by Thunboe, Bo
He leaned back. “I’ve searched everywhere except that big apartment complex by the casino. I need to do that now and then head south. There’s a polar vortex coming tonight, or in the morning.” He looked away from her steely gaze, embarrassed and disappointed in himself for being afraid to go in there alone.
“Inez used to live there.” Marla stood up. “Let’s talk to her before we go.”
* * *
Marla led the way, shotgun in her hands and two Glocks wedged in the back of her waistband. She’d given Dan an extra clip for his Glock but he couldn’t imagine needing more than the bullets in the first magazine. And he still had four bullets left in the revolver.
Inez had explained that the apartments in the complex were all electric, including the stove and baseboard heaters. With the temperature dropping and no way to heat their apartments the residents had to be cold, and would be at grave risk from the coming polar vortex.
The five buildings were arranged almost like circled wagons with a community building in the center next to a drained swimming pool. As they approached the complex, they saw three columns of gray smoke rising into the still air. These turned out to be from bonfires the residents had built inside the circled buildings. The fires, and the limited windbreak the buildings offered, would not be enough when the polar vortex got here. The residents tending the fires—tossing in pizza boxes and other garbage pulled from the dumpsters—looked at them, but said nothing. Probably because of Marla’s gun.
The building manager’s office shared the central building with the laundromat. They found the manager behind her desk, bundled in a giant parka with a fur-lined hood. Her head snapped up when Marla knocked on the open door. She was Latina with big expressive eyes and full lips. She pushed back from her desk and put her hands out in front of her, eyes wide and locked on Marla’s gun. “I don’t have anything worth taking.”
Marla put the sling over her shoulder and let the gun hang down behind her.
“We need your help.” Marla entered the office and Dan followed her. He’d slid the Glock into his waistband and had his hands out and visible. The woman looked back and forth between them.
“A cold front—a polar vortex—is coming tonight or tomorrow morning,” Marla told her. “Temperatures are going to drop below zero.”
“None of our apartments have heat,” the woman said.
“The police station has power,” Dan said. “Maybe they could house some of your people.”
The woman—the plaque on her desk said her name Elena Perez— pursed her lips, her eyes dropping to a computer print that listed a dozen or more names. She thumbed the edge, then looked up. “Some of our residents have physical impairments that make it hard for—” She closed her eyes tight, took a breath, and opened them. “That’s my problem. What do you two want help with?”
Marla looked to Dan and he took the lead explaining about Erin being abducted near the casino and his search for her. Elena was shaking her head before he was done.
“Our residents have to pass a security check, but some residents let other people move in to share the rent, or whatever. We act fast when one of them acts up, but until then…” She shrugged. “Renters can have guests.” She swiveled her chair and pulled a stack of index cards out of a drawer in the credenza. She transcribed their contents onto a piece of paper and handed it to Dan. Six apartment numbers, with two names following each.
“The first name is our renter. The second name is the guest. They’re all men, no big surprise. Men without jobs, who sleep most of the day and get a lot of visitors after dark.”
Would he find Erin in one of these apartments? His stomach churned as his mind struggled with what he hoped to find and what he was afraid to find.
“Thank you,” Marla said. “We’ll—”
“Please don’t shoot anyone.”
Marla nodded, but didn’t make any promises. Back outside Marla took the list and traced a finger down the page. “I only know this one name,” she said. “We’ll do that one last.” She pulled the shotgun up in front of her. Dan pulled out his Glock and they got to it.
In three of the apartments the suspicious men were not home and the women cooperated, more or less. In two of the other three, Marla had to point her persuader to gain entrance. Dan followed her inside with Glock raised. None of the five netted them any information about what had happened to Erin.
They stood outside the last apartment. Marla had the shotgun up in front of her, hands kneading the grips, a line of sweat glistening on her upper lip.
“This is the guy you know?” Dan asked.
Marla didn’t respond, her eyes blank and staring at the door. He nudged her and she startled. “Just a guy from my past. I—”
The door opened. A tall slender man in a long fur coat with dreadlocks down his back. His eyes widened and he tilted his head back in surprise. “Marla Coutrie, my Crescent Queen.”
Marla licked her lips. “We’re looking for this man’s daughter.” Her voice was low, barely more than a whisper, like this man had drained the nerve out of her.
The man tilted his head and looked at Dan. “This the whitey that saved your wife from the fire?”
Marla’s head pulled back, then she pressed the shotgun’s muzzle to the man’s chest. “We’re coming in, Jerry.”
Jerry scowled and stood fast. “You know I don’t use that name anymore.”
“Fine,” Marla said. Her voice louder. “Step aside, King Creole.”
He grinned. “Of course, my queen.”
The apartment reeked of marijuana and body odor. It was a corner unit doubled in size because someone had cut through the wall into the adjacent apartment. Four other men sat around a huge sectional sofa that faced a giant television mounted on the wall, all bundled up in fur and quilted down and thick hats.
“Gentleman, I’m sure you all remember my prom queen.” Jerry indicated Marla with a flourish.
