“Shut. Up.”
“You were there, weren’t you? Hiding in the one of the guest rooms on the second floor. You heard the conversation between your dad and Winnie while they ate breakfast. You stashed the money in the laundry chute, went downstairs, and slipped out the front door. You didn’t even shut it behind you.”
Mel Rosenthal grabbed tissues, wiped her tears, and blew her nose.
“Stupid drug addict was going to turn me over to my stupid dad.”
“You should have gone to the cops. You would have got a slap on the wrist. Instead you got four people killed, including Raynard Haas, who got off easy with a bullet in the back of his head. If he’d been arrested and faced trial, it would have destroyed him. He knew it. That’s why he killed the people who could bring him down and he would have killed you, too, if he thought you weren’t as good as dead lying frozen and unconscious in the woods.”
She sat in a chair near the window, the one you’re supposed to pull up when visiting patients. “I didn’t get any sympathy from anyone else so I sure as fuck don’t expect it from you.”
“How did Haley Housh end up in that cave?”
The smugness left Linnea’s face. She couldn’t rationalize that one. “I told her to meet me there after the game. Said I’d give her some W-18. She’d been asking to try it. I always said no. I saw how addicted Winnie was. I told Haley if she wanted some she’d have to get it from Raynard. Know what Haley said? She said Raynard creeped her out too much.”
“Then why did you change your mind?”
“I didn’t. I never intended to meet Haley in the cave. I just wanted her to tell everyone I did, to throw off the people looking for me, make them think my plan was to stay in the Cities.”
“So she just sat there waiting for you, getting sleepy and not knowing why. Five people. That’s five fucking people who died because of you.”
“Shut up!”
Mel hid her face in her hands.
“Then you went to Madison before you went north. Same idea, to throw people off your trail?”
“I never went to Madison. Joaquin did.”
“But the fingerprint—”
“I just added his fingerprint to my phone and my bank account. Simple. Someone would have figured it out eventually. I was just trying to buy some time.”
“If you didn’t go south, how’d you get from St. Paul to Warroad?”
“I paid someone to drive me. And I’m not telling you who.”
Linnea said it as if she were smarter than the whole world.
When I was eighteen I was dumb. All of us were dumb because we could only be as smart as our life experience would allow. But in the information age, kids can be smarter than their life experience. It’s a false kind of smarts, of course. It’s not learned the same way. It’s learned through words and images on electric screens, not through joy, pain, and shame.
Linnea’s generation is not ashamed. Of anything. And shame, really, is the seed of decency. But it’s not their fault. How could they be ashamed? They’ve grown up in a shameless world.
Linnea Engstrom was just too fucking smart in her brain and too fucking stupid in her heart. That’s what made her dangerous.
I couldn’t stand being in that room one more minute. I walked toward the open door and said, “Good luck with the rest of your life, Linnea. You’re going to need it. And happy fucking birthday.”
I walked out feeling nothing but regret for finding the girl with auburn hair, never knowing if she was one of the dead bodies on the kitchen floor, or if she were the kid who drew the pictures on the refrigerator.
* * *
I attended two funerals in two days. The first was Roger Engstrom’s. It was open casket, and Anne had him looking better dead than he’d looked alive. I didn’t pay much attention during the service. I mostly watched Linnea, who cried like a child. Guess she wasn’t so happy her dad was dead, after all. Maybe she missed hating him. Maybe she missed the future they’d never have. Maybe she was just plain sorry. For everything. And all that remorse gushed out at once.
Mel Rosenthal and I smoldered like a doused campfire. We’d admitted we’d always be in love with others, and she’d witnessed my unpleasant conversations with Anne and Linnea. That didn’t give us a great start. We remain friends, though, and every so often the bellows of loneliness stokes us into something more. For a night. Sometimes a long weekend. We share respect and attraction and laughter. But we’re not kids. When you’re looking to share a life you’ve already built rather than find a partner with whom to build your life, the bar gets terribly high.
It’s sad.
* * *
Robert Stanley only returned to Minneapolis for babies, graduations, and funerals. His funeral was held at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in North Minneapolis. It’s big and old and made of stone and stained glass and wooden pews.
The place was full of cops. Minneapolis PD, St. Paul PD, half the Woodbury force, and dozens from other agencies around the state. Leah sat with her mother and siblings in the front row.
I sat between Gabriella Núñez and Micaela. We were flanked by Ellegaard and his wife, Molly, and Annika Brydolf. Char and Jameson sat together a few rows behind me. Mel was there with Anne. Linnea stayed away.
I barely remember the service other than it broke Leah Stanley. All that smarts and toughness yielded to raw grief. Leah Stanley wailed. Her pain infiltrated my bones like the cold of Minnesota in January.
Micaela held my hand through the entire service. Afterward, she drove me back to the coat factory and lay next to me on the cold bed. I drank no alcohol and fell asleep in my suit pants and shirt. Whenever I woke, I’d reach out and find her.
BOOKS BY MATT GOLDMAN
Gone to Dust
Broken Ice
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MATT GOLDMAN is a playwright and Emmy Award–winning television writer for Seinfeld, Ellen, and other shows. He brings his signature storytelling abilities and light touch to the Nils Shapiro series, which started with his debut novel, Gone to Dust. He began his career as a stand-up comedian while attending the University of Minnesota, before moving to Los Angeles to write full-time. You can sign up for email updates here.
www.mattgoldman.com
www.facebook.com/mattgoldmanauthor
www.twitter.com/goldman matthew
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Books by Matt Goldman
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BROKEN ICE
Copyright © 2018 by Matt Goldman
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller
Cover art by Shutterstock.com
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9131-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9133-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765391339
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First Edition: June 2018