Cold Black Earth (28 page)

She joined Greg and Susan ten minutes into a drama that showed implausibly handsome crime scene technicians collecting evidence on a sex killing that had occurred off-screen. To Rachel the whole thing looked thin and phony. After the show they went back to the kitchen and Greg made Manhattans for everyone. “We allow ourselves one cocktail a night,” said Susan. “This month it’s Manhattans. We’re working our way through the bartender’s guide.”

“I’m amazed you can limit yourself to one,” said Rachel. “In Baghdad, with all the stress, there were people that put away amazing amounts of booze, every night. I knew if I ever started I would wind up an alcoholic, so I went completely Carry Nation, didn’t touch a drop for months. And then when I got back to Beirut with Fadi I would drink like a fish.”

They wound up skipping the next TV show, hanging at the kitchen table while Rachel told them about Baghdad and Beirut and eventually, over a mutually agreed-upon second drink, the crashing and burning of her marriage. “Thank God there were no kids,” said Rachel. “That’s the one thing we did right.”

In the heavy silence that followed, Rachel’s cell phone could be heard faintly purring. She went and pulled it out of her purse and saw a number she didn’t recognize on the display. “Hello?”

“Aunt Rachel?”

“Billy? What’s up?”

“I need your help, Aunt Rachel. I need it bad.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You got the Chevy, right? You could come and pick me up?”

“Uh, sure. Where are you?”

“Right now I’m out in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. But what I need is, if you can swing by where I was in East Warrensburg and grab my stuff, I can tell you where to come and get me.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m in deep shit and I got nobody else I can trust. I need you to get me to Peoria tonight if you can.”

Now she could hear the edge in his voice, the desperation. “Billy, if you need help, I’ll help you, but are you allowed to leave the county while you’re out on bail?”

“Christ, if that was all I had to worry about. Look, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it, but right now I just got to get out of the cold and then have somebody come and get me and take me the hell away from Dearborn County.”

Rachel flicked one glance at Greg and Susan’s baffled looks and said, “All right, Billy. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Where am I meeting you?”

“Get my stuff from Kayla’s house first and then come up 74 and get off at Alwood. Then it gets a little complicated. You got a pencil, I’ll give you directions.”

28    

Rachel made one wrong turn in East Warrensburg, but in a town that size you can never go too far wrong, and she pulled up in front of the long low ranch house by ten thirty. The curtains were drawn but there was light behind them. Rachel took a deep breath and got out of the car.

She rang the doorbell and waited, looking around at the scattering of lights in the darkness under the trees, houses jumbled just close enough together to qualify as a town, people keeping their distance from one another. Somewhere not too far away, somebody was playing country music, loudly. The door opened.

“Can I help you?” The woman standing there with a cigarette in her hand looked as if she had been pretty not that long ago, before hard living or maybe hard usage had worn her down; the tobacco and the whiskey Rachel could smell on her breath hadn’t helped.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” said Rachel. “Billy Lindstrom asked me to come by and pick up his things.”

All Rachel got in response was a little frown and a series of blinks. She was about to launch into explanations when the woman said, “He’s cuttin’ and runnin’, is he?”

Rachel groped for an answer and said, “All I know is, he called me and asked me to come and get his things. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Rachel Lindstrom, Billy’s aunt.” Rachel held out her hand.

The woman gave it a good look first before she stuck the cigarette in her mouth to shake it. “I’m Deanna. What happened, him and Kayla had a fight?”

“I really don’t know. All Billy told me was to pick up his stuff and come and get him.”

“Decided he was too good for us, is that it?”

Rachel sensed class resentment at work and groped for an answer. “I got the impression he was in some kind of trouble.”

Deanna took a drag on the cigarette and stepped back to let Rachel in. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Compared to some of the riff-raff Kayla’s drug in here, Billy wasn’t too bad. I thought maybe he’d get Kayla straightened out a little, but I guess that’s asking too much.”

The television was on, emitting unidentifiable generic reality-show babble; a DVD cover bearing the image of a bloodied saw blade lay in the middle of the floor. “I think Billy has enough work to do getting himself straightened out.”

They stood for a moment assessing each other, and then Deanna shrugged and said, “Well, easy come, easy go. Come on back and see if you can find his stuff in the mess.” She led Rachel back through the kitchen to the door in the rear where Billy had emerged the last time she had been here. At the end of a short hallway Deanna pushed a door open and gestured Rachel in.

The mess wasn’t that bad: There was an unmade bed and a pile of clothes on a chair, but the floor was mostly visible and the dirty dishes were neatly stacked on a bedside table. On the wall at the head of the bed was a poster depicting a woman dressed in black leather standing in a cemetery, with the legend
Thanatos
at the bottom. “OK,” said Rachel.

