Leave No Trace Page 14

  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, a
s 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 M.E., 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.”

  17

  * * *

  Modern science says: “The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.” From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

  —Nikola Tesla

  JOSIAH

  Damaged people recognized their own. Josiah could smell it on Heather Price as she led him and Lucas through the vacant apartment.

  “The ad said it was furnished.” He opened a few cupboards and glanced in the fridge, where a brown ring stained one of the empty shelves. A folding table and two chairs sat under the bare bulb in the dining room, coated in a fine layer of dust.

  “There’s a bed.” Lucas, already far ahead of the adults, reported from one of the bedrooms.

  “Partially furnished.” Heather held her elbows and walked to the couch in the living room. “You’re not going to find that in Ely at this price. Trust me.”

  She pivoted and gave him another once-over without any attempt to disguise what she was doing, her gaze settling somewhere near his wallet. Her hair was limp and tangled, falling almost to her waist, and any luster it might have possessed had leached out a long time ago. Her skin looked brittle, her movements jerky, and it seemed like all the life in her had been sucked into those too-bright reptilian eyes. For someone who’d moved as many times as he had, Josiah had seen plenty of landlords and no matter what the exterior looked like they all spoke the same language.

  “Two hundred and fifty a month? I can give you the first and last month today.”

  She backed into the shado
ws, unblinking. “I told you the first month is free.”

  “Dad, the toilet sounds like a frog. Come listen!” Lucas called from another room.

  He glanced at the trampled carpet, the yellowing walls, and the hook in the corner of the ceiling where someone had maybe tried to hang a plant once, as if a tiny gasp of green could make any improvement to the place.

  “Nothing’s free. You can put it toward a damage deposit if you want.”

  That made her blink and after a fraction of a pause she reached a hand out of the shadows. He didn’t want to, but he shook it.

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks, he and Lucas settled into the duplex and bought their usual necessities—sheets, toilet paper, bleach—lots of bleach—and also found a secondhand canoe that they stored in the living room. Lucas did his homework every night in the belly of the boat, balancing his worksheets and library books on the thwarts and afterward he wrote and illustrated stories about their adventures, which always ended with treasure and ice cream. Josiah taped all his stories to the walls, next to maps of places they’d been, places they were planning to go, and some places they could only imagine.

  They did everything together—cooking, grocery shopping, spending afternoons at the library to surf the Internet and read back issues of National Geographic. He refused to leave him with strangers. The entire concept of exchanging money for childcare hinted too much of his own childhood and then there was the other problem; when Lucas was out of sight, a quiet panic began building in Josiah’s chest. When Josiah had to work evenings, his boss let Lucas hang out in the office. He got up at least once a night to watch the hypnotic rise and fall of his son’s chest and sometimes when he woke up, Lucas’s frame was illuminated in his own doorway, checking on him, too. When he was younger he asked questions from those shadowy doorways. “What was Mom’s favorite holiday?” “Did she like cats or dogs better?” By the time they moved to Ely, though, Lucas just blinked sleep-swollen eyes and turned around, heading back to burrow into his bed. Josiah worried about his son’s lack of friends. He knew what it was like to grow up alone, but every time he mentioned it Lucas scoffed. “I’m not alone. I’ve got you, Dad.” And for the rest of the day he would stand a little closer, talk a little more, showing Josiah with every word and action that there was nothing missing. Together they formed their own discrete ecosystem.