Salt River (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Only the insurance lights were on, one on Municipal's side, one on ours, when I pulled in at City Hall. I put Isaiah's package on my desk by a note from June asking me to call her. The
J
of her signature was drawn leaning to the right, toward the other letters, its crosspiece sheltering them. The exclamation point after
Call me
was a fat, balloonlike shape with a smiley face below.

"Billy's taken a turn for the worse," she said without preamble upon hearing my voice. "Something about a blood clot, and hemorrhage. Dad's on his way up to Memphis. Doc Oldham went with him. Milly's up there already."

"I'm sorry, June. Are you okay?"

"I guess. Better get off the phone, though. In case Dad or the hospital calls? But one more thing—"

"Okay."

"That detective from Fort Worth? He's still around, asking questions. Did a swing through town first, hit all the stores. Then he drove out to the bars and roadhouses. Dad thought maybe you might want to look into it. 'Since Eldon is nowhere about,' as he said. He left a note for you, top drawer of your desk."

I locked Isaiah's package in our possessions safe, which just about anyone could open with determination and a state-of-the-art nail file, and read the note from Lonnie, which told me, among other things, that Officer Jed Baxter was staying at the Inn-a-While out by the highway. So I got back in the Jeep and made the longish drive.

It's a habit you never quite get rid of. You pull in and sit for a time, watching closely, sizing up activity and positions, before getting out.

Three cars ranging from three to a dozen years old, an SUV with Montana plates, and a beat-to-hell pickup, half Ford, half spare parts, occupied the parking lot, making it a landmark business day for the motel. The number was missing from the door on room 8, but with 7 to the left and 9 to the right, and a Camry with Texas plates out front, I managed to figure it out. The Camry was gold-colored and well used, with stains on the carpet and seats, but all of it clean, none of the usual detritus of fast-food wrappers, sacks, paper cups. Even the boxes in the backseat were neatly stacked.

Jed Baxter didn't look all that surprised when he answered the door in his boxer shorts and T-shirt.

"Sheriff." He backed out of the door to give me room.

A bottle of bourbon stood on the bedside table. From the look of things, the two of them had been keeping close company. The TV was on, one car in pursuit of another against what was all too obviously a back-projected city, volume turned so low it could have been sound from the next room. Baxter had been ironing his pants atop a damp towel on the dresser surface. One leg was folded back on itself, like a cripple's. He unplugged the travel iron and, since he was there by it, snagged his drink.

"You've been rooting around town, asking questions." I'd settled in on the wide window ledge. He sat on the bed. We were maybe a yard apart.

"What we do—right, Sheriff?" He shrugged. "I wasn't trying to hide anything. News in a town this size, it's not likely to gather flies."

"And I'm thinking you knew that; it was part of the plan. Maybe it
was
the plan."

"Ah. The plan." Baxter held up his empty glass and motioned with its toward the bottle, offering. Why not? Been a long day. He found another plastic cup in the bathroom, half filled it, and brought it over.

"We spoke with your people back in Fort Worth. Seems—"

"I'm on a leave of absence, Sheriff."

"Okay. Not quite the way they put it, but close enough. Explains the lack of a warrant or any other paperwork. You're here, they were careful to point out—a number of times—in no official capacity."

Baxter smiled.

"So," I said.

"So?"

"So it begins to look personal." He took a long sip of his bourbon before responding. "It is, but not the way you think. Back in town I definitely got the feeling that you weren't eager to help."

"I had no information for you."

"Come on, Sheriff. You were just shining me on, didn't even want to talk to me."

"In which case, you acted in a manner that assured I would."

"Yeah, well. I've been doing this a long time. Whatever works."

"What do you have against Eldon Brown?"

Baxter shook his head. "Not him. My concern is Ron Nabors, the detective who nailed him for it and wouldn't hear otherwise. Still won't, for that matter."

"You have reason to believe this Nabors was involved?"

"Laziness and habit, more like."

"But you're looking to what? Take him down?"

"Not going to happen. And not that I'd want to. But your friend had nothing to do with the murder, and Big Ron's gotten away with too much for too long. Hell, we all have."

I was not only a psychologist of sorts, I was a cop who had seen some of the worst mankind had to offer and an ex-con who had been privy to society's best, gnarled efforts at greatheartedness and manipulation. Altruism gets handed to me, I'm automatically peeling back the label, looking to see what's underneath. But I didn't say anything.

Baxter held the bottle up and, when I shook my head, poured what remained into his cup.

"I just want this set right, Sheriff. Came here hoping I might persuade Eldon Brown to go back with me, turn himself in. Nothing more to it. This point, I'm not expecting a lot more from life. Small wins. Small rewards. And most of those for someone else."

CHAPTER NINE

"I'm there?"

"For the benefit of the exercise, you are."

"I'm not your student anymore, Cy."

"Habit. So tell me: What do you, as a trained professional, say?"

"I say . . . " I began, and foundered.

"Exactly. You don't say anything. You listen." Cy got up to leave. "And that's the most important thing I can ever tell you. A small, simple thing—like most great secrets. You just listen."

