Absolute Zero (17 page)

For several minutes Broker lost himself in the rhythm of the work, keeping warm, swinging the maul. Then more carefully he spilt several of the pieces into smaller strips. When he had a pile of kindling, he loaded an armful, turned to the deck, and saw Jolene standing on the steps watching him. Allen stood inside looking out the kitchen window.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. She had pulled a bulky blue sweater around her shoulders and wore a pair of scuffed leather slippers that were many sizes too large.

“Kind of hard to have a fire without wood,” Broker said.

She hugged herself. “Hank brought in this stuff before he went on the hunting trip and it’s just been sitting.”

“You have at least two cords of good oak there,” Broker said as he carried his load up the deck back to the studio. Jolene ran ahead to hold the door. Inside, Broker filled the wood box and found a hand hatchet next to the wood box which he used to splinter off some tinder.

Jolene stood over him with her arms folded across her chest. A pile of old newspapers lay next to the hearth and Broker crumpled several sheets in the grate, added the tinder, and stacked smaller pieces of wood, pyre-fashion, spacing them so the fire could breathe. He took out his lighter, lit the paper, and set the flue. The hot flame from the newsprint was sucked up the chimney. In a minute he had a good fire crackling.

The flicker from the flames put a hint of color in Jolene’s face. “Nice to have a fire,” she said.

Broker stood up and dusted off his hands. When he turned he had another of those uncomfortable impressions that Hank Sommer was watching him. Almost like . . . But when he looked more closely he saw that Hank’s eyes were wandering and rotating. The eye business engaged his curiosity. He needed more time, here, in this room. He needed a reason to come back.

“I have to get going. I’m going to need a ride. It’s not far; I’m staying at a friend’s farm about eight, nine miles away,” Broker said.

Jolene nodded. “Of course. Allen will give you a lift.”

For a moment Broker stood looking at Hank. He exhaled. “Words don’t come close, do they,” he said.

She smiled a utilitarian smile, then walked across the room and straightened the framed
Life
magazine cover. Broker followed her and inspected the June issue from 1942 that featured Vinegar Joe Stillwell’s face in black and white, looking like a weathered American Mars.

Jolene smiled and pointed to the date. “I found it in an antiques store; it came out on the exact day Hank was born. I probably shouldn’t have straightened it. What if it was the last thing he touched in this room?” She shifted her feet and started to lose her balance.

Broker raised his hand to steady her. She caught herself and said, “Thank you; I’m just a little tired.”

As they left the room Ambush the cat darted through their feet, crossed the floor, and smoothly leaped up on the bed. She curled against Hank’s motionless hands, and then slowly began to lick the fingers of his right hand with her pink sandpapery tongue.

Hi, Ambush, looky here; Broker is Prometheus, he brought us fire.

Broker found his reason to return as he followed her up the circular stairs. “You should get that wood split and out of the weather,” he said.

She turned, studied him, and simply said, “Yes.”

“Why don’t I drop by tomorrow afternoon and take care of that,” he said.

This time she just watched him and said nothing.

“About two,” he said.

“I’ll make a pot of coffee,” she said, and then they continued into the kitchen. Broker washed his hands in a bathroom off the kitchen while Jolene explained his transportation problem to Allen.

Allen had put on his coat and shoes and was holding Broker’s coat. “Let’s get going, I have to get back to the hospital and check on some folks.”

Jolene and Broker said good-bye. They did not mention chopping wood in the morning.

Allen drove over the speed limit but was very competent behind the wheel. For the first few minutes they chatted, catching up. Broker asked about Milt. Allen described again the insurance fiasco and the weird money-bind Jolene was in because of the trust. Then he delivered a flat, factual overview of Hank’s condition. “His involuntary muscles seem to function perfectly. But Jolene misinterprets his random blinking and eye movement for focused sight.” Allen turned to Broker and grimaced slightly. “It gives her false hope that he’ll recover.”

“She looks pretty done in,” Broker said.

