Wolves of Mercy Falls 03 - Forever Read online

  Mercy Falls wasn’t rich, but it was quaint, in its way, so by virtue of its quaintness, it had a pretty thriving downtown. Charm, plus proximity to the beautiful Boundary Waters, brought tourists, and tourists brought money. Mercy Falls offered several blocks of boutique-sort shops to part them from their cash. The shops were largely of the sort that kept husbands waiting in the car or sent them poking around in the hardware store on Grieves Street, but still I glanced in windows as I walked. I kept to the edge of the sidewalk so that the cautious morning sun could reach me. It felt good on my skin, a small consolation prize in this terrible and wonderful week.

  I made it a few yards past a shop that sold clothing and knick-knacks, and I stopped and doubled back to stand in front of the window. A headless mannequin in the window wore a white summer dress. It was just a simple thing: thin straps up over the shoulders, a loose tie round the middle. The fabric was something that I thought was called eyelet. I imagined Grace in it, the narrow straps over her shoulders, a triangle of bare skin below her throat, the hem falling just above her knee. I could imagine her hips beneath the thin material, my hands bunching the fabric at her waist when I pulled her to me. It was a carefree dress, a dress that was about summer and ankle-high grass and blond hair streaked paler by the confident sun.

  I stood there for a long moment, looking at it, wanting what it stood for. It seemed like such a foolish thing to be thinking of right now when so much else was at stake. Three times I shifted my weight, about to step off, to go back on my way. And every time that image of Grace — wind lifting the edge of the dress, pressing the fabric flat to her belly and breasts — kept me fixed in front of the window.

  I bought it. I had four twenties in my wallet — Karyn had paid me in cash last week — and I left with one of them and a little bag with the dress nestled in the bottom. I backtracked to put it in my car and then went on to the Crooked Shelf, eyes on the sidewalk running ahead of me, feeling the warmth and uncertainty of having bought a gift that cost more than a day of working. What if she didn’t like it? Maybe I should have been saving for a ring. Even if she had really meant it and did want to marry me, which seemed like an impossible thing, a ring seemed far off. I had no idea what a ring cost, and maybe I needed to start saving. What if I told her I’d got her a present and that was what she expected and I disappointed her? I felt simultaneously like the oldest nineteen-year-old on the planet and the youngest — what was I doing thinking about rings, and why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? And perhaps in all her practical nature Grace would be annoyed that I’d bought her a gift instead of doing something about the hunt.

  So it was these things I wrestled as I walked into the bookstore. With my mind so far from my body, the store felt like a lonely, timeless place as I opened it up. It was Saturday, so an hour after I opened the store, Karyn came in the back door, sequestering herself away in the tiny back room to do ordering and reconciling. Karyn and I had an easy relationship; it was nice to know she was in the shop even when we didn’t speak.

  There were no customers and I was restless, so I walked back to the workroom. The sun was coming in the front windows full and strong, reaching long hands all the way back here. It warmed my body, comfortingly hot, as I leaned on the doorway.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Karyn was already sitting surrounded by drifts of invoices and book catalogs. She looked up at me with a pleasant smile. To me, everything about Karyn was always pleasant — she was one of those women who always seemed comfortable with themselves and the world, whether they were in polar fleece or pearls. If she thought any differently about me since Grace disappeared, she didn’t show it. I wished I could tell her how much I had needed that from her, that unchanging pleasantness. “You look happy,” she said.

  “Do I?”

  “Happier,” she said. “Have we been busy?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been quiet. I swept. And removed some tiny handprints from the front windows.”

  “Children — who needs them?” Karyn asked. It was a rhetorical question. She mused, “If it would get warm, we’d get people. Or if that Tate Flaugherty sequel would come out already, we’d have them in scads. Maybe we should do up the front window for it. What do you think, an Alaskan theme for Mayhem in Juneau?”

  I made a face. “It seems to me Minnesota just got done with its Alaskan theme.”

  “Aha. Good point.”

  I thought about my guitar, the northern lights over my head, the songs I needed to write about the past few days.

  “We should do music biographies,” I said. “That’d make a nice window.”

  Karyn gestured to me with her pencil. “Point to the man.” She lowered the pencil and tapped it on the letter in front of her, a gesture that suddenly reminded me of Grace. “Sam, I know that Beck is … ill, and this might not be a priority for you, but have you thought about what you’re doing for college?”

  I blinked at the question and crossed my arms. She looked at my crossed arms as though they were part of my answer. I said, “I — hadn’t given it a lot of thought yet.” I didn’t want her to think I was unmotivated, though, so I said, “I’m waiting to see where Grace goes to school.”

  I realized, half a moment later, that this statement was wrong, for about three different reasons, primary amongst them being that Grace was officially missing.

  Karyn didn’t look pitying or puzzled, however. She just gave me a long, pensive look, her lips set in a small line and one of her thumbs sort of resting on the bottom of her chin. I felt, then, like she knew, somehow, about us, and that this was merely a pretense that Beck and I played with her.

  Don’t ask.

  She said, “I was just wondering because, if you’re not going to school right away, I was going to ask if you wanted to work full-time here.”

