Swift Edge (7 page)

“Venison stew,” he answered my unspoken question.

“Have you been out shooting Bambi?” I knew Dan had a couple of guns and that he was quite the marksman. We’d gone to the range together once or twice. I didn’t know he hunted.

“A parishioner got Bambi with a crossbow and shared the wealth.” He turned around, and his smile faded. “Good God, Charlie, what happened to you?” He crossed the kitchen in two strides and cupped my face in his large hand, tilting it so the light illuminated my forehead.

I’d almost forgotten the lump. It was probably a lovely mix of purples by now. His palm felt hard and callused against my cheek. The calluses reminded me that Dan hadn’t always been a priest, that he’d only been ordained ten years ago, and I wondered (not for the first time) what he’d done before answering “the call.” Something about the way his body stilled when he concentrated, his fierce intelligence, and the way he kept himself fit told me he hadn’t been an actuary or a shoe salesman. I twisted my face away from his hand, which felt a bit too good against my skin. “Um, I got conked on the head while rifling a famous figure skater’s bathroom.”

“Of course,” he said sardonically. Light from the overhead fixture glinted off his blond hair. “So the figure skater came home and smacked you? Who can blame her?”

“Him. He’s the one I’m looking for. Someone else hit me while I was going through his condo, looking for a clue as to where he might be hiding out.”

“Start at the beginning,” Dan ordered, sliding onto the bar stool beside me.

I filled him in on the case.

“So what do you think’s going on?” he asked. “Did Fane leave under his own steam, or is he in trouble?”

“Both, maybe,” I suggested. “I don’t know. I think he left on his own, but I’m damned if I know why. Everyone agrees that skating is his life, so it seems odd that he’d run off right before the Olympic trials.”

“Damn odd,” Dan agreed, getting up to dish the stew into stoneware bowls. He pulled a loaf of crusty bread out of the oven, sliced it, and slid it onto the counter. “Here okay?”

“Sure.” I was pleasantly relaxed and didn’t feel like getting up to move to the dining room.

“So what’s your next move?” Dan rejoined me, his hip bumping mine as he settled onto the bar stool.

“Talk to the coach again. Dara says she’s usually at the rink by five and the first skater arrives at five fifteen. Barbaric. I’ll get there early and see if I can’t have a real conversation with Comrade Bobrova.” Using my teeth, I ripped a bite of bread from the chunk in my hand and chewed hard.

“Do you think she’s really Fane’s aunt?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters one way or the other. Maybe she is and they kept it secret so the other skaters wouldn’t whine about favoritism. Maybe she’s not and Boyce is confused. Totally possible. His pad reeked of MJ. Did I tell you he keeps a weasel in the house?”

I swiveled my stool away from the counter so I could hop off it. “You cooked, so I’ll clean up,” I said, motioning him to stay seated. “Tell me what you want my help with. Are you going to redo your bathroom?”

He looked confused for a moment, automatically sliding our bowls and plates toward me as I ran water in the sink. “My bathroom? No. I want your help finding a missing kid.”

“That I can do,” I said, relieved that he didn’t want manual labor. I wasn’t up to it after getting beaten up by a psychotic skating coach and a mysterious intruder. “Who?” I squirted citrusy dish soap into the sink and made it bubble up by running the water hard.

“He goes by Kungfu.”

“That’s a name?”

Dan shrugged. “Nickname. He’s an Asian kid, maybe sixteen.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “Is this one of your runaways?” Dan volunteered at a nonprofit downtown, Dellert House, that provided temporary lodging for homeless men and teens, some of whom were runaways. He did counseling with the boys. “Your runaway ran away?”

“Something like that,” he admitted with a crooked smile.

“How do you know he didn’t go back home?” I scrubbed at a stubborn spot on the stew pan.

Dan shook his head. “He didn’t.”

The expression on his face persuaded me. “Okay. Do you have a picture? When did you last see him?”

“Saturday morning.” Dan pulled a square of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. Four teens mugged for the camera, holding hammers and pliers and screwdrivers. “This was taken a week ago, the morning we took the guys to work on the Habitat house. That’s him,” Dan said, tapping the kid second from the left.

I studied him. He looked ordinary, with straight black hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, almond-shaped eyes, and crooked teeth displayed in a wide grin. “What makes you think he didn’t just move on?”

