The Cold Nowhere (5 page)

Like the one in his mind dedicated to Michaela Mateo.

*

‘Private party,’ the guard told Stride, holding up a beefy hand to stop him as he boarded the
Charles Frederick
.

Stride peeled back the flap of his black leather jacket, revealing his badge pinned to the inside pocket. ‘I have an invitation.’

The guard swore under his breath. He looked like a tackle on the UMD football team, with a blond crew cut, no neck, and a
huge torso bulked with muscle, not fat. He was young, probably not even twenty years old. He wore red nylon shorts despite the cold morning, holey sneakers, and a gray sweatshirt with a logo advertising Lowball Lenny’s used cars.

‘What’s your name?’ Stride asked.

‘Marcus,’ the kid told him.

‘You been here all night, Marcus?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tell me about the party.’

‘I don’t know anything about that. They hired me to make sure nobody crashed. I stayed down here. All the fun was upstairs.’

‘Who hired you?’ Stride asked.

Marcus pointed to his sweatshirt. ‘Lowball Lenny. You know, Leonard Keck. The car guy. This was some big celebration for his top salesmen. He brought them in from around the state.’

‘Was Lenny here himself?’

‘Yeah, but he left early. He was gone by eleven o’clock.’

‘You saw him leave?’

‘He walked right past me down the steps. Had his F-150 parked across the street.’

Stride wasn’t surprised to hear Leonard Keck’s name in connection with the party. Lenny was one of the richest men in the northland, thanks to his string of Ford dealerships and his commercial real estate developments around the state. He’d served on the Duluth City Council for a decade. He was also a close personal friend of Stride’s boss, Kyle Kinnick, the Chief of Police. The combination of money and political power, and a relationship with K-2, made Lenny believe he was bullet-proof.

‘Let me guess,’ Stride said. ‘The girls arrived later.’

‘Girls?’

Stride was getting impatient. ‘Marcus, you play for the Bulldogs, right?’

‘I do, that’s right.’

‘Your parents won’t be too happy if your scholarship gets yanked, but that’s what happens when you lie to the police. Understand? So don’t play dumb with me. I know there were girls here.’

Marcus’s face reddened. ‘Okay, yeah, about a dozen girls showed up before midnight. Some guy brought them in a van.’

‘Who?’

‘He was a little guy, skinny, with Hitler hair. Lots of cologne.’

Stride nodded. The description sounded like Curt Dickes.

‘I’m interested in one girl in particular. Small, Hispanic, brown hair and eyes, very attractive.’

‘Yeah, I remember a girl like that,’ Marcus admitted. ‘She was hard to miss.’

‘When did she leave?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her.’

‘Were you here all night?’ Stride asked.

‘Well, I grabbed a nap after midnight,’ Marcus admitted. ‘I figured all the guys were busy with the girls upstairs, and I had a tough practice yesterday.’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘There are beds in the crew quarters on the stern. The party was on the other end.’

‘Did you see or hear anything?’

‘Nah, I crashed. I sleep like the dead. I set my phone to get up in twenty minutes, but I blew through the alarm. I was gone for an hour.’ He looked nervous. ‘Don’t tell anybody, okay?’

‘I better not find out you were with one of the girls, Marcus,’ Stride said.

The kid shook his head. ‘I wasn’t. No way. I got a girlfriend, sir, and she’d rip me a new one if I messed around.’

‘Good.’

Stride left Marcus and took the stairs to the main deck. He stood alone outside, surrounded by the long expanse of red steel. The
Frederick
was small compared to the thousand-foot freighters that
now traversed the Great Lakes, but it was still an imposing boat. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and followed the starboard railing toward the fantail, where Cat said she’d run from her pursuer. Puddles of melted snow gathered on the metal deck. Cold wind swirled off the lake.

At the stern, where the massive anchor chain slipped into the water, he saw no ice choking the channel, but the water temperature could be no more than forty degrees. He imagined Cat throwing herself toward the canal. He knew what that long second felt like before the frigid impact. He’d gone off the side of the Blatnik Bridge between Duluth and Superior the previous year during a police chase and nearly died of the fall. Panic attacks had dogged him for months. Even now, the height made him dizzy.

