Cold Springs (9 page)

Chadwick had disrespected him again.

If Samuel ever doubted God had a plan for him, he didn't doubt it anymore.

He had been given a sign. He must not leave without settling every score. He must not leave one brick on top of another in the rubble.

And, praise God, Samuel would obey.

6

“Zedman!”

Mallory wanted to yell something back. She chewed on all the bad names she could call this bastard, but she was thinking about what had happened to that last kid who used the F-word.

The instructor yelled her name again.

Mallory didn't look up. Boots crunched on the gravel.

“Simple instructions, Zedman.” The guy bellowed like he was talking to somebody across the river, like he wanted all the buzzards circling this fucking place to hear him. “I say your name. You say, ‘Here, sir.' ”

Mallory's nausea was getting worse—the cold shakes, razors in her gut. She told herself she was sitting down on purpose, to protest, but the truth was she wasn't sure she could stand. The pain had never been this bad before. Her whole body was turning to ice and melting from the inside. She needed a fix. She had fantasies about Race finding her, busting in with a semiautomatic and taking her away. But Race wouldn't be coming. He was in worse trouble than she was.

It was hard for Mallory to control the shaking, but she decided she wouldn't throw up again. She wouldn't give the instructor the pleasure.

The instructor's assistant, a young blond dude, started yelling at Mallory, too—“Get over here! Get off your butt and get on this line!” But that was just background noise. Mallory knew the real threat was right in front of her.

She looked up, just so she wouldn't have her face in puking position.

The black guy hadn't gotten any prettier. He was huge—maybe not as tall as Chadwick, but wide, built like a tank, black T-shirt and camo pants and combat boots like a character from one of those arcade games Race liked.

She imagined Race pointing a blue plastic gun at this guy, the instructor's head exploding on the video screen. Race giving her a warm bright smile, saying,
See? Ain't nothing.

The thought made her feel a little better.

“I've got all day,” the black guy said. “All day and all night.”

Mallory looked at the other three kids. They'd already given up. They were standing on the line, holding their supplies. The fat girl had mascara streaks down her cheeks from crying.

The assistant instructor was pacing behind them, yelling in their ears whenever they moved or muttered or looked in a direction he didn't like. The boy who'd said the F-word had a gag taped in his mouth—a goddamn gag.

Screw that, Mallory thought. Screw her mother for sending her here.

There was
no way
her mother could've known what this place was like. No way a gag was legal. If she could get to a phone, she could call her mom. She'd thought of that in the airport, but Chadwick always seemed to know what she was thinking. He'd been too hard to get away from. Maybe this black guy wasn't as smart as Chadwick.

Finally, one of the other kids yelled at her, “Get up, Zedman!”

For the first time, the assistant instructor didn't shut the kid down, didn't even act like anyone had spoken.

“I ain't standing here all day for you!” the kid yelled. He was the overweight guy—the one with the acne and the greasy hair. “
GET
——
UP!
”

Hell with him, Mallory thought.

But Mallory had a new thought—maybe she
should
play along. Pretend. If she did, it would be easier to get to a phone. One call to her mother, and she could swallow her anger long enough to apologize, cry a little, tell her what this place was like. Her mom would cave in. She'd bail her out. Mallory knew she would. And then Mallory could run away again—only this time, she wouldn't be found.

Mallory tried to get to her feet. It wasn't easy. Her head was spinning and her legs felt like bendy-straws.

She was standing, but she wasn't going to look at the black guy. No way.

“Zedman!” the black guy yelled.

Mallory muttered, “Here.”

The black guy's feet crunched gravel. “Here,
sir.
”

Mallory bit back some cuss words. She concentrated on Race. She had to get back to Race. “Here, sir.”

“I've heard kindergarteners louder than that. Are you a kindergartener?”

“
HERE, SIR!
”

Mallory was crying, but she didn't care. She just hoped she'd broken the bastard's eardrums.

“Fall in, Zedman.”

Mallory staggered toward the line, stopped halfway, doubled over. The world thickened like maple syrup around her—everybody staring at her, waiting for her to die.

