Castle Danger--Woman on Ice Read online

  Abe started his SUV with his fob. “Was that so hard? Jesus, you’re my oldest. I’d move mountains for you. Get used to it. See you at the house.”

  Joel stood, aimlessly wiping snow off the hood of his truck, something to keep his eyes on while his dad backed out and drove off. Pointless to fight with the old man, try to make him get it. He never would. He was already used to Abe butting into every aspect of his life, which was why Joel joined the army. To get. The fuck. Away.

  But as soon as that kid had died right beside him, how he wished his daddy could have made it all go away. He slammed his fist down on the hood. Another dent. Another bruise.

  3

  I took some time off, and boy did I need it. I had watched my partner disappear into Lake Superior, joining the choir of ghosts down there, thousands upon thousands. I put Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on repeat for days, man, and I usually wouldn’t be caught dead, right? “Sundown” is a much better song.

  I woke up in the mornings and steered clear of the porn. I started jogging again. But it wasn’t a sexual thing. Not even a guilt thing. I was as frustrated as ever. I heard Gerard’s grating Letterman-like monologue every mile of my run. Granted, in this weather and after laying off for so long, I didn’t last much more than one mile through this neighborhood, near enough to the university that it was mostly older homes chopped into apartments. We didn’t have the best view of Superior from here, but we were near Chester Park, full of rushing creeks and waterfalls, frozen at that time of year.

  I longed for spring, still months away, just so the white noise of the water would drown out my partner’s voice in my head. Not that it was telling me anything profound. It was the same as always. Inane. Pointless. A mosquito buzzing.

  Back at my place, I would stare at myself in the mirror after peeling off my jogging clothes. I was relatively skinny but had muscled up since I joined the academy, now that I’d been on the job for a few years. What was I looking for in the mirror? It wasn’t full-length, so it cut me off from the waist down. I wondered what it would be like if there wasn’t a damaged penis lurking, if instead there was something … different.

  Gerard had taken off the snowmobiler’s helmet and said she was a man, but I don’t know if anyone else heard him besides me. I asked around among the gruff fishermen in overalls and fur-lined hats to figure out what they thought they had heard, and all they did was shrug at me.

  The divers found Gerard two hours later. Dead, of course. I watched them push him above the ice, stiff, while someone tossed a line out to loop under his arms, drag him across the ice to where we waited. His eyes, half-closed, his mouth, half-open. Just a dumb look to have for a death mask. Poor Gerard.

  But they swore they couldn’t find the snowmobiler. In fact, they couldn’t even find a snowmobile. At least not the one they were looking for. There was one down there, but it had been there several years, from the looks of it.

  So she, he, it, was gone. The crew said it would keep searching. Assured me they’d taken photos. They even had eyewitnesses. I’m telling you this because, I don’t know, I had this feeling in the days to come that no one was really putting their hearts into finding her. More expense and effort had been put into pulling idiot drunk snowmobilers out of smaller lakes than was going into looking for our mystery girl, found in broad daylight in Duluth Harbor, for fuck’s sake.

  My debriefing. Then my second debriefing. Then my written report. Then my first week off. Then my calls to the detectives in charge of the case, asking if they could use my help. Then, after their turning me down, another call from my captain, telling me to take another week off, paid, not counting against my current PTO reserves. At the end of that week I had increased my runs from two to four miles, had gotten up earlier, had dropped to one Doubleshot, had kept away from the porn — most of it. Most of it is something, right? I mean … this is going to sound weird, I know.

  Anyway, here we go: At the end of that second week off, I uploaded those few photos I had of the snowmobiler to my laptop. Cleaned them up as best I could. Enlarged certain areas of her exposed skin, looking for clues — scars, cuts, birthmarks, jewelry, tattoos. It was hard to tell. I couldn’t distinguish bruises from blood settling. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at veins under the fishnets or faded ink. The larger I blew up the photos, the less I could see. It was becoming abstract art. Beautiful in a way, but after a while, it made me nauseated. Staring at it like a 3-D movie without the glasses.