He examined the channel. Near the pedestrian bridge, he spotted something caught on one of the wooden posts where pleasure boats tied up during the summer. It swished and eddied with the movement of the waves. When he squinted, he saw what looked like flowers opening and closing on a sodden mass of fabric. It looked like a girl’s dress.

Cat’s dress. She’d been in the water, just like she said.

Stride backtracked the length of the boat. He reached the multistory superstructure of the bridge, and the door to the guest quarters was open. He heard laughter somewhere above him. He followed two flights of steps to an elegant half-moon-shaped lounge. He found half a dozen men inside, drinking whiskey from crystal tumblers and playing cards. Once upon a time, rich men had stayed here. Steel company presidents. Army generals. Congressmen. Now boys who made too much money came here to pretend to be their fathers.

One of the men had a gauze pad taped to his forehead under messy blond bangs. The man, who was well dressed and in his mid-thirties, sprang up as Stride walked in. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Police,’ Stride said.

The laughter stopped, like switching off a record player. The car dealers clamped their mouths shut in nervous silence. The man with the bandage adopted a showroom face. He grinned and finished his drink, as if the arrival of a cop were nothing more than a chance to make a sale.

‘Always a pleasure to meet one of Duluth’s finest,’ he said. ‘How can we help you?’

Stride pointed a finger at the man. ‘Let’s talk.’

The man with the bangs spread his arms wide, pleasant and helpful. ‘Sure, whatever. Let’s get some fresh air. Another gorgeous Duluth morning out there. Guys, don’t look at my cards.’

They exited the lounge onto the landing of the upper deck. The car salesman leaned his elbows on the white railing and lit a cigarette. ‘So what’s up, Officer?’ he asked. ‘Why the little visit?’

‘Lieutenant,’ Stride corrected him. ‘I hear there was a party on the boat last night.’

He saw a flicker of concern in the man’s easygoing face. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was thinking.
The girl talked
. He was debating in his head whether to shut up, lie, or confess.

‘Yes, it’s our annual sales award banquet,’ the man said, with a false air of surprise. ‘I’m the top salesman at Keck Ford in Warroad. Conrad Carter, that’s me. You need a new vehicle, Lieutenant?’

‘Where’d you get that wound on your forehead?’ Stride asked, pointing at the bandage.

‘I slipped. Banged my head. Footing’s pretty treacherous on this old boat.’

‘I heard that a girl hit you,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah? Where did you hear that?’

‘She told me.’

‘Someone told you that? No, it’s not true. Besides, if someone knocked me in the head, that would make me a victim, wouldn’t it? I’d be the one pressing charges, and I’m not. So what’s the problem?’

‘She was sixteen,’ Stride said.

The car salesman’s face froze in dismay. ‘Sixteen? Really? Well, you’ve definitely been getting some bad information, Lieutenant.’

‘I know there were girls here last night, Mr. Carter,’ Stride said.

‘Okay, sure, some ladies decided to join us. What’s a party without female companionship?’

‘Paid companionship?’

Conrad blew smoke from his mouth and crossed his heart with spread fingers. ‘You mean prostitutes? No, no, no, Lieutenant. There was no money changing hands here. Definitely not. If you have good-looking guys and free booze, you can always find women who like to have fun.’

‘Where did the girls come from?’ Stride asked. ‘Who knew they were going to be here?’

‘I really have no idea. Party planning’s not my thing. Maybe someone spread the word at the bars downtown. Maybe there was a flier on the bulletin board at UMD. Word travels fast.’

‘Did you talk to Curt Dickes?’

Conrad smiled. ‘Curt who?’

‘He brought the girls.’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

‘So who would?’ Stride asked. ‘Are you saying Mr. Keck arranged everything? I’ll be happy to tell him you said so.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Conrad replied quickly. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’

‘Then let’s try this again. Who arranged for the girls?’

Conrad drummed his fingers on the railing. He squinted over Stride’s shoulder at the lake. ‘You know, Lieutenant, I think I’ve said enough.’

‘You know which girl I’m talking about,’ Stride said. ‘Young, pretty, Hispanic. She was here. She hit you.’

‘If this girl was here, and she was under-age, then she faked her way on board. Nobody wants kids at a party like this. It kills the
mood, you know? As for me, I never saw her and I never touched her.’

‘You never solicited anal sex from her? Because she says you did, and that’s when she knocked you out with her boot. Right there, on your forehead.’

