The Zero Night

7

But Serena didn’t.

While she drove south out of Superior on Highway 53 toward Rice Lake, the Border collie sat upright in the passenger seat and curiously watched the forested landscape passing by on both sides of the car. Dry now, the dog had a lush coat, black on his lower body with a white tuxedo vest, and a black head with just a ribbon of white fur running down the middle of his face to his nose. His head didn’t seem to have fully grown into his big ears, which drooped a little of their own weight. His eyes were dark, and one seemed to open more than the other, which gave him a permanently mournful expression.

“So do you have a name?” Serena asked.

The dog, hearing her voice, seemed to know she was talking to him — she’d checked; it was a him — and his head swung to look at her. She spotted a collar nestled tightly in the fur of his neck, and as she drove, she worked with her fingers to find his red ID tag. She squinted at what was etched on it.

“Sad?” she said, shaking her head. “Seriously? They named you Sad Sacks?”

Hearing his name, the dog barked.

“Well, sorry, buddy, but I’m not calling you Sad. At least while we’re together, we need an alternative. Any suggestions?”

The dog kept looking at her, his floppy ears pricking up a bit.

“How about Elton?” Serena said.

The dog didn’t react.

“I knew another dog named Elton once. We’re probably not going to be together for very long, so you’re going to have to put up with it for a while. You good with that, Elton? I’m Serena, by the way.”

With a little snort, Elton draped himself across the red-and-black leather of the Mustang’s seats and positioned his nose across Serena’s leg. Even dry, he still had a wet-dog smell, so she turned on the vents a little higher. The fan ruffled Elton’s fur.

The rain had finally stopped, but the sun was still missing in action. Bubbly clouds hung low in the sky. The north — south Wisconsin highway wasn’t crowded, so she put the Mustang on cruise control. A few minutes later, she passed the town of Solon Springs, which meant she still had an hour to go before reaching Rice Lake. It was almost noon, but she didn’t bother stopping to eat. She’d filled up at a gas station before crossing the high bridge out of Duluth, and she’d bought a few microwave hot dogs for Elton, which he happily devoured.

Her fingers stroked the dog’s head in her lap. Elton closed his eyes and enjoyed the massage.

“So tell me something,” she said, not caring that this was a one-sided conversation. “Do you miss being with the Sackses? I mean, dogs are funny that way. They even love people who kick the shit out of them.”

The dog exhaled with a noise that was part whistle, part snore.

Serena’s mouth curled into a frown. “Then again, it’s not like I can talk. I stuck around for a long time with someone who kicked the shit out of me, too.”

She wasn’t aware of driving faster, but her foot pushed heavily on the accelerator, overriding the cruise control, and the Mustang responded like a thoroughbred unleashed.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she murmured, although she knew it was still a secret. When she looked down, she saw that Elton was sound asleep. Plus, he was a dog, and dogs were good secret-keepers.

“When my dad left us, I didn’t even miss him,” Serena continued. “That’s pretty pathetic, huh? I was fifteen years old. Samantha had already started doing drugs. She shared them with me sometimes, when I wasn’t sneaking drinks from her vodka bottles. She was so much cooler than the other moms. They didn’t want anything to do with her. Or me. They started keeping my friends away from me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need them. I had Samantha.”

The Wisconsin landscape whipped past them, lightning fast.

“My dad didn’t even try to take me with him. He just left. I went out with Samantha to a club one night — she had a fake ID for me, and I looked a lot older than I really was — and when we got back, he was gone. Packed up, no note, no idea where he went. For years, I told people that he abandoned me, but that’s not really true. I wouldn’t have gone with him even if he’d asked me. I was a momma’s girl. I wanted to stay with Samantha. Being with her, living the way she lived — totally free — that was magic.”

She touched her face, wondering if she’d find tears on her cheeks this time. There were still none.

“I remember when we got home to the empty house at four in the morning and found the note. Samantha just shrugged when she read it and said, ‘Fuck him.’ Like it was no big deal that her husband had walked out.”

In her lap, the dog stirred and gave a low woof, as if offended by the profanity.

“Sorry, but that’s what she said. I said the same thing, just parroted it right back. Fuck him. I was glad my father was gone. He was a downer. Without him, we could do whatever we wanted. Stay out all night. Sleep all day. Samantha bought me all sorts of shit. Music. Video games. I had no idea that she’d lost her job, that she was maxing out one credit card after another, that she hadn’t paid the mortgage in a year. I didn’t think about the fact that she wasn’t working. When you’re drunk at a party, you never think about the party ending.”

There was no emotion in Serena’s voice, because she felt no emotion at all. Everything that had happened may as well have been scenes from a movie on a screen, something unreal that an actor had gone through, not herself.

“Eventually, the bank foreclosed on the house, and we got kicked out. We were homeless. We lived in the parks, under bridges, in shelters when we could find a bed. Samantha just dug the hole deeper. She and I sort of switched places at that point. I began taking care of her. I didn’t mind. I would have done anything in the world for her. That was when I met my friend Deidre. She was homeless, too. She taught me the ropes: how to scam things, who would help you, who would rape you if you gave them half a chance. I burned through jobs, mostly because I stole all the time, and as soon they figured that out, I was gone. But Samantha would always tell me what a good girl I was, how proud she was of me. Then she’d take the money I gave her and buy more drugs. It was never enough, though. Not for her habit. She needed a more permanent arrangement to keep the coke flowing.”

