The Cold Nowhere

16

Stride found Curt Dickes in Canal Park, steps away from the steel lift bridge that towered over the harbor. Behind him, angry lake waves hit the rocks and blew up in clouds of spray over the boardwalk. There was no sun, but Dickes wore metallic sunglasses. He was dressed in a black wool coat that draped to his ankles, and the wind swooped his coat behind him like a cape. Underneath, he wore a lavender silk shirt and pleated tan pants that ballooned at his skinny waist. A square-bottomed tie blew over his shoulder. His shoes were black sneakers.

When Dickes saw Stride, half of his face folded upward into a cocky smile. ‘Hey, Lieutenant Stride. I don’t usually get to see the big guy anymore. Most of the time it’s Sergeant Guppo or one of the other boys in uniform.’

‘Hello, Curt,’ Stride said. ‘Nice outfit.’

‘It’s trendy, huh?’

‘Sure. Pretty nice ride you’ve got there, too.’

Dickes stood next to a showroom-new red Ford Fusion in the parking lot. ‘It’s sweet, isn’t it? Plus, I’m saving the planet. Very cool.’

‘Yeah, you’re a regular Al Gore, Curt.’

Stride noticed an advertisement on the vehicle plates from Lowball Lenny’s huge Ford showroom on Miller Hill. He didn’t like the coincidence of Curt Dickes showing up in a car he couldn’t afford, the day after Leonard Keck’s party aboard the Charles Frederick.

‘So where’d you get the money for the car?’ he asked. ‘You’re a janitor, aren’t you? You throw sawdust on puke.’

‘In my day job, sure, but I’m also an entrepreneur.’

‘Oh, yes? Doing what?’

Dickes used his index finger like a comb to smooth his black, greased hair, which barely moved in the ferocious wind. The breeze off the entire lake, however, wasn’t enough to overpower Dickes’s Monsieur Musk cologne, which oozed from his skin like burnt incense. The twenty-five-year-old dug in his coat pocket and extracted a business card and handed it to Stride.

‘Entertainment Advisor?’ Stride asked, reading the title. He shook his head and laughed.

‘That’s me.’

‘I hear you’re a pimp now,’ Stride said.

Dickes slapped a hand over his heart in mock dismay. ‘Tourists have lots of entertainment needs. I do what I can.’

Stride looked the kid up and down. He’d probably arrested him twenty times over the years. Curt Dickes had a radar for scams and an addiction to cash, which usually didn’t last long in his pocket. ‘Look, I’ve known you for a long time, Curt. You’re not a bad kid, but there’s a big difference between selling fake Yanni tickets outside the DECC and getting in the middle of prostitution and drugs. That can go bad for you in a lot of ways. If someone gets hurt or killed, you could be staring at real time.’

‘Thanks for the warning, Lieutenant, but I’ve got friends looking out for me now.’

Stride ran a hand over the car’s spoiler. ‘Friends like Lowball Lenny? Did he give you the car?’

‘It’s more like an extended test drive,’ Dickes said. ‘You know Lenny, he takes care of people.’

‘Yes, he does.’

Stride had bought a Ford Bronco himself from Lenny years earlier. It was his first Ford; he’d driven a Chevy Blazer until then. Lenny insisted on selling him the new truck at cost, as appreciation for Stride’s work in putting away the burglar who’d shot Lenny’s wife. Lenny was also a candidate for City Council at the time, and it made good headlines to play nice with the police. Since then, their relationship had soured. As a politician, and a good friend of the chief, Lenny liked to throw his weight around, and Stride didn’t like back-seat drivers on his investigations.

‘I know about Lenny’s party on the boat, Curt. Somebody saw you arrive with the girls.’

Dickes shrugged. ‘So what?’

‘I talked to one of them. You gave her money.’

‘I hired girls to dress up a party. That’s not a crime.’

‘Not to have sex?’

