Meadowlark (20 page)

"Leave my flanks out of this. You can drop me at the farm
afterwards."

We ate breakfast in companionable silence, uninterrupted
by the telephone. The sun shone between squall lines, turning my
kitchen into a riot of daffodil yellow. I was going to have to do
something about the color.

We were halfway out to the car when I stopped. "The
map?"

"Got it."

"The cell phone?"

"What?"

Jay's brother, Freddy, had given him a cellular phone for
Christmas. Since Jay had spent more than half his working life tied to
a beeper, it was one of those gifts that evoke the 'just what I've
always wanted' response. Jay had never used the phone.

"I'll get it. If we find the pickup, we'll need it."

"Maybe the battery's dead," he said hopefully.

I unlocked the back door and went in. It took me fifteen
minutes of hard searching, but I finally found where he had hidden
the device. For good measure, I brought one of those aluminum
emergency blankets, too, a thermos of leftover breakfast coffee, and
half a dozen highway flares, though Jay kept a good supply of
emergency equipment in his Honda. It was almost eight by the time
we got started.

When we reached the Ridge Road and turned south, I tried
out the phone. I called Meadowlark Farm. Marianne answered from
the kitchen. I could hear the coffee maker burping away. I gave her
the cellular number but didn't say where I was going. When I told
her Jay would bring me out to the farm later on, she didn't sound
thrilled.

Jay drove all the way to Shoalwater College, past the huddle
of cheap apartments that housed most of the students who didn't
live at home. The apartments were privately owned and managed,
not dormitories.

The college has a beautiful setting. Jay's office overlooks the
bay, and the grounds crew does good things with native plants. Still,
the architecture is basically early biscuit factory. The student
population exceeded capacity two years ago, but there are no new
classrooms in sight.

Jay drove past his own building to the student parking lot
behind the science labs. A dozen or so parked cars indicated that
some unlucky students were attending a lab. Jay got out and walked
around for a while, hands in the pockets of his jacket. A light wind
ruffled his hair. I was about to jump out and join him when he came
back.

"What were you looking for?"

He started the engine and put the car in gear. "Just
visualizing. I want to try to retrace their route."

He eased onto the highway, drove half a block, and made a
right turn at a Seven-Eleven. Again he got out. He was gone quite a
while. I read the booklet that came with the phone, though it
sounded as if it had been translated from Japanese by a computer. I
even considered telephoning my parents in New York to see if the
phone worked for long distance calls.

"That was a good guess," Jay said as he got back in the car.
"They stopped for a six pack of Bud and a frozen pizza."

"The clerk remembered?"

"It's a family place. The owners are on the premises night
and day, apparently. The man says he remembers them because he
carded Jason, thought he looked too young to buy beer. Jason turned
twenty-one in December."

"You know a lot about these kids."

"The Dean did ask me to look after them." He wheeled into
the parking lot of the apartment complex. "Bill's nineteen."

"I thought he looked young." I began to have a clearer
understanding of Jay's urgency. He tends to take responsibility
seriously. If the Dean had trusted him to look after the students, he
would do his damnedest.

Jay got out. So did I. He looked at me over the top of the car.
"Jason's apartment is 722B. It's over there. Second floor." He
gestured. "Will you knock on the door? Just in case. I want to look
around the parking area."

The apartments were strictly motel modern. I climbed an
open-work stairway and walked along the passage until I came to
the bright red door of 722B. The paint was beginning to peel. I
knocked and listened. No answer. I knocked again. Silence.

"What a dump," I said as we pulled out of the lot. "Carol lives
there?"

"It's the social place to be."

"Hey, are you saying Carol's a sosh? That young woman is
not stupid."

"No. She aced organic chemistry."

"But not English?"

"A C in composition."

"From Keith McDonald?"

"No. She's never had a class from McDonald. Mary Sadat
took his ballad seminar. So did Letha Carlsen. Not Carol."

"He mentioned that Mary took it." It was just possible that
Keith's feeling of concern for his students was as protective as Jay's.
Keith had seemed far more shaken by Mary's disappearance than by
Hugo's death.