“She’s watching him around the clock. So far, her jury-rigged home-care plan is working. In a few days Milt will have him into a full-care nursing home. Otherwise, he’s as good as his heart and lungs, and they are working just fine.”

“So he could go on for quite a while?” Broker said.

Allen pursed his lips and they remained quiet for a few miles. Broker asked finally, “The guy who answered the door? He was at the hospital up north.”

“Exactly,” Allen said. “Well, life’s a come-as-you-are party, and that guy—Earl Garf—is a visitor from Jolene’s previous life. I have to say that when she discovered she was broke, Earl was Johnny-on-the-spot to help her out. On the other hand, he, ah, also moved into the basement.”

“Maybe he smells a big malpractice settlement,” Broker said.

The remark caused Allen to study Broker’s profile for a few beats. “Yes, the thought has occurred to Milt and me.”

“Doesn’t look like the kind of person Hank would keep around,” Broker said. Some of the animus he felt against the younger man weighted his words.

“Believe me, if Hank was on his feet, Garf would be gone,” Allen said. “They had a fight once. Hank threw him out of the house.”

“Doesn’t sound like a good scene,” Broker said.

“I don’t think they’re intimate, if that’s what you mean,” Allen said tightly.

“Still,” Broker said.

“Right,” Allen said.

Then they arrived at J.T.’s and, seeing the birds gathered in a pool of barn light against the wire fencing, Allen said in a distracted voice, “Ostriches? They’re a healthy alternative to beef.”

They shook hands. Broker was hoping that Amy wouldn’t come walking out the door. Allen Falken was thinking that he was saying good-bye to Phil Broker forever. He turned his car and drove off with a final wave.

J.T. let Broker in and they went into the kitchen where Amy was helping a six-foot-tall thirteen-year-old set the table.

“Unca Honky, wazup?”

Broker narrowed his eyes at Shamika Merryweather. “You’re not suppose to be talking like that. It’s definitely not PC.”

“Certainly not in mixed company,” Shami said straight-faced. “And certainly not at school where it would be abusive and insensitive. But here at home I’m still under my daddy’s strict control, and my daddy says that’s your name.”

“How tall are you now?” Broker countered.

“Six foot. How tall are you?”

“Six foot.”

“Yeah, but I still have another five years to grow,” Shami said.

Amy walked up looking very sane and healthy to Broker after his visit to Sommer’s house. “How’d it go with Hank?” she asked.

“It’s hard to tell. He could be looking at people. But Allen Falken doesn’t think so.”

“Oh.”

“Right, that was him in the car. He just dropped me off. Which makes it harder for you to go Sommer’s house, because Allen can ID you.”

“So what’s next?”

“I’m going back tomorrow for another look.”

“Okay, can I take your truck to do my Mall of America junket?”

“Sure.” Broker rubbed his chin. “Basically, it’s pretty grim over at Sommer’s.”

“You don’t look grim,” Amy observed.

Broker was not one
to dream.

So the sudden flash of Sommer’s startling acetylene eyes jolted him awake and left him sitting up in the dark on the fold-out couch in J.T.’s unfamiliar living room.

Shadows strummed the wall above him as the wind pushed the willows back and forth. New night sounds murmured: the creak of the eaves, the furnace fan whirring on.

Sitting in the dark in one strange house he thought of another strange house. Sommer’s. Multileveled and full of people. Especially Garf, the wild card in the basement. Broker tried to imagine Jolene and Garf together in the cherry sleigh bed while Sommer treaded water in the next room.

He rejected the image, reformulated it, and put Garf back in the basement and saw Jolene, alone in the king-size bed. Did she sleep soundly or did she toss? Or did she really sleep in the narrow bed at Sommer’s feet?

Was she a diamond in the rough, or just an opportunist?

Jolene, Garf, Sommer, and the dead accountant were human puzzle pieces that he couldn’t make fit. And he wondered if Sommer would now be counted among the things he’d never know. Like where his daughter was sleeping tonight. He didn’t even know what country she was in.

