The Laura Cardinal Novels (51 page)

A chair had been placed next to the gurney. The chair was coral red and made of nubby material. Laura noticed that Louise Yates held Andrew Whitcomb’s hand, as if she had known him all her life. He had clearly done this many times before and inspired confidence with his gentle, respectful demeanor.

Mark let go of Louise’s hand long enough to push the sheet up away from the young man’s arm, which lay just inside the rim of the tray on which he had been stored.

Louise groaned.

Behind Laura, Chuck Yates muttered, “Dear God.”

Andrew Whitcomb returned to Louise’s side, said something Laura could not hear, something for Louise’s ears alone. Louise nodded. They crossed the few feet of distance to Dan Yates.

“Do you want to sit down?”

Louise shook her head. She was staring down at her son’s hand, which was palm-up and slightly curled. The sheet had been pushed halfway up his forearm, mercifully covering up several pellet wounds Laura had seen during the autopsy photos.

“Why don’t you stay with him awhile?” Mark said.

She turned to him, panic in her eyes. “But what if it isn’t Dan?”

Chuck spoke up. “You know what they said. They matched his fingerprints. His fingerprints from that time he worked at—”

Louise hunched her shoulders and Chuck stopped talking.

Time stretched. Louise kept staring at Dan’s arm. The room went completely quiet. Louise’s expression was flat, unreadable, but her fingers seemed to move of their own volition, almost as if she were playing piano in the air by her hips. Laura wondered what she would do. Wondered if she’d bolt.

“I don’t want to touch him if he’s not my son,” Louise Yates said into the silence.

Andrew Whitcomb stood with her. He said nothing, but he was there.

Suddenly, Louise bent at the waist and picked up the arm. Shocked at the weight, or maybe the feel of his flesh, she nearly dropped it back on the metal gurney, caught herself just in time. “He’s cold,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s true.”

“Like he was in the refrigerator.”

She held his hand limply, at the wrist. Staring at the arm, uncertain. Laura could see the struggle that went back and forth behind her eyes: She didn’t want him to be her son, but instinct told her he was, and this would be her last chance to touch him.

Abruptly, Louise Yates sat down in the chair and covered his hand in both of hers.

She started to cry, hugging the hand to her cheek, her tears falling on the pale flesh. Running her fingers over his palm, his knuckles, his fingers, exploring the only part of her son she was allowed to see.

Memorizing the weight, the mass, the feel of his skin against the time when she would never have access to him again.

Mark Sproule was early. He usually was. Every time he met someone he’d get to a place anywhere from fifteen to five minutes early, and even though he’d tried many times to recalibrate his timing, it never made a whit of difference. The result this time was that he found himself standing outside the Mineshaft Coffee Shop in Shoshone, California, the early morning chill seeping through his jacket, watching the sunrise. Hands stuffed into his pockets; he’d forgotten his gloves.

I’m too old for this
, he thought as he stared out at the mountains. The mountains stood out like crisp blue cutouts against the pale morning sky, just a hint of lemon between two low peaks. He’d just driven all the way to Indiana and back, a turnaround of four days, and all he wanted to do was go home.

By thirty-seven years of age, you’d think I’d have a stable life like everybody else
. But all that had been shot to shit a year ago. Now Rhonda had taken Sarah back to the family home in Indiana, and he was left out here, alone, except for his tortoises.

His tortoises and his friends. If they really
were
friends. He was beginning to have his doubts. How well did he really know any of them?

He flashed on his four desert tortoises, Hambone, Colonel Klink, Bubba, and Landshark, their ancient, shriveled faces, their wise eyes. They weren’t really his, but the state gave him a permit to care for them. That was because he was considered a law-biding citizen. He’d gotten the first two for Sarah. Now she wasn’t here to enjoy them.

He’d have to figure out how to give them back without raising any alarms. Tell the government he was moving to Indiana, which was true.

Stamping his feet in the cold desert light, he wondered for the hundredth time,
How’d I get into this?
He still wasn’t sure. Considering what he knew about the PATRIOT Act, knowing that without any explanation they could deport
US citizens
, how did he allow himself to get involved in this mess?

He thought he must have just slid into it.

They kept telling him his part was minimal, but he knew deep inside that you could never be one-hundred-percent sure of anything. He’d learned that the hard way.

Mark rubbed his hands for warmth, lit a cigarette. Used to be he’d laugh when anyone said the government was out to get people. That was for those wingnuts in Kingman, places like that, where they stockpiled weapons and dug themselves bunkers and laid in the old MREs, spicing up their diatribes with Ruby Ridge and black helicopters.

But now he knew. The United States—the country of his birth, the country he had pledged allegiance to as a school kid—was only as good as the people in power at the time. Like any and every other government in the world.

Look at Yucca Mountain. Those two words sent shivers up his spine. Pretty soon the US government would start transporting nuclear waste on the highways and rails from every corner of the country and bury it out here in this pristine desert.

But it was the nuclear plants that scared him the most. For the first time in over twenty-five years, the government was seriously talking about building new ones. If there was a nuclear plant accident like the one at Chernobyl, it would take twenty-five thousand years to recover from a major plutonium melt down.

He’d seen a documentary on Chernobyl—people’s homes blackened and rotting, falling back down into the toxic earth. The sarcophagus housing Reactor 4, supposedly made to contain the radiation, was just a Band-Aid and was a prime candidate for a nuclear explosion. The Zone of Exclusion covered only a radius of nineteen miles. If the thing exploded, it would destroy Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine.

