The Zero Night

11

As Serena drove home that night, she passed through the Canal Park area and noticed an unusual number of people gathered on the green grass near the ship canal. October was still the tourist season, and the passage of an ore boat under the lift bridge always brought gawkers running to the piers. But this seemed to be something different. From her car, she spotted an odd display of multicolored lights flashing through the darkness in the middle of the park.

Rather than head across the bridge toward their cottage on the Point, she pulled off the street and parked her Mustang. Putting Elton on a leash, she took the dog and walked into the grassy park near the city’s marine museum. A stiff, cold breeze blew off the lake and swirled her black hair as she approached the crowd. There were at least fifty people arranged in a circle around a man perched atop a coffin that glowed with green luminescent paint. The man was on stilts that lifted him high into the air, and he wobbled unsteadily in the gusty wind. He wore a tight-fitting black bodysuit that had some kind of plastic overlay studded with lights.

As Serena watched, the lights changed colors and transformed into various designs. First, the bodysuit became a skeleton, its white bones dancing. Then, a dozen orange Halloween pumpkins illuminated all over the performer’s body. Then, a Christmas tree filled his chest, twinkling with red-and-green lights. Finally, the word DULUTH appeared on one leg, and MINNESOTA appeared on the other leg, and #1 flashed on his torso.

That won a big cheer from the crowd.

The next message had a more mercenary tone:

From atop the stilts, the man spotted Serena standing in the crowd. She heard him calling to her. “Hey! Detective! It’s me!”

She knew that voice. It was Curt Dickes.

Of course, it was. If a strange moneymaking scam were underway in Duluth, the odds were good that Curt was behind it. Over the years, she’d caught him peddling everything from homemade craft-beer growlers (which she suspected were poured from cans of Coors) to knockoff concert tickets and bags of marijuana. The jail had a revolving door with his name on it. He was mostly a low-level fraudster, but he was clued in to nearly every scheme on the Duluth streets, which often made him a useful source of information when she and Stride needed help.

Serena also suspected that Curt was in love with Cat. She didn’t like that at all. The two of them had hung out for years, dating back to when Cat was living on the streets and Curt was in the business of recruiting pretty teenagers to dress up Duluth parties. Cat had left that world far behind, but Curt was still in the middle of it. So if there was one person that Serena wanted out of Cat’s life forever, it was Curt Dickes.

“Come on down here, Curt,” she called, drawing a disappointed groan from the crowd.

Curt nimbly hopped down from his stilts and landed with a thump on the coffin. He began passing out business cards to people around him, and when Serena grabbed one, she saw an advertisement for curtslightsuits.com. With a sigh, she pried the rest of the cards from Curt’s hand, then beckoned him toward the water. Elton followed on the leash, his nose to the ground.

They stood by the rocks, where the whitecaps of Lake Superior erupted in spray. A few wet fall leaves blew across the grass. Whenever Curt moved, the plastic on his light suit crinkled, and the lights flashed. Tourists kept coming up to ask where they could buy one, and Serena shooed them away.

“Curtslightsuits?” she asked. “Really?”

“You bet, I’m taking orders now!” Curt replied with his usual enthusiasm. “If you want one, you should do it fast and beat the Christmas rush. I figure these things are going to sell like crazy over at Bentleyville.”

“And you’ll be delivering these orders when?” Serena asked.

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “To be honest, my delivery time is a little uncertain. I’m still negotiating with a supplier in China.”

“Uh-huh.”

He flashed a cheerful grin that didn’t really try to hide the scam he was running. That was part of his charm and part of why Cat found him attractive. Yes, he was usually on the wrong side of the law, but he had so much fun doing it that it was actually hard to dislike him.

Curt was tall, but without much meat on his bones. He had greasy black hair that he usually wore down to his shoulders, but which was now tied into two pigtails jutting out of his head like antennae. His bodysuit didn’t show much skin, but Serena could see a tapestry of tattoos stretching from beneath the fabric onto his hands and face. He was almost thirty, but still had the boyish looks of a teenager. She thought of him like a misdemeanor version of Peter Pan.

“Shut the site down,” she told him. “Got it? I’ll be clicking over there in the morning, and I better not find it online.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

Serena didn’t ask how many people he’d already conned into placing advance orders at two hundred bucks a pop. She figured they’d get complaints about that at the station soon enough.