She had packed Billy’s things to begin with, so she didn’t have too much trouble identifying them. She found the tote bag in the closet and began filling it. “Don’t forget the bathroom,” said Deanna. “He’s got some shit in there.”

Rachel retrieved his toothbrush; there was a can of shaving cream and a package of disposable razors on the sink. “Are these Billy’s?”

“They ain’t mine,” said Deanna. “We don’t have nobody around here that shaves but Billy.” Rachel stuffed them into the bag.

At the door Rachel checked her urge to rush out into the clean cold air. She turned and said, “Thank you for taking Billy in. His father and I appreciate it.”

Deanna was crushing her cigarette out in an ashtray that hadn’t been emptied in a while. She looked up and said, “He’s got a father that’s still interested in him, that’s more than my Kayla’s got.” The look in the eyes under the fake lashes was sullen.

Rachel didn’t have much to say to that. She left, closing the door behind her. She went to the car and got in behind the wheel, tossing the bag on the passenger seat. She reversed and swung around and made a beeline for the road back toward Warrensburg.

In five minutes she was on the interstate and in fifteen she was pulling off at Alwood, the gas station sign floating high and bright in the night. She rolled past it to the edge of town and pulled over to the side of the road, looking out into the darkness beyond the range of her headlights. She sat still for a time and then switched on the dome light, reached into her purse and pulled out the sheet of notepaper on which she had written Billy’s directions. She scanned them again. They were simple enough and she didn’t really need the paper, but she was stalling.

The problem was the fear. Dan had assured her there were police on the roads tonight, but Rachel hadn’t seen any. The house Billy had described to her was about three miles from where she sat, if his directions were accurate: south and a little east. He had said it was hard to find, which meant it was isolated and not on a frequented road. Rachel was trying hard not to let her imagination run away with her, but the prospect of exploring the remoter corners of Dearborn County at night with a killer, sane or otherwise, demonstrably at large, had reduced her to paralysis.

She laid the paper on the seat and reached into her purse for her cell phone. She hadn’t asked what bar Dan was camped at, but there was a chance he was just a few blocks away, here in Alwood. And if not, he was probably at the bar at the Rome crossroads on 150, a ten-minute drive away. It was time to call for the cavalry.

Dan answered on the second ring. “I need your help,” Rachel said.

There was no joking this time, maybe because he had picked up on her tone of voice. “What do you need?”

“Billy called. He’s in some kind of trouble and he wants me to come and pick him up. Right now I’m sitting at the side of the road in Alwood. He said to meet him at an old abandoned house around here somewhere. He gave me directions. But I’m too scared to go look for it alone.”

There was a pause of maybe three seconds. “What the fuck is that kid up to?”

“I don’t know. He said he was in deep shit and he couldn’t trust the cops and he needed to be taken to Peoria. I went by his girlfriend’s house and got his stuff and now I just have to go find him. But I’m too chicken to go by myself. I just can’t do it. Is that ridiculous?”

“No. That’s not ridiculous at all. Sit tight. I’m right here in Alwood. Where are you exactly?”

“I’m right at the edge of town, on what is it, East 200 maybe. A couple of hundred yards past the gas station.”

“Give me five minutes,” said Dan, and hung up.

Rachel let the phone drop to her lap, closing her eyes and exhaling in relief. She rested for a moment, listening to the gentle idling of the car, and then opened her eyes and put the phone back in her purse. She turned off the headlights, switched on the hazard blinkers and then turned off the ignition, bewildered as she did so by the sudden slight rocking of the car and the eruption of swishing, thumping and creaking noises from behind her. Her hand was still on the key when her shocked awareness registered the presence of somebody in the car with her.

Rachel screamed. A hand in her hair jerked her head back and an instant later the knife was at her throat.

The physiological responses overwhelmed anything resembling actual thought: All her brain could come up with was an adrenaline surge and muscular contractions. A voice in Rachel’s ear said, “Surprise.”

Terror does not facilitate speech: What came out of Rachel’s mouth with each breath was merely wind through the vocal cords, a rapid high-pitched “Huh, huh, huh” that communicated nothing except distress. Her mind, however, stabilized to the point where she could think: I am going to die now. She had a brief pitying vision of a woman with her throat cut bleeding all over the seat of a car, and the voice said, “I think we’ll just start her up again and put her in gear, don’t you?”

“Huh, huh, huh, huh . . .”

