The Cold Nowhere

31

‘Special delivery,’ Ken McCarty said when Maggie opened the door.

He cradled a Sammy’s pizza box in his hands, and the aroma wafted into her condo like an old friend. It was almost midnight, and Maggie was angry, horny, and starving. She took him by the collar and dragged him inside.

‘Sausage and pepp?’

‘Sausage and pepp.’ He slid the cardboard box onto her dining room table and held out his hand. ‘That’ll be twenty dollars for the pizza, ma’am. Not including tip, and college boys like me really need tips.’

Maggie ran a fingernail down his neck. ‘Oh, no. Oh, I have no cash. Whatever will we do? Would you take a check?’

‘Sorry, ma’am, no checks.’

‘I’m so embarrassed. Is there anything else I can do?’ She undid the first button on his shirt, then the second.

‘Do I look like some UMD gigolo trying to pay back my student loans? It’s twenty bucks, ma’am.’

She scraped her fingernails through his blond chest hair. Her other hand squeezed between his legs. She continued unbuttoning his shirt as she kissed her way down onto her knees. ‘Are you sure? Isn’t there some other way I can pay you?’

When she tugged his zipper down, Ken couldn’t keep a straight face. ‘Okay, okay, you win. The pizza’s going to get cold if you keep doing that.’

‘Cold pizza is the food of the gods. It’s like McNuggets. Besides, this isn’t going to take long.’

She was right. Half an hour later, they sat on opposite sides of her small kitchen table, half-dressed, with open beer bottles in front of them. The pizza was still warm. Maggie began eating the little pepperoni slices before starting in on the pizza itself, which was cut into squares.

‘So what’s up with the video of Roslak and Cat?’ she asked, her mouth full.

‘It’s creepy stuff.’

‘Creepy enough that you think she killed him?’

‘I don’t know. She’s screwed up enough that I would say yes. Anyway, you’re not going to like it.’

‘How so?’

‘You’ll have to watch it and see.’ Ken popped a square of pizza in his mouth. ‘You know what we need for dessert? Donuts.’

‘Sick man.’

‘I miss House of Donuts.’

‘Jeez, you and Stride and your donut envy. Steve’s the same way. Is this a guy thing?’

‘Hey, we used to live on crullers after the bars closed. When they shut down, I barely had a reason to live. That’s why I moved to Minneapolis. There was nothing keeping me in a donut-free world.’

‘What about me?’

Ken rubbed her thigh with his foot. ‘If you’d greeted me like that in the old days, I never would have left.’

‘You like it down there?’ she asked.

His foot moved up her thigh, close to the mound between her legs. ‘Down where?’

‘Minneapolis, you pervert.’

‘It’s okay. I thought a bigger city would be more exciting, but there’s too much racial garbage. The minorities hate us. The leftwing freako politicians are always looking over our shoulder. Everybody thinks they know how to do the job better than we do. Pisses me off.’

‘There’s political crap everywhere,’ Maggie said.

‘Yeah, I know. My dad wants me to move to Florida. He’s got a rathole trailer in Tallahassee. Him and me, we’d probably kill each other after a month in the same town. Plus, I hate Florida. All those fucking cockroaches and that fucking humidity. Hurricanes, too. I’m staying in Minnesota for the weather.’

Maggie laughed. ‘So move back here. I could talk to Stride. We could get you on the team again.’

She noticed the anxious look on his face, and she back-pedaled. ‘Whoa, not because of me. I just mean, if you don’t like it down there, you’re not stuck.’

‘Thanks, I get it,’ Ken said. ‘I didn’t think I’d miss it the way I do. I guess when you grow up somewhere, you can’t get it out of your genes. Anyway, it’s a moot point. My mortgage is so far underwater I’d need a scuba tank to see daylight. I ain’t going nowhere.’

Maggie wondered if that was true or if that was a line to spare her feelings. She’d pushed him too fast. It was way too soon to talk about him moving back to Duluth, even if she had no ulterior motives. If he was happier up here, she wanted him to come back here, with no strings attached. The trouble was, it was hard to say you weren’t pulling romantic strings ten minutes after you’d given a man a blow job and washed his hair in the shower.

