Frag Box (16 page)

Chapter 21

Ships in The Night

My new favorite sheriff, Oskar Lindstrom, led the parade in his Explorer, followed by a couple of deputies in unmarked cars and then a fire truck. When they got close enough to have me in their headlights, I put the shotgun on the ground and stepped forward, away from it. The sheriff got out of his vehicle and squinted at me, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He had his revolver out and up, but when he recognized me, he relaxed a bit and pointed it at the sky.

“Some folks don’t seem to know when to get out of town,” he said.

“It’s that small town hospitality,” I said. “You just hate to leave it.”

“Yeah, I’m so sure. So you stick around and blow up a motel room, just to be doing something?”

“We didn’t do it, we had it done to us. I’ll tell you the whole story, but first I think we ought to go check on the motel manager. He could need medical attention.” I walked toward the motel office with the sheriff at my side. The others trailed behind us. As we walked, I gave Lindstrom a quick version of what had happened. He put his gun back in its holster and walked with his hands on his hips, shaking his head a lot and scowling. He looked as if I had personally brought him more trouble than the entire rest of his law enforcement career.

“Well, I can’t imagine anybody making up something like that,” said the sheriff. “So who do you think these people are, then?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think you have a lot of ideas. You just don’t like sharing them.”

I was starting to think he might be right. Maybe I knew a lot more than I thought I did. Or I was about to.

The motel manager had been gagged and tied up but was otherwise undamaged. Apparently it had been one of the other motel guests who had called nine-one-one. We checked our rooms next, and to my amazement, there was very little damage beyond the broken window and a couple of kicked-open doors. If the sheriff hadn’t gotten a call from somebody other than me, I’d have had trouble convincing him there had been any explosions at all.
Concussion grenade
, I thought.
Not meant to kill, just to stun and shock
.

“So, is that your shotgun back there?” said Lindstrom.

“No. I borrowed it from a garage with a big boat in it. We ran away and hid there when the goons came.”

“That would be Elmer Carlson’s garage. He’s a retired carpenter, built that boat from scratch. Used to be, when his wife was alive, it was his place to go get away from her. He’d go out and pretend to work on the boat and then get drunk and pass out. She’s been gone for a long time now, died of cancer, and he’s confined to a wheelchair, has a nurse look in on him a couple times a day. So there’s probably been nobody in the garage for years now. I’m surprised it wasn’t locked. Where’s your wife, then?”

I nodded my head in the general direction of the alley. “Still hiding in the boat. I have to take her some clothes.”

“Well, I think maybe we’re done with you here for now. Take your time. Have a shot of old man Carlson’s booze, if you find it. He’ll never be back out there. See me again before you leave town, though, hey?” He gave me a card.

“Sure, no problem.”

I grabbed up everything from both our rooms and headed back out to the alley. Along the way, I picked up the shotgun again.

***

It took Anne a while to respond to our secret knock, and for a brief moment I wondered if she had been attacked by a fifth member of the patrol, if that’s what it was, while I had been drawn away.

But the third time I knocked, I heard the axe being pulled out, and then the door opened away from me. When Anne saw I was alone, she put down the crowbar and hugged herself again.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She nodded. “I was back in the boat again, and I wasn’t sure I ought to come out. The question is, are
we
okay?”

“Yes. Anyway, we’re clear for now,” I said. “The bad guys are gone and the—”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I pointed my trusty shotgun at them and they got in their car and left.”

She gave me her penetrating, skeptical stare again. I gave her what was probably a goofy-looking grin and nodded my head. “Yeah.” I laughed at the sheer wonderfulness of it. “Just like that. I couldn’t believe it, either. They ran off just before our friendly sheriff showed up. He’s back at the motel now. I brought you your clothes. Maybe you’d like to—”

But instead of taking the bundle out of my hands, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me long and hard. I pushed her back for a moment, just so I could put the shotgun out of the way, then kissed her back. Wonderful, euphoric stuff, escaping from mortal danger. Just about the best aphrodisiac there is.

“You’re running on adrenalin afterglow,” I said. “You should—”

“Come and see what I found,” she said, still ignoring her clothes, though she should have been turning blue by now. She took my hand and led me back to the transom of the boat. We climbed aboard, then stepped down into the cabin.

“There’s power,” she said. She flipped a switch and a tiny light came on in the overhead. There was also a small electric space heater on one bulkhead, and she turned it on.

The cabin was small, but cleverly laid out. The entire bow of the boat was one big, triangle-shaped bed, upholstered in some kind of red plush fabric. Farther toward the stern, there was a bench seat and a fold-down table and a lot of shelves and mesh slings, with various kinds of gear in them. On one shelf, there was a case of beer in long-necked bottles and a quart bottle of Canadian Club.

“I don’t think I want to go back to that motel room just yet, Herman.”

