A Fistful of Rain (23 page)

CHAPTER 32

Junction City was about another fifty miles or so south of Salem, still heading along Interstate 5. I left Anne Quick talking to Chapel on the phone, and was back on the road before ten, with the Ford following as I went. Once again they weren’t trying to be hidden. They knew I saw them there, and they didn’t care.

The weather was holding, and the drive wasn’t too bad, except for the part passing Albany, when the stink of the paper mill fell over the road like a shadow of death. When Tailhook first started getting gigs outside of Portland and we’d drive down to perform in Eugene, we’d try to see who could hold their breath the longest going through the zone. Van always won.

Junction City is a big name for a little community, mostly farming, just northwest of Eugene, in the peppermint fields. I reached it just past eleven. It’s rural, with the slightest of downtowns, and the bare essential of amenities, and I stopped at a mom-and-pop convenience store on the side of the road. I parked on gravel and hopped out, feeling the bruise on my side tighten as I moved. Inside, I bought myself a bottle of Arrowhead and got directions from the middle-aged man behind the counter to the address Anne Quick had provided. He was wearing coveralls and a flannel, and he eyed me and my earrings with some suspicion before determining that I wasn’t here to undermine his way of life. I didn’t correct his assumption.

The Ford pulled up while I was getting the directions, and Marcus and Hoffman got out. Marcus made straight for me at the counter, then asked the man if there was a bathroom he could use. I almost laughed aloud.

“Don’t leave without me,” Marcus threw over his shoulder at me, then went to use the facilities.

Hoffman was stretching by the car when I came outside, arching her back with her arms extended over her head. When she stretched, I could see the gun in the holster on her waist. I unlocked my door and was about to get into the Jeep when she said, “Christopher Quick.”

I closed the door again, looking at her over the hood, waiting.

“Son of Anne and Gareth.” She dropped her arms, put the weight of her gaze on me. She still had her sunglasses on, hiding her eyes, but I felt it just the same. “Brother Brian. Both recent guests at OSP.”

“You gonna tell me what they went in for?”

“Aggravated assault and attempted rape, the both of them. Why are you talking to the Quicks?”

“You’re not supposed to be asking me questions,” I told her.

“Yeah, but here, out in these peppermint fields, you can’t really hide behind your counsel, can you? Why the Quicks?”

“I stayed with them for a few months when I was a kid. They were one of the foster families I was placed with.”

“Thought that was Beckerman.”

“The Beckermans were the last family I was placed with. Before the Beckermans, there were the Quicks. Before Quick, there was Larkin. And in the beginning, there was Bracca, Thomas and Diana.”

She took it in, then glanced in the direction of the store. Inside, Marcus was at the counter, picking out a piece of beef jerky.

“I was going to call you,” I said.

Hoffman turned her sunglasses back to me. “If I’d known you’d become a suspect again, it never would have happened.”

Marcus came out of the store, then, before I could respond. He handed a bottle of Arizona green tea to Hoffman, opened an RC cola for himself, then settled on the hood of his car, grinning at me.

“Lot of commuting just to dispose of a body,” he told me.

He so obviously didn’t believe that was what I was doing, I almost laughed.

“You tell us why you want to talk to the Quicks, we’ll do it for you,” Hoffman said. “We’re detectives, we could detect. We could determine you’re not a suspect, but instead the kind of person who wants to help us.”

“You don’t know I’m going to talk to the Quicks.”

“You’re not in Junction City to enjoy the air.” Marcus took a deep inhale. “God, I fucking
hate
peppermint.”

“At least it’s not Albany,” I said.

“You don’t want to talk to these guys without us there, Miss Bracca,” Hoffman said.

“Why not?”

“These are not nice boys,” Marcus said. “Christopher and Brian, they take drugs and they get violent and they have impressive records for such young men. Christopher and Brian have ties to God’s Army.”

“They’re a band?”

“They’re a militia,” Hoffman said.

“White racists, fighting for God’s People against the Forces of Darkness,” Marcus added. “That would be people like my lesbo partner here, and me, a government patsy, and you, you drug-taking promiscuous rock star, you. Declared war on the false government of the USA when abortion was legalized. Don’t like blacks, Jews, Catholics, the whole rigmarole. And they probably won’t like you very much, at all, come to think of it, since you’ve got miscegenation of the races going on, what with a black man playing drums.”

“They used their time inside to get in good with some of the more passionate racists,” Hoffman said. “Yet another success of the penal system.”

