The First Rule of Ten (27 page)

“What happened?”

“Norman messed up the machine somehow while he was out there prospecting. Then he put it back broke.”

“How’d they connect it to Norman?”

Dardon permitted himself a small laugh. “You’re going to love this. Come Monday morning, he let it slip he knew the thing was busted. When his boss confronted him, Norman broke down, cried real tears. Of course he denied everything when they suspended him.”

“Any guess what he was looking for?”

“Hell if I know. Nobody ever said, but I haven’t heard rumors of any buried treasure in these parts. If there was, I’d be out there digging for it myself.”

I spent an hour playing with my new toys, organizing, rearranging, and testing the equipment. Everything worked. Mike had spent a quick morning executing what would have, one, taken me at least a week of frustrated finagling; two, included many more four-letter words than Tank was accustomed to hearing; and three, culminated in an emergency call to Mike to come out and save me from tearing out my already-too-short hair.

I’ve learned the hard way it’s better to just skip directly to three.

Time to make it mine.

I took a scavenging stroll outside and returned with a sprig of hummingbird sage, a coffee scoop’s worth of sandy soil, and five very small stones of varying shapes and colors. My best find was a polished gray oval, narrow and flat like a guitar pick.

I placed the sage by my new laptop, where it could remind me that a world of hawk and deer and wildflowers waited right outside my office door.

I scoured my cabinets and came up with a shallow ceramic dish for olive oil dipping. Sorry, friend, you’ve got a new job. I filled it with the sand. Using the polished oval stone like a tiny hoe, I smoothed the surface. Then I positioned all five stones in the sand, choosing spots that felt just right for that moment.
Et voilà
. Instant Zen garden.

I called John D and let him know I was headed his way.

“I need your help with something,” I told him. I didn’t tell him I probably could have gotten my answers over the phone, but I wanted to check on how he was healing.

“You’re coming out here so often, you oughta consider running for mayor,” he said.

Ninety minutes later I arrived with a quart of fresh fruit salad, a loaf of cracked wheat bread, a wedge of sharp cheddar cheese, and my growing affection.

He seemed delighted with all four.

“Are you sure you’re up for this tour?” I asked.

“I’m a farmer,” he said. “We’re tough.”

He did look amazingly spry for a man with a tumor who was recently mugged.

As we hiked slowly around his property, I gave him a rundown on what I’d learned from Dardon.

“Norman never said one word to me about any of that,” John D said. He scraped at the earth with one work boot. “What you gotta know about Norman is, he’s always got some kind of scheme going. Always has, prolly always will.” A small smile crossed John D’s face. “One summer, when he was just a kid, he set up a farm stand selling fruit, only the fruit came from our own kitchen bowl.”

“Does Norman have kids?”

“Not that I know of. No, Norman is all that’s left of the Murphy gene pool.” John D shrugged. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

I said nothing as we reached the end of a row of dying almond trees. John D parted the branches of one, and plucked a bruised black leaf from a smattering of green ones.

“Look here, Ten. This is what’s been happening.” His forefinger traced the bright yellow streaks striating the blackened surface. “Within a year, this tree will have only black leaves. Then it won’t have any. It’ll be dead, just like all the others.”

“And nobody could ever tell you why?”

He shook his head. “They said maybe acid rain, but nobody seemed to care much, one way or the other. Eighty acres is small potatoes.”

He pointed. “Over there, that’s what you’ll be wanting to see.” John D led me over to an old wooden well. He drew up a bucket of water.

He dipped in a forefinger and touched it to his tongue. “Tastes okay to me.” He offered me the bucket.

I did the same. And spat reflexively. There was no mistaking the faint but familiar residue left on my tongue: bitterness, metal, and death.

John D was peering at me. “Boy, that’s some look came over your face right then. You okay?”

I told him about the taste that had paid a visit two days earlier, a foreshadowing of this moment with him.

John D squinted. “Hunh. Seems like your inner dowser’s been working overtime.”

Something was niggling at me.

“John D, didn’t you say you asked Norman to look into something for you, having to do with your land?”