Half a mile south of the campus, Jay slowed the car. We crept
along to an illegible signpost and turned left.

"Are you sure this is the road?"

"Pretty sure. Carol said it wasn't well marked."

For the first few miles the road was not bad. We passed
farmhouses, a collapsing machine shed, a fishing cabin. The road
began to climb and the surface got bumpier. Nobody had painted the
white line along the shoulder or the yellow line down the center for a
long time. Winters on the Peninsula are not severe by Eastern
standards, so the frost damage was subtle. The county's road crew
had tossed a mixture of gravel and asphalt into the worst cracks.
Even so, the roadbed was rough.

We wound through second-growth forest, almost ready for
harvest, for a few miles. Then we hit the first clear-cut. It was recent,
and it looked like hell.

I know the timber company propaganda in favor of
clear-cutting trees, but the fact remains that it's an insult to nature and an
insult to the eye. This area hadn't been cleaned up and replanted. It
would look better in a few years. In a few years it would look like a
Christmas tree farm, which is what timber companies want. Now,
early in the season, before the bushes had leafed out, the clear-cut
looked like photographs of Belleau Wood circa 1917.

We climbed past the blitz into another stretch of
second-growth. As we rounded a curve, a log truck loaded with one
mammoth cedar barreled toward us, horn blaring. Jay bumped the
Honda onto the shoulder as the noise doppelered. Gravel sprayed,
but we didn't spin out.

Jay's knuckles showed white on the steering wheel. "Good
thing we met him here. No drop-off."

I drew a breath. "That was an old-growth cedar log."

"Are you looking, Lark?"

"For signs of the pickup? Yes. Pity it's silver and black. If it
was fire-engine red, it would be easier to spot. Do you really think
we'll find it?"

"I hope it's not out here."

We continued to climb. The road surface was dry. The
previous evening, it would have been wet and treacherous. We
passed the derelict fishing lodge. Stumps surrounded it.

We pulled around another curve, and I made a noise that
may be represented as
Ulp
. A sheer drop-off skirted my side
of the road. The cliff ran several miles, with the misty foothills and a
bend of the Coho visible below in the blue distance. I made myself
look straight down.

"Stop!"

Jay slowed the Honda but didn't stop. "What is it?"

"Never mind. Sun on water." A creek must run at the base of
the canyon.

Jay grunted and drove on.

About a hundred yards farther along, I glimpsed something
else. I squinched my eyes. "Better stop. I can't tell. Could be
water...damn." A tree that must have grown straight up the side of
the ravine blocked my sight. "Slow down, damnit. There. You have to
stop, Jay."

"I can't stop yet. I need a straight stretch or a wide place." He
kept going.

I had lost sight of my glittering patch. I blinked hard. It was a
good quarter mile before the road straightened, the shoulder
widened, and Jay could pull over without endangering us or the
car.

He set the brake. "We'll have to walk back."

"I know. Do we need a flare?"

"Not yet."

We got out. I zipped my all-weather jacket and tugged my
gloves on. Jay reached into the glove compartment on my side and
took out his binoculars. "Show me."

Every ten yards or so Jay lifted the binoculars and scanned
the canyon below us. It was brushy and had been logged, but noble
firs had begun to rise above the deciduous undergrowth. We trudged
to the tree that had blocked my view.

We had already passed the tree when I glimpsed the patch
of color from the car. I jogged back toward the Honda about ten
yards and looked down. At first I didn't see anything but the brown
of the undergrowth and the somber greens of the dominant conifers.
Then I stepped sideways and there it was. "Come here."

Jay walked over to me.

I pointed.

He steadied the binoculars and focused. "Yeah. That's it,
about halfway down. They must've been flying. I don't see--"

"It's the pickup?" My pulse accelerated.

He lowered the glasses and looked at me, his eyes grave. "I
can see the sleeve of a jacket in the underbrush. One of them was
thrown. I don't see the other. The truck smacked into a blackberry
patch, so it's half-hidden."

I gulped. "What now?"

"We call for help. Then I'm going down with a medical kit.
Let's hope I need it."

