Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  Allen shuddered. There, he’d purged it and now it took a moment for him to bring his breathing back to normal. “There,” he said aloud. “So now you know.” Then he patted Hank’s inert knee almost fondly. “The only thing I didn’t foresee, old buddy, was that you would live through the episode.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When Amy wheeled into the parking lot, Broker, antsy, was pacing at the end of the boat dock puffing on a cigar. She walked out to him and noted the vital color in his freshly shaved cheeks and his alert eyes. He wore his coat casually half zipped. No hat.

  “You’re feeling better,” she said.

  “What if . . .” Broker began.

  Amy held up a gloved hand. “Hold on. What are we doing here?”

  “What if there’s a reason they don’t have Hank Sommer in a hospital?”

  “You mean he isn’t as wasted as they say he is?”

  “You tell me,” Broker said.

  “That’s wishful thinking.” Amy shook her head. “First, I’ve been briefed by our risk-management people. Milton Dane is a top-of-the-line malpractice attorney. No way he’d jeopardize his reputation in anything duplicitous. And second, Hank has been examined by the insurance company doctors, too. There’s no dispute about the diagnosis.”

  Broker studied the look in her eyes, which was the same methodical, intelligent look that good investigators always had in their eyes when they demolished his hunches.

  Procedure, they would say. Go slow, they’d say.

  Right on cue, Amy said, “These things follow a certain protocol.”

  “Yeah, but what if the wife is right about him looking at her?” Broker pressed.

  “Unlikely. It’s normal for a bereaved spouse to grab at straws.”

  “What if I could get you in to see him?”

  Amy expelled an explosive, mirthless breath. “The defendant in a lawsuit approaching the plaintiff? They’d pull my license. I’d never work again.”

  “So why’d you drop everything and come over here?”

  Amy bit her lower lip, looked down the lake. “Did you make that coffee?”

  Ha, thought Broker.

  They went inside and took off their coats. Broker poured two cups of black coffee from Uncle Billie’s Braun. Amy took a chair to the kitchen table and made room for her cup in the litter of Broker’s notes, permit applications, and the newspaper she’d left last night.

  Broker thumped a knuckle on the Stovall article in the Star Tribune. Amy sipped her coffee and read. Her tongue meditatively probed one cheek, then the other. She looked up. So?

  “The dead guy is Sommer’s accountant.”

  “Weird.”

  “It’s past weird. Sommer’s luck giving out in the hospital after he lives through a cliff-hanger rescue is weird. Then his accountant coincidently dies the same week? Check this out—when the seaplane plopped down in Snowbank, the last words Sommer said to me were ‘Tell Cliff Stovall to move the money.’ Five days later you hand me a newspaper and I read that Cliff Stovall dies in the woods under bizarre circumstances.”

  Amy considered the doodles on the notepad. The names, the address. The directions. The block letters: FOLLOW THE MONEY. “So those doodles—what does ‘follow the money’ mean?”

  “It’s a cliché. But a very durable one. People being who they are, it never wears out.”

  “Be more specific; exactly what does it mean, in this circumstance, associated with Hank Sommer’s name?” she asked.

  Broker cleared his throat. “When somebody draws five fouls in the first quarter, what’s the first thing you think.”

  “Too many things going wrong for normal play,” Amy said. “But that’s hypothetical law-school bullshit. Give me facts.”

  “Okay, that morning at the hospital, when Sommer was choppered out. His wife was there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you notice the young stud who came up with her?”

  “Broker, I sort of kept my distance that morning.”

  “Mrs. Sommer isn’t just a young, sexy trophy wife; she comes with heavy baggage, like her old boyfriend, who has apparently now moved into Sommer’s house.”

  Amy raised her cup and studied the faint coffee ring it left on the table. “So? She observes briefer decent intervals than the rest of us.” She raised her eyes. “It’s only the oldest story in the world.”

  Broker continued, unfazed. “On the trip, Sommer and his wife were fighting about money. They were feuding on his cell phone. At one point he got so pissed he threw the phone in the lake. Dane and Falken said he moved all his finances into a trust because she was giving money to the boyfriend. It involves money,” Broker insisted.

