Cold Black Earth (5 page)

“I’m working on it.” They shook hands and Roger left, casting one last look at Rachel before he ducked out the door.

“You’re going to be very popular around here,” said Matt as the cruiser pulled away from the house.

Rachel made a face. “Oh, please. The last thing on my mind when I came back was to reconnect with all the guys I knew in high school.”

Matt laughed softly. “Well, you gotta remember. It’s different around here than it is in a big city. In a small community there’s a limited supply of people. Believe me, it’s something us divorced and widowed guys are aware of. The pool of potential partners is small. And you just added one to the pool. You’re sending out ripples.”

Rachel tried to see through the amused look on his face, but he rose from the table and turned from her. Loneliness was an aspect of her brother’s life she had not considered. Suddenly she hurt for him again, but she could see he wasn’t going to sit still for her pity. Rachel turned back to the sink. “You know, I don’t think Roger’s as much of a fool as everyone seems to think.”

“Roger? No, he’s no fool.” Matt was rooting in the cupboard. “I may rib him with the Barney Fife thing, but I never thought he was stupid.”

“Did he ever get married?”

Matt brought out a can of soup and closed the cupboard. “His wife left him a couple of years back. Took their daughter and moved to Colorado.”

“My God, did we all make a mess of our marriages?”

“It’s harder than they let on when you’re young,” Matt said, frowning at the label on the can. “They don’t tell you what happens when the honeymoon’s over.”

5    

WQAD in the Quad Cities had the Ryle story on the five p.m. news. A powder-puff blonde was doing her best to look grim while saying, “Authorities believe Ryle may have left the area, but are warning residents to be on the lookout, as he is considered extremely dangerous.” Over her shoulder a picture hovered, a mugshot of a slightly disheveled middle-aged man, mostly bald with a tuft of hair sticking up on top, staring into the camera with a yearning look. “State police and local sheriffs’ departments are mobilizing extra units in an intense manhunt for the fugitive. They are warning people not to pick up hitchhikers and to report any unusual activity or suspicious individuals to their local police department.”

On the screen a burly state cop in his Smokey hat appeared, a microphone in his face. “The main thing to be aware of is that an individual like this has to seek shelter. It’s a little cold to be sleeping under the stars. We’re concentrating our search on abandoned buildings, but if he gets cold enough and desperate enough he’s going to be knocking on doors or trying to grab somebody’s car.”

The blonde came back and said, “An investigation at Mills Correctional Center in Warrensburg, where Ryle was incarcerated, has shown that the fifty-two-year-old inmate obtained an unauthorized pass to a receiving area at the prison where outside deliveries are made. He then apparently exited the prison by hiding in a vehicle, somehow avoiding security checks designed to foil just such an escape. An investigation of all vehicles that made deliveries at the prison on the day of the escape failed to yield any indication of which vehicle he may have used or where he exited the vehicle subsequently. Authorities at the prison are promising a thorough review of procedures.”

“Slam that barn door shut,” said Matt. “The horse is gone.”

The blonde wasn’t done; she looked her viewers in the eye and said, “Ryle, a former Bloomington resident, was convicted in 1998 of killing and dismembering his wife and two children.” Her glossy lips pursed in a moue of distaste, the blonde turned over a page, brightened abruptly and went to a commercial.

“He didn’t just dismember them,” said Matt, muting the television. “I got the scoop from Roger when it happened.”

Rachel looked at her brother in the depths of the old recliner where their father had reigned for so many years. “Do I want to hear this?”

Matt shrugged. “Only if you want to know just how sick this guy is.”

“Not really. But I know you want to tell me.”

Matt hauled himself to his feet, picking up his empty beer bottle and heading for the kitchen. As he passed Rachel he said, “He ate them.”

Rachel turned from the window and looked at the room where she had grown up, essentially unchanged in the last thirty years. Bed, dresser, desk, closet, the armchair by the window where she had sat looking out at the old oak and the fields beyond, dreaming of the wide world she would go out and conquer some day. Her eye fell on her bookshelves, jammed with hoarded favorites. She stepped over and ran her finger over the spines, looking for comfort. Here were
Winnie the Pooh
,
The Wind in the Willows
,
A Wrinkle in Time
,
The Outsiders
,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
,
Gone with the Wind
,
Wuthering Heights
. And over here
Anne of Green Gables
,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
,
Pride and Prejudice
,
Island of the Blue Dolphins.

She turned away.
Wuthering Heights
? Rachel couldn’t think of a more depressing book. Isolation and abuse, cruelty and despair. Why on earth did people read the damn thing?

I don’t want to be here, she thought. I want to be in Georgetown tonight, listening to wicked gossip about the Secretary over my fourth or fifth cocktail at Martin’s Tavern. I want to be in Paris, in Chantal’s flat up under the mansard roof, ten or twelve of us crowded in under the eaves, passing the bottle, something cooking on the stove, the slamming of trains behind the Gare du Nord drifting in through the open window.

Instead I’m here.

Rachel moved out into the hall, looking for her parents. Her dead sister-in-law had expunged most traces of them, but here was their wedding picture where it had always hung, at the head of the stairs, a big strapping country boy stuffed into a suit next to his pretty little bride, clutching a bouquet, fifty years before.

Since coming home Rachel had avoided looking into the master bedroom, but now she tiptoed over to the door and gently turned the knob. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The bed was stripped to the mattress. The pictures were gone from the walls; the blinds had been drawn over the windows and the curtains removed. The room was as sterile as a furnished apartment between tenants. If there had ever been a mess from Margie’s suicide, somebody had done a thorough job of cleaning it up. There were no ghosts here. She stood looking for a moment and then backed out of the room.

