Black River (7 page)

Wednesday, October 18

3:52 p.m.

C
orso kicked a rolled newspaper aside, stepped over the threshold into the apartment, and closed the door behind himself. He stood for a moment in the narrow entry hall, staring down at the silver key in the palm of his hand. He heaved a sigh. When Dougherty hadn’t bothered to ask for her key back, he’d figured it was because she’d changed the lock. That’s what he would have done. The fact that the key still worked saddened him and left him feeling hollow and cold.

He pocketed the key and walked down the green carpet runner into the living room. Everything was as he remembered—the burgundy oriental rug and the bright green couch, the nest of rosewood Chinese tables, the framed posters. All of it—except for the photographs. The places that had once held pictures of him…of them…now showed a sandy-haired guy with a close-cropped beard and glasses, laughing, lounging, leaning his head against her shoulder.

He turned away from the photographs and pulled open the mahogany door to what had once been a walk-in closet: an eight-by-eight space that Dougherty, before the advent of digital photography, had used as a darkroom and that now served as her makeshift office. At the back, a built-in desk held her computer. A trio of battered file cabinets lined the left wall. Overhead, a pair of shelves overflowed with books and magazines.

The cops had been through her files, leaving the drawers open and the folders scattered about like leaves. A black-and-white picture of himself lay on top of the pile: standing on a rock at the apex of Stuart Island, the entrance to Roach Harbor barely visible in the distance. He reached out and turned it over. She’d written
Frank Corso, Stuart Island, 11/9/99
. Must have been what sent the cops scurrying to his door.

He sat in her chair and ran his hands along the arm-rests. He remembered the week on the island. No phone, no electricity, no nothing…except each other. Walking in the woods and digging clams down on the beach. Watching darkness fall from the deck and then retiring inside. And the nights filled with low moans among the rustle of the trees and the ragged songs of the night birds.

Corso got to his feet. Ran one hand over his face and another through his hair. A voice in his head was getting louder, telling him to get to work, to stop spacing out and start looking for something that might give him a clue as to why somebody would want to do her harm. He gathered the folders that littered the desktop and tapped everything back inside before returning them to the file cabinet.

The cops had her little black notebook, but that was just what she used when she was out on a shoot. At home, she kept track of her life in a series of six-by-eight journals she bought from Urban Outfitters. Her idea books, she called them.

She went through two or three a year and never threw them out. The entire top shelf above the desk was filled with old journals, purple, red, blue, and green. Like the files, they were a mess. The brick she used as a bookend had been moved. A dozen journals lay sprawled on their sides. He stood them up, put the brick back in place, and eased out the purple book on the far right. Inside the front cover she’d written
1/00–7/00 Post-Corso Journal Number Two
. His fingers felt thick and stiff as he thumbed through the pages. It was awash in her bold, looped handwriting. It also was full, which meant she’d started another.

He went through the office slowly, looking for her current journal, cleaning up as he went along. There were only three possibilities: either she had it with her in the car and the cops had it, or the cops had taken it when they went through the apartment, or it was still here someplace. Took him five minutes to satisfy himself that it wasn’t in the office.

Finally, he sat down in her chair again and pushed the button on the keyboard of her candy-colored iMac. A symphonic tone filled the little space. He waited for the computer to boot, then went directly to Adobe PhotoShop. Clicked his way to
MY PHOTOS
and surveyed the field of labeled and dated folders. Near the right margin, a folder read
MAGNOLIA BRIDGE
10/17/00. He double-clicked the icon. She’d taken thirty-two pictures of the construction site. He opened a picture of the truck still embedded in the hill, zoomed in twice on the license plate, and found it too mud-encrusted to read. Five pictures later, the fire hoses had cleaned the plate enough for Corso to be able to make it out: Washington plate 982-DDG. He pulled his notebook from his pocket, wrote the number down, and then picked up the phone and dialed.

“Licensing,” a man’s gruff voice said.

“Ellen Gardner, please,” Corso said.

“Hang on,” the guy said.

A putrid instrumental version of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” forced Corso to hold the phone away from his ear. Halfway through the second chorus, the music stopped. “Gardner.”

“It’s Frank.”

“And what can we do for you today, Mr. Jones?”

“Washington plate: Nine-eight-two-DDG.”

“Five minutes.”

“Different number.” He recited from memory. “Ring it once and hang up. I’ll call you back.”

“Why certainly, sir. You have a nice day too.”
Click
.

Nine minutes later, having searched the tiny kitchen, he stood in the doorway to the bedroom, unable to force his foot across the threshold, bracing himself against the doorjamb with both hands, like Samson about to bring down the temple, when the phone rang once and then went silent. With a sigh, he propelled himself forward into the room, like a ski racer pulling himself out the gate.

The black-and-gold bedspread was dented where she’d been sitting. He stood by the side of the bed and dialed the phone. This time, Gardner answered.

“It’s me.”

“Registered to Donald Barth. Twenty-six-eleven Marginal Way South, Renton, Washington. Nine-eightone-oh-nine. Mr. Barth is employed by the Meridian School District in the maintenance department.”

“The check’s in the mail.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” she drawled.

