The Detective's Garden (32 page)

Dominick turned the boat to the south. Coins of light dap
pled the water. To their left sat the mainland and to the right
the lumped excrescences of the San Juan Islands. The name
Sainte-Marie
curled in thin black letters on the hull of the
speedboat. Water spat behind the motor. The bow rose. Elsie’s
hair whipped behind her head and one dark strand caught on
her cheek. They passed through the wake of a garbage barge,
leaping from the peaks of the waves and hammering, flat-bot
tomed, into the troughs. Inside them, their organs shook.

Clarke shouted, “Where will they take her?” He had to
scream to be heard over the wind and the engine. He looked
tense, like a figure carved of wood.

Dominick shouted, “I don’t know.” He stood at the wheel
and steered with smooth gestures.

Clarke’s head was lowered. Elsie held his forearm tightly as if
she was afraid one of them would fall off the boat. They pressed
their backs into the cream-colored seats. Clarke shouted at his
father, “How’re we going to find her?”

Dominick opened his mouth and his larynx worked and the
muscles of his voice box pinched together but the wind curled
inside the cave of his mouth and stripped his voice and left the
sound back behind them, disowned.

Elsie first pointed at the whales. Tall dorsal fins cut near
the sides of the boat. White bellies and saddle patches. The
black hulking rise of skin. The orca pod moved faster than the
Sainte-Marie
; Dominick cut the engine and the boat slowed to a
halt. Elsie grabbed Clarke and said, “What’re those?”

“Killer whales?”

Twenty yards out, a giant male breached the surface and wa
ter poured from his fins as he half turned in the air and his
white belly caught the sun. The splash when he belly flopped
was so great that drops of water scattered across their faces.
Dominick touched the spray and put his salty fingers to his
mouth. He restarted the speedboat’s engine.

A mother and two calves spy-hopped their heads from the
water and their dark eyes ogled the thin land creatures standing
in the half egg.

Dominick pushed the throttle and the boat sped forward
again. Clarke stood on uneven sea legs and shouted, “King’s
scared.” He gripped his father’s shoulder too hard. “We have to
turn back! She thinks we’re coming!”

His father put his mouth near Clarke’s ear and said, “We
are.”

KING OPENED HER
eyes to a white ceiling and white
walls. She wore a light blue gown. She lay on a bed. There was
an IV in her arm. A light-skinned man with sharp eyes sat in
the chair beside her. He was not her father. He was smaller than
her father, neither as tall nor as broad. He looked comfortable
in his blue suit.

King said, “Who’re you?”

The man stood and held out his hand. “I’m Charlie Basin.”

“I’m King Sawyer,” she said. They shook hands. “Are you
looking for my dad?”

“That’s right,” said Charlie.

“I want to go home,” King said. Her hand had touched the
cuff of Charlie’s jacket and the wool felt thin. The hospital light
was bluish and harsh. Outside the room, a voice floated over the
intercom.

“Are you thirsty, kiddo?” Charlie asked. “You want any
thing? A 7-Up? A popsicle?”

Charlie went out for a while. He sat in a waiting room and
took his phone out of his pocket, glanced at it in his hand, and
called Charlene. She didn’t answer. Her voice prompted him
to leave a message, then there was a mechanical chirp. He let
the buzzing quiet go on too long. She wouldn’t listen to so
much silence, would she? What would she hear? Heels walking
tiled corridors? A distant intercom? A throat being cleared? He
hung up and dialed again. This time he left a message.

“Guess where I am right now? I’m in a hospital with some
body else’s daughter. Her name is King. She’s eleven years old.
She’s been unconscious but she just woke up. I feel a little
shaky. I need to know that you’re going to be okay, Charlene.”

He sat in the waiting room for a few minutes, then he went
back into the kid’s room. She was sitting up in bed. She looked
good. Skinny but ruddy with health. She had eaten most of her
lunch. Roast beef. Corn. Broccoli. A roll. Milk. Butterscotch
pudding. Charlie stood by the door. He asked, “What do you
mean you want to go home?”

“I want to go back to Pennsylvania,” King said. Sharp hills
rose outside the window. She said, “I want you to take me.”

“There’s nobody there, King.”

“Our neighbor found something of my mom’s.”

“A neighbor? Jon Howland?”

“Uh-huh,” King said. “I talked to him on a pay phone.”

“What did he say?”

“I told you already. He found something of my mom’s.”

“What did he find?”

“I can’t tell you till I’m home.”

A nurse walked by the doorway, holding a syringe. Charlie
moved into the room and sat in a chair beside the bed. King
pulled a blue blanket up so that it covered her to the neck. She
said, “Will you take me back?”

“Like your dad,” Charlie said, “I have two children. A boy
and a girl.”

“Who’s older?” King said.

“The boy, Oswell.”

“Oswell?”

“It’s my grandfather’s name.”

“My dad and me aren’t getting along,” King said.

“Does he know that?”

“Not yet,” said King. She wrinkled her nose. “You get along
with your daughter?”

“Not very well right now.”

“What did you do wrong?” King asked.

Charlie stood up. He straightened his pressed pants. “I’m
going to get myself some lunch, King,” he said. “You want
anything?”