What he did know was that he wouldn’t get back to sleep, so he felt around for his jeans, pulled them on, and carefully made his way between the shadowy furniture toward the kitchen.

Red digital numbers on the microwave stamped 5:29
A.M.
in the dark. A moment later an appliance clicked on with a watery gurgle—J.T.’s preset coffeemaker. Upstairs, on the same schedule as the coffeepot, people stirred. Doors opened and closed. Water ran in pipes.

Broker went back to the living room, got his travel bag, and took it to the half bath off the kitchen. When he emerged shaved and dressed, he smelled brewing coffee and heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs.

J.T. padded through the doorway wearing jeans, a blue flannel shirt, and wool socks. He flicked on the light. “Amy’s still asleep. Denise and Shami are coming down for breakfast, so let’s take some coffee into the barn. Feed some birds.”

J.T. poured coffee into a thermos, sat down, pulled on a pair of work shoes, then got up and reached for a lined denim jacket. Broker took his coat and boots from the mud porch and soon they were walking toward the barn, testing the icy pre-dawn air in their lungs.

J.T. handed Broker the thermos and two cups, then withdrew a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his chest pocket. “Even in Minnesota, I can still smoke in my own barn,” he said as he filled his pipe and squinted into the distance over Broker’s shoulder. Broker reached for a cigar and they lit up like two truant kids.

J.T.’s eyes had acquired a new habit of focusing beyond the person he was with and resting on a point in the sky. Even a blank night sky. He used to be a close watcher of people, and they had pretty much lived up to his expectations. Now he preferred to stay far away from most of them, to get beyond them. Growing his own corn, oats, and alfalfa he’d become addicted to the constant examination of wind, clouds, humidity, and the color of air.

They walked out to the paddocks, fed the birds there, returned to the barn, and continued to scoop feed into five-gallon plastic buckets and dump them in feeding troughs in one of the two pens that sectioned off the lower level of the building. Broker moved in easily among the leggy hens who drifted away and cautiously returned after he’d dumped their feed.

The barn was new territory for Broker, with its musty scent of oats and corn fermenting in cold wooden bins and the loft above, heavy with alfalfa bales. He had grown up north of Grand Marais on Lake Superior. He knew something about fishing, hunting, logging, and iron mining. But there were few real farms in the granite bedrock of Cook County, Minnesota.

“Watch out. They peck at glasses, watches, rings, pens. Shiny stuff attracts them,” J.T. said. Broker shouldered through the birds. He wasn’t wearing a watch. He sure wasn’t wearing a ring.

Then J.T. held out an arm to bar Broker from entering the second pen. In that pen, a solitary four-hundred-pound male stood nine feet tall, with his thick black plummage flexed, tipped with white feathers. The stubby wings and tail feathers came up and he coiled his long neck at them.

“Popeye’s my big, ornery male,” J.T. said “When he gets his wings out and his tail up, never get in front of him. He’s getting ready to attack. Always stay to the side.”

“How come you have him all alone in here?” Broker asked.

“I, ah, haven’t figured out how to move him back into a paddock. Last time I tried, he cornered me and almost kicked me to death. So I’m going to wait till he’s way, way out of season to try again.”

The reinforced plywood door to the pen shuddered when Popeye threw a kick as if to echo J.T.’s remarks.

“Jesus,” Broker said.

“Yeah. Ostriches throw a mean knuckle. They’re the only birds that have two toes on their feet. Check it out.”

Broker snuck a look into Popeye’s pen. Two toes, but one was little and one was real big with a thick ugly claw on it. “Ow,” he said.

“It’s no joke. They can kill a lion with one kick. He could disembowel a man, easy.”

After all the birds were fed and watered, J.T. led Broker through his incubator and hatchery rooms, now closed down because the birds quit laying their two-pound eggs in September. J.T. and Broker climbed some stairs and entered a long, comfortable studio paneled with barn wood.