Corso pulled open the drawer in the nightstand, and there it was. Shiny black, with a bright blue elastic holding it shut. He pulled the elastic aside and opened the book to where her pen was stored. The final page of the journal read
Consolidated, Rough and Ready, Baker Brothers, Evergreen, Matson and Mayer
. He read the list several times. Backward, then forward. The names sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put them in context.

He leafed back another page. Times. The bridge.
D/L 2:30
. Then another.
Airport—David—Tues. American 1244
. Nothing. He went back a full week, but nothing among the notations suggested anything that could have led to such dire consequences.

He returned the journal to the nightstand and walked back out into the living room. In his mind, he retraced his steps through the apartment. Looking for something he might have missed or misinterpreted. Nothing came to mind.

He was still deep in thought when the lock clicked and the door swung open. The sandy-haired guy in the pictures, reading the newspaper headlines, briefcase slung over one shoulder, dragging a wheeled suitcase along behind like a stubborn puppy. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of Corso and lowered the paper to his side.

“What are you… ?” he began, before a glimmer of recognition swept through his eyes. “You’re—”

“Frank Corso. You must be David.”

David gave no sign that he’d heard. Instead he slid his luggage into the hall leading to the bathroom and threw the paper on top.

“How’d you get in?” he demanded.

He couldn’t have been much more than thirty: fiveten, slim. His beard was redder than his hair, but not as red as his face. He repeated his question.

“Meg’s been hurt,” Corso said.

“What—just because you’re this famous writer, you think you can walk around other people’s apartments without an invitation?” He pointed toward the door. “Get the hell out of here, right now.”

“Listen,” Corso started.

The younger man cocked a fist and took a quick step forward. Corso straight-armed him to a halt.

“Take it easy,” he said quietly. “She’s in Harborview Hospital. She was—”

He didn’t get a chance to give him the particulars. Without warning, the kid telegraphed a looping overhead right at Corso’s chin. Corso moved his head. As the punch came whistling by, Corso grabbed the kid’s arm and used his forward motion to send him staggering out into the living room. Now Corso had his back to the yawning door. “Take it easy, man,” Corso said. “She needs you to have a calm head here. She’s—”

This time the kid rushed him, head down, his arms grasping like horns, in an all-out tackle. Again, Corso sidestepped like a matador. This time, however, he sent a short right hand the kid’s way, clipping him alongside the jaw as he rushed past, sending him lurching head first into the door across the hall. The hall echoed with a hollow boom. David lay still at the base of the door.

Corso reached down and touched the guy’s throat. His pulse was fast and heavy. With a sigh, he stepped into Dougherty’s apartment and began to pull the door closed. That’s when he spotted the series of pictures on the front page of the
Seattle Times
.

Upper left was a picture of an embankment, washed away by the rain. Halfway down the embankment, the front end of an automobile poked its nose out of the dirt. The next picture showed a fire truck using its high-pressure hoses to loosen the hill’s grip on the vehicle. The third picture captured the very moment when the buried truck came loose from the hill and began its freefall to the ground below. He turned the page sideways. Picture credit read:
M
.
DOUGHERTY
.

The squeak of a door pulled Corso’s attention from the page. Across the hall, a bald-headed guy had his door open on a chain. His eyes moved back and forth between Corso and the body on his doorsill. David groaned and rolled over on his back.

“Whenever Junior wakes up, tell him Meg’s up at Harborview. Room One-oh-nine in the Intensive Care Unit. Okay?”

The guy gave a minuscule nod and quickly closed the door. Corso refolded the paper and took it with him as he walked down the hall and out into the street.

Outside, the trees swayed in the wind and the sky was flecked with blowing leaves.

Corso turned left out the door and started up Republican Street toward the Subaru. At the far end of the block, a halo of exhaust swirled around a dirty black Mercedes, obscuring a pair of low-rider silhouettes.

Wednesday, October 18

4:41 p.m.

“T
hings are a goddamn mess is what they are.”

He was about fifty, wire-thin, with an Adam’s apple the size of a Ping-Pong ball. His narrow, unshaven face was twisted into a sullen mask. “We got every damn piece of equipment we own down at the bridge site. We got the city offerin’ to pay us doubletime to keep workin’ all night, and the boss ain’t nogoddamn-where to be found.”

Corso unbuttoned his coat and slipped it from his shoulders. The office was like a sauna. “Gone home?” he asked.

“Hell, no. His missus ain’t seen him since yesterday morning. Poor woman’s near outa her mind. Called the cops last night when he didn’t make it to supper. Cops come and rousted me out at a quarter to three. Got my old woman over there sittin’ with her till we got some
idea what in hell’s going on.”

“What do the cops say?”

He slashed the air with his hand. “Those dumb shits don’t know nothin’ more than what I tol’ ’em. Wanna know if he’s got a woman somewhere. I tol’ ’em half a dozen times: Joe Ball’s a family man. Just bought him a house a few months back. Ain’t got no floozie stashed someplace. Joe Ball ain’t here at seven sharp they’s somethin’ big-time wrong, mister. And you can take that to the bank.”

“When’d
you
see him last?” Corso asked.

