Hard Cold Winter (26 page)

B
ARRETT AND PARSON YORKE
brought Elana to the cemetery on Crown Hill to visit their friends’ graves. They had all missed Kend’s funeral the week before. Elana had been in hiding during the ceremony. Barrett had stayed with her distraught brother.

Even now, Parson looked shaky. The bruises from Rusk’s beating had healed, but his hurt went deeper than that. He was out on bail, after a lot of legal legerdemain by the Yorke family. They were playing him up as a big, dumb kid who trusted the wrong people. It wasn’t bullshit. But his passport had been confiscated by the Feds, just in case.

The cemetery still allowed upright grave markers, which were scattered in familial patches through the grass and trees and flat stones. Kend’s was a small wedge of granite, with his full name and birth and death years on a plaque. Other Haymes graves were nearby. On the oldest, the dates were so smooth that I could only make out that the stone had been carved in the ninteenth century. Kend’s marker was the smallest.

Barrett read a poem. Parson stood and stared blankly at the marker. Elana wept, silently.

In the days after Harbor Island, Elana had told me her story of the long, horrible night at the cabin. Kend’s gambling and his evasiveness had been driving a wedge between the two lovers. Barrett had been a focal point of that tension. Elana had been convinced that she and Kend were having an affair.

When Kend had called Elana and said he was leaving for the cabin, she suspected the worst.

“I thought about how weird that was for him to just leave, and I kept obsessing about Kend and Barrett, together.” Elana had told me. “Then I called Trudy and ragged to her about all of that same crap for half the evening. Finally I figured, screw them both. I might as well catch them in the act.”

“You and Trudy drove out together. In her convertible,” I had said.

“Kend had taken my car, since he didn’t have one anymore. I was so mad. That was just twisting the knife, right? Taking off for the weekend with Barrett in my own car.”

“What happened?”

“Trudy and I got to the cabin. It was really late, almost morning. No Barrett anywhere. Kend was still awake. And angry. He said we had to leave, but he wouldn’t tell me why. He kept looking up the road.”

“Waiting for Reuben to come and buy the Tovex.” But it had been Kasym who had made the witching-hour visit instead.

“Finally I was so furious with Kend that I had to leave, to go up to the main house, and cool off. Our fighting had exhausted Trudy. She stayed. In case Barrett really did show up, but also because she didn’t want to drive anymore.”

Elana had returned an hour later, to find a nightmare.

“I hardly remember seeing them,” she had said to me. “Isn’t that strange? It was so—”

“I understand.” I remembered the cabin a little too well. When the images came back, Elana would need help dealing.

“I just remember running. Running for help. Running away. Maybe whoever had killed them was after me. I drove as fast as I could. It wasn’t until I got to the ferry that I realized my purse was back at the cabin.
Trudy’s purse was still in the car. So I paid for the ferry with her cash, and that gave me the idea.”

“Hide out as Trudy,” I said, “until you were safe.”

“By that time I knew—or thought I knew—why someone had killed them. Kend had been honest with me, about the gambling at least. He was in way too deep. We’d argued about asking his father for help, but he wouldn’t. I was sure I could find his bookie. I risked telling Parson I was alive. He tried to help me by placing bets around town, asking who knew Kend. Broch’s name rose to the top of the list.”

Which was why Parson had called Broch’s place of business, and made himself a prime suspect in Broch’s murder. For all Reuben’s boasting of doing me a favor by eliminating Broch, the loan shark’s death had also snipped a loose end that might have led back to the Russians, after all the bombs went off and Kend was linked to their theft.

Elana and Barrett had cried a lot together during the past week, and reconciled. Their circle had become smaller, and tighter.

They didn’t leave a rectangle of bare earth on graves anymore. Too bleak, probably. Strips of fresh grass sod made an emerald patchwork in front of Kend’s marker. Elana bent down and placed the bouquet and touched Kend’s name for a long moment.

“Thanks for coming,” she said to me, rising. “Walk with us to Trudy?” Trudy had been cremated. Her urn was in a columbarium on the cemetery grounds.

Elana was unsteady on the dirt path on her heels. She took my arm as we walked down the gentle grade toward the enclosed mausoleum.

As we made our way through the cemetery, I finally shared the whole story of what I had done with Reuben Kuznetzov. Her mouth was set in a firm line of approval at hearing how Old Lev’s men had hustled him into the limousine.

“I knew it had to be Reuben, when you talked about Kend stealing cases from his dad’s company,” she said. “Reuben oozed up to me at Willard’s card game a few months ago. He pretended he was just making conversation. Did Kend work for his dad? Was he treating me right, spending money on me, shit like that.”