The instructors' eyes looked like her father's—cold disapproval, her last argument with Daddy, his insistence,
If you don't keep away from him, I will make him stay away. I can't stand this anymore, Mallory.

She finally managed to get in line. She held out her arms and the assistant instructor shoved a bundle at her. He yelled orders until she was standing straight, holding her stuff with her elbows at a 45-degree angle, forearms level to the ground. The bundle wasn't that heavy, but standing there at attention, her arms got sore quickly.

The assistant instructor ripped the gag off the guy who'd cussed.

“I say,
Eyes front,
” the black dude bellowed, “you say,
Sir.
And you are looking at me. Eyes front!”

“Sir,” they all said.

“Pathetic.
EYES FRONT!
”

“
SIR!
”

The black dude was getting off on his power trip, bullying little kids. It occurred to Mallory that one of these instructors might actually hit her. The idea sank in like the prick of a heroin needle—painful, but salty, pleasant in a sick way. Mallory would be able to show her bruises in court. She'd laugh when this place was shut down and all of these blowhards were dragged off to jail.

Just pretend a little while,
she told herself.
Just get to a phone.

“Ladies and gentleman,” the black guy said, “this is Cold Springs Academy. My name is Dr. Hunter. I own and direct this facility. While you are here, I direct you.”

He didn't say,
I own you,
but that's what Mallory heard.

“You are now part of Black Level,” Hunter said. “You are holding two sets of black fatigues, two pairs of underwear, one pair of shoes, one blanket, one bar of soap, one roll of toilet paper, and one toothbrush. Everything else—all other privileges—must be earned. Every rule must be followed. You will not advance from Black Level until you show that you have earned the right to do so. Is that understood?”

Mallory muttered, “Yes, sir.”

Of course, not everybody did, so they had to say it again, yelling, “
YES, SIR!
”

“Run in place,” Hunter said. “
NOW!
”

You've got to be joking,
Mallory thought.

But the assistant instructor was yelling in her ear: “
MOVE IT! KNEES UP! RUN!
”

Mallory tried. She was sure she looked like a damn fool, holding this crap and jogging, feeling like she was going to puke.

Soon she was sweating, wishing she'd taken off her jacket. The air was cool, even cooler than back home, but it was drier, too. It burned her mouth and nose. The pain in her gut was unbearable.

Hunter called, “Halt!”

The second instructor was at the end of the line, yelling at the kid who'd had his mouth gagged earlier. The kid had thrown his supplies on the ground and kicked them away.

“I'm leaving!” the kid yelled. He had spiky hair, unnaturally yellow, and with his face all red and angry his whole head looked like a big match.

“F—” The kid stopped himself, remembering the gag. “Forget your Black Level. You can't make me stay here.”

Match-Head started storming off, but quickly he realized he didn't know what direction to storm off in.

They were in the middle of a clearing about the size of a volleyball court, surrounded by scrubby woods. Workout equipment was scattered around—a balance beam, a tire obstacle course, a couple of cinder block walls of various heights. The only road led toward the big ski lodge–type building they'd passed on the way in, and that was a good quarter mile away. The van that had dropped them off was gone. The horizon was nothing but low puke-colored hills in all directions. Mallory knew from Chadwick that this place was somewhere in Texas—the absolute middle of nowhere.

Match-Head started to stomp up the road, then stopped in his tracks. A third staff member had appeared in front of him, like he'd been waiting in the woods. The new guy was holding something that looked like a canvas pup tent with a bicycle chain stitched through it.

Hunter said, “No one leaves except by working the levels. How you stay depends on you.”

Then Mallory realized the canvas thing was a body sack. The bastards would chain you in it up to your neck.

Mallory glared at Hunter, not believing anyone would actually use that thing, but Hunter didn't look like he was bluffing.

Match-Head didn't move.

“Your supplies are on the ground,” Hunter told him. “You won't get new ones.”

Slowly, the kid turned. He went to the supplies and started picking them up.

