No!’
Cinching Jasper’s leash and holding Lucas behind me by his good elbow, I navigated the narrow dock as it dipped and swayed. Bryce had his arms spread wide, holding the Taser and blocking the group from getting to us. The red-haired girl recognized him and, pointing at the weapon, started in on the Eighth Amendment and cruel and unusual punishment. Shouting above her, Bryce swept his arms forward, trying to make a space for us to get off the dock where we were trapped. Phones pointed at us and I squeezed Lucas’s arm. ‘Get ready.’
I could hear him saying, ‘They want me free.’
The hair on the back of Jasper’s neck stood entirely on end. He growled and shifted his weight, unsure of what to do. I choked up further on the leash, steadying him, until Bryce had pushed the fans back far enough for us to duck through.
‘Excuse us. Please allow us to pass.’ I tried to make myself heard as we edged forward. The closer we got to the crowd, the more Lucas stiffened against my grip. His head jerked as someone called his name, a girl young enough that she should have probably been in school, who ran forward and yelled, ‘I love you!’ Bryce caught her just as she launched herself at us, holding her by the arms and glaring at me.
‘Go!’
‘Come on.’ Jasper barked as I dragged him away, shielding Lucas’s face with my free hand. The red-haired ringleader began shouting at Bryce to release the girl while two more of them chased us across the parking lot, holding their phones in front of them like talismans. I unlocked the car and Lucas got in immediately, bending at the waist and covering his ears. Jasper climbed in front and, ignoring the shouted questions and yells, I asked everyone to please move back so I could pull out of the spot and return our patient to Congdon. They swarmed the car instead, holding their phones to the backseat windows and making it impossible to see where Bryce was. Revving the engine, I inched back, finally spotting Bryce in the center of the crowd. Angrily, he holstered the Taser and gestured to the road. Go.
I went. We took the fastest route back to the hospital with Jasper pacing, falling whenever I turned, and anxiously checking the windows. Lucas stayed hunched over for the entire ride, only sitting back up after we cleared Congdon’s gates and were driving through the parking lot.
Pulling up to the main entrance, I put the car in park and turned around.
‘What was that?’ He still looked shell-shocked.
‘One of the reasons it’s not entirely safe for you out there.’
‘I don’t want this.’ Without warning, he ripped the sling off his arm and threw it on the floor of the car. ‘I don’t want any of this. Maya—’
‘I know.’ I reached a hand over the seat. ‘I’m going to get you there. I promise.’
He took several deep inhales, using the meditation breathing, and then wrapped my hand in both of his, squeezing down to the bones.
The next few days passed in a blur of emails and phone calls crammed between near-constant sessions with Lucas and updates to Dr Mehta. I checked the ice in websites, making sure none of the Boundary Waters lakes were freezing over yet, and also monitored news sites and social media. Other than a bear sighting near Twin Harbors and photos of the last of the fall colors, it was quiet up north. I wished I could say the same for Duluth. Footage of Lucas at Twin Ponds had swept through the media, causing backlash at the protesters and throwing Congdon’s practices even further into the spotlight. Dr Mehta had given a news conference explaining patient reintegration privileges and appealing to the public for their support.
With Lucas in attendance I held the first meeting for the search party, who were surprisingly easy to recruit. Everyone wanted to be part of the rescue effort, winter be damned. Two orderlies volunteered within ten minutes of when I sent the email and Dr Mehta offered up one of the associate psychiatrists as the medical resource on the expedition. A US Forest Service ranger named Micah was going to be our official guide and within two minutes of meeting him – and without asking – I learned that he’d grown up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he’d needed to find some direction after his discharge from the military, and he had no, absolutely no, problem with crazy people. Officer Miller, who was sitting in on the meeting, stifled a laugh as I shook the ranger’s hand.
I started by displaying the same picture showcased on all the news outlets and taped up on my fridge, the Blackthorns sitting on a dock together before they’d disappeared. After repeating the story everyone in the room knew, I told them the part they didn’t know – that the Blackthorns had lived happily off the grid for ten years until a few months ago, when Josiah got sick.
‘It’s been twenty-five days since Lucas last saw his father and time is running out. Our mission is to rescue him before the ice
sets in.’
I went over the details of the trip. Due to Lucas’s ‘inability’ to pinpoint Josiah’s location on a map, we’d backtrack his journey starting from the outfitter’s store. Lucas would lead us to his father, our doctor could administer any emergency medical treatment, and Micah the forest ranger would be able to radio in for an airlift to transport Josiah to the hospital.