She looked down at her long dirty nails, her palms, the veins
beneath the skin looked like worms. Her black hair fell across
her face.

Charlie waited, then spoke. “We can talk about me taking
you back home,” he said. “Let me give Jon Howland a call, see
what he says.”

“If you take me back,” King said, “I’ll help you find my
dad.”

A long-faced doctor at St. Joseph’s Hospital observed King
for two nights. Charlie spent time inside the hospital room and
time outside the hospital room. He spoke with the Belling
ham police chief and the SWAT team leader. The search party
dead-ended on a wharf south of Bellingham, a boat had been
stolen but had not yet been found. Charlie called Andy Fry.

“This guy is capable,” Andy said. “You knew that.”

“It wasn’t all a loss. We got something he wants.”

“You think we can get to Sawyer through his daughter?”

“That’s right,” Charlie said. “I think he’s desperate.”

“Do it, then.”

With a few phone calls, Assistant Director Andrew C. Fry
had King released into the custody of Charles Basin. King put
on her tattered jeans and the threadbare Spiderman T-shirt
that Charlie had retrieved from Benny Ward’s house,
then she
sat on the edge of the bed. Her belly pushed out over the
top of her pants. When she pulled her socks on, Charlie said,
“Okay.”

The kid looked up. “Okay what?” she said. She had a face
straight out of a parenting magazine, only a little too thin
and pale.

“Okay,” Charlie said, “I’ll take you home.”

They stopped at a department store and bought a package
of polka-dotted children’s underwear, a few pairs of jeans, and
three T-shirts. King trailed after Charlie Basin, just at his heels.
By the rack of shirts, King said, “Can I pick the colors?” She
took her time. She picked yellow, orange, and blue. She tried
them on in a changing room with Charlie sitting on a chair
beside the door. King said, “Everything fits okay.” She said,
“Thanks.”

On the hourlong drive to Sea-Tac airport, Charlie Basin de
cided that she didn’t talk enough for an eleven-year-old. He
tried to get her going. “You don’t talk a whole lot?”

“I don’t really know you,” she said. “Did your kids talk a lot
more?”

“I think so,” Charlie said. “It’s hard to remember.”

He didn’t ask hard questions, nothing about her mother or
her father, or about the flight to Washington, D.C., or the se
cret of what Jon Howland had found. Instead he asked if she
was comfortable and turned on the air conditioning. He asked
if the blue T-shirt she was wearing was too big. He glanced at
her shaggy black hair. He remembered how infrequently he’d
spoken to Charlene during their trips in the car. He’d tuned
out. He’d thought of other things. He’d always thought of
himself as too busy.

“You been in an airplane before, King?”

“No.”

“Are you excited?”

“Not really.”

“You hungry? You want to stop for something?”

“No.”

“It’s going to be okay, kid.” He didn’t know what else to say.
There wasn’t room for small talk.

King’s eyes were wrinkled and skeptical. “You really think so?”

She was right, it had been a dumb thing to say.

With Charlie’s federal ID they passed briskly through secu
rity at Sea-Tac. They walked beside one another. Polished glass
threw their image back at them, a faceless man beside a face
less child. At the noisy terminal, they waited for the departure.
Charlie sat in a chair. King pressed against the glass and looked
out at the great dark stretches of tarmac. Her clothes looked
new but her face looked old, like a carving in ivory or bone.
Charlie thought, What awful human power can age a child?
What happens to a kid who loses her father?

THE
SAINTE-MARIE
SLID
onto the beach out
side the ferry town of Anacortes. The hull grated to a halt on the
sand, the sound like something old being worn away. A mass of
heavy-bellied clouds hung overhead. Dominick jumped from
the bow. His legs bent—great anonymous hollows pressed into
the sand. Elsie jumped overboard and Clarke slung the duffels
full of guns to his father.

They walked up the beach until the sand ended and they
scrambled over head-sized stones and driftwood. The air was
cool and moist. The beach gave way to a line of scrappy trees
and then to a boat storage warehouse sided with red corrugated
metal. They walked into residential Anacortes. Among small
brightly painted ranch houses, they split up. Dominick to find
a car. Clarke and Elsie to find a pay phone.

Walking toward town, Clarke and Elsie could see a clock
tower rising above the roofs of the squat houses. They found
a phone in the parking lot of a dingy grocery store. The
sun had just begun to set and neon signs for fish and beer
blinked brightly in the windows. Clarke wore a tattered
blue sweatshirt. He looked at Elsie, her pale pink shirt and
grungy wool sweater. She had a smudge of something dark
and greasy on the underside of her jaw. He licked his thumb
and tried to rub it off. He nodded. She looked like any other
teenaged urchin.

He made change in the grocery store and called his Aunt
Annie.

“Clarke, Clarke!” Annie said. “Are you okay?”

“We’re okay,” Clarke said. “I only have a minute. Have you
seen King? Heard from her?”

“What do you mean have I seen King? You’ve lost King?
Oh, my God!”

“We’re trying to find her.”

“Listen to me, Clarke,” Annie said, “you need to get away
from your father.”

“I don’t think so,” Clarke said. “I’m committed. I don’t want
to get away from him anymore.” He paused. “We’ll get King
back. I promise.”