The Rivers Run Dry (23 page)

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I haven't done right by you,” she continued. “Here you are, working around the clock, and I didn't have the foggiest what it is about. Why, that's just plain selfish of me. From now on, Raleigh, you have my word. I'll pay close attention to your work.”

I glared at Aunt Charlotte. She offered another mooing expression.

“In fact, why don't I come see where you work?”

“Really, that's not necessary—”

“Raleigh's always out in the field,” Aunt Charlotte jumped in. “Even for lunch. It's pretty dirty out there.”

My mother looked horrified. “You're eating with all the rocks?”

Aunt Charlotte was on a roll. “Rocks are good company. You'd be surprised. And they have better manners than most people.”

“Raleigh, you're not eating near that arsenic, are you?”

“Arsenic?” I said.

“The arsenic that the company is being sued over.”

“Oh,
that
. No, ma'am. I'm not.”

“And you wash your hands after you've been there?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Your sister once had a close call, scared me out of my mind,” she said. “We were in our first apartment in Richmond, not a nice place either. She was two and came toddling down the hall holding a box of rat poison. Somebody had left it in the closet.”

“So that's what happened to Helen,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.”

“Raleigh, I'm serious. If any of that arsenic gets into your system, it could kill you. It can work into your ovaries and your children will have low IQs.”

“As long as they're polite,” I said.

My mother paused. Significantly. “Have you talked to DeMott Fielding recently?”

A family friend in Richmond, DeMott Fielding was the man my mother most wished to graft into the family tree. “Why would I be talking to DeMott?”

“Why? Oh my lands!” she cried. “I
have
been negligent.”

Aunt Charlotte said, “Fielding? Not those traitors out on the James River?”

During the Civil War, the Fieldings had offered their plantation to Union troops. General McClellan lived in the family's mansion, his army spearing canvas tents across the wheat fields that ran alongside the James River. Richmond burned in pridefilled loss, but the Fielding estate came through the war with barely a scratch. And the embers of resentment still smoldered.

“Don't you dare marry one of those FFVs,” Aunt Charlotte said, referring to the First Families of Virginia, the state's blue bloods. “I married one and look what happened. I'll be in recovery the rest of my life. I'm telling you, those people are inbred. Have you taken a good look at their earlobes?”

“Charlotte, please,” my mother said.

“Hey, I know a nice guy for Raleigh,” she said. “He comes into the store. Nadine, you met Gary.”

“That round man with the little glasses?”

She nodded. “I think he's single.”

I stood suddenly, Madame fell off my feet.

“What's wrong?” my mother said.

“I have to get to the office.”

“The office!” she cried. “But it's past seven o'clock. Can't it wait until morning?”

“No.” I felt a rush of relief. Finally, an opportunity to speak the truth. “No, it can't wait until morning.”

A little after 8:00 p.m. I walked across the casino parking lot searching for a specific vehicle and license plate number. The bright orange neon sign reflected along the back windows of sedans and pickups, and I finally found the old gray Honda wagon parked along the building's side, where the pavement turned to sand and gravel. Red signs designated reserved spaces for high-level employees, including P. Wannamaker whose car was gone. When I circled back, looking for hidden cameras, I found one affixed to the corner of the stucco building. It was pointed at the public lot in front. Apparently, employee parking didn't have surveillance.

I snapped on latex gloves, slipping a seven-inch flat bar up my left sleeve; then I went to work on Stacee Warner's Honda. Her muffler was coated with rust, the same color as the miso sauce now giving me indigestion. The car was parked next to a Ford F-250 truck, the cab jacked up on fat tires. With the flat bar, I pried loose the Honda's right rear hubcap. The wheel well contained a fair amount of soil—coarse, with half-inch pine needles—and I deposited the sample into an evidence bag. Replacing the hubcap, I ran my flashlight over the tire treads where the rubber was worn down to steel threads.

Suddenly I heard a man's voice.

“Juss for that, you kin walk home.”

I crouched, heading for the truck's front wheel.

“And you'll what, fly?” said another voice. “You're ham-mered, Hank. You shouldn't even be driving.”

“Juss find my car,” the man slurred.

I could see their legs, the truck's undercarriage high enough that they were visible from feet to waist. They stood just beyond the back bumper, and for several long minutes I listened to them debate the car's location, who should drive, and whether a certain girl was really interested in joining them. Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, they turned and wandered toward the public lot. I stood up, shaking out my knees, and quickly jimmied the flat iron between the Honda's window and door, popping the lock before a stab of conscience could stop me. And if I did feel one, all I had to do was remember the expression on Stacee Warner's face when she saw Jack this afternoon, when he'd caught her and pretended not to know her. When he acted like I'd never told him, even though I'd mentioned it just last night in the surveillance van.

There was a bundle of clothing on the front passenger seat and I scooped it up, dropping inside and closing the door to turn off the dome light. Her clothes smelled stale, a faded scent of sweat and stale perfume, and my feet kicked against something on the floorboard. A pair of hiking boots. I tossed the clothes on the driver's seat and lifted each boot, taking soil samples from the soles.

Then I picked up the clothes again because I'd felt something hard inside the pile of blouses and slacks. It turned out to be a yellow leather date book, several inches thick. Each day was laid out in half-hour increments, although her simple entries scrawled across full hours. One day read: “Nails, 2:00 p.m.”

I flipped through the pages, discovering a tally of tips. Some nights Stacee Warner cleared $250, others $350. The page for the Sunday her roommate disappeared read: “Mount Si with JS, 11:00 a.m.”