‘Hey, what they do with the guys is their business, not mine. Come on, Lieutenant, who are we kidding? This is a college town. Tuition keeps going up. A sophomore at UMD can work thirty hours a week toasting sandwiches at Quizno’s or she can spend a couple hours with a bored convention rat and make twice the dough. Your own cops know these girls need the money. Most of the time, they look the other way.’

‘I’m not interested in the college girls. I’m talking about a street girl. Her name’s Catalina Mateo.’

‘Sure, I know Cat. Men will pay big for a face like hers.’

‘She’s sixteen.’

For the first time, Dickes paled. ‘F*ck, no, no way! She had a license, it said eighteen.’

Stride shook his head. ‘Sixteen.’

‘Hey, I don’t mess around with kids.’

‘Like I said, this is the kind of business that can get you into real trouble. Tell me about Cat.’

‘Not much to tell, man. She comes and goes. Sometimes I don’t see her for weeks. When she needs cash, I hook her up.’

‘She thinks someone is coming after her. You hear anything about that?’

‘She told me about a car almost running her down near the shelter. That’s all I know. I figured it was some drunk.’

‘Did you set her up with any creepy guys? Stalker types?’

Dickes shook his head. ‘Nobody worse than anybody else. Come on, the guys up here are mostly bald Swedes on business trips, not serial killers. Besides, if some john got obsessed with her, I figure he’d come to me to find her again. Nobody did.’

‘No one asked for her by name?’

‘Nope.’

‘Do you have a list of guys you set her up with?’

Dickes groaned. ‘What, do I look like I take American Express? It’s not like I check IDs.’

‘What about parties? Could Cat have seen something that she wasn’t supposed to see?’

‘I don’t see how, man. Most of the time, it’s bachelor parties and high school reunions.’

‘Okay, tell me about Lenny’s party. Someone knew Cat was going to be there. He waited for her outside. How would anyone know about that?’

‘I put the word out,’ Dickes told him. ‘Girls talk. Lots of people probably had the lowdown. It was all over town.’

‘Cat also says someone was asking around about her a few weeks ago,’ Stride said. ‘Did you hear anything about that?’

‘Nah, that’s news to me. Who told her that?’

‘One of the street girls named Brandy.’

Dickes whistled. ‘Whoa, Brandy, she’s a trip. You don’t mess with Brandy. With those eyes of hers, she’s like an alien. Like something out of Area 51. She scares the shit out of me. I count her money twice, because you don’t want Brandy thinking you’re trying to rip her off.’

‘Brandy told Cat someone was trying to find her. This was down near the graffiti graveyard under the freeway.’

‘Yeah, if I was looking for a street girl, I’d check there.’

‘But you don’t know who it could be?’ Stride asked.

‘I don’t.’

‘Have any of the girls talked about someone hassling them?’

‘Nothing they couldn’t handle. If anyone was causing problems, I’d hear about it.’

Stride frowned. He wasn’t finding any answers. ‘Where does Brandy hang out?’

‘Brandy goes wherever there’s money. It’s Saturday, so she’ll probably be cruising around here this evening. There’s always business on the weekends no matter what time of year it is.’

‘What about right now?’

‘Now? Who knows? It’s daylight, man, that’s when the vampires stay inside. Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘So make a guess,’ Stride said.

Dickes shoved his hands in his coat pockets. ‘Okay, but you did not hear about this from me. If the girls find out I’m rousting their hiding places, it’s bad for business.’

Stride waited.

‘Check over at Central High,’ Dickes went on. ‘Ever since they closed the school, some of the smart ones have figured out how to get inside and treat the place like a motel for hook-ups. Brandy’s definitely one of the smart ones.’

*

The old high school had one of the prime locations in the city, with sweeping views down the hillside to the lake. Stride parked near the entrance to the brick building. The school was vacant, a victim of shrinking enrollment, but there were still torn posters for the Trojans taped to the windows, as if classes were in session and students would walk through the doors. He couldn’t visit this building without seeing ghosts in the hallway from his teenage years.