Meanwhile, Curt squatted in front of Elton, and the black-and-white dog responded to his charm, too. The dog licked his face and then tumbled over on the park sidewalk for a tummy rub.

“Who’s the pooch?” Curt asked. “When did you guys get a dog? I can’t believe Cat didn’t tell me.”

“He’s sort of a loaner,” Serena replied without going into details.

“Well, he’s cute. You guys need a dog. I mean, now that you don’t have a Cat anymore, why not get a dog?”

“Ha.”

“Speaking of Kitty Cat,” Curt went on.

“Let’s not.”

“Aw, come on, Serena. We’re just friends. She and I text every day. It’s no big thing. I’d never cause her any trouble, I swear.”

“You’ve already caused her plenty of trouble,” Serena reminded him.

“Well, don’t worry, I’d never lay a finger on her. Absolutely no funny stuff. I value my life too much. You and Stride know too many places to hide bodies.”

Serena couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Cat’s doing well at UMD, so I want you to leave her alone, okay?”

“Tell you what, how about I leave Cat alone and you leave my website alone?” Curt asked with a wink. He pushed a button on a small plastic box to make the lights on his body chase each other from head to toe. The display gave Serena a headache.

“How about you tell me what you know about Gavin Webster?” Serena replied. “And turn off those damn lights.”

Curt switched off the controller with a loud sigh, and his light suit went dark. “Gavin? Sure, I know Gavin. He’s helped me out a few times. What’s the deal with the kidnapping? Did he do it? I bet he did it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hubby inherits a fortune. Wife disappears. Connect the dots.”

“Do you have any evidence to back that up?”

Curt put a finger on the side of his nose. “No, that’s just how it smells to me.”

“Well, forget how it smells. Right now we’re trying to figure out who grabbed Chelsey and where they’re hiding her. You got any names of people I should talk to?”

Curt looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. “You know about Broadway?”

“Yeah, Stride and Maggie just talked to him. Stride filled me in about Gavin and the poker games.”

An eyebrow shot up on Curt’s forehead. “Stride? The big guy’s back in the lineup? I knew he couldn’t stay away forever.”

“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to have your support, Curt. Now, do you know anyone who could be involved in the abduction? Any people connected to Broadway?”

“Well, I’ve been known to put Broadway in touch with local assets from time to time,” Curt admitted. “He’s a Minneapolis guy, so he doesn’t have the connections around here that I do.”

“What kind of connections are you talking about? Players?”

“No, that’s all him, but he likes a class operation. Entertainers. Musicians. Studs behind the bar to pour drinks, pretty girls to take their minds off the cards. All of that is sort of my specialty.”

“And Gavin?”

“He’s been hip-deep in the whole thing from the beginning.”

“He’s not just a player?” Serena asked.

“Oh, no, he helped Broadway set it up. There have been a few legal hiccups along the way, and Gavin made them go away. A security guy had a DUI. One of the players got carjacked with a lot of cash in the car. Gavin smoothed it all over. In return, Broadway staked him in the games.”

“We heard Gavin was in some heavy debt for a while.”

“Yeah. He loves poker, but he’s no good at it. Between you and me, I think Broadway liked having Gavin in hock to him. A lawyer makes for a nice house pet. But then Gavin got a windfall from his sister and paid it all off.”

“Is it possible Broadway got nervous about Gavin inheriting all that money? Like maybe Gavin would walk away and expose the games?”

“Hard to say. Broadway’s a slick dude, but you don’t want to cross him.”

“What about Gavin’s wife? What do you know about Chelsey?”

Curt made a little growl. “The cougar? Nice body, I’m told. She stays in shape. Better shape than the marriage.”

“Who told you that?” Serena asked.

“One of my favorite party girls also works as a masseuse. She met Gavin at one of the gigs. She’s not always strict about adhering to the no-happy-endings rule, so she calls Gavin for help sometimes when you guys haul her in. Gavin said his wife was looking for a massage and asked Toni to give her a rubdown. No funny business, Chelsey wasn’t into that, at least not with girls. But Chelsey must like her because Toni’s been giving her massages for a while now.”

“What did Chelsey tell Toni?”

“You’d have to ask her for the details. Toni just said Chelsey was worried about getting dumped now that Gavin had money.” Curt snickered. “But I don’t suppose she figured that meant getting dumped in a landfill.”

“This masseuse, Toni. Where do I find her?”

