Authors: Owen Laukkanen
THE TECHS SHOWED UP
around four. Three of them. The lead was a young guy, Nazzali. “Heard they ruined your vacation for this,” he told Stevens. “Or did you get bored of the camping?”
“Wife and kids are at the motel,” Stevens told him. “I’m just trying to close this and salvage some family time.”
“Yeah?” Nazzali squinted across the lot at the Paul Bunyan. “And how’s that going so far?”
Stevens looked down at the mud. “Ask me when we’ve dug up this lot.”
Betty Horst hadn’t been thrilled when Stevens explained to her that he wanted to tear up the parking lot to search for more casings. “Ed said they found a bunch of casings already,” she told Stevens.
“Sure,” Stevens said. “But I’m thinking we could be missing a couple. I’d like to do a little more looking.”
The diner owner contemplated her parking lot, as if already seeing the diggers in action. “Well, okay,” she said, sighing. “If you think it’ll help, dig away.”
> > >
STEVENS WENT FOR A WALK
while the techs did their thing. Checked out the gas station down the road from the Paul Bunyan, and the marine shop next door, your typical vacationland toy store. He browsed around the lot for a while, gaudy powerboats with monstrous outboard motors, Jet Skis, pontoon boats with patio tables and deafening sound systems. Imagined, briefly, being the kind of family that could afford toys like this.
Maybe if Nancy worked corporate,
he thought.
Or we robbed a couple banks
.
He chased the thought from his mind, left the boats, and started back toward the diner. Was almost there when Nazzali stood up and waved. “Come see this, Agent Stevens.”
Stevens hurried over, slogging through the mud. Found Nazzali holding six bullet casings in his open palm.
“Check this out,” he said. “We found these in this puddle here, a couple feet from where you guys said the decedent was found. Kind of buried in a tire track and sunk in the mud.”
“Six casings,” Stevens said. “That makes, what, fourteen total?”
“Fifteen.” One of the techs poked her head up from the mud. “Just found another one, Ramze.”
“Fifteen,” said Nazzali. “And counting.”
“Here’s another one,” said the tech. “That makes sixteen.”
“Sixteen,” Stevens said. “My guy had a fifteen-round mag.”
Sheriff Watkins had wandered over from his truck. “So, what?” he said. “Are we thinking the girl reloaded?”
“I don’t think so,” Nazzali said. “Those casings you found earlier, they were .357 Sigs, right?”
Watkins nodded. “That’s right. That’s what Dale was shooting.”
Nazzali held up a couple more casings. “We found a bunch more .357 casings in the muck here, Agent Stevens, but we found these, too,” he said. “These here are for nine-millimeter rounds.”
Stevens frowned. “Two guns.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Well, shit,” Watkins said. “Makes you kind of wonder which gun killed my deputy, doesn’t it?”
The sheriff’s words lingered in the air, and Stevens let them echo, feeling his wholesome family vacation in the woods come to a final crashing halt.
“Two guns,” he said. “Damn it. So where in the hell is our second shooter?”
CATALINA MILOSOVICI
felt the truck slow, and wondered if this would finally be the stop where the men dragged her from the box. She knew she should be afraid. But she felt nothing. She felt numb.
A part of her had known, all along, that Irina’s big American scheme was just madness. Her older sister was a dreamer, a hopeless romantic. She’d gushed about Mike, the charming, handsome American, relayed his promises to her.
“He says he’ll make me a model, Catya,” Irina had told her. “He says I have the right look for a magazine cover.”
It was fanciful. It was fantasy. It was plain foolishness, but Irina had been too caught up in the illusion to really understand. And Catalina had let herself be convinced, too. She’d seen pictures of Mike, and he really was handsome. Wholesome-looking. American. He didn’t look like any criminal Catalina had seen.
Still, she must have known somehow, deep down inside. Why else would she have run away and joined Irina? It wasn’t like Catalina wanted to be famous. She didn’t even really want to visit America; had barely ever left Berceni, the little village south of Bucharest where her mother and father lived. But just as she’d trooped after Irina that day her ridiculous sister had run away into the woods, she’d followed her to America, her trusty old suitcase packed with snacks and clothing and toothpaste, always the practical sister while Irina pranced about with her head in the clouds.