The kid was crying. He was probably a year older than Mallory, but there he was, crying. Mallory could still see the impression of the gag—red lines around his mouth.

When Match-Head was back in line, Hunter barked more commands—turns, forward march. Army stuff. None of the kids made any more fuss.

Mallory switched off her brain, tried not to think about the pain. She concentrated on her feet moving, on the commands of the instructors.

She hated her mother for sending her here. She hated Chadwick for catching her.

Most of all, she hated the memory his presence had sharpened—Katherine's face, her cold fingers on Mallory's knee, her smile when she said,
Hold it for me. I want you to, Mal. I love you.

Mallory's definition of love had been formed that night. Someone makes you admire them, need them, want their approval, and then they abandon you, leave you holding . . . something. A necklace. Pain. Their blackest thoughts. Their path.

It had taken Mallory years to get angry about that. She had grown up deathly afraid she would end up like Katherine, but when she tried talking about it to her parents, her counselor, her teachers, she saw no reassurance in their eyes, just the exact same terror. They handled her as if she'd been infected, as if the silver necklace around her neck was a vial of nitroglycerin. They gave her doe eyes. They used gentle voices. If she threw a fit, they retreated. Just like Katherine—always turning to smoke.

And so Mallory had gotten angry. Fuck, yes, she would keep the necklace. She would be Race's friend. Fuck, yes, she would try heroin. She would validate their fear. She would leave them holding her childhood pictures, wondering what the hell had gone wrong. That was love.

“You will rest when it's time to rest,” Dr. Hunter yelled. “You will work when it's time to work. You will do what you are told, and you will save your own life before you get out of here. That, ladies and gentleman, is a promise. You will find I keep my promises.”

She tried to push away the anger, the desire to scream cuss words until they taped her mouth. She thought about home—about Race, and the world of trouble she'd left him in.

She couldn't be gone now.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Talia Montrose—the ragged cuts, the way her fingers had curled into claws, the fat black fly walking along her eyelid. The sound that had come from Race's throat—the raw, hollow moan that was beyond pain—the sound of some animal that had never learned language. The look he had given her—not saying anything, not accusing, but knowing damn well it was all her fault. Her father had threatened to do something like this. And still she and Race had stayed together. They had run. They had slept in places too horrible to remember, on mattresses that stank of urine and grease. They had made awkward love—the first time, despite what their parents had thought—driven together by pain and fear and the need to believe there was something that could burn the image of death out of their brains. She had tried to comfort him. They had tried to make a plan. Race had pressed the money into her hand, said, “I can get more. I will. Keep this for now, until we're ready to leave.”

She wanted to believe Race's beautiful vision—that they could run away together. Race had wonderful dreams, better than anything Mallory ever had.

But at the same time, she had delayed. She had dragged her feet, kept them from leaving Oakland. Part of her craved trouble the way she craved heroin—the way she wanted to lie down and feel the rumble of the BART tracks until the sky turned black and the world ended. Part of her wanted to follow Katherine into that darkened bedroom and close the door.

No,
Mallory told herself.
Just survive. Just get out.

And so she marched, the man with the body bag screaming in her peripheral vision, as if he'd always been there, waiting for her to step in the wrong direction.

7

Another week of pickups—New York, Utah, St. Louis, Belize. Chadwick chased a boy across a rooftop, collared him at the TV aerials, and dragged him down five flights of stairs by the scruff of his neck. He pulled a girl out of an underage prostitution ring after breaking a two-by-four over her pimp's head with a little too much relish.

Olsen did her job with quiet efficiency. She related well to the kids, treated them with the right mix of respect and firmness. She had no more nervous moments, betrayed no further scent of fear. She performed better than most of the young women he'd trained that year—always women, since Hunter's rules stipulated a male and female escort must work together on every assignment—but the whole week, she said maybe a dozen sentences off-duty. He could feel her slipping away, withdrawing from the job, just like so many others.

