The Zero Night

15

“Who’s next?” Maggie asked Guppo impatiently.

Max checked the roster of Gavin Webster’s clients he’d downloaded from court records. They’d already made the rounds to a dozen men throughout the afternoon, looking for connections to Broadway and for faces that twitched when they asked about a stolen boat abandoned on the Wisconsin side of the Saint Louis River. So far, they hadn’t found anyone Maggie considered a suspect.

“His name’s Hink Miller,” Guppo said.

“Hink? You mean Hank?”

Guppo shook his head. “Nope. The charges list him as Hink.”

“What kind of a name is Hink?” Maggie asked irritably.

“What kind of a name is Guppo?” Max replied with a chuckle.

“Yeah, all right. What’s the deal on this guy?”

“We arrested him for assault in a downtown parking ramp last year. Some guy backed out of a spot and dinged his old Ford Taurus, and Hink took it badly. Put the guy in the hospital. Gavin was the lawyer, and Hink walked, charges dropped. The victim developed memory problems, and the county attorney didn’t think she could make the case. Thing is, Hink’s employment history includes a lot of work as a bouncer, arena security, tough-guy stuff.”

“Sounds like someone Broadway might have on the payroll,” Maggie said.

“Exactly. The last known address we have is a third-floor apartment on 2nd Street on the hill over the courthouse.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Maggie gunned her Avalanche along Highway 2, heading back to the city. As she drove, a loud crunch of gravel rumbled from under her tires as she veered accidentally onto the highway shoulder. Guppo cleared his throat to alert her, and she steered back into the lane, overcorrecting across the yellow line and prompting a horn blast from an oncoming truck. Maggie didn’t hide the fact that she was a terrible driver. She’d totaled more than one Avalanche already, and her current model looked like she’d been driving in Beirut rather than Duluth. Stride and Serena refused to drive with her, but Guppo never seemed concerned.

“How’s Troy?” he asked her.

Troy Grange was the health-and-safety manager for the Duluth Port and also Maggie’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. The off part was primarily her fault, not his. He’d asked her to marry him two years earlier, and she’d said no. Then she’d had a brief affair with a Florida detective named Cab Bolton, who was as tall and suave as Troy was lumpy and short. That definitely hadn’t helped their relationship. But to his credit, Troy kept coming back into her life, and she was running out of excuses to push him away. She couldn’t say she loved him, but she’d never really loved anyone other than Stride, and that affair had crashed and burned as quickly as they both had known it would.

“Troy’s fine now,” Maggie said.

“Now?”

“Well, he had a little problem last month. I’m not sure he’d like the word to get around.”

“Come on,” Guppo prompted her, obviously smelling dirt.

Maggie glanced away from the road, and Guppo reached over and grabbed the wheel to straighten it as the truck swerved. “You know how they say to contact a doctor if you’re still ready for action after four hours?”

“Uh-oh,” Guppo said.

“Yeah. So he and I had a good morning. A really good morning. Three times worth of good morning, and he was still ready for action. When he hit five hours, we went to the ER. Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cute little twentysomething nurse use a big-ass needle to drain the blood out of your boyfriend’s dick. It’s kind of like watching one of those Macy’s parade balloons deflate.”

She pantomimed with her index finger slowly toppling, and Guppo gave a little shiver. “That’s an image I’ll never get out of my mind,” he said.

“You asked.”

“At least it sounds like you guys are still together,” Guppo added.

“Yeah, we’re still together. Despite my best efforts.”

Maggie kept driving. They reached the city a couple of minutes later, and she screeched to a stop at the red light across from Miller Hill Mall, nearly rear-ending a city bus. A uniformed police officer in a squad car pulled up in the lane next to them, glanced over with a grin, and made the sign of the cross at Guppo. Maggie responded by lifting her middle finger.

As they started up again on the green light, Maggie said, “You mind if I ask your advice about something, Max?”

“Go ahead, but isn’t Stride your Ann Landers?”