A counter ran around the room and one side held an ammo-loading press and shelves of gunsmith paraphernalia. Farther down the counter a screen saver on a Gateway PC trailed bubbles, sting rays, and an occasional shark. Two space heaters were in place as backup, but J.T. crumpled some newspaper and tossed some kindling in a Fisher woodstove next to his computer desk, and soon had a fire crackling.

The other side of the room was outfitted with more counters fanning out from an industrial Singer sewing machine and racks of leather-working tools. Sheaves of tanned ostrich leather in black, maroon, and gray—some with a scale pattern, some with quills—hung from the walls. A picture window behind the sewing machine was an ebony mirror, filled with night.

Broker took the rocking chair by the stove and J.T. sat on the stool at his work counter. J.T. tossed a leather checkbook case to Broker. “You want to trade up?” he asked.

J.T.’s first prototypes had been stiff, the stitching not sufficient to hold the leather. He’d brought in a commercial sewing machine, learned a few tricks, and started backing the ostrich with calfskin, and now the items were supple. This new one was a little slicker than the one in Broker’s hip pocket.

“Shiny leather,” Broker said.

J.T. nodded. “An experiment. Out of a South African shipment.”

Broker handed it back. J.T. tossed it aside and picked a sheaf of printer paper from the counter. He poured more coffee and relit his pipe.

The calm expression of the ostrich farmer was overprinted by the suspicious frown of J.T. Merryweather, former homicide detective.

“I downloaded this stuff from Washington County: Cliff Stovall was a fifty-six-year-old white guy, a CPA. He died of exposure complicated by self-mutilation . . .”

“So they’re set on this self-mutilation theory?” Broker said.

“There it is. The coroner made notes more about what was on the outside of Stovall’s body, than what he found inside.”

“What’d he find inside?” Broker sipped coffee.

“Traces of Antabuse and a lot of alcohol. Blood level out of sight.”

“Okay, give me the outside,” Broker said.

“Thirteen significant self-inflicted wounds caused by cutting and piercing going back over twenty years.” J.T. raised his eyebrows. “In a world of seriously fucked-up individuals, this guy was a standout.”

“Nothing about foul play?” Broker said.

“Nope. Self-mutilation,” J.T. reiterated. “I’m getting pictures sent of the pre-autopsy so I can show Shami the downside of body piercing. She wants to get a nose ring.”

“So this isn’t the coroner making a diagnosis?”

“No, they pulled this guy’s medical records. He wasn’t some teenage kid taking a roll-around in the tackle box. The coroner called him an aristocrat of the cutting culture. He was a regular inpatient at the St. Cloud VA on the neuropsychiatric ward.”

Broker frowned. “I don’t buy it.”

“You want to see all the reports?”

“Screw the reports; I don’t buy it.” Broker said.

J.T. leaned forward and poked the air with the stem of his pipe for emphasis as he read from his notes. “You’re just being contrary. Stovall was an alky on Antabuse. And he took Trazadone to go to sleep and Prozac to smooth him out in the morning. The record mentions severe childhood trauma complemented by post-traumatic stress disorder. And his wife left him and filed for divorce six months ago.”

“So what are they calling it?” Broker asked.

“Misadventure.”

“Jesus, not even suicide?”

“Uh-uh. See, the way they interpret this stuff, Stovall was a mass meeting of self-destructive disorders, so borderline and numbed out, the only way he could feel things was to cut and stick himself. They figure he fell off the wagon, drank his way though an Antabuse reaction—which is hard-core because Antabuse and alcohol are a recipe for projectile-vomiting like in
The Exorcist
—then he kept drinking and was playing dangerous games with a hammer and a spike.”

J.T. tapped a sheet of faxed paper on the desk. Broker recognized it as a police report. J.T. said, “July ninety-six, Washington County responded to a nine-one-one from Stovall’s wife. He’d gone off the wagon and nailed his wrist to the bathroom door in the basement of their home. Paramedics used a Wonder bar to get him free. Same wrist. Like this.”

