County Line (36 page)

“Was it lost?”

“Stolen, I assume. Where did you find it?”

“There was a man in your apartment.”

She looks away, unsurprised. “I told him to leave. He’s not welcome there.”

“He didn’t listen.”

Her chin rises. “Wait. Did you say
in
my apartment?”

“He broke in. He was eating your soup.”

“Did you talk to him?”

I shake my head.

“Where is he now?”

I hesitate for so long she answers for me: “He’s dead.”

“You’re not surprised.”

“I’m not sure what I feel. I guess I’m supposed to be upset, but I don’t know.”

“He died in your bath tub.”

“Oh.
That
upsets me.”

“Who is he, Ruby Jane?”

“Someone who wasn’t supposed to ever come back.”

I think of what Mrs. Parmelee told me in her living room under the Cézanne print. “Your father?”

The shadow in her eyes is answer enough. Too many people have died.

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

“Jimmie …” I can’t finish the thought.

“What about Jimmie?”

I chase the right words, but I don’t need them. She sees it in my troubled gaze.

“I’m lucky, I guess.” Tears gather in her eyes. “I keep getting to not see people die.”

“Ruby Jane, I’m sorry.”

She stands and paces a short arc. She’s struggling against her tears, a losing battle. “How’d it happen?”

“A hit-and-run.”

“Just like you and Pete.”

“Close enough, yeah.”

“Why?”

“He was in trouble. Pete said he was almost broke. He sold his interest in Uncommon Cup.”

“Jimmie was always hanging by a thread. Even when the money was pouring out of his ears, it was contingent on things beyond his control. But he took care of me. I wouldn’t have been able to make Uncommon Cup happen without his help.”

“Something funny was going on. Have you ever heard the name Biddy Denlinger?”

Her face goes blank. She hesitates a brief, indecisive moment, then reaches for the doorknob. I sit up, wince as a sharp pain stabs from shoulder to belly. “Ruby Jane, please. It’s not safe.”

“It’ll be okay, Skin. Go home. I’ll be there soon.”

“Let me help you. Whatever’s going on, you don’t have to deal with it alone.”

“This I do.” Her words die in the empty doorway.

The plastic bag holding my pants and shoes is hanging on a hook next to the bed. They must have cut my shirt off in the ER. I’m stuck in a hospital gown printed with rainbows and unicorns. I yank out the IV, ignore the drop of blood welling up on the back of my hand. I manage to pull my pants on one-handed and slip into my shoes, the laces loose. I stuff the tail of my unicorn gown into my pants, but I can feel it billow behind me. My arm is killing me, my head swimming. Anyone who pays more than a second’s attention will assume I broke out of a lunatic asylum. But no one notices as I hobble out of the room and down the broad corridor.

Outside, the night is cool. I have no sense of where I am, but the sounds and scents are urban. I follow signs to the parking garage, brick-faced recent construction with bright-colored metal scrollwork—some hospital architect’s idea of warm and fuzzy. I trot along the sidewalk toward the street. A couple of unfamiliar cars go by on the hospital drive. Passing one of the exits I find myself bathed in headlights and turn. Ruby Jane, behind the wheel of her old beater Toyota, stops short. Her face reveals nothing and for a moment we stare at each other. Then she closes her eyes and her shoulders rise and fall. When she opens her eyes again, she looks exhausted. I move around to the passenger side but she shakes her head and pulls away. I run after her, gasping with pain, and reach the street in time to see her turn onto a major arterial. Salem Avenue.

An instant later, she’s gone.

- 43 -

Here’s to Health!

No one is happy I yanked out my IV. Doctor Lindoff suggests I might prefer the first aid aisle at Kroger’s. I try a helpless shrug, made more ridiculous by rainbows-and-unicorns. Finally, after many dark looks and a condescending lecture, one of the nurses finds me a bed and sets a fresh IV. I’m in an open ward with polyester privacy supplied by wraparound curtains and my own miniature TV on an adjustable armature. The bed is wider and more comfortable than the gurney, but the ward is noisier than the treatment room. My arm remains a loaf of semi-thawed meat. My shoulder and head ache. Every time I doze off a nurse wakes me to check my vitals and shine a pen light in my eyes. Others nearby murmur and moan, cough and hack, or call for more pain meds. During each inspection tour, the nurse lifts my gown to examine the ribbons of bruising on my chest and punish me with her stethoscope. Her third or fourth time through, she clucks to herself. “Quite a scar there, mister.”

“I got shot.”

I don’t think she realized I’m awake. “How did it happen?”

My thoughts are fluid and loose, and I almost unload the whole sordid tale. But when she adjusts my sling, a stab of pain in my shoulder provides a moment of clarity. “I used to be a cop.” Unimpressed, she says she’s sure the doctor will release me in the morning.

After that, she grants me some uninterrupted sleep. I dream I’m swimming against a cold current, my arms frozen and useless. At some point the quality of the light changes and I kick to the surface and awake. Pete stands at the curtain. His shirt and pants are spattered with blood. A bandage wraps his right forearm from elbow to wrist. Patches of gauze bloom all over him, like he fought his way out of a briar patch.

“Hey, Pete.” He watches me through a pair of raccoon’s eyes. “Did Ruby Jane ever tell you her mom or dad’s names?”

“Good morning to you too, Skin.”

“Sorry. Just wondering.”

He thinks for a moment. “Dale and Bella.”