  It was not what I’d expected her to say, so I didn’t answer.

  Karyn said, “I know what you’re thinking, that it’s not a lot of money. I’ll up your hourly by two dollars.”

  “You can’t afford that.”

  “You sell a lot of books for us. It would make me feel better to know that you’re always the one behind the counter. Every day you’re sitting on that stool is a day I don’t have to worry about what’s going on in here.”

  “I —” Really, I was grateful for the offer. Not because I needed the money, but because I needed the trust. My face felt warm, a smile pending.

  Karyn pressed on, “I mean, I feel a little guilty, trying to keep you out of college for another year, but if you’re waiting anyway …”

  I heard the front-door bell ring as it opened. One of us was going to have to go up there, and I was glad for it. Not because the conversation was awkward or terrible, but the opposite. I needed a moment to process this, to hold all this at an arm’s length so I could be sure of my face and my words when I spoke again. I felt like I looked too ungrateful, too slow. I asked, “Can I think about it?”

  “I would’ve been amazed if you didn’t,” Karyn said. “You’re a little predictable, Sam.”

  I grinned at her and turned to head back to the front, which is how I happened to be smiling when the police officer first saw me.

  My smile melted away. Actually, it remained for just a moment too long, my lips pulled up to show an emotion that had vanished seconds before. The police officer could have been there for anything. He could’ve been there to talk to Karyn. He could’ve been there with just a quick question.

  But I knew he wasn’t.

  I saw now that he was Officer William Koenig. Koenig was young, understated, familiar. I wanted to think that our previous exchanges would weight things in my favor, but his face told me everything I needed to know. His expression was the purposefully blank one of someone who was being made to regret his past kindnesses.

  “You’re a hard man to find, Sam,” Koenig said as I slowly approached him. My hands felt sort of useless hanging at my sides.

  “Am I?” I asked. I felt prickling, defensive,
although his tone was light. Being found was not something I cared for. Being looked for wasn’t something I liked, either.

  “I told them this was the place to find you,” Koenig said.

  I nodded. “That’s a pretty fair guess.” I felt like I should ask him What can I do for you? but I didn’t really want to know. Mostly I wanted to be left alone to process everything that had happened to me in the past seventy-two hours.

  “We actually need to ask you a few questions,” Koenig said. Behind him, the door dinged as a woman came in. She had a giant purple bag that I couldn’t stop staring at.

  “Where are your self-help books?” she asked me. She seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that there was a police officer in front of me. Maybe people spoke with police officers on a casual basis all the time. It was hard to imagine.

  If Koenig hadn’t been there, I would have told her that every book ever written was a self-help book and could she be more specific? And she would’ve left with four books instead of one, because that was what I did. But with Koenig there, I just said, “Over there. Behind you.”

  “Back at the department,” Koenig said. “For your privacy.”

  For my privacy.

  This was bad.

  “Sam?” Koenig said.

  I realized I was still watching that purple leather bag move slowly through the store. The woman’s cell phone had rung and now she was yammering on it. “Okay,” I said. “I mean, I have to, don’t I?”

  Koenig said, “You don’t have to do anything. But things are a lot less ugly without a warrant.”

  I nodded my head. Words. I needed to say something. What did I need to say? I thought of Karyn, sitting there in the back, thinking all was fine up front because I was here. “I need to tell my boss that I’m leaving. Is that all right?”

  “Of course.”

  I felt him drifting after me as I headed to the back of the store. “Karyn,” I said, leaning on the doorframe. I could not make my voice casual, but I tried. It occurred to me that I didn’t normally address her by her name, and it felt wrong in my mouth. “I’m sorry. I have to go for a little bit. Um, Officer Koenig — they would like me to go in for questions.”

  For one second, her expression stayed the same, and then everything about it hardened. “They what? Are they here now?”

  She pushed out of her chair and I backed up so that she could stand in the doorway and confirm that Koenig was standing in the aisle, staring up at one of the paper cranes that I’d hung from the balcony above.

  “What’s going on now?” she asked. It was her brisk, efficient voice that she used when she was speaking to a difficult customer; it stood for no crap and kept emotion out of it. Business Karyn, we both called it. It turned her into a completely different person.

  “Ma’am,” Koenig said apologetically — this was a natural response to Business Karyn — “one of our investigators has questions for Sam. He asked if I would bring him back for a chat in some privacy.”

  “A chat,” Karyn echoed. “The sort of chat that would be better with a lawyer present?”

  “That’s entirely up to Sam. But he’s not being charged with anything right now.”

  Right. Now.

  Karyn and I both heard it. Right now was another way of saying yet. She looked at me. “Sam, do you want me to call Geoffrey?”

  I knew my face gave me away, because she answered her own question. “He’s not available, is he?”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “This strikes me as harassment,” Karyn said to Koenig. “He’s an easy target because he’s not the same as everyone else. If Geoffrey Beck were in town, would we be having this conversation?”

  “With all due respect, ma’am,” Koenig said, “if Geoffrey Beck were in town, he would probably be the one we were questioning.”

  Karyn sealed her lips shut, looking unhappy. Koenig stepped back out of the center aisle to gesture toward the front door. Now I could see a police car double-parked in front of the store, waiting for us.

