No Coming Back (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

W
hen are you going to get it through your thick skull she’s never coming home again? She’s gone, thanks to you. Cleared out. Doesn’t matter how much you cry about it, she won’t be coming back. So stop your whimpering, you sniveling little brat. Don’t you understand? You’ll never see her again. Sooner you get used to the idea, the sooner you can stop acting like a crybaby and give me some blessed peace. Now get out of my sight and leave me the hell alone.”

From the doorway of his bedroom, I gazed at my father through eyes blurred by tears.

It was my eighth birthday and no one had thrown a surprise party. No friends on their way with gifts and cheer. No magician booked. No finger-food and cake in the kitchen. Just the same tense emptiness as always, and the knowledge that things would get worse as the day wore on.

I was a needful child, hurting, and yet my father had no sympathy for me. Anger consumed him. He was too embroiled in hate to even consider my feelings, or that I had any. He offered nothing to mitigate the torment knotting up my belly, no calming words, no hope. Nothing to blow away the black smoke churning away deep inside me.

It was midday and he was still in bed. Weeks of the same. Only ever rising when he needed to fill his bladder or empty it. The bedroom stank of sweated alcohol. Garments strewn on the floor and piled in the corners. The whole of the house was like this now: a mess. This way for months, slowly accumulating, suffocating. My father was a mess, too. When he wasn’t in bed, feeling sorry for himself, he wandered aimlessly around the house like a zombie, unshaven and in week-old underwear, with a twitch in his eye and a curse on his tongue. Sleep and drink. Drink and sleep. Come the weekends he’d make an effort, when his social services were more in demand. He’d wear a heavenly face for those that mattered more than I. He’d rake nicotine-yellowed fingers through greasy hair, drag a razor over tight jaw muscles, shake out the creases in last week’s clothes. Then he’d preach about wrongs and rights to anyone within earshot. Of course, he only did so because he was duty-bound and unable to opt out, not because he wanted to. What he really wanted was to get his hands on my mother’s throat and squeeze the life out of her for leaving him.

“He’s right about one thing,” my brother told me as I caught up with him in the yard, where he was raking autumn leaves into a big golden mound. “Mom’s gone, Jake. Doesn’t matter how much you cry about it, it won’t bring her back. We just have to get on with things without her.”

I dragged a damp sleeve across my face, wiping away snot.

Aaron was my hero. Since our mother had walked out, he’d been a rock. I hadn’t seen him shed a single tear in public or in my presence. He knuckled down and got on with things. I wasn’t that good at pretending, not then. But I would be.

At that point I was simply too young and too mixed up to fully understand most of what was happening. I didn’t understand complex relationships. I couldn’t work through the reasons why. I wasn’t aware of repercussions. I knew my father blamed me but I didn’t understand why. Unconnected synapses struggling to spark. I had no idea what I’d done to earn my father’s hatred, or the part I’d played in forcing my mother from the family home. The sad part was, even if I had all the information at hand I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. The rational pathways in my eight-year-old brain simply didn’t exist. It left me confused, upset, and unable to process.

Frequently, I sought solitude in my darkness, then fled it when the thorns began to prickle.

The kids at school knew my mother had left. It was the hottest topic of conversation for the whole of one day—my first day back after her leaving—before something juicier came along to occupy their tongues. Meanwhile, to mollify the hurt and to quash the
gossip
, I made up my own stories and sold them to disinterested ears, making excuses for her walking out:
she’d landed herself a prime photography assignment with one of the big magazines on the other side of the country, maybe oversees, she’d be gone a while and nobody knew when she’d be back.
A day later her departure was old news and no one at school ever spoke of her again, not even my teachers, not even me.

But my father made a point of reminding me that she was gone whenever our paths crossed, sometimes with brute force.

For my own well-being, from the moment she walked out, I learned how to compartmentalize, to divide my mind into two halves, to contain the fallout from the loss. I learned how to keep the pain separate from my day-to-day activities. It helped me get through. Unexpectedly, the damage limitation had a beneficial effect on my father. With my withdrawal, his slurs and raised fists turned into cool indifference. His cold-shoulder treatment stung just as much as the back of his hand and his spiteful words, but I could live with it, adapt. I learned to keep a wary distance between us. I learned to keep everything in, locked away, pushed down in the darkness. I learned that displaying emotion was a weakness.

