The Cold Nowhere

5

Stride lived in a place that never forgot the past.

Duluth was a small town masquerading as a big city, and small towns had long memories. Fewer than one hundred thousand souls lived inside its borders. It sounded like a lot, but for a native, it was nothing. When Stride dragged a middle-aged man to the drunk tank, there was a good chance it was someone who’d gone to Central High School with him. When he found a drowned child in the Lester River, he usually knew the parents. It made the job harder and the wounds more personal. He couldn’t see the people as strangers. They were neighbors and friends.

Other towns tore down the past and built on top of it. Not Duluth. The terraced streets that rose off the shore of Lake Superior still boasted Victorian homes that dated to the early part of the previous century, when shipping and mining had made the city a glamour town. The wealth of that era was long gone but the houses remained, decaying like sorrowful echoes. The same was true of the Canal Park factories near the water, even after they’d been shuttered and converted into shops and restaurants for the tourists. You could still see old industrial names etched into the building stone, like Dewitt-Seitz and Paulucci.

When something did get torn down in Duluth, people complained. Where Stride lived, out on the sliver of land known as the Point that divided the harbor from the wild waters of Superior, the shabby old lake homes were slowly disappearing, replaced by condos and hotels and new mansions. No one liked it. The house where he’d lived with his first wife for twenty years was gone. Every time he crossed the lift bridge over the shipping canal, he remembered the homes and the faces of the people who weren’t there anymore.

He’d spent his whole life here. It was an extreme place, like a frontier outpost on the border of the Canadian wilderness. Tourists flooded the town for the brief, warm summers, but the endless winters defined the city and gave it its fierce beauty. For months the waves of the great lake made ice sculptures on the beach and the smaller lakes simply froze into roads for fishermen. Blizzards buried the empty highways, and Alberta winds swept snowdrifts up to the roof lines. Living here was harsh, but Stride couldn’t live anywhere else. When he’d tried, he always came back. This was his home.

Locals boasted that Duluth toughened anyone who survived the winters, but Stride knew that it also made you old before your time. You couldn’t fight the elements and not feel the damage to your body. You couldn’t weather the storms and not get broken. There were other, less visible scars, too. The more time he spent in Duluth, the more he learned about keeping things inside. You hung on to the pain and locked it away. You stayed closed off to the world. After a while, it became a way of life.

Serena had complained that he kept every death harbored in his soul, and she wasn’t wrong. He never forgot the people he’d left behind. To Stride, loss was like the parade of giant ore boats coming and going through the city’s ship canal. Every boat arrived weighted down with black cargo, and every boat had a name.

Like the one in his mind dedicated to Michaela Mateo.

*

‘Private party,’ the guard told Stride, holding up a beefy hand to stop him as he boarded the Charles Frederick.

Stride peeled back the flap of his black leather jacket, revealing his badge pinned to the inside pocket. ‘I have an invitation.’

The guard swore under his breath. He looked like a tackle on the UMD football team, with a blond crew cut, no neck, and a huge torso bulked with muscle, not fat. He was young, probably not even twenty years old. He wore red nylon shorts despite the cold morning, holey sneakers, and a gray sweatshirt with a logo advertising Lowball Lenny’s used cars.

‘What’s your name?’ Stride asked.

‘Marcus,’ the kid told him.

‘You been here all night, Marcus?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tell me about the party.’

‘I don’t know anything about that. They hired me to make sure nobody crashed. I stayed down here. All the fun was upstairs.’

‘Who hired you?’ Stride asked.

Marcus pointed to his sweatshirt. ‘Lowball Lenny. You know, Leonard Keck. The car guy. This was some big celebration for his top salesmen. He brought them in from around the state.’

‘Was Lenny here himself?’

‘Yeah, but he left early. He was gone by eleven o’clock.’

‘You saw him leave?’

‘He walked right past me down the steps. Had his F-150 parked across the street.’

