Conclusion

by Peter Robertson

  Colin was sure that was true.

  “He might have been an upgrade like me.”

  She answered quickly, “He wasn’t. I can always tell. He seemed at home.”

  “So not an upgrade?”

  She smiled. “Very definitely not.”

  “So how do I find his name?”

  Linda Jackson answered, “The only record of his being there is the keypad at the door that lets him in. He entered his number and inserted his card.”

  Colin knew that accessing the keypad records was well beyond his computing skills, but he wondered about Angie. He would ask her. If she wasn’t working on it already.

  Colin sat back. A southbound train rattled the plates and cups on the high shelves behind the counter. Linda Jackson sipped her coffee.

  Colin said quietly, almost to himself, “I wonder if he was coming or going that night.”

  He wasn’t expecting an answer but he got one: “He was going.”

  Colin was surprised. “You could tell that?”

  She laughed. “Maybe I could,” she considered the possibility for a moment. “But no. He made it a lot easier. He told me. He was going to Duluth, Minnesota.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Colin told her.

  “I left my phone in the basement. It’s almost time for the dryer.”

  “Thank you again for seeing me. For helping us.”

  “Did I help you?”

  He assured her that she had.

  Linda Jackson took her coffee to the counter where a thin young man nodded gravely to her and took it away. She came back to the table.

  “Will you still be here when I get back?” she asked Colin.

  He told her he wouldn’t.

  She wished him luck. Then she left.

  Five minutes later, after Colin had placed a very large tip on the table, he left too.

  JUSTIN

  The interstate bus was fiercely air-conditioned and half empty. Justin had both seats to himself and he kept his hood pulled up for the length of the journey.

  In Duluth he disembarked. It was early evening. The resale shop was the same one where all the kids had bought their flannels several years ago. It was open late. Justin found a used hoodie in his size. It was a pale grey. His old one was a pale blue. He handed the blue one over as a partial trade-in and was given a dollar credit. The new hoodie was five dollars. He used up more of his cash for the balance of the transaction.

  Justin walked the length of the lake walk, killing time. He bought a chocolate malted and sat in the park to eat it. The breeze off the lake was cooler and the air temperature was dropping fast.

  It was much later when Justin walked up the hill, away from the water, and across the church parking lot. It was the same church where they had stayed the last night after the canoe trip, before the long drive home. It was the same denomination as the church the campers attended. The associate pastor had let them in that night, welcomed them warmly, boasting that their church doors were never locked, that everyone would be made welcome. To Justin, he had sounded like he meant it.

  The young man had insisted on shaking hands and introducing himself. His name was Jeffrey; they should call him Pastor Jeff.

  Pastor Jeff had seemed like a good guy.

  Outside the side entrance, Justin studied a notice board planted in the grass. Pastor Jeff was now the senior pastor.

  The parking lot was deserted as Justin walked to the last line of empty spaces and looked down on the city. There were street lights below that demarcated the main thoroughfares that ran at right angles to each other. Further away, the shipyard cranes stood illuminated in geometric poses, shimmering against the dark of the distant lake water.

  Justin remembered standing there watching the sunrise on the morning before they headed home.

  He walked back across the lot and pulled the handle of the church door. Pastor Jeff was as good as his word; the door was unlocked.

  Inside, the building was dark, and Justin navigated the hallway by the red glow of the exit signs. He found a meeting room with an ugly assortment of overstuffed chairs and couches and a badly scarred coffee table placed in the center.

  He took his hoodie off and folded it carefully before placing it inside his bag. He pulled out his towel and wrapped it around his duffel. He lay down on the couch and placed his makeshift pillow under his head. The room was warm and stuffy.

  Justin heard a tanker out in the channel blow its horn three times, then an answering sequence of bridge horns, then the quieter ringing sound, as the Aerial Lift Bridge rose vertically one hundred and forty feet in the air to allow the huge ship to pass safely through.

  Justin thought about going over to the window to watch. But his thought was as far as he got. He was asleep before the bridge came back down and the street traffic could pass safely through.

  In the early morning Justin repacked his duffel. He washed his face in the church bathroom. He left some money in a collection envelope, which he found on top of a neat stack on a table right outside the church sanctuary.

  Justin was walking across the parking lot as the first car pulled in. He hoped it might be Pastor Jeff, but the young man looked more custodial than pastoral. Justin smiled and the man smiled back as he pulled two buckets filled with cleaning supplies from the back of his car.

  The final part of his journey was a nearly twenty-hour trek on paved trail along the north shore of the lake, a few detours on backroads inland, a stretch or two of gravel pathway, and then a section of gravel road proper, as he left the shoreline and headed northwest toward the outfitters.

  From the start, Justin walked the trail with purpose. When he stopped once to throw himself in the lake, it took his breath away. As he swam, he drank, although there were water fountains close to habitation, and streams to drink from as he walked the more remote portions of the trail.

  Justin passed several small towns, and he ate his meals at cafés along the trail that catered to hikers and bicyclists. He wore a T-shirt and shorts with his wool socks and sturdy shoes, which were technically made for water but doubled as hiking boots. At Two Harbors, he drank his coffee at a coffee shop in a bike store. He bought a baseball cap that featured the bike store logo.