John D nodded. “Yeah. I told Norman about the trees dying when I first noticed it. Asked if his department could do what they do, you know, analyze the well water I use for irrigation. He came out and took some samples, but then, who knows, I prolly made him mad about some dang thing or other, because he never got back to me.”

I said nothing. John D took a moment, but he put it together.

“Oh, Norman,” he said.

Norman’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac, one of the worst places for any kind of covert surveillance, so I had little choice but to go overt. I had come equipped, in the form of a direct-mail postcard of a hollow-eyed missing child.

I made my way down the street toward Norman’s place, ringing doorbells, flashing my postcard, and getting blank looks and head-shakes in return. Too bad. I could have addressed two wrongs with one right action.

Norman’s driveway was like a play yard for a giant toddler. A gleaming new speedboat, hitched to a trailer, sat next to a bright red motorcycle with three fat wheels, just an oversized kid’s trike.

I didn’t see any SUV, though, official or otherwise, so I rang Norman’s doorbell. A few moments later the door opened and I had my first look at Mrs. Norman Murphy, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. I blinked. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was pulled off her face with two clips. Pink cheeks. Hazel eyes, a little watery. A nice figure, kind of regular, not too skinny, not too plump. She wore stretchy pants and one of those short-sleeved shirts with a tiny embroidered alligator on it. She looked … nice.

“Yes?” she said.

I showed her my postcard and asked if she’d seen the little boy. She glanced at it, then back at me.

“I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him. Poor little thing.”

I was astonished to see her eyes brimmed over with tears.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m … really emotional these days.” She started to close the door, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You’re Mrs. Murphy, aren’t you? Norman’s wife?”

“Yes. I’m Becky Murphy,” she nodded, her forehead furrowing.

“I used to work for the city,” I explained. “I’ve met Norman. He’s quite a character.”

“He is, isn’t he?” Her smile was amused, yet slightly apologetic, like that of an indulgent parent. It occurred to me she might actually love Norman, which meant some part of Norman was actually lovable.

“I notice Norman’s a boater,” I said.

Mrs. Murphy’s eyes widened as tiny beads of sweat formed on her upper lip. She swallowed twice, and shuddered.

“Unh,” she said, and all the pink drained out of her face, leaving it the color of putty. “I have to go. I’m going to be ill,” she whispered. She covered her mouth and closed the door.

Maybe just the thought of Norman’s boat made her seasick.

C
HAPTER
26

I reached Mike just as I hit the 170. I told him what I needed. New office equipment or not, this particular piece of research was way beyond my skill set.

He called back as I was chugging up the hill to my house.

“You hacked into Public Works already?”

“Didn’t have to. I found a pdf of their annual report on employee suspensions, which gave me the personnel codes I needed. From there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump into Norman’s office computer. It took a few minutes to break into his files, but once I got inside, it was like driving a go-cart, boss.”

“Were the reports there?”

“Yeah. John D’s place, the pig farm. The whole area tests clean as a whistle. Maybe I should move out there.”

“Hunh.”

“Then again, maybe not. Ever heard of neptunium-237? … Me neither. It’s a by-product of uranium tailings. Also comes from spent nuclear rods. Norman had a bunch of encrypted information on it.”

Acid started to pool in the back of my throat and I almost gagged. “Toxic?”

“Highly. And it’s got a half-life of two million years. They just found some buried in Utah.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“It means if you visit Utah four million years from now, some of the neptunium-237 might be gone.”

“But everything tested clean?”

“That’s what Norman wrote.”

I was inside my house, opening a can of tuna for Tank, when I got a follow-up text message:
NM BOUGHT BOAT ON EBAY
2
MO
AGO
88K
CASH
.

As a public servant, Norman took home about $5,000 a month, if he was lucky. Now he had the cash to buy new boats? Love or money: I picked door two. Norman was into some dirty money, and he didn’t seem too concerned about flaunting it. I thought about Mrs. Murphy, and wondered if she knew about Norman’s latest scam, or if his secret lay buried deep inside their marriage, slowly but surely poisoning the well.

