Broker was not one to dream.
So the sudden flash of Sommer’s startling acetylene eyes jolted him awake and left him sitting up in the dark on the fold-out couch in J.T.’s unfamiliar living room.
Shadows strummed the wall above him as the wind pushed the willows back and forth. New night sounds murmured: the creak of the eaves, the furnace fan whirring on.
Sitting in the dark in one strange house he thought of another strange house. Sommer’s. Multileveled and full of people. Especially Garf, the wild card in the basement. Broker tried to imagine Jolene and Garf together in the cherry sleigh bed while Sommer treaded water in the next room.
He rejected the image, reformulated it, and put Garf back in the basement and saw Jolene, alone in the king-size bed. Did she sleep soundly or did she toss? Or did she really sleep in the narrow bed at Sommer’s feet?
Was she a diamond in the rough, or just an opportunist?
Jolene, Garf, Sommer, and the dead accountant were human puzzle pieces that he couldn’t make fit. And he wondered if Sommer would now be counted among the things he’d never know. Like where his daughter was sleeping tonight. He didn’t even know what country she was in.
What he did know was that he wouldn’t get back to sleep, so he felt around for his jeans, pulled them on, and carefully made his way between the shadowy furniture toward the kitchen.
Red digital numbers on the microwave stamped 5:29 A.M. in the dark. A moment later an appliance clicked on with a watery gurgle-J.T.’s preset coffeemaker. Upstairs, on the same schedule as the coffeepot, people stirred. Doors opened and closed. Water ran in pipes.
Broker went back to the living room, got his travel bag, and took it to the half bath off the kitchen. When he emerged shaved and dressed, he smelled brewing coffee and heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs.
J.T. padded through the doorway wearing jeans, a blue flannel shirt, and wool socks. He flicked on the light. “Amy’s still asleep. Denise and Shami are coming down for breakfast, so let’s take some coffee into the barn. Feed some birds.”
J.T. poured coffee into a thermos, sat down, pulled on a pair of work shoes, then got up and reached for a lined denim jacket. Broker took his coat and boots from the mud porch and soon they were walking toward the barn, testing the icy pre-dawn air in their lungs.
J.T. handed Broker the thermos and two cups, then withdrew a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his chest pocket. “Even in Minnesota, I can still smoke in my own barn,” he said as he filled his pipe and squinted into the distance over Broker’s shoulder. Broker reached for a cigar and they lit up like two truant kids.
J.T.’s eyes had acquired a new habit of focusing beyond the person he was with and resting on a point in the sky. Even a blank night sky. He used to be a close watcher of people, and they had pretty much lived up to his expectations. Now he preferred to stay far away from most of them, to get beyond them. Growing his own corn, oats, and alfalfa he’d become addicted to the constant examination of wind, clouds, humidity, and the color of air.
They walked out to the paddocks, fed the birds there, returned to the barn, and continued to scoop feed into five-gallon plastic buckets and dump them in feeding troughs in one of the two pens that sectioned off the lower level of the building. Broker moved in easily among the leggy hens who drifted away and cautiously returned after he’d dumped their feed.
The barn was new territory for Broker, with its musty scent of oats and corn fermenting in cold wooden bins and the loft above, heavy with alfalfa bales. He had grown up north of Grand Marais on Lake Superior. He knew something about fishing, hunting, logging, and iron mining. But there were few real farms in the granite bedrock of Cook County, Minnesota.
“Watch out. They peck at glasses, watches, rings, pens. Shiny stuff attracts them,” J.T. said. Broker shouldered through the birds. He wasn’t wearing a watch. He sure wasn’t wearing a ring.
Then J.T. held out an arm to bar Broker from entering the second pen. In that pen, a solitary four-hundred-pound male stood nine feet tall, with his thick black plummage flexed, tipped with white feathers. The stubby wings and tail feathers came up and he coiled his long neck at them.