  “What does?”

  “The accountant’s death.”

  Amy reread the article. “It says here he had a history of drinking and self-mutilation.”

  “I don’t buy it. He was sitting on Hank’s estate which the wife wanted. She had to take Hank out of the hospital because of financial difficulties.”

  “They were married. There’s probate. Where the hell are you going with this?”

  Broker pursed his lips. He kept seeing the smug young guy standing next to Jolene in the hospital parking lot, his handsome, gloating face. Like he’d just won the lottery. “The boyfriend,” he said.

  “C’mon, Broker. The wife is now a de facto widow. So she decides to seek the comfort and support of her young stud/ex-boyfriend. It might be sleazy, but it’s not breaking any laws. Is it?”

  Broker brooded under his thick eyebrows. “I’ll bet if I toss the boyfriend he comes up dirty.”

  “If that’s all you’ve got, you don’t have much,” Amy said.

  “Actually I have less than that.” Broker stood up and walked from the kitchen area through the main room to the coat hooks near the door. With a swipe of his index finger he speared Sommer’s key ring off a hook. “All I’ve really got is Sommer’s Ford Expedition, which I’m returning today. To his house. That means I’ll get to go in and pay my respects, check out the wife, check out the boyfriend, and check out Sommer. What if I get in there later this afternoon and he looks me dead in the eye? What then?”

  Amy squinted at him suspiciously as he came back toward the table. “I see what you’re trying to pull.”

  Broker, aghast, held up his hands in protest. “What?”

  “You’re trying to suck me into this project of yours.”

  Broker smiled. “How am I doing?”

  Amy raised her chin. “Maybe I’ll tag along just to prove I’m right and you’re full of shit?”

  “But what if I’m right?” Broker countered.

  Amy’s features conducted a mobile tug of war between practicality and curiosity. “And you can get me in to see him?”

  Broker nodded. “Shouldn’t be too hard. The wife never met you. You could be anybody. Hell, you could be my girlfriend.”

  Amy smiled politely. “But what if the wife isn’t dumb. What if she sees I’m way too smart to get mixed up with some lame-duck, middle-aged, half-married guy?”

  “Ha,” said Broker, grinning.

  “Ha, yourself. If we take the Ford down, how do we get back?” she asked.

  “I have a buddy who runs a farm near Sommer’s place. He’s got my truck. I’ve been meaning to bring it back up north.”

  “How long will we be gone?”

  Broker shrugged, “A couple days?”

  Amy thought about it and said, “I get one day at the Mall of America; it’ll save me a trip and I can get some shopping out of the way.”

  “Deal.”

  “Okay, I’ll go to keep you honest,” Amy said.

  “Great. Let me throw some things in a bag, then we’ll go to your place and drop off your wheels,” Broker said.

  Amy’s barely winterized rented cabin overlooked Lake Shagawa on the outskirts of Ely. As Broker came through the door he saw a computer, lots of books, cross-country skis, snow shoes, a pile of busted-out running shoes. He also sm
elled something. Propane gas.

  It never failed to amaze him how natives could ignore every rule of winter survival, from going out in sub-zero temperatures in tennis shoes to living with leaky gas connections on their stoves.

  Immediately Broker went to the sink, mixed some dish-washing detergent with water in a glass, crossed to the stove, and dabbed the suds on the connector stem, and saw bubbles blister up in the suds. “Do you have any wrenches?” he asked

  “What?”

  “You’re streaming gas. You’re going to blow up.”

  And Amy, who had mastered the life-and-death complexities of an anesthesia machine, said, “Oh, the stove always smells a little.” She pointed. “Wrenches are in the drawer to the right of the sink. There should be some Recto Seal there, too.”

  While Amy threw clothes into a duffel, Broker turned off the gas, unthreaded the valve, regooped the fitting, retightened it, tested it, and went to the bathroom to wash up. She’d hung a grotesque poster on the back of her bathroom door that showed the gross folds of a ridiculously obese human face. Mouth open, tongue out, its sex was impossible to determine. A hand-lettered caption over the picture announced: INTUBATE THIS!