And now it had all gone to shit. Irina was gone, run off into the woods somewhere. With any luck, she had escaped, though Catalina held out little hope that her big sister would come back for her. How would Irina find her in this vast, foreign country? And even if she did, Catalina had seen the size of the thugs who drove the truck. They were ruthless killers. Irina would have no chance against them.
So now the truck was slowing again, and the men would appear at the door, and they would drag out more women until all of the women were gone. And maybe this time they’d choose Catalina, and who knew what they’d do to her then? Something perverted, no doubt, and she’d never even kissed a boy.
She pushed the thought away, tried not to think about it. Let them do what they wanted. Irina was free. Catalina had saved her big sister yet again, and wasn’t that enough?
The thought was cold comfort, but it would have to do. The truck had stopped, and the men were unlocking the door. Catalina stood in the gloom and prepared to meet her fate.
But when the men opened the door and searched the mass of huddled women, their eyes seemed to skip past her, unseeing. They took more women—ten of them, maybe—dragging them out of the box, screaming, and locked the door again.
The box began to move. The women around her said nothing. Catalina sank into a gloomy corner, resigned to more boredom and terror, as the truck and its cargo continued the journey.
NANCY STEVENS
put down her paperback and cast her eyes around the motel room. It wasn’t a bad little room, as these things went, and truth be told, she was secretly a little grateful for the hot shower and comfy mattress that Kirk’s unplanned vacation from vacation had provided, but still. Kirk wasn’t here, and as charming as the town of Walker was, she figured she’d pretty much shown the kids all of it. Now it was evening, the sunlight was waning, and Nancy needed something to do.
No fair that Kirk gets to work while I can’t,
she thought.
It’s not like I don’t have a mountain of paperwork I could be working through while he’s off playing cowboy again.
She stood and walked to the window, looked out across the motel lot toward downtown Walker, the shadows creeping across the pavement like fingers in the evening light. “I’m bored,” she said, turning back from the window. “Who wants to go for a walk?”
On the bed, JJ didn’t even bother to look away from the TV, some shoot-’em-up action movie, no doubt completely age-inappropriate. Andrea had curled herself into an easy chair and was texting incessantly, her iPhone tethered to a wall outlet and her eyes on the screen. Neither kid responded.
Triceratops, though, knew a good thing when he heard it. The dog scrambled to his feet as soon as she said the W-word, and bounded to the door, where he stood, whining, tail wagging, his big eyes pleading with her. “Well, fine,” Nancy said, reaching for the leash. “Just you and me, dog.”
> > >
SHE CLIPPED THE LEASH
on the dog and told the kids to behave, walked Triceratops down to the lake, and stared out over the water and missed Kirk, hoping he would finish his case and come back to them. And as she thought about Kirk, she thought about his case, about the thin, beautiful girl who’d shot the sheriff’s deputy. She wondered if the girl was eating yet, where she’d come from, and if she was scared. And before Nancy knew it, she was leading Triceratops up from the lake, toward the county courthouse where the girl was being held, walking without a plan besides the vague idea that she might as well try and do something useful.
“Nancy Stevens,” she told the deputy at the front desk of the sheriff’s office. “My husband’s the BCA guy. I was just out walking the dog and thought I’d check in on him.”
Behind the deputy, the department was empty. “I think they’re all still out at the Paul Bunyan,” he said. Then he gave her a sheepish smile. “Did you say you brought the dog?”
Turned out the guy was a bit of a dog lover. Nancy brought Triceratops into the small lobby. The dog gave the deputy a good minute and a half of tail wagging and tongue slobbering, then put his nose to the ground and set about sniffing out his new environment.
“Probably smells dinner,” the deputy told Nancy. “I was just about to bring some in for the prisoner, see if she’d decide to eat this time.”
“She’s still not eating?” Nancy asked.
“She’s not doing much of anything,” the deputy told her. “She just crawls back to the corner of her cell and looks at us like we’re coming to kill her whenever we step near the door.”
Nancy surveyed the empty department. “Sometimes it takes a mother’s touch,” she told him. “Tell you what, you watch the dog and I’ll deliver the meal.”
The deputy winced. “Probably breaking all kinds of rules.”
“What am I going to do,” Nancy asked him, “break her out?”
The deputy looked at her. Looked at the dog. Like the perfect accomplice, Triceratops bounded over. Nuzzled and slobbered on the guy until he laughed, and Nancy knew she had him.
“Fine,” the deputy said, taking the dog’s leash and leading them both deeper into the department. “Come on. Just make it quick, okay?”