‘What if he’s already dead?’ one of the orderlies asked.
That question sparked a debate about whether a helicopter would be called, under increasingly extreme conditions, merely to transport a body and who was going to pay for all these extraordinary measures. The doctor suggested towing an empty canoe for the remains, but – after accidentally catching Lucas’s murderous look – quickly amended that it could be used to haul out any extra stuff from their campsite, too.
‘After all,’ he appealed to everyone else, careful to avoid Lucas’s corner of the table, ‘that’s the motto in the Boundary Waters, right?’
Lucas grunted, drawing the table’s attention. ‘We don’t need lessons on how to disappear.’
I directed the conversation quickly back to the list of supplies, cautions about entering the Boundary Waters in November (cue smug grins from the ranger), and general preparations for monitoring Lucas, who needed to be supervised at all times by Congdon staff. He would sleep in a tent with the orderlies, paddle with me, and wear an ankle bracelet in the event he got separated from the group. As long as Dr Mehta gave the approval, our target departure date was November 1, three days away.
Sometimes when things moved forward, they moved backward, too. It was a strange sensation, a déjà vu carnival ride. I’d spent years trying to forget Ely, Minnesota, and now it had clawed its way back into every corner of my life. Past and future, a man killed, a man who might be saved; everything converged in Ely. There was no hiding from it anymore, so on my last day off before the search party was scheduled to leave, I left Dad a note and drove north.
If Duluth was considered small by most urban standards, Ely was hardly more than a dot on the map. It had been an iron town until the mines gave out, drawing all the miners to the taconite under the towns to the south. Now it was a collection of small businesses, a hub for the forest service, and of course, a gateway to the Boundary Waters. Soon after my discharge from Congdon I’d read that Ely was named The Coolest Small Town in America, referring to possibly more than the temperature.
Driving through the small grid of streets I saw a mix of old and new – Babe’s Bait and Tackle, Steger Mukluks, and the Northland Market sitting adjacent to places with vague names like Insula and very specific ones like Gator’s Grilled Cheese Emporium. I drove past Pillow Rock, the one place we always stopped when Mom and I came to town, our tradition, like some people went to the Old-Fashioned Candy store. Bigger than a car, the ancient greenstone could be found nowhere else in the world, but what I remembered most was that she never let me climb on it, never let me lay my head on those inviting, almost fluffy looking puffs of minerals.
In the center of town, I found a large camping store in a clapboard building whose foundation was lined with flowers. Wilting plants, crosses, and wreaths with ribbons that whipped in the wind crowded next to black-and-white pictures of a lined, laughing woman’s face. A hand-painted sign in the center of the memorial had Monica Anderson’s name with her dates of birth and death. Across the street, a tax office’s window was crowded with signs. One of them said, Friends of the Boundary Waters. Another, in large red letters, read, Remember Monica. Keep Blackthorn in jail. I parked outside the camping store and took a deep breath.
Inside there was enough gear to outfit the entire Forest Service. I browsed the all-terrain boots, the tent covers, and varieties of powdered eggs, picking up items here and there and starting a pile on the abandoned counter. I was on my fourth trip back up to the register when a man appeared on the stairs at the back. Moving stiffly, he unfolded a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and scanned my selections with flat eyes.
‘Planning a winter trip?’
‘Yeah.’ I set a box of fire starters on top. ‘Going to find Josiah Blackthorn.’
His head snapped up. I gave him a bland smile.
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘I didn’t say you did, Robert. I’m just here to buy some gear.’
His throat worked and he seemed to be weighing the benefit of a thousand-dollar sale against the urge to throw me out of his store. Eventually he stepped closer and picked up a pair of top-of-the-line boots. ‘These are men’s. This size won’t fit you.’
‘They’re not for me.’
He braced both hands on the counter then, and stared at the stack of clothing, gear, and provisions. He might have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, with stone gray hair standing up in odd places, and a series of faint red lines zigzagging through one side of his forehead and temple, like the edges of puzzle pieces if the puzzle had been bleeding. A huge silhouette of a moose against the sunset hung behind the counter, framed in driftwood. There were other touches through the store – painted paddles mounted near the ceiling, product explanation cards written in an elegant flourish – the undeniable traces of a woman who’d left her mark, even if she hadn’t planned on leaving.
