Killer View (19 page)

She left the car and walked over to the light at the front door. Walt caught sight of Cutter inside, keeping his eye on developments. She turned the biosensor in the light, called inside to Cutter, and he handed her purse to her. She made a call on her cell phone. Walt was thinking he’d made the right choice—it was better if the space aliens showed up at Patrick Cutter’s isolated mansion than on Third Avenue South in Hailey. She returned to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. For the first time in about an hour, Walt felt some relief.

“Mild exposure to low-level radioisotopes,” she stated.

“I’m radioactive? Seriously?”

“If it had been a darker shade, there’d be reason for concern. The tags were modified post nine-eleven to be supersensitive. That way, if a container inspector, for instance, had had contact with even ultralow levels of radiation, it would be detected. Yours isn’t exactly ultralow, but it’s not high. You can lose the suit. We’ll ask that they run a few tests at the local hospital, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Walt leaned back against the headrest and let out an audible exhale.

She said nothing for a moment. “Must have scared you.”

“You think?”

“About my being here . . .” It became clear she’d had no intention of finishing the sentence when Walt made no attempt to interrupt her.

“About your being here,” Walt said, taking unexpected pleasure in her awkwardness.

“I’m a big girl. I can separate the two.”

“I’m not saying you can’t.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

“I know Danny’s history.”

“Preliminaries aren’t in. If there’s biological contamination at the bottling plant, we’re having a hell of a time finding it. Much less ID’ing it.”

“Do you carry one of those?” he asked, referring to his tag in her hand.

“Of course.”

“Did you wear one at the plant?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

Walt considered this. He had a scenario in his head that he wasn’t willing to voice without a lot more proof. Her tag coming up blank didn’t sit well with his theory. “Have you asked Danny what he did out at the plant before your arrival?”

“Meaning?”

“What if his brother’s private jet happened to have flown in a wet team?”

“You’re saying he deep-cleaned the facility prior to my inspection?”

“You sound so shocked.”

“That’s illegal.”

“I doubt that. More like it violates some regulation.”

“Same thing to us.”

“Maybe so. But not really.”

“There’s protocol. I questioned Mr. Cutter. He answered me faithfully and to my liking.”

“You’re not on trial, Dr. Bezel. And drop the ‘Mr. Cutter’ crap, will you? Ask again,” Walt said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Are you telling me my job?”

“I’m telling you your sugar daddy can sweet-coat anything, can sweet-talk anyone, can fast-talk the best of them, and I put nothing past him. I’m betting he professionally hosed down his facility before you arrived, and that if you had a tape of your Q and A—which you don’t, I’m guessing—that you’d find he never lied to you but failed to tell the truth.” He paused. “Meet Danny Cutter, Dr. Bezel.”

She blinked repeatedly, pursed her lips, turned her face toward the house, and then trained her rage on Walt. “What is it with you people out here?”

“Ah, come on. He dodges a few questions. No one’s ever done that? And, at least for an evening, he’s managed to take your mind off work. Score two points for Danny.”

“Stop it!” Her lower lip was quivering. She looked ready to bite his head off.

“Test the plant for low-level radioisotopes,” Walt said.

Her neck made a cracking sound, she spun it so quickly. “You’re saying you were there? At the bottling plant?”

Walt considered how to answer this. “No, I wasn’t,” he said. “And that’s the hell of it.”

SATURDAY

ROY COATS’S WIDE SHOULDERS FILLED UP ONE SIDE OF A booth table in the dim recesses of the back corner of the Mel-O-Dee steak house in Arco, Idaho.

The woman who entered, fanning at the smoke-filled air, had aged fifteen years in the past twelve months since he first recruited her. The meth had dragged bags under her once-pretty eyes, melted her gums, and had turned her skin a pasty gray. But she still had the tight body of a thirtysomething.

She couldn’t help the way she walked—and not many men missed it. All without an ounce of self-awareness. If she’d had a face to go with it, she wouldn’t have been walking into this bar. But the small head and pointed chin, the turned-in teeth, and pixie nose had all suffered under the effects of the meth. She wore a mask of melted, sallow skin, and carried a haze of disrespect, like an out-of-work whore. At a glance, you’d never have imagined her an atomic physicist.

“Evening,” he said. “Buy you a drink?”

She shrugged.

Roy signaled the waitress, a sixty-year-old former rodeo queen with a beer belly. Without asking, he ordered his guest a double vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime, himself a draft beer.

“Do you have it?” he asked.

“Not yet. But it won’t be a problem.” She paused, then asked, “Do
you
have it?”

“You’re two weeks late.”

“So sue me. It’s tricky. They’re watching everyone like a hawk. You have only yourself to blame for that.”

“I need it. Soon,” he added.

“Yeah. And I need it now.” She leveled her eyes on him. Jaundice was setting in.

“You gotta take better care of yourself,” he said, caring nothing about her long-term health. “They’re going to figure you out. You don’t look so good.”

“When anyone asks—and it isn’t often—I tell them I can’t shake the flu. I can handle myself.” Her right hand trembled, and she tucked it in her lap.

They both went quiet, as the old cow approached and delivered the drinks. She asked if the younger woman wanted a menu and the younger woman laughed. She didn’t understand the concept of eating. Not anymore. The cow trundled off.

“Listen, I gotta have a backup plan. We lose this chance, no one’s going to listen.”

“I told you: I don’t know.”

“I’d hate to miss my next delivery,” he said.