“We probably shouldn’t. If the nasties come back, that’s where they’ll look for us, not here. And we have more or less official permission to stay in the boat.”

“Really? How did we get that?”

“The owner is a shut-in. The sheriff gave us his blessing to mess around in the garage.”

“Mess around. I like that.” She pulled the cap off the whiskey bottle and took a slug, then held it out to me. “Buy you a drink, sailor?”

“I don’t think you want to be doing that,” I said. “You’re just a bit on the emotionally fragile side right now, you know.”

“True, true,” she said. She put down the bottle and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Then she reached farther back on the shelf and picked up something small.

“Forget about the booze, then. Look at what else I found.” She put it in my hand. It was a condom in an unopened wrapper.

Considering what the sheriff had told me about the owner of the boat, there was no way I believed Anne had found it there. She had to have bought some at the mall in Virginia and put one in the elastic band of her underpants. There was also no way I was going to tell her I knew that. Not for the first time, I marveled at my utter inability to read a woman, and I was grateful that Anne hadn’t had the same problem with me.

Her mouth found mine again and this time, I did not push her away, even slightly. I put my hand under her sweater and pulled her against me, then laughed in spite of myself.

“What are you finding so funny, there, Iowa Jackson? I’ll have you know I’ve been—”

“Your rear end is cold.”

“Oh, that.” She chuckled quietly. “Well, I wonder why? I’m cold all over, you know?”

“There’s a cure for that.” I pulled down the collar of her sweater and nuzzled her neck.

“Well for God’s sake, let’s get to it, then.” She unbuttoned my shirt and, I swear, climbed inside it with me. Then she wrapped her legs around my torso and we traveled to that place that has heat and resonance and intensity but no name. Somebody once said that when you make love, the dogs don’t bark. Time doesn’t exist and neither does fear. I hadn’t been to that place for a very long time, and it was nice to be reminded.

***

Much later, we treated ourselves to a drink of whiskey and a can of cashews that we found on another shelf. It was warm in the cabin by then, even hot, and after a nightcap and a snack, we made love again, much more slowly this time, savoring it all. Then we curled up together and slept the long, blissful sleep of people recently delivered from death.

I have to say Elmer Carlson had built himself a damn nice boat.

Chapter 22

The Morning After the Night Before

Dawn came with real sunlight, for a change. It streamed into the high east window and bounced around the garage a little before finally finding its way into the boat cabin. That made it dissipated, but still friendly.

The little space heater had been running all night, and the cabin was now much too warm for comfort. I stepped out into the rear cockpit and enjoyed the feel of the frigid air on my body. I looked at my watch. Only a little after eight. All things considered, it wouldn’t have surprised me if we had slept until noon. A heavy hangover wouldn’t have surprised me, either, but as far as I could tell, I didn’t have one and wasn’t going to get it. Never underestimate the curative powers of adrenalin and sex. Either one or both.

Anne was still asleep, and I grabbed my clothes out of the cabin and dressed in the cockpit. Then I went back to the motel to retrieve my car and get us some coffee from the lobby. The motel clerk did not seem to be my friend anymore.

“I could charge you for the damage to those rooms, you know.”

“I get attacked in your motel, and you want to charge me for the experience? You’re lucky I’m not a lawyer.”

“Um. You’re not, are you?”

I shook my head and gave him a reassuring smile. I was feeling much too good to get sucked into an argument, and anyway, he was looking more confused than angry. Obviously, nothing in his two-year community college degree had prepared him for this kind of incident.

“Did you call your insurance people?” I said.

“Sure, right away.”

“And you’re not hurt and neither is anybody else and you will be getting a police report to substantiate what went on, right?”

“I guess.”

“Sure, you will. So relax. You’ll have a good story to tell down at the corner saloon.”

“I don’t go to those places.”

“Right. Me either. Tell you what: give me four cups of coffee and a cardboard box to carry them in and we’ll call everything square.”

“And then you’ll go, right?”

“And then I’ll go.” Nice young man, but he really needed to do something about all that negative thinking.

I put the coffee on the roof of my BMW, took a flashlight out of the trunk, and lay down in the new snow long enough to check the undercarriage for bombs or bugs or other assorted bits of unwanted baggage. Seeing nothing amiss, I brushed myself off, got in with my coffee, and fired it up. Going around the corner of the motel into the alley, I punched the gas and did a short power slide, just for the pure joy of it. Then I went more sedately the rest of the way and stopped by the garage in the middle of the block, to collect Anne.

She was dressed by the time I got there, but still in the boat. We popped the lids on two of the coffees and sat with our feet hanging over the gunwale, eating Elmer Carlson’s cashews and getting ourselves recaffeinated.

“Well, Herman, now you know my worst secret.”

