The Devil's Analyst Page 34

  Danny resisted her recommendation, partly because the boat remained stored in the boathouse. Cynthia persevered until he finally broke down and said yes. Still she questioned if he would really follow through. At mid-morning, he called and changed the timing to an early dinner. He claimed he was having trouble lowering the boat into the water. She prepped herself for the possibility of a no-show. But eventually he appeared and now he sat opposite her at Harvest Landing Restaurant, arriving at five, just as he said he would. Located outside on a screened deck, the dining room overlooked the marina and a lake that shimmered brightly in the afternoon sun. In mid-June, the sun wouldn’t set for hours this far north. It provided plenty of time for talk, while still ensuring Danny could motor home in daylight.

  The trouble was they weren’t really talking. Instead, Danny stared out at the docks below and his enormous boat; it was almost a cabin cruiser and not at all well suited to the waters of the flowage and interconnected lakes. Cynthia suspected the purchase had been Josh’s since he always sought out whatever was the biggest and flashiest.

  Finally, she spoke, “Tell me what you’re thinking.” He had already described the surprise appearance of Josh during the storm as well as the unexpected files he handed over. She wasn’t certain what upset Danny the most—Josh’s reappearance or the biography of Danny’s mother.

  Maybe it was a mistake trying to connect with Danny. Days ago when one of the men in the office mentioned that he saw lights at the camp, which all the locals still called the Van Elkind place, she immediately thought it had to be Josh. She debated whether to alert Danny, but finally decided it was her responsibility as a friend.

  Over these past few years, she grew to dislike the hulking lake house. As a child, she was never allowed to visit the estate but because her parents, who occasionally interacted with the Van Elkinds, often told glamorous tales of the place, she endowed it with an almost mystical elegance. Her childish imaginings made it a gateway to the kind of world she daydreamed she might eventually inhabit. But when she joined Josh and Danny on their first walk-through, reality gave a different interpretation. Years of standing empty through harsh Wisconsin winters resulted in a downbeaten look. The layout was spacious, the views incredible, and the lake frontage and acres of surrounding virgin forest inspiring. But for some reason the overall setting was not the fairy-tale place she once imagined. Maybe being married to a Native American whose tribe was robbed of these lands made her focus on what had been lost when the original lumber barons ruthlessly clear-cut entire counties. In this case, the man only left pristine the one area he wanted for his own summer home. She preferred to imagine the original landscape still inhabited, haunted really, by the native spirits who once lived in these woods. Such a setting deserved a fate other than being Josh’s trophy.

  Because Josh liked the house so much, it didn’t surprise her that he might use it as a hideaway. What she didn’t understand was why she encouraged Danny to fly out and check for himself. The police had already visited and deemed the place empty again. She shouldn’t have meddled, just like she probably should not have suggested this meal. What could she possibly advise Danny? Each of them was in over their heads. Why did she want to know what Danny was thinking, when she didn’t even understand her own thoughts or motivation?

  “My heart lifted when I realized Josh was in the room with me,” Danny blushed as he admitted that fact. “I longed for an explanation that I could believe. I wanted it all resolved.

  “That’s all that I’ve wanted since the day I first walked into his secret room in Los Feliz. I need a story that makes sense of it all. Without it, I can’t believe in him, and then how can I possibly believe in myself?”

  Cynthia saw no value in hiking down that path. “Listen, Josh is a psychopath. He occupies a space beyond the behaviors that make the rest of us human. Don’t try to make sense of him. Just because he took you in doesn’t say anything about you. We all believed him. We’ve all known him for years.”

  Danny returned to staring at the lake, and his voice was disconnected as though Cynthia had dissolved into the summer breeze. “But you didn’t kiss this man every day, wait for him, and miss him. You didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, and fall back asleep with the comfort of hearing him breathe, knowing that he was beside you, that he held your back. Discovering all of this . . . it’s like he stripped me bare and has left me nothing.”

  “He’s changed nothing about who you are,” she insisted.

  “Hasn’t he?”

  Danny looked down at his steak frites. He hadn’t touched them. The glass of red wine remained full.

  Cynthia knew she needed to ask about Danny’s mom. “You haven’t said anything about the information he left you on your mother. When we talked on the phone this morning, you seemed very disturbed by it. What exactly did he tell you?”

  “You’d be upset too,” he snapped. “To learn that your mother had an FBI file, that she was suspected of bombing a university building in an explosion that killed her best friend. I always thought I somehow disappointed my mom, but now I have to look at her as a murderer. I used to worry that I had too much of my mother inside me and that one day I would try to kill myself. Now . . . I never knew her. How can I share anything of my life with her? Maybe suicide wasn’t good enough for her.”

  Cynthia was shocked. She vaguely remembered Lempi Makinen, a woman she never found the least bit interesting, certainly not a person with a history. “Maybe your father . . .”

  He cut her off. “I can’t discuss this with him. He still loves her. He worships her memory, and he’s never even really accepted her death. For a while I thought he was starting over, but then he fell back. I always wanted him to be there for me, not her, but she held on to him even after she died. How do you compete with a memory?

