The Mortal Groove (38 page)

But as Peter was about to crawl out from behind the branch, he heard Larry start up with his singing again. Only this time, the sound was close. The beam of a flashlight washed over the woods to the right of him.

“Fee fi fo fum,” Larry called, laughing into the damp night air. “I smell the blood of a dirtbag.” He was holding his pistol, waving it around in the air.

Peter wondered if this was a lucky guess, or if Larry had known where he was all along. He burrowed himself back down, as far into the earth as he could get without making a noise. The beam of light flew over his head but didn't linger. He heard Larry's boots tramp around not far from him, then saw them pass right by the tree.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Larry cooed.

A bullet ripped into the earth about a foot in front of Peter's head. His heart stopped.

“Pssst. Hey, Petey, let me tell you some thin'. One of the reasons
I was such a good soldier over there in Nam was because I could smell Charlie. Always knew he was close even if I couldn't see him. Charlie had this real strong smell of weird sweat and fish. Now you, on the other hand, smell like vomit and piss. Kind of hard to disguise, know what I mean? I been sittin' on a rock about twenty feet away this whole time, just waitin' for you to make a move so I could chase you some more, but hell, don't seem like that's gonna happen. You got ten seconds to come out from under that tree. You don't come, I start firing.”

Peter's mind went numb. Shivering with cold he clawed the dirt in front of him, hauled himself out from behind the branch. As soon as he was up, Larry shined the light in his eyes, blinding him.

“God but you're a pussy, Petey. You agree with that statement?”

Peter couldn't seem to focus. Nothing seemed real.

“You agree!”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“Yeah, I agree.” He put a hand in front of his eyes to block the light. “Turn it off.”

After that, it was all a blur. Lie felt Larry slam him to the ground, then press the gun hard into the small of his back.

“Well now, little Petey, it might just be judgment day in the big woods. Do I kill you, or just mess with you a little more? Decisions, decisions.”

 

 

J
ane was up the next morning before Kenzie. She pulled on a navy crew neck sweater over a pair of powder blue jeans, and she made sure to wear the boots Kenzie had given her. Once downstairs, she fixed coffee and had just taken a carton of eggs and some bacon out of the fridge when Kenzie walked into the kitchen.

“How'd you sleep?” asked Jane, smiling over her shoulder.

“Better than I did the night before.” She sniffed the air. “The coffee smells good.”

“Can't send you off without a decent breakfast.”

“Come here,” said Kenzie, pulling Jane into her arms, brushing her hair with a kiss. “I'm sorry.”

“You already said that.”

“I know.”

When Kenzie didn't elaborate, Jane drew back. “Are you sorry
generally
—as in the ‘life sucks' sense?”

Kenzie's eyes searched Jane's. “I didn't tell you why I got so twisted about the Memorial Day party this weekend.”

“Sure you did. You think I'm a workaholic and it pisses you off.”

“Well, there's that, yeah. But there's more.” She hesitated. “This isn't exactly the way I pictured having this conversation. See, I had it all planned. Before the party, I was going to give you an engagement ring. I've had it for months. I was just waiting for the perfect time.”

Jane felt something clench in the center of her chest. “You want to get married?”

“Yeah. It's possible now, you know. Even legal. Not here, yet, but I thought we'd drive up to Winnipeg or Thunder Bay—assuming you said yes.” Again, she hesitated. “You would say yes, wouldn't you?”

“I'm speechless.” It wasn't an answer.

“We don't have to do it right away. We could just be engaged for a while. But it's not like this comes out of the blue. I mean, we've been together for a couple of years. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Lawless. You feel the same way, right?”

Jane stared at her a moment. “I do. More than anything.”

“Man,” said Kenzie, drawing a hand over her forehead in mock relief, “I thought there for a minute you were going to turn me down.”

“No, it's not that,” said Jane. She couldn't explain her reaction, not even to herself.

“But we should do it right,” said Kenzie, stroking Jane's arm. “This was just a test run. I didn't bring the ring with me. Besides, you've got too much on your plate right now.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“So we'll table this until later, okay?”

“Sure,” said Jane. They kissed and then held each other. Maybe Jane held on too tight, but she didn't care. “I love you,” she whispered. She had to make sure Kenzie knew that, that she would never doubt it.

“I know,” said Kenzie. “Somehow, in this crazy world, we got lucky.”

 

Kenzie left to drive back to Nebraska just before eight. Jane spent the next couple of hours vacuuming the house, cleaning the bathroom, wiping down the kitchen cupboards, and studiously refusing to think about Kenzie's marriage proposal. She knew she'd have to figure out why she'd reacted the way she did, but not now.

She talked to Nolan for a few minutes. He'd checked out Peter's rental car, got the license number and a full description. It was a white Ford Taurus. Four door. He'd spoken to a couple of his police buddies, unofficially put out the word that the car had been stolen. Jane wasn't sure it was the best idea, but it was a done deal, so she let it drop. The problem was, Nolan pretty much confirmed what she already knew. When it came to finding Peter, there was no magic bullet. As they said good-bye, Nolan said he'd be in touch.

Mainly, Jane was just waiting for the mail. She didn't know when Peter's letter would come—or if it would come to her or her father—but she wanted to be there the moment the mail arrived. She dug the lawn mower out the garage and was about to fill it with gas when she saw the mail carrier cut across her drive on the way to her mailbox.

Racing around to the front of the house, she caught him just as he was looking in his bag, pulling out her letters.

“I'll take it, Dave,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Oh, sure thing.” He came back down the steps. “You expecting something important?”

