Envy the Night

Atkins considered Frank for a long moment after that, then gave him a few slow nods. “Interesting observation, Mr. Temple. No, I am not excited. There’s nothing exciting about what we’re dealing with here.”

“Rest of the cops seem to think so.”

“Agreed. That’ll pass with time.”

“So who are you with?”

The repeated question seemed to irritate Atkins, causing a quick, hard flicker of his eyes before he answered.

“I’m with the FBI, Mr. Temple.”

“Milwaukee?”

Atkins’s eyebrow went up again. “No, Wausau. We maintain a small field office there.”

Frank nodded. If Atkins had come in from Milwaukee already, that would have told him something, suggested that the cops here were already getting a sense of things, maybe knew something about who these guys really were. Nobody from the FBI responded to a murder otherwise. But if he’d just made the hour-long drive from Wausau, maybe it wasn’t quite as strange. There weren’t a lot of homicides up here, certainly not of this nature, and Frank guessed the FBI office in Wausau wasn’t swamped. Probably welcomed the chance to step in, give this one a look.

“Not a real good start to your weekend, is what I’m hearing,” Atkins said. “First you had this trouble yesterday in which, according to what I’ve been told, you performed quite admirably. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you found a murder victim in the same building.”

Atkins cocked his head at Frank. “No way to start a vacation, right?”

“Nope.”

“So you are here on vacation?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what brings most people here. Most people, though, they don’t have a string of bad luck like you’re experiencing.”

“I wouldn’t think so.” Even this early in the conversation, Frank had reached two conclusions about Atkins: First, he was smart, and deserving of respect. Second, Frank didn’t like him.

“You rent a cabin up here, is that it?”

“Own one.”

“Really? Very nice. Out there on the Willow Flowage, is it?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you come into possession of the cabin, might I ask?”

Here was the reason Frank didn’t like him, drifting out in these casual questions. The man had come here to ask about Frank’s father. Either he knew the name, or somebody had done the homework.

“It was in the family,” Frank said. “But I don’t see what relevance that has to the poor bastard we found with his leg broken and his throat cut, Mr. Atkins. Ron.”

“I understand that. I’m going to ask you for a little patience. See, I may find relevance in places you don’t.”

“Tell you what,” Frank said, “let’s go ahead and talk about my dad.”

Atkins pursed his lips into a little smile but looked at the tabletop instead of Frank. “Your father. Yes, I’ve heard about him.”

“A lot of people have. And, hate to tell you this, but he’s been dead for seven years. Tough to blame him for this one.”

“I’ve heard a few terms used concerning your father—”

“I’ve used a few of them myself.”

“I believe it. But I’m talking about his, uh, entrepreneurship, you see. Because the man didn’t just kill people. He made money doing it, for a while. One of those terms that people use is ‘hit man.’ ”

“I’ve heard it.”

“Right. So—and I understand how frustrating this has to be for you, trust me—when a cop ends up beaten half to death outside of a body shop on a Friday and another man ends up killed in the same body shop on a Saturday, and the key witness to both events is, well, the son of a hit man . . .”

“This is what brings the FBI up from Wausau,” Frank said.

Atkins nodded with a theatrical sense of apology. “Like I said, Mr. Temple, I understand this may not be fair to you, but sometimes we have to endure a little extra suffering along the line just because of our families. That happens to everybody, in one way or another.”

I could tell you some of the ways, Frank thought. Could tell you what it’s like to be seventeen years old and fooling around with your girlfriend, biggest concern in the world just trying to get her shirt off, when your father comes home and walks into your bedroom. And for a minute, Mr. Atkins, you’re still worried about the girl and about his reaction and this all seems like a major crisis. Seems like that until he says, Son, we’re going to need to be alone right now, and something in his eyes tells you that the pending conversation has nothing to do with anything as innocent as you and the girl.

“So I understand, is what I’m trying to say,” Atkins said. “But I’ve still got to ask the questions.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I kind of figured you would.”

“Right off the bat, I’m curious about this: I was told you were wearing a gun when the police got down to the body shop. A gun, I might add, with your father’s initials stamped into the stock. FT II would be him, right? You’re FT III?”

Frank nodded.

“You always carry the gun?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then you come up here on vacation, a fishing trip, and you think, yeah, this seems like the time and place to pack a pistol?”

Frank looked at Atkins for a long time before he said, “It had started to seem like a dangerous town.”

Atkins nodded. “Almost from the moment you arrived.”

19

__________

This couldn’t be her life. The longer Nora thought about it, the less sense it made. Hit men, tracking devices, murder? No, they didn’t fit. None of those things belonged.

Yet there they were, the reality hammered home by the parade of police interviewers. Can you describe . . . they’d say, time and time again. Of course she could describe it. Jerry had been murdered. Try seeing that and forgetting it. She’d be able to describe that scene for a long time, far longer than any of the things she wanted to remember. The way his head had hung at that unnatural angle, the way the bone had bulged from his thigh . . . this couldn’t be her life.

She’d gone through a few rounds of interviews and one short talk with some sort of grief counselor who’d left a card and told her something about the pain of those left behind lingering longer than the pain of those who suffered. What that meant, Nora had no clue. The idea seemed to be that Nora would suffer more than Jerry, but the grief counselor hadn’t seen Jerry’s leg.

The only thing that stood out in all the talking was the lead cop’s disclosure that no tracking device had been found in the locker. He wanted to know if it could have been left somewhere else, and she gave them permission— as if they needed it at this point—to search the whole shop, but she knew it was gone. That’s what they’d come for, and now it was gone. The only physical link she’d had to them was missing.

The last visitor was a man in an ill-fitting brown suit who showed his badge almost immediately, the only person who’d done so all day. FBI, it said. That surprised and comforted her. About time somebody like this was involved.

The reassurance his presence provided didn’t last long. After some of the same preliminary questions, his focus shifted to Frank Temple and stayed there. How long had she known Mr. Temple? Just a day, huh? Was she