Serena finally glanced at the dashboard and saw that she was driving one hundred and ten miles an hour. Her foot eased off the gas.

“His name was Blue Dog,” she said.

The parents of Gavin Webster lived in an old section of Rice Lake, only a couple of blocks from Main Street. Their tiny house faced a neighborhood playground across the street. The lawn was mostly made of weeds, and it was brown where a couple of huge oak trees blocked out the sun. Serena suspected that Gavin had used some of his inheritance to help his parents, because she noted that the paint on the house was fresh, the roof looked recently replaced, and there was a brand-new Subaru Outback parked outside the detached garage.

She’d called ahead, so Mary and Tim Webster were waiting for her. They invited her inside the house when she knocked. Elton stayed in the Mustang. The three of them sat in the living room that faced the street, and Mary switched off the local radio station, which was playing a Travis Tritt song. Serena took a seat in a leather armchair, and the Websters sat holding hands on the sofa by the window. Mary was short, and Tim was very tall, with skinny legs that seemed to jut out into the middle of the room. The air had the syrupy, floral smell of hot oil plugged into an outlet.

When Mary fixed her stare on Serena, she saw that Gavin had gotten his distinctive eyes from his mother. They were the same intense blue.

“Who could have done this?” she asked with a frantic tone of disbelief. “Do you have any idea who kidnapped Chelsey?”

“We don’t know that yet, but we have a large team investigating the case and we’re doing everything we can to find her.”

The father, Tim, shook his head. He was mostly bald, with a neat triangular gray mustache and black glasses. “You won’t find her.”

Serena looked at him in surprise. “Why do you say that, Mr. Webster?”

“My cousin’s a cop in Des Moines. He says if the kidnappers don’t get back to you once they get the ransom, that’s it. She’s dead.”

“Timothy,” his wife interrupted. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Yes, I know you’re both concerned,” Serena said, trying to reassure them, “but it’s way too early to assume the worst. In order to find Chelsey, we need to gather all the information we can. That’s why I’m here.”

The father snorted. “Don’t play games, Detective. You’re here to check up on Gavin. Right? My cousin said as far as the cops are concerned, nine times out of ten, it’s the spouse that did it. Well, you’re wrong about Gavin.”

“Gavin loved Chelsey,” Mary added. “He’s devastated. A wreck.”

“I’m sure he is,” Serena said mildly. “I really just want to confirm what happened and get the facts straight. When did Gavin arrive at your house?”

“Early evening on Sunday.”

“Did he stay here with you? Not at a motel or anything like that?”

“He stayed with us,” his father said.

“And you spent time with him on Monday and Tuesday?”

“We were with him all day both days.”

“We think the abduction occurred around nine o’clock Tuesday evening at your son’s house,” Serena said.

“Then you can rule Gavin out,” his father replied firmly. “He left our house at eight thirty. Unless you think he beamed himself to Duluth, he didn’t make it there until after ten.”

“You’re sure about the time he left?”

“Yes. He checked his watch and said he wanted to get home before Chelsey was in bed.”

“When did you next talk to him?”

“In the morning,” Mary said.

“Did he tell you what had happened?”

“No. He didn’t say a word. It was obvious that something was wrong; we could hear it in his voice. He seemed to be under some kind of tremendous stress, but he told us it was one of his cases. We didn’t find out what was really going on until today when he called us again. Gavin apologized for not telling us the truth. He said he couldn’t risk word getting out and Chelsey ending up in any more danger. I’m sure he thought we’d call the police if he told us, and I suppose we probably would have. He knows he made a mistake by trying to deal with this himself, but he was in a panic. I’m sure the kidnappers were counting on that.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have done this?” Serena asked.

“It must be one of his scumbag clients,” Tim harrumphed. “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

“You don’t sound too happy about your son’s law practice,” Serena said.

Mother and father exchanged glances. Tim’s face looked sour.

“Our children’s lives didn’t go the way we hoped,” Mary told her. She sounded like someone in a bathrobe on the street watching her house burn down. “It’s been one tragedy after another for both of them, and none of it was their fault. Honestly, there are days when Tim and I wonder if we’re cursed. That God is punishing our kids.”

“I know you also lost your daughter — Gavin’s sister — to cancer recently,” Serena said quietly. “Is that right?”

“Yes. Susan. We’d known it was coming for a few years. She’d been battling it bravely, but I’m afraid the outcome was never really in doubt. She lasted longer than the doctors thought she would, but in the end, well, death always wins, doesn’t it?”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Serena found it hard to look away from Mary’s ocean-blue eyes.

