No Coming Back (2 page)

“Soon as he retired, things really started to deteriorate at home. Eventually, my mom threw him out, and that’s when I came back from college to do my bit.”

“What happened with your dad?”

“He moved into our cabin up at the lake. We all thought he’d turn into a crazy hermit, but he picked himself up after a while and converted the place into a sports outfitters. Now he runs kayaking schools in the summertime for the tourists.”

Before I can catch it, a drowned memory rises to the surface, as real as the moment it was created:

It’s late afternoon in early summer, and mayflies swarm the shallows. The sky is vermilion, and the tree-bristled hillsides stand silhouetted against the calm water. I am standing in a vacuum, on the muddy shoreline, with my fists bloodied and sweat stinging my eyes. Clothes torn, dirtied, spattered with blood—not all of it mine. The memory is scary, uncomfortable. I push it back under, into the swirling darkness, holding it there until the weight of it drags it back to the deep.

“Of course, I’ve tried talking him out of it time and again,” Krauss continues, bringing me back to the present, “but he’s determined to stick it out. Says he likes the solitude. Gives him time to reflect. I worry about him, you know? He’ll be seventy in a couple of years. He’s all alone up there, which isn’t sensible this time of year.”

We hit the highway with a thud. Slush splashes the windshield. Automatically, the wipers skim it off. The Interceptor fishtails on the level roadway, leaving overlapping arcs in the thin layer of fresh snow. Krauss floors the accelerator as the vehicle straightens out. The headlights pick out a set of tire tracks disappearing into the dark, and we head northeast at a pace, climbing through woods entombed in winter.

I watch Krauss through the corner of my eye.

It feels strange being in her company again after being apart for so long. Unreal, like I’ve been transported into the future, with no memory of what lies between. Not just unreal . . . weird. The
Kimberly
I know, the Kimberly still living in my mind, is a
seventeen
-year-old girl. A bookworm with a boyish figure and a twisted sense of humor. One of my closest friends from day one of kindergarten. We did everything first together: conquered creeks; climbed cliff faces; crossed the lines and laughed about it
afterward
. Dumb kids, thinking we knew better than our forebears, thinking the world was ours for the taking. This version of her is more woman than I’ve seen in eighteen years. It will take some
getting used to.

She catches me spying. “I know, it’s bizarre, isn’t it? I can’t believe it myself, that you’re actually here. Truth be known, Jake, I never thought you’d come back. Of course, I kept my fingers crossed. Your uncle told me you were making a new life for yourself in the Cities. For a while I was tempted to reach out, to get in touch.”

“Kim, you should have.”

“I didn’t want to push it, you know?”

Krauss has questions for me. It’s to be expected. Questions not just about my past, but about me as a person, all bottled up for nearly two decades. Despite our history I am an unknown quantity, and she’s law enforcement. She must be wondering how the intervening years have changed me, altered my perspectives, shaped my thinking and maybe even my preferences. Krauss was always the inquisitive one—a trait no doubt honed by her profession. She would always pry, dig, cajole, always wanting to know what I was thinking or feeling, but then choose to be annoyingly evasive if I ever turned the tables. It was one of the few things about her that used to get under my skin. I know she will bide her time and pick her moment to peel back my layers. I’m worried she might not like what she finds.

We pass an abandoned car. It’s off-road and leaning into a ditch, the rear wheels off the ground. Recent snowfall has already begun smudging its features. Somebody has drawn an unhappy face in the snow on the tailgate window.

“Kim, where exactly are we going?”

“Lars didn’t mention it?”

“We both know Lars: he keeps one hand close to his chest while the other is picking your pockets.”

She laughs. On the surface Krauss has changed dramatically, but her sudden laughter is the same hyena whoop that I remember with fondness. The sound of it brings back bittersweet memories of the busy weeks immediately prior to my uprooting; of short evenings studying in her bedroom, with a pile of textbooks and
unspoken
words between us; of long nights on the phone, philosophizing and playacting, planning futures and vocalizing dreams.

None of it would come to pass, for either of us.

We really screwed up.