  As he dried his hand she moved in next to him, opened the cabinet, and removed several slim jars of various face oils and emollients. Then she picked up a palm-sized plastic wafer—her diaphragm—passed it under his nose, weighed it briefly in her hand, and dropped it in a cosmetic bag.

  Broker frowned mildly at her clowning.

  “I could always get hit by lightning,” she said airily, spinning on her heel.

  He bet she was a demon for detail in the OR, but she was lax in her bathroom. He snagged her elbow, pulled her back, selected the tube of Gynol vaginal lubricant from a shelf, and tossed it to her. “Just in case it’s not greased lightning.”

  Amy pursed her lips. “And I had you figured for a prude.”

  Broker shrugged. “Hey, I was young once. You know how it goes: you drink too much, you wake up in a strange apartment with a lizard nesting in your mouth and her big scaly sister snoring in bed next to you, so you stagger for the bathroom, grab for a toothbrush . . .” He made a face. “I’ve brushed my teeth with that stuff at least once in my life.”

  For the first time since they’d met, they laughed.

  Broker relaxed behind the steering wheel of Sommer’s big Ford and debated whether to empty the ashtray. He decided to leave it. The crushed cigarette butts were like Hank’s cold fingerprints. They were just a few miles down the road when Amy asked.

  “So, did you go on hunches like this when you were a cop?”

  “I was a lousy cop,” Broker said.

  “Really?” Amy raised her arms, reached behind her head, and pulled her hair back in a practical ponytail.

  “I mean I was good at what I did but I was a lousy cop,” Broker said. “Take Dave Iker, now he’s a good cop: responsible, a demon on details, street smart—but.” Broker poked a finger in the air. “Ninety-nine percent of the time he’ll get there after it happens. Then he’ll follow procedure. If he’s lucky, he’ll squeeze a snitch or a suspect to squeal on somebody. It’s worked that way since Cain killed Abel.”

  “Dave says you were an adrenaline addict, that you never could go the speed limit.”

  “There you go, procedure. Most cops are rigid about authority, they like to enforce rules.”

  “And you?” Amy asked.

  “I preferred to get there before it happens. That’s what deep undercover is all about. If you’re really going to catch monsters you go hang where the monsters live.”

  “And maybe become a bit of a monster yourself?” Amy asked.

  Broker held her gaze for a beat, then held up his hand with his thumb and forefinger a measured inch apart. “Maybe just a little.”

  “Right, like a little pregnant,” Amy said.

  After that, they exchanged normal information about attending the University of Minnesota in different eras. Amy mentioned the doctor she almost married in Minneapolis. Broker skirted the subject of his first wife.

  He drove Highway 169 out of Ely and crossed the Laurentian Divide just north of Virginia, Minnesota. He got on 53 and took that into Cloquet where he stopped and filled up the Expedition at the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright gas station with its hovering witch’s-hat roof.

  They bypassed Duluth and stopped at the Black Bear Casino for lunch. Then back on the road, Interstate 35 fast-forwarded them toward the Cities at seventy-five-plus mph. The traffic thickened and the evergreens gave way to mixed hardwood and fields around Hinckley. The Expedition purred powerfully on eight cylinders, and soon they were running a gauntlet of billboards and tract houses.

  Then they skimmed the northern edge of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro and angled off east and took 95 south along the St. Croix River through Stillwater.

  Then they entered the Timberry mall-sprawl and cul-de-sacs with names like Hunter’s Lane and Oak Ponds. Broker turned again, into the countryside west of the river.

  “Where are we?” Amy asked.

  “Lake Elmo,” Broker said. “I’m going to drop you with J.T. and then I’ll take the vehicle over to Sommer’s. I assume somebody will give me a ride back.”

  “So who’s this friend?”

  “J.T. Merryweather. Ex–St. Paul cop. Used to be my partner a million years ago. Now he’s into raising poultry.”

  Twenty minutes later they arrived. Amy laughed out loud. “Since when are ostriches poultry?”