“Popeye’s my big, ornery male,” J.T. said “When he gets his wings out and his tail up, never get in front of him. He’s getting ready to attack. Always stay to the side.”
“How come you have him all alone in here?” Broker asked.
“I, ah, haven’t figured out how to move him back into a paddock. Last time I tried, he cornered me and almost kicked me to death. So I’m going to wait till he’s way, way out of season to try again.”
The reinforced plywood door to the pen shuddered when Popeye threw a kick as if to echo J.T.’s remarks.
“Jesus,” Broker said.
“Yeah. Ostriches throw a mean knuckle. They’re the only birds that have two toes on their feet. Check it out.”
Broker snuck a look into Popeye’s pen. Two toes, but one was little and one was real big with a thick ugly claw on it. “Ow,” he said.
“It’s no joke. They can kill a lion with one kick. He could disembowel a man, easy.”
After all the birds were fed and watered, J.T. led Broker through his incubator and hatchery rooms, now closed down because the birds quit laying their two-pound eggs in September. J.T. and Broker climbed some stairs and entered a long, comfortable studio paneled with barn wood.
A counter ran around the room and one side held an ammo-loading press and shelves of gunsmith paraphernalia. Farther down the counter a screen saver on a Gateway PC trailed bubbles, sting rays, and an occasional shark. Two space heaters were in place as backup, but J.T. crumpled some newspaper and tossed some kindling in a Fisher woodstove next to his computer desk, and soon had a fire crackling.
The other side of the room was outfitted with more counters fanning out from an industrial Singer sewing machine and racks of leather-working tools. Sheaves of tanned ostrich leather in black, maroon, and gray-some with a scale pattern, some with quills-hung from the walls. A picture window behind the sewing machine was an ebony mirror, filled with night.
Broker took the rocking chair by the stove and J.T. sat on the stool at his work counter. J.T. tossed a leather checkbook case to Broker. “You want to trade up?” he asked.
J.T.’s first prototypes had been stiff, the stitching not sufficient to hold the leather. He’d brought in a commercial sewing machine, learned a few tricks, and started backing the ostrich with calfskin, and now the items were supple. This new one was a little slicker than the one in Broker’s hip pocket.
“Shiny leather,” Broker said.
J.T. nodded. “An experiment. Out of a South African shipment.”
Broker handed it back. J.T. tossed it aside and picked a sheaf of printer paper from the counter. He poured more coffee and relit his pipe.
The calm expression of the ostrich farmer was overprinted by the suspicious frown of J.T. Merryweather, former homicide detective.
“I downloaded this stuff from Washington County: Cliff Stovall was a fifty-six-year-old white guy, a CPA. He died of exposure complicated by self-mutilation. .”
“So they’re set on this self-mutilation theory?” Broker said.
“There it is. The coroner made notes more about what was on the outside of Stovall’s body, than what he found inside.”
“What’d he find inside?” Broker sipped coffee.
“Traces of Antabuse and a lot of alcohol. Blood level out of sight.”
“Okay, give me the outside,” Broker said.
“Thirteen significant self-inflicted wounds caused by cutting and piercing going back over twenty years.” J.T. raised his eyebrows. “In a world of seriously fucked-up individuals, this guy was a standout.”
“Nothing about foul play?” Broker said.
“Nope. Self-mutilation,” J.T. reiterated. “I’m getting pictures sent of the pre-autopsy so I can show Shami the downside of body piercing. She wants to get a nose ring.”
“So this isn’t the coroner making a diagnosis?”
“No, they pulled this guy’s medical records. He wasn’t some teenage kid taking a roll-around in the tackle box. The coroner called him an aristocrat of the cutting culture. He was a regular inpatient at the St. Cloud VA on the neuropsychiatric ward.”
Broker frowned. “I don’t buy it.”
“You want to see all the reports?”
“Screw the reports; I don’t buy it.” Broker said.