“You’re right,” she admits with a nod. “Lars does play a mean hand of poker. And he does make everyone who owes him pay their dues. But you’ll be relieved to hear he’s not quite the same self-
serving
megalomaniac he was when we were young. I’ve gotten to know him better in his old age, and I can solemnly vouch that he does have a human side. The world’s moved on since Lars ran the show with an iron fist, and he’s accepted he’s no spring chicken
anymore
. Of course, he still has his thumbs in everyone’s pies, but these days he’s mostly a recluse. When he’s not at home with the drapes drawn he’s locked away at the printing press.”

“The roar of the wild waits for no man.”

Krauss smirks at my vocalization of the slogan joyfully
emblazoned
on the top of every edition of the
Harper Horn
. “It’s a truckload of bullshit, isn’t it? But, God bless Lars, he believes every last word of it.”

“That’s because he writes it.”

We share a laugh. It feels natural, comfortable.

“So what’s the story here, Kim?”

“I’m not completely sure. I got a heads-up from a friend at the Sheriff’s Office. She said some hunters were making their way down from the lake before nightfall when they came across something unusual. They called it in as soon as they picked up a signal.”

“Did they say what?’

She shrugs. “If they did, she didn’t know it. But you can bet your life it’s something big; they don’t dispatch deputies out here and at this hour for the fun of it.”

Up ahead, the tire tracks swerve off the highway and follow a fire road as it curves its way uphill though the woods. Krauss slows the Interceptor and makes the right. Then we are being jiggled around in our seats like kids on a Coney Island roller coaster. We pass beneath overhanging trees weighted with snow. I know where this trail leads. We’ve been out here many times before tonight, in our youth, just the two of us. Kids exploring the world, their
emotions
, and each other. We both knew our way around back then, and I’m sure things haven’t changed a whole lot since. But there’s a cool unease uncurling in my belly, something I can’t put a finger on or ignore.

Lights twinkle through the dark. Rotating red-and-blues splashing vivid color across an otherwise monochrome scene. The lights belong to a Tahoe sporting Sheriff’s Office decals. No one inside or standing around. Krauss brings the Interceptor to a controlled stop and we climb out.

Beyond the glow of the turret lights everything exists in tomblike blackness. Everything still, as though the snow is deadening every sound.

Krauss hands me a flashlight and lights her own. The beams burrow deep into the woods. She points toward multiple elongated footprints snaking away into the trees. “Looks like they went that way. You coming with?”

Off-road, the snow is easily two feet deep. We wade, leaving runnels. The going is all uphill and hard on the knees.

The foreboding in my belly is gathering momentum. It’s hard not to think about what lies through these trees, farther upslope. The memory is clamoring for attention. But I keep it at arm’s length.

“So what were you doing back there,” Krauss asks as we climb, “in your backyard, with the shovel, at three in the morning, like a weirdo?”

“Are you asking as a friend or as a cop?”

She glances at me through fogging breath. Her gaze is filled with interest, but it’s underpinned with suspicion. “I’m asking because I’m curious, okay?”

I look away. Those eyes were always able to see through me, but not without seeing everything on the inside first.

“I was checking if something was still inside the old bomb
shelter
.”

“In the dead of night? What have you got stashed back there, Jake—the family silver?”

I point through the trees. “They’re up that way.”

Distantly, two separate flashlights are visible off to one side, much higher upslope, lancing though the dark. Faint voices
permeating
the funereal hush. The terrain rises steeply directly ahead, forming a thick folded blanket of meringue-like snow,
broken
only by black-boned trees. I know this area well. So does Krauss.
Without
hesitating
, she veers left and picks up the tracks again. Skeletal branches rise up and claw at our passing. Thirty yards later we emerge onto a flatter ridge of snow-covered rock.

“Watch your step there,” she warns.

We are on the brink of a steep drop-away. A ravine known locally as The Gallows, running in a jagged line all the way up to Hangman Falls. This was our hangout on hot summer days, our retreat on warm summer nights. We were explorers here. Stargazers and settlers. We climbed its height and swam its length.

I remember it fondly. But now there is something creepy about the place that my innocent childhood senses missed.

Our flashlights reach out across empty space to strike the
opposite
wall. White disks revealing snowy rock and shrugging trees. A frozen ribbon of water, twenty feet down, littered with
broken
twigs and dislodged boulders. A few overlapping animal tracks. Deathly quiet.

