

  “That depends on how you’ll remember me,” Amanda said as she tilted her head to look at him. Her piercing green eyes evoked a feeling of melancholy in Cillian that he couldn’t explain.

  “What do you mean?” he wanted to know. She laid her head back down without answering him.

  “Can you list the fifty states?” she asked after a while, as if she hadn’t heard his question.

  “Can you?”

  “I’ll do you one better; I can list all the state flowers!” Amanda said with a youthful enthusiasm in her voice.

  “Are you kidding me?” Cillian asked, profoundly surprised, even though he now vaguely remembered her saying something like this before.

  “Oh, I never kid about state flowers, Cillian. I challenge you to a duel.” She poked him in his side.

  “You win,” he
laughed. “I don’t think I know a single state flower.”

  “Not even the Indiana one?”

  “Uhm… rose?” Cillian didn’t know why that was his guess, since he was sure it was not correct.

  “It most definitely is not,” Amanda said. “Why would you say that?” She sounded disappointed. Cillian felt ashamed all of a sudden, without fully understanding why.

  “Okay,” he said, trying to distract her. “So what if I try listing the states in random order. And for every state I mention, you mention the flower. Are you ready?”

  “I was born ready!” she exclaimed.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s start with Illinois?”

  “Easy: violet.”

  “I have no way of knowing if it’s correct, but sure.” Cillian chuckled. “North Dakota?”

  “Wild prairie rose.”

  “Could be. What about New York? Oh wait, I know this one. It’s…” It was on the tip of Cillian’s tongue, but he couldn’t utter the word.

  “Rose,” Amanda said with irritation in her voice. He nodded, even though she still had her head on his chest and was not able to see his face.

  “Why do you keep mentioning roses, Cillian?” Amanda unexpectedly snapped at him. Her outburst hit Cillian like a punch in the gut. He felt sick all of a sudden.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he pleaded. There was despair in his voice, but she remained silent. He gently wrapped his arms around her and began kissing the top of her head.

  “Please,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  “It’s okay, Sea,” Amanda said after some time, in the loving voice he knew so well. “What if we do another one?”

  “Sure. What about Alaska?”

  “Forget-me-not!”

  “Oregon?”

  “Forget-me-not.”

  “The same, really?” Cillian remembered this differently. “And Indiana?”

  “Forget-me-not,” she said again, mechanically.

  “No it isn’t,” he said, without being sure of himself. He had a queer feeling of déjà vu, but he was unable to remember anything specific. All his recollections seemed to form an indistinctive mess in his mind.

  “So what is it?” She sounded annoyed.

  “I don’t know,” Cillian responded with a sigh. “I feel so confused. None of this makes sense. Why did you call me your betrothed earlier? We didn’t get engaged in autumn.”

  “So what?” Amanda raised herself up and looked at him with an angry frown on her face.

  “B-but it’s autumn now,” he stammered. Cillian looked at Amanda in despair. Her long brown hair was covered with white flakes. It had started snowing.

  “October!” he exclaimed. “It’s October now.”

  “So what, Cillian?” Amanda asked crossly. He wanted to take her in his arms again, but she jumped up and started walking toward the maple tree. When he got up to follow her, his eyes caught a thick column of blackish-gray air rising up to the sky above the middle of the field. As he lowered his gaze, he noticed that the leaves of the maple tree were flaming red. Just before she reached the trunk of the burning tree, Amanda turned around.

  “I love you, Cillian,” she said sorrowfully. “Don’t you want to be engaged to me anymore?”

  “Wait!” Cillian shouted as he ran toward Amanda. She was casually circling the trunk, holding one arm out toward it to let her fingertips slide over the bark as she walked.

  “Of course I do!” Cillian yelled, going into a full sprint just when Amanda’s body disappeared out of sight behind the burning tree. An instant later he reached the trunk himself.

  “Amanda, I…” Cillian began, as he ran around it. But he knew it was too late.

  “I love you!” he screamed in agony over the field of white, unmarked snow behind the flaming tree. Amanda had vanished.

  Cillian awoke in terror, covered in sweat, all alone in the darkness of his bedroom. The horrendous experience of his nightmare was still present on his mind, and it took him a while to completely snap out it. But eventually, the disquieting mix of memories and fiction that had been his dream began to fade away, leaving him to deal with the kind of tremendous heartache experienced by people in mourning.