J.T. leaned forward and poked the air with the stem of his pipe for emphasis as he read from his notes. “You’re just being contrary. Stovall was an alky on Antabuse. And he took Trazadone to go to sleep and Prozac to smooth him out in the morning. The record mentions severe childhood trauma complemented by post-traumatic stress disorder. And his wife left him and filed for divorce six months ago.”
“So what are they calling it?” Broker asked.
“Misadventure.”
“Jesus, not even suicide?”
“Uh-uh. See, the way they interpret this stuff, Stovall was a mass meeting of self-destructive disorders, so borderline and numbed out, the only way he could feel things was to cut and stick himself. They figure he fell off the wagon, drank his way though an Antabuse reaction-which is hard-core because Antabuse and alcohol are a recipe for projectile-vomiting like in The Exorcist-then he kept drinking and was playing dangerous games with a hammer and a spike.”
J.T. tapped a sheet of faxed paper on the desk. Broker recognized it as a police report. J.T. said, “July ninety-six, Washington County responded to a nine-one-one from Stovall’s wife. He’d gone off the wagon and nailed his wrist to the bathroom door in the basement of their home. Paramedics used a Wonder bar to get him free. Same wrist. Like this.”
J.T. picked up a pen and then positioned his left forearm on the counter, palm up, and then curled his wrist back, aligning his thumb and fingers so the pen pointed back into the hollow of his wrist. “They figured he was playing this kind of game again.”
J.T. pounded the pen down into his wrist with an imaginary hammer in his right hand. “He went a little too far and he got, pardon the pun, stuck in the woods with the weather turning bad, and he froze to death. Not suicide.”
Broker shook his head. “Well, thanks for the trouble.”
“No problem.” J.T. tossed the pages aside and said, tongue in cheek, “I know how you benefit from a steady hand when you go off on a tangent.”
Broker ignored the jab and rocked silently back and forth and stared out the picture window where the blackness had dissolved into pale streaks of purple and vermilion.
“So you really went for this thing; why is that?” J.T. asked.
“We were bringing Sommer out in the seaplane. And he started raving about telling Stovall to move the money. That’s what got me going after I saw the article about finding Stovall in the woods.”
“Raving, like in delirious?”
“Yeah, he was delirious. He was pissed at his wife. So he moved all his money into a trust where she can’t touch it. The alternate trustee was Stovall, who checks out the day after they discover that Hank Sommer’s health insurance has lapsed.”
J.T. stroked his chin. “Her lawyer is Milton Dane. She’s not without resources.”
Broker nodded. “True. Milt’s arranging for a nursing home, and he’s busting open the trust.”
“So she panicked and now she’s covered,” J.T. said. “You went with your gut and arrived at a conclusion and worked backward, trying to make events fit. Uh-huh. Typical Broker. You always were a prosecutor’s nightmare. But they put up with your bullshit because it helps to have someone around who’ll walk into the lion’s den with a pocketful of raw steak. That last bust, you bagged those National Guard guys selling machine guns all over the Midwest, that got a lot of people promoted. Not just at BCA, but at the Bureau and ATF. The word on the street was, they left you out there about five years too long.”
“You getting into giving speeches in your old age?” Broker said.
J.T. squinted. “Yeah, I’m into speeches and simple shit like knowing where my wife is. She’s in the kitchen eating Total Raisin Bran with my daughter, getting one hundred percent of her vitamins before she goes to work. And this is your problem we’re getting to.” J.T. leaned forward. “Can you tell me where your wife is? Where your kid is?”
Broker grimaced. “C’mon J.T.; not first thing in the morning.”
“You can’t, can you?” J.T. said. “ ’Cause you don’t even know. And you know why? Because you married yourself, you dumb shit. Only difference between you and Nina Pryce is she’s younger, so she’s got bigger balls.”
“Having fun, aren’t we?” Broker said.