“Digging for info, and hitting on you at the same time. Efficient,” I said.

“Later on I found him getting all chummy with Kend. I thought Reuben was just looking for another sucker to bet big at the card game. But he was setting Kend up the whole time, wasn’t he?”

“He was probably already imagining ways to steal the metal from his father. He wanted a big diversion. And Reuben knew how to work with explosives.”

“I was ready to murder him,” she said. “I
wanted
to do it. Not have Willard step in and handle things. If my uncle never learned about my troubles, that would have been fine with me.”

The last time Willard had tried to help, he’d convinced Elana to stay silent about our theft at Gallison Engineering. I still felt shameful about that. And I couldn’t fault Elana for being wary of her uncle’s priorities. Kend and Trudy hadn’t meant anything to him.

Elana and I hung back, as Parson and Barrett stopped to admire some of the older stones. Elana shook her head. “I tried to play Reuben, to get close enough. Told him that Kend’s loan shark must have killed Kend and Trudy at the cabin, and that I had run away and hidden for a few days, thinking Broch would come looking for me next. I said I was so relieved to hear Broch was dead, and could I just hang with big, tough Reuben for a while until I felt safer?” She mimed batting her eyelashes and fanning her face.

“He wasn’t fooled.”

“Stupid me. I put on the terrified girl act and he said, ‘It’s okay, baby, I’ll protect you.’”

“Reuben wasn’t a bad actor himself. And maybe he suspected you already.”

“The second we walked in the door at the shipping company, that pet maniac of his stuck me in the neck with a syringe. I knew I was dead. I was so surprised when I woke up in the boathouse. With you.”

“I was pretty glad to wake up there myself.”

It had been a very, very close thing. I was still pushing the details of that night away with a mental broom handle. I would look at them
more closely when some time had passed, and marvel at the nearness of it.

“Willard’s asked me to take over the card game,” Elana said.

I looked up, jolted out of my musings. “Do you want to?”

“It’s a possibility,” she said. “I might try being a straight citizen instead. The path not taken.”

“What will Willard do?”

She smiled. “I’m not sure even he knows that. But he’s gotten edgy. He might need more action than he admits to.”

Willard
had
looked happy, with the rifle in his hands after the meeting with Old Lev.

The granite plaque for Trudy’s niche was understated and elegant. Elana was pleased. It read
TRUDY
instead of Gertrude, which Elana said she would have hated.

We walked back to the parking lot. The path was smooth, but Elana took my arm anyway.

“I’m glad that you didn’t kill Reuben,” I said.

“I was certain that I could, at first.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure now.”

“It changes you. After.”

She looked at me. Her jade eyes traversed the line of each scar in the left side of my face, without haste or shame, and came back to meet mine.

“I wish you could have known them,” she said.

I looked across at the verdant lawn, the rows of markers, and thought about that ghostly separation from reality that had plagued me, after the focus of danger. I didn’t feel that remove now. I didn’t feel any longing to be at war, either.

Mostly, I felt relief that I wasn’t occupying one of those graves.

It was enough.

L
UCE AND I STOOD
on the orphaned stone steps, looking at the charred wreckage of the house. The bits and pieces had fallen where they had first burned, and the rain in the days since had steadily driven the ash and smaller chunks down into the hollow of the old stone foundation, creating a pit of wet charcoal sludge. What remained standing looked like a piece of theater scenery.

“What’s the opposite of
façade
?” I said, stepping down to walk around the edge of the heap. “Is there a word for just the back of a house?”

She smiled, tucking a strand of gilded hair behind her ear. “I wonder sometimes if you’ve always had gallows humor, or if that’s an Army thing.”

“Yes and yes.”

Two days of sunshine had grudgingly allowed some warmth, and neither of us wore coats. Luce’s green blouse replaced a fraction of the color from the trees that were now gone. I wore a plaid flannel shirt with long sleeves, although the temperature didn’t require it. The ban
dages on my burned wrists made too many people look at me with mixed parts embarrassment and pity.

I pushed a small pile of slag and timber out of the way with my foot. “I’ll need a rake and a shovel. Maybe a few things survived.”

“One of the gang at the bar will have lawn tools. We’ll come out and make a day of it,” Luce said, a fraction too cheerfully.

“You don’t need to,” I said.

“I don’t mind.” Then she looked at me sidelong. “You don’t just mean the salvage work.”

“You’ve been wanting to talk to me,” I said. “Waiting until things calmed down.”

Luce looked down at the porch slats. The fire had left a piecrust of wood at the far corner. It started three paces from the steps and curved around for fifteen feet before its burned-match end. “You had to keep yourself safe. And me.”

“So here we are.”

She nodded. I waited.

