Alexei’s words flashed in my mind: Don’t tell your team we’ve spoken. I’ll know if you do.
If Kayla’s life really was in danger, I couldn’t take the chance of sharing too much information with my friends.
“Nothing’s as effective as hiding in plain sight,” I said vaguely.
They all waited for me to go on.
“Who was on the phone?” Lien-hua asked.
“Listen.” I lowered my voice. “Something’s going down, and I need to play this close to the chest. That’s all I can say right now.”
“If you know something, don’t keep it from us,” Jake challenged me. “We’re a team here and we’ve got a job to do.”
Think this through, Pat. Be careful.
“We can’t talk here,” I said. “Grab your things, meet in my room in ten minutes.”
It wasn’t a lot of time, but at least it gave me a small window of opportunity to try to think of something honest to tell them that wouldn’t end up endangering Kayla’s life.
I turned to the thing I knew best, geospatial analysis.
51
As Tessa waited for Sean to heat up the spaghetti, she walked into the living room to get away from the sausage smell.
Last night all she’d really noticed were the deer and muskie, but now she took in the room. A quilt lay on the back of the couch, and paintings of loons and sunsets over northern lakes hung on the walls. A Brett Favre-signed football sat in a glass case near the window, from back in the day when he was still a Packer, before he retired, unretired, and the Packers fans turned rabidly against him.
Sean didn’t have any photos of himself, just of his family: his parents, his son in Phoenix, Amber, Patrick, and two pictures of their younger sister who’d died when Patrick was eight. A staph infection that went systemic took Emily’s life when she was only five. Over the last couple years, Tessa had noticed that talking about Emily’s death was hard for Patrick, so she almost never brought it up.
One painting near the window particularly caught her attention. It showed a rippling lake with a sailboat leaning elegantly into the wind. The horizon was marked with a string of golden clouds hiding a twilight sun.
The picture invited her in, made it feel like she was a part of it, as if she were watching from a small island as the sailor rode the waves that reflected the dusky sky.
She knew that over the years, tons of stories had been written about people who magically entered or left paintings.
Someone steps into paradise.
Someone slips into the abyss.
Fiction.
Fact.
Only a brushstroke away.
The water looked so alive, and the wind seemed to whisper from the painting and glance against her face, but she knew, of course, that this was all an illusion. Of course the water was still. Of course the soft breeze was only in her imagination. No one can step into a painting or sail free from one. No one can step from one eternity to another. We’re locked in here, on this side of the canvas.
On this side of the glass with the dead wasps.
And the deer and “Ready,” Sean called from the kitchen.
After one more lingering glance at the painting, she went to the table. “Amber here?”
He was pouring a glass of grape juice. “She ended up staying at the motel in Woodborough. It was a good thing Patrick reserved a room for you because I can’t imagine there would’ve been any left last night after the roads were closed down.”
He slid a plate with two cut-up apples, a steaming plate of spaghetti, and a thick piece of toast covered with a generous layer of strawberry jam in front of her, then took a seat beside her. “So are you a vegan for health reasons or philosophical ones?”
She let her gaze drift through the doorway to the living room, toward the muskie hanging on the wall. “I don’t believe in senselessly killing animals.”
He was quiet for a moment. “All native cultures hunted, fished, lived off the land.”
She almost said it, almost did: Yeah, but they respected the natural world, they didn’t just shoot things or snag hooks in their mouths to get trophies, but she caught herself. She didn’t even want to be having this conversation with him, not since he’d been so nice to her.
“I’m all for living in harmony with the natural world,” she said vaguely. “And of course I know that for one thing to live another must die.” She had more to say but left it at that.
Death.
Why did they have to be talking about death again?
You’re a killer yourself, Tessa.
You took a man’s life.
Senselessly killing animals.
No, but it wasn’t senseless, he was Sean saw her look toward the other room again. “It’s not such a simple issue, dealing with the deer,” he said. “The whitetail population.”
She quietly ate her spaghetti.
“You probably already know this, but since wolves, the natural predators for whitetail, are so scarce these days-”
“Only because of human encroachment and habitat destruction. There aren’t enough undeveloped woodlands left for pack displacement and repopulation.”
Easy, Tessa. You don’t need to be arguing with him.
Sean didn’t seem surprised by her words. “Yes, but now, as things stand, without hunters, the deer herd in this state would get too large, and eventually disease would ravage their numbers. Is it more compassionate to let thousands of deer die slow and lingering deaths than to put some of them down quickly, preserving as much meat as possible for food?”
Despite her desire to bow out of the debate, she felt herself getting riled up. “Okay, but you don’t have to mount their heads; celebrate their death.”
“I celebrate their beauty, their majesty.”
“Do me a favor and don’t celebrate my beauty when I die.”
Oh, that was just brilliant, Tessa. Way to go!
Sean was quiet for a long time.
At last he pointed to a framed photo that she hadn’t seen before, propped on the countertop by the stove. It was a picture of her at her mom’s wedding. She was laughing, free and easy, and it was hard for her to even remember what that felt like-to be lighthearted, to smile and mean it, to let something beautiful sweep her away.
“Amber and I already do,” he said.
His words stunned her. She’d never even met her stepaunt, but the woman cared about her, celebrated her.
Sean walked to the stove, took the plateful of sausage he’d cooked, and tipped it into a Tupperware container. “This is venison sausage from a doe that ran in front of my truck last month. I didn’t want her life to be wasted.” His voice wasn’t sharp, just authoritative. “Senselessly.”
Tessa kept quiet. She’d said enough.
He gestured toward her plate. “Hey, be sure to get plenty to eat. It’ll help keep you warm.”
“Warm?”
“We’re going snowmobiling.”
“Where?”
“I know you wanted to see Pat. I’m going to make that happen.”
52
Cassandra joined her team in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn.
Becker, Ted, and Millicent were there, along with the seven team members she’d kept hidden from Chekov.
“As you know,” she began, “the facility has three levels, all underground…”
It was possible that Lien-hua’s phone had been compromised, so after making sure the room phone wasn’t bugged, I called Sheriff Tait, brought him up to speed concerning the team’s 9:00 briefing. Then, I phoned Callaway, and right after he answered, Jake showed up at my door. I let him in, and he took a seat near the window.
Callaway hadn’t been able to locate anyone in the area by the name of Kayla Tatum. “I did find out that a Kayla Tatum who lives in Eau Claire didn’t come in for work at the hair salon this morning,” he told me. “Her boss said Miss Tatum didn’t call in sick, just never showed.”
A deep sinking feeling. “Thanks.”
Momentarily after I hung up, Lien-hua and Natasha arrived, and I asked Lien-hua if I could hang on to her phone for the time being. “Just until I get mine back from Sean.”