The dropout rate for new escorts was eighty percent. The work was just too intense. It didn't take long for the rookie to hit a job that really unnerved her—a situation that resonated in her nightmares like a diminished chord. For Olsen, for whatever reason, it had been the Mallory Zedman pickup.

They got back to Texas late Friday night.

Saturday morning, after four hours' sleep, Chadwick was sitting on the deck of the Big Lodge, proctoring a White Level study hall. He had his cell phone in his hand, tapping his thumb lightly on the numbers.

At the picnic tables behind him, a dozen white levels were bent to their work—writing essays, studying for AP exams or SATs.

The morning was crisp and cool as the underside of a pillow, the sky scratched with high winter clouds, sunlight gilding the hills and the wings of redtail hawks. The white levels didn't seem to notice. They labored so quietly that a family of deer had gathered to graze the hillside not a hundred yards away.

The last year of his marriage, living in San Francisco, Chadwick had often fantasized about the Texas Hill Country. He had imagined starting every day here, teaching kids in this setting, reinventing young lives. Now here he was, thinking only about San Francisco.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on 1994, the year he'd started escorting.

Whenever the hot empty feeling started burning in his stomach, whenever he felt like kicking down a brick wall, it calmed him to calculate backwards through history, jumping from event to event like stepping stones, making a continuous line into the past. He could do it with centuries, or millennia, any measurement larger than his own life.

1894. Eugene Debs and the railway boycotts.

1794. Jay's Treaty.

1694 . . .

He took a deep breath, turned on his phone, then dialed a number he'd never forgotten.

He circumnavigated a few secretaries at Zedman Development, gave them his name, told them he had news about Mr. Zedman's daughter.

When John finally came on the line, his voice was tight and familiar, as if Chadwick had just called five minutes before. “Well?”

“Mallory's safe.”

“You call me now. You steal my daughter, and a week later you call. Your timing sucks, old buddy.”

He was trying hard to sound callous, but Chadwick heard the emotion cracking through. He wondered if John missed their arguments about basketball and politics; if he found himself wondering how Chadwick had spent the millennial New Year's, or whether he could get through Thanksgiving without thinking of the way they used to spend it together—their two families, now irrevocably shattered.

“I didn't know about Race Montrose,” Chadwick said. “I didn't know about the murder.”

“And what—you want to apologize?”

“We need to talk about this, John.”

“I'll only ask you once. Bring back my daughter.”

“She's better off here. She needs help.”

“Goodbye, Chadwick.”

“Race Montrose brought a gun to Laurel Heights. Mallory said he needed protection. Did you threaten him?”

“I tried not to blame you, Chadwick. And then you take my daughter without asking, without even warning me. You know what? Fuck it. It
is
all your fault. Katherine's death, my wife leaving me, my daughter turning against me—that's all on you.”

“I'm not your enemy, John.”

“Yeah? Tell me you've been getting the letters, Chadwick. Tell me you've been living with it the way I have.”

“Letters.”

John's laugh was strained. “That's good, old buddy. I'm sure Samuel is laughing—fucking laughing his ass off.”

“John—”

But he was talking to dead air.

Chadwick stared at the phone, the little LCD message asking if he wanted to save the number to his address book for easy redial. Just what he needed—a moral dilemma from his cell phone. Chadwick punched
yes.

He made the rounds among the students, flexing his fingers, which suddenly felt frostbitten. The white levels were all on task—no questions. No problems. Nobody needed to go to the bathroom.

Chadwick moved his chair a little farther away on the deck, then placed another call—to Pegeen Riley, a woman he'd worked with before at Alameda County Social Services.

After five minutes with her, he tried the Oakland Police Department, Homicide Section. He watched the deer graze until Sergeant Damarodas came to the phone.

“Well, Mr. Chadwick. Imagine my surprise.” The homicide investigator's voice reminded Chadwick of a drill instructor he'd had at Lackland Air Force Base, a bulldog of a man who'd sing German drinking songs while the BTs dug trenches.