  Justin had spent a lot of time thinking about traveling unobtrusively, about leaving no trace. His duffle bag had adjustable straps that made it easy and comfortable to carry on his back. He had packed his bag carefully. It was perfectly balanced. He would look a little dirty and unshaven in a day or two, but in a day or two everyone else around him would look pretty much the same.

  He estimated that the trip would require him to sleep unsheltered for just one night if he made good time on the first day.

  Walking fast, he considered his bedtime options.

  He would look worn and out of place and conspicuously vehicle-less in a roadside motel. He had no camping supplies for an overnight stay at a state park.

  This one night was the most problematic. Once he got to his destination, he could begin to improvise. He could begin to disappear.

  He passed a sign on the trail and he stopped. He read it twice. The second time to make sure, because he could not believe what he was reading.

  TÖFTEHÖSTEL

  The latest venture from Zack Todd, media entrepreneur and visionary

  TÖFTEHÖSTEL. A Eurasian-style hostel for backpackers, for bikers, for urban bohemians. A place for hardcore souls who thrive on a little discomfort. A place for organic souls who could use saving a little scratch for beer and adventure and life’s other essentials. A place at the end of the day, for tired souls to unwind, to recharge after a long day’s interface with Mother Nature.

  Justin didn’t read all this at first; he stared uncomprehendingly at the first word for several seconds, wondering what TÖFTEHÖSTEL meant, wondering how to pronounce TÖFTEHÖSTEL, which came liberally doused with umlauts.

  Much later he would be able to more fully digest the hyperbolic puffery on one
of several conveniently located laptops running superfast Wi-Fi and offered gratis.

  TÖFTEHÖSTEL was an abandoned hardware store, Ikea-ized with dorm-style rooms on the first floor and communal showers and toilets on the second. Twenty dollars cash got you a bunk bed, enclosed on three sides, with storage lockers underneath. It was quiet, and Justin had the choice of a top or bottom bunk in a building that housed forty people and boasted a walkout deck, kitchenette areas, and an indoor sitting area for chilly nights.

  Justin took a long shower and padded downstairs to his bunk, barefoot and wrapped in a fluffy towel.

  Early the next morning, he hiked away from the lake toward the outfitters, with more than ten miles to go. It would take three hours if he followed the trail, slightly longer if he kept off the gravel as much as possible.

  COLIN

  It hadn’t initially occurred to Colin to invite Angie Rennie up north for what he privately referred to as the ceremony of the ashes, part two.

  It had been four days since he had seen her in person. He had cried then. It had been two days since he had spoken to her, two days since he had met with Linda Jackson.

  Before he left the northern suburbs, he called Angie and told her everything Linda Jackson had said. She mostly listened. She asked about the cheesecake. He had perversely told her it was foul. She asked if Linda had worn the Celtic cross, and he admitted that he hadn’t noticed.

  Then he asked her about going to the cottage with him, and she said yes.

  The cottage wasn’t far from Duluth. Elliot Devine had flown to Duluth. The Natural Boundary Foundation had a post office box in Duluth, and Duluth was on the way to the Frontier Waters, where the NBF and Devine found pretty photographs to decorate their websites.

  All roads were leading to Duluth.

  Not for the first time, Colin wondered if he was dating or detecting. Maybe a little of both, he thought. He wondered if Angie felt the same. He hoped so.

  Colin had remembered to stop his mail and his newspaper delivery. He had asked the youngsters next door to watch the house, and while they assured him that they would, he wasn’t optimistic.

  When he wasn’t settling his affairs before traveling, Colin thought about what Linda Jackson had said. She confirmed that Elliot Devine, the not dead and clearly not dearly departed Elliot Devine, was the man he had seen at the airport lounge, sipping his whisky in the enveloping dark of the private room, smoking his cigar, and tipping like a bigshot before taking a flight north to Duluth.

  The reason Linda Jackson had proved helpful was her conviction that she, too, had encountered a person she had every reason to believe should be dead.

  Colin carefully read the newspaper each morning. It was the largest national paper in the country, and it was faithfully delivered to his house seven days a week.

  On the day before he left town, there was an article buried in a middle section about people who vanished. The article referred to them as the Disappeared, and they were legion. The Disappeared were mostly ordinary people, who were not in trouble, not in debt, not wanted by the police, nor were they especially unloved or unwanted. The article used the term marginalized, which Colin considered to be negative. They left neatly and carefully; they had planned ahead, their bills paid before they vanished, dishes washed, milk and other perishables taken out of the fridge. Their cars were paid for and abandoned in places where it would take a while for them to be noticed.

  They almost never came back. Bodies were seldom discovered mangled in sad and desolate places. Cash in bank accounts stayed where it was, although sometimes family members needing help received anonymous funds by wire. Fake IDs were easy to procure, and the police weren’t terribly interested, if there wasn’t any suspicion of a crime.