  “J.T. says they’re the beef of the future.”

  The objects of her surprise drifted big-eyed, short-beaked, long-necked, and very long-legged behind six-foot fencing. Flocks of gray-brown females and a few taller black-plumed males. They stood between seven and nine feet tall, and some of the males could weigh four hundred pounds. There were almost a hundred of them in the fenced paddocks, anomalous against the flaming maples and red oaks of the Minnesota countryside.

  They turned into a drive past a country mailbox positioned on a setback so a snowplow wouldn’t knock it down. They passed a sign that spelled out royal kraal ostrich, j.t. merryweather, proprietor.

  The snug two-story farmhouse was separated from a red barn by weeping willows. The door opened and a tall denim-clad man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson walked out to greet them.

  “He’s a black guy?” Amy said.

  “Makes sense, huh? Both J.T. and his birds originated in Africa.”

  Amy looked at the paradoxically ungainly but graceful birds floating across the cold afternoon shadows. “Those birds are a long way from Africa.”

  Broker threw open the door, got out, and walked to meet J.T. They clasped hands, locked thumbs, and dapped it down, old style.

  For five years J.T. had been putting his farm together; like most of the cops close to fifty in St. Paul, he took the early retirement. He’d dropped the twenty pounds he’d gained when he quit the cigarettes and his face had lost that puffy desk-bloat. Some men age into roundness. J.T. and Broker shared a genetic predisposition toward edges. And farm work and fresh air were putting the taut angles back into J.T.’s Ethiopian cheekbones.

  “Hmmmmm,” J.T. said, big hands on his hips, as Amy came around the Ford and waited to be introduced.

  “J.T., this is Amy Skoda,” Broker said.

  “Uh-huh,” J.T. said, appraising Amy.

  “It’s not like that,” Broker said.

  J.T. nodded. “Far be it from me to judge people,” though in fact J.T. believed in enforcing the rules with the ardor of an Old Testament Jeremiah. He grinned and tipped back the brim of his hat with more than a little theater. “Hell, I’d fuck around myself except my wife would beat me to death with a number-twelve Weber cast-iron skillet when I was sleeping.” He extended his hand. “J.T. Merryweather. Pleased to meet you.”

  Amy took the handshake, looked around. “So what’s it like going from law enforcement to ostrich farmer?”

  J.T. grinned slowly. “Comes naturally. I k
eep them in cages.” Straight-faced, he added, “Actually, my family was heavy into agriculture for quite a while in Georgia, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

  “Gotcha,” Amy said.

  Denise Merryweather walked out on the porch in just a blouse and jeans, hugging herself. She was a well-put-together woman over thirty and under fifty, who was successfully playing hide and seek with age. She had a width of Cherokee blood to her dark face, strong brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and a cross on a chain at her throat.

  As a general proposition, she had never approved of Broker.

  “Phil Broker,” she said in a noncommittal tone. “Will you and your friend be staying for a while?”

  “Hi, Denise, this is Amy Skoda. Amy, this is Denise,” Broker said.

  The two women met on the stairs and shook hands.

  “It’s not like that,” Amy said. “We are, like, friends.”

  “I’m glad,” Denise said. “Because we only have the one spare bedroom. Broker, you get the couch.”

  An awkward silence followed Denise’s remark. Amy cocked her head at a distinctive rattling rebound sound from the barn and changed the subject.

  “Hoops?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” said J.T. “I tore out the milking stanchions in the back basement of the barn, poured a new concrete floor, and put up a backboard for my daughter.”

  “You did, huh?” Broker said.

  “Okay. You helped.”

  “Come on inside, honey,” Denise said. “Let these two men whine about getting old.” Denise motioned Amy into the house.

  “We are getting old,” Broker said.

  “I’ll never unhook a 38D triple-eyelet bra one-handed in under three seconds again, cruising in a ’57 Chevy, that’s for sure,” J.T. said.

  “Why, Jarret True Merryweather, I didn’t know you could count past twenty.” Denise flared her eyes as she disappeared through the door with Amy. When the door was shut J.T. scrutinized Broker.