‘Take your business elsewhere.’ He didn’t look at me.
I moved to the door but stopped before opening it, glancing through the window from one end of the street to the other. ‘Why didn’t he?’
‘Excuse me?’ It was the closest most Minnesotans would come to telling you to fuck off.
Ignoring his implication, I looked through the store, filling in the shadows of struggling bodies, the spill of fluids. ‘Why didn’t Lucas go somewhere else? Why did he come here, to an outfitter in the middle of town, when there were three other stores closer to the edge of the woods?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He strangled me. See?’ I moved back to the counter, approaching carefully, lifting my chin to reveal the faint bruise line. ‘He could have killed me, but he didn’t.’ Robert looked at my neck and his jaw started working.
‘There are two kinds of violence, Robert. Violence as an end and violence as a means. Lucas’s violence is a means, and we both know what the end is, don’t we?’
I let the silence drag out. No one came in to interrupt us, the store virtually dead in the off-season. Picking up a premium winter tent, I added it to the pile.
Robert heaved out a long sigh and shook his head, then pointed me to a model that cost half as much. ‘That’ll give you the same protection with less draft and an easier setup.’
I smiled and made the switch.
After ringing up the sale, Robert flipped the closed sign and invited me upstairs for coffee. He showed me pictures of him and Monica at the store’s grand opening. It had been their second career, their dream. He wasn’t sure what to do with it without her and could hardly bear to look at the flowers laid outside the building. Then, swirling the grounds at the bottom of his cup, he began talking about Josiah Blackthorn.
‘I told the police I didn’t know it was him until they started showing their pictures on the news. Josiah came in a few times a year, and he didn’t look any different than most people exiting the Boundary Waters. No one would have noticed him in town. You can’t throw a rock around here in the summer and not hit a guy wearing a backpack. He always said he was stocking up for next year and always paid cash. Rations, lures, clothes, and I only remembered him because he cut the tags off everything and packed it up right in the store.’ He swallowed. ‘That’s what I told the police.’
I set my cup down. ‘I’m not the police.’
Robert looked out the window, where the Keep Blackthorn in Jail sign was posted across the street. ‘I met Josiah Blackthorn when he and his boy moved to town. He bought a secondhand canoe off me and started coming in regularly after that. Not a big conversationalist, always had his son in tow, but we talked paddle and portage routes, fishing spots, all the regular stuff. Then one day he came in by himself and something was different. He asked to speak to me privately and I brought him up here. He was sitting right where you are now and I noticed . . . I noticed dirt on his clothes and under his fingernails. It was early in the season – the ground hadn’t even thawed yet – and I remember wondering how he could’ve gotten all that dirt on him.
‘He said he and his son were moving, leaving town, but he wanted to keep buying his camping supplies from me. He gave me a list of items and two dates. April first and October first.’
‘And you agreed.’
He nodded. ‘I knew right away when I looked at the list. Preppers and survivalists are good customers for outfitters. I figured the Blackthorns were going off the grid somewhere and true to his word, he came in like clockwork twice a year after that, right up until this fall. He didn’t show up this October first and I was worried, wondering if I should do something. I’d given him . . .’ Robert covered his mouth, as if trying to keep the coffee from coming back up. ‘I always gave him my card when he came in, and I told him if he or his son ever needed anything, they knew where to find me.’
The words trailed off and a storm of emotion worked over his face, pumping the scars on his temple with fresh blood.
Robert sold me Josiah’s unclaimed supplies, which I packed into the car along with the rest of the gear. I was fitting the last of the boxes in the trunk when a vintage Chevy drove by, the rasping putt-putt noise unmistakable, and I lifted my head in time to see the driver stop in the middle of a left turn. His hunched frame swiveled in the window and we stared at each other, neither making a move. Before I could decide on a reaction, an oncoming car honked its horn and the driver stepped on the gas, pulling onto the side street.
Slamming the trunk, I walked straight to the police station a few blocks away. I had the business card Officer Miller had given me along with Josiah’s arrest records, but I didn’t need to look at it when the desk sergeant asked who I wanted to see.
‘Sergeant Coombe, please.’
It took fifteen minutes for the guy to waddle out into the waiting area and when he spotted me, his eyebrows shot up to underline the furrows in his forehead. Waving me back, we went to a messy office littered with empty vending machine wrappers and enough stacks of paper to suggest he thought the computer age was a giant hoax.