“I’m just warming up. See, the way I have it figured out is those other women you knew bored you, and then here comes Nina who doesn’t bore you. And you actually thought that because she had your kid and married you, she’d toss off her Wonder Woman bracelets and stay home and knit.” J.T. rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Looks like she’s the one that got bored with you this time.” J.T. grinned.
“What is this? Tough love or shooting-wounded?” Broker asked.
“You tell me,” J.T. said. “Nina left your shit weak and some writer guy had to save your ass. And you’ve got yourself so turned around that you show up here looking like the poster boy for the Peter Pan Principle, with your snappy young nurse.”
Broker had to protest. “Peter Pan Principle? When did you stoop to psychobabble?”
“Actually it’s Denise’s term,” J.T. sniffed. “You know, for guys who never grow up.”
And then Amy, who had been standing in the doorway unobserved, nursing a cup of coffee, enunciated precisely: “That’s snappy young nurse-anesthetist.”
“Hmmm,” J.T. said, slightly deflated, coming off his roll.
Amy entered the room and said, “Okay, while you guys are solving the problems of the world I need to borrow a vehicle and do some early Christmas shopping.”
“Hmmmm,” J.T. said again.
“Right,” Broker said, glad to change the subject. “So where’s my truck?”
J.T. cleared his throat; wrinkles appeared on his neck as he drew his head back between his broad shoulders and tried to stand up and scratch his forehead. “I been meaning to talk to you.”
“My truck?” Broker insisted.
“It’s in the Quonset,” J.T. said, pulling on his coat and moving toward the door.
Broker and Amy followed J.T. back out into the cold and they tramped after him across the yard to the large equipment shed. J.T. pushed open the doors and flipped on a light. A tractor and a John Deere bailer were parked in the foreground. A bobcat sat beyond them, and parked in the rear was the shape of Broker’s sleek Ford Ranger, shrouded in a huge blue tarp.
Broker walked forward, grabbed a handful of tarp, yanked, and then groaned. The windows on both doors were gone, nothing but pulverized shatter-glass hanging in the corners. The door panels were caved in and so were the fenders and wheel wells. The sides of the truck bed were cratered. The tailgate was dimpled.
His truck looked like a Roman legion had hauled it in a field and used it for catapult practice.
“I can explain,” J.T. said as Broker began to space out his cussing.
“Goddamn mother fucker. . I let you use this to bring in hay?”
“Well, it involved hay-straw actually. See, I was taking bedding straw into the paddock where I used to keep Popeye and. .”
“Son of a bitch, shit!”
“. . and the sucker decided to take on the truck. Amazing he could kick that high.”
“Kick?” Broker voice was strangled. “A bird did this?”
“If it helps any, I damn near didn’t get out of that pen intact,” J.T. offered. “It’s not like you paid full boat for the thing. I remember how you had the fix in at the police auction. You had your eye on that truck since the time you confiscated it on that meth bust up in Pine County.”
Broker growled and stomped out of the Quonset and paced back and forth. He noticed Denise and Shamika standing on the porch. After making fleeting eye contact they both diplomatically scooted to Denise’s Accord and drove away.
Hearing J.T.’s boots crunch up on the cold trap-rock behind him, Broker walked to where J.T.’s glossy Chevy Silverado was parked next to the house. “Well,” Broker announced, “I’m going to need to drive something.”
“Uh, wait. No way, man. You can’t use the Chevy. I sort of promised that to Amy to go shopping. But, ah, you can use the Cherokee.”
“The Cherokee?” Broker swung his gaze to the ten-year-old boxy red Jeep that sat next to the Chevy. It looked like an experiment to determine how much rust could be balanced on top of two axles.
“The Leper Colony?” Broker protested.
“Not much to look at, I agree; but everything under the hood is rebuilt, got new rubber, heater’s good. Oil changed every three thousand miles,” J.T. added.
Amy smiled and patted the fender of the Silverado. “So which of you guys is making breakfast?”