Green Lake (6 page)

“Is there a problem?”

She held up the plate. “In return for sharing your newspaper, I've brought you some supper.”

He only looked at the plate before excusing himself. A moment later he returned and opened the door to hand a paper to her. He made no move to relieve her of the plate.

“I told you I would share the paper.”

“Yes, and I'm sorry you mistook my meaning about how we would go about it.”

There was no response, and as the silence lengthened Madeleine began to feel ridiculously stupid standing there with a complete chicken dinner in her hand and having it rejected by a man who was probably salivating at the sight of the tin foil.

“Take the food, Eris. Can't you see I'm trying to repay you for your kindnesses to me?”

His lids blinked at her use of his name. Still he said nothing, and still he made no move to take the plate.

She wanted to throw it at him, but instead she put it down at her feet and turned wordlessly away, clenching her teeth all the while and silently calling him every vile name she could think of. He wasn't about to make anything easy for her. He was probably still punishing her for their first meeting, and her initial response to him.

Fine. She could handle it. She had dealt with any number of mute, recalcitrant males in her time, and she could deal with this one. It might actually prepare her in a way for going back into the field. She needed all the help she could get for that.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eris sat in his recliner eating the meal Madeleine Heron had given him and had to fight to keep from wolfing it down. Everything tasted so good he was nearly drowning in the juices from his mouth and stomach. She had stacked the plate high with two of everything, and by the time he was finished he had to unfasten the top of his trousers.

He lay back in the recliner and let the food settle in his stomach while he tried to recall when last he had eaten so well. It had been a long time.

The plate sat on the porch about thirty seconds before the smell got to him. He was starving, as usual, and had been about to stick a frozen dinner into the microwave when she knocked on his door. The temptation to shut it in her face had been great, but that would mean she was getting to him, and if Sherman Tanner, the slimy Earthworm, didn't get to him, then no blonde-haired, aristocratic ex-professor of anthropology was going to get to him.

He thought of how large and dark her eyes had looked as she stood there on his porch. How small the wrists were that held the plate. She wasn't very big, but she could certainly be imposing. Her soft feminine features could go hard as rock in an instant, something the three jerks who had stopped for her that day found out. Eris had seen them around, had seen them out on their boat, and knew the way they liked to party. He despised man-handlers of women, and his threat to the three had reflected that fact. It wasn't what he said, particularly, but the way he used his size and his face to emphasize the point.

What happened afterward surprised him, her coming to the truck and attempting to chat with him instead of staying to talk with Dale Russell. Either she didn't care, or it was good strategy on her part. Eris had seen women do anything short of a back flip to get Dale Russell's attention. The younger girls were more his style, however, so Eris had been further surprised at his mention of the dance to Madeleine.

Not that he could blame Russell. Even while he tried to avoid her Eris’s thoughts escaped to her flawless skin and unusual brown-green eyes. When he stood beside her he felt very tall and awkward and yes, ugly, though a part of him hated Russell for saying so. It was the same part that was envious.

Eris had a girlfriend in college; she had graduated first in her class and was now an astrophysicist. He thought of her sometimes, mostly when he missed having someone to be with. The romance hadn't exactly been hot, but it had made both of them comfortable. Since then he had dated once or twice, but either he wasn't interested or she wasn't interested, and nothing had ever meshed. He thought he might one day again find someone to feel comfortable with, but he wasn't out there looking. When and if it happened, it would have to happen on its own.

He rubbed his eyes and left the recliner to go and take a shower. He took the band off his hair and let the water run over his scalp as he thought of Madeleine again. He had seen more of her in the last three days than he had seen of anyone in weeks. She was lonely, he guessed, and probably unused to being by herself. Things would be better for her on the weekend, when her sister came. She would leave Eris alone and he could get back to worrying about drunken boaters, horny skiers, and missing, presumed-drowned little girls.

The next morning he took her plate and another newspaper up and left it on her front porch. He didn't see her that day, or that evening, but the next morning when he drove up and tossed his paper in her yard, he saw his mailbox hanging open. He looked in and found a brown paper sack with a sandwich, a banana, and a bag of peanut butter crackers inside.