Marla faltered, the muzzle of the shotgun wavering.
The biggest of the men dropped his feet from the coffee table and started to rise, two others reached under their coats.
Dan raised the Glock and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The men froze, then looked at the TV, spidered with cracks emanating from a bullet hole.
“What the fuck, man!” The big man spread his arms wide. “How we gonna watch our shows!”
“Sit back down.” Marla stepped forward, gun raised, her breathing hard and fast. “Now!”
The men all sat back down and Jerry stood behind the couch.
Dan pulled out Erin’s photo. “My daughter was walking home on the Wolf River Trail last night and was attacked by the casino. What do you know about that?”
Jerry looked from Dan to Marla and back. “We don’t go—don’t no one go—anywhere near the casino. The cops patrol that all fucking day and night, protecting that tax money. And the people who own the casino have associates in various organizations.”
That was basically the same story the cops and the East Side Tres had told Dan, but Erin was still gone.
“Look at her picture.” Marla gestured with the shotgun. “Have you seen her?”
Jerry took the photo, looked at it, and passed it on. None of the men had seen her or heard anything about her or were even aware that anything had happened at the casino.
“We been staying in pretty much since this thing happened,” Jerry said.
“I’m going to look around,” Dan said.
“The man with the gun makes the rules,” Jerry said.
Dan made a fast circuit through the expanded apartment; Erin wasn’t there. They left.
“Sorry about freezing up like that,” Marla said when they were back in the hallway. “I didn’t think seeing him would bring that whole time back to me. I was so confused back then. About who I was and what I wanted. I just went along with the whole high school thing.”
“He was really your prom date?”
She nodded.
&n
bsp; “Seems like you could have done better.”
She smiled. “Pickings were slim.”
They walked back outside, then worked all three fires, showing Erin’s photo and asking if anyone had heard anything about an incident at the casino. They came up dry.
The wind kicked up as they left the shelter of the buildings. His anxiety while working the six apartments had soaked him with sweat that the wind was turning to ice. He shivered, then glanced over. Marla looked unbothered.
“What was your day job, Marla?”
“I’m a bus driver, but I was an Army medic for twenty years. There were plenty of times where I had to defend myself.”
He believed it.
On the way back to Inez’s apartment Marla helped him work the neighborhood east of the casino, going house to house, showing everyone Erin’s picture. People were home—where else would they be—but no one had seen her. With every house, with every step, the dark cloud of doubt and despair that had plagued him since he found her backpack edge deeper into his brain.
As twilight started to fade Marla grabbed his shoulder and stopped his rush to the next house.
“Just a few more houses,” he said.
“Pushing people like we’ve been doing after dark is a bad idea.”
“We can—”
“Dan. I’m sorry. But she’s gone. I don’t know why, or who, but that’s it. You need to get home to your wife and boy. The same craziness we’ve seen here is going to make its way to your town. You can’t leave them alone for that.”
She was right. He bit his lip and fought off tears.
“You’ll spend the night with us, then go in the morning.”
“I can’t. That vortex is coming.”
“Well, at least have another bowl of stew before you head south.”
He followed her back to Inez’s apartment thinking about his failure, and about Mary. She would never forgive him. They’d live the rest of their lives with that ugliness between them. He couldn’t take that.
Listen to yourself, Fallon. They need you, that’s it. You go home and you take it and you devote the rest of your life to protecting the family you have left. Go.
When they got back to Inez’s place, he ate another bowl of her stew and got on his bike. He hoped someone would try to stop him on the way home. He’d blast them to hell and laugh doing it. And if they bested him, so what.
The wind picked up as the polar vortex pushed its way south into Illinois but the trees lining the trail shielded him from the worst of it, and was behind him, pushing him along. His head and his soul were so filled with his own loss, his own despair, that he had no room for anything else.
Then he was home, straddling the bike on the street in front of their house, the wind buffeting him. Mary was inside. Right now, she still had some hope that he would bring Erin home. When he stepped inside, alone, he would kill her hope.
He got off the bike and wheeled it toward the house. A shape crossing the yard. A coyote, heading south. He watched it go, loping confidently in the quiet. In the Fleck’s yard the coyote ran up a mound of dirt and sat back on its haunches and howled. He parked the bike and walked down there, the coyote scampering away as he approached.
A grave.
Craig Fleck must have died. He was a good man and his long road to death had been painful.
Dan put his bike in the garage. The deer was gone, but the space still smelled like raw meat.
He went inside, sat on the bench in the mudroom and took off his boots in the soft flickering glow that bled in from the family room. He put the boots on the mud tray, stood up and stretched his back, then took off his coat and hat.
Something blocked the light and he looked that way. Mary, backlit by the flickering fire.
“Mary.” He choked back a sob and walked slowly toward her. She met him in the kitchen, and wrapped her arms around him. Eventually, she pulled back and led him to the couch.
“I’m sorry—”
“Tell me everything. Every single thing you did.”