“I do?” I shot her a quick sideways look. “And what might that be?”

“What I look like in the morning.”

I looked again, a little more critically.

“If that’s the darkest secret you’ve got, I would say you have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Whether it was true or not.”

“Damn right I would.”

She chuckled and took another handful of cashews. They went surprisingly well with the coffee.

“I don’t suppose we can go back to the motel and use the bathroom and clean up a bit?”

“As a matter of fact, we can. The clerk was so happy to see me go that he forgot to get our keys back. And anyway, it’s not as if he’s going to rent the rooms out again right away, with two broken doors.”

We shut off the lights and the heater, and Anne wrote a thank you note and stuck it in the empty cashew can. On the way out, I bent a piece of wire I found hanging on the wall into a crude lock pick, and I used it to lock the door behind us. After all, who knew what sort of riff raff might be wandering in?

We drove back to Anne’s room, since that was the one that still had all its glass intact, and while she disappeared into the bathroom, I used the bedside phone to call Agnes and tell her I’d be back in the office sometime in the afternoon.

“Is she cute?”

“I can’t imagine who you’re referring to, Aggie.”

“Oh, good. She is cute. I’m glad for you, Herman.”

“I don’t know why you always think—”

“Wendell called, by the way.” She always refers to Wilkie by his real first name. “He says he’s got something for you. And a Detective Erickson from the SPPD called later. You want that number?”

“No, thanks. He made me wait. Now it’s his turn. Anything else?”

“I, um, guess not. Not really.” The energy had suddenly gone out of her voice altogether.

“Tell me, already.”

“It’s really nothing, Herman.”

“Has that asshole Eddie Bardot been bothering you again?”

“He scares me, Herman. And that gets me mad at myself for being so silly, since he doesn’t really do anything very threatening.”

“What does he do, exactly?”

“Yesterday morning, he tried to leave an envelope full of money on your desk.”

“What did you do?”

“I threw it out on the sidewalk. I told him he could pick it up or not, as he liked, but I certainly wasn’t going to do so.”

“Good move. So did he leave then?”

“He did, but later he came back. He hangs around. I think he only does it because he knows you’re not here. He makes what he thinks are cute little sexual innuendos and says I should be nice to him because you aren’t going to be around much longer.”

“Does he, now? Next time he comes back, in fact the next time you even see him coming down the street, call Wilkie right away, okay? Tell him I said we need the trash taken out. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, maybe I will.”

“Not maybe. Do it.”

“Drive safely, Herman.”

“See you, Ag.”

I hung up and dialed Wilkie’s cell phone, but all I got was his voice mail. “I’m not here now, see?” said the recording. “So I can’t talk to you. When I’m back, I will. You can leave a message, if you want to, and I might listen to it.”

I waited for the beep and then left a message asking him to look in on Agnes. Meanwhile, Anne had come out of the bath. We left our keys in the room and headed out.

***

Sheriff Lindstrom’s office was a new building just off the new Highway 169, not really in any town. His deputy gave us some coffee in real cups, and we settled into some visitor chairs in front of Lindstrom’s desk in his inner office.

“I did a little write up of the business last night,” he said. “Maybe you could look it over and sign it for me?”

“Sure,” I said, and I began to skim through my copy. It was written in first person, as if it had been taken as dictation from me, so I felt free to edit it. When I came to references to Anne as my wife, I crossed them out and wrote in “girlfriend.” That made me smile, and I wondered what she was writing on her copy.

“By the way, Sheriff, has your coroner determined when James Victor was killed yet?”

“Um, well, it’s not so easy, you know. The heat turned off in the house, and all. Ah, why, ah, would you be wanting to know that?” He was visibly uneasy with the topic.

“Well, I was just thinking.” I paused and looked into his eyes, and he did not hold the contact.

“Okay, then,” was all he said. “You’re allowed to think.”

“I was thinking that if James Victor was killed more than three days ago,” I said, “then maybe the killer or killers came to the old man to find out where the kid was.”

“Oh, like that. I see. That could be, I guess.”

“I was also thinking that yesterday at the murder scene, and again last night, you were awfully nice to me. Not suspicious or authoritative at all.”

“Hey, I’m a nice guy. Just ask Marty out there.”

“He’s a nice guy,” said the deputy from the desk in the front office.

“Sure you are. But I think you also knew you didn’t have to suspect me of any wrongdoing, because you knew you had already seen the real killers.”

“Just what the hell are you saying?”

“They came here, didn’t they? To ask how to find old man Victor. And of course, you told them.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I? Not that I’m saying I did, mind you. That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with—”

I held up my hands and shook my head. “I wasn’t implying anything of the sort.” I signed his report and pushed it back across the desk to him. “People ask for directions, you give them some. Nothing wrong with that. What did they say, that they were old army buddies, trying to get a line on Jim’s kid?”

