Hard Cold Winter

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “It happens.”

  He took a breath. “If—and I am only conjecturing here—if a large quantity of such explosive were found to be missing, it could be damaging to the company. Somewhat.”

  “Sure. A federal investigation could shovel a whole lot of Somewhat all over your building contracts with local and state governments.”

  He shifted in his seat. “Perhaps.”

  “I think I read about Maurice being touted as a candidate for governor, too. Tough to call for law and order with your son stealing bombs and killing girlfriends.”

  Ostrander looked like his Scotch had suddenly turned to vinegar, but inclined his head at the obvious implications.

  “So you want your explosives back,” I said. “Very quietly.”

  “We do. We have to.”

  I rolled my neck. My muscles were sore. The physiological hangover of a huge rush of adrenaline and endorphins after the explosion. Not to mention falling off the porch onto gravel with Luce and Leo on top of me.

  “I’ll take that drink now,” I said, and stood up before Ostrander could tell Rusk to fetch it. At the walnut bar, the bottles were all out in the open, lined up against a frosted mirror on the back wall. With the member fees that the Aerie must charge, it would be considered déclassé to lock up the booze.

  I picked the Scotch that was the same color as Ostrander’s. Eighteen-year-old Laphroaig. I carried the bottle and a glass back to the chair, and poured myself a taste.

  “Why do you think Kend wanted explosives?” I said.

  “We don’t know. At this point, that is immaterial. What matters—”

  “—is retrieving it, I get that.” I took a sip. The Laphroaig was like wood smoke and cinnamon scented from afar. “How much did he take?”

  Ostrander looked at Rusk.

  “All of it,” said Rusk. “Two dozen cases of Tovex. Fifty pounds per. Plus blasting caps.”

  I knew what water gel explosive looked like, even before I’d seen the bomb wrapped in duct tape thrown through my window. Fat flexible tubes, like giant bratwurst. The tubes I’d seen were about eighteen inches long. Guess each tube at a kilogram. Two dozen tubes per case. I thought of Elana’s Volvo and its big cargo space with the backseats folded down. Kend would have had to stack the cases all the way to the roof, but they would fit. There had been dents in the carpet from the weight. Over twelve hundred pounds of jellied destruction.

  It must have been one hell of a nervous drive for Kend, down and around the Sound to the Peninsula and the cabin. One traffic stop by a curious state trooper and Kend would be in a supermax holding cell before he could take a breath. But it was better odds than boarding the ferry, where police dogs sniffed at every car in the terminal.

  “The cases were gone by the time I got to the cabin,” I said. “How do you know Kend had them?”

  “Aside from the coincidence of their deaths on the same night,” Ostrander said, “there is some substantiation.”

  I made a keep-going gesture.

  “Video,” said Rusk. “The alarm and cameras at the storage site were disabled.” He looked at Ostrander. “I’ve been telling you for months to get a better system.”

  Ostrander made a sound like a sigh.

  Rusk tapped his smartphone. “But one camera for the company across the street caught him in action.”

  “It’s nothing that could be held up as evidence,” said Ostrander quickly. “Kend was masked, and only visible in the distance. But to anyone who knew him well, it’s undoubtedly him.”

  “Let’s see it,” I said to Rusk.

  He got the nod from Ostrander, pulled up the video on his phone, and handed it to me.

  The clip was about thirty minutes long. For the first few seconds, it was only grainy color footage, at night, of an empty street with two small buildings across the way. A ten-foot-wide alley separated the buildings. The buildings were inside a large, aggressive-looking fence with barbed wire and signs warning of electric current.

  Then a figure walked behind the buildings, from one side of the alley to the other. Perhaps sixty feet from the camera. His head was covered, in a ski mask or balaclava. He loped quickly past, gone in two seconds, dragging a hand truck behind him. Two minutes passed, and then he came slowly back across, pulling the hand truck, which was now loaded with three big and obviously very heavy cases. The cases were unmarked. A minute later he ambled across once again.