Now, thirty years later, I discover my mother’s true fate and it brings everything home to roost. It’s all I’ve ever known: that my mother abandoned me. Suddenly, I am being compelled to rethink a premise that has underpinned my entire life so far and influenced the way I have viewed the world, and the way those perceptions have changed me.

My mother didn’t leave me.

She was killed.

While the seven-year-old me was sobbing into his pillow at night, silently pleading with his mother to return to him, she was already dead and decomposing.

It’s enough to break the seals on Pandora’s Box.

Still dazed, I hunker into my coat, switch down a dark side street, and almost lose my footing on black ice. An incandescent moon hangs in a sky salted with stars. Everything’s still. Everything not already frozen is freezing—including me. I watch my step and cross the street.

Cold Harper isn’t a hotbed of crime. When it isn’t hibernating for the winter, it serves as a busy tourist destination. Visitors respect the laws and go about their business peacefully. Aside from Jenna’s disappearance, there are no other known killings out here on the edge of the National Forest. None, it would seem, until now.

Could the person responsible for killing Jenna be the same
person
who killed my mother, all those years ago?

After all, what are the chances of there being two killers living in tiny Harper?

Is it my father?

I dig in my heels, suddenly reeling from the thought. Every dark memory I have of my parents together is bitter, stained in blood. My father abused my mother, the same way he abused me. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that he chased after her the day she left, possessed by rage, to unleash his own brand of biblical retribution on her.

But why would he kill Jenna?

A black pickup swings dangerously into the curb next to me, braking hard and throwing up a wave of snowmelt. Before I can step aside, the passenger door springs open and a short, chubby guy with a ginger beard jumps out onto the sidewalk. Despite the inclement weather he’s wearing cargo shorts and board shoes.

“Get in,” he commands.

I know him. He’s an older version of Ryan Hendry, the son of barbershop Chuck, the former town barber and deceased member of Six Pack. He holds a handgun, aimed at me.

“I said get in, Olson. Or as God is my witness I’ll put a bullet in your balls.”

But even if I wanted to I am not given the chance to do as instructed. Something like a wrecking ball slams into the back of my skull and white-hot fire explodes through my brain. My knees buckle and the sidewalk comes up and cuffs me on the chin. I roll onto my side, senses scurrying from the pain, flashbulbs popping in my vision. Something equally unkind slams into my stomach, and more fire purges the air from my lungs.

“Told you you’re a dead man,” comes a voice I recognize.

It belongs to Gavin Luckman. Through acid tears I see him looming over me—weasel-thin, with blond hair shaven into a fuzz—wielding a tire iron.

“Time to pay the piper, duckweed.”

Another boot slams into my burning belly and my lungs
pancake
.

“Wait,” I gasp.

But they aren’t interested in striking up a conversation, only retribution.

A leg swings and a boot connects with my forehead. It’s like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Another boot stamps. Then it’s open season and the pair go at me, unrestrained, kicking and whooping with delight. No holding back. I try to curl into a ball, to roll with the blows, to protect my head and face as burning pain rains down. My mind takes refuge in its safe place, in the sanctuary decked out like the shrine of a seven-year-old boy, and sits out the storm in darkness.

“Hush now. They can’t hurt you here.”

Then the world fractures like a smashed mirror and the shards tumble into blackness.

Chapter Nineteen

O
ccasionally, the nature of Tolstoy’s job meant following his target until it was practical to approach. In his opinion, engaging a person in public was both unprofessional and bad practice. Often, it would attract unwanted
attention
, sometimes from the authorities, and sometimes with negative
consequences
. Experience had shown him that the majority of those he chased down responded more positively to home visits, where he could demonstrate the error of their ways in an environment in which they felt secure. Rarely, he followed them around town all day.

But he had spent the best part of twelve hours tailing Jake Olson from one location to another, all over Harper, reporting his movements back to his employer.