“Sergeant,” Chadwick said. “Pegeen Riley from Social Services says you're in charge—”

“Yeah. She just called. Good woman, Peg. I'll be honest, Mr. Chadwick. Without her recommendation, I'm not sure you'd be on my Christmas card list.”

“About Mallory Zedman—”

“You transported a material witness out of state. Pegeen says you used to be a teacher. You'd think a teacher would have better sense.”

Chadwick tried to read the man's voice. There was something besides annoyance—a wariness Chadwick didn't quite understand.

“Listen, Sergeant, Mrs. Zedman is a worried mother. She's trying to do the best thing for her daughter.”

“I've got another mother I'm worried about. Her name was Talia Montrose. She's got thirty-two stab wounds.”

The wind rose. On the hillside, a thousand grasshoppers lifted from the grass and whirled like smoke over red granite.

“Sergeant, how much do you know about the Montrose family?”

“Enough to piss me off,” Damarodas said. “I know the lady had six kids, maybe seven, depending on which neighbor you talk to. Not one of them's come to ID her body. I know the victim's mother is a head case, lives in a condemned building downtown, reacted to her daughter's death by asking me if I'd ever been off the planet. I know the youngest kid, Race, was sharing a sleeping bag with your little angel Mallory at his mom's house the week of the murder. Then your worried friend Mrs. Zedman paid God-knows-how-much money to have her daughter picked up and smuggled to your fine facility. What am I missing, Mr. Chadwick?”

“The girl says she and Race were at a Halloween party. They came home, found the body, called 911.”

“And then they ran.”

“They're fifteen-year-olds. They panicked.”

“You want to explain why the 911 call came from a pay phone on Broadway, halfway across town? They were calm enough to get away from the scene before they called. The girl's voice on the tape—she'd practiced what she was going to say, Mr. Chadwick. How about you put her on the phone?”

“Not possible.”

“Talia Montrose's house? Blood everywhere. Looked like a damn sprinkler went off. Wounds caused by a short, bladed object, six, maybe seven inches long. Fingerprints all over the crime scene. Blood samples. Hair samples. We'll get it all back from the lab in a day or so. In the meantime, I can tell you we're pretty sure Race and Mallory were the only ones staying at the house. Talia was staying with a boyfriend, getting ready to skip town, probably came home to tell Race
hasta la vista.
We think she had upward of twenty thousand cash on her person when she was killed. Except for a few bills stuck in the blood, all that money is gone.”

Chadwick thought about the $630 he'd taken from Mallory's coat pocket—fresh new bills. “The Montroses aren't saints. Run the last name. Take a look at her kids. The oldest son—Samuel. He'd be an adult now.”

“What would I find, Mr. Chadwick?”

Something in Damarodas' tone made Chadwick's scalp tingle. The detective was playing him, flashing a lure.

“All I'm saying, Sergeant— Mallory Zedman didn't bring trouble to that family. I don't believe she would get herself involved in a murder.”

“Last week? I arrested a seventy-two-year-old grandmother, kept her dead boyfriend in a freezer, five different pieces wrapped in aluminum foil, so she could collect his Social Security checks. I didn't believe she'd be involved in a murder, either. I intend to fly down there and ask Mallory Zedman some questions.”

“Cold Springs is a closed program. No exceptions.”

“This is a homicide investigation, Mr. Chadwick. I've requested a court order from Alameda County.”

“I wouldn't go that route, Sergeant. Dr. Hunter's lawyers have had a lot of practice. They'll turn your court order into trench warfare.”

Chadwick watched the sunrise creep over the hill, melting the shadows from the hooves of the deer.

Finally Damarodas sighed. “Perhaps there's another thing you could help me with, Mr. Chadwick.”

“Sergeant?”

“Something we found near Mrs. Montrose's body. Kind of an odd piece of jewelry to be stuck in the woman's blood.”

Chadwick felt a distant rumble, like a train ripping through a dark tunnel.

“A silver necklace,” Damarodas told him. “An inscription on it. I bet you can't guess.”

The morning seemed colder—the air thickening, swirling to a standstill.