“I’ll text you her number,” Curt replied. “Might as well get a massage while you’re there. She has magic fingers, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Please stop talking, Curt.”

“Yeah, sure. We done here?”

“One more question,” Serena said. “Stride got a tip from Broadway. Have you heard about anyone passing around hundred-dollar bills today?”

“C-notes? What, like from the ransom payoff? No, but like I said, I’ll put out the word. Something like that’s easy to spot. If I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”

“You do that.”

Serena tapped her thigh, and Elton scrambled up next to her as if they’d been training together for months. She also crooked a finger at Curt, and when he leaned in, she took hold of Curt’s collar and whispered. Something about the gesture and the sound of her voice made Elton realize that Curt wasn’t a friend, and a mean rumble emerged from the dog’s throat.

“By the way, I don’t like hearing that you’re still recruiting girls for parties,” Serena murmured. “My advice is that you get out of that business if you know what’s good for you. And if I ever — ever — hear that you’ve invited Cat to one of your parties, then you’ll be the one getting dumped in a landfill.”

Curt held up his hands in surrender and laughed nervously at the threat.

Serena didn’t laugh at all.

Late in the evening, Stride sat in Maggie’s office with his feet up on her desk. This had been his office and his desk before he was shot. She sat on the other side, with her own feet propped on the window ledge. Beyond the glass, the woods were lost in the darkness of the night. The overhead office lights were off, so the only light came from the glow of her computer monitor. They were both quiet.

When Stride inhaled, he realized that the smell of the office had changed. It didn’t smell like him anymore. It didn’t look like his office anymore, either. Serena’s picture and Cat’s picture weren’t smiling at him from frames on the wall. The souvenirs he kept from old cases were gone. Nothing was the same.

Maggie opened the bottom drawer of the desk and removed a bottle of Dublin whiskey, something he never would have kept there. “Teeling?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She took out two shot glasses and filled them high. He drank his in a single swallow and enjoyed the mellow warmth that spread in his chest. Like so many other things, alcohol wasn’t on his postsurgery diet, but he didn’t care. He’d decided that the key to not dying wasn’t to quit all the things that made life worth living.

“Today was good,” Maggie said.

“I’m not sure we’re any closer to finding Chelsey,” Stride pointed out.

“I mean good as in having you back.”

“I’m not back,” he clarified.

“Well, even if it’s just a trial balloon, I’ll take it. You, me — I miss that.”

He didn’t answer. She was right about him and about the day. Part of him was hungry to be back. Part of him wanted to sit behind that desk again and call the shots and feel the surge of adrenaline in his veins. Another part of him wanted to leave it all behind.

“I don’t know what to think about Gavin Webster,” Maggie admitted.

She poured another shot for herself, but Stride waved his hand over his glass.

“I don’t either,” Stride said.

“When I hear about gambling debts and inheritance windfalls and secret poker games, I think he has to be guilty. He wanted to get rid of his wife, so he got somebody to abduct and kill her, and he used the ransom money to pay the person off.”

“Could be.”

Maggie shoved a stack of papers across her desk. “We got a copy of Gavin’s cell phone records.”

“And?”

She pointed at an incoming call highlighted in yellow. “See that call? It was made the day that Guppo says the surveillance camera was placed in Gavin’s house. The number is the same burner phone that was used to demand the ransom on Tuesday night.”

“So the kidnapper contacted Gavin before Chelsey was abducted?”

“Yep.”

Stride shook his head. “If Gavin’s guilty, that’s a pretty careless mistake.”

“I agree. And yet most criminals — even smart criminals — make mistakes. Good thing, or our job would be a lot tougher.”

“We need to talk to Gavin about it.”

Maggie tipped her glass toward him. “You want to take the interrogation?”

“This isn’t my case,” Stride said. “It’s yours.”

“Yeah, but you’re better at this than me. I tend to scare people, and they shut up.”

Stride looked at her. “I’m not back, Mags.”

“Well, you’re here now, and hopefully, you’ll be here tomorrow. Talk to Gavin in the morning. See what he says.”

He shrugged. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

“Thank you.”

She drained her shot of Teeling, and then she held up the bottle. Stride didn’t bother turning down the whiskey this time. She filled both crystal glasses, and they clinked them together in a toast.

“To old times,” she said.

“Old times.”

Maggie drank the shot, put the glass down on the desk, and then said, “So. What are we going to do about Serena?”