“We aren’t right for each other,” she said. “These past weeks, even before this”—she motioned to the house—“I’ve been in knots. It wasn’t about Willard, or even Broch and his goons.”

A crow landed on the back fence, looked us over, decided against whatever it had in mind and flapped off.

“We were trying to make a fling more than it was, maybe,” I said.

“Please don’t. Don’t mark us down like that,” she said. Her eyes were wet, which added an extra dimension to their stormy color. “When you were here last year, that time was so short and intense. I thought that when you came back home and you stayed, it could go two ways. Either what I felt was all a ball of infatuation and new energy and it would fade and I’d be fine with that ending. Or we’d develop into something more.”

“But neither happened.”

“No. And you know it, too, I can tell. I’m wanting you more. And you’re pulling away. This nightmare with Kend and the Russians, for God’s sake. That wasn’t why. That just gave you a direction to go.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“If you did, this might be easier. You seemed—
happy
isn’t right. Resolute. More than with me.”

“I don’t need thrills to be happy, Luce.”

She thought it over. “Maybe not. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re bred to it. That kind of excitement. After all the grief of the last week, could you say you would have preferred to stay out of it? If Elana and all those people hadn’t needed saving, would you still have gotten involved?”

I didn’t know how to answer conjectures like that. I hadn’t jumped in looking to play hero. Or even because I wanted to see Reuben K hang. If the bombs had gone off and the city had burned, I would never stop wondering if I could have stopped it. I couldn’t have lived with the question. Not if I stayed in Seattle. Maybe not anywhere.

None of which mattered to me and Luce, together. The answer wouldn’t fix us.

“Our lives,” I said. I had thought I was going to say more, but whatever words were next didn’t arrive. We both just stood.

“I like running things. I’ll probably find something else to manage, after I sell the Morgen someday,” she said.

“I’m not blaming the bar. Or you.”

She stood at the edge of the highest step. The kind of woman the Norsemen had in mind when they dreamed up Valkyries, high on the wing over the battlefield.

“I really do—” Luce said, and I was shaking my head to stop her almost before she’d started.

It was probably true. All the more reason not to hear it.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG
for the winter rains to return. A soft, icy patter had driven the most of the world indoors while Leo and I ran on the two-lane road of the Arboretum. We wore waterproof gear with hoods and baseball caps. Our feet, mine in my broken-in ASICS and Leo’s in a pair of New Balances we’d bought earlier in the morning, were wet. Seattle socks.

Each time a car would approach, we’d jump the tiny, rushing river along the curb and wait for the car to hiss past. We could have run through the mud alongside the road. Or taken a longer route to loop back to the house. But the slower pace was better. Leo was still healing. And although the bandages were off my wrists, every once in a while a joint or muscle would twinge to remind me that it was less than happy.

“You ever been through here before?” I said, nodding at the dogwood trees.

“No,” Leo said between breaths.

“It’s bare-looking now, with the leaves gone. When spring comes, it’s a hell of a place.”

We waited for one minivan to ease past. Leo watched the tree line, scanning it in the same way he’d had eyes on every street and car we’d passed.

“You sleeping?” he said.

“Mostly,” I said. “I had that old dream just last night, with the rifle fire. But I could sleep after. You?”

“Off and on,” he said. “But the days are better.”

We came to the end of the park and wound our way around to Montlake. I stopped to stretch out my Achilles. Leo stood, shoulders back, exhalations making white bursts in the air.

“V.A. gave me a start date,” he said. “Last week of March.”

“The inpatient program?” I asked. He nodded. “How long?”

“Two weeks, they think. Out-care afterward.”

“Not too long.”

“Not too long,” he agreed. “And it’s in the city.”

“So I can visit.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe your nurse can, too,” I said.

He glanced sideways at me. “You know about that?”

“She blushed a little when I picked you up at the hospital last week. And her blouse wasn’t all the way zipped.”

Leo might have smiled. It was hard to tell sometimes with Leo.

He wasn’t the only one making plans. With the paltry insurance on the house, I had just enough to afford a new foundation and to buy the lumber for the framing. I’d figure out the rest as I went.

A future, one piece at a time. Luce wouldn’t be part of it. I’d have to take that in steps, too.

“How far?” said Leo, looking up the hill of 24th Avenue.

“To my street? Over a mile, all up. It’s a meat grinder.”

“We could catch the bus,” he said. “If you want.”

“I’m not the guy with stitches in his head.”

“Screw that. Bet a steak dinner that I can beat you.” His grin was obvious now. Baiting me. Trying to take my mind off my troubles.

I came out of the stretch. Bounced twice on my toes, loose and springy, and looked up the long, steep incline.

“Shut up and run,” I said.