“SHE’S ROMANIAN,”
Nancy told Stevens. “She speaks a little English, but I got you a translator anyway.”
Stevens met his wife’s eyes across the motel room and couldn’t help smiling. “Why am I not surprised?”
“You’re not the only big-city hotshot in this town, Agent Stevens,” Nancy said. “I conned my way into taking the girl her dinner. Bribed a deputy and all. I was right, Kirk, she’s starving. Emaciated. God knows when’s the last time she’d eaten.”
“Bribed a deputy,” Stevens said. “Of course you did.”
“Someone had to do it, Kirk,” she said. “Those people would have just let her waste away before they found someone who could speak her language.”
“She wouldn’t talk to them,” Stevens said. “Hell, the girl was damn terrified. Watkins said she seemed like she was ready to bolt every time the deputies came near. How’d you get through to her?”
“Easy.” Nancy said. “I talked to her.”
Stevens stared.
“I talked to her, Kirk. She wasn’t going to just burst open and tell me her life story, but I talked to her anyway. Just so she’d feel like a human again.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told her she was safe now. She was going to be fine. That whatever happened, my action hero husband was going to get to the bottom of it.” She crossed the room to him. “And you will, Kirk. Whatever happened, this girl’s not just some murderer. Something brought her to Walker, something bad.”
Stevens let his wife wrap her arms around him. “We’ll see, Nance,” he said. “She’s still the main suspect in a murder investigation. I’m not sure I’m ready to just spring her right yet.”
He was thinking,
Slow down, Nancy.
Thinking how awkward it would be if it turned out the girl had killed Dale Friesen after all.
But he was also thinking how Nazzali had found those 9mm casings at the Paul Bunyan, how there was probably another shooter. Thinking, whatever the girl did, there was a hell of a lot more to the story than one dead sheriff’s deputy.
“So, okay,” he said. “You talked to her.”
“Honestly, I just babbled,” Nancy said. “She didn’t look at me, say anything, nothing. But then she finished her meal and she pushed the tray back at me and she said, really soft,
‘Multumesc.
’”
Stevens blinked. “Mult-zoo what now?”
“It means ‘thank you’ in Romanian, Kirk. I had Romanian neighbors growing up. My mom used to make me bring them casseroles and cakes and stuff. They’d always say that to me,
‘Multumesc mult
.
’
Thank you very much.”
“Hot damn,” Stevens said. “You’re unbelievable.”
“That’s not the end of it, Kirk,” Nancy said. “I went to take her tray back and she stopped me. Just grabbed my arm and held me.”
“Just held you.” Stevens frowned. “Did you call for the deputy?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Nancy said. “It was—I’ve never seen anyone look so scared. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘My sister.’”
“Her sister,” Stevens said. “What does that mean? Was she calling you her sister?”
“I don’t think so, Kirk. I think she was talking about somebody else, somebody real.” Nancy drew back, looked at Stevens. “Kirk, there’s something going on here. Something more than just a murder.”
Stevens nodded. “I know, Nance,” he said. “Let’s see what happens when the translator gets here.”
> > >
STEVENS CHECKED IN ON
the kids in the adjoining motel room, found JJ and Triceratops watching TV while Andrea texted, furiously, on her iPhone. He sat down beside his son, scratched the dog’s belly. “You guys have a good day?”
Andrea grunted something noncommittal from the other bed. JJ rolled his eyes. “She’s been on that thing all day, Dad. I don’t think she even knows where she is.”
“I swear to God, JJ.” Andrea put down the phone and scowled at him. “Can you mind your own business,
please
?”
“Okay,” Stevens said. “Everybody calm down. You getting decent reception, Ange?”
“It’s fine.” Andrea’s phone buzzed, and Stevens watched her type something, a smile on her lips and her eyes suddenly alight.
“What about you, kiddo?” he asked JJ. “How was your day?”
“It’s okay.” JJ rolled over onto his back. “Dad, this place is boring. Can we go back to the lake tomorrow?”
Stevens could sense his son’s restlessness, and no wonder. The motel room was dingy, kind of plain. Nothing like the open wilderness. “I dunno, Jay,” he said, sighing. “This case isn’t turning out as easy as it was supposed to.”
“Does that mean we get to go home?” Andrea asked.
“We were supposed to go canoeing again,” JJ said.
“I know,” Stevens told him. “I know, guys. I’m working through this as quick as I can.”