“You’re pretty damn smart, you know that? You want a job as a deputy?”

“Hey!” said Marty.

“Yeah, they were here. I guess it can’t hurt anything if you know that. They had an address for old Jim, but they couldn’t find the whole damn town of Mountain Iron, they said. You wouldn’t believe how much of that I get.”

“Yes, I think I would. And you say they also asked about Jim’s son?”

“They asked, but I didn’t have anything to tell them. I’m thinking Jim didn’t, either. One time he bitched to me about how his kid only sent him one lousy postcard in the last twenty years. He knew it was sent from St. Paul, but that’s about it.”

“Really? Did you tell them that?”

“Hell, no. I didn’t like them. Bunch of arrogant, pushy types, acted like they owned the world and everybody should kiss their asses. So I didn’t feel like telling them diddly.”

“So when did James Victor die?” said Anne, also pushing her report form across the desk.

“It’s iffy, like I said. The coroner says he could have died as much as a week ago. The guys who came here were five days back. Happy? Now, have you two got anything else to tell me? Like maybe who these guys were?”

“I wish I knew. They seem to be tied to Charlie Victor’s past in Vietnam somehow, but they’re way too young to have been there when he was. And they seem to be military, but I don’t think they’re part of any kind of actual operation, even a rogue one. That’s as much as I know, and I’m not even sure I know that.” I got up and headed for the door. On my way, I said, “The police detective in St. Paul who’s working on Charlie Victor’s murder is named Erickson. You might want to give him a call.”

“Another St. Paul smart guy? I can hardly wait.”

“I really think he—”

“I’ll call him, I’ll call him. Are you gone yet?”

“Ciao,” said Anne, and we were, indeed, gone. But we didn’t head south just yet. We went back to James Victor’s house.

***

Yellow CRIME SCENE tape was wrapped around the entire house several times, and the site was full of tire tracks and footprints. Anne took a picture of it.

“Did you tell the sheriff we were coming here?” said Anne.

“Of course not. He’d have just told me not to.”

“So now we can pretend we didn’t know any better?”

“I was thinking more of getting in and back out fast enough that we don’t have to pretend anything.”

“That’s a good plan. What are we looking for?”

“A postcard, with a twenty-year old postmark on it, the one Charlie’s father bitched about. You want to stay in the car and play innocent bystander?”

“Not on your life.”

The back door was still unlatched, and when I looked at it more closely, I saw that the strike plate had been completely ripped out of the jamb. I swung the storm door out as little as possible, and we managed to slip inside without breaking the plastic tapes.

Inside, the place was pretty much as we had seen it the last time, except that now, of course, James Victor’s body was gone. I had been wondering how the cops were going to make the famous chalk outline of the body, since it had been sitting in a chair. To my disappointment, they hadn’t even tried. Maybe they only do that in the movies.

The rest of the house was an even bigger mess than the kitchen. Drawers dumped, upholstery cut open, everything thrown all over hell.

“It doesn’t look as though our crime scene techies were very neat,” said Anne, and she took some more pictures.

“I’m thinking this is the way they found it.”

“Our bad guys’ handiwork?”

“It would fit.” I had also noticed some possible bloodstains in the living room, which I had not pointed out to her, and I wondered if the pickaxe in the kitchen had been used for some purpose quite different from digging ore. The crime scene people had taken it, in any case.

In the bedroom, the threadbare mattress on an old brass bed frame had been slashed, dresser drawers dumped, and even the dresser mirror had been smashed, then spun around backward and the paper backing torn open. Shards of slivered glass crunched under our feet.

“I think we’re a day late and a postcard short, Herman.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes people trying to be intimidating get in a frenzy and don’t look carefully.” I rotated the broken mirror back to facing the correct way. And stuck in the frame, in places that still had pieces of glass left, were some ticket stubs from a movie theater, a menu from a pizza joint, a church program from some long ago Easter, and an old postcard.

“Hello,” I said.

“Something?” said Anne.

“Could be,” I said, pulling it out. “It almost looks
too
old, though.”

“Let’s see it. No, it isn’t. It’s one of those nostalgia replicas, like they sell at the History Center gift shop. It’s meant to look like something from before World War Two, but it’s really not.”

“It looks like a picture of a downtown park.”

“Kellogg Park, the way it looked back in the streetcar days,” she said. She flipped the card over. It had Charlie Victor’s signature and James Victor’s address on it, but nothing else. No greeting, no request for money, no message of any kind. I squinted at the tiny printing in the upper left hand corner, telling us what the picture on the other side was.

“That doesn’t say ‘Kellogg Park,’” I said.

“No, it has the older name for it: Viaduct Park.”

And my mind flashed back to that first day in my office, when Charlie had told me about his cardboard box “under the wye-duct.”