Three hours ago, after sitting patiently outside the Harper police station, he’d followed Olson to the house shared by two of the town’s police professionals, then sat in wait, again, at a discreet distance down the street, trying not to think about the broken glass tumbling around in his bladder. Two hours after that, Jake Olson had ventured back outside, leaving on foot.

To his own error, Tolstoy had made an assumption that had lost him his target.

It had appeared that Olson was headed across town, and it had occurred to Tolstoy that Olson was making his way back to
collect
his father’s pickup truck from where it had been left outside Occam’s Razor earlier in the day. From experience, Tolstoy knew that following someone on foot while he was in his vehicle came with all sorts of impracticalities. And so he’d made his own way to the middle of town ahead of Olson, to park up down the side of Merrill’s, to wait for Olson to show up.

But he hadn’t.

He’d given him plenty of time.

But Jake Olson had vanished without a trace.

And now Tolstoy was driving around town, in the dark, annoyed with himself, his bladder screaming for relief, while he peered down one deserted alleyway after another, clueless as to Jake Olson’s whereabouts.

Fearing the worst, he had already powered up his police
scanner
.

Chapter Twenty

T
he glassy splinters reattach and a dreamlike scene resolves out of the darkness, as real as if it is happening in real time:

I am a boy again, standing in the lake, with cool water
lapping
at my ribs, feeling the soft mud squelch between my toes. The
surface
teems with flies. They congregate around the blood caked on my hands, forming dark, moving mittens. Behind me, the sun is low in the sky, almost set, turning the lake into liquid bronze. I am alone, and the only sounds are those of my ragged breathing and the constant buzzing of the insects.

Slowly, I lower my hands into the molten surface. The flies go into a frenzy as the water dilutes the blood, sucking it away to form purple clouds. They bounce and scatter across the surface like hail falling on ice. I push deeper with my arms until the water level touches my chin, further dissipating the blood until it becomes part of the lake itself.

Then I submerge myself completely, letting its silken touch cleanse, remaining immersed for long silent seconds, suspended, drifting, until my lungs ache, forcing me to resurface and gasp fo
r air.

A sound in the sky causes me to look up.

A rent has opened up in the twilit heavens, right above me. A black hole, high up, shaped like a mouth. A deafening scream is issuing from its cavernous throat. I watch, mesmerized, as a waterfall of blood spews out of the sky-fracture, becoming a glistening red torrent plunging to earth. It hits the lake with an almighty roar and drowns me in bubbling blood.

Noise and pain.

Both vie for sensory dominance in waves crashing against the shores of my consciousness. They roll in and out, muddying my thoughts and pounding at my brain.

Disoriented, I fall back into reality on the backseat of
Luckman’s
pickup, propped up against the door frame behind the driver’s seat. I have no idea how long I have been unconscious. Long enough it seems for my captors to bundle me in the truck and begin the
journey
to whatever secluded destination they have in mind to
finish
what they started.

From under a swelling eyelid I see Luckman doing the
driving
, and doing it erratically. I assume he’s pumped after pummeling me into the pavement. Hendry is in the passenger seat, thick head rocking to a heavy metal stampede coming from the stereo. We’re
moving
along an unlit road, with snow-heavy trees rising up on both sides, headlights guiding the way. No other traffic. Looks like the northeast route heading away from town and deep into th
e Superior
National Forest.

Tentatively, and without drawing their attention, I evaluate my predicament. It’s not sunny. The outlook is plenty of scattered pain, with bruises developing later. My mouth tastes like I’ve been
sucking
coins, and the worst headache since leaving Stillwater is pushing at the insides of my skull. My abductors have worked me over good, kicked and battered, but nothing feels broken.

Zip ties bind my wrists together.

Something Krauss told me a lifetime ago, the day Jenna first vocalized her interest in me, comes to mind:

“Trust me, Jake. Dating the queen bee is the quickest way to make enemies. They’ll forever hate you for it and make your life a total misery.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Jenna was beautiful and brimming with life. Heads turned in her wake—boys and girls alike, but for very different reasons. I knew my viewpoint was prejudiced, but no one could dispute the fact that Jenna was the prettiest at the ball by far. Exactly why she’d chosen me was unclear. I was nothing special, even less to look at. I didn’t come with a prestigious pedigree. Nothing to offer.
Prospects
equally uncertain. I was moderately intelligent, humorous in the right company. But I was shy and withdrawn among strangers. Jenna could have had her pick of the boys. But she was the one who had made the first move, and flattery was a huge
ego-boo
ster to a seventeen-year-old hormonal male with
confidence
issues.