“Not this time. It’s about Serena.”

Guppo glanced at her with surprise, and words burbled out of his mouth. “She told you about that? Aw, jeez. Look, it was a reflex. The house was dark, and she didn’t realize it was me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Um, what are you talking about?” Guppo asked.

“About her walking off with the damn dog.”

Guppo frowned. “Oh. Yeah. The dog.”

“What am I missing, Max? What did Serena do?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. I told her I’d keep it to myself.”

“Max, spill it,” Maggie snapped.

“Okay, okay. Look, it wasn’t a huge deal. She didn’t hear me call out to her when I got to the Webster house. I went upstairs, and she — well, she drew her gun on me.”

Maggie pounded the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“She wasn’t going to fire,” Guppo insisted. “Come on, we’ve all made worse mistakes at one time or another.”

Maggie bit her lip hard and didn’t say anything more. Sergeant Maggie would have unloaded on Guppo for not telling her, but Lieutenant Maggie tried to keep a stranglehold on her tongue, rather than blame the messenger. Serena was the problem, not Guppo. She also knew Guppo was sweet on Serena and would do just about anything to protect her. But this was a disaster.

She kept a rein on her temper for another ten minutes, until they got to the small apartment building on 2nd Street. With a squeal of her brakes, she bumped over the curb and parked three feet onto the sidewalk. After she jumped down to the street, she slammed the door hard behind her and didn’t wait for Guppo. She went and jabbed her finger repeatedly into the buzzer for the third-floor apartment.

A woman’s whiny voice blared back over the intercom. “Who is it? Lay off the goddamn buzzer, will ya?”

“Police. We’re looking for Hink.”

“Who?”

“hink!” Maggie shouted. “How many Hinks do you know?”

“There’s nobody here with a name like that.”

“His name’s right on the damn label on the damn buzzer,” Maggie insisted. “Hink Miller.”

“Well, he must have had the place before me. I only moved in last month.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Not a clue. Never met him.”

Maggie heaved a sigh. Next to her, Guppo was already running searches to locate a new address for Hink Miller. Before he could find anything, however, a window slid open on one of the first-floor apartments, and a skinny man in a white T-shirt leaned outside. He had a can of Bent Paddle in his hand. His face was freckled, and he had wiry hair the color of sand.

“You looking for Hink?”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah. You know where he is?”

“Moved out,” the man said. The expression on his face didn’t look sorry that Hink was gone.

“How about where he works?”

“He does security gigs mostly. Nothing permanent. Any place where they need muscle.”

“Well, do you have any idea where we can find him? Where did he move to?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know the address, but I think he’s over in Wisconsin now. His mother had a stroke, so he lives with her. She’s got a little house just off the highway south of Superior.”

For most of her life, Serena had never believed in premonitions, or intuition, or a sixth sense. She was too practical for things like that. She’d never believed in God, either, not after the things God had let happen to her in Phoenix. But over the past few years, she’d begun to wonder if it was arrogant to think that there was nothing else to the world but what you could see with your eyes.

A couple of years earlier, she’d met an actress named Aimee Bowe who claimed to be psychic. Serena had dismissed the idea as foolish. And yet when Serena had been hunting for Aimee after she’d gone missing, there had been a mental connection between them that Serena couldn’t rationally explain. She’d felt Aimee reaching out to her. Guiding her. The only word that fit was telepathy.

Then there had been Stride’s surgery. Serena, who never prayed, had prayed that day as if God were real. When Stride lived, she told herself it was the skill of the doctors that had saved him and nothing more. And yet, deep down, she couldn’t help but wonder.

As Serena drove down the Point, exhausted and confused, she had another premonition, but this time it was of dark things coming. A bad moon rising. She didn’t doubt her instincts for a second. She looked over at the dog in the passenger seat and knew their time together had come to an end. And she knew that, without him, she would be heading over a precipice.