The guy heaved a sigh. “Tell you the same thing I tol’ them. Last time I laid eyes on Joe was about three-thirty yesterday. Right in this here office. I’d been out at the site for fourteen hours. Joe was here when I come back and punched out.” He turned a palm toward the leaden sky. “Tol’ me he’d see me in the mornin’.”

“He was alone?”

“ ’Ceptin’ for the girl who come later.”

“Girl?”

“I was up by the guard shack fixin’ to go home. She come by just as I was packin’ up. Said she was a reporter. Doin’ a story on the bridge repairs. Wanted to know about the equipment we had down at the job site. I sent her down here to see Joe.”

“Black hair?” Corso used his finger to draw a line across his forehead. “Cut straight across like this?”

The guy nodded. “That’s the one.”

For the third time in the past hour, Corso failed to suppress a shudder. He’d experienced the first when, fifteen minutes after leaving Dougherty’s apartment, he finally got around to scanning the fourth photograph.

She’d used a long lens to zoom in on the macabre figure sitting behind the wheel of the buried truck. The fire hose had cleaned the windshield enough to reveal the ivory grin of the decomposed body that sat slouched in the driver’s seat, his head thrown back as if sharing some cosmic joke with the sky.

The news copy told how construction crews attempting to repair a washout of the foundations supporting the Magnolia Bridge had come upon the yellow Toyota pickup buried a dozen feet down into the hill.

According to the
Seattle Times
, police were speculating that the truck must have been buried some three months earlier, when torrential rains had first threatened the bridge, necessitating an emergency repair operation of equally monumental proportions.

It wasn’t the massive sinkhole or the remnant driver that sent a cold chill running down Corso’s spine like a frozen ball bearing. It was the cement truck and the logo. Two intertwined
R
s:
ROUGH AND READY CON
-
CRETE
.

He’d slid the Subaru to the curb, hurried over to the pay phone on the corner of Fifteenth and Republican, and thumbed his way through the frayed yellow pages to Construction Equipment. Like he figured, they were all there: Consolidated Trucking, Rough and Ready Concrete, Baker Brothers Cranes, Evergreen Equipment, Matson and Mayer Pile Driving. Shudder number one.

A quick perusal of the company’s addresses revealed that Evergreen Equipment was located on a piece of reclaimed marshland adjacent to Western Avenue. Right where the cops said she’d crashed. He remembered what she’d said about chasing the story that would put her over the top and shuddered for a second time.

The guy leaned over and rested his hands on the Subaru’s window frame. Half his right index finger was missing. He eyed Corso suspiciously. “You know somethin’ about this, mister?” Before Corso could answer, he went on. “ ’Cause Joe’s old woman would be most appreciative iffen you could shed a little light on what’s goin’ on here. I know she surely would.” The guy leaned farther in the window. He smelled of mildew. “Girl ain’t missin’ too, is she?”

Corso shook his head and told him about her crash. About the witnesses who said she was being pursued by a black Mercedes, and about how he’d surmised that Dougherty was chasing the story of how the truck got buried in the hillside. The guy shifted his weight from foot to foot and rubbed his chin as Corso spoke.

“You think Joe comin’ up missing and the girl’s accident are related?” he asked, when Corso finished.

“I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions, if I were you,” Corso said.

The guy thought it over. “I don’t like it,” he said finally. “You can set your watch by Joe Ball. Him not bein’ here at a time like this…and then the girl…I don’t like it.”

“That makes two of us, buddy,” Corso said. He dug around in his pocket. Came out with a business card. “Anything comes up you think I ought to know about, give me a call. Okay?”

“I don’t like it,” the guy said again.

Wednesday, October 18

4:59 p.m.

“I
don’t like it,” Gerardo said. “What the fuck’s he doing down here, anyway? Boss says he’s just some nosy writer dude. He got nothin’ to do with this shit.”

“Take it easy. We just gonna do what we was told,” Ramón said. “We gonna stay on him and find out where he lives.”

Although his voice was calm, Ramón was worried too. Ever since they’d found the guy dead in his truck, nothing had gone quite as planned. Somebody’d offed the mark before they got the chance. The truck had become unburied. The girl walked in on them while they were cleaning up. Tourists showed up and prevented them from making sure she was dead. Nothing but loose ends and sloppy work.

“We gonna tell the boss where he went?” Gerardo demanded.

“We tell ’em that, we gotta tell ’em about the girl.”

Gerardo thought it over. “Maybe we shoulda told ’em the guy was dead when we got there. Maybe then none of this other shit woulda happened.”

“I don’t think so,” Ramón said. “We tell ’em we lied about the hit, they’s gonna be somebody tailing our asses.”

“I don’t like it,” Gerardo said again. “Maybe we oughta just pop this writer guy’s ass and be done with it.”

“Here he comes,” Ramón said.

The green Subaru wagon was rolling down the access road, heading back out onto Western Avenue. Ramón waited until the car turned right at the farthest warehouse and disappeared from view, then dropped the Mercedes into
DRIVE
and took his foot off the brake. “Let’s see where he goes next,” he said, as much to himself as to Gerardo.