“Yeah, hope so.”

“Have a good day.”

“You, too,” she said, flipping quickly through each item. And there it was, second to the last. A small white envelope. No return address. It wasn't Peter's handwriting on the outside. She assumed it was Larry's. The postmark was from Cambridge, Minnesota. She figured, if Larry was smart, he wouldn't mail the letter from anywhere near where he'd stashed Peter.

Jane sat down on the steps, setting the rest of the mail next to her, and ripped the envelope open. Inside was a folded piece of steno notebook paper. She read through the note. It was Peter's scrawl, all right, but it made no sense. She read it through a second time.

Scooping up the mail, she ran around to the back of the house and entered through the screen porch. Mouse trotted along after her as she entered her study. The first call she placed was to her father.

“I got it. Peter's letter.”

“Is it his handwriting?” asked her dad.

“Yes.”

“What's it say?”

She read it to him.

“I don't get it.”

“I think he's trying to tell us something, but it's in code.”

“That just sounds like a bunch of gobbledegook. Have you talked to Nolan?”

“I'll call him next.”

“Fax me a copy. Sigrid will want to see it. So do I.”

She called Nolan. “Nothing in the note is real. Our mother's
maiden name wasn't Lind. He's not a Libra. I mean, I can go right down the line. He hates steak. He didn't ride his bike over to my house three nights ago. He doesn't even have a bike. And if he had a favorite pie, which I doubt, it wouldn't be lemon.”

“I thought the note was supposed to prove to you it was him,” said Nolan. “That was the whole point of it.”

“So why all the fiction?”

“You're right, it's got to be a message.”

“Yeah, but how do we figure out what the message is?” Jane dropped her head in her hand.

“My guess is, he's trying to tell us where he is. What was the postmark?”

“Cambridge.”

Nolan was silent a moment. “Fax it to me.”

After sending the fax to her father and Nolan, Jane got herself a cup of coffee and sat down behind her desk to work on it.

By lunchtime, she had a bunch of word lists, but she was no further along than she'd been when she started.

Deciding to take a break, she called Cordelia. “How's Mia today?”

“Actually, pretty good,” said Cordelia. “I'm about to leave for the hospital. Cecily's taking her swimming at the downtown Y this afternoon.”

“Sounds like you've got it all handled,” said Jane, feeling incredibly grateful.

“Doing our damnedest. Any updates on Peter?”

Jane read her the note.

“Lord.”

“It's a code.”

“Think so. How's it written?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it all one block of writing, or is it in paragraphs?”

“Paragraphs.”

“How many?”

Jane took a look. “Counting the ‘I love you' at the end, twelve.”

“Rats.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I read a book once about an Englishman who was great at cracking codes. Seems it's the numbers that give the message structure. I mean, what about that fake phone number? Except, there are only ten numbers in a phone number, so that's a dead end.”

“Maybe not. I'll keep working on it.”

“Call me when you've broken it, Janey. I know you will.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

After saying good-bye, Jane looked for a few seconds at the phone number. Had Peter just made it up, or was Cordelia right? Did it point to something in the text?

If she took away the sentence the number was in, and then removed the “I love you all” from contention, that left ten paragraphs.

“756-624-2979,” she whispered.

She wrote another list, the selected words pulled out of each paragraph with the exception of the first and the last. And then she read it out loud:

twin

points

Lind

turn

left

dirt

rode

trailer

Woods

hurry

 

“My God!” She shivered in recognition. She knew right where he was. “Thank you, Peter!” She called her dad, but he wasn't answering. Most likely, he'd gone out to discuss Peter's note with some legal or law enforcement buddy. She left a message. Then she called Nolan. He didn't answer either. “Strike two,” she said, waiting for the answering machine to give him the update.

“I know where Peter is,” she began. “He's up near a place that used to be called Twin Points, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was a resort about fifteen miles northeast of two Harbors up on Highway 61, but it's been torn down, so don't look for a sign. You've got to go by the mileage. If you screws up, people in the area will know where Twin Points used to be. It's a public access beach and boat launch now. Here's what you do: As you're going north out of Two Harbors on Highway 61, go approximately fourteen miles and then start looking left for a dirt road. Take it and drive back into the woods. Maybe his rental car is parked somewhere along the way. Fle's being held captive in a trailer in the woods. It's a big area, but this narrows it down. He said to hurry. I can't wait, Nolan. I'm heading out to Flying Cloud. My dad's not using his Cessna at the moment, so I'm taking it. It's the fastest way up there. When you get this, call me. I'll already be on my way, but I need you to follow. I don't want to do this alone, but if I have to, I will.” She cut the line.

“Mouse,” she said, getting up, “I'm leaving. I'll call Evelyn and have her come get you. You be a good boy.” She grabbed her keys and her billfold and burst out the front door.

 

Peter hadn't slept the first night in the trailer because he was terrified—and because of the cold. Last night, hate had kept him awake.

The sun had been up a long time before Larry finally snored himself into semiconsciousness. He moved his legs, then rolled over on his side. Peter figured he'd have one huge hangover when he got up, which would make him meaner than ever. He knew now, without a doubt, that this was his last day on earth. He'd given up hope of being found. It was just him and Larry. Peter didn't quite understand how Larry had mesmerized him, but he had. Maybe it was shock. Sure, Larry had a gun, he'd kept Peter locked up tight, but as he thought about it, there had been a couple of times when Peter could have tried to get the jump on him. If Larry took the cuffs off him today, it would be a different story.