For putting it on the porch anyway, the note in the sack read. Eris shook his head and put the sack beside him in the seat.

“It's in the yard now,” he said as he drove away. He had some unsavory business to attend to that day. The parents of the missing little girl had used up every extension allowed, and the rules said they had to take their motor home and leave the park. Eris argued for special consideration and was denied. Rules were rules, and several goodwill shelters offered to take in the family since their plight aired on local television. Eris had to tell them to pick up and move along.

The Lyman’s did not take the news well. Ronnie Lyman's eyes reddened and his wife Sheila sat down and stared at the ground. The two little girls stopped playing and looked at Eris with round, fearful eyes, as if he were about to pounce on them.

“Your permit could be extended for three days only,” said Eris. “I asked for longer, but they turned me down.”

“We appreciate it,” mumbled Sheila.

“Yeah,” said Ronnie.

“You'll have to get your gear together and leave the park today.”

Ronnie began to shake his head. “They don't understand. How can they make us leave when we don't know what happened to our little girl yet?”

“It's been several days, Mr. Lyman. People are still looking, but not as intensively as before. There is nothing you can do here. I understand that several shelters have offered space to you, and I suggest you take advantage. Wherever you go, you will know immediately the moment there is any news. You have my sympathies.”

“It ain't right,” said Ronnie. “It just ain't right, you kickin' us out like this. I'm goin' on TV again and tell 'em all about how the Department of Parks and Wildlife is kickin' us out of the park where our little girl got lost.”

“You're free to do as you wish, Mr. Lyman,” said Eris. “But take your family and leave the park today.”

“Or what?” said Ronnie, his lower lip quivering with anger.

“Or I will arrest you and take your family to a shelter myself.”

Ronnie could see Eris meant it. Ronnie struck a pose and whined, “I thought you were on our side, man.”

Eris only looked at him.

Sheila swallowed and said, “We'd better start gettin' our stuff, Ronnie.”

Ronnie snorted. “You start gettin' our stuff. I'm goin' to make a call.” He looked at Eris and said, “That all right with you, Tonto?”

Eris's mouth twitched. He nodded and then turned and walked back to his truck. “I'll be back after lunch. Be gone by then.”

As he drove past them on his way out, Sheila Lyman's eyes lowered and refused to look at him, while Ronnie Lyman glared.

The glare made it easier to get over the feeling that what he was doing was wrong, even if it was his job. He drove far away from the reservoir that day to check out areas he had missed for a while. One stop was the farm pond where the fish had died. He talked with the owner about the alkalinity of the water, gave him some guidelines and other printed material and then left.

On Highway 99 he came across an elderly man who had struck a deer with his truck and banged his head hard on the steering wheel. Eris took the dizzy, befuddled, bone-thin old man to the nearest clinic and then returned to dress the doe and haul it to a meat locker, where he impulsively paid for the preparation of the deer, then gave the name and address of the old man and told them to call him when it was done. The deer hadn't meant to get hit and the old man hadn't meant to hit it, but at least he would eat well while nursing the stitches in his head.

It was long past noon when he made it back to the Lyman’s' campsite, where he was relieved to see the motor home and its occupants gone. His relief was short-lived, however, when he drove out to leave the reservoir again and saw the Lyman’s' motor home parked at the Haven, a tiny bait shop and convenience store just off the access road. Beside the motor home was a mobile unit from a local television station, and as he passed by, Eris could see a mournful Ronnie Lyman, eyes lowered to the ground, responding to questions from the reporter.

Eris thought about sticking around and watching Lyman's next move, but he decided it would make him look like too much of a hardass. If they were still here at the end of the day, Eris would make good on his threat to arrest Lyman. He was already a little disgusted at the way the man was capitalizing on the disappearance of his little girl. He showed not an ounce of pride while on television, complaining long and loud to all about a lost job, a lost home, no more unemployment benefits, and struggle, struggle, struggle, milking every second of air time for all it was worth.

