Impasse

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  “Sort of.”

  “How come nobody knows? I’ve been wondering the whole way to Boston. I almost called my BFF, but you seemed so serious about not telling anyone.”

  “Let’s talk in the car.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  They found her Subaru, a practical blue thing with all-wheel drive and reasonable gas mileage. Stu offered to drive. Audry told him not to be stupid and to get in, which he did without further protest. She shot him a warning look when they came to the gate, and so he knew better than to offer to pay, but he kept track of the cost, knowing that she was buried in student loans, both hers and her daughter’s.

  “You know that people think you’re dead, right?” Audry began.

  “Yeah, somebody already filled me in on that.”

  “Things have happened.”

  “I figured they would.”

  “Stu, you’ve been gone almost six months. Even your wife thinks you didn’t make it.”

  “I have some things to fix. I get that.”

  “So why aren’t you telling anyone?”

  “The Yukon Tours pilot left me out there. Until I do some investigating, I don’t want anyone to know.” He omitted any talk of Ivan or murder plots.

  “Deep undercover, eh? Are we going to sue said pilot?”

  Stu looked out the window, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t think he’s worth suing at this point.”

  She accepted it, and him.

  He didn’t learn much asking her questions. She knew less about his wife than Stu thought she would. Audry was working more hours for Clay, it turned out, but she still only saw him a couple of times per week, and he didn’t discuss Katherine. Nor did Katherine come to the firm often—only a few times. Stu wondered if Clay had bought out Katherine’s inherited interest in the firm so that she could move on. She wasn’t a lawyer, after all. Audry said the name Stark hadn’t been removed from the letterhead yet.

  They didn’t talk clients. There would be time for that later. And Stu spent the remainder of the trip from Boston to New Bedford being peppered with excited questions and recounting wilderness survival stories. It was relaxing, he found, and sort of fun. Her eyes lit up when he described his encounter with the grizzly.

  “Not only did you survive six months in the arctic, but you shot a freakin’ grizzly? Man, I should have given you more credit.”

  “More than what?”

  “More than before. You’ve done some amazing things.”

  “I did what I had to do. I’m not proud of it all.”

  “If I shot a bear that was trying to eat me, I’d make it into a rug.”

  “Or maybe a stupid hat.”

  “No! Is that a bearskin hat?”

  “Deer actually. It’s part of my look-like-shit look.”

  “Oh yeah, I said that. Sorry. You really could use a haircut and a shave though.”

  “You also said I looked great.”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Hmmm.” She looked him over, recklessly ignoring the road. “You’ve obviously trimmed down, and you don’t look so soft anymore.”

  “Soft?”

  “Desk job. You had soft hands. Now you have calluses, strength, some color in your cheeks. And the way you carry yourself has evolved.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I dunno. Alert. Upright. Not slouching around like a dog trying to avoid getting whacked with a newspaper. More like, if I were a bear, I’d think twice before eating you.”

  CHAPTER 36

  When they pulled up to Stu’s house at eight p.m., he felt an overwhelming sensation that he didn’t belong. Something had changed. About him. About the house. Nothing he could put his finger on. A new planter on the porch? A garden hose off its hook? Maybe his beard.

  “You okay?” Audry asked.

  “I haven’t practiced what I’m going to say to Katherine.”

  “You don’t need practice, you dork. Just hug her and be you.”

  “All right. I’m going in.”

  “Will you wave once you’re safely settled?”

  “Like a grade-school kid?”

  “Humor me. I’m a parent.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Don’t get into a long make-out session and forget me.” She smiled.

  “I won’t forget you.”

  Stu thanked her again and went around to the sliding glass back door. The lights were on upstairs. His keys had been a casualty when he’d abandoned half his gear at the small cabin, but he knew how to lift the sliding door off its track and move it aside.

  The living room was dark, and he stumbled into the couch before he decided to switch on the light. He blinked. The furniture had been moved. In fact, it wasn’t the same furniture.

  “What the hell?”

  He felt a presence and looked up. A small boy of perhaps five years stood on the stairs, staring at him. Stu didn’t recognize him.

  “Who are you?” the boy said.

  “I’m Stuart,” Stu said stupidly. “I live here. Who are you?”

  “I’m Johnny. I live here.”

  Stu was stumped for a moment. Then the foreign furniture and the presence of the boy came together to make sense.

  “Well, this is a funny situation, Johnny. Where is the woman who lived here before you?”

  “She went to the beach.”

  “The beach?” It took him a moment. Ahh, the beach house from the e-mails.

  Just then a man appeared with a baseball bat—a nice one from the look of it. Stu could almost read the name of the Red Sox player who’d signed it. The man grabbed the boy and shoved him up the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” a female voice called down.

  “Get back upstairs, hon! And call the cops! A transient has wandered into our house!”

  The man was scared. Stu could see it. A rabbit. To him, Stu was a predator that had wandered into his hutch. But trapped animals were dangerous, especially when protecting their young. A badger that wasn’t quite dead had torn the sleeve of Stu’s coat to ribbons a month earlier. He’d had to duct-tape it back together, and was lucky he didn’t have to do the same to his arm.