Strange how, as we age, our lives turn to metaphor. Memories flood in often and with little provocation, to the point that everything starts to remind us of something else. We, our actions, our lives, become representational. We imagine that the world is deeper, richer; in fact, it is simply more abstract. We tell ourselves that now we pay attention only to what's important. But sadly, what's important turns out to be keeping our routine.

Much like the town back there behind us.

Billy, it turned out, was going to be okay. He'd thrown a major clot, but it lodged in a leg vein and they managed to excise it surgically before it hit lungs or heart. Lonnie's description of the procedure when I spoke to him on the phone just before we left made it sound a lot like pulling a worm out of its skin. Except for all the fancy tools, equipment, and degrees, of course.

And now Jed Baxter and I were hiking up-country through the heaviest growth, four or five hollows and a long hill or two away from Isaiah's colony. Morning sunlight fell. at a slant through the trees, struck the ground, and slid away into undergrowth without much purchase. Bird calls everywhere, growing silent as we approached, starting up again behind us. The barky, lisping chatter of squirrels.

The colony was looking good. The townspeople did a great job rebuilding, and the kids had done an equally great follow-up. Kids—I still thought of them as that, though none of them were, and most hadn't been for some time. The old sign—HIER IST KEIN WARUM—was back up, over the common hall now. They'd left the scorched edges and glued the ragged crack running lengthwise down its middle. At the far end of the compound, they'd built a playground worthy of the swankest inner-city park: animal-shaped swings, treehouse, wooden jungle gym, tunnels made from crates, pint-size barn and corral. One of the colony's newer members had been a woodworker, custom stairways, door casings, and the like for a builder back in San Francisco. The swing in the shape of a horse bore an elaborate swirl of hand-carved mane; delicate whorls ran into its ears.

The group was having its morning meal outside at one of the tables. Moira spotted us first, lifting a hand high in what served as both alert and greeting. The others turned, Isaiah came to meet us just inside the clearing, and nothing would do, of course, but that we eat with them. Fresh-baked bread, elderberry preserves, a kind of farmer's cheese made (Moira signed, with one of the children interpreting) by curdling milk with lemon juice.

I'd told Baxter what to expect, but you could tell it was a reach for him, taking all this in, accepting it for what it was. After we'd finished eating, he and Eldon stood nearby playing horseshoes (horseshoes! how long had it been since I'd seen horseshoes?) and talking. We had helped clear the table and attempted to help more, but Moira and the others held up hands and pushed us away in pantomime, mugging in mock terror as though we were an invading army.

Isaiah and I sat beneath a pecan tree at a table splattered with dried bird shit. Isaiah wiped what he could of it away with his hand, then bent down to wipe his hand on grass. He'd come a long way for a city boy.

"It's his brother's diary, from the last days," Isaiah said of the package I'd brought him. "The only other person, besides me, that Merle was ever close to. Thomas was dying from cancer, this weird kind that doesn't metastasize but recurs. First time, they pulled a tumor out of his stomach that weighed eleven pounds. Called it Gertrude—and Merle sent a birth announcement instead of a get-well card. Everything fine, then a little over a year later it was back, bigger this time, with more organ involvement. With the fourth one, Thomas refused further surgery."

Isaiah leaned back against the tree.

"Remember when I told you about my grandmother, how she was the start of all this? How I was with her there at the end? Well, it wasn't like that with Thomas and Merle. Merle wasn't there with him, he was three states away, trying to save a marriage that had been too far gone for far too long. He was at work when the call came. A patient was going bad, a transplant that came in an hour or so before. They insisted the call was urgent, so Merle took it. It was the hospice telling him that Thomas had died that morning. Merle thanked them for letting him know and went back to work just as a code was called on the transplant patient. He was in charge that day, and ran it."

You just listen.

"Merle was never one to show emotion much. Part of that was what he did, part of it simply who he was. But Thomas's death hit him hard. He'd call some nights and we'd exchange three or four sentences the whole time, he'd just be there on the phone, six, eight hundred miles away."

I had to ask; old habits die hard. "How long ago was this?"

"Little over a year."

"So he was still depressed?"

"Why do you ask?"

I hesitated. "To all appearances he was coming here to give you the diary."

"You think he was suicidal."

"Why would he want you to have it now? Something that was so important to him. It's the sort of action that people take—"

"Yes. It is." Isaiah pulled off the tree and sat straight again, his hand flat on the diary. "But I don't know. We'll never know, will we?"

"Could he have been ill, like his brother? A premonition of some kind?"

Isaiah was silent. He picked up the diary and stood.

"Does it matter?" he said.

CHAPTER TEN

Eldon wanted to think it over, this turning-himself-in thing.

Jed Baxter was back in unmarked room 8 at the Inn-a-While.

And the dog that Red Wilson complained about had, as it turned out, good reason to be barking.

Late afternoon, I drove out that way. By the time I came around the curve, Red was standing at the mailbox waiting for me. Jerry Langston, who runs the rural mail route, told me that Red was there every day waiting to collect his mail in person, adding that "Heard you coming" was all he ever said. Which is what Red said to me.