This was his school. He and Cindy had both gone here.

Stride got out of his truck and breathed in the cold afternoon air. It was almost dusk. He began a slow walk around the perimeter of the building. The area was oddly desolate, like an abandoned town. The parking lots were empty. So were the athletic fields. At the school windows, he squinted and saw deserted corridors and overturned chairs, their metal legs jutting up like a field of nails. Each classroom carried an imaginary echo of voices, but the echoes wouldn’t last. Soon enough, the building would be torn down, replaced by more soulless condos. Sometimes he wondered if he would recognize the city in a few years.

When he cupped his hands on the glass at one window, he saw a shadow move. It was there and gone, as swift as a spirit. It could have been someone inside, or it could have been a trick of the light. He stayed at the window, watching, but he finally decided that he couldn’t trust his eyes.

He continued to the rear of the school. A separate building for the physical plant was built in front of a large inset in the school walls. The plant facility created a U-shaped concrete passageway that was partly hidden from view. When he checked the passage, he found evidence of habitation. Musty blankets. Old food wrappers crackling as they blew in the wind. Broken glass. Someone had been urinating against the wall. When he peered through the rear windows, he saw debris inside. Curt Dickes was right; people had been coming and going, using the school as a refuge.

He followed the school walls and found a door tucked in a shadowy nook that gave way when he pulled on it. When the door opened, an old school desk tumbled onto the cement with a crash. He swore. Someone had rigged the desk as a primitive alarm, and if anyone was inside, they knew he was here. Meanwhile, the real security system had been disconnected. His arrival didn’t trigger any sirens.

Stride found himself in a corridor lined with tall red lockers. It had a shut-in smell of dust and dampness. The air was cold; the furnace had been set just high enough to keep the pipes from freezing. The corridor was dark, like a tunnel. He could see only a splash of light at the far end where the corridor opened into the school cafeteria. The dim glow made the handles on the lockers gleam like a trail of silver. He made his way down the hallway.

One of the lockers was cracked open. He nudged the metal door with his finger and found a winter coat hung on the hook, a bottle of water, and a pack of cigarettes on the locker shelf. He saw a worn leather wallet, too, and when he opened it, he spotted a driver’s license with a photo of a man named Alton Koren. Stride remembered the name from a report of a vehicle break-in several days earlier. The wallet itself had been stripped; the money and credit cards were gone.

He spotted a second wallet on the floor of the locker. He squatted to retrieve it, but as he did, a door banged behind him. He glanced back and saw a girl burst from inside one of the classrooms. She screamed like a banshee, swinging the forked head of a crowbar toward his skull. Twisting, he shunted away and heard the whoosh of the heavy steel sail past his ear. The hook missed his head, but the rod landed on the meat of his shoulder and drove him to the floor. The crowbar clattered to the ground beside him, and the girl leaped over his body, but he landed a grip on her ankle, making her trip and fall. As she scrambled to get up, he grabbed a belt loop on her jeans and dragged her toward him.

She squirmed like a cat wriggling to get free. Shouting, flailing, she hammered his shoulder, and one of her sharp nails scratched his face. He yanked her up, keeping a tight lock on her arm, and marched her down the corridor to the bright, open space of the cafeteria. A wall of picture windows looked out toward the lake. The room was filled with dozens of round tables topped with plastic chairs. He overturned one chair and forced the girl into it. When she scrambled to her feet, he pushed her back down.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she snarled.

‘My name’s Stride. I’m with the Duluth Police.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Are you Brandy?’

‘Go to hell. I don’t have to tell you who I am.’

He grabbed another chair and sat in front of her with their knees almost touching. He knew she was Brandy. Cat and Curt Dickes had both mentioned the girl’s eyes, and they were her most distinctive feature, huge and blue. They were nakedly sexual eyes, and tough, like a tiger that wanted to eat you. She should have been pretty, but life and want had gnawed at her face like an attack of bed bugs. She wore a dirty yellow tank top over her jeans. She had tattoos covering most of her arms, and her long hair was streaked with blue and purple, with a racetrack shaved over her right ear. She was feral, and she didn’t like being caged.