Other pages held names of places she apparently hiked: Paradise Lake, Rattlesnake Ridge, Tiger Mountain West. But none of them had initials. I laid the book across my lap and picked up the cell phone, resting in the cup holder. It was an older model without a camera and I decided not to risk listening to her voice mail, in case I couldn't save them as new messages, and in case I got busted for not having a search warrant. I clicked open the phone book and found Courtney VanAlstyne's cell phone. I punched the button to dial the number and got nothing but twenty rings, no voice mail. Mrs. VanAlstyne was in there, along with four people whose last name was Warner, probably family. And I found “Ernie S,” a number that connected me to Suggs's voice mail at the casino. Ernie Suggs was away from his desk at the moment—no kid-ding—and then I found “JS,” also in the
S
entries.

I hit dial.

He picked up on the fourth ring. He didn't say hello.

“You okay?” he asked. “That was a close call today.”

I hung up.

Seconds later, the phone rang. But the number did not show up on her caller ID. It was blocked by the sender.

Because all those numbers were blocked. Mine. Lucia Lutini's. Byron Ngo's. Every special agent in the FBI had a blocked ID.

Including Jack Stephanson.

JS.

chapter nineteen

A
hundred miles into my drive to Spokane, the painted yellow lines on the highway began floating off the black pavement and flying into my windshield like javelins hurled by an invisible adversary. I leaned my head out the open window, breathing in the scent of sage that tumbled across the hard basalt of eastern Washington. The draft snapped me awake, I pulled my head back into the car.

But the javelins returned and I finally surrendered on the outskirts of Ritzville, parking at a truck stop. When I turned off the engine, the Barney Mobile shuddered violently, hissing like a snake. I told myself to check the fluids, then leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

When I woke up, it was past 2:00 a.m. and the parking lot was deserted. Inside the restaurant, a lone waitress in a dingy tan uniform slapped inverted ketchup bottles, squirting the remains into one bottle. She carried it to my table by the window and took my order for a cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate shake. I ate the meal without ketchup, listening to the call-in radio program playing somewhere behind the counter, then carried an extralarge coffee to the car.

Dawn was still hours away, but the lights around the truck stop created a false gray sky. As I passed the gas pumps, one of them was beeping, beeping, beeping, apparently signaling the pump was ready. But there were no cars around. And there was no attendant in the cashier's booth between the concrete islands. I pulled a paper towel from the box by the pump, listening to the tinny sound speakers embedded in the metal roof, a wordless tune playing a repetitive rhythm like the song was stuck. I glanced around. At the far edge of the concrete pad, a black eighteen-wheeler idled, its amber auxiliary lights glowing. But I couldn't see a driver in the cab.

Setting my coffee on the ground beside the Barney Mobile, I lifted the car's hood, feeling a desert breeze blow across my shoulders, sending a shiver down my spine. I pulled out the dipstick, wiped it on the blue paper towel, reinserted it, and found I was a quart low. I glanced at the attendant's booth, still empty. Maybe they sold oil inside. I grabbed the hood, letting it drop to close.

Then I turned.

The man stood behind me. He wore a checked flannel shirt. His white beard had the fibrous appearance of torn cotton bolls.

“You by yourself?” he asked.

I didn't answer.

“Middle of nowhere,” he said. “Stuff happens.”

My right hand moved toward my hip.

“I'm parked over yonder.” He pointed at the idling eighteen-wheeler. Something was in his hand, his gnarled fingers twisted around it.

I unsnapped my holster.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said. “But I'm fine.”

“Well now, I don't know about that. God told me to come over and talk to you. I told him, ‘God, I just drove twelve hours and I got another twelve tomorrow; I want to sleep.' But God just kept kicking me and kicking me. Finally I got up and walked over here. You can't argue with him.”

I leaned forward, pretending to look at his truck again, my palm on the hard stippled butt of the Glock. I still could not read his face, and when he moved his hand I lifted the gun, the barrel pointing at his forehead.

“Whoa, there.” His right hand was raised. “I'm not looking for any trouble.”

“Turn around and walk toward your truck.”

“Hey, listen, I just want to give you something.”

“Step away from my car.”

“But God said I gotta give you this. Don't you understand?”

“You don't understand. Move away from my car.”

He raised his hands, peering up into the night sky. He was nodding his head, the ragged edge of the white beard bouncing on his shirt collar. “All right,” he said, “all right.” Then he lowered his chin, looking at me. “You got a mighty nice gun and I don't know why you need this with it. But God's telling me he wants you to have it.”

“Turn around,” I growled. “Keep walking until you reach your rig.”

“Now hold on, sister.”

“I'm not your sister.”

“Okay, okay. I'm just gonna put this on the ground. Okay? I promise, that's all. And then I'm going to turn around, real slow, and walk to my truck. You can pick it up when I'm gone. Just don't shoot me. I got a family. I got grandkids.”

His hands stayed in the air as he bent his knees, lowering himself then setting the object on the concrete pad. His hands returned to the air as he straightened. “Now you got it and I'm leaving. I done what he asked.”

He turned and walked bandy-legged across the pavement, past the empty cashier's booth, past the entrance to the restaurant. When he reached the eighteen-wheeler, he grabbed a vertical chrome bar beside the cab, hoisting himself inside and slamming the door. The Glock was still in my hand when I picked up what he left.

It was a knife. The wood handle was carved and shellacked, and one word had been burned into the handle, running vertically like an acrostic. TIGER, it said. I pressed the small button on the handle. Six inches of steel flicked out. Touching my thumb to the blade, it felt sharp, honed to slice. I stared across the parking lot.