The Cold Nowhere (18 page)

‘No, I only saw a flashlight on the beach. I made it to the bridge and he followed me into the city. When I got inside the DECC, I thought I could hide there, but I heard someone coming. I figured it was him, but it was Brandy.’

‘What did she want?’

‘Money. Food. Whatever I had. I told her I didn’t have anything, and she went crazy and started punching me. I think she was high. I dropped the knife, and I got out of there. I found my way to the skywalk and headed for downtown. From there, I walked all the way to the Seaway. That’s it.’

‘Did you see or hear anyone else inside the DECC?’

‘Just Brandy.’

‘Brandy’s dead,’ he told her.

‘
What?
’

‘Someone hit her with a wrench.’

Cat leaped to her feet. ‘It wasn’t me!’

‘If it was self-defense, you can tell me the truth,’ Stride said. ‘Or if you thought it was the man chasing you, I need to know that. Even if you’re scared, you can’t lie to me about this, Cat.’

‘I’m not lying! I didn’t do it!’

Stride took her hand and made her sit down again. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. I needed to ask.’

‘Brandy came after
me
, not the other way around,’ she insisted, kicking the sand.

‘Okay.’

‘There’s somebody out there who wants me dead. That’s all I know.’

‘We’ll find him, but I need your help.’

‘Anything. I just want to make this stop.’

‘I need to ask you about Vincent Roslak,’ he said.

Cat flinched. ‘Vincent doesn’t have anything to do with this.’

‘You know who he is, right? You saw him for counseling?’

‘A few times. What difference does that make?’

‘Vincent Roslak was stabbed to death eight months ago. Last night, Kim Dehne was stabbed to death, too.’

‘There’s no connection,’ Cat said.

‘There
is
a connection. You. Somehow, this may be the link that explains why someone is coming after you.’

‘No, no, no, it can’t be. Vincent moved away. I never saw him again. You’re wrong.’

‘Did you sleep with him?’

Cat wiped her eyes, which were moist. ‘Don’t make it dirty. He cared about me.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Then he went away and that was the end of it.’

Stride put an arm around her shoulders, but she tensed at his touch. ‘Listen to me, Cat. Roslak abused the trust that his patients put in him. We don’t know how far it went. If you told him things about other people, he may not have kept it confidential. Or maybe someone was afraid about what you might tell him, and that’s what got him killed. Maybe that’s why you’re in danger.’

Cat sniffled. ‘I told him stuff from my past. That’s all. Years ago. My parents.’

‘What else? You were on the street, Cat. You saw things, you did things, that people like to keep in the shadows.’

‘I know, but I can’t think of anything like that.’

‘What about men you slept with?’ Stride asked.

‘It’s not like I know their names. They come, they go, you know what I mean?’

She laced her fingers with his and held on tight. He could almost feel her wishing and praying that the past was behind her. She was young. It would be a while before she learned that the past never went away.

‘I don’t want to talk about Vincent anymore,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘Okay, but there’s someone else I need to ask you about.’

‘Who?’ Her voice was soft and fragile.

‘Margot Huizenfelt.’

‘I don’t know who that is,’ Cat said.

‘She’s a reporter. Dory says she sent Margot to you. She’s missing.’

‘Oh, her,’ Cat said. ‘Yeah, a few months ago, a woman found me under the overpass. She said she was a reporter. She mentioned Dory. She offered to buy me lunch. It was winter, so a hot lunch sounded good.’

‘What did she look like?’ he asked.

‘Heavy. Butch.’

‘That sounds like Margot.’

‘You say she’s missing? Is it because of me?’

‘I don’t know yet, but she may have been the person who was looking for you in the graffiti graveyard. What did the two of you talk about?’

‘She asked me lots of questions. How I got there. The life I led. My parents. Eventually, she said she wanted to write a story about me. She gave me a hundred bucks, so I said sure.’

‘Did you ever see the article?’

Cat shook her head.

‘What else did you tell her?’

‘Oh, you know, why I was on the street, what my days were like. She asked where I slept, how I got money and food, what I thought about men and life and all sorts of crazy things. I felt like I was on a reality show or something.’

‘Did you give her your name?’

‘Yeah, but she promised she wouldn’t use it.’

‘Did Vincent Roslak come up?’

Cat shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t talk about him.’

‘Anyone else? Any names?’

‘I didn’t mention anybody. She wanted to know how I got hooked up with people. You know, did I have a pimp or something. I just said there was a guy in Canal Park who was connected.’