  So I zoomed back out and looked at the overall scene again, that helmet raising my rage about as much as porn did. One big “fuck you” to the universe. What … who … was beneath that visor?

  And that’s when I started back on the porn. All trannies, all the time. What was the secret? How could I tell if the woman on the ice was really a woman? Some sort of tell. Some trick. Like, Adam’s apple? You couldn’t tell on my photos. Hand size? My research shot that cliché down sharpish. Foot size? We only saw the boots. Huge boots, but they were made to be big.

  A bulge?

  Not if she tucked.

  Jesus. I covered my face with both hands and pressed my palms hard against my skin. What was I not seeing? Why hadn’t Gerard backed the fuck away? Yes, I saw him take off the helmet. Yes, she was wearing a wig. But that still didn’t mean “man”.

  I flicked back and forth between photos: fully-dressed transsexual, dead woman on the ice, fully-dressed transsexual, dead woman on the ice, fully-dressed transsexual, partially-dressed transsexual, almost naked transsexual, sucking a cock.

  That was when the pressure started, and the pain wasn’t far behind. My cock thickened, but the scar tissue kept it from achieving a full, proud erection. It felt as if the skin was going to split all around. I didn’t want to look at it. It had been a few weeks since I had let this happen, and I had forgotten how fresh and urgent the pain came on. I pressed my fist against it, willing it to go down. Think about something else. Anything else.

  But what I thought about was the same question I had been asking myself for months, every morning, every evening, watching porn: Am I attracted to the tranny, or to the guy fucking her? Or both?

  I switched back to the photos of the dead woman. One with Gerard standing near her, looking back over his shoulder at me. His mouth was open, so he must have been making some sort of tasteless joke. I zoomed in on his face. I sure as fuck wasn’t attracted to that clown, so focusing on him was the perfect cock-softener.

  The pressure and pain subsided a few minutes later. I sat there for another few minutes concentrating on my breath, in and out, and on the ice and swirling snow at Gerard’s feet. Then I stood and walked to my kitchen to take some pain medicine, just over-the-counter stuff. I’d had something stronger early on, along with some antibiotics and creams, but to tell you the truth, I prefer the pain. It helped remind me of what I had been hiding while I’d made wedding plans with Whitney.

  And with that, it’s probably time to tell you about the accident.

  It was a fire. I can’t even remember how it happened exactly. I was out at the family farm, seeing my folks for a weekend this past fall, a very dry fall. Me, my sister, my dad, reattaching a newly sharpened blade to a riding lawn mower. Dad had six of them spanning the decades, and he had tractors, at least four of those. Sometimes he just liked riding the little ones, even if the job took longer.

  Taking care of them was always something we’d done together. Dad wanted to make sure Marcia and I could change our own oil, both in cars and mowers. He wanted to make sure I was never helpless, at least mechanically. So he was reattaching the blade, my older sister was helping with that, and I was cleaning the carb. Can of carb cleaner, a good stream. And dad was smoking.

  We didn’t think much of Dad smoking. He stopped smoking indoors once my older sister was born, yet kept one stuck between his lips outside, and it was an extravagance for him. He’d stopped bothering with the cheap American shit and started rolling his own, so they smelled kinda
nice.

  I don’t remember the exact sequence of events because, you know, we were talking and laughing and we’d done this hundreds of times before. It was second-nature, but I must’ve sprayed carb cleaner and he either reached over for something or flicked his Zippo with the white wolf on the side and the spray flamed-up. Fireball. I must’ve freaked out, because next thing I knew, I was on fire all over and rolling on the grass, spreading the fire, and my dad had his arms tight around me, rolling, shouting to my sister for a tarp, a blanket, anything.

  How long? I have no idea. They tell me maybe twenty, thirty seconds. My dad had to let go because his beard lit up and threatened his eyes. But then my sister draped one of grandma’s quilts over me, stealing the fuel and smoking us out.