Her hand clasped the glass more tightly, turning the skin beneath her unpainted fingernails a bloodless white. Her face remained impassive. “As if,” she said.

“Don’t push me.”

“I’m on it. It’s not easy.” She leaned across to him, her breath giving lie to the myth that the smell of vodka went undetected. “It’s an atomic research facility, Roy boy. What do you expect?”

“Delivery,” he said equally softly. He despised the nickname, despised her weakness, despised most everything about her but her body. Her talking in that husky voice aroused him. “All those degrees of yours . . .”

Her eyes went off someplace over his head. He wondered what was going on in there, if she could grasp even a glimpse of her decline at the hands of the meth. He’d taken her from a lonely, bored, successful physicist and reduced her to a skeleton-eyed addict who showed no remorse over her breaches of security. Maybe it hadn’t been him or his cause but instead the tedium of a professional life that required total secrecy, performed in the middle of an enormous desert. The government contractor daily bused three thousand specialists just like her in from Pocatello—nerds with their laptops—a Mormon town where the idea of an exciting night out was a decaf latte at Starbucks. She’d walked into a four-year contract and had burned out within six months. She’d been waiting for someone like him to come along.

He passed the paper bag beneath the table. Collected no money for it. If she’d thought about that, it might have given her pause. He’d never charged her for the meth. He understood the ways of an addict. If she wasn’t totally behind his cause, she was at the very least accustomed to his keeping her high.

His knuckles brushed her knee under the table. Her hand met his and she took possession of the bag, and, with it, an eagerness flashed across her otherwise-dull, yellowing eyes.

“I could take a room at the Lazy Horse,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to wait. To risk smoking in the car. We wouldn’t want you to get busted.”

She no longer rode the bus from Pocatello. She’d moved to a double-wide near Moore, a few miles down the road. This to be away from her coworkers, thrust into the roaring nightlife of Arco, Idaho, population one hundred and fifty. The movie theater ran two shows every Friday night.

“I think I can make it seven miles down the road, Roy.”

He wasn’t so sure. “But you wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Not if I took a room.”

“What else do you want from me?”

He smiled.

“Oh, Roy, what are we going to do with you?”

“Just about anything you want,” he said.

She upended the vodka, leaned close to him, and whispered again, “You terrify me. Whenever we meet, I leave shaking. A pit in my stomach. You scare the piss out of me, Roy. You scare everyone who meets you.”

He heard all that, but he barely reacted, because she rose and pumped her way back to the EXIT sign. Next time, he would withhold the meth. Next time, she would pay for that mouth of hers.

DESPITE THE PROMINENT SIGN—PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE, THIS IS A NO CELL PHONE ENVIRONMENT—Walt was on the phone for a good deal of the time his physical was being conducted. Dr. Royal McClure, a good friend who sometimes wore the hat of pathologist for Blaine County, drew his blood and ran him through a variety of tests while Walt raised his own blood pressure trying to locate a Geiger counter. Nancy was on the receiving end of his irritation, as it became increasingly clear to him that Idaho State University owned two such devices but didn’t loan them out; the state’s environmental agency used a lab in California; and buying a Gamma-Scout would cost five hundred dollars. After a number of calls back and forth, he relented and approved the purchase. He asked her to call the Idaho state crime lab and confirm that they’d tested the mess of broken glass and ice discovered on his back porch for radioactivity.

While Walt was sitting on the edge of the examination table, the paper liner crackling beneath him when he buttoned up his uniform, his cell phone rang as he was putting it away. McClure glowered at him. Bothered, Walt barked his name when he answered: “Fleming!”

“Sheriff Fleming?”

“Speaking.”

“Hold for Congressman McMillian, please.”

The line clicked.

“Sheriff?”

“Congressman?”

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, sir.”

“I was speaking with George Carliner and your name came up.”

“If this is about my suggestion we drop party affiliation as a requirement for—”

“It’s not,” the congressman interrupted.

“I told the attorney general it was an idea still in its infancy,” Walt said.

“Nothing to do with that. Let’s put a pin in that and come back to it another time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m calling about the National Law Enforcement Conference here in Washington next week. I don’t know if you’ve heard but Mel Tooley has had to withdraw at the last minute.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“His wife, I think. Something medical.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Walt liked Tooley, who was sheriff of Ada County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation.

“George and I were discussing a replacement. You’ve headed the Western Regional Sheriff’s Association, as I understand it. You held two terms as president, and you gained high-profile status in that fine work you did involving Vice President Shaler.”

“She hadn’t been elected at the time, Congressman. She was a candidate. And I really didn’t—”

McMillian cut him off again. “The point is that George has recommended you to replace Mel Tooley at the conference. To represent the state for us. I wish I were asking here, Walt—may I call you Walt?—but I’m not. The state needs you. I need you. The federal government is at the start of a major reorganization of everything, from communication to hardware assets for state law enforcement. A lot of us want them to keep their hands off. We need you there. You’re respected. You’re recognizable, and George and I think others will listen to you. I’d like you out here by Friday. My people will work through the talking points with you, and you’ll come out to our home in Bethesda for some meetings over the weekend. You’ll hit the ground running Monday morning on the Hill.”

His head was spinning. To be seen on the national stage was certain to open job opportunities. It was just the kind of appointment he could see his father arranging for him. Elizabeth Shaler, now the vice president, had told him she could use him in Washington; he wondered if this appointment had anything to do with her. He wondered if Mel Tooley’s wife was actually ill or if Mel had been asked to step aside so that Walt could be offered the appointment. Wheels within wheels.