I’m going to go mad, she thought, back at the head of the stairs. She could hear the television going in the living room below. That’s what my life is going to be here, she thought. Watching Jay Leno with my brother every night.

When Rachel walked into the living room Matt said, “Dan’s coming over. He wants to take us to the bar.”

Rachel stopped in her tracks. “What bar?” she said, stupidly.

“Up in Alwood. That’s our usual joint. Unless we go over to Logan’s, there on 150. They got a pool table up at Alwood, so we usually go there.”

“Oh.” She stood looking at the television until Matt glanced up at her. “That’s nice,” she said. She was surprised to find that it did, in fact, have a certain appeal. “When’s he coming?”

“Any time.” Matt looked back at the TV. “I might let you two go by yourselves. I’m kinda tired.”

Rachel thought about that for a second. “Forget it, Matt. If you’re trying to play matchmaker, it’s not happening.”

“I’m not trying to play anything. I’m just tired. You don’t want to go, call him and tell him to forget it. I’ll give you the number.”

Rachel folded her arms, watching Jay Leno smirk. “No,” she said. “That’s OK. I could stand to get out of the house.”

Rachel had left for college before she reached legal drinking age, and thus had little experience of country saloons. This one was dark enough for anonymity but cheerful enough for comfort, especially with the Christmas lights strung up behind the bar. Besides the pool table it had a muted TV with a basketball game on, a jukebox playing Waylon Jennings, three video game machines and a bottle-blonde barmaid on the down side of fifty. It’s not Martin’s Tavern, but I’ll take it, Rachel thought.

“What are you drinking?” Dan said, sliding onto a stool. He had dressed for the occasion to the extent of buttoning his flannel shirt and tucking it into his jeans. Down the bar, male heads were turning, and Rachel thought of ripples in a pool.

“Gin and tonic.”

“I don’t know if they can handle anything that complicated here,” Dan said. “Mostly us hicks drink beer.”

The blonde gave him a sour look. To Rachel she said, “Honey, I can make anything you want. You want a mai tai or a martini, I can make it.”

“Gin and tonic’s fine.”

“Well, I’m a hick,” Dan said. “I just want a beer.”

The blonde went to fetch the drinks, and Dan traded jabs with a couple of the men at the bar, mostly middle-aged and with a preponderance of denim, Deere caps and paunch. Dan made no attempt to introduce her, and Rachel was grateful.

“Here’s to ya,” Dan said, clinking his glass against hers. “Nice of you to come and hang out with us hicks.”

Rachel gave him the dead-at-ten-paces look. “Look, Dan. I may have been away for a while, but that doesn’t mean I brought back any kind of attitude.”

He smiled, looking sheepish. “All right, that’s good to know. I’m trying hard not to be intimidated, all the places you’ve been, the stuff you’ve done.”

“Everybody’s got to do something. I just had an idea and ran with it.”

“You went and saw the world. I’ve never done that.”

“It’s not too late.”

He took a drink of beer and shook his head. “Yes, it is. I’m not going anywhere at this point in my life. Once I washed out of football at the collegiate level, it was over. That was my shot. But you had your shot and made it count. You went and did exciting stuff in exotic places.”

Rachel concentrated on stirring her drink. She had spent years defending the dignity of farm life, and the last thing she was going to do was exalt her experiences over those of somebody who had stayed home to work the land. “It’s still just life, wherever you go. I messed up a marriage in another country, big deal. I still messed it up.”

“Takes two to mess up a marriage. That’s what I decided.”

“Sometimes it takes three. Or, in my husband’s case, half a dozen.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dan gave a shake of the head. “Jesus. With you at home? What was that man’s problem?”

“Mainly the fact that I wasn’t at home, I think. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Well, hell. I’m just calling it like I see it. Anybody that’s running around on you needs to get his eyesight checked or his priorities straight. Or both.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’ll take a couple more drinks before I start falling for lines like that.”

“And it’ll take a couple more drinks before I can come up with another one.”

They laughed. Rachel was determined to keep it light, but it was nice to be flattered; it had been a while.

“I’m worried about your brother,” Dan said.

“Why’s that?” Rachel said, looking into her glass.

“He’s depressed. Look at him tonight, sitting there watching TV instead of coming out with us.”

Rachel had her suspicions about that, but she said, “Yeah, that surprised me a little.”

Dan frowned into the mirror behind the bar. “He never has bounced back from Margie killing herself.”

“Well, that would be a tough thing to bounce back from.”

“Yeah, but you would. You’d have to. You gotta go on with life. I don’t think he’s fighting hard enough.”

“He had a lot to absorb in a short time. My folks and Margie all went right in a row. He’s worried about Billy, too.”

Dan waved a hand in dismissal. “Billy’s OK. Matt’s too hard on him. He’s forgotten what it’s like to be eighteen, nineteen. We did some running around, too. Billy’s a damn good kid. He did some work for me a couple of years back, helping me put up a shed. He’s a good worker when he wants to be.”

“I think Matt’s worried about the company he keeps.”

“What, the Stanfield kid? OK, the kid’s a little rough. But I don’t know that they’re getting up to anything too awful.”

“What are they getting up to?”

Dan drank, not looking at her. “All I know is the rumors.”

“Which are?”

“Don’t take my word for it. It’s all just hearsay.”

“Has Matt heard it?”

“Sure. OK, look, the Stanfield kid got busted for selling drugs a couple of years back. Got probation, didn’t have to do jail time. But people don’t figure he got out of the business. And Matt’s scared Billy’s in it with him.”