  I still have that quilt. They had to peel it off my skin, cut it when it wouldn’t peel. My grandma took it back, patched up the tears, but I told her to leave the burn holes and blackened squares. Something about them … I guess I wanted the reminder. But yeah, I still sleep under that quilt. (My grandmother keeps saying she’ll make me another one, but I doubt she will. She and grandpa are enjoying their first years of retirement on the road. Besides, I like the way mine smells.)

  Skin grafts on my arms, stomach, thighs, and, yes, my genitalia. Especially my genitalia. It looks like a fried chicken wing. I’ve never grown much hair down there since. The pattern of scars and skin grafts has my dick curving left all the time. It was never real big, an average four inches, but the fire shrunk it some and fucked up the elasticity of the skin. Hard-ons hurt like hawk talons, and ejaculating is like passing a kidney stone while someone’s kicking your guts.

  They did the best they could. Months have passed, and I’ve learned to piss without a catheter, and they’ve done a couple more grafts to loosen the constriction. My arms probably got off easiest, and except for some tender-looking pink patches and some hairlessness, they’re almost back to normal. My thighs, however … like freshly stretched pig skin.

  Now, everyone wants me to meet with the plastic surgeon to see if we can get my cock-and-shrunken-balls to function more or less normally. Sexually, I mean. Providing I can find a willing partner who will look past the horror show on the surface to the awkward, creepy-feeling intercourse we can share, while spending the whole time anxiously locking eyes asking, Are you okay?

  So far, I’ve pushed it off. Canceled one appointment, ignored some of their calls. I mean, yeah, a lot of people know I’ve had an accident, but they don’t know the extent of the damage, or where on me it’s located, because that’s not something a cop wants other cops to know. Cops get into being cops because it’s a license for bullying. It’s one thing getting off on the public’s discomfort, but a fellow cop? Gold. Push, push, shove, shove, KICK, KICK, until they get bored and move on to the next one weak enough to show any chinks in his armor.

  Fuck the cops. Fuck them. My fucking balls are none of their business. When I opt out of drinking trips, it’s because of “my medicine”. When I don’t make it out for snowmobiling, ice-fishing, trolling for badge bunnies, it’s all “My doctors, these grafts. Next year, man. Next year.”

  Which is fine. I’m sick of cops. I’m sick of the way absolutely zero women could pass before them without eliciting some sort of sexual comment, good or bad: Stacked chicks? Motor boating. Fat chicks? Like a bouncy castle. Ugly chicks? “Just turn her around!” I felt for them, a pang of embarrassment every time it happened. So much so, I’ve started to wonder … remember those times when I was a teenager, strutting around, biting my lip, glancing over my shoulder into the mirror to see how those panties made my ass look. At the time thinking, Just a phase. Happens to us all. But now … maybe I’d been hiding the truth from myself.

  What you’re probably thinking but don’t want to admit: So he can’t fuck pussy anymore, now he wants it in the ass?

  That’s not how it works.

  All I know is that you can’t even imagine what this feels like. So unless you can piss a mile in my junk, shut it.

  See, I said Dad never wanted me to be helpless. For the most part, the message got through. I can do cars, farm equipment, household appliances, some woodwork. Since the fire, though, I can’t help but feel helpless.

  I’d never admit it, had it not been for all that happened next, but at that point, helpless wasn’t so bad. In fact, I was starting to get off on it.

  I called the detectives in charge of the missing snowmobiler again and offered to meet with them. I might be able to give them some insight on the body, I said. On my impressions when we hit the ice. What Gerard said before going in. But they told me they had transcripts of my interviews, and that was enough. I told them I’ve had time to think about it and analyze some more. I got a sigh and a “Thanks, we’ll keep that in mind.”

  Ten minutes later, another call from the Captain. General “How you doing?” stuff. Chit-chat. Jokes about the guys. Shop talk. Then, “Look, Manny, it’s another slow week. If you want another freebie …”

  Seriously? Seriously?

  I didn’t want it. I told him that. I wanted to get back on the street. I wanted anything but to sit here and think about that dead woman on the ice. Anything but to give in to the urges and watch trans-porn until I was shaking and sweating from the pain. I wanted my goddamned job back.