  I watched as the masked figure repeated the same process, as if the video were looped, seven more times. Rusk got up and fetched himself a vodka. Ostrander watched me watching the show. A few moments after Kend’s last trip with the cases, the street in front of the camera momentarily grew brighter. Headlights, just off to the side of the frame. Then the clip ended.

  He’d taken only one minute on each trip to drop the cases off at the Volvo. Kend was a lean guy. Too lean to load fifty-pound containers into a hatchback that fast.

  “He had help,” I said. Rusk nodded.

  I handed the phone back to him. “And you thought it was me.” I was at the cabin. I knew Willard, and Willard’s niece was Kend’s woman. A to B to C.

  “We did. Until the attack on your home this evening,” said Ostrander.

  I had some incentive now, was what he meant. They had been half sure I was crooked before. Now they weren’t certain if I was involved with the theft of the Tovex, but they were willing to bet that I was still dirty enough to steal it back from Willard, if he had it.

  Ostrander steepled his skeletal fingers. “After Rudy found the security video, we hoped we could negotiate with Kend. Get him to return the explosives and avoid a felony charge, or worse. But he didn’t answer Maurice’s calls on Saturday.”

  “And then he turned up dead. And the Tovex is gone. And you’re caught between the monster and the whirlpool.”

  “Scylla and Charybdis. Yes. It’s too late to inform the authorities without repercussions. And we cannot sit by and simply hope the explosives are not used for—for other purposes.”

  They couldn’t. Even if they gave half a shit about anybody else being blown up. If the Tovex were used again, after the leveling of my house, the assumption would be that the city had a mad bomber on the loose. Feds would descend like gray-suited raindrops. The explosives would eventually be traced back to HDC, no matter how Ostrander and Rusk tried to cover their tracks.

  “I can get your toys back.” I picked up the bottle of Laphroaig.

  In my peripheral vision, they shared a look.

  “You’re certain?” said Ostrander.

  “First, I need a number.”

  “Fifty thousand,” Ostrander said.

  I stopped pouring the Scotch. There was about a pinky finger’s breadth in the bottom of the glass. “Fifty. For a governorship.” I poured more. A lot more, until the liquor was the same finger width from the rim of the lowball glass.

  “Two hundred,” said Ostrander. “Thousand.”

  “Jesus,” said Rusk disgustedly.

  “Half now,” I said.

  Ostrander waved a finger idly. “That’s absurd.”

  “You’re not the one having bombs thrown their way,” I said.

  “Yeah, about that. Why the hell is someone trying to kill you?” Rusk said. He was back to risking his blood vessels. “Don’t tell me you’re an innocent fucking bystander in all this.”

  Ostrander looked peeved at Rusk’s lack of decorum, but nodded. “You have to share how you’re certain you can recover the cases. Give us some assurance that you can do what you say.”

  I took one very nice sip from the very full glass and set it back down. I’d had my fun with Ostrander and Rusk. I stood up from the chair.

  “No need for dramatics,” said Ostrander. “Half in advance.”

  I walked to the lounge door.

  “If this is negotiation, it’s pointless,” he called.

  I opened it and walked through.

  “What is it you want?” Ostrander said, his voice strained taut
as the door closed. I caught the start of another obscenity from Rusk. It startled the doorman.

  I didn’t know a lot of rich people. But I knew if you had a big hammer, every problem looked like a nail. Let them think I was angling for more money. They had told me all they were going to, and maybe all they could.

  Which might just be enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AT THREE A.M. ON a Friday morning, the downtown streets were as close to deserted as they ever got. With the window open, I could hear the sound of my pickup’s engine echoing off the glass monoliths, like the city was humming along to the tune. I drove the truck for a few blocks before pulling over about halfway between the Aerie Club and the Morgen. White shoes to blue collar, in under a mile.

  I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else yet. Not even Luce. Instead I sat in the truck, and watched the stoplights cycle through their slow patterns. It had been a long day followed by a longer night. My head was reeling with everything that had happened.