“You actually want to date?” I asked her, stupidly, with an equally stupid expression flattening out my face.

We were on a lunch break, and the school grounds were knotted with noisy students soaking up the early spring sunshine.
Dozens
of curious glances, all rotating our way.

“I’d like to, if you want to. See how it goes.”

“Why me?” Another stupid question.

“Because I like you, Jake. You’re different, interesting.” She laughed lightheartedly. “Wait a minute. I’m not making a mistake here, am I? You are into girls, right?”

“Sure, so long as they’re female.”

Another giggle. “So what’s with the hesitation?”

“Surprise, I guess. And worry that maybe you’ve taken a knock to your head, or I have.”

Her laugh became playful and she batted long blonde lashes at me. “See, quirkiness. That’s exactly why I’m drawn to you.”

Naïvely, I felt like I’d won the state lottery.

Things like that didn’t happen to a scrawny kid from Harper, and especially not to one who didn’t have the balls to gamble.

I remember gaping at Jenna with big, stupid, unblinking eyes, my heart hammering out the tune from
Love Story
. Tragic, I know.

Then and there it was less important to know why Jenna was interested in me than it was to bask in the warmth of the moment, even if it later proved to be short-lived.

“I’m telling you, Jake,” Krauss said after Jenna and I had arranged to meet at Merrill’s for milkshakes, “this can only end one way, and that’s in tears.”

Almost twenty years later she’s still not wrong.

“Check he’s breathing,” Luckman shouts from up front.

Hendry twists in his seat, props the handgun on the armrest, and looks me over. “Seems pretty banged up to me, dude,” he shouts over the deafening music. “You want me to put a hole in him, see if he squeals?”

“Just check, okay? I need him alive and conscious when I take him to pieces.”

“You mean when we take him to pieces. We’re in this together, remember? Never skinned a human before.” Chuckling, Hendry scoots up in his seat, leans over the gun, and reaches out two meaty fingers to press against my throat.

I don’t let them touch.

I loop my bound wrists over his head, grab the back of his fat neck, push down as hard as I can. The move takes him completely by surprise. It forces Hendry into the gap between the two front seats, facedown, before he can react and before he can yelp a
warning
. He’s big and it’s a tight fit. The hand holding the gun is crushed under him and the other is wedged against the backseat. Luckman glances around. The pickup fishtails. Using Hendry as a vault, I throw myself forward and head-butt Luckman in the side of his face. It’s the last thing he’s expecting and his hands fly off the
steering
wheel. Hendry squirms under my knuckles, a yowl rumbling in his compressed chest. I plant a knee on the back of his neck, pinning him down, then loop my bound wrists over
Luckman’s
dazed head, hook them around his throat and pull backward with all my might. Frantic hands claw at mine. With no one driving, the pickup fishtails again, this time dangerously. Luckman emits a high-pitched scream. I lean back, strangling him, putting all my weight on Hendry. Luckman’s foot stamps on the gas. The truck swerves perilously across the road, a fender scrapes the bank of plowed snow. Metal whines. Snow and ice spray up across the hood and windshield. The impact bounces us around. Uncontrolled, the truck rebounds. Luckman’s thrashing feet hit the gas and the brake, alternately. The pickup lurches, swerves on a tighter angle, and hits the snowy barrier on the opposite side of the pavement, this time head-on. The bull bar buries itself in the snow and the impact throws me into the back of the driver’s seat. I disengage from
Luckman
, fumble open the door with gloved fingers, and leap out.

The pickup is dug in deep, tail-lights blazing.

I gather my bearings, then I run, on shaky legs, sucking in freezing night air and blowing out crystallizing clouds, leaving the din of rock music behind.