  “Promise. One more week. I promise. And, one more thing …”

  Here it was.

  “The detectives, leave them to it, eh? It’s hard enough with them not having a body, and now with Gerard’s folks, so, leave them to it.”

  Okay, I could dig it. Fine by me.

  I went out to the farm for the week.

  It’s north of Alexandria, a vacation town on one of our ten thousand lakes. Dad bought it twenty years ago when he got tired of working as an executive for VLP Industries, one of those huge corporations no one has ever heard of that owns a shit-ton of businesses and services everyone uses all the time. He’d worked his way up the ladder after only a couple of years in community college, but it was his Navy history and his know-how on hunting, tracking, and fishing that landed him in the “guest hospitality” department — running a lodge for other VLP execs, awarded employees, clients they wanted to impress, or sometimes rented out to families for weddings, reunions, executive retreats, those sorts of things. When he tired of catering to the rich who treated the place like their own, even though he’d always thought of it as his lodge, he decided to get out and run his own place, kinda similar, but for “normal” people.

  Jahnke Family Farm was born. Not simply a place to grow and sell things, although that did happen on a small scale, but also a B&B, a minuscule café, and gift shop; a beautiful spot to get married, have reunions, small business retreats, a place to pick strawberries, or to show tour groups how “farm to table” worked, since Dad had found several restaurants in the region willing to buy from him directly.

  Those first years, when I was barely a toddler and my sister in second grade, we were flat broke most of the time. Heavy in debt to get the place up and running. It would take a few years for the gardens to come in fully, and just as long to find the antique furniture and farm machines that made ours and other family farms such an “authentic” experience. Which is bullshit, of course. The authentic experience these days is not the organic paradise we and many other families showcase for tourists, not if you want real farm money.

  That wasn’t my Dad’s idea, though. He just wanted to make the right people happy. And, you know, that wasn’t a bad way to grow up. It was fun. Sure, we were unpaid employees, Marcia and me, but the benefits were a happy Dad, a mostly happy Mom, and a strong bond that kept them together for nearly thirty years, even if we were pretty sure Mom had a few flings with old boyfriends now and then. To tell you the truth, we were pretty sure Dad knew and was fine with it.

  He had decided to close this winter for renovations. First time ever. He and Mom and taken most of January off for a trip to Mexico, only back for two weeks, but they both sounded r
efreshed and exhausted at the same time. And they were thrilled to have me home.

  Since I’d moved to Duluth, my bedroom had been transformed into the “Northern Lights Room”, with eerie but hypnotic ambient lighting Dad said he saw on the website for a New York hotel called Dream, except his version had wildlife paintings on the wall, an arctic-white paint job, and a plug-in “fireplace”. It was actually quite a step up from the room where I’d spent my childhood years. I dropped my bag on the bed and went downstairs.

  The kitchen was in shambles, with new appliances and cabinets coming next week. The dining room table and sideboard were covered in plastic, but they hadn’t started yet. The lounge, our living room, was immaculate, cozy, centered around the only real fireplace on the farm, but with small tables set up for games and cards, some other deep chairs set facing the view from the windows — usually of the flower garden and on to the heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers, currently a frozen wasteland.

  Dad in his gloriously overstuffed chair, reading from his iPad, me nearly sliding off the suede couch, arms spread wide, while staring at the embers.

  “Having a rough time?” He asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I wished I had something other than embers to stare at. Like a Simpsons rerun. Dad had taken the TV out when some of the B&B folks complained about the noise. It pissed off my mom royally. She loved TV. So she moved the 42-incher into the kitchen and mounted it on the wall to make sure people in the living room could still hear it. With the renovations, Dad finally made her move it to the basement, our “real” living room. I hadn’t seen Mom since I’d gotten home twenty minutes ago. She must have been waiting for a show to end.

  “Can’t your union do something? A man wants to work, and they won’t let him?”

  “I tried that. My union guy said I had to be shitting him. They fight for weeks off with pay. What was I trying to do here?”