“Because I hired him to do some custodial work at the church,” Dan said, a line between his brows. “He needed the money. He hinted that he was saving for something big but wouldn’t say what. He worked last Friday and half a day Saturday but didn’t show up on Tuesday like he was supposed to. I asked around Dellert’s, but no one’s seen him. His stuff is still there.”

I dried my hands on a paper towel and chucked it toward the trash. I’d done pro bono work for Dan before, but this case seemed like a loser from the word go. A kid who’d run away from home wouldn’t hesitate to ditch a halfway house he found confining. Or maybe he’d had a run-in with the law. I’d check.

“Why this kid, Dan? Don’t runaways drift in and out of Dellert’s all the time?” I studied his face. He seemed tired, his skin a little gray under the perpetual tan, the lines at the corners of his eyes a bit deeper. I usually guessed his age as being early forties to early fifties; tonight, he looked like he belonged on the latter end of that scale.

“I don’t know,” Dan admitted, rubbing a hand down his face. “He seemed like he could make it, brighter than most, with a real plan. Maybe he reminds me of someone I used to know. Shit.”

“C’mon,” I said, taking his hand. “You need a half hour in a hot tub. That’s Dr. Charlie’s prescription for what ails you. And another Scotch.” I grabbed the Lagavulin bottle in my other hand and dragged him toward the door.

“What ails me?” he asked with half a smile.

I set down the Scotch and framed him between my hands, like a movie director setting up a shot. “An inability to solve all the world’s problems and a deep sadness that you can’t save the youth of Colorado Springs from their abusive parents or their own stupid choices,” I intoned in the voice of a film narrator. “Either that or you’re worried about the middle-aged man’s trio of fears: hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and high cholesterol.” I ticked them off on my fingers.

“Middle-aged!”

“Only one thing will cure all that.”

“Prayer.”

He didn’t even make it a question. No wonder he was a priest.

“No, Scotch and water. Hot water, that is, as in hot tub. Get your suit.”

8

Parked outside the Ice Hall Friday morning, I cursed the makers of Scotch and my own stupidity. Relaxing with Dan in the hot tub, I’d drunk more than I intended to. That happened more often than it should when I drank with Dan because the man could put away more alcohol than the Scottish national rugby team. A headache pounded behind my eyes despite the handful of aspirin I’d swallowed with my first Pepsi of the day at four thirty. That’s
A.M.
Even the birds knew there was no point to being up this early, especially in the winter. I’d left the air force mostly because they overdo the whole teamwork thing—rugged individualism was good enough for the pioneers and it’s good enough for me—but also because the emphasis on starting the day BCOD (before the crack of dawn) went against nature—mine at any rate. When I stepped out of my car, the bitter cold made it seem even darker. I plunged my hands into my coat pockets, grateful for the black cowl-necked sweater that swathed my neck. My wool ski cap kept my head warm, even though I’d have hat-head later in the day. I wore an old pair of soccer cleats on my feet in anticipation of having to meet Bobrova on her home turf: ice. There was only one other vehicle in the lot, a late-model Volvo I assumed was Bobrova’s.

I made my way to the side door Dara had assured me would be open. It was. The only illumination came from the
EXIT
sign over my head that shed a reddish glow. I started down the hall, calling softly, “Coach Bobrova?”

No answer. I tried a couple of doors, but they were locked. Okay, this was a little spooky. If it hadn’t been for the van in the lot and the open door, I’d’ve assumed the place was deserted. It was quieter than a high school on Sunday with thin carpet muffling my footsteps. Some light would improve the atmosphere tremendously, I decided, running my hand along the wall in search of a switch. No dice. I almost wished Gigi were here; she’d have a flashlight in the saddlebag she called a purse.

A hiss of sound I couldn’t identify came from in front of me, from the rink, if I wasn’t mistaken. I walked more purposefully toward the double doors and pushed them open. It seemed lighter in here, with the flat sheet of ice reflecting the ambient light from windows set high in the walls and a dim glow coming from a vending machine in the corner, but it was still a dark twilight. As I listened, trying to orient myself, a door clicked closed on the far side of the rink.

