“Thank you for what you did for me last night,” I say. “You may have saved my life.”
“If I saved your life, then we are even,” she says. She reaches up and cups her hand on my cheek. “Maybe someday . . . if we ever see each other again . . .”
I let my eyes fall to the floor. I can feel the wilt of her palm against my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I forgot who I am.”
“No,” I say quickly. “It’s not that at all. Please.” I hold her hand in mine and bring it to my lips. “I have to be alone. That’s all. I’m no good right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be good again. I need to be by myself for a while to . . . to figure things out. After that—well, who knows. Maybe we’ll find each other again.”
“I would like that,” she says.
I lift her face and kiss her softly on the lips. It is the first time that I have kissed a woman since Jenni’s death. I’d forgotten how sweet and soft a woman’s lips could be. I let the kiss linger longer than I had intend, but without regret. Then I kiss her again, this time on her forehead. I give her a smile and leave.
CHAPTER 45
I don’t turn my phone back on until I am within a mile of my family’s cabin, a Lincoln Log hovel compared to the palace Mikhail Vetrov called a cabin. The logging road that leads to my place is invisible under the snow, and a four-foot ridge of crushed ice lines the side of the highway, left there by the county plows. I can’t make it back to the cabin in the Durango, but I am pretty sure I can jam the SUV far enough into the snowbank to be off the pavement. I line the vehicle up crossways on the highway and make a run at it with all the Durango can muster. I hear plastic crunching as my nose shoots up, the snow exploding around me.
I lay on the accelerator until movement is replaced by the high whine of spinning tires. I’m far enough off the highway to be out of the way, and I call my friend, Sheriff Voight, the man tasked to keep the peace in this sleepy part of the woods, and tell him I’m at the cabin. I don’t need him sending someone out to investigate my abandoned SUV.
I had stopped by a grocery store in Grand Rapids and loaded up on supplies, enough to last a few months, maybe longer if the fishing goes well. It takes me a couple hours to haul everything down the logging trail and to my cabin. I light a fire in the fireplace and watch as the flames grow and dance around the pine logs.
I wait until the cabin is warm before I check my phone. I find eight text messages and three voice–mail messages from Niki. I also see two missed calls from Chief Murphy. I decide to call him first. He doesn’t answer—a stroke of luck.
“Chief, it’s Max Rupert. I guess you’re probably wondering where I am. Sorry I missed my shift. I needed some time off to think. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years, but I am calling to let you know that I am resigning. I’ll make arrangements to turn in my badge, gun, and car. I’m sorry for the short notice, but . . . I need to call it a day.” I hang up.
I go to the text messages from Niki.
WTF. Whitton committed suicide last night. Call me.
Where are you? Things blowing up here.
You’re late. U OK?
Murphy’s looking for you. He’s not happy. Call me.
Starting to worry. What’s going on?
Please call me. Are U OK?
Murphy’s pissed, FYI. I’m getting scared. Call me ASAP!
Went by your house 1 a.m. where are you?
I don’t bother listening to the voice mail. I know what the messages will say. I hit Niki’s name on my phone and send the call.
“So you are alive,” she says when she answers. “Where the hell you been? Murphy’s threatening to hang you from the rafters.”
“If he wants to hang me, he’ll have to come up to the cabin to do it.”
“The cabin? In January? What’s going on?”
“Niki, I just called Chief Murphy and turned in my resignation. I quit.”
The phone goes silent. I wait.
“Why would you do that?” Her tone holds a faraway sadness, the questioning of someone who didn’t see the slap coming.
“I had to quit, Niki. I know you don’t understand, but I had no choice.” I should have prepared better for this conversation. “I need to step out of that world. I don’t belong there anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I . . . I can’t . . .” I shake my head and pull it together. “Nothing happened. It’s time for me to do something else, that’s all.”
“Does this have anything to do with Whitton jumping off the top of a parking ramp?”
I don’t answer.
“It’s a mess here. A million rumors floating around.”
“Just keep your head down and let the rumors swirl. It’ll pass.”
“Max?” She pauses, as if trying to find the words she wants to say. Then, “Will I ever see you again?”
“I don’t know.” I’m pretty sure I’m lying to her.
“Are you . . . content?”
“Content?”
I know what she’s asking. She wants to know if I tracked down Jenni’s killer. She wants to know if I found a way to put to rest those ghosts that have been haunting me for the past four and a half years. “Yes,” I say. “I am content.”
She doesn’t ask any further.
“I’m going to miss you, Max.”
“Back at you, Niki.”
I want to say so much more. I want to tell her how important she has become to me; how, after all that I have lost, she is the one person still there for me. I want to say all that and more, but instead I say, “I gotta go. Good-bye, Niki.”
“Good-bye, Max.”
I kill the connection and shut my phone off.
I am alone now, more alone than I have ever been, but I feel awash in calmness. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to be okay with what I’d done. Where was the anguish, the regret? I wait for it, but nothing happens. The snow starts to fall again in big, popcorn flakes that swirl in lazy swoops past my front window. It is beautiful and it makes me want to smile—so I smile.
The impact of what I did out on that frozen lake may visit me at some point. There may come a day when the darkness inside of me roils up in my chest to scream its damnation at me—but that day is not today. I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, letting the aroma of the burning pine take me back to my house in Logan Park, to a day when Jenni was at my side. The wolves are gone, and for now, I am at peace.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sgt. Robert Dale, Detective with the Minneapolis Police Department, and Special Agent Ann Quinn of the Minnesota BCA for their insight into the criminal world in Minnesota. I would also like to thank John Filliman and Sheryl Hindermann for their expertise in the north woods.
I would like to thank my wife, Joely, for her patience and help. Thank you, Nancy Rosin and Terry Kolander for your editorial assistance with this book. Thank you, Amy Cloughley, my agent, for your sure-handed guidance. Finally, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dan Mayer and Jade Zora Scibilia, my editors, as well as to Jon Kurtz, Jill Maxick, Cheryl Quimba, and everyone at Seventh Street Books for everything you have done for me.