  I was intensely grateful to Karyn for standing up for me. For acting like I was her business. She said, “Sam, call me. If you need anything. If you feel uncomfortable. Do you want me to come with?”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said again.

  “He’ll be all right,” Koenig said. “We are not trying to back anyone into a corner here.”

  “I’m sorry I have to leave,” I told Karyn. Usually she only came in for a few hours on Saturday morning and then left the shop in the hands of whoever was working. Now I’d ruined her entire day.

  “Oh, Sam. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Karyn said. She came over and hugged my shoulders, hard. She smelled like hyacinths. To Koenig, she said — Business Karyn vanishing as accusation slipped into her tone — “I hope this is worth it for you guys.”

  Koenig led me down the aisle toward the front door. I was infinitely aware that the woman with the big purple bag was watching me go, cell phone still up to her ear. Her phone speaker was turned up loud enough that we could both hear the woman on the other side of the line say, “Are they arresting him?”

  “Sam,” Koenig said. “Just tell the truth.”

  He didn’t even know what he was asking for.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  • COLE •

  After I left the Culpeper house, I just drove. I had Ulrik’s old BMW wagon, some of the money I’d brought, no one to tell me not to go.

  On the radio, I was listening to a song by a band that had opened for us once. They had been such a train wreck live that I’d felt positively virtuous, a difficult feat to accomplish at that point. I should’ve thanked them for making us look good. The lead singer’s name had been Mark or Mike or Mack or Abel or something like that. Afterward, he’d come up to me, ferociously drunk, and told me I was his biggest influence. I could see the resemblance.

  Now, a million years later, I listened to the DJ describe the single as the band’s one hit. I kept driving. I still had Sam’s phone in my pocket, and it wasn’t ringing, but for once, I didn’t care. I felt like I’d left a message for Isabel that didn’t require a callback. It was enough to have said it.

  My windows were rolled down and my arm was out, the wind buffeting it, my palm moist from grabbing mist. The Minnesota landscape stretched out on either side of the two-lane road. It was all scrubby pines and flat houses and rocks stacked randomly and lakes suddenly glinting behind trees. I thought the residents of Mercy Falls must have decided to build ugly houses to make up for all the natural beauty. Keep the place from exploding, or something, from an excess of picturesque.

  I kept thinking about what I’d told Isabel, about thinking of calling my family. I’d been mostly truthful. The idea of calling my parents felt impossible and unpalatable. In the Venn diagram that was me and them, the shape where our circles overlapped was empty.

  But I still thought about calling Jeremy. Jeremy the resident bassist-yogi. I wondered what he was doing without me and Victor. I liked to think that he’d used his money to go backpacking across India or something. The thing about Jeremy, the thing that made me almost willing to call him and no one else, was that he and Victor had always known me better than anyone. That was what all NARKOTIKA really was: a way of knowing Cole St. Clair. Victor and Jeremy had spent years of their lives helping describe the particular pain of being me to hundreds of thousands of listeners.

  They did it so often that they could do it without me. I remembered one interview where they did it so well that I never bothered to answer another interview question again. We were being interviewed in our hotel room. It was first thing in the morning because we had a flight to catch later. Victor was hungover and pissy. Jeremy was eating breakfast bars at the tiny, glass-topped desk in the room. The room had a narrow balcony with a view to nothing, and I had opened the door and was lying out there on the concrete. I had been doing sit-ups with my feet hooked on the bottom rung of the railing, but now I was just staring at jet trails in the sky.
The interviewer sat cross-legged on one of the unmade beds. He was young and spiked and pressed and named Jan.

  “So who does most of the songwriting?” Jan had asked. “Or is it a group thing?”

  “Oh, it’s a group thing,” Jeremy said, in his slow, easy way. He’d picked up a Southern accent at the same time he’d acquired Buddhism. “Cole writes the lyrics, and then I bring him coffee, and then Cole writes the music, and Victor brings him pretzels.”

  “So you do most of the writing, then, Cole?” Jan raised his voice so that I could hear him better out on the balcony. “Where do you get your inspiration?”

  From my vantage point on the balcony, staring straight up, I had two viewing options: the brick sides of the buildings across the street, or one square of colorless sky above me. All cities looked the same when you were on your back.

  Jeremy snapped a piece of his breakfast bar off; we could all hear the crumbs rustle across the table. From the other bed, still sounding like he was PMSing, Victor said, “He won’t answer that.”

  Jan sounded genuinely puzzled, as if I was the first to refuse him. “Why?”

  “He just won’t. He hates that question,” Victor said. His feet were bare; he clicked the bones in his toes. “It is kind of a stupid question, man. Life, right? That’s where we get our inspiration.”

  Jan scribbled something down. He was left-handed and writing looked awkward for him, as if he were a Ken doll with parts assembled slightly wrong. I hoped he was writing down Never ask that question again. “Okay. Um. Your EP One/Or the Other just debuted in Billboard’s top ten. What are your thoughts on that incredible success?”

  “I’m buying my mother a BMW,” Victor said. “No, I’m just buying Bavaria. That is where BMWs are from, right?”