He went through it all—the ride up there, saving Julia from the fire, meeting Marla, learning from her about Erin heading for home alone and being attacked, about Marla saving her, about Erin continuing on, about shooting one of the men who’d attacked Erin, about raiding the men’s house looking for Erin and finding his shooting victim dead, about the old lady on the porch with the big gun, about Marla staying behind and finishing the job, about finding Erin’s backpack by the casino, about searching the neighborhood half the night and sleeping through the dawn hidden under a bush, about the two dead men up at Erin’s hotel, about the notes, about making the police report and visiting the gang-bangers’ house, and about Marla helping him search the big apartment complex and the neighborhood by the casino.
“Then I rode home. I’m so—”
“You could not have done anything more,” she said, eyes locked on his. “I know that and believe it and I’m glad you made it home.”
“Marla’s going to check with the police once a week and take care of Erin if—”
“That’s good,” Mary said. The words held the hard bite that meant she didn’t want to hear any more. “Death isn’t scary, Dan. It’s not the end. What comes next depends on what you do, here, while you live on earth and with other people. Our angel earned her way to heaven and each of us must do that too and we can look forward to being with her again when each of us makes it there.”
Dan wasn’t sure of all of that, but if believing it helped Mary, he would go with it. Telling Mary he hadn’t found Erin had released the tension that was keeping him awake and the sorrow and despair flooded back, wiping him out. He leaned back, and closed his eyes.
66
Mary watched Dan sleep, the fire’s glow flickering shadows across his face. He’d slept so little over the last few days that he would sleep deep and for a long time.
She found the fancy stationary he’d given her way back when they first met, and sat down at the kitchen table to write him a letter. A paragraph into it she realized her hands were shaking so badly her writing looked like a crazy person’s scribbles. She threw that page in the garbage then took a few deep breaths, letting each out long and slow. Her hand steadied and her pulse quieted and as she started, she focused on the pen in her hand and on the feel of its nib gliding across the paper and let the words flow through her and onto the page. She wrote about meeting him, her doubts about having a relationship with her mental condition, her happiness when Sean and Erin approved of him, her joy when he wanted her children to move in with them when their dad died, and how it filled her heart every time she saw him with Erin or Sean. And about what a great father he was.
She wrote about running out of her pills and how her mind had cracked repeatedly over the last few days and that she WOULD NOT subject him and Sean to seeing her descend into madness.
She wrote about her complete and total belief that Dan had done EVERYTHING he could to find Erin. About the pain of losing her and about her faith that Erin was in a better place. About her confidence Dan would redeem himself in God’s eyes for what he had been forced to do on his way home from Iowa and on his trip to Elgin.
The pen scratched to a halt when the words stopped. She didn’t review what she’d written. The words were perfect because she’d felt them and God had written them through her hand.
She put the letter in an envelope and propped it against the centerpiece on the kitchen table. Then she wrote a short letter to Sean, and another to Judy.
67
Dan woke to someone shaking his shoulder. Sean. Eyes wide. Out of breath.
“Wake up!”
Dan sat up. The fire had died and the room was cold, an icy draft coming down the chimney. The polar vortex. Damn! How cold was it?
“Dan!”
Dan rubbed his face. “Okay. I’m awake.”
“Mom’s gone!” Sean rattled a piece of paper. “She left us letters.”
“Gone? She’s not in the house?”<
br />
“No.” Sean thrust an envelope into Dan’s hands. It had his name on it in Mary’s big loose cursive. Why would she write them letters? “What does your letter say, Sean?”
“She told me you didn’t find Erin.” Sean slapped his letter against his thigh. “The rest is a mess. She ran out of her pills. I… anyway. It ended with ‘I’m sorry I had to do this. Goodbye.’”
Goodbye? Dan tore open his envelope and found three sheets of paper inside. The handwriting was shaky and the sentences ran on and on. About their life together and her mental issues and a whole jumble of things. He skipped to the end. “Here! She says she’s going to meet Him—capital H—where she always feels his presence.”
“What does that mean?”
“Outside,” Dan said. “She means outside.” Mary had never felt God’s presence in church, a fact that amused her. “Under a big sky.” That’s why she always like to vacation out west—Arizona and New Mexico and Colorado. Places with clear blue skies and wide-open vistas. “Your mom would hug herself and say she felt God’s presence under those skies.” But he didn’t remember her saying that around here. There were no wide, open vistas. No place with big—
“The dam,” Sean said. “I’ve seen Mom standing on the top of the dam staring up at the sky and hugging herself.”
Dan had never seen Mary do that, but the location made sense. The dam was nearly a quarter mile of concrete that pushed the woods back and the view upriver was long. That spot was as wide-open as it got in Weston. “Let’s go.”
They hustled into the mudroom for their coats. Dan sat on the stool and pulled on his boots.
“This is her coat,” Sean said.
“It’s probably below zero out there!”
“It’s four below. I checked the thermometer.”
Dan tied his boots and grabbed his coat, pulling it on as he ran through the garage. The polar air outside tightened his face and chilled his hands. He pulled on his hat and gloves as they ran for the dam. The air was so cold it hurt his throat. Would Mary even make it there without her coat?