Her reaction started with a slight quiver in her lip. She looked at me as if I might tell her that it was a mistake, that it wasn’t her little sister lying pale in that dumpster. Her hands began to shake as she looked again at the picture. Tears flooded her eyes, and the name Zoya escaped from her lips.
She dropped to her knees, her knuckles white as she gripped the picture with all of her strength. “Zoya!” This time it was a howl that filled the house. She collapsed inward, her stomach heaving her words out. “No! No! Zoya, no!” She rocked back and forth on her knees, the picture in a crumpled wreck on the floor. Her breath hammered out of her chest as she wailed in Russian, spitting out words that announced her pain with no need for translation.
I wanted to put an arm around her, comfort her, but I was afraid that any such movement might result in a fight. She was a wounded animal ready to lash out to ease her pain. Then she stopped rocking. Her breath calmed, and she looked up at me with such hatred that I froze.
“Get out,” she snarled.
“I have some questions I need to—”
“I said get out!” She stood and grabbed a lamp off of a nearby sofa table.
I opened my mouth to speak, and she launched the lamp at my head.
I raised my arm and took the blow in the forearm. Before I could counter, she had a vase and sent it flying.
“Get out of my house!” she screamed.
I turned to the door as the vase hit me in the back. “Get out!” Her yowling sounded more like a wounded cat than a human. I made it to the door just as a candle stand crashed into the wall beside me. The door slammed shut, and I heard the deadbolt click. And then, from deeper in the house, I heard the animal wail again.
CHAPTER 28
Up North
I plod back toward my little nest in the snow, the bundle of rocks slung over my shoulder, pulling at my arms and wrists and fingers. Twice it slips from my grip and falls behind my heels. With each step I am bludgeoned with thoughts and voices, memories that cut through the fog of time. I start counting my steps out loud, losing track before I get out of double digits. When the bundle falls for a third time, I grip the edge of the snowmobile cover behind my back and drag it through the snow.
Why are you doing this?
Nancy’s voice has a way of parting all of other thoughts and demanding attention. I still have a long way to go before I’m back at the nest, so I answer.
“Something has to be done to restore balance to the world.”
You’re restoring balance to the world? And how will killing this man do that?
“His death will be justice.”
Justice? Or vengeance?
“He has to pay a price for what he did.”
And you are the one to determine that price?
“He robbed me of my wife—my child. I think I have that right.”
Did Mr. Yager have that right?
I shake my head as the memory comes rushing in—as if I could wave it away that easily. I can still remember the drop of sweat that glistened on Mr. Yager’s upper lip as I told him that Kristen, his fifteen-year-old daughter, was dead. A tow-truck driver found the girl’s body in the trunk of an abandoned car. It was a hot day, the temperature touching one hundred degrees, sweltering for Minnesota. When I told him that she was found in the trunk of a car owned by a man named Victor Nacio, I could see the recognition in his eyes, even as he told me that the name meant nothing to him.
I offered Mr. Yager my condolences and left, driving my car around the block to wait. Two minutes later, Yager came out of his house with a paper bag in his hand, a bag that swung as if it held something heavy—a gun, maybe. I followed him to a flophouse in North Minneapolis. When Yager stepped out of his car, carrying the bag, I debated whether I should stop him. I actually gave voice to the thought of letting his vigilantism be the last word on the death of his daughter. No courts. No judges. No plea bargains.
Yager walked up to the house and peeked into one of the windows. When he put his hand into the paper bag, I ran up and stopped him. I expected a fight, but Yager began crying instead. He fell to his knees, handing me the sack with a gun inside. He kept uttering the words, “He killed my baby. He killed my little girl.”
“We’ll get justice for Kristen,” I told him. “That’s our job, not yours. I promise, we’ll convict Nacio, and he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”
I found Victor Nacio inside the flophouse, passed out on a couch. When I put him in handcuffs, he wouldn’t shut up. He kept asking why he was being arrested. After I told him that I was taking him in for questioning regarding the death of Kristen Yager, he stopped talking all together.
But Nacio never went to prison because Victor Nacio didn’t kill Kristen Yager. Rich Molitor, a man who was letting Nacio crash at his house, killed the girl. Molitor had slipped a few clonazepam into the wine that Nacio and Kristen shared that night. Victor Nacio slept in the bowels of a drug-induced blackout while his girlfriend was raped and murdered and stuffed into the trunk of his car.
Victor Nacio was an innocent man.
“I’m not Yager.”
You don’t make mistakes?
“I didn’t make one here. I’ve come too far. I’m too close. I have to make it right.”
You sound like your father.
“I’m not my father.”
No, you’re not, are you?
And just like that I’m back in fifth grade, crossing the playground to punch Hank Bellows in the nose. I was almost to him when I heard Nancy’s words in my head: “You’re the one who has to live with what you do.” Her voice stopped me in my tracks, and Hank went home from school that day oblivious to how close he came to getting his nose broken.
I put the bundle of rocks down and crouched to catch my breath.
“There’s got to be a reckoning,” I say. “There’s a great many things I can live with, but what I cannot live with is the thought of this piece of shit seeing another sunrise. I cannot live with the notion that men like him can murder and maim without repercussion.”
And what if you’re wrong?
“I’m not wrong.” I pick up my bundle of rocks again. “He’ll confess. I’ll make him tell me that he killed Jenni.”
My forearms are burning to the point that my grip fails and I sit in the snow to rest. Up ahead, I can see the shadow of the nest, but I can’t see the man. He must be lying deep in the snow and out of sight. I’m still far enough away that he can’t hear me, but I’m getting too close to keep talking to myself like this.
He wants a chance to defend himself.
I stand up and drag the bundle of rocks to where the auger lay. The wind is notching up, biting where my cheeks and neck are exposed. My left foot is starting to throb from the cold.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll give him a trial. He’ll lie to me and try to convince me that I’m wrong, but I’ll give him his trial.”
I wait for Nancy to answer back, maybe applaud my magnanimity or chide me for some unseen flaw in my offer. I wait, but I hear nothing other than the wind. She is gone from my head, and I can tell that she is gone for good. Her absence leaves me with an odd sense of loneliness, even though I know that she was never there to begin with.
CHAPTER 29
Minneapolis—Yesterday