“What was your daughter's name, sir?” Damarodas asked. “Was it Katherine Elise?”

Chadwick took the phone away from his ear, knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Don't run away from this conversation. Don't hang up.

He heard Damarodas say, “Sir?”

Then Chadwick disconnected.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, watching the deer graze the hilltop, before Asa Hunter came out to join him.

Hunter hooked a chair, pulled it up next to Chadwick's. “That bad, huh?”

“What?”

Hunter propped his combat boots on the railing, laced his fingers around his coffee cup. “You look like hell, amigo.”

“Blame my boss. He works me too hard.”

Hunter gave him the same skeptical appraisal he'd been giving him since they were both eighteen, working perimeter guard duty in Korat, Thailand. His expression posed the rhetorical question,
Where'd this big dumb white boy come from?

“Listen, amigo, if I thought picking up Mallory Zedman would make you feel worse rather than better—”

“How is she doing?”

“Hit her assistant trainer yesterday. Day before that, she scratched and bit a white level. Day before that, kicked her counselor in the balls. Three solitary confinements. No extra privileges. Standard problems.”

“Standard, if she's a rabid mountain lion.”

Hunter's face could have been crafted from stealth bomber material—smooth hard contours, bald scalp so dark it seemed to drink the light. His eyes trapped you, studied you, released you only when they were good and ready. “The girl is resistant. We'll get to her.”

“She talk much about why she's here?”

“You need to let the program work, amigo. You got enough . . .”

Hunter's voice trailed off.

A white level, a kid named Aden Stilwell, stood waiting at a respectful distance to be recognized. Chadwick called him forward. Aden politely asked if he could go inside and use the computer to look up a word. Chadwick reached into the bin of reference materials at his side and pulled out a dictionary. He explained to Aden how it worked. Aden looked at the book, mystified, then thanked Chadwick and walked away thumbing the pages.

Hunter smirked. “Hard to believe that's the same boy tried to run you over a year and a half ago, huh? Someday—that's going to be Mallory Zedman.”

“Trying to run me over?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I need to go back to San Francisco, Asa.”

“You want to tell me why?”

Chadwick told him about the murder of Talia Montrose, Katherine's necklace at the crime scene. He told him about the letters John had mentioned from Samuel, the court order Sergeant Damarodas had threatened to get to interview Mallory.

Hunter looked out toward the hills. He sighted a deer over the tips of his combat boots, as if calculating the best shot. “You think this young man—Samuel—he's trying to get some kind of revenge?”

“I don't know.”

“For what—Katherine?”

Chadwick was silent.

Hunter sighed. “Look, amigo. Samuel Montrose was what—her drug dealer? So maybe you brought a little heat on him for supplying the drugs that killed her. Maybe he had to leave town for a while. So what? Guys like that—they have an attention span of three seconds. They use people, throw them away, forget about them. You're telling me he's spent nine years planning some kind of revenge scheme? That he'd kill his own mother to get at you? Doesn't make sense.”

“Mallory is following the same path Katherine did, with this guy's little brother. That's a coincidence?”

Hunter's jaw flexed, as if he were chewing on something small and hard. Chadwick knew the warning sign. He'd seen Hunter do that in Korat, when an ARVN made a racial crack at Hunter's expense. Hunter had walked up behind him, real calm, yanked him out of his seat by the hair, and drove the Vietnamese's head through the hootch wall.

Years later, Hunter had taken Chadwick out to show off his new six-thousand-acre spread that would become Cold Springs—land he had bought with minority business loans and mortgages on three different houses and decades of blood and sweat, working on grants that had landed him an initial capital outlay of $5 million. When they'd gotten almost to the gates, county deputies pulled them over, said Hunter fit their description of a wanted rapist. Hunter's jaw had been going as he explained to them he didn't care if he was the only black man they'd seen all month. He was now the biggest landowner in the county, and they had best get used to it. He'd kept his cool, but he spent the rest of the afternoon down by the river, throwing his knife at a tree, impaling the blade three inches into the bark.