The Cold Nowhere (9 page)

‘It was him,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t see the car.’

‘It was him,’ she repeated.

He came close to her. Too close. ‘I really wish you’d leave town for a while, Michaela.’

‘And lose my job?’ she said. ‘Lose my house? I won’t let him make me run. You’ll protect me, Jonathan. I have faith in you.’

He felt her trust. Her faith was like an embrace. She believed in him.

Two days later, he stared down at her dead body, riddled with stab wounds, her blood like a lake. Marty’s body lay sprawled beside her, a gun in his hand, with his bone and brains shot across the hardwood floor of the matchbox bedroom.

‘Do you remember Marty Gamble?’ Maggie asked.

Ken McCarty, who was naked on top of her, paused in his thrusting. His face screwed up like a dried apple and she felt him wither inside her. ‘Wow, you really pick odd times to talk about work,’ he said.

Maggie wrapped her legs around his backside and pulled him deeper. ‘You’re right. Continue.’

Ken launched into his rhythm with renewed vigor. His face reddened with effort as he shook the bed frame, but the more he labored, the more he shrank, until she couldn’t even feel him between her thighs. Finally, in frustration, he withdrew and flopped over on his back beside her. His skin was damp with sweat. ‘Sorry.’

‘No biggie,’ Maggie said.

‘Thanks for reminding me.’

‘Oops,’ she giggled. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She turned over on her side and reached between his legs to caress him. ‘Want me to work my magic?’

Her fingers kneaded and twisted as if she were working on bread dough, but the dough failed to rise.

‘I better take a rain check,’ Ken said. ‘Either that or I need some blue pills. That would be a first.’

‘My fault.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I like it better at night anyway. Hey, I caught a Bree Olson video on pay-per-view last week. There’s a hot position I’d love to try. You game?’

‘Always.’

He kissed her, and they tongued back and forth. His hands roamed her body. ‘God, you’re hot,’ he said.

‘Even for an older woman?’

‘Twenty-somethings got nothing on you, babe.’

Maggie grinned. She knew that Ken had had his share of younger girls over the years, and he probably still did. They’d only hooked up a couple of times. Even so, she was oddly pleased to think that he was watching porn when he wasn’t with her, rather than bringing home a girl from a Dinkytown bar.

She also knew that if she did anything well, other than her job, it was sex. She was open to anything and always had been. Sex didn’t really mean much to her, so she didn’t care about crossing lines. She’d never put sex and love in the same equation, not until she’d finally slept with Stride, and that had been a huge mistake, right up there with the McDonald’s McLean burger. A relationship with Ken, if it went that far, was safer. Wild sex. Lots of time apart. No pressure. The two hours between Duluth and Minneapolis felt like the right distance.

Ken rolled his naked body out of bed and pulled on his tighty-whities. He wasn’t tall, but everyone was tall to Maggie. He had a sandy crew cut and the tough-as-nails bulky physique of a carb-loaded cop. His blond goatee was neatly trimmed, and he had an easy grin. He still had a young, carefree style, which she liked. He was thirty-four, but he could have been twenty-four, an adult who was happy to stay a kid.

He wandered to the window in his underwear. Maggie had a condominium on Superior Street above the Sheraton Hotel, with a million-dollar view. Most of the other owners around her were rich doctors from St. Mary’s and St. Luke’s, who had mansions in the Cities and used the condos as their home base when they breezed into town to do surgery. Maggie was the only cop in the building. She’d inherited money after her entrepreneur husband was murdered, and she didn’t need to work anymore. However, she
couldn’t imagine living like a socialite, getting her nails done and pretending to care about the Symphony Ball. She was a cop and would always be a cop. It also meant she kept working with Stride.

‘So do you?’ she asked.

‘Do I what?’

‘Remember Marty Gamble.’

Ken turned around and scratched his beard. ‘Wasn’t he the skinhead who stabbed his wife and then blew his head off?’

‘That’s him.’

‘That was a long time ago. He was a brutal son of a bitch. We all knew him. Why, what’s going on?’

She explained about Cat and Stride. ‘I think he’s taking on more than he should. I don’t trust this girl.’

‘Gamble’s dead. What does this have to do with his daughter?’

‘The girl’s obsessed with knives,’ she said. ‘Just like Daddy.’

‘You think she’s violent?’

