Starting to change. To emerge.
Before they got back on the road, one of the marshals opened a large first aid kit and changed the dressing on Tom’s leg. As he removed the old gauze pad, he remarked how well the wound was healing.
The other marshal told Tom how lucky he was. Catching a clean flesh wound like that.
Tom kept a straight mild face, inside he growled all over.
Finding the hundred-dollar bill in the Subaru was a single puzzle piece on a bare board. But Jeff and Broker agreed; 166 / CHUCK LOGAN
quiet, ordinary Tom James was starting to cast an unclean shadow over Caren’s death.
Jeff tucked the bill into an evidence bag and, assuming the State BCA was handling the Angland investigation for the U.S. attorney, called the crime lab in St. Paul.
“Nah,” said a forensic scientist. “The feds are hogging the show, routing all the good stuff-like the famous tongue-through their lab in Virginia. So call them.”
Jeff did. Garrison wasn’t in the St. Paul office. An agent listened, consulted a supervisor, then told Jeff they’d send some agents up to collect the car. He could send the bill certified mail. Jeff said he would, hung up and turned to Broker, “There. Now, go home, and remember, you’re a civilian. Have Christmas with Nina.”
Broker drove back to babyland and spent a quiet night cooking, cleaning, bathing and putting Kit to bed. A rising wind woke him before dawn. He was up, refreshed, focused.
Barefoot, he padded the plank floors of his living room, chewing on a cigar. Coffee water heated. A soft plague of gray snow blotted out the dawn. He couldn’t talk to James.
But maybe he could talk to Keith.
“
“
Kit announced herself upon the morning with authority, hurling “Cucaracha Dog” out of her crib. Broker’s day began; remove diaper, take shower, dress her. As he spooned oatmeal, he started a list of “things to do for Christmas”: Buy a tree.
Buy Kit a sled.
Get Nina a present.
He’d considered writing her a letter explaining Caren’s death and Keith’s arrest. But he figured she’d be in transit, working through echelons between Bosnia and the States.
She’d call when she got situated. He’d tell her then. And she’d be home in less than a week.
The dishes hummed in the dishwasher. The clothes were folded. The weekly menu posted on the refrigerator had Tuesday and Wednesday marked off. Today, Thursday, was cabbage soup. When Kit was down for her nap, he walked through the trickling snow, up to the road, to get the mail.
He opened his mailbox, scooped the letters and walked back, sifting through the junk, put the propane bill from Eagle Mountain Energy under his arm. Inspected a beat-up envelope.
No return address. The address caught his attention-printed, cut out and pasted on the envelope-was imprecise: General Delivery, Devil’s Rock. The mail sorter in Grand Marais had penned in his route number.
Postmarked four days ago. From St. Paul. Lost in the Christmas rush. He tore the flap. At first, he thought it was a homemade Christmas card. Desktop format, in stanzas, like a poem. Words like fishhooks ripped his eyes:
A hard shuffle stirred in his chest, a stamping, like impatient hooves. Broker had always had a reverse nervous system. He descended now into that cool practical chamber where he kept the men he’d killed. Very calmly, he harnessed the surge of anger and continued to read:
Broker took a deep breath to center himself. He looked around. Sky, water, trees, house. All clean and smoothed by the new snow. Familiar, reassuring. His safe place.
His eyes settled back on the sheet of paper.
Not somebody from the past he’d put in jail. Most of those guys couldn’t write a complete sentence. He’d been up here for five months. The reference to choking. Cold water. Rocks.
And how did the writer know Kit had copper ringlets?
Because he had seen them. Even touched them. Because he had held her in his arms.
Like with the hundred dollars in the rental Subaru, Broker’s intuition was immediate: James, dropping crumbs of money behind him all the way into the maze of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Now this.
Slowly, Broker walked a circuit of his home. The house occupied a finger of granite with sloping boulders on two sides and a cobble beach descending in front, facing the lake.
The approach from the highway was screened in old red and white pine, smaller evergreens, brush.
The summer cabins were shuttered, locked. Cheryl and Don Tromley, the closest neighbors, were half a mile away.
The only visible habitation was a new log cabin, set on another point, a hundred yards to the south. A doctor from Chicago had built it. A rental. A black Audi had parked there, with skis on the roof, for three days. He’d glimpsed a young couple coming and going in cross country ski togs. Saw their lights at night. Smelled their wood smoke.