  The man advanced, cocking the bat behind his head. He caught a ceramic lamp on the backswing, disintegrating it with a loud crash. It was clear the man had no idea who Stu was, and Stu didn’t enlighten him. Given that Stu still did not know what the hell was going on, and he was now adding breaking and entering to his criminal résumé, the idea of revealing himself to a complete stranger seemed worse than ever.

  “Sorry, wrong house,” Stu said. He walked calmly toward the door but didn’t turn his back, and he remained ready to bolt. A man in his own house could pound an intruder to pulp with a bat and no jury would ever convict him, even if the intruder were fleeing.

  Once outside, Stu ran to the Subaru and slid into the passenger seat. Audry stared at him expectantly.

  “Go,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “New owners. It’s probably better if they don’t get your license plate.”

  “Oh. Jeez.” She started the car.

  Stu buckled in. “They were, however, nice enough to tell me where Katherine is. Do you have Internet access on your phone?”

  A quick search for beach house in Katherine’s e-mail account revealed an address, and he punched it into the phone’s GPS.

  The drive was short, and soon they were pulling up to another home, only this one was on the South Dartmouth waterfront and had an expensive stamped-concrete driveway. Audry turned off the headlights, and they sat in the darkness of the moonless night.

  “She couldn’t afford this,” Stu said.

  But the e-mails clearly said she’d bought the house, and they’d provided the address. Katherine had even gabbed at length about how she was furnishing the place. But it didn’t feel right. Stu had never believed in karma, but if he had, he would have said this place f
elt more wrong than the stranger-occupied home he’d just been chased out of.

  Which leaves me nowhere, he realized. And he suddenly felt as homeless as he looked.

  Audry waited while he just sat and stared.

  “This is the place, right?” she said finally.

  “The black Cadillac in the driveway isn’t hers. She drives an old Corolla.”

  “It has a garage. Or maybe she upgraded the car, too.”

  “I’m just a little gun-shy after the baseball bat incident, okay?”

  “Then peek in a window.”

  “The windows all face the water.”

  “Go around.”

  “Trespassing.”

  “God, don’t be such a lawyer.” Audry threw off her seat belt and got out of the car.

  She was around the corner and headed for the back of the house before Stu could get out of the car.

  “Wait up.…”

  He caught up to her as she was shinnying up the lattice to the deck.

  “Are you crazy?” he whispered. “Someone will see you.”

  Audry whispered back. “The lights are on inside. We can see in, but the glare will keep anyone from seeing out.”

  Then she was on the deck. Stu rolled his eyes and climbed up after her. When he pulled himself onto his belly on the composite decking, she was frozen in a crouch in front of two all-glass French doors. A single overhead light inside illuminated the sparse bedroom, and Stu followed Audry’s gaze like a fellow moth staring into a flame.

  Katherine was nude. Spectacularly nude. She stood in the center of the room, her clothes puddled on the floor. Stu’s heart leaped into his throat.

  “Wow,” Audry whispered, “she’s in great shape.”

  Stu had the sudden urge to pound on the glass, to go to her, to take her in his arms and have her right then. Probably on the floor. But something stopped him—the same feeling of not-rightness he’d felt in the driveway.

  In his moment of hesitation, the door to the bedroom opened and Clay walked in.

  He was dressed. Well dressed. Tie and slacks with expensive leather shoes. He smiled, and Katherine returned his smile with a nod. She didn’t hide her naked body.

  Audry laid a hand on Stu’s shoulder. “Oh God, Stu, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Stu steeled himself for their embrace. But Clay didn’t take Katherine in his arms or begin to undress himself. Instead he simply inspected her. She allowed it, turning to present her body from several angles. Then Clay was directing her. After the brief examination, he gave her a firm swat on the rump and pointed to the bed. Katherine didn’t protest. Instead she walked to it, leaned over, and put her hands on the mattress. It was carnal, animal—arousing, even. Again, Stu felt the urge to get in there and claim her. But he had to process things first.

  Audry tugged on Stu’s sleeve. “Stu, let’s go. You don’t want to see this.”

  Stu shook her off. “It’s okay. She thinks I’m dead. She’s lonely. I get it.”

  I can deal with this, Stu told himself. He’d spent six months eating rabbit and drinking boiled water. I killed a freakin’ bear. He could handle this, he thought. He even felt the familiar old instinct to forgive. Once I get things sorted out, it’s all going to be okay.

  Then another man walked into the room. What the hell?

  He was about sixty and wore a thin robe. No shoes. No socks. No pants. He looked at Clay, who nodded toward Katherine.

  Stu recognized him at once. Joseph Roff. The police called him Big Fish, because he ran a crew in New Bedford and had a penchant for fishing. He’d never been prosecuted in Bristol County, but he routinely posted bail for several local frequent fliers—smugglers, small-scale loan sharks, Oxy peddlers, and the like—his crew, his “school of small fry.” Roff managed his interests through intermediaries and lived in Providence, which put him beyond the reach of the county. New Bedford cops didn’t have the resources to launch an extended investigation into organized crime that would require a multijurisdictional sting. And Roff’s little fish lurked below the level of offenses that the Feds cared about. So no federal prosecution either.