‘I don’t know, but the whole thing feels wrong to me.’

Ken wandered back to the bed. He sat down and played with her nipple, and she started to get horny. It made her think about peeling off his tighty-whities and trying again.

‘If your instincts say something’s wrong, then something’s probably wrong,’ he said. ‘Trust your gut.’

‘Thanks.’

Before she could pounce on him and straddle his groin, he bounced off the bed. ‘So what should we do this afternoon? You want to go down and hit the casino? I like the idea of a rich girlfriend staking me at blackjack. I can go for this whole boy-toy thing.’

‘Listen, about this afternoon,’ she said.

Ken groaned with displeasure. ‘Oh, shit, tell me you’re not busy, Maggie. It’s Saturday. It’s play day.’

‘You surprised me. I’m behind on my paperwork. I’ve got to go into the office for a few hours.’

‘How many hours?’ he asked.

‘Three, max, I promise. Four at the outside. Okay? We can hook up tonight.’

‘Fine, I’ll go to the casino and spend my own money. Nickel slots and free Mountain Dew. Are you happy?’

‘You want some cash?’

Ken laughed. ‘Please, I am an old-fashioned chauvinist male. I refuse to sponge off a woman unless she is physically with me.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said.

She came up and pressed her body against him. She worked her hands inside his underwear and squeezed his cheeks like she was testing melons at the farmers’ market. ‘You going to give me any hints about this position you want to try? Because chances are I’ve tried it.’

‘Well then, you can be the teacher, and I can be the naughty student.’

She slapped his ass and pulled out her hands. ‘What do you want for dinner? How about T-bones right here? Au gratins, cabernet, candlelight.’

‘Now you’re talking.’

She sat down on the bed and pulled on her black socks. He watched her with hungry eyes, and she liked the fact that he didn’t hide his desire for her.

‘There’s nothing sexier than a woman wearing nothing but socks,’ he said.

‘Funny.’

‘No, it’s true. Besides, socks keep my shoulders warm.’

She giggled. She didn’t giggle very often, but she found herself doing it a lot with Ken. Maybe it was true that dating a younger man was the secret to the fountain of youth. Her lips turned upward, and her white teeth beamed.

‘That’s what I like to see,’ he said. ‘That smile.’

‘Sorry. I’ve been distracted this morning.’

‘I could tell.’

‘It’s this thing with Stride,’ she said.

Ken frowned, and Maggie knew she’d put her foot in her mouth by mentioning Stride’s name. They were new lovers, but they were old friends. It was hard to keep secrets from someone who knew you well. She’d been the one to hire him away from his job as a UMD campus cop; she’d trained him, supervised him, gone on calls with him, and complained to him. When he’d transferred to the Minneapolis Police four years earlier, she’d been disappointed, because she liked spilling her guts to Ken. There had always been a hint of sexual tension between them, but it had never amounted to anything until now. They both knew why.

‘It’s always about Stride, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Nothing ever changes with you.’

‘That’s not what this is.’

‘Yeah?’ He wasn’t convinced.

‘Really, it’s not. Not anymore.’

‘Sure.’

She couldn’t pretend that she’d never had feelings for Stride. It was an open secret in the department, and she’d shared a lot – probably too much – with Ken when he’d worked with her in Duluth. However, she hadn’t told him about her short-lived affair with Stride over the winter. No one knew about that.

No one except Serena.

‘Does Stride know about us?’ Ken asked.

‘I told him this morning.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He asked who you were. He didn’t remember you.’

Ken looked crestfallen, but then his eyes narrowed as he studied Maggie’s face and realized she was joking. ‘You lying bitch.’

She laughed. ‘Sorry. He gave us his blessing. He said we were two crazy kids, and he said to make sure we were using protection.’

‘Right.’

Maggie continued getting dressed. She squeezed herself into tight jeans and let him admire her, topless, before reaching for a T-shirt. Not that there was much to admire upstairs. Her breasts weren’t exactly mountains. She slipped her shirt over her head and tucked it in. Her hair was mussed, and she blew her bangs out of her eyes. Ken came over and fondled her bowl haircut.

‘Red, huh? I can’t picture it.’

‘Where did you hear about that?’ she asked.

‘I talked to Guppo. He said it was a sight to behold.’