  It was assumed that they led new lives. Several experts believed that they simply recreated the minutiae of their previous existence elsewhere. If they washed dishes in a restaurant in one town, they likely now washed dishes in a restaurant in another town.

  But other experts thought that a dramatic break was more likely. A drastic new life. Perhaps in a dream town they had read about, or a favorite vacation spot remembered from childhood.

  If they had been single, they might now choose to marry.

  All the experts agreed that the Disappeared would try to find a place where they could feel love.

  Colin tried to slot Elliot Devine into the ranks of the Disappeared. If Devine was running, he was running from a tangible threat of six people, all blonde, plus lawyers, all after his money. It was possible that he was dead, and that Colin had been mistaken. But it was also possible that he had faked his own conclusion. Colin supposed it could be done, although he also strongly suspected that Devine had too much money to find true anonymity.

  Colin finished the article just as Angie texted him. The texts became an electronic flurry.

  She was coming over.

  He told her he would pick her up.

  She asked when.

  In an hour.

  She told him she had packed already.

  He said that was great.

  She reminded him they hadn’t decided how long they would stay.

  Was that okay?

  Yes. She was flexible.

  He had also already packed, and this he did not share in a text.

  For the next hour, Colin invented a number of small things to do around his house. And as he killed time, he found that he couldn’t stop smiling.

  He loved his cottage. He was bringing a date. He was going to sprinkle his dead wife’s ashes on the water. He was chasing the trail of a dead man.

  A favorite location. A possible new romance. A sad occasion. A sense of adventure.

  He was at Angie’s front door in just under an hour and a half. They were on the road and heading north ten minutes later.

  There had been no doorbell for Colin to ring. Instead there was a section of brittle, unpainted wood forming the silhouetted outline of where a doorbell had once been. The front door itself was tiger striped, with peeling paint and untreated veneer, weather abused, visibly buckled in places. The blades of grass out front were sparse enough to be individually countable, and Colin could see no evidence of even the most cursory yard care.

  Behind a leaf-encrusted screen, a window curtain parted seconds after his knock. The front door opened, and, a moment later, a decidedly curious Colin was ushered silently across the shabby threshold.

  “Welcome.”

  The interior of Angie’s house was small and bright and immaculate as a new pin. Period wood tables supported an explosion of freshly cut flowers. A cheerful mélange of antique rugs spread across slickly polished oak floors, the pristine wood surfaces extending across and upwards, merging organically into the carved door frames and the staircase.

  Colin continued to look around. “I’m assuming you didn’t tidy the place for me.”

  “You would be correct in that assumption.”

  “All these flowers didn’t come from the garden.”

  “There’s a flower stand in the summer months between the train station and the Mexican restaurant.

  Colin knew it well. He had shopped there himself on occasion. “They’re very pretty.”

  “Why thank you. I love flowers.”

  “I assume you don’t care much for tending them.”

  Her smile was mysterious. “Why do you think that?”

  “Well,” he faltered, “your yard—”

  “—Is an illusion I’m happy to provide.”

  She had already packed her small shoulder bag, and it lay at her feet. An immense pale grey sweatshirt was draped across her shoulders.

  He proceeded hesitantly, “The inside and the outside of your house. They don’t—”

  “No, they don’t. I live on the inside. The outside is a deception.”

  He was barely able to stop himself from remarking on the effectiveness of the deception.

  Minutes later, as Colin pointed his car in a northerly direction over
empty roads, Angie sat motionless in the soft leather of the passenger seat, cocooning herself in the expanse of her sweatshirt.

  “I get cold when I’m nervous,” she offered.

  A vintage white plastic Apple laptop was perched on Angie’s lap. Their bags nestled together on the back seat. Approximately half of Ruby Tugdale’s ashes wedged securely between the two bags.

  Angie finally asked, “Where will you put them?”

  “Somewhere,” he told her. “By the edge of the water. I’m not sure yet.”

  But Colin was being evasive. He had a plan. He would row one of their two kayaks out into the lake. There was a raft a hundred feet from the shore that they used to swim out to. In the interests of strict verisimilitude, Colin should have swum out to the raft holding onto the ashes. In his mind’s eye, he imagined this very scene, an Olympian tableau, where an urn was brandished above the waves by a godlike creature swimming with effortless strokes across the smooth water.

  But that didn’t seem a practical notion. He wasn’t that strong a swimmer. His half-baked plan was to paddle the distance then stand on the raft and throw the ashes into the air. He prayed he wouldn’t spill most of Ruby inside the canoe on the way out there.

  “Where did you put the rest of her ashes?” Angie asked him.

  “In the garden. In amongst her flower beds. It was what she wanted.”

  “We have that in common.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We both find comfort in flowers.”

  He stopped at a four-way intersection.

  “Make a right here,” she told him.

  “The highway is the other direction,” he was quick to point out.

  “I know,” she said.

  The laptop was open, and Angie was typing.

  “The drive is going to take us most of the day.”

  She didn’t look up. “Are we in a hurry?”

  He turned right as he was instructed.

  A few minutes later she looked up from the screen and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  His stated answer was nothing. But the unspoken answer was the raft, and the lake. And it was also Ruby.