My landline rang, and I recoiled a little inside. I was tired. My mind was starting to spin. I needed to sit on my meditation cushion with my eyes closed for at least half an hour. But I worked out of home now, so I had to check.

It was Julie. I pinged and I ponged, should I, shouldn’t I, but guilt won out and I answered.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“How are you doing?”

“Great,” I fibbed. Instead of making me feel better, it irritated the hell out of me. I started over.

“Actually, kind of tired. I’ve been beating the bushes out in Lancaster. How about you?”

She sighed.

“I’m rotten, Ten. I begged off work early today. The chef reamed out another busboy, just for breathing the same air as far as I could figure out, and I couldn’t take it. I may never go back.”

She paused. I knew she was waiting for me to invite her over. I ran through my options, and none of them felt good. But she was sounding needy, and I was sleeping with her, and I knew what that added up to. I suggested she come over in a few hours.

“Are you sure you’re not too tired?”

“I’m sure,” I fibbed for the second time. The pressure behind my eyes started to re-form into a headache.

“Okay. If you’re absolutely sure. What would you like to eat?”

“Julie,” I snapped, “my brain’s fogged over at the moment. Just food, okay?”

The line went silent.

Then, “You know what, Ten? Forget it.”

“Julie …”

“No, I mean it. This is called three strikes and you’re out. I’ll see you around, okay?”

I spent my entire meditation defending myself to myself, which did little to relieve the tiredness or the guilt. So I took a long, hot shower and changed into my last clean pair of jeans. Tank and I moved outside to the deck. A flat, gray bank of fog hung like a pall on the horizon. The sun was sinking behind the wall of vapor. Fingers of orange-yellow light reached downward, as if in supplication. Then the mist swallowed up the last of the sun, snuffing out the flames.

It doesn’t always have to be like that.

Yes, it does.

I shivered and walked inside, shutting the door hard on the dank night.

I couldn’t shake the heavy feeling of dread, nor could I identify its source, beyond disappointing yet another woman, that is. I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and set it aside to breathe. My cell phone chirruped from the bedroom, and I ran for it. Maybe Julie was calling me back.

It was a Lancaster number, one I didn’t know. I answered.

“Mr. Norbu? This is Norman Murphy.” His voice was strained and tense.

“Norman,” I said. The silence stretched out a while. I wasn’t going to make this easy.

“Listen, I happen to be in your neck of the woods this evening. I wonder if we could meet for a cup of coffee?”

“A friend was planning to meet me here in an hour, so it needs to be quick,” I semi-lied. This was becoming a regular habit. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about my father.”

I didn’t much care for the tightness in Norman’s voice. I grabbed my Wilson to stash in the Mustang’s glove compartment.

I was halfway down the hill, hugging a steep curve, when my windshield was flooded with light. A black Cadillac Escalade had gobbled the turn just below me, and was charging like a bull. I yanked the Mustang hard to the right, skidding to a halt. The canyon dropped into darkness somewhere just beyond the shoulder. The Escalade slowed to a crawl, drew alongside me, and stopped. It loomed over me, a beast of chrome and metal. I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see inside the tinted windows. Every nerve jumped to the surface of my skin.
Okay. Okay. Keep breathing. It may not be what you think.

I started to squeeze past, maybe two inches of space between cars, when the back door of the Escalade opened and a man stepped out. I couldn’t proceed without running him over, and I couldn’t reverse without driving blind. I was wedged in so tight I couldn’t even open my door.

I lunged across the seat for the glove compartment, but the door blew open, and I was face to face with the ruddy menace of Liam O’Flaherty—Brother Eldon, to his faithful flock.

“Hello, Ten m’boy,” he said.

He raised a .38 snubnose and aimed it at my sternum. A Smith & Wesson Airlite. He cocked it and smiled.

It looked like a cap gun in his big paw, but I knew better. A high-velocity .38 Special cartridge will drive a 110-grain bullet into its target at 1,000 feet per second. And it doesn’t have a safety.

Liam knew better, too.

“It’s a modest little weapon,” he said, “but it can make a right mess of you. Now get out.”

I slid across the front seat and ducked outside. Liam kept the gun trained on me until I was standing in front of him.