Conrad threw his cigarette on the deck and stamped it under his foot. ‘I told you we’re done, Lieutenant,’ he said coldly.

‘Someone was waiting for this girl outside the ship, Mr. Carter. She says he tried to kill her.’

‘
Kill
her?’ he said. ‘That sounds pretty crazy to me.’

‘Did you see or hear anything?’

‘No, I didn’t, and I think you better consider the source. A sixteen-year-old girl crashes a party to get some free drinks? And then starts throwing around wild accusations? If you ask me, she’s running some kind of scam.’

‘A scam?’

Conrad gestured toward the men in the lounge. ‘That’s right. My friends and I, we’re successful, we’ve got money. I don’t need to tell you how much money Lowball has. A street girl looks at that and thinks, “How can I get some of that for me?” So maybe she figures she can blackmail somebody.’

‘Is that what happened?’ Stride asked.

‘Nothing happened, Lieutenant,’ Conrad replied. ‘Nothing at all. I already told you. Whoever this girl is, she’s a liar. You can’t trust a word she says.’

As Stride descended into the cargo holds, his boots made a hollow echo on the iron grid of the stairwell. Wire-encased lights strung along the hull of the ship illuminated the huge space. Gray riveted walls rose to the high ceilings above him, and moisture squeezed through the hatches overhead and dripped to the steel floor like music. He smelled closed-in dankness that had gathered over the winter months.

He’d been on ships like this throughout his life. Access to international waters through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway sometimes meant that smugglers tried to ferry illegal cargo via the giant freighters. Drugs. Weapons. Even people – usually desperate immigrants bought and sold by human traffickers. Over the years, investigations in tandem with the FBI and Homeland Security had taken him onto the water many times.

His own experience with the ore boats went back to his childhood. His father had worked as a seaman and had often taken Stride aboard with him when he was in port. Stride had been five years old the first time, awed by the boat’s vast size. The ships had never completely lost their magic for him. There were days when Stride thought he would have been happier here on the boats than he was with the police. Then again, there were also days when he remembered what the lake had taken from him. A December wave on Superior had snatched his father into the sea, leaving him and his mother alone. The loss had broken his mother’s spirit, and for himself, it had been the first loss of many to follow. That was one
of the reasons he lived on the Point, to be closer to the ghosts of Superior.

From nowhere, a rat, alarmed by his presence, scampered into a pile of wooden beams. He had no idea how a rat could cross from the land to the ship, but rats were smart. They always found a way, and there were plenty of hiding places down here. He saw plywood walls throughout the massive hold that had been used to create a Halloween maze for children. Posters about Minnesota shipping and mining were covered in plastic and stacked in piles, ready to be unveiled for the tourist season. Tools and machines lay scattered like debris.

In the light, he could see to make his way, but for Cat, being here in total blackness would have been terrifying.

She’d been here. Just like she said.

Directly in his path, he saw the yellow forklift where she’d hidden. He stepped through standing water to get a closer look, and in one of the puddles he spotted a metallic glint reflecting off the light overhead. He squatted and used two fingers to extract a six-inch knife with an onyx handle from the water. He held it up by the hilt and examined it, then deposited it in a plastic evidence bag from his pocket.

Everything on the boat backed up Cat’s story, despite Conrad Carter’s denials. She’d struck the man who wanted to violate her. She’d dropped a knife in the cargo hold as she charged her pursuer, and then she’d fled into the water to escape.

He also thought:
A knife
.

This was the second time he’d found a knife connected to Cat. When he’d confronted her about taking a knife from his kitchen, she said it was for protection. In the places she went, in the things she did, her life was always at risk. That was true, but it still felt wrong to him. He didn’t like the idea of Cat obsessing over knives. She should have been terrified of knives; she should have associated
them with blood and evil. She should never have wanted to hold one in her hands.

Ten years ago, her father had stabbed her mother to death while Cat hid in the frozen night outside.

*

‘So how are you?’ Dory asked.

Cat didn’t answer. Her mind was reeling. She smelled the acrid smoke of Dory’s cigarette. Her aunt smoked cheap Indian cigarettes from Arkansas. They were strong, like road tar. She hadn’t smoked in weeks, but she wanted one between her lips now. ‘Can you spare a cig?’