Stride didn’t think it would have taken Margot long to home in on Curt Dickes.

‘She said I was pretty and that guys must really like me,’ Cat went on. ‘She wanted to know if I ever did guys who paid better than others. Rich guys. High roller types, you know?’

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah, a couple times Curt got me dates for twice what I usually make. One time, like a year ago, I even got a fancy dress and a limo ride out of the thing. That was cool.’

‘Where did the limo take you?’ Stride asked.

‘Some resort on the north shore. There was a guy waiting in one of the rooms. He had bucks.’

‘Do you know who it was? Did you recognize him? Or did you get a name?’

‘No, we just did it. Ten minutes, like most guys, and I was out of there. Nice tip, too, like I was a waitress or something.’

‘What did he look like?’

Cat shrugged. ‘I don’t look at their faces.’

‘Do you remember the resort?’

‘No. I guess we drove for at least an hour. I don’t remember where it was, except it was right on the lake.’

‘You told Margot all of this?’

‘Yeah, I told her the story.’

Stride smiled at the girl. ‘Thank you, Cat.’

‘You think it’s important?’

‘I think if I were a reporter, I’d have turned over rocks to find out who that guy was,’ Stride said. ‘I’m betting he’s not the kind of man who would want Margot tracking him down.’

Steve Garske peeled off his gloves and flopped down on the sofa next to Stride. His legs jutted out like stilts. He rubbed his hands through his blond hair, leaving it with wings, and he blinked as if he were not entirely awake. He grabbed a mug of cold coffee from the end table and slugged it down.

‘It’s too early to be conscious on a Sunday morning,’ he said, glancing at Stride, whose own face was dead with exhaustion. ‘I know, I know, I get no sympathy from you.’

‘None,’ Stride said. ‘Did you have a gig with the band last night?’

‘No, just my usual insomnia. I’m still on island time. I had late rounds at St. Luke’s, too. Anyway, Cat’s fine. I cleaned the cuts with antiseptic, and I’m going to put her on a round of antibiotics just to be on the safe side.’ He added, ‘How’s the shoulder, Oh brave warrior?’

‘Hurts, but it’s getting better.’

‘We should X-ray it. Swing by tomorrow while you’re out and we’ll take a picture. In the meantime, ice it.’

‘Will do. How about her baby? Are there any risks from the fight?’

Steve shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. There’s no sign of abdominal injury. Cat says she wasn’t kicked or punched there. The baby should be fine. Even so, I want her in soon for a full check-up.’

‘Sure.’

Steve studied Stride’s living room. He ran his index finger along the wood of the end table and held it up to examine. He shook his head. ‘I’m going to get you a Swiffer. Have you dusted this place since Serena left?’

‘I don’t think of it as dust. I think of it as skin cells I might need again someday.’

‘Uh huh. It’s the brain cells I worry about.’

‘You should be worried,’ Stride replied with a smile. ‘Is Cat on the porch?’

‘Yeah, she’s working on that puzzle you’ve had sitting there all winter. You mind telling me why a man who lives in Duluth buys a jigsaw puzzle with a photo of the lift bridge? Couldn’t you find a picture of the pyramids, or Hawaii, or something like that?’

‘It was a gift.’

‘A gift? You need better friends.’

Stride chuckled. ‘This one came from a little girl, actually.’

‘I forgot, cops get gifts from grateful members of the public. Wish I could say the same. It’s not like my patients send me fruit baskets. “Hey, Steve, thanks for the pap smear.”’

‘I’ll remember that after my colonoscopy.’

‘You do that. I want some kind of tropical fruit-of-the-month club thing. Make it something with mangoes.’

‘Got it.’

‘Sounds like you had a rough night,’ Steve said.

Stride nodded. ‘The media’s all over the county attorney this morning. We’re not releasing much. I’m trying to keep Cat out of it for the time being. She couldn’t handle a media circus.’

‘Any leads?’

‘There’s a stolen car that we haven’t found yet. A black Charger. Other than that, our only lead is Cat. I need to keep her safe.’

‘She trusts you,’ Steve said. ‘Must take after her mother. There was a little bit of a crush there, right?’

‘Michaela and I were friends,’ Stride said. ‘That’s all.’

Steve gave him a sideways glance, and Stride wasn’t sure if his friend believed him. The room was dimly lit, and they were both in shadow. He glanced at the kitchen to make sure the girl hadn’t
come inside from the rear porch. ‘Tell me something. When you saw Cat last year, did you talk to her about Vincent Roslak?’