  “That’s why it was so easy for me to leave Thread. I couldn’t live any longer with my father and the way he was living in the past. I needed to abandon him and her. But now it feels like she’s reaching back, pulling me down into her darkness. I don’t know how to resist.”

  “Maybe it’s time to reconnect with your dad,” Cynthia said. “Maybe he knows more about what Josh uncovered. You don’t even know any of this is true. It could all be lies. You can’t trust Josh.”

  Danny seemed to be thinking about some memory, as though it now made sense, and Cynthia wanted to ask him what that was. But she felt she was already on the border of having gone too far. Instead she asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I think I will go home and burn those files. Then I can pretend that I never saw them. I’m good at burning things.” He knew Cynthia was unaware of what he had destroyed back in California. “And while I’m tossing the past into the fire, I should burn every picture of Josh.

  “But, no, I have to keep one. I need to give one to the police. They need to know what I know. They need to understand Josh.”

  As the sun sank toward the horizon, and against his better judgment, Danny joined Cynthia in ordering a full bottle of merlot. He knew a glass or two would mean nothing to her. She could always stay in the hotel adjacent to the restaurant and marina. After all, the resort was partially hers, and even if she drove home, her house was only minutes away. On the other hand, Danny would need to maneuver several miles through the flowage, motor through the channel to Clearwater Lake and then speed across the broad lake to reach the dock at his camp. He didn’t want to undertake the journey in the darkness, and twilight was rapidly approaching. He needed his wits.

  Nevertheless, he was the one who ended up drinking most of the wine. Cynthia only toyed with her glass and he remembered that she was pregnant and shouldn’t drink.

  As he walked from the restaurant to the marina, he felt a bit unsteady. The light wind shimmered its way through the quaking leaves of the white birch trees that lined the brick path to the wooden docks. Everything was taking on a golden hue in the lingering light. Even as the ripples of lapping waves along the shore grew more i
ridescent, the deeper waters toward the center of the flowage darkened. Evening birds called out to proclaim the boundaries of their territories. Around his ear, Danny heard the whir of encroaching mosquitoes. Not many here, so close to the resort, which sprayed its grounds, but Danny knew that out on the water the insects would hover as a heavy, hungry, buzzing cloud. Lacking any insect repellant, his trip home would be filled with bites.

  His comforting relationship with Cynthia lulled him into lingering too long. A room filled with happy tourists, a friendly waiter, and a good glass of wine momentarily gave the world a mask that made it appear sane once more. For a moment, the jumble of facts and emotions that defined his life receded as unimportant.

  But under the growing onslaught of evening insects, reality reasserted itself. Danny hurried toward his boat and clambered into it. He needed to get home. At twenty-four feet in length, this boat was among the biggest in its class; its powerful motor could make good speed. Originally Josh chose it because it was fast enough for water skiing but still provided the set-up for fishing. Danny was glad to have the craft tonight. It would bring him home before dark.

  He unknotted the mooring line, pulled it into the boat, and stood at the steering wheel. As he began to maneuver his way past the end of the floating dock, someone ran down the planks and leaped from the end of the pier to land on the boat’s prow. His unsteady body crouched in front of the windshield and blocked Danny’s view into the lake.

  The person looked up and laughed. It was Josh.

  Before Danny could yell for him to get off, Josh scrambled over the windshield, landed on the floor of the craft and pushed Danny from the controls. Josh yanked up on the speed control, revved the engine, and turned the boat so it sped past the docks into the open water. No other boats were in the way. Before long the two were alone in a boat on the water, speeding toward the center of the flowage, away from the marina and resort, heading into the depths of the woods.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get you home,” Josh said, “but I needed one more chance to talk. You owe me at least that, don’t you?”

  “I owe you nothing,” Danny replied.

  Had Josh been watching him and Cynthia all afternoon, just waiting for his return to the boat? Soon they would be too far from shore for anyone to see them but Danny hoped that Cynthia had remained at the table, watched him board his boat and saw Josh boatnap him. Would she call the police? Didn’t the tribe maintain some kind of watercraft patrol to handle all the vacationing fishermen and water-skiers at this end of the flowage? Maybe her alarm was already sending someone on the way.

  “You owe me everything,” Josh replied. “I gave you everything you have and I can take it all back. Whenever I want.”

  “Then take back my mother’s file and everything I learned,” Danny spat.

  “That I can’t do,” Josh responded. “But the material things. The fame. The fortune. Those are the things I can take back. But these other things. The mental images. The emotions. They’re more like computer viruses that infect your mind. They’ll just grow and turn until they fulfill their mission. Everything has its purpose, you know. You just have to wait to find out what it is. I’ve been waiting a very long time for that to happen.”

  Danny’s fears were true. Josh was mad. In some crazy way, everything Danny discovered over the past weeks truly reflected the yearnings and imaginings of this man. He wondered if he could survive the night. On the horizon, the first star of the night popped into view and he made a promise. If he lived to morning, he would do everything possible to ensure that the proper authorities arrested Josh.