“Coach Bobrova?” I was getting pissed. Okay, I didn’t have an appointment, but Dara had said Bobrova was here by five every morning. She must have heard me calling her name. If the door closing was her ducking out to avoid me, I was going to haunt her until she talked to me about her putative nephew. Maybe I’d even take a skating class so I could follow her around on the ice. Hah! I looked at my illuminated watch dial. Five ten. Her first students would be here in five minutes and I’d lose the opportunity to speak with her.

“Help…”

The throaty whisper drifted from the middle of the ice. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could barely make out a darker shape on the ice. Bobrova had fallen—she was hurt. The woman had to be seventy, after all, and probably had osteoporosis. Maybe she’d broken her hip. “Just a sec,” I called to her, feeling my way to the gate.

My tailbone twitched as I shuffle-stepped across the ice in my cleats, reminding me of yesterday’s fall. Reaching the still figure, I crouched beside her, feeling for her hand. I brushed the hem of her cape and let my hand travel up it until I encountered her hip and then her shoulder. My hand was damp, and I wondered how long she’d been lying here, unable to summon help. She was probably soaked to the skin and freezing.

“Where does it hurt?” I asked, reaching for my cell phone.

“Dmitri—” she croaked.

“Why’s it so dark?” a young voice asked.

The overhead lights sprang to life, glaring down on the ice and the old woman crumpled there, red blood oozing from her head and making a halo around the matted gray hair. She’d lapsed into unconsciousness after the one word, and I couldn’t find a pulse. The dent in her forehead and the bloodied cane lying two feet away gave me some idea what had happened.

Screams bounced off the ice and echoed shrilly in the cavernous space as the young skater who’d turned on the lights skidded to a stop several feet away. Her blades stuttering on the ice triggered a memory: That was the sound I’d heard before entering the rink—something sliding across the ice.

I looked around and saw a trail scuffed into the ice, a trail made by shuffling shoes, not skates. It led to the far side of the rink. The first several feet of the marks glimmered red, and I felt sick. This was not a good morning to be hungover.

Swallowing, I looked up at the bug-eyed face of the skinny girl backing away from me. “Can you—”

“Help! Mom! She killed her,” the girl shrieked, spinning and speed-skating for the gate where she’d entered. She thudded into it and let out a squawk.

Running footsteps sounded in the hallway. “Jessica,” a woman’s frantic voice called. Mom. “Are you hurt?”

I ignored Jessica’s boo-hooing, dialing 911. As I waited on the line at the operator’s request, I couldn’t stop shivering, chilled as much by the brutality as by the frigid air.

9

“You look awful, Charlie,” Montgomery said some hours later, following the arrival and departure of the ambulance with Yuliya Bobrova, the influx of crime scene techs and police, and the endless questioning about what I was doing there and what I’d seen and heard. The first cops who responded had aimed guns at me, primed with Jessica’s hysterical assertions that I killed her coach. Montgomery and I were seated in the first tier of spectator seats, cold metal bleachers impressing ridges into my behind and thighs. Yellow crime scene tape roped off the rink, and cops had been posted to send skaters home as they arrived for classes and training sessions. Ice Hall officials hovered on the edge of the action, wanting to know if the hockey practices scheduled for the evening could still go on.

“Nice shiner.” His long finger gently traced the swollen area above my eye.

I resisted the urge to close my eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin, would you?” I asked. I felt beat-up and stained. Despite the twenty minutes I’d spent over the bathroom sink scrubbing at my hands and coat, Bobrova’s blood rimmed my nails and splotched my coat and the hem of my slacks. The fabric was dark enough I could hardly see it, but I knew it was there.

He handed me two Tylenols, and I swallowed them dry. “Is it Monday again?”

“No, it’s Friday. Did you bang your head? Let me see your pupils.”

“I don’t have a concussion.” I pushed his hand away.

“Let’s go over it again,” he said.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I need food.” The two Pepsis and the variety pack of headache medicines I’d consumed roiled in my stomach.

“Come on. I’ll take you to breakfast.” Montgomery helped me to my feet with a hand under my elbow and guided me down the hall that had seemed so spooky earlier. Now it was awash with light and activity. I carried my stained peacoat, not wanting to put it on, and the wind knifed through me when Montgomery opened the door. He guided me over to his car and put the heat on high for me.

Minutes later, I clutched a half-eaten bear claw from a nearby doughnut place while Montgomery stirred creamer into his coffee. Between bites, I ran through my story again. “What do you think happened?” I turned the tables on Montgomery before he could think up any more questions.