“I’m sorry, Elton,” Serena told him. “They’re going to take you away from me.”

He seemed to understand her because he bumped his face against her arm repeatedly until she took one hand off the wheel to pet him.

When she got to their cottage on the lake side of the Point, she saw a slick, expensive SUV parked outside, and she had no doubt that the truck belonged to Dale Sacks. She pulled into the driveway and put her arms around Elton, and she held him silently and kissed his head. Then she attached the leash to the dog’s collar and brought him into the house through the back door.

In the living room, Jonny stood by the stairs that led to the unfinished attic. He was in hushed, intense conversation with Dale Sacks, who sat on the red leather sofa. She knew perfectly well that Jonny was trying to convince Dale to give Serena more time with the dog, and she knew equally well that Dale was having none of it.

When the man spotted Serena and Elton, he bolted to his feet, his face red with rage. He swore at her, and that made Jonny take a step toward him, his attitude calm but menacing.

“I know you’re upset, Mr. Sacks, but do not talk that way to my wife.”

“It’s okay,” Serena murmured to Stride. “He’s right.”

She squatted next to Elton and held the dog’s face. “You have to go home now, sweetie.”

“Sad,” Dale Sacks commanded, snapping his fingers. “Over here. With me, right now.”

Sad Sacks. Serena still couldn’t believe this son of a bitch would name their dog Sad. She patted Elton’s backside and whispered, “Go on. It’s okay. You need to go with him.”

Elton whimpered and refused to move.

“Sad!” the man shouted, but his command had no effect.

Serena stood up and used Elton’s collar to pull the dog to his feet. With the leash, she dragged him across the room against his will, and then she handed the end of the leash to Dale Sacks.

“I apologize for my behavior,” Serena said calmly.

Dale swore at her again, and Elton growled, and Stride looked ready to throw a punch.

“Elton, you need to go with him,” Serena told the dog.

Dale yanked on the leash, but Elton dropped back on his hindquarters and refused to stand up. The man grew exasperated. “Do I have to carry you? I’ll fucking carry you if I have to.”

Serena caressed the dog’s head and pointed at the front door. “You can go, Elton. It’s okay. You need to go.”

And then to Dale Sacks: “I expect you to treat him better. Is that clear? Animal control will be following up with you.”

“Fuck off, you crazy bitch.”

Serena had to stand in front of Jonny and hold him back.

Elton whimpered again, but now he let Dale pull him across the room. The front door was partially ajar, and Dale and the dog disappeared through it, and the man slammed the door behind them. His footsteps thumped down the porch, along with the scratch of Elton’s paws. Serena didn’t move at all, but she grimaced when she heard the dog howl in grief from the front yard. It made no difference. She stared at the windows, saw the headlights of the SUV shine to life, and saw the U-turn as it drove away toward the lift bridge. Elton was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Jonny apologized. “I did everything I could. I offered him any amount of money to let you take him.”

“I know.”

“We can get you another dog. We’ll go to the Humane Society; we’ll find you a rescue dog.”

Serena shook her head. “No.”

“What can I do? Tell me what to do. Tell me what you need.”

“There’s nothing you can do, Jonny.”

She turned around and headed to the rear door of the cottage.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Out. I need to be somewhere else.”

“Let me come with you.”

“I want to be alone,” Serena said.

“I’m sorry about Elton,” he repeated.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. I knew it would end this way.”

“Serena, stay here with me. You shouldn’t be alone feeling like this.”

She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. “How do you think I feel, Jonny? Tell me.”

That was cruel.

Cruel to put him on the spot. Cruel to show him how little he really knew her.

He spread his arms wide, looking more helpless than she’d ever seen him. “Lonely. Abandoned. Heartbroken. I don’t know if you won’t open up to me. How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel anything, Jonny,” Serena answered in a robotic voice, which she knew was like turning a knife into him. “Nothing. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care about anyone. Not me. Not you. I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing in this world. I might as well be dead.”