“I’ve been fishing for quite a while now,” he said, pulling his line out of the water. A metal lure, the kind you’d use for trolling in the middle of summer, gleamed in the lantern’s light. “Perhaps I’m not doing it correctly. Would you like to try?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Perhaps Mr. Bruckman would like to try,” he said. “Why don’t we find out?”
Pearl and Roman stood up in unison. They picked up Bruckman from the back wall, one arm apiece, and lifted him over to the bench they were just sitting on. I saw his face for the first time. His eyes were swollen shut. I could barely recognize him. My coat slid off of his naked, blue body.
“Please, his coat,” Molinov said. “We wouldn’t want Mr. Bruckman to catch cold.”
The men pulled his arms away from his body and somehow managed to get my coat on him.
“Much better,” Molinov said. “Now, Mr. Bruckman, perhaps you’d like to try your luck at some ice fishing?”
Bruckman started to fall sideways. One of the men caught him.
“I think Mr. Bruckman needs some more assistance,” Molinov said.
With one smooth motion, the two men picked him up and dropped him head first into the water. The splash hit me across the front of my shirt and across my face, as cold and shocking and painful as a thousand icy needles. Bruckman’s body hung against the edge of the opening. It was barely big enough for him to fit through. But then as my coat soaked up the water it pulled him down until only one foot was left above the surface. And then that too was gone.
I kept staring at the water. I could not move.
Pearl and Roman sat down. Molinov looked at his wet cigar for a moment and then threw it behind him. “Mr. McKnight, I can understand your reluctance to reveal her whereabouts.”
The surface of the water was still trembling. I kept expecting Bruckman’s head to come bursting back up through the hole.
“But I should think at this point you see how important it is to me that I find her, as well as a white bag that was in her possession.”
“I don’t know where she is,” I said. “I don’t know where the bag is.”
He nodded slowly. “When I found out that Miss Parrish had come to you, naturally I was curious about who you were. The man on the tape states quite clearly that you are a private investigator. I made some inquiries and discovered that yes, you do in fact have a license. I was surprised to find, however, that you have no office, you have no listing in the phone directory, you apparently make no attempt whatsoever to advertise your services. I thought that rather odd, until I learned more about your recent past. Is it true that your last clients were the Fulton family?”
I looked up at him.
“It’s a very wealthy family, is it not? I understand they have a vacation home on the lake, just north of your cabin. I actually paid the house a visit today, did you know that? It’s an impressive building. Of course, it’s empty now. I couldn’t imagine living here in the winter if one had a choice. We have places just like this where I come from, you realize. I can assure you, though, that nobody ever builds a vacation home there.”
The water on my clothes was soaking through to my skin. I tried not to shake.
“I made some more inquiries, Mr. McKnight. It seems that the Fulton family suffered a great misfortune recently. The Fulton heir, Edwin the third, was tragically killed. Of course, this is not news to you. I understand that you were employed at the time by a lawyer named Lane Uttley, and that Mr. Uttley was in fact representing the Fulton family. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Mr. Edwin Fulton,” he said, “the man who died so suddenly. He led a rather interesting life, did he not? I have heard many rumors. Voices in the wind, if you will. It made me think, here is a man, Alex McKnight, who has a license to be a private investigator, but doesn’t seem to do any investigating. Yet when a wealthy man with many problems disappears, Mr. McKnight is close by. Then comes a young woman with many problems, different problems to be sure, but just as serious. When this woman disappears, once again Mr. McKnight is at her side. It makes me begin to wonder if perhaps this is… Am I using the correct word here? His specialty?”
The room was getting colder. The kerosene heater was hissing like it was running out of fuel.
“This place,” he said. “It does seem to be perfectly suited for disappearances, does it not?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“The next question, of course,” he said, “is does Mr. McKnight help these people disappear, or make them disappear?”
“I don’t know what happened to Dorothy,” I said. “But I do know what happened to Edwin Fulton. He’s dead.” I was starting to feel dizzy. My own voice sounded far away from my body.
“I wonder what Edwin Fulton’s widow might say if I took up this matter with her? What is her name again? Sylvia?”
“No,” I said. “Not her.”
He drew the gun out from his breast pocket. He didn’t point it at me. He didn’t hold it away from his body or wave it around in the air like most men would. He held the gun close to his body, as naturally as holding a telephone or a fountain pen. “I am offended,” he said. “Do you believe that I would harm this woman?”
I looked at his gun. I didn’t say anything.
“To harm a woman,” he said. “An innocent woman. That you would even think such a thing. I’d like to show you how strongly I object to the very idea.”
I looked up at this face.
The heater had gone out. There was silence.
“Gentlemen,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. “Please remove those coats. They are quite expensive. I would not want them to be ruined when we perform our little demonstration.”
The two men stood up and took their coats off. They put them on the bench behind them. The bigger one, the one with the hard face and the nose that had been broken, he looked at me with the cold eyes of a natural killer. He flexed his hands in their black leather gloves.
I waited for what would happen next. My whole body was tight. I will not shake, I told myself. I will not let them see me shake.
The other man. I saw him blink. He sneaked a look at his partner, and then at Molinov.
Molinov raised his arm sideways and shot both of the men.
They fell backwards, first one, then the other. The bench fell over with them. The shots rang in my ears. Molinov’s upraised arm did not move.
“I understand,” he finally said, lowering his arm, “that when my associates were questioning Mr. Gobi and his female companion about Mr. Bruckman’s whereabouts, they committed an act of extreme brutality. The woman was innocent. There was no reason to kill her.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Not at all,” he said. “Now I wonder if you’d be so kind as to collect their coats. I believe you’ll find the keys to the vehicle in Mr. Pearl’s pocket.”
“Which one is he?”
“They didn’t introduce themselves? How impolite. Mr. Pearl is on the left.”
When I stood up, the room began to spin around me. I grabbed the bench to stop from falling over.
“Careful, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to fall through that hole and join Mr. Bruckman.”
I shook my head clear and went over to the two men on the floor. They were both staring at the ceiling, with holes perfectly centered in their chests. I pulled the coat out from under him, the one named Pearl. I found the keys and pulled them out.
“Bring them to me,” he said.
I turned and took two steps toward him. I looked him in the eyes.
And then I dropped the keys into the water. They disappeared instantly.
He looked down at the water, then back up at my face. He smiled.
“You have seen death before,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re not afraid of me right now, are you? Not enough to beg me for your life.”