“Was there a Dale or Bella on that list of Whittakers?”

“You’re just thinking of this now?”

“Pete, dammit—”

“It was the first thing I checked. No Isabella either, assuming that’s her given name.”

It was a long shot anyway. “What did she tell you about them?”

“Barely their names. I don’t think she has good memories of her childhood.”

What had Mrs. Parmelee told me? Abandoned by her father and accused by her mother. No good memories indeed. I can’t forget Ruby Jane’s hints just before the accident. If I hadn’t found Chase née Dale in her tub, I’d be ready to believe she’d buried her old man on Preble County Line Road.

“What are you going to do now, Skin?”

“Visit Mrs. Parmelee again.”

“You don’t believe she’s still there, do you?”

I’d shrug if it didn’t hurt so bad.

“We have to start somewhere.”

“I suppose.” He looks at his feet.

“What’s on your mind, Pete?”

“Ruby Jane stopped by while I was getting my stitches last night …” He pauses, and if groping for words. After a moment, he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you I have a flight.”

“A flight.”

“Out of Dayton at noon. A cab is waiting for me.”

No need to ask why. The last thing he’ll remember from before the crash is me declaring my love for Ruby Jane.

“You were right. I shouldn’t have come.”

“I’m sorry, Pete.”

I wonder what she said to him, but he doesn’t enlighten me. He smiles, weary and scornful. “No, you’re not.” He doesn’t say goodbye.

After he’s gone, I press the call button, desperate to take a piss. A nurse throws the curtain wide so the whole goddamn world can watch me struggle to my feet and drag the IV on a wheeled pole to the john. When I return, Doctor Lindoff is making her rounds, her eyes caffeine bright and her manner ephedrine crisp. She checks me over and declares me fit for release. Shirtless, I’m allowed to keep my gown. I wonder how hard it will be to claim my meager belongings from the wrecked rental car.

A candy-striper younger than my last pair of shoes wheels me to the billing office, where I sign away what I presume are all my assets. When that’s finished, I find myself in the lobby gazing out at too bright sunlight. My sense of regional geography is so uncertain I don’t know if Farmersville is in cab range, or if I’ll have to catch a stage coach. For a moment I consider following Pete to the airport, then wonder if they’ll let a man dressed in a check-out-my-ass hospital gown through security.

I pull out Chief Nash’s business card. My cell—and Ruby Jane’s—is somewhere between Preble County Line and the rental company’s tow lot; I have to use a pay phone. Collect. Nash accepts the charges and says he has something to show me.

“I’ll send an officer to pick you up.”

The least offensive t-shirt in the gift shop is a baby blue number with the words
Here’s to Health!
in yellow puff ink across the chest. I buy an overpriced packet of Advil and find a restroom, where swapping gown for shirt and wrestling back into the sling is an exercise in agony. I wash down the ibuprofen with a too-sweet vanilla latte from the cafeteria and return to the lobby as a Jackson Township patrol car pulls up in the traffic circle outside. Nash’s officer, a youngster named Mackenzie, is so ramrod straight I get exhausted looking at him. He lets me sit up front.

“We’re meeting the chief in West Alex.”

I don’t know where that is, but Mackenzie offers no clarification. We head west on Route 35, which passes through a number of fair-sized towns, then open countryside. He types on his computer and swerves through traffic. I squint against the high brassy glare outside, breathe conditioned air which smells of fried food and spilled coffee. After half an hour, we turn onto a narrow road lined with tract houses and steel pole barns. The road dead ends in a dirt lot. Behind a row of county maintenance trucks, Nash sits on the hood of his own patrol car, a Preble County Sheriff’s car parked next to him. Nash is talking to the deputy. Beyond them, I see a pickup truck. The windows are broken out and the cab scorched black. When I open the car door, I smell the burn on the warm, heavy air. Beyond the lot, grass fields extend out to a line of trees. The air is filled with the sound of insects.

Nash eyes my t-shirt. “Nice get up.”

“Be grateful I found the gift shop.”

He points at the pickup, like I can’t guess why we’re here. “This the truck that hit you?”

The front grill is shattered, the bumper a broken memory. The metal flake gold paint has a vague familiarity to it, though I have no recollection of seeing the approaching vehicle. Ruby Jane’s eyes were all I cared about.

“Probably. You check it for paint transfer?”

“Paint on the grill is a visual match to your rental. Got a tech coming out, but it’ll be six months before I see any results. You know how it is.”

“Yeah.”

“But we’re less than five miles from where you got nailed, and this truck was stolen from the short term lot at the Cincinnati airport yesterday morning.”

My cheeks flush. “We were followed.” Nash doesn’t comment. We cross over to the truck, peer into the overcooked cab. The seats are nothing but springs and frame, the dashboard a vision out of Dali. I can smell kerosene and burned plastic.

“How often is this lot used?”

“Depends on the weather. It’s been nice for a while.”

My idea of nice doesn’t include molten humidity. “So no one saw him.”

“Preble County will canvas the houses up the road. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“We’re a long walk from anywhere. One of the neighbors has to be missing a car.”

“It’s a fair bet.” Nash folds his arms across his chest. “So, Mister Kadash, you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

Sweat gathers in the small of my back. All I can offer is a weak shrug.

“This isn’t some jerk who doesn’t want to deal with insurance after a fender-bender. He tracked you from Cinci, and I’ll wager he followed you from San Francisco before that.”