  I didn’t trust Arthur Ostrander, Esq., farther than I could spit. But he had been right about one thing. I had incentive to find the explosives, and whoever took them. A hell of a lot. Stack up all the motivation and carve it into the rough form of my family home. Then put Luce’s life, and Leo’s and my own, as the mountains behind it.

  Maurice Haymes could stick his money up his ass and set fire to it. None of us were safe until I found out who wanted me in tiny pieces. The person who had almost killed Luce. That was all that mattered.

  Retrieving the explosives meant a lot to Maurice Haymes, too. Maybe his whole future. Ostrander had just proved to me that they were willing to pay a few thousand percent more than market value to get those cases back. Maybe Kend had figured out his dad’s weak spot and had stolen the Tovex with the idea of ransoming it, to buy his way out of trouble with Broch. But Kend was killed before he could cut a deal with dear old Dad. Whoever had murdered Kend and Trudy had driven the Tovex away in the dually truck.

  So who had helped Kend steal it? And who had it now?

  Elana was the obvious first choice. She had a criminal record. She’d been at the cabin. She was even strong enough to load fifty-pound cases into the Volvo, if she had to.

  But there was another individual I liked a lot better, for that kind of heavy lifting.

  Barrett Yorke picked up on the third ring.

  “You’re awake,” I said.

  “Have you heard? About Trudy?” Her voice was thick.

  I guessed what was coming, but had to play dumb. “Did she call you?”

  “Trudy’s dead.”

  “Dead.”

  “A relative had been trying to reach her, and they filed a missing persons report, and they found out it was her at the cabin all along. And nobody knows where Elana is. God.”

  The police would already be looking for Elana Coll. Once they compared the timings of Trudy’s online posts against the times of death, that search would become very serious.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Poor Tru.” Barrett began crying, the quiet, smooth sobs of someone who has been crying for hours and is near exhaustion. Awake only because the grief wouldn’t let her rest. “She was a really good person, you know?”

  “She seemed like it. I liked her paintings.”

  Barrett wept through another two stoplight rounds. “You called me,” she prompted, when the wave had passed.

  “I did. I need to talk to your brother.”

  “God, get in line. What’s going on?”

  I sat up. “Somebody else has been asking about Parson?”

  “Asking isn’t the right word. That implies some kind of manners.”

  “Who?”

  “Some jerk who said he was investigating Kend’s death. He called last night and wanted to know if Parson was home, or where he was.”

  Investigating Kend, the guy had said. Implying he was a cop, without actually claiming to be. “Was his name Rusk?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He sounded all official, but he was a creep. Tell me this and tell me that. I figured he was a reporter. I told him where he could go, all right. He got so mad I thought he might just crawl through the phone.”

  “You were right not to talk to him. Where’s Parson?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. I called Parson to tell him about the creep, and he just freaked. I explained that I didn’t say anything, and so what? But he hung up. He hasn’t been home all night.”

  Dammit. Rusk had Kend’s computer. He was probably working his way through Kend’s close friends, looking for anyone with enough heft to be Kend’s accomplice. Maybe Barrett had diverted him to the next name on the list. Or maybe Rusk’s cop instincts had told him he was on the right trail.

  But the HDC security chief’s questions had sent Parson running for cover. Which confirmed what I had only started suspecting about the big kid.

  “Barrett,” I said. “Is Parson—I don’t know another way to put this—normal?”

  She tsked. “Parson’s fine. Everyone thinks that he’s dumb, because he doesn’t talk much and when he does, it’s not complicated. But really, he’s quite bright. He’s brilliant with electrical things and engines and stuff. He just—he feels really hard. Loves me and our parents and his friends hugely. It nearly destroyed him, when he learned Kend and Elana—Trudy now, I guess—when he learned they were dead. He doesn’t have a lot of defenses, you know?”

  “Guileless.”

  “Yes. That’s him. Van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Parson in trouble?” Her voice was small.

  “I don’t know, Barrett.”