  Without offering explanation, Josh suddenly stepped away from the controls and sat on one of the back seats. The boat was still going forward full speed. Danny rushed toward the controls to slow the speed. With its many shallow spots, the flowage often hid copses of dead trees just below the surface. Hitting one could sink a boat and he didn’t intend to drown out here in the inky waters of the night.

  Josh pulled open one of the fishing compartments built into the boat. He seemed to be searching for something among the tackle. Danny didn’t even realize the boat was equipped with lures and sinkers suitable for fishing muskie or northern pike.

  “What are you doing,” he asked. Danny slowed down the boat and kept one eye out for unexplained ripples that might mark danger below the surface. The other remained focused on Josh.

  Josh looked up with a self-satisfied smile. He pulled a large folding utility knife from one of the tackle box trays. “I thought this was here,” he said and unfolded the blade. Even in the fading light, its gleaming stainless steel edge managed to reflect back some of the fleeting molten sky.

  The knife worried Danny. He could kill the motor, Danny thought, and just let the boat drift in the weak currents of the flowage. Or he could increase speed and race toward the safety of land. Neither choice was appealing. He didn’t remember the shore well enough to know where to run aground and seek sanctuary. Much of the shore was swamp. The firmer ground usually sported summer homes, which were frequently unused. If he could make it to the channel and into the first lake in the chain, then he could reach the year-round home of the high school principal in Thread and escape Josh and his knife by dropping off the boat and swimming to that man’s house. The principal was always at home.

  “Did you ever go fishing?” Josh asked. He didn’t seem concerned about what Danny might be plotting. “With some fish, you just have to be patient, let the bait float down and just do its job. Are you that kind of fish Danny? What does it take to land you? I really want to know. You never bit at anything I sent your way. Do I just need to be more patient?

  “Now your mother—I thought telling her story would be enough to make you bite. You’ve always blamed yourself for her suicide. It was written all over your face whenever you mentioned her. But I never thought you held any responsibility, and now I’ve blessed you with that freedom. But will you take it? Face it. Your mother was no saint, so no matter what she did, she was the one who chose death. She had reason to despair and none of it had anything to do with you. Don’t hold it on yourself. You’ve been living a lie.”

  Danny agreed. His life was a lie, but it was one that became a falsehood due to Josh’s existence. Not his mother. He realized he didn’t care what she did or why. This was his life, and he wouldn’t be pushed into one path or the other just to satisfy a whim of Josh. He needed to understand one thing.

  “Why research my mother and why show me the findings?”

  Josh was playing with the knife, tossing it back and forth between his hands. The opened tackle box contained large lures, designed to catch the region’s biggest fighting fish, the muskie. Danny always considered the hooks on such lures to be dangerous.

  “I needed to know,” Josh said, “That’s all it’s ever been. Not about your mother, but about you. What kind of person are you really? I’ve always felt that you’ve been too afraid to peel back the layers of your true emotions. But bottom line, you’re no better than me. You need to know it. You never dared to get away with anything. You’re stuck in the normal, never grasping for more. But until you realize that you and I aren’t so different, I can’t help you.”

  Danny felt there was one more thing he needed to ask. And then he would act. While he still had time.

  The sound of the rushing engine drowned out normal evening sounds, and the boat’s speed kept the mosquitoes at bay. They were heading toward a distant shore, but it wouldn’t take that long to run aground. Josh simply watched Danny, awaiting his move, measuring some trait that only he seemed to detect. Then Josh sighed.

  “Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you’re filled with grace, blessed by God and able to move on. But I don’t think so. You know Pete always worried about you.”

  Danny had been planning to rush Josh to knock him overboard, but those words derailed his plotting. The last thing he had expected was a mention of Pete. ”What do you know about Pete’s worries?”

  “Quite a bit
actually. A few years ago when I felt that I just wasn’t able to understand you the way that I wanted to, I tracked Pete down. You know everyone in town knew about the two of you. They know that you’re the one who pushed Pete over the edge with desire. Made him crazy. But I wanted to hear from him first-hand how it happened. I heard he was still around, so I tracked him down in Phoenix. Met up with him under a freeway overpass on one of those crazy monsoon rainy nights in the desert.”

  Danny knew he had to do it. Push the guy overboard. It was either Josh or him. Only one of them could make it to shore.

  Josh laughed. “You’re so transparent. Thinking about rushing me, aren’t you? That’s what Pete thought too that night. I think he planned to push me into the flood channel. But I had a knife that night too. He tried, but I guess you know how that ended. Did you find his hat in my secret room?”

  A calm descended on Danny. Maybe, he realized this was his final night. Alone in the middle of a lake, caught in the light that was rapidly vanishing into the night, standing face to face with the man he had always thought he loved, trying to keep balanced on a moving boat.

  “Did you ever love me?” Danny asked.

  “What is love?” Josh responded.

  Danny could always define love. It was loyalty and the willingness to wait for however long it might take for the right thing to occur. It was dedication to a person, taking the steps that honor required—while never forgetting the person you honored. It was focus and perseverance. It was all the stories that had populated his mind while growing up in Thread—tales of Indian chiefs and French voyageurs, of copper miners and poor farmers, of those individual people who saw in another person the opportunity to achieve their own self-realization. It was Josh.