  Clay took a seat in Stu’s favorite recliner and made no move to stop Roff from walking to where Katherine stood bent over the bed without a stitch of clothing on. Stu knew that whatever Joseph Roff had his fingers into was dirty and, as he watched, the known criminal slid them right between the cheeks of his wife’s fabulous ass.

  CHAPTER 37

  “No flipping way! Shut! Up! Are you kidding me?” Audry was animated. She ran through a series of almost-swear-words, occasionally repeating herself. And the way she was flailing with her arms, Stu worried about her driving.

  “We need to calm down,” he said.

  Audry took a deep breath. “You mean I need to calm down, right? Look at you. You’re analyzing this, thinking it all through, like you do. Amazing. You should be more freaked out than I am.”

  Stu put his hand on the wheel and eased her back into the proper lane of travel. “I don’t think that’s possible, but believe me, I’m plenty surprised and perplexed.”

  “Perplexed? I’d think you’d be insanely jealous and furious. I don’t get it; the average man would have gone nuts trying to stop that.”

  Stu frowned. He’d considered stopping it. In fact, he’d felt like throwing a deck chair through the window. But if someone was trying to kill him, and if that someone was tied to a man like Roff, revealing himself might have put Katherine and Clay in immediate danger.

  Whereas getting screwed isn’t inherently dangerous.

  “I had a good reason.” It sounded lame. Audry was questioning his masculinity. What kind of man didn’t stop another man from doing his wife? His fiery associate probably thought he was the same pussy he’d been when he’d left. And maybe I am. He couldn’t let it lie. “I haven’t told you everything,” Stu said. “This isn’t the most shocking thing that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Really? Wow!”

  “But it could be related.”

  “This I gotta hear.”

  “No. It’s time to cut you out. It’s obviously dangerous, and it was selfish of me to involve you in the first place. I was … lonely.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me. You can’t stay at my place unless you let me in on what’s going on.”

  Stu hesitated. “I wasn’t expecting to stay with you.”

  “Where else can you go?”

  “Motel?”

  “Noble but stupid. I have a guest room. But you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  Stu had ideas. Theories. He realized that he wanted to talk them through. He needed to talk them through with someone else before he could believe them. Otherwise, they felt like invalidated little puffs of crazy drifting through his brain.

  “I killed a man,” he said suddenly, throwing himself off the confession cliff, knowing that telling her about Ivan’s death forced him to tell her everything.

  “You said it was a bear.”

  “I did that, too.”

  Audry gave him a sideways glance. “Should I be calling the police?”

  “Probably.”

  “Great.”

  “He tried to kill me first. Don’t worry. I’m not a danger to anyone.”

  But he was a danger. He could feel the capacity for mortal combat in him. It was like a new superpower—he could kill. He’d killed things all winter long. Only to survive, Stu told himself.

  “Now I definitely have to hear the rest.”

  “You’re not scared?”

  “This is maybe the most intense thing I’ve ever gotten sucked into. Hell yes, I’m scared! But I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” She was sweating, but she was also smiling. “So tell me, who did you kill?”

  * * *

  Audry’s apartment was spotless. Stu was a bit surprised, given how busy she was. He’d thought dishes would be stacked in the sink, the kitchen table piled with mail, grocery coupons, and bar review materials, may
be a yoga mat in front of a big-screen TV, unboxed workout DVDs, and an unreturned romantic comedy rental scattered about. He’d thought wrong.

  She offered him a seat on her stylish but inexpensive-looking couch, then grabbed a computer tablet.

  “Okay, where do we start our analysis?”

  “I think I’m most comfortable treating this like a case. Then again, the man who acts as his own attorney has a fool for a client.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means it’s hard to be objective when the case is about yourself.”

  “Then I’ll be your attorney.”

  “You have one year of experience. No offense.”

  “Zero years as an actual attorney, if you’re going to get technical on me. And you’re wasting time. What do we know?” She fired up the tablet, fingers tapping like frenetic raindrops on the touch screen. “I’ll make a list of facts and theories.”

  “Well, for starters we know Ivan tried to kill me. No doubt. Pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger. He ran when it didn’t fire.”

  “Then you hit him with the ax?”

  “Hatchet.”

  “Jeez,” she mumbled under her breath. “What did he say, exactly?”

  “He apologized. And he said I should be dead.”

  “Doesn’t mean he planned it. He could have meant he assumed you were dead, and he panicked when you appeared, because he’d blown the pickup and knew he was in serious trouble. Plus, you said he seemed high.”

  “Agreed. But when I said things had worked out because I was alive, he disagreed with me. He said things hadn’t worked out.”

  “As though leaving you was a plan that failed.”

  “Right.”

  “Better, but still not conclusive.”

  “He also said, ‘Sorry, dude, I don’t even know you.’”

  “He actually said dude before he tried to shoot you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a tool. Go on.”

  “The fact that he didn’t know me or steal anything from me means he had no personal motive.”

  “Promising.…”

  “He seemed surprised that there was a cabin. And here’s the really creepy part: he said, ‘I was supposed to leave you there.’”