‘I just want to talk,’ Stride said.

‘I said, I don’t have to tell you a f*cking thing!’

‘No, you don’t, but you’ve got a choice to make. I can take you in for trespassing and possession of stolen property, which are misdemeanors, or I can add on first degree assault of a police officer. That’s a minimum of ten years, no parole.’

‘You don’t scare me,’ she insisted.

‘If I don’t, I should. What’s it going to be, Brandy?’

Her eyes never left his face, and her stare was so direct it unnerved him. Calculations spun in her mind, as obvious as reels on a slot machine. Her features softened. Her lips nudged into a smile, as if she could flirt him into submission.

‘What do you want to know?’ she asked.

‘Tell me about Cat Mateo,’ he said.

‘Cat? She’s a pretty little kitty. What about her?’

‘I understand you like to beat her up.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Why not? If you’re going to join the circus, you better expect to step in some elephant shit.’

‘You told Cat that someone was asking around about her. Is that true?’

‘I don’t know, is it? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. She’s fun to mess with. So paranoid. Always thinking somebody’s after her. Maybe it’s because of how Mommy died.’ Brandy made a fist, as if she were holding the knife, and stabbed the air.

‘Is it true, or did you make it up?’ he repeated.

‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’ She grinned.

‘No.’

Brandy pulled her tank top down, squeezing it against her breasts. Her nipples protruded like bottle caps. ‘You sure? I’ll give you a freebie.’

‘If you tell me, I’ll forget about the assault charge.’

She pouted. ‘Yeah, okay, fine. It’s true. Somebody was looking for Cat.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know. A month ago?’

‘What did he look like?’

Brandy wagged a finger at him. Her silver nails were filed into points, like talons. ‘Not a guy.’

‘It was a woman?’ Stride asked, surprised.

‘That’s right.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Who knows? I was in a sleeping bag with a guy in the graffiti graveyard. I heard some chick asking about Cat on the other side of the embankment.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Just that she wanted to find her. It sounded like they knew each other. She said she’d found her there before.’

‘In the graffiti graveyard?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you ever see this woman again?’ he asked.

‘Nope.’

‘You said it was a month ago. Do you remember exactly when?’

‘The guy I was with, he was wearing a Jason Aldean T-shirt. Wasn’t there a concert or something?’

Stride nodded. ‘There was.’

‘See? That’s worth a free pass. Now let me go.’

‘Cat thinks someone is trying to kill her,’ Stride went on. ‘Do you have any idea who that might be? Or why someone would want to hurt her?’

Brandy’s bony shoulders shrugged. ‘Doesn’t sound real to me. Sounds like one of her dreams.’

‘Dreams? What do you mean?’

‘Cat goes crazy at night. It’s like howling at the moon, you know? She wakes up screaming. F*cking annoying if you’re close by. It’s all death and blood and knives.’ Brandy leaned forward, taking him by surprise, and shrieked in his face. ‘I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!’

She sat back, bubbling with laughter. Her tiger eyes danced. ‘See? F*cking annoying.’

‘Cat dreams about someone trying to kill her?’

‘No, man, it’s the other way around.’

‘What do you mean?’

Brandy made the stabbing motion with her fist again. ‘I think the sweet little bitch dreams about killing somebody.’

Her words hit him in the face, and he took his eyes off the girl, just for a moment. That was all she needed.

Brandy lowered her head and charged like a ram. She collided with his injured shoulder and butted him backwards over the chair. The pain froze his muscles and left him immobile. By the time he recovered, Brandy was halfway across the cafeteria, and he was too far away to catch her. He watched her bolt through the door out of the school with a rebel yell. She jumped the balcony, tore across the wide lawn with her hair flying behind her, and disappeared down the slope leading to the city.