It’s hazardous for anyone not paying attention.

Krauss points. “Looks like they’re up at The Falls.”

In my belly, the misgiving uncurls a little more. Decades have passed like stick drawings in a flip book, but my memory of this place is perfect, defined and drawn in blood. I push it back down, into the darkness, until it disappears completely.

One of the sheriff’s men spots our approach and comes lumbering down the snowy incline to meet us halfway.

“Hey. You there,” he calls, “stay back. This is sheriff’s
business
.” He’s a young guy, mid-twenties, with a long face split by a thick moustache. He runs an interrogating flashlight over our faces. “Officer Krauss? What’re you doing out here?”

“I guess I could ask you the same question, Deputy Milner.”

“This isn’t a Harper PD matter.”

“I know. But we came all this way, and in the dark. It would be impolite to turn us back now. Can we at least take a look, while we’re here? It’s a long ride home with our tails between our legs.”

Indecision twists his face. His eyes roll my way, properly, for the first time. I am not the smallest of guys. Not these days. As a teenager I was gangly, stringy, one of those cadaverous kids who shies from sunlight and never gets picked for the football team. Now I look like a guy who can look after himself. It’s a look that puts people on their guard. I can see by his expression he’s wondering who the hell I am and why Krauss has brought me out here, uninvited. My beanie skull cap and two-day stubble only add to the thuggish look.

I give Deputy Milner a perfunctory smile.

Krauss reaches up and punches him playfully on the arm. “Will you relax, Deputy Milner? We’re all friends here. All working toward the same goal. No one’s going to drag you over hot coals for breaking protocols. My lips are sealed.”

His stance softens. “Just don’t either of you touch anything.”

“We promise. Don’t we, Jake?”

“Cross my heart.”

We follow Milner to his waiting partner, who he introduces as Deputy Hanks.

Hanks is twice Milner’s age and twice his girth. His face screws itself into a ball the moment he lays eyes on me. He takes a provocative step forward and dazzles me with his flashlight. “Hey, wait a minute. You’re that Olson kid, right? It is you, isn’t it? You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here after what you did.” His hand moves to his firearm.

Swiftly, Krauss steps between us. “Whoa. Slow down there, Hanks. Keep your speed in check. Jake here’s my guest, which means if you pick a fight with him you’re as good as picking one with me, too. Plus, he works for Grossinger. Is that a road you really want to go down?”

Hanks is staring me out with cold distrust in his eyes, his hand hovering dangerously close to his firearm. But Krauss’s words eventually penetrate. No one in their right mind wants to make an enemy of the man who draws rent on half the properties in Harper.

“Stand down,” Deputy Milner warns him. “We’re all good here.”

Reluctantly, Hanks backs off, looking pissed, but keeps his scowl aimed at me.

“Anyhow,” Milner breathes, “back to business.”

He shines his flashlight at a patch of roughed-up ground lying between the tree line and the rocky precipice. It’s a circular disturbance of black soil and broken roots, four yards across and over a yard deep in the center. Circling it are rings of overlapping boot prints, compacting the snow.

“There used to be a tree here,” he says.

Krauss nods. “Sure. Hangman’s Tree.”

The focus of many of our childhood exploits. An old tree with one exceptionally large limb overhanging the ravine, rubbed smooth by kids happy to drop from it into the cool plunge pool below.

“So where is it now?”

He redirects the flashlight over the edge of the precipice, into the darkened depths. “Down there.”

Cautiously, we approach the drop-away. It’s dicey and deadly. I keep Krauss between me and Hanks.

Flashlights probe an open grave.

To our immediate right, a towering cliff of corrugated ice rises into the night sky. A month of arctic temperatures has transformed the waterfall into a ribbed wall of dirty ice. We’re about a third of the way down, on a level with a fringe of icicles, each thicker and longer than my arms. The Gallows is deeper here, at least fifty feet and eerily quiet. Our beams drop to the uprooted tree standing upside-down at the foot of the falls. The trunk is a thick column of mossy wood, propped up against the ice cliff. Its upturned root system is a tangled mass, gnarled with frozen soil and snow. Farther down, the snow-thickened crown has smashed into the ice covering the plunge pool and partly broken its way through, pushing up big jagged ice slabs before refreezing.