The Mortal Groove (35 page)

“I'm sorry. I—”

“Look, I can't talk right now. I'll . . . call you later.”

“Jane, you've got to forgive me. I just went off. I didn't mean—”

“Nothing to forgive. Go to sleep. We'll talk in the morning.” She shut off the phone and threw it on the floor. Getting out of her Mini, she stood for a moment, hands on the hood, trying to force the anger out of her system. Tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them come. It wasn't Kenzie's fault, it was hers. She should have talked faster. But what if it had been her job? Was that the end of the world?

She stood there a minute more, trying to back away from her emotions, then looked up and surveyed the parking lot. The rain had finally stopped. Hearing the sound of laughter, she turned and watched two men run past her on the footpath along the river road. That's when she saw it. Larry's truck. It was parked on the street directly under a streetlamp. It was as if the cosmos had reached down and pointed at it with a lighted finger.

Jane rushed up to it, checked the doors and windows, but everything was locked tight. She looked inside and saw some junk on the seats. Was Peter being held someplace near here? Or—what if Larry hadn't used his truck to grab Peter. As she mulled it over, she realized that Larry must have been waiting for her brother when he came out of the Linden building after dropping off Mia. They must have driven away in the car Peter had rented in New Jersey.

Jane sprinted to the rear door of the Linden building and let herself in with her key. Entering Cordelia's loft a few minutes later, she found Cecily in the living room, lying on the couch reading a fashion magazine.

“Where's Cordelia?”

“Asleep. Mia woke up a while ago and was pretty upset that Peter hadn't come, so Cordelia took her up to her room for a little
talk. Last I looked, they were both out cold with various cats and dogs littering the room.” She hesitated. “Jane, I need to tell you how sorry I am about Peter.”

“Thanks.”

Mouse trotted down the steps. Jane crouched down and gave him a hug and a scratch. She was so incredibly glad to see him. “I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight, so I thought I'd take Mouse and we'd head over to the Lyme House, burn the midnight oil trying to figure out some way to find my brother.”

“Good luck,” said Cecily. “Really, if there's anything I can do—”

“Tell me where Cordelia keeps a hammer.”

“In the junk drawer in the kitchen.”

“Junk,” said Jane. “Why not.” She found it underneath a kitchen timer, two yo-yos, and a bunch of take-out menus. Nolan might advise against what she was about to do, but she didn't care. If there was something in that truck that might give her a clue to where Larry had taken her brother, she intended to find it.

Back outside, Jane let Mouse run down to the riverbank while she made quick work of smashing the front window. Thank God it was late and most people who were out for a night on the town were up on First Avenue or Hennepin. She brushed the glass off the front seat, then started to sift though the junk, piece by piece. Candy wrappers. Crumpled-up fast-food bags. There were a bunch of catalogues and a few magazines. An empty package of Trojan Magnums. She picked everything up and put it in an empty Wal-Mart bag, including the contents of the glove compartment.

“Come on, boy,” she called, seeing that Mouse was sitting down on the footpath, sniffing the night air. “Let's go for a ride.”

They drove across town and made it to the Lyme House just before one. The upstairs dining room was closed, but the pub on the main level was still open. Jane unlocked her office door and let Mouse inside. He jumped up on the couch in front of the cold fireplace and made himself at home, while she headed down the hall to the pub and pulled herself a pint of ale. She said hi to one of the bartenders, spoke to a few regulars, and on her way back grabbed herself a bowl of popcorn.

After closing and locking the door, she sat down behind her desk. She didn't want any interruptions. She checked her cell phone and saw that Kenzie had called back twice. She just couldn't deal with that right now.

Dumping the contents of the sack on the desk, she turned on the lamp and began going through everything. Two of the magazines were porn, one was all about guns. She dumped those in the trash. Most of the contents of the glove compartment had to do with the recent purchase of the truck. But there was a Minnesota map that Jane put in a separate pile to look at more closely. The last two magazines were law enforcement supply catalogues.

Jane took a sip of her ale, then paged through the first one. Nothing stood out until she got to the section on body restraints. Larry had circled a pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs, a pair of leg irons, and something Jane had never heard of before—transport restraints, a combination of the two connected by a heavy-duty chain. None of it made her feel any better about Larry or his intentions toward Peter.

She pulled the Minnesota map in front of her and stared down at it, hoping Larry might have marked a destination. And there it was. He'd circled three cities in red ink. Fergus Falls. Duluth. And Grand Rapids. Obviously, these were big areas to search, but Jane couldn't help but feel her pulse quicken.

After studying the map a few more seconds, she put it aside and started to go through the bits of paper she'd picked up from the floor of the truck. One was a receipt from a gas station in Battle Lake, near Fergus Falls. Another was from a motel in Hill City, just south of Grand Rapids. There was a receipt from Judy's Cafe in two Harbors. Another from Betty's Pies up on the North Shore. Jane knew that area of the state best.

Elbows on the desktop, hands buried in her hair, she tried to think it through. Where would Larry try to hide her brother? And why had he circled those three towns? Jane's mother had always loved Lake Superior. Superior wasn't your average Minnesota lake, it was more like an inland sea, and so for the few years that Jane's mom had lived in Minnesota before her death, she'd insisted that the family spend time during the summer on the North Shore. Jane's dad had continued the tradition, taking Jane and Peter up to various cabins and resorts from Duluth to Grand Marais when she was in college and Peter in junior high. She knew the shore well and so did Peter. But if Larry had taken him to somewhere around Fergus or the Grand Rapids area, she was in the dark.

“It's your fault,” she whispered.

The impact of the words dissolved her.