She said: Move back up here.

He heard: We’re a couple now.

Then again, maybe he was being straight with her. The housing market was on life support, and Ken was still Ken, which meant he’d probably sucked every dollar of equity out of his house to buy toys. She’d lectured him about it when he first joined the force, but Ken never changed. He was still a kid at heart, breezy and impulsive. So was she. Or that was what she told herself. She wasn’t getting old, no matter what the calendar said.

‘So Serena’s in town, huh?’ Ken asked, forcing three squares of pizza into his mouth at the same time. ‘Guppo says she’s looking good.’

‘Serena always looks good,’ Maggie replied sourly.

Ken had no way of knowing he’d pinned the tail on the wrong donkey. ‘You two pissing on each other? You mad because she walked out on Stride?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘You want to talk about it?’

‘The last thing I want to talk about is Serena Dial.’

He held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sorry.’

Then, out of nowhere, he added: ‘So were you ever planning to tell me that you and Stride got it on this winter?’

Maggie slammed her beer on the table. ‘Shit shit shit! Guppo?’

‘World’s roundest spy.’

She pushed her chair back so hard it fell, and she stalked to the window. She slammed a palm against the wall. ‘I was going to tell you about it.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t.’

‘I figured you’d think you were some kind of consolation prize.’

‘Am I?’

‘No. That’s not what this is about.’

Ken swallowed his pizza and came up behind her. He wore boxers and nothing else. Maggie’s shirt was undone. He put his arms around her and fingered her breasts like they were musical instruments.

‘I really am sorry,’ she told him.

‘Relax. Fuck me again, and all is forgiven.’

Maggie spun around and slapped him hard. He reeled back in surprise, rubbing his face. His smile vanished, and he shook his head. ‘Guess that wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to say.’

‘Am I a good lay to you? Is that it?’

‘Hey, we both seem pretty happy with this arrangement.’

Maggie closed her eyes. She was suddenly furious. Furious at Ken, at Stride, at Guppo, at Serena, but mostly at herself. She prided herself on never letting her emotions get in the way of her judgment, but she felt like a fool.

‘Let’s not do this now,’ she said.

‘Fine with me.’

‘Maybe we should talk about work.’

‘Maybe we should.’

‘Show me the tape,’ she told him.

‘Whatever you say.’

*

Ken slid the unlabeled DVD into the drawer of the Blu-Ray player on Maggie’s stereo tower. ‘I spent four hours going through Roslak’s files,’ he told her. ‘There were hundreds of videos. He taped everything. I don’t think it was for any clinical purpose. I think the son of a bitch was just a voyeur.’

‘You found Cat?’

‘Yeah, she was in the pile.’

‘Why’d they never bring her in for questioning?’

Ken shrugged. ‘You think the murder of an unlicensed shrink with a rep for screwing patients gets much priority? Around the same time, we had a ten-year-old boy killed in a school bullying incident and an immigrant store owner blown away behind the counter of his shop by two gang members. Guess where the manpower went? It wasn’t Vincent Roslak.’

‘Still, it’s been eight months,’ Maggie said.

‘The case has one lead investigator, and he’s swamped. We dicked around with a judge about getting access to Roslak’s materials at all. Patient privilege, you know? We got permission to do screen captures to sort the videos by face, and we identified a couple hundred people. We’ve got names for most of them now, but we can’t even watch the tapes without consent, which means tracking down each person one at a time. The whole thing is an evidence nightmare.’

‘What about Cat?’

‘With the consent Stride faxed this morning, I was able to pull her videos. Roslak saw her at least five times. I watched all of them. Most of it doesn’t tell us much, but the last one — wow. She was hypnotized. He took her on a flashback about the night her parents died.’

‘She was six then,’ Maggie said. ‘Would her memories be accurate?’

‘Who knows? He’s the shrink, not me.’

‘Where was this? Duluth or Minneapolis?’

‘No way to be sure,’ Ken told her. ‘He’s got a white sheet as a backdrop. I didn’t see anything to identify the location.’

‘Is it dated?’

‘No.’

‘So what did she say?’

‘Take a look,’ Ken said.