  “I was really ticked at you, you know? Not just because you turned me down. I’m not that delicate. But I knew you weren’t telling me everything, at Trudy’s.” She sighed knowingly, and it turned into a yawn. “You probably aren’t telling me everything now. Men with secrets. Why are guys like you the ones I go for? You and Kend.”

  She had said it so quietly, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “Kend? Did you and he—?”

  “Hmm? No, no. I just liked him a lot, is all. Nothing ever happened. Maybe if he and Elana . . .” She yawned again.

  I was beginning to understand why all of the couple’s love notes had been stuffed into a drawer in Kend’s apartment. And maybe why the photo of Barrett and Trudy had been banished with them.

  “If you hear from Parson, call me. I’ll help.”

  “Sure.” She sounded like she was falling asleep even as she hung up.

  Parson Yorke had more devotion than a pack of Saint Bernards. Especially to his best buddy, Kendrick. Parson might have committed grand larceny with Kend. He was fervent in his belief that Kend hadn’t killed Elana.

  So do you think the rumors are true? Barrett had asked me on the rooftop bar. Parson had immediately answered for me. No. A flat statement. No, Kend hadn’t killed her. No, he wasn’t a murderer. Parson might have meant both of those.

  Or maybe the huge lump had unconsciously been saying, No, Elana isn’t dead. Had he known?

  I’d spooked Elana. She’d lost what little food and shelter she’d acquired by pretending to be Trudy. She might cut her losses and put a few thousand miles between herself and Seattle before ditching the Ford sedan.

  But I didn’t think so. She had stayed hidden in Seattle, after the horrors at the cabin. If she was still as stubborn as the Elana I’d once known, she’d stay in Seattle now. She would need money, and a place to stay, and she’d be desperate enough to ask someone for help. I could guess that good old Parson would be more than willing.

  Unless Parson was the one that Elana had been running from all along.

  Just a big naïve kid. Brilliant with electronic things. Like security systems. And maybe like bombs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SOMEONE BANGED ON LUCE’S door at nine in the morning. We had both been dead asleep, but the Smith & Wesson was in my hand before I knew it. I motioned Luce to get behind the bed.
<
br />   Another three bangs. I was pretty sure I’d heard that knock before, but there was no point in taking chances.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Guerin.”

  I put the gun in Luce’s dresser, climbed into my jeans, and went to open the door.

  Guerin stood in the hall with Kanellis, his partner. Kanellis was about my age, with longish brown hair and a whippet-like build. He had changed his look since the last time I’d seen him. A corduroy jacket and gray knit tie, over a hunting plaid shirt and tight trousers. Professorial.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “I heard about your house. You two all right?” Guerin said.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Luce formally. She had slipped on a robe. Kanellis gave her a once-over that wasn’t lost on any of us.

  “You don’t look otherwise occupied,” Guerin said. “Let’s take a ride.”

  I nodded and closed the door while I dressed.

  “Are they looking into the bombing?” Luce said.

  “They’re looking into Broch. If we’re lucky, it’s the same thing.”

  She kissed me. I lingered, feeling the heat of her body through our clothes as strongly if we were naked again.

  When I had returned from my meeting with Ostrander and Rusk the night before, Luce had been awake, waiting up with Marcie. As soon as we were alone, Luce had pulled me to her. The terror and pain of the night evaporated, and she clung to me with all of her strength and cried out for me to hold her back just as fiercely. At the end she gasped and bit into my shoulder, hard enough that later, when we were parted and damp with each other, we didn’t know whether the blood spots left on the pillow were from love or from our earlier wounds.

  I threw on my jacket, kissed her once more, and asked her to call Leo to tell him I’d come by Swedish as soon as the cops were done with me. Hoping to myself that it didn’t turn out to be a long wait.

  I followed the detectives to their car, a silver Lexus sedan. Guerin drove. Kanellis took the back, granting me the passenger’s seat. Standard procedure, if a pair of cops had to escort a suspect without using the mobile jail cell that is the rear seat of a police cruiser. I was getting more uneasy by the minute.