My questions about the dog didn't fare a lot better. If I'd been collecting syllables, I'd never have made my quota. The barking had been going on for three, four days now, I managed to discover, but as of yesterday it got worse. Old man over there had taken to beating the dog for it, he was pretty sure.

Old man.
Though still hard and lean, Wilson himself was well along in his seventies. He pointed across the dirt road to a house that gave the impression of having begun as a porch, developed a middling ambition, and undergone mitosis.

I drove over. It hit me the minute I stepped out of the Jeep, but the smell's common enough in the country that I didn't pay undue attention. The property owner, Bob Van-der, stood inside the screen door peering out. He'd probably been watching me across the way at Red's. We'd never met, but I knew of him. Around to the side of the house, tethered on a ragged length of clothesline wrapped several times around its legs, the dog barked away.

"You want to step out here a minute, Bob?" I asked, though evidently that was about the last thing he wanted to do. As for me, I was tired and damned irritable and had, I thought, far more important things to attend to. Phrases like "Or I can come in there and get you" drifted unbidden to the surface of my mind.

He emerged, finally, standing with one hand still on the screen-door handle. In a kind of travesty of Sunday dress, he wore a pair of pants that had once been the lower portion of a navy blue suit, and a white shirt with areas gone so thin they looked like windows onto a pale pink world. A small woman or a girl stood inside, just back from the door, peering out as Bob had done. I told him I was here in response to a complaint, and what the complaint was.

"I know, I know." Here, his expression insisted, was yet another instance of everything in life being out to confound him. "I done what I could," he said. "Dog just suddenly took hard to barking. Barking's what dogs do."

The dog snarled and bared teeth when I approached, but settled as I put my hand on its head. No more barking. It had a goodly portion of short-haired pointer mixed in with goodlier portions of other things, and was malnourished and severely dehydrated; you could make out each individual rib.

I cut the clothesline with my pocketknife. The dog looked up at me and went to the back of the house, where the stench was strongest. It reared up, put its front paws on the rotting wood, and began barking again. Nearby, an ax leaned against a tree. I took it, urged the dog aside, and sank the ax into the side of the house.

I was remembering stories my father told me, stories passed down from
his
father, about old-time fiddlers who got religion and put away their devil's instruments in the walls of their houses, where people found them a hundred years later.

"You can't—" Bob said, then, with the second blow, the smell hit us full on and a small arm fell out of the gap in the planking.

The child was around six years old. He'd crawled through one of the broken boards inside the house, got stuck inside the wall, and died there. He'd been in the wall about a week, the coroner judged.

"And you didn't notice? That he was missing?" I asked Bob at the time. We were standing by the Jeep, him in cuffs I'd managed to find in the glove compartment, waiting for the troopers who would run him up to County.

"Well, it did get kinda quiet there for a while." He raised an eyebrow, which pulled the rest of his face into what may have been meant to register some emotion, though what emotion, I have no idea. "Before the damn dog commenced barking."

That night the storm that had been threatening finally hit. I stayed in town, no way I was going to try to get out to the cabin, even in the Jeep. Standing outside the office beneath the overhang, I listened to the rain pound down, so loud that it obliterated all other sound, so heavy that I couldn't see across the street. Periodically gusts of wind would blast down Main, sudden and forceful as cannon shot, lifting the rain momentarily to horizontal as they passed.

We never found out who the woman was. Around twenty years old, Doc Oldham estimated, and mute. That last caused the coroner to take a second look. The child's vocal cords, he decided, were undeveloped. Perhaps he had been mute too, or had simply grown up without learning to speak. The woman's child? Or younger brother? She went to the state home. Bob Vander went from county lockup to prison, where, weeks later, his body was found among a hundred pounds or so of bedding in one of the cement-mixer-like dryers in the prison laundry.

Eldon, I'd left surrounded by the compound's children, plunking on his banjo and singing, of all things, old minstrel songs. I had to wonder what the kids could possibly make of "That's Why They Call Me Shine." And I had to wonder, too, how they were making out up there, in all this rain. Fierce as it was here, they'd be getting it far worse. Rain could come down off those hills and through those hollows like a mile-long hammer, all at once.

I went back in to brew my second pot of coffee. Earlier I'd dialed up the Internet connection, thinking I'd e-mail J. T. and see how she was doing back in Seattle since I hadn't heard from her lately, but I kept getting kicked off. So we weren't the only ones getting slammed. And now even the phone itself was out.

When I heard the door, I wondered who could possibly be out in this and why; and when, disentangling myself from memories, I turned, for a moment I couldn't speak or think, because for just that moment I had the impression—I was certain—that it was Val standing there.

Then June threw back the hood of her coat.

"I—" And that was as far as she got. As though simply making her way here had used up whatever small reserves she had remaining. She went down all at once, the way kids do, onto the floor, and sat. I pulled her up out of the water and into a chair with a cup of hot tea in front of her and, as wind roared down Main and rain beat at the roof, learned that Billy was dead.