Stride wasn’t surprised to hear Leonard Keck’s name in connection with the party. Lenny was one of the richest men in the northland, thanks to his string of Ford dealerships and his commercial real estate developments around the state. He’d served on the Duluth City Council for a decade. He was also a close personal friend of Stride’s boss, Kyle Kinnick, the Chief of Police. The combination of money and political power, and a relationship with K-2, made Lenny believe he was bullet-proof.

‘Let me guess,’ Stride said. ‘The girls arrived later.’

‘Girls?’

Stride was getting impatient. ‘Marcus, you play for the Bulldogs, right?’

‘I do, that’s right.’

‘Your parents won’t be too happy if your scholarship gets yanked, but that’s what happens when you lie to the police. Understand? So don’t play dumb with me. I know there were girls here.’

Marcus’s face reddened. ‘Okay, yeah, about a dozen girls showed up before midnight. Some guy brought them in a van.’

‘Who?’

‘He was a little guy, skinny, with Hitler hair. Lots of cologne.’

Stride nodded. The description sounded like Curt Dickes.

‘I’m interested in one girl in particular. Small, Hispanic, brown hair and eyes, very attractive.’

‘Yeah, I remember a girl like that,’ Marcus admitted. ‘She was hard to miss.’

‘When did she leave?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her.’

‘Were you here all night?’ Stride asked.

‘Well, I grabbed a nap after midnight,’ Marcus admitted. ‘I figured all the guys were busy with the girls upstairs, and I had a tough practice yesterday.’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘There are beds in the crew quarters on the stern. The party was on the other end.’

‘Did you see or hear anything?’

‘Nah, I crashed. I sleep like the dead. I set my phone to get up in twenty minutes, but I blew through the alarm. I was gone for an hour.’ He looked nervous. ‘Don’t tell anybody, okay?’

‘I better not find out you were with one of the girls, Marcus,’ Stride said.

The kid shook his head. ‘I wasn’t. No way. I got a girlfriend, sir, and she’d rip me a new one if I messed around.’

‘Good.’

Stride left Marcus and took the stairs to the main deck. He stood alone outside, surrounded by the long expanse of red steel. The Frederick was small compared to the thousand-foot freighters that now traversed the Great Lakes, but it was still an imposing boat. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and followed the starboard railing toward the fantail, where Cat said she’d run from her pursuer. Puddles of melted snow gathered on the metal deck. Cold wind swirled off the lake.

At the stern, where the massive anchor chain slipped into the water, he saw no ice choking the channel, but the water temperature could be no more than forty degrees. He imagined Cat throwing herself toward the canal. He knew what that long second felt like before the frigid impact. He’d gone off the side of the Blatnik Bridge between Duluth and Superior the previous year during a police chase and nearly died of the fall. Panic attacks had dogged him for months. Even now, the height made him dizzy.

He examined the channel. Near the pedestrian bridge, he spotted something caught on one of the wooden posts where pleasure boats tied up during the summer. It swished and eddied with the movement of the waves. When he squinted, he saw what looked like flowers opening and closing on a sodden mass of fabric. It looked like a girl’s dress.

Cat’s dress. She’d been in the water, just like she said.

Stride backtracked the length of the boat. He reached the multistory superstructure of the bridge, and the door to the guest quarters was open. He heard laughter somewhere above him. He followed two flights of steps to an elegant half-moon-shaped lounge. He found half a dozen men inside, drinking whiskey from crystal tumblers and playing cards. Once upon a time, rich men had stayed here. Steel company presidents. Army generals. Congressmen. Now boys who made too much money came here to pretend to be their fathers.

One of the men had a gauze pad taped to his forehead under messy blond bangs. The man, who was well dressed and in his mid-thirties, sprang up as Stride walked in. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Police,’ Stride said.

The laughter stopped, like switching off a record player. The car dealers clamped their mouths shut in nervous silence. The man with the bandage adopted a showroom face. He grinned and finished his drink, as if the arrival of a cop were nothing more than a chance to make a sale.

‘Always a pleasure to meet one of Duluth’s finest,’ he said. ‘How can we help you?’

Stride pointed a finger at the man. ‘Let’s talk.’