No wonder Anne had been so hostile, I thought.

“So you see why we’re kind of concerned with you going to talk to these guys alone,” Hoffman added.

“Did your father maybe know Chris or Brian while at OSP?” Marcus asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“Pity. See, if he had, we’d call that a lead. And if you could confirm something like that, well, it would make our job easier.”

“I don’t know who Tommy knew in prison.”

“Then why do you want to see these two?”

“That’s none of your business, and I see a pay phone over there, I can call my lawyer.”

“Where’s your father?” Hoffman asked.

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re not looking for him? That’s not what this is?”

“No, it’s not.” I pulled my car door open again, climbed back into the Jeep. “Now, sing along with the chorus, you know the words: If you have any further questions, you can talk to my attorney.”

The Quick brothers lived down a dirt track off Prairie Road, behind an expanse of peppermint field, in a house just outside a line of pine trees.

I say house, but I’m being generous, because what I really thought when I first saw it was shack. There were power lines coming to it through the trees, electricity and telephone, perhaps, and maybe there was running water, too, but none of those things changed my assessment. The road went from paved to dirt on the way in, a long straight line that wasn’t dusty only because there’d been recent rain.

More than the out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere feeling that came from the sprawling fields and the distant hills was making me nervous as I pulled up. If Chris and Brian had both been at OSP, that tied all of us together, them, Tommy, me, maybe even Mikel. While I had no idea what prison was actually like, it didn’t seem impossible that Chris or Brian or both had learned who Tommy Bracca was, that it had come out in some conversation or some interaction that the Miriam Bracca they knew as boys was his famous daughter.

It didn’t take much imagination to see them hatching a plan, then, trying to find a way to use the information to make some money. If they’d gotten out around the time Tommy had, then all either would have needed to do was wait until I came home, and then they could get the whole thing rolling. Pictures and kidnapping and all of it, all wrapped together. Maybe the pictures had been one plan, and Mikel had learned about it somehow, so they’d killed him.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I was headed straight into a lot of trouble. If Chris or Brian was the Parka Man, then they’d already proved themselves dangerous, already proved they weren’t afraid to kill. It meant they knew enough to plant cameras in my home, to get past my alarm, to take pictures of me while I slept.

The thoughts lingered, expanding with horror as I realized how bad things could have gotten. Whichever Quick had forced me into his truck at gunpoint, whichever Quick had been in my home, he’d had me alone and defenseless and, once, even completely unaware. Jesus, one of them had finally gotten me out of my clothes. If he’d wanted more than just a scare or a photograph, nothing would have stopped him from getting it.

The Jeep popped and slid along the ruts in the road. At the end of the drive there was a clearing, with a rusted hulk of a tractor and a stack of empty and perforated oil drums vaguely framing the front of the shack. I pulled in and parked and waited a few moments, and there was no motion from the door, no signs of movement beyond the two scum-stained windows.

I didn’t see the Ford anywhere in my mirrors.

There was an odor in the air as I stepped out of the Jeep, foul and heavy and eliminating the scent of the mint all around, and I could see wisps of smoke rising from behind the house, farther in the trees. The only sound came from the Jeep as I shut my door, and then that died away, and there was nothing else.

I took a breath to steel myself, nearly gagged on the stink in the air, and started for the shack. It was bright and the sun was almost directly above me, but it wasn’t doing much to warm me. When a blackbird bolted off a branch in one of the nearby pines, I nearly shrieked, expecting three dozen more to come and suddenly swarm on me. Shades of a Hitchcock movie—cold and still and menacing.

The door was wooden and loose on its hinges, and a red and white plastic sign ordered me to keep out, and another hung below it, warning me not to trespass. I knocked tentatively on the door, anyway.

The door swung open at my touch, then stopped inches into its swing. Through the parting I could see a corner of the shack opposite me, a metal bed frame with a sloppily dressed mattress. Shelves hung to the walls, with books and magazines.

I thought about calling out their names, or maybe identifying myself. Then I thought that I wasn’t keeping out, that I was probably trespassing, and that maybe advertising that fact wasn’t the smartest move I could make.

The door didn’t budge when I gave it a little push, so I pushed it harder. This time it gave an inch, then seemed to push back, so I pushed it a last time and, before it tried to return, slid through the gap and let it fall shut behind me. The change in light was more dramatic than I’d anticipated, and it left me blind for several seconds, blinking away the autumn glare, trying to adjust to the dimness inside.