If she hadn't gotten mixed up in that cold murder case in Iowa, none of this would have happened. Ever since their mother had died, Jane had felt like Peter was her responsibility. She couldn't let him down in a mundane, ordinary way. Oh, no. She had to do it in a life-threateningly huge way.

As she thrashed around for a life raft in her self-induced purgatory, Mouse nosed the side of her leg. She hadn't heard him get up. She put her hand down to pet him, but he nosed it away.

“What's wrong?” she said, looking down at him. As she
pushed her chair back, he jumped into her lap. “Whoa.” He'd never done it before.

“Oh, buddy,” she said, her eyes instantly filling with tears. The feelings she'd been suppressing all night finally came pouring out. She cried against his fur. “Thanks, Mouse,” she whispered, holding him tight.

 

 

P
eter didn't sleep much that night. Larry cuffed his hands be-hind his back, but this time, he added leg irons, and something he called a bull strap tether—a piece of heavy leather that hooked the back of Peter's handcuffs to the leg irons. Larry wasn't taking any chances. While he snored away inside his sleeping bag at the back of the trailer, Peter shivered on the floor under the broken windows. Terror mixed with the chill night air kept his mind alert.

When he was pretty sure Larry was asleep, he tried to get up. Larry flew at him, racked the slide of his semiautomatic pistol, and pressed it to Peter's temple. Peter thought it was all over, but instead of shooting him, Larry kicked him in the stomach a bunch of times to work off some steam, then told him that if he tried to get up again, he'd take him outside, tie him up, cut him, and let him play Russian roulette with the northern Minnesota wildlife population.

Peter didn't move for the rest of the night.

Before sunup, Peter, untethered now, was standing outside the trailer, feet together, arms at his side, eyes forward, chin up. Every muscle in his body ached.

What seemed like hours later, the sun had finally risen above the trees and now struck him square in the eyes.

As he stood sweating in the morning sunlight, a fly landed on his nose.

“Well, now, ain't that a good case in point,” said Larry. He sat cross-legged on the ground about fifteen feet away, smoking a cigarette. “That fly, he don't care that you're in formation. Looks like one of them big bad blackflies, too—the kind that bite.”

Peter's head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He hadn't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday morning and it was starting to take a toll. He clenched his jaw, tried to will the fly away.

Larry got up, ambled over to where Peter was standing. “I'm gettin' tired of this, Petey. Drop and give me twenty.”

Peter didn't know what he meant. Since he couldn't speak without being asked a direct question, he had no way of finding out.

“You hard of hearing, boy?”

“No. Thank you, Drill Sergeant.”

“Then do it!”

“I don't know what you mean, Drill Sergeant.”

Larry pressed the gun up under Peter's chin. “Push-ups, you retard! Ever heard of them?”

“Yes. Thank you, Drill Sergeant.”

“What?”

“Yes. Thank you, Drill Sergeant!”

He cupped a hand around his ear. “I can't hear you.”

“Yes, thank you, Drill Sergeant!” Peter yelled.

“That's better. Now, get to it.”

Peter sank to his knees. He might have been able to do twenty push-ups with ease six months ago, but after he'd been fired from his job, he let his membership at the local health club lapse. He stretched out. The first ten weren't a problem. By twenty, he was getting winded.

“Gimme twenty more, ” said Larry.

Peter went at it again. Flis muscles were screaming at him to stop.

“Now, flip over and give me fifty sit-ups,” said Larry. He sat down in the doorway of the trailer.

Peter eased onto his back. He didn't exactly complete the fifty quickly. As he struggled through the last ten, Larry yelled at him to “pick it up.” Peter had never truly hated anyone before, not the kind of white-hot hate you saw in movies, but he was beginning to understand it—the desire for total annihilation.

“Get up,” said Larry.

Peter eased over, tried to move into a crouch, but lost his balance and fell forward to his hands and knees. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips.

“I need water,” he said.

Larry was up instantly. The butt of his gun connected with Peter's head, forcing him backward. The pain was so intense that for a few seconds, he couldn't see or hear.

“Get up!” screamed Larry.

Gritting his teeth, Peter struggled to a sitting position, feeling hot blood ooze down his cheek. When he hoisted himself up, he felt so dizzy that for a moment, he thought he might fall.

“I guess it is time for a little R&R.” Larry pushed him through the door of the trailer, told him to sit at the table. “You're going to write that letter, Petey.”

Peter pulled out one of the folding chairs and sat down.

This time, instead of cuffing him Larry tried something new. He wound duct tape around Peter's upper arms, and then around his lower legs, leaving his hands free so he could write.

“Here's the situation. You dad seems to need some proof I really got you. Write some thin' only you would know.” He pulled a battered steno notebook and two Bic pens from his backpack. Tearing off a sheet of paper, he set it down in front of Peter. And then he retreated to the rear of the trailer, where he sat propped against his rolled-up sleeping bag and began to write something himself.

Peter had been thinking about the letter all night. This might be his only chance to tell his dad and Jane where he was.

 

Hi, all.

My cell phone number is: 756-624-2979. I'm a Libra.

It's really Peter, not my evil twin. That's a joke.

Let me make some points that prove it's me.

My mother's maiden name was Lind.

On my next birthday, I turn 37.

I left the dry cleaning in the bedroom closet
—
Sigrid's red dress and my blue suit.

They got the and stain out of the dress finally, which should make Sigrid happy.

I rode my dirt bike over to Jane's house three nights ago for dinner. We had fried chicken.

Steve promised to come on Saturday with the trailer to pick up the old gas stove.

My favorite play is Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Favorite food, steak. Favorite dessert, lemon meringue pie. No favorite color.

I
wish I hadn't been in such a hurry with my life, wish I had taken more time to enjoy it.

I love you all,

Peter