I unfolded a piece of paper from my backpack and set it on top of one of the stacks. Heather Price’s creased face smiled up at both of us.
When he saw it, he gave a shocked laugh and leaned so far back in his chair the hinges shrieked. Then he crossed his arms and looked me up and down, as if checking for weapons. The last time he’d done that, he’d had to take a bloody agate out of my hand, so he probably assumed anything was possible when it came to me.
‘Heard you ended up at a mental hospital. How’d that work out?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m still kind of there.’
‘Better there than here. Especially when you seem to have a thing for dead bodies.’ He grunted and nodded at the picture. ‘Officer Miller, huh? I was wondering about that request when it came through.’
I got down to it, giving Sergeant Coombe a slightly different pitch than what had worked with Robert Anderson. Instead of victim solidarity, I went for the unsolved case angle, but I’d barely outlined the situation before he was in stitches.
‘You’re his shrink?’ He couldn’t stop laughing and, in all honesty, the man had a point.
‘I’m trying to figure out what drove them into the Boundary Waters in the first place.’
After wiping his eyes with a napkin, he wadded it up and overhanded it into the waste basket. ‘Never thought they stuck around. Frankly, I was shocked as shit when your boy turned up here. Back when those two went missing, I assumed they hightailed it to Canada.’
‘Why Canada, then? What were they running from?’
He nodded to the paper. ‘You already filled in your own blank.’
‘The medical examiner’s report said she died of a heroin overdose.’
He rifled through a drawer and pulled out a few packets of Cheetos, offering one to me. I happily dug in as he took me through the finer points of the autopsy with a mouthful of orange mush. Heather’s body had shown evidence of chronic heroin use including scar tissue on her veins, abscesses on her lungs, and even tissue death in her heart.
‘Her heart was dying?’ I scooped up the last of the Cheetos crumbs. ‘That doesn’t sound like Josiah’s fault.’
‘No,’ he licked his fingers, ‘but listen to this.’
The heroin hadn’t actually killed Heather, not by itself. The medical examiner also found a contusion on her brain. Somehow, she’d received a blow to the head before she died and the pain-inhibitors in the drug prevented her from getting help before a blood clot formed.
‘So she fell and hit her head?’ I asked.
‘Maybe. Or something – or someone – hit her.’
Someone with a history of violence. I carefully folded the empty Cheetos bag and laid it on the desk. ‘Why did you close the case? Why was it ruled an overdose?’
He tossed his own bag and wiped his fingers on another napkin. ‘Believe you me, I searched that scene for any evidence of wrongful death. We couldn’t come up with anything and according to the medical examiner, the drugs and the contusion were kind of a chicken and egg thing. We found her dealer and he confirmed she bought and shot alone, so my chief closed the case.’
I picked up Heather’s picture. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘Why, you know something about it?’ His voice changed; it became threaded with that universal flint edge handed out to every cop along with their gun and badge. My pulse reacted, but I smiled as I deliberately folded the paper and slipped it back in my backpack.
‘Back then I was still learning how to pick locks in Lincoln Park.’
He shook his head. ‘Well it’s probably good you ended up where you did . . . and lucky for Josiah Blackthorn he ended up wherever he did.’
‘Why do you say that?’
His lips thinned out. ‘Cops are pretty fair psychologists, too. I don’t know exactly what happened to Heather Price, but I do know Josiah Blackthorn was hiding something.’
The Cheetos had sucked all the moisture out of my mouth. Clearing my throat, I thanked Sergeant Coombe for his time and got up to go, but he stopped me, making me wait while he left his office – to do what? Get a tape recorder? Another officer? I wasn’t at liberty to reveal anything Lucas had told me, but maybe he could see it in my eyes. A body – Heather Price’s body – draped over Josiah’s shoulder. I checked my phone and thought about leaving before he could come back, but as I moved toward the door he appeared again, handing me a box that looked like it held files. I set it on the desk, lifting the lid.
‘That came up for disposal a while ago. I’m not sure why I had them keep it.’
Reaching in, I pulled out a plastic bag holding the agate, my mother’s agate, still crusted with remnants of dried blood. It felt lighter than I remembered, the colors less vivid, but still warm to the touch.
‘I’ve never given anyone back a murder weapon before.’
‘Don’t worry.’ I dried my eyes and put the bag in my backpack next to the picture of Heather Price. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’