When my vision returned, the first thing I focused on was the light source, a computer monitor glowing on a workbench. It was a big screen, maybe nineteen inches, and running a screen saver, a parade of naked women, none of them obviously me. The PC was next to it, on the table, and flanking the other side of the monitor was a flatbed scanner. A set of cables ran from the back of the PC to the side of the table, unattached, waiting for attention.

Behind the monitor, on the wall of the shack, were clippings and papers. Most of them I couldn’t make out, but there was a picture of Tailhook that I recognized, torn from some magazine. One of the publicity stills from the press kit that went out when
Nothing for Free
was released, the same one I had in boxes in my basement closet. Beside it was a printout, what looked like a copy of the tour schedule. Tacked to the wall, made out of nylon or maybe cloth, was a small red flag. A black swastika rode high in the center, and beneath it two stylized lightning bolts, in silver.

And there was a copy of Picture Three.

I took a step forward to get a closer look, and nearly tripped, and that’s when I discovered why the door wouldn’t open properly.

The body was on its side, facing the front of the shack, its legs crossed but extended, as if trying to run to the grave. Both hands were extended in the same direction, as if trying to clear the path. When the door had swung in, it had been blocked by the leg. A black puddle had spread out from the middle of the back, down to the boards that served as a floor, filling the seams between each plank. Flies buzzed over the puddle, sluggish and a little bored.

It wasn’t Tommy, and it wasn’t Mikel, but for that first awful instant it was both of them. Then I was certain it was Tommy, and I was sure it was my fault, I’d screwed up again, and I lurched forward and went to my knees, not thinking and not caring. My gorge rose, and it was the only thing that was keeping my voice from rising, too.

This man’s head was shaven, his forearms tattooed, his face too young; he wasn’t Tommy. There was enough in his death that I could remember him from life, could see him running away from me, down my street in the middle of the night. From fourteen years’ distance, I could see Chris Quick, and he had died with the same fear on his face he’d worn when his father had caught him trying to rape me.

I’d come down in the puddle, felt the blood soaking through my jeans, and it wasn’t Tommy and it wasn’t Mikel, but maybe it was my mother, and I could smell the grass and the beer and the gutted pumpkins and the cigarettes and the truck. I could see my father, his look of horror; I could see Mikel, his look of despair.

The door knocked me as it was shoved open, pushing me and the body aside, and I toppled dumbly, wincing into the sunlight. Flooded with backlight, there was a new man in the doorway, and at first I thought he was wearing a parka, but there was no hood, only long hair flopping loose onto the shoulders of his jacket, and the sunlight licking around his legs showing a camouflage pattern, and his boots were black and high.

It was the same man who’d been in my bedroom the night I’d returned home.

I realized that at the same moment I realized he was holding a rifle in both hands, and that the rifle was pointed at me.

“Fucking cunt,” Brian Quick told me, and he brought the gun up to his shoulder.

CHAPTER 33

I could smell the pine and the mint in the air, crisp and clean odors suddenly revealed beneath the stench of blood and the chemicals brewing behind the shack. I could hear the sound of traffic on the Coburg Road out of Eugene, even though that had to be over a mile away.

I could see this man, maybe four years older than me, barely older than Mikel, the mass of metal in his hands, solid and unforgiving, pointed at me.

This isn’t real, I thought. This cannot be real, this is another memory I’ve manufactured, another fiction created, but this cannot actually be happening to me. I am a musician, I play guitar in a band, I drink and I pass out and feel sorry for what a fucking good life I have.

I do not have guns pointed at me, I am not a detective, I am not a cop, I am not supposed to be here.

And the rifle was now at his shoulder and his mouth was opening to say something else, but the words I heard didn’t come from him, they came from farther away, louder than before.

“Drop that weapon! Drop that weapon fucking now or I drop you! Drop it!”

“Mim! Mim, stay down!”

Brian Quick balked, staring at me on my knees in his brother’s blood.

“Drop it
NOW
!” Marcus screamed.

The rifle came down, hit the floor without a clatter, like a brick.

“Back it up! Back it up, hands high!”

Brian was looking at me, I could feel it, but with the sunlight behind him, I couldn’t make out his face, see if there was fear or excitement or anger in it. His hands had come down to drop the rifle, and he’d begun to step back, and Marcus was still yelling at him to reverse out of the shack, to do it slowly, to raise his hands. Brian started to follow the last order, but his right rose slower than his left, crossing inside his body as it came up instead of moving straight, and I gave it full-throat, everything I’d ever used onstage, everything Steven had ever taught me about using my diaphragm, and then some.