“Calm the fuck down, will you? I ain’t gonna hurt you.” The pressure of the knife blade on her throat eased and her hair was released. “Less you fuck with me. Now turn on the car and let’s move. We ain’t waiting for your friend.”

“Huh, huh, huh. Oh, God.” Rachel was amazed to find that her throat was not cut and strove to control her breathing. “Oh, God. All right, all right.”

“Just take it easy and get this car started. We’re going to see Billy, OK? You get me to where Billy is and nobody gets hurt. Fuck with me and I’ll kill you, you got it?” The knife edge pressed on her throat again, lightly, then receded. “Now let’s go.”

“All right, all right.” Rachel reached for the key in the ignition.

She was still in full adrenaline surge, which made fine motor skills problematic, but she managed to get the car started. “Here’s the deal,” the voice behind her said. “You get me to where Billy is, I’ll let you go. You fuck with me, I’ll kill you. I got every cop in the State of Illinois looking for me already, so one more crime don’t mean shit to me.”

Rachel knew now who it was behind her; the voice had finally registered. “Take the car,” she said. “Just take it.”

“I don’t think so,” said Randy Stanfield. “I don’t want you running back there for help. What I want is for you to take me to Billy. Hand me those directions.” Rachel hesitated, then stiffened as the knife touched her again. “Come on, I heard you looking at the paper. Give ’em here.”

Rachel felt for the paper in the dark and handed it back over her shoulder. Stanfield snatched it. “We’ll pull over so I can take a look somewhere up ahead. For now just get this fucker moving.”

She managed to turn on the headlights and put the car in gear. Pulling onto the road, she headed south into the darkness, quickly leaving the lights of the town behind. Function, she told herself, fighting hard to order her thoughts. What will Dan do when he doesn’t find me? He will call me on my cell phone. When I don’t answer, he will . . . what? She came up against a blank wall. Beneath her headlights the black asphalt came flowing out of the darkness.

“Not too fast now. We don’t want no accidents.” The blade was not touching her throat, but his hand was resting on her shoulder blade, clutching the knife.

I didn’t check the backseat, Rachel thought. The one time I was too distracted, too hurried, he was there and I had left the car unlocked. She remembered looking into the darkness under the trees from Kayla’s doorstep; he had been there and she had missed him.

Function, she thought. Her heart rate and breathing had stabilized at crisis levels; she was in control of the car though driving stiffly, gripping the wheel hard. This is the trouble Billy was running from. So whatever you do, you can’t take him to Billy.

“Pull over.”

Rachel obeyed, easing to a stop on the shoulder. “What do you want with Billy?” she said, her voice quavering.

“Me and him got business.” The knife went away and the dome light came on, and then quickly the knife was back, in Stanfield’s other hand. There was a pause, a rustle of paper, and then the light went off and Stanfield said, “Let’s go. Looks like your first turn’s up here on the left.”

And that is that, she thought. He knows where Billy is and we are running out of time. She pulled back onto the road and accelerated. The road rose in front of her.

There is a revolver in my purse, Rachel thought.

“Slow down,” said Stanfield. “Here it is.”

Rachel braked at the top of a hill and turned left onto a gravel road. She was already on unfamiliar ground, disoriented with no landmarks visible in the dark. The numbered county roads at one-mile intervals overlay a less than regular system of blacktopped major roads and graveled minor ones, mostly at right angles but with local anomalies, roads that didn’t get used or maintained much, and here and there a road to nowhere. Exploring these roads while learning to drive, Rachel had once been hopelessly lost within three miles of her home. This one was taking her into the rolling, intermittently wooded country to the north of the creek. The road dipped and something scuttled across it in the headlights.

In Rachel’s purse, her cell phone rang. “Leave it be,” said Stanfield. “We got enough for a party already.”

“He’ll come looking for me.”

“Let him.” They were approaching a stop sign. Stanfield said, “OK, this is East 400. Lemme see, go straight here and then make the first right about, should be a half mile ahead.”

Rachel looked up and down the county road as she crossed it but saw no lights. She took a deep breath. “We’re not that far from the interstate and you can be miles away before I can hike anywhere to get help. Why don’t you just forget about Billy, let me out and take the car?”

“Why don’t you just keep your fuckin’ mouth shut and drive? I told you, I got business with Billy. Once I’m done with him, I’m gone. Here’s your turn.”

Rachel turned south and the road dipped again, dropping toward the creek. There were trees on either side now; she hadn’t seen a house for the past three-quarters of a mile. Gravel and ice in the potholes crunched under her tires. She slowed as the road bottomed out. Just ahead her lights shone on the low steel guardrails of a bridge where the road crossed the creek. “Turn here,” Stanfield said. “This has gotta be it.”