J.T. picked up a pen and then positioned his left forearm on the counter, palm up, and then curled his wrist back, aligning his thumb and fingers so the pen pointed back into the hollow of his wrist. “They figured he was playing this kind of game again.”

J.T. pounded the pen down into his wrist with an imaginary hammer in his right hand. “He went a little too far and he got, pardon the pun, stuck in the woods with the weather turning bad, and he froze to death. Not suicide.”

Broker shook his head. “Well, thanks for the trouble.”

“No problem.” J.T. tossed the pages aside and said, tongue in cheek, “I know how you benefit from a steady hand when you go off on a tangent.”

Broker ignored the jab and rocked silently back and forth and stared out the picture window where the blackness had dissolved into pale streaks of purple and vermilion.

“So you really went for this thing; why is that?” J.T. asked.

“We were bringing Sommer out in the seaplane. And he started raving about telling Stovall to move the money. That’s what got me going after I saw the article about finding Stovall in the woods.”

“Raving, like in delirious?”

“Yeah, he was delirious. He was pissed at his wife. So he moved all his money into a trust where she can’t touch it. The alternate trustee was Stovall, who checks out the day after they discover that Hank Sommer’s health insurance has lapsed.”

J.T. stroked his chin. “Her lawyer is Milton Dane. She’s not without resources.”

Broker nodded. “True. Milt’s arranging for a nursing home, and he’s busting open the trust.”

“So she panicked and now she’s covered,” J.T. said. “You went with your gut and arrived at a conclusion and worked backward, trying to make events fit. Uh-huh. Typical Broker. You always were a prosecutor’s nightmare. But they put up with your bullshit because it helps to have someone around who’ll walk into the lion’s den with a pocketful of raw steak. That last bust, you bagged those National Guard guys selling machine guns all over the Midwest, that got a lot of people promoted. Not just at BCA, but at the Bureau and ATF. The word on the street was, they left you out there about five years too long.”

“You getting into giving speeches in your old age?” Broker said.

J.T. squinted. “Yeah, I’m into speeches and simple shit like knowing where my wife is. She’s in the kitchen eating Total Raisin Bran with my daughter, getting one hundred percent of her vitamins before she goes to work. And this is your problem we’re getting to.” J.T. leaned forward. “Can you tell me where your wife is? Where your kid is?”

Broker grimaced. “C’mon J.T.; not first thing in the morning.”

“You can’t, can you?” J.T. said. “ ’Cause you don’t even know. And you know why? Because
you married yourself
, you dumb shit. Only difference between you and Nina Pryce is she’s younger, so she’s got bigger balls.”

“Having fun, aren’t we?” Broker said.

“I’m just warming up. See, the way I have it figured out is those other women you knew bored you, and then here comes Nina who doesn’t bore you. And you actually thought that because she had your kid and married you, she’d toss off her Wonder Woman bracelets and stay home and knit.” J.T. rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Looks like
she’s
the one that got bored with
you
this time.” J.T. grinned.

“What is this? Tough love or shooting-wounded?” Broker asked.

“You tell me,” J.T. said. “Nina left your shit weak and some writer guy had to save your ass. And you’ve got yourself so turned around that you show up here looking like the poster boy for the Peter Pan Principle, with your snappy young nurse.”

Broker had to protest. “Peter Pan Principle? When did you stoop to psychobabble?”

“Actually it’s Denise’s term,” J.T. sniffed. “You know, for guys who never grow up.”

And then Amy, who had been standing in the doorway unobserved, nursing a cup of coffee, enunciated precisely: “That’s snappy young nurse-
anesthetist
.”

“Hmmm,” J.T. said, slightly deflated, coming off his roll.

Amy entered the room and said, “Okay, while you guys are solving the problems of the world I need to borrow a vehicle and do some early Christmas shopping.”

“Hmmmm,” J.T. said again.

“Right,” Broker said, glad to change the subject. “So where’s my truck?”