It took us about four minutes to jog back to the car. Jay
called the sheriff's dispatcher while I set flares in front of the Honda
and at the curve behind it. We would have to trust the next log truck
to avoid it.

I retrieved Jay's first aid kit from the trunk, his emergency
blanket, and a canteen of water. I got my aluminum blanket and
more flares from my side of the car. When Jay finished talking, I
reached for the telephone.

He grabbed my wrist. "Who were you going to call?"

"Bianca."

"No."

"But I'm obviously going to be late ...oh."

"I don't want those people to know what's happening. We'll
take the phone, though, in case I need to relay information on the
injuries. I gave the number to the dispatcher. Did you bring the
rope?"

"Rope?"

He popped the trunk again and got out, leaving me to
retrieve the phone. I was laden like a camel. I lumbered around as he
pulled a coil of climbing rope from behind the black plastic box of
snow chains we had never used. He also took out his point-and-click
camera with the built-in flash, which he stuffed into one of my
pockets.

I regarded the rope with interest. "You're taking up
mountain climbing, and I'm your faithful sherpa."

"Very funny. I want a lifeline. I'll use that tree by the road.
The first ten or fifteen feet are steepest."

We redistributed the load and slogged back to the marker
tree. Jay would have to lower himself through the brush then make
his way along the milder slope to the wreck. I was ready to go down,
too, but he made me promise to wait for the rescue car. We wrapped
a bight of rope around the trunk of the tree. It was some kind of
native evergreen and probably shallow rooted. I hoped it would
hold.

"Phone?" Jay said, reaching for it.

"Why... Oh, in case you need to describe the injuries."

"Come on, Lark. Get it into gear." He stuffed the phone in one
pocket and the emergency medical kit in the other, and draped the
canteen across his chest. He also managed to squish both blankets
into his jacket. They folded up small.

I held the rope against his weight as he picked his way down
the slope. Once he lurched off-balance and the rope jerked at my
hand, but I dug my heels in and held on. When I felt the rope go slack
I peered down at him.

"I'm okay. Set the flares out," he called.

"Okay," I yelled back.

I set four flares both ways from the tree, with attention to
the curves in the road and the probable speed of the rescue vehicles.
I also had instructions to photograph the skid marks and the point at
which the truck had left the road. Neither of us thought the photos
would substitute for professional work, but the rescue vehicle might
arrive before the patrol car. Rescue crews tended to take first things
first, and as far as they were concerned preserving evidence came a
long way behind saving lives. That was a viewpoint I could
sympathize with. Nevertheless, I did my best with the camera. Just in
case.

The marks were fairly obvious, now I knew they were there.
I wondered how many less lethal times Jason had burned rubber. His
tires had ground tread marks into the weedy shoulder before the
pickup became airborne. I shot the tread marks from a couple of
angles. The natural light must have been adequate because the flash
didn't discharge.

Then I stuffed the small camera back in my pocket, walked
to the tree, and watched Jay's uncommunicative head bobbing in the
brush. I dislike waiting. I hoped the paramedics and the cops would
hurry.

Since I knew where the pickup was, the path it had cut was
visible. It had sailed over the edge, hit the ground beside a noble fir,
and rolled down through the blackberries until it came to rest on its
side against an alder. The blackberry vines had whipped back,
partially obscuring the truck so I couldn't see which side was down.
Blackberries are the kudzu of the Pacific Northwest.

Jay stopped by the patch of color that was one of the boys.
He squatted there a long time. Then he inched his way through the
vines to the pickup. Once, I thought I could hear him talking on the
phone, but the wind had picked up and a stream gurgled nearby, so I
couldn't be sure.

I didn't see how anyone could have survived a crash like
that. I thought of Bill's ingenuous face and Jason's twisty little mouth,
and I began a kind of preliminary mourning. It was such a stupid
waste.

Jason was a rotten driver, however youthful his reaction
time, capable of running the truck off the road on his own. He was
the personification of adolescent male insurance rates. I was no
expert, but, from the look of the tread marks, he had been speeding.
Was the wreck an accident, a nasty coincidence, or had it been
engineered? I shivered in the rising breeze.