‘I did. Sorry, I should have mentioned it. Brooke called last night and said that Maggie had been around, asking questions.’

‘So tell me now.’

Steve stood up from the leather sofa and winced as he rubbed his lower back, which was a perennial source of pain. He’d suffered a mean tackle on the football field in college. ‘Hang on, I need more caffeine for this. There anything left in the pot?’

‘Always.’

The doctor took his mug into Stride’s kitchen, poured the remnants down the sink, and refilled it. He disappeared through the back door toward the cottage’s screened porch and Stride heard the muffled hum of voices and his friend’s easy laughter. Steve returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa, balancing his coffee mug in his lap.

‘Cat’s already two-thirds of the way through that puzzle,’ he said.

‘Everybody says she’s smart,’ Stride said.

‘We should run some tests and see just how smart. There’s something special there. Anyway, Roslak. Some guys, they smile, and you know they’re trying to pull one over on you. He looked the part, he dressed the part, he said the right things, but you know how it is. You meet a guy, you decide in five minutes if he’s solid or not solid. Roslak wasn’t solid.’

‘How did you find out what he was doing?’

‘I got a tip at my clinic. One of my regular patients said he was sure his wife was sleeping with her shrink. He asked me if I knew the guy and whether I’d heard any dirt about him. It was Roslak.’

‘What did you do?’ Stride asked.

‘At first, nothing. I wasn’t going to risk the guy’s career over innuendo, even if it was someone I didn’t particularly like. Besides, husbands always think their wives are screwing the shrink.’

‘But?’

‘But I kept my eyes open. I saw one of the street girls for a physical, and I asked her some leading questions to see if she volunteered anything. She clammed up instead. Wouldn’t talk about Roslak. I got the same treatment from the next girl. Didn’t seem to matter what he did. The girls wanted to protect him.’

‘So how did you crack the wall of silence?’

‘I saw some of the girls immediately after therapy. There was evidence of sexual activity. Two of them finally admitted it to me. The details were pretty extreme, but the girls refused to go to the police. Instead, I worked with a friend on the state licensing board, and they basically gave Roslak a choice. Give up his license and get out of Duluth, or they’d pursue civil and criminal action against him.’

‘Did Roslak know you were the one who turned him in?’ Stride asked.

‘Oh, yeah, he knew. He didn’t take it well. He stopped by my house one evening, and it almost came to blows. I thought about calling you for a little backup, but I figured I could handle myself. In the end he left without a fight, which was what he did over his license, too. I was surprised he gave up as easily as he did, but of course we later discovered that he was sleeping with a lot of his paying patients, too. He knew it would all come out.’

‘What about Cat?’

‘She denied a relationship with him.’

‘Do you believe her?’

Steve frowned. ‘No.’

‘Roslak left town a year ago,’ Stride said, ‘and Cat claims she never saw him again. Four months later, someone murdered him in Minneapolis.’

‘Do you think there’s a connection?’

‘I would have said no, but after last night I’m not so sure. Now I’m wondering if Cat told Roslak something that got him killed. I
think she told Margot Huizenfelt the same thing and that’s why she was grabbed.’

Steve’s eyebrows arched in surprise at the reporter’s name. ‘Cat knew Margot?’

‘She interviewed Cat a few months ago.’

‘So what the hell does Cat know that’s worth killing over?’

‘We’re talking about an under-age street girl. That’s lethal exposure for any man who touches her. Particularly if he’s got a wife or a public job. Margot was pushing Cat about whether she’d slept with any men with money.’

Steve said nothing but Stride could read his friend’s face. Something was wrong.

‘You look like you know something,’ Stride said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’m not sure I can say anything,’ Steve replied. ‘Patient confidentiality.’

Stride waited.

‘Obviously, I can’t name names,’ Steve went on.

‘Obviously.’

‘The thing is, I’ve noticed an odd trend at the clinic.’

‘Odd? How so?’

‘STDs,’ Steve said. ‘They’ve been showing up in places I wouldn’t expect. Like some very well-off husbands and wives. Normally I might see one case every now and then, but this is multiple cases in a short period of time. One of the men admitted that he’d had sex with a girl at UMD. Not his wife, needless to say, and she wasn’t screwing him out of the goodness of her heart. She was a paid escort, looking for tuition money.’