‘I bet he did. He told me I looked like a felt-tip marker. Guess I’ll stick with black.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Red’s sexy. You must have been hot.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed him, but then her eyes widened in horror. ‘Holy crap! You didn’t tell Guppo about us, did you?’

‘Hey, I was tempted, but no. I think he probably guessed, though. I can’t keep it off my face when I’m having sex.’

‘You can’t keep it off my face,’ Maggie replied, winking. She studied him in his underwear and added, ‘I don’t know exactly what we’re doing here, but I kinda like it.’

‘Me, too. I had a crush on you in the old days, you know.’

‘So why did you never make a move on me?’

‘Are you kidding? Back then, you scared the shit out of me. You and your Terminator sunglasses and your snarky mouth. I figured you must be some kind of dominatrix in bed.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I’m into that,’ he said.

She strapped herself into her boots, which really did look like something a dominatrix would wear. She grabbed sunglasses from her nightstand and slid them over her face with both hands.

‘Ah’ll be back,’ she rumbled.

‘Just like Arnold,’ he said.

She headed for the door, but before she could leave, he called after her. ‘Hey, Maggie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You want to tell me where you’re really going?’

She took off her sunglasses and acted surprised, but he’d caught her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Maggie Bei never got behind on paperwork in her life,’ Ken replied coolly. ‘What are you up to?’

He was a cop, and you can’t fool a cop.

‘Okay, okay, I want to dig around into this girl a little bit more. She hangs out at the shelter downtown. I’m meeting Brooke Hahne to see what she can tell me.’

‘Sounds like I better not count on steaks and sex tonight.’

‘It depends on what I find. It’s probably nothing.’

‘You could have told me the truth. Why is this so important to you?’

Maggie frowned. It bothered her to say what she was really thinking. ‘Forty-one times. That’s what I keep thinking about. That’s what scares me.’

Ken’s face scrunched up in confusion. ‘What?’

‘Forty-one times. The medical examiner counted the stab wounds during the autopsy of Michaela Mateo. I remember the number. Marty Gamble stabbed his ex-wife forty-one times while he was killing her.’

‘It was horrible, but what’s your point?’

‘My point is, this girl heard the whole thing. She hid under the porch, listening to her father stab her mother, listening to her mother screaming, listening to her father when he took a gun and blew his own head off. And now that same girl is staying
in Stride’s house
. I don’t like it.’ She put her sunglasses back on and shook her head. ‘Forty-one times. What does that do to a kid?’

Stride sat with Cat’s legal guardians, William and Sophie Green, in a tiny kitchen decorated with vinyl wallpaper that was printed with daisies. The wallpaper had bubbles at the seams. The closed-in air of the room smelled like cigarette smoke and curdled cream. He saw a neon NASCAR clock, with a picture of Dale Earnhardt, hanging over the refrigerator, but it had stopped, and it still showed the time as 9:07. A religious calendar, with an illustration of Jesus spreading his arms on a cliff-top, was opened to February, not April.

‘Is that your Coupe de Ville in the driveway?’ Stride asked William Green.

Green swigged a can of Budweiser and wiped his mouth. He looked surprised by the question. ‘Yeah. It’s an ’84. I’ve been overhauling it for months. Scrounging for parts.’

‘You’re a car guy, huh?’

‘That’s right. I fix ’em up and sell ’em. It’s a hobby.’

‘You go to the Auto Show in Minneapolis?’

Green shot an uncomfortable glance at his wife, Sophie, who stared at the kitchen table. ‘Most years, sure,’ he said.

‘That was a month ago, right?’ Stride asked. ‘Were you there?’

‘Yeah, I was. So what?’

The man’s dark eyes flamed with anger. His wife looked oblivious to the undercurrent in the conversation, but Stride wanted Green to know that he was aware of the man’s arrest for solicitation the previous month.

‘What is this about?’ Sophie asked in a thin voice.

She had wispy auburn hair and a plain face with over-done makeup. She wore a floral dress suitable for church and had a cross on a slim chain around her neck. A purplish bruise peeked out from the half-sleeve on her upper arm.

‘I’m trying to find out exactly what was going on that weekend,’ Stride explained. ‘Cat says someone chased her outside the house on Saturday night.’

‘Chased her? Who?’

‘I don’t know yet. Do you remember seeing any strangers in the neighborhood in the last few weeks?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Were you and Cat the only ones in the house while your husband was away?’