The man with the bangs spread his arms wide, pleasant and helpful. ‘Sure, whatever. Let’s get some fresh air. Another gorgeous Duluth morning out there. Guys, don’t look at my cards.’

They exited the lounge onto the landing of the upper deck. The car salesman leaned his elbows on the white railing and lit a cigarette. ‘So what’s up, Officer?’ he asked. ‘Why the little visit?’

‘Lieutenant,’ Stride corrected him. ‘I hear there was a party on the boat last night.’

He saw a flicker of concern in the man’s easygoing face. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was thinking. The girl talked. He was debating in his head whether to shut up, lie, or confess.

‘Yes, it’s our annual sales award banquet,’ the man said, with a false air of surprise. ‘I’m the top salesman at Keck Ford in Warroad. Conrad Carter, that’s me. You need a new vehicle, Lieutenant?’

‘Where’d you get that wound on your forehead?’ Stride asked, pointing at the bandage.

‘I slipped. Banged my head. Footing’s pretty treacherous on this old boat.’

‘I heard that a girl hit you,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah? Where did you hear that?’

‘She told me.’

‘Someone told you that? No, it’s not true. Besides, if someone knocked me in the head, that would make me a victim, wouldn’t it? I’d be the one pressing charges, and I’m not. So what’s the problem?’

‘She was sixteen,’ Stride said.

The car salesman’s face froze in dismay. ‘Sixteen? Really? Well, you’ve definitely been getting some bad information, Lieutenant.’

‘I know there were girls here last night, Mr. Carter,’ Stride said.

‘Okay, sure, some ladies decided to join us. What’s a party without female companionship?’

‘Paid companionship?’

Conrad blew smoke from his mouth and crossed his heart with spread fingers. ‘You mean prostitutes? No, no, no, Lieutenant. There was no money changing hands here. Definitely not. If you have good-looking guys and free booze, you can always find women who like to have fun.’

‘Where did the girls come from?’ Stride asked. ‘Who knew they were going to be here?’

‘I really have no idea. Party planning’s not my thing. Maybe someone spread the word at the bars downtown. Maybe there was a flier on the bulletin board at UMD. Word travels fast.’

‘Did you talk to Curt Dickes?’

Conrad smiled. ‘Curt who?’

‘He brought the girls.’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

‘So who would?’ Stride asked. ‘Are you saying Mr. Keck arranged everything? I’ll be happy to tell him you said so.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Conrad replied quickly. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’

‘Then let’s try this again. Who arranged for the girls?’

Conrad drummed his fingers on the railing. He squinted over Stride’s shoulder at the lake. ‘You know, Lieutenant, I think I’ve said enough.’

‘You know which girl I’m talking about,’ Stride said. ‘Young, pretty, Hispanic. She was here. She hit you.’

‘If this girl was here, and she was under-age, then she faked her way on board. Nobody wants kids at a party like this. It kills the mood, you know? As for me, I never saw her and I never touched her.’

‘You never solicited anal sex from her? Because she says you did, and that’s when she knocked you out with her boot. Right there, on your forehead.’

Conrad threw his cigarette on the deck and stamped it under his foot. ‘I told you we’re done, Lieutenant,’ he said coldly.

‘Someone was waiting for this girl outside the ship, Mr. Carter. She says he tried to kill her.’

‘Kill her?’ he said. ‘That sounds pretty crazy to me.’

‘Did you see or hear anything?’

‘No, I didn’t, and I think you better consider the source. A sixteen-year-old girl crashes a party to get some free drinks? And then starts throwing around wild accusations? If you ask me, she’s running some kind of scam.’

‘A scam?’

Conrad gestured toward the men in the lounge. ‘That’s right. My friends and I, we’re successful, we’ve got money. I don’t need to tell you how much money Lowball has. A street girl looks at that and thinks, “How can I get some of that for me?” So maybe she figures she can blackmail somebody.’

‘Is that what happened?’ Stride asked.

‘Nothing happened, Lieutenant,’ Conrad replied. ‘Nothing at all. I already told you. Whoever this girl is, she’s a liar. You can’t trust a word she says.’