  He took his phone from the nightstand without unplugging the charger and began scrolling through his limited collection of pictures he had taken of Amanda. With every picture, he tried to remember the moment it was taken—how her laugh had sounded, the way she had moved her body, the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin—until all of a sudden it struck him that he was remembering his fiancée not as someone he was missing and hoped to see again someday, but as someone whom he had permanently lost. Amanda Greenfield, the ravishing riddle that swept me off my feet, he thought with melancholy. Where the hell have you gone?

  “All right, that’s enough whimpering for one night,” Cillian whispered to himself as he exchanged the phone for the TV remote on his nightstand and turned on the local news channel to distract himself. It was a quarter to six in the morning, meaning that he had only slept for a few hours, but Cillian gathered he was not going to get any more rest out of this night, especially since he would have to leave within an hour and a half anyway if he wanted to make it to the university library at eight. So he decided to cut his losses and get some mild exercise in instead, by revisiting his old morning stretch-and-cardio routine from his parkour days.

  About a hundred minutes later, Cillian entered the subway feeling about a hundred years older. His early-morning activities had been way more strenuous than he had expected, forcing him to face the inconvenient truth that he was out of shape. Even though this was to be expected given his poor sleeping and eating habits and the absence of intense, regular exercise in his daily routine, it had come as a mild shock to Cillian, who had up until this morning still considered himself to be in practically the same physical condition as when he was a student. But what he had lost in physical suppleness, he easily made up for in mental flexibility, for after abandoning his cardio within ten minutes to make himself a dry bowl of sugary cereals and a cup of black coffee, he had found solace in the knowledge that he could at least still pull off some of his parkour moves, as he had demonstrated the night before. Moreover, it didn’t matter one bit that he would undoubtedly have to pay for such shenanigans the next day with some nasty muscle pain like the one he had just begun to notice.

  Another more metaphorical pain in Cillian’s butt had been the news that Mayor Gullfay had announced a joint decision by the city council, the superintendent of police, and himself to deploy a special police task force of about two thousand officers in the city as a temporary security measure in anticipation of the upcoming City of Chicago Fair of the Future.

  The news about the “CCFF police force” bothered Cillian because it would require him to be more careful not to draw attention to himself and his unlicensed PI activities. This would be extra difficult because, as the mayor had mentioned, the CCFF was going to set up a limited number of checkpoints around the city to safeguard “particularly vulnerable” areas, whatever that meant. To Cillian they had sounded like ominous words, foreshadowing potential civil rights violations. He was especially concerned about his freedom of movement now that he planned to carry a concealed weapon with him whenever he was working on Rose’s case. In fact, for the protection of his client he currently carried two: a .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol in a waist holster on his right side and a 9 mm subcompact pistol in an ankle holster on his left leg. He knew that this might be overdoing it a little bit, but he had taken heed of Rose’s comments from last night about gambling with his life, chiefly because failing to protect himself by extension meant failing to protect his client, and that was a sin he didn’t ever want to commit.

  Upon exiting the train at the subway station near the university, Cillian took care to hang around on the platform for a minute or two and scan his surroundings to make sure he wasn’t being followed, a possibility he had been very conscious of from the moment h
e left his apartment that morning, once again because of what Rose had told him the night before. Once he had assured himself of his inconspicuousness, he exited the station in the direction of the central library.

  Rose was already waiting for him at the fountain. She looked even more alluring than at their previous meeting, wearing a casual dark green dress and black patterned tights under her dark winter jacket. A faint smile slid across her face as she spotted him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cantor. You are right on time.” She offered him her hand in a formal manner, but he could tell from the jesting look in her eyes that she was kidding.

  “Call me Cillian, please. Either that, or Your Honor, if you don’t want to take any liberties with me,” he joked as he shook her hand.

  “Sure, and I’ll be Rose or Your Highness.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Cillian?” She had lowered her voice and glanced attentively over his shoulder. “You weren’t followed?”

  “Positive. I was very careful this time,” he assured her.

  “Good,” Rose said, turning toward the library. “Let’s go in.”

  Cillian felt a peculiar impulse to grab her hand as they walked up the steps to the majestic building but deliberately refrained from doing so.

  “I think the work of George—I mean, Mr. Blair—should be in the humanities section,” Cillian said, keeping his voice down, “which is on the fourth and fifth floor if I remember correctly. But I just realized we have to pass a metal detector to get there, so before that I think we need to get a locker for our… ‘protective gear,’ let’s say.”

  Rose shot him an appreciative look. “So you do plan to keep me safe after all,” she said. “Glad to hear that.”

  “I never meant not to protect you; I was only ever speaking of myself. But now that I think about it,” he continued with a wry face, “I may have come a little ‘overprepared’ to safeguard us from the possible danger lurking in the shadows inside the library.”