Eris felt for a man who had lost his job and couldn't keep up the payments on his house, but there were other things to do besides living in parks and fishing the days away. Ronnie Lyman needed to get off his lazy ass and find a job or two. Three, if he had to, because idle hands and mind led to loss of self-respect and eventually to self-hatred, something Eris was familiar with in his life. He had watched his adoptive father go from a bright, contented, hard-working man to a sneering, vindictive, cantankerous old bastard. A man's work was his life, and when Jean Renard left his twenty-five-year military career behind and accepted a pension for a permanently disabled back, he gave up on living.

And started picking on Eris, who was only seven at the time and did not understand why the love and affection he had been shown up to that point appeared to have been rescinded by the stranger who now stayed home days instead of going off to work. At first the anger and bitterness had been directed at Eris's adoptive mother, but then it turned upon Eris, the outsider, the interloper, and there was no one to protect him, since even his mother became cold to him to keep from drawing the heat of his father's fire back onto herself.

Eris ran away from his parents at the age of thirteen. He rode a bus all the way to Kansas City, telling himself he was going to find his real parents on the nearby Sauk-Fox reservation. The whites hated him and he didn't want to live with them anymore. He knew he was Fox, because his adoptive parents always laughed and said they wanted a little Fox baby since she had Fox blood in her, and because the name Renard meant fox. They also told him the name Eris was given to him by his natural mother, and they had no idea what it meant, but they kept it because it was unusual and seemed to suit him. Eris had the idea that if he visited the reservation and told people his name, someone might remember something.

An hour after he reached the reservation he knew his task would be impossible. His plight was not unusual, and few cared to help him even by trying to remember anything. He returned to the bus station and walked inside to sit at the diner. Several people eyed him, but since his hair was cut short and his clothes were clean, he passed inspection. He saw a notice printed on the chalkboard that a dishwasher was needed in the diner, and Eris applied on the spot. He was thirteen, but he was tall enough to pass for sixteen and no one ever asked him any questions. He was paid cash and he slept on a bench in the bus station at night, until he could afford to rent a room.

He worked at the diner a year and a half, until he got on another bus and went to Oklahoma, because he heard there were Sauk-Fox there, too. In Oklahoma he hired on with a construction crew. At fifteen years of age he stood six-one and had good muscle definition, so, again, no one asked for anything but a social security number. He had one, courtesy of the military man who had called himself father. He let his hair grow long, like the other Indians on the crew, and he saved half of every paycheck, turning down invitations of the older men to go out and party with them. His spare time was spent looking for his natural parents.

When he was sixteen he contracted chicken pox and was sick for several weeks. A girl he had dated steadily bid him adieu after the pustules appeared, and only when he was in the worst stage of the disease did he realize what was happening to his previously smooth, brown skin. Afterward he became bitter and stayed in his room nights, refusing to go out or to talk to anyone. The men at work teased him mercilessly about his face and chest and back, until Eris finally lost control and went after one of them with a shovel. The incident saw him fired from his job.

He remained in Oklahoma long enough to receive his general equivalency diploma. At the age of seventeen he picked up his GED and took himself and all his saved money back to Kansas, where he enrolled himself in Kansas State University.

Eris was a good student. He worked hard at his studies and made one or two friends while there. He took another job, this time at an animal shelter, where he was placed in charge of euthanizing the hundreds of strays that went unplaced each month. He vomited nearly every time he performed the task and was later given other work, but he still had problems. Regretfully, the operators of the shelter let him go.

It was in his second year of college that he decided to be a conservation officer. He liked the idea of being outdoors all day, with no one but himself to answer to or be responsible for.

Obtaining his degree took longer than he thought it would, since he kept running out of money. During breaks he worked full time at temporary jobs, and in the summer he hired on with construction crews and saved every penny so he could stay in school.

It was more than pride and stubbornness that made Eris so determined. It was the way he felt about himself, and how he wanted to go on feeling about himself.

He graduated when he was twenty-four, and had numerous interviews with the state, finally going on to the police training academy and becoming certified as a law enforcement officer. A few months later he was assigned an area of his own, and now, two years later, he was dealing

with what the other COs called ”a year that rains shit,” when every minute something was happening, and no sooner did he catch his breath than something else cropped up that needed his attention.