He pushed the Play button. The image of Cat Mateo filled the fifty-inch screen. Ken was right; it could have been filmed anywhere. The video showed her and a white backdrop and nothing more. Cat sat on a wooden stool, facing the camera. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were folded in her lap. Her legs were pressed demurely together, like a child in church. She looked serene.

Maggie heard a voice-over behind the camera. The voice dripped with honey and concern. It was Vincent Roslak.

‘Are you comfortable, Cat?’

‘ Yes.’

‘Relaxed?’

‘ Yes.’

‘It feels natural to be here, doesn’t it?’

‘ Yes.’

‘Good. You trust me, don’t you?’

‘ Of course, I trust you, Vincent.’

‘I would never hurt you.’

‘No.’

‘We’re going to take a little journey, Cat.’

‘ Okay.’

Maggie waved her hand. ‘Fast-forward. Get to the part you want me to see.’

Ken advanced through several scenes. When he stopped, Maggie saw Cat again, but she looked transformed. The peace in her face had vanished. She sat open-eyed, staring into nothingness, her face slack with horror. She clutched the arms of the chair and rocked from side to side. Her voice was the scared voice of a little girl. She wailed at the lens, as if gripped by an unbearable pain, and then she leaped out of the chair and stormed the camera.

‘ STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP No no no no no no.’

Maggie jumped back. ‘Jesus.’

‘It gets worse,’ Ken said.

Cat’s voice turned guttural. It was deep and menacing — a man’s voice. She shouted at the top of her lungs.

‘ I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you!’

Maggie listened to the back-and-forth between Cat and Roslak. His relentless questions pushed the girl into the past. She could picture Cat under the porch, cold, scared, and confused. Inches away from her parents as they died. ‘Roslak was playing with fire,’ she said. ‘He could have pushed her over the edge. God knows what she would have done.’

‘There’s more,’ Ken said. ‘It’s not just that. Listen.’

‘To what?’

‘Listen.’

‘What’s going on, Cat?’

‘ Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. He’s dead. They’re both dead. Oh, God.’

‘Your father?’

‘ He killed him.’

‘What? Who?’

‘ Sirens.’

‘Talk to me, Cat.’

‘ I’ll protect you.’

‘Everything’s okay. What’s my name, Cat?’

‘ Come out, it’s okay.’

‘My name, Cat. Who am I?’

‘ Stride. My name is Stride.’

Ken stared at her. ‘You see?’

Maggie stopped the recording and stripped the disc out of the machine. ‘No, I don’t see. What the hell is that supposed to mean? She heard Stride?’

‘It’s not hard to figure out,’ Ken said.

‘Yeah? Tell me.’

‘I don’t think you want to hear it.’

‘Shit, Ken, just tell me what you think.’

‘Cat makes it sound like Stride was there before Marty died.’

‘Are you kidding? No way. She’s mixing things up. Or she was acting. That wasn’t real.’

‘It sure looked real to me,’ Ken said.

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I’m not saying anything. Cat’s the one who said it.’

‘Marty Gamble killed himself. It was a murder-suicide. Stride sure as hell did not kill him.’

‘Are you sure?’

Maggie shouted at him. ‘Of course, I am fucking sure! Are you crazy? We’re talking about Stride.’

‘Hey, I hear you, but everyone knew he was sweet on Michaela. If he showed up and found her dead? If Marty was drunk or passed out in her blood? What would he have done?’

‘No way. This little bitch is either faking it or she’s mixing up her memories. That is not what happened.’

‘You’re probably right, but it doesn’t look good.’

‘I don’t care how it looks.’

‘Was he there?’ Ken asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Was Stride on the scene?’

‘Of course, he was there! We were all there!’

‘When did he arrive?’

Maggie found herself almost hyperventilating. ‘What?’

‘When did Stride arrive at the crime scene?’

‘That doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Maggie,’ Ken murmured. ‘Come on.’

She stared at the dark television. This was wrong. This was a mistake. This wasn’t how it happened.

‘Okay, yes, Stride was the first responder,’ she told him. ‘Michaela called him when she saw Marty’s car. He was there before any of us arrived. Just him and the two bodies. And Cat.’