“Let me give you my cell,” I said, writing my number on a napkin and handing it to her. “So, I take it you didn’t go speak with Zoya again?”
“No. In fact, after I’d heard about what happened to your wife, well . . . it was kind of confusing. The whole ER was flipping out. People were crying and hugging each other. I thought I might be of some help, maybe explain to Zoya what had happened, so I went to her room. When I got there, she was gone. No one knew where she went. I think she just walked out in the middle of the confusion.”
“Anything else you can think of that might identify her—in case she was using a false name?”
“Well, like I said, she looked young, dark hair, five foot five, maybe. Pretty under the bruising and makeup, I think. And, oh yeah, she had a tattoo, right about here.” Farrah touched a spot of skin behind her left ear with two fingers. “Do you know what a ruble is?”
“Russian money.”
“She had the symbol for the ruble tattooed behind her ear.” Farrah reached into her purse and pulled out a pen. On a napkin she drew the ruble symbol, a capital P with a crossbar just below the loop of the P. She slid the napkin with the P on it across the table to me.
An old memory creaked open somewhere in the wayback of my brain. I stared at the symbol on the napkin, my mind digging deep, searching. I’d seen that tattoo before. But where? When? Then it came to me. Jane Doe. I had seen the ruble symbol tattooed on the neck of a young woman found dead four years ago. I remember because hers was the first case I worked after my bereavement leave—a leave Commander Walker forced me to take. The case was never solved. What were the odds that two women would bear that same tattoo on the same part of their body?
The waitress came with our check, and I handed her a debit card.
“Does that help?” Farrah asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. Whether it helps or not, I want to thank you for meeting with me. It means a lot to know that Jenni was trying to help someone the day she died.”
“I’d take it a step further,” Farrah said. “Your wife believed that Zoya was being trafficked, sexually. Jenni was hoping to get her out of that life. As I saw it, your wife was trying to save that girl’s life.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket again. I pulled it out to see another text from Niki. I really need to talk to you, Max.
“It’s my partner,” I said. “I need to get back to the office.” I texted back. On my way.
My phone then buzzed again. Don’t come in. I’ll meet you out front. Text when you’re here.
CHAPTER 10
Up North
I ride the snowmobile back to what has to be the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area—a buffer zone between Canada and Minnesota where motorized vehicles are not allowed. From here I walk. I only take a couple steps before a thought occurs to me. Later, on my trip back, I may be too exhausted to turn the snowmobile around. I go back to the sled and pick up the ass end, heaving it in a semicircle until the machine faces back toward the cabin. Then I head north.
About the time I start my third trek across the lake, something that the man said comes back to me. “Who are you?” he’d asked. At the time, it pissed me off. The gall of that man—to look me in the eye and pretend he doesn’t know exactly who I am. I didn’t answer him, and now I begin to wonder that maybe he took my silence as some kind agreement that he had no reason to know me.
Is that the game he wants to play? Does he really think that if he denies everything, he’ll put me to some burden of proof? If that’s the case, he’s made a grievous miscalculation. The man has a noose around his neck and he thinks we’re playing tug-o-war. He doesn’t realize that denial is more dangerous to him right now than any wolf or subzero night could ever be. His denials feed me. They put steel in my bones and warmth in my muscles. Go ahead. Pretend you’re innocent. Let’s see where that gets you.
I stop walking when I get to a spot that seems to be the middle of the lake. I separate the rope from the tarp and shove the tarp into the snow so that a gust of wind can’t blow it away. I also drop the auger, which disappears beneath snow. Then I tuck the rope under my arm and start walking again.
As I near the northern shore, I stop to listen. If he were still yelling for help, I’d be able to hear that by now. He must have given up. Maybe that thump on the head has him floating in and out of consciousness—or maybe he’s dead. I step over the rocks and head up the hill. I can see his shoulders sticking out on either side of the tree, and I can see the belt that holds his neck against the trunk. Branches scrape against my coat as I make my way up toward his position. He hears me and starts to yell.
“Help? Is someone there? Help me! Please, help me! Please—” His voice is raspy, worn down by his yelling and the cold and the squeeze of the belt around his throat.
When he sees me, his hollering stops and he turns plaintive. “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t understand.”
Still breathing hard from my march across the lake, I squat down beside him, close enough that my knee is touching his left shoulder. I look at him for a few seconds while I catch my breath. At first he’s looking directly into my eyes, but then he averts his gaze away from me. He knows me all right.
“What’s my name?” I ask him. I already know he’ll lie, but I want to see how good of a liar he is.
“I don’t know you, mister. What the hell’s going on? Why are you doing this to me?”
“You don’t know me? Are you sure? Look closely.” I lean in and take off my stocking cap.
“No. I don’t know you. Who are you?”
He’s good. His eyes stop pulling away and he locks his focus on me, even managing to put on a mask of fear and befuddlement as he talks. He wants to play. So let’s play.
“I’m Detective Max Rupert,” I say. “Ring a bell?”
“Detective? You’re a cop?”
I don’t answer.
“Let me go. You can’t do this to me. I didn’t do anything wrong. You have no right.”
“Shut up!” I say through gritted teeth. “I have every right.”
“Whatever you think I did, you’re wrong. I didn’t do anything. You have to believe me.”
“I have to do nothing of the sort.” I lean back and sit in the snow.
“If you’re a cop, show me your badge.”
I say nothing.
He digs his heels in and pushes back against the tree, sliding his neck and the belt a couple inches up the trunk to give his throat a finger-width of slack. “You know that we’re in Canada,” he says. “If you’re really a cop, you have no jurisdiction here. You can’t arrest me. I didn’t do anything, but if I did, you can’t arrest me. We’re not in America anymore.”
He’s right about that, but this stopped being about cops and jurisdiction and courts a long time ago. I lift the rope from under my arm, tie a small loop into one end, and pull a length of rope through that loop to make a slipknot.
“What . . . What are you going to do with that?”
“You’re coming with me.”