I put a hundred yards between us before pulling out my phone and dialing Krauss’s number. The connection is dead. No signal. I keep running. It’s over a mile to the outskirts of town, all downhill; I can make it. But it’s slippery underfoot; I tumble twice and scuff off skin before shortening my stride. The beating has left me with a wobbly gait, aches and creaks everywhere, but adrenaline is burning through and evaporating the pain. I can make it. At some point I’ll get a phone signal and Krauss will come pick me up.

When she does, Luckman and Hendry will be facing some pretty stern questions. And I will be pressing charges.

I keep to the shadows, following a snowy rut cut by multiple wheel impressions. No obvious sounds of my abductors coming back for more. No other traffic on the highway.

Some concerted effort will be needed to extract the pickup from the snow bank, I know, and Hendry is way too fat to give serious chase on foot. Luckman, on the other hand, is wiry, and wiry guys fed by hate can run like headless chickens.

The safest and shortest route to town is through the snow-choked woods, but it would sap energy and take forever to navigate the darkened terrain. Even with a flashlight the going will be toug
h. T
he highway is the straight-line option and with fewer obstacles. If I keep my head down I can be back in Harper in fifteen minutes, at a push. Running is keeping me warm, but I’ve never been any good at it. Not like Aaron. I get breathless, quickly, and as soon as I slow, the unremitting cold rushes in and flails me bare.

I’m about five minutes out from the crash site when I see a pair of high beams in the distance, illuminating a tunnel through the overhanging trees. Aside from Luckman’s pickup it’s the first vehicle I’ve seen out here. I straddle the median and wave manacled hands over my head. The vehicle slows as it nears, pulls over,
headlights
blinding. A door opens, then the silhouetted shape of a man moves through the brilliance. He’s wearing a Harper PD parka and a
mystified
expression.

“Meeks? Never thought I’d be glad to see you.”

He emerges from the glare. “Olson? What are you doing out here, and what the hell happened to your face?”

I wipe tacky blood from my busted lips with the back of a glove, blink swollen eyes. “Gavin Luckman and Ryan Hendry. They jumped me back in town, then bundled me into Luckman’s truck and brought me out here to finish the job.”

“No kidding?” He shakes his head. “So what happened—you escaped?”

“I forced Luckman to wreck the truck. About a half mile back.”

“Anyone seriously injured?”

“Who cares?” My tone is sharp, cut by wheezing lungs. “We weren’t on our way to a picnic, Meeks. They were out to lynch me. You need to go back up there and arrest them for kidnapping—unless vigilante justice is your kind of law.”

A familiar sneer creeps up his face. It looks like there might be a toxic retort lingering on the tip of his tongue, but he keeps it in check. “Okay, get in. Let’s go finish this.”

I thrust out my wrists, revealing the bloodied zip ties.

“After I confirm your story,” he says.

“Meeks.”

“After. It’s not open for debate.”

The police Mustang still reeks of cheap cologne. Meeks cranks up the heater and pops on the turret lights. Red-and-blue specters skitter across the surrounding trees. He pushes my gloved hands to my bleeding lips. “Please, no blood on the leather.” Then he squints at the bruising developing on my face. “Looks like they roughed you up pretty good, Olson. Broke your nose. You feel as bad a
s you lo
ok?”

“I survived Stillwater.”

“That you did. But Harper’s a whole different ball game.” He puts the cruiser in drive and we set off, heading back the way I’ve come. “So let me get a handle on this. You say they jumped you back in town?”

“Yeah.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe not to you. But it’s my job to determine if there were any witnesses, to corroborate your story.”

I lift up my shackled wrists. “So what’s this—fantasy role-
playing
? Meeks, you can see with your own eyes what they’ve done to me. Luckman was talking about chopping me into little pieces and Hendry was salivating at the thought of skinning me first.”

“Those two are born idiots.”

We round a bend. The red-lit backend of Luckman’s truck comes into view at the limit of the high beams. Meeks hits a switch and the police sirens let loose a short squawk. Up ahead,
Luckman
drops out of the truck, one hand massaging his neck while the other shields his eyes against the oncoming light. A second later he’s joined by Hendry, who is breathing out huge clouds of condensing moisture, looking pissed, still brandishing the handgun.