“As for Gavin, things started out so well for him,” the woman went on with a sad smile. “After law school, he worked at a corporate firm in Minneapolis for several years. Then he moved to Duluth to start a firm with a friend of his. They worked with start-up technology companies. It was a very successful practice. For a while, he had everything. Big house on Skyline Drive. Smart, beautiful wife in Chelsey. That was a happy time. We were very proud of him.”

Tim scowled. “He was naïve. He didn’t watch his back with that fucking partner of his.”

Mary looked pained by her husband’s harshness. “I suppose that’s true, but I can’t really blame him for that. Gavin is too trusting. His so-called friend — his partner in the law firm — had a gambling problem that wiped him out. He began to embezzle money from the firm’s clients. Gavin didn’t pay enough attention to the books. When it all came out, his partner went to prison. Gavin nearly did, too. As it was, he and Chelsey lost everything. Money. House. They were wiped out. Gavin started over doing criminal law for — well, for not the best sort of people.”

“Scumbags,” Tim said again.

“Gavin always says his clients are just down on their luck,” Mary corrected her husband. “He said he could relate to that, given what he went through. Actually, he told us he was happier doing criminal defense work than he had been when he was working with stock offerings and venture capital. He said he could see the impact of what he did on people’s lives, and he liked that.”

The look on Tim’s face told Serena that Gavin’s father didn’t agree.

“Could we talk about the inheritance?” Serena asked.

Mary looked down at her lap, and Tim — for all his rough edges — also looked stricken, thinking about his daughter.

“About three years ago, we finally got a bit of bright news in the family,” Mary went on with a sigh. “Susan got married. She was forty years old, so we’d sort of given up hope about that. But then she met a wonderful man — athletic, very successful, a senior health-care executive in Duluth. We had visions of grandchildren, which we’d assumed was never going to happen.”

“Gavin and Chelsey didn’t want kids?” Serena asked.

“Oh, they talked about it for a while in the early years. I’m not sure Chelsey was too crazy about the idea of putting her body through pregnancy. I can’t really blame her for that. Anyway, after the setbacks Gavin went through, they didn’t feel ready. Financially, emotionally, whatever.”

“And Susan?”

Mary sniffled. “Like we told you, it’s been one crisis after another. First, we went through all of Gavin’s troubles. And then, Susan got the diagnosis. Aggressive uterine cancer. She hadn’t even been married a year! At the time, the doctors told us she might only have months to live. We couldn’t believe it. You’d think that would be tragedy enough, wouldn’t you? But God piled on. Susan lost her husband the same year. A car accident a few months later. I was so angry. Angry at the world. There Susan was, battling to stay alive, and she loses the love of her life. Honestly, I thought the stress of it would kill her right then and there. She hung on for two more years, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in the fight. This whole stretch of time has been like a nightmare.”

“I’m so sorry,” Serena said again.

Mary nodded. Tim stared out the windows.

“I understand that Gavin was the principal beneficiary of Susan’s estate after she died,” Serena went on with a little hesitation. “Obviously, we’re wondering whether money was a motive in Chelsey’s kidnapping. I’m wondering how widely known it was that Gavin received a substantial inheritance.”

“Well, this is a small town,” Mary replied. “People talk. We didn’t hide it. I’m not aware that Gavin or Chelsey did, either. I mean, who would dream that something like this could ever happen?”

“How did Gavin feel about his newfound wealth?” Serena asked.

“Well, he had mixed feelings, of course. He was on stable footing again financially, but only because he lost his sister. That’s not something he would have chosen in a million years.”

“Did he talk to you about any of his future plans?”

Tim leaned forward, his hands on his knees. His voice was gruff. “What do you mean?”

“Was he thinking about any changes because of his new economic circumstances? Giving up his job? Moving? Anything like that?”

“Or giving up his wife?” Tim asked sharply. “That’s what you’re really thinking, isn’t it? Gavin got a boatload of money and was looking for a cheap way to get rid of Chelsey.”

Mary’s blue eyes widened in shock as she stared at Serena. “You can’t honestly believe that Gavin did this—”

“Of course, they can!” her husband interjected. “You heard what my cousin said. That’s the first place the police go. Blame the spouse.”

“I’m just trying to get the whole picture,” Serena replied calmly. “I talked to one of their neighbors, and she indicated that Chelsey was a little concerned about Gavin. She said he’d changed after the inheritance. It sounds like things were strained between them.”

“If Gavin was different, it’s only because Susan died,” Mary retorted. “That’s all it was. Grief. He lost his sister.”

“How were things between him and Chelsey?” Serena asked.

“Fine. He’s crazy about her. You’ve seen her picture. She’s beautiful. Why would he look anywhere else?”

“He hasn’t mentioned any problems?”

“All marriages have problems, but I don’t believe there was anything serious. We would have known if there was. When Gavin told us what happened, we could hear how devastated he was. That wasn’t an act. We know our son.”

Serena smiled. “I’m sure you do.”

Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Except you still think he was involved, don’t you?”

“I’m just trying to piece it all together. That’s what will help us find Chelsey.”

“Well, you can take this to the bank, Detective,” Tim went on. “Gavin had nothing to do with his wife’s abduction. He didn’t do it. Believe me, I know my boy. He would never hurt anyone.”