“Gun, he’s got another gun!” I screamed, pulling myself out of the doorway, tumbling over Christopher Quick’s corpse, and there was a shot that seemed so loud I figured the shack would fall down around me from the percussion.

To my side, behind where I’d knelt, a circle opened in the wooden wall, spitting splinters and showing green leaves beyond.

There were more shots, two or four or three, I couldn’t count them they came so fast, and they didn’t come from the same places. New circles opened in the wood around me and I cowered against the dead man, hiding my head and trying to breathe and not get killed. More shots came, but from a different direction, answered from the opposite, maybe behind me, now, but I didn’t move, I didn’t think I could.

It got quiet again. It stayed quiet.

I didn’t move. My blood-soaked jeans were making me cold, my bruised side ached, but I didn’t move.

I kept seeing Mikel and Tommy and my mother and the truck.

“Mim? Mim, where are you?”

I forced my arms apart, unwrapping my head. Hoffman was in the doorway, her gun in her hands, pointed at the ground. She saw the movement, focused on me.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said, like she’d been kicked and hadn’t seen it coming.

I was starting to push myself up but she took a step forward, pushing me back down with one hand, putting her gun away with the other, shouting for her partner.

“Marcus, ambulance! We need an ambulance! Jesus, don’t move, Mim. Goddamn you, where’re you hit? Where’d you get hit?”

I kept pushing her hands away, and she kept batting them aside and trying again, and I flailed, finally managing my voice again. “Not! I didn’t! Not me!”

She caught it at last, stopped, grabbed my wrists.

“Not me,” I said. “Him, it’s his blood. His blood. I didn’t get hit.”

Hoffman looked at me like this was another of my lies, too, like she couldn’t believe I was this stubborn. I shook my head and indicated Chris’s body, and she didn’t let go of my wrists, just used them to pull me to my feet as she got to hers.

Marcus filled the doorway, breathless. “Sheriff’s on his way, and an ambo . . .”

Hoffman propelled me toward him, releasing her grip. “Cancel the ambo, add a coroner.”

I stepped out, into the hot daylight again, Marcus guiding me by the shoulder. There was already the sound of a siren in the distance, maybe more than one. When I looked down at myself, I saw that the front of my jeans was soaked, and the bottom of my shirt.

Marcus led me back to the Ford, using his free hand to dial his mobile phone. When the call connected he spoke in fluent cop, using numbers and words like “homicide” and “medical examiner” and “fugitive” before he was through. Once we reached the car, he opened the rear door and had me sit on the backseat.

“Sure as hell looks like you got hit.”

“Not me,” I said, and pointed back to the shack. “Chris Quick.”

“That makes the one who was shooting at us brother Brian?”

I nodded. “They did the cameras, you can tell, you just look in there you can tell they did the cameras on me. And they were at my house, it was Brian the first time, the one who put me in the truck, he must have a truck around here, a Ford truck. The first time, not the second time, the second time it was Chris. I should have recognized them, I should have known, but they looked different. It was them.”

“You think Brian’s got your father?”

I started to nod again, then heard the word “fugitive,” just the way Marcus had said it on the phone, and I stopped myself before my chin came down, twisted my face so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes.

“Brian got away?”

“He won’t get far. You think he’s got your dad?”

I swallowed, hard, mostly to put my stomach back where it belonged. “I don’t know where Tommy is.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I know.”

“You are fucking unbelievable—” he said, but then stopped, because the sirens had arrived. “Don’t move, Miss Bracca. Stay right here.”

I nodded, and the sirens cut off, and he went to speak to the new arrivals. I heard the frustration in his voice, could tell it was with me, and reaching its end.

But Brian had escaped, and unless Tommy was nearby, the cops weren’t going to find him, either. Which meant that the only hope in hell I had of getting Tommy back alive was to stick to the original deal, and to pray that Brian meant to do the same thing.

Beyond the Ford, descending on the shack, were deputies in khaki, gesturing to one another, talking earnestly to Hoffman and Marcus. They gestured to me, to my Jeep, to me again. They gestured to the shack. A couple of deputies ran off into the woods. They seemed very busy.

Fugitive. The word resonated, sounded true. Brian had to keep our deal, he had nothing left, I realized. He was wanted now, known now. He could run poor, or he could run rich, and with a million dollars, he’d get a lot farther. He had to keep our deal.

And I needed him to, more than ever before.

Because I’d been wrong.

Tommy hadn’t killed my mother.