And these assholes were planning to do more of it here.

So here he was, taking a risk that probably wouldn’t change a thing in the long run. But he had to do it.

Plus, there was the money.
Don’t forget the money
. Not a whole hell of a lot, but enough to get him to Indiana, get him set up in an apartment, see him through the first six months. Enough to let him be near his little Junebug. And maybe what he did here could start a national dialogue, get people to wake up and see what was happening before it was too late. He knew from his own experience that a person needed a jolt every once in a while if they were going to ever learn anything.

An old blue truck pulled into the parking lot. Bobby Burdette driving, Glenn Traywick leaning his elbow on the passenger-side window.

“Hop in!” Bobby Burdette yelled.

Mark threw his cigarette on the walkway and ground it out under his boot, walked over and squeezed into the cab. “You sound happy this morning.”

“I am happy. I found the perfect place.”

As usual, Glenn had that serene, sunny-seeming demeanor, but his blue eyes were neutral—you could never really tell what he was thinking. He wore stiff, dark denim head to toe, his jacket collar pulled up to hide the strawberry mark on his neck, the blocky gimme cap with a lightning bolt and the words GLENN ELECTRIC on it pulled low over his grizzled eyebrows. Guy had his own business, and he was doing this—Jesus.

Glenn always wore the hat. Mark was there when Glenn saw the cap at an electrical repair shop, couldn’t resist that his name was on it. When he wrote letters to the paper, he signed himself Glenn Electric.

Bobby, Mark noticed, was sporting a new haircut. Military short with whitewalls. New, mean-looking sunglasses, wrap-around, that you couldn’t see into. He looked like a cop. All he needed was the mustache.

Bobby pulled out of the parking lot, and Glenn Electric’s styrofoam coffee cup spilled onto Mark, not scalding, but bad enough.

“Shit! I’m sorry. These damn lids never do what they’re supposed to.”

“Rag on the floor,” Bobby said.

Mark stared at the red rag under his feet. It looked like it had been left out in the elements for months, stiffened into frozen whorls and crusted over with oil. What was he doing with these people?

He used to teach fifth-grade biology, and now here he was with a guy who wore a hat labeled GLENN ELECTRIC and looked and acted like a poster boy for
Soldier of Fortune
.

Twenty minutes later, they reached Micaville. Or at least the sign for Micaville. Some poor taxpayer had paid good money for the green reflector sign, but there was nothing in the road except a broken foundation in the weeds, lined by a foot-high parapet of stacked wafer-thin flagstones, and one toasted brown Joshua tree.

Bobby pulled off the road in a funnel of dust.

Mark said, “This is where we’re gonna meet?”

“No,” Bobby said, pointing out the window to the left. “We’re gonna meet over there.”

Mark squinted against the bleached whiteness of the landscape, the puffs of dusty sage like dirty sheep, saw the orange-slice shape way out there, corrugated metal dulled by the sun.

“What’s that?”

“Hangar,” Bobby said.

At that moment, Mark felt his bowels wanting to let go. They really meant it. It wasn’t a game. They were serious, which meant so was he. He sucked it up, literally, willing the cramp in his gut to go away.

It did. But the airplane hangar stayed where it was.

The apartment Kellee had rented in Flagstaff was red brick accented with wooden beams and a shingle roof. The Swiss Chalet Apartments were neatly laid out around a common area. A walkway wound between snippets of bright green winter lawn and tamed bushes. Flower boxes filled the lower windows, and brown wooden balconies containing the detritus of college students—beach towels, bicycles, grills.

Apartment 409C was on the second floor. She didn’t have to knock; the door was open, and some song she didn’t recognize floated out. The male voice was deep and scratchy and meandered tunelessly.

She called out, “Is someone home?” Had to shout three times, louder and louder.

A barefoot, brown-haired girl in short shorts and a skimpy top appeared in the doorway. Her hair was held up over her neck in a big clip. Pert nipples poked through the thin material of her top. Laura concentrated on the girl’s face, which was pretty despite a row of pimples across her forehead and a good paving-over of base makeup. “Can I help you?”

Laura showed her shield and introduced herself.

The girl hung on the door, confused. “I talked to a detective the other day.”

“This is just a followup.”

“Oh.” She left the door open and walked into the apartment. After turning down the music, she threw herself onto a cream-colored couch.

The room was mostly white or cream, with dark brown rattan furniture that looked as if it had been bought all at once. Aside from several large textbooks, notebooks and loose paper, the place was neat and well-cared-for. Laura sat on a chair opposite her.

Amy answered her questions intelligently and thoughtfully. She would be a perfect witness. Laura got the impression that Amy was a very smart person and was using her intellectual capacity to distance herself from the trauma of losing her friend and roommate. She was dry-eyed, articulate, and helpful. Offering her opinions on the relationship between Kellee and Dan (“They both were old souls, but nonetheless there was a naïve quality to them”), on her own relationship with Kellee (“I saw her more as a sister than a friend—we were, like, family”), and on Kellee’s family (“Kellee and I spent a couple of days down at their cabins this summer”).

Laura remembered what Richie had said, his conclusion that Kellee and Amy had recently just met. He’d been wrong about that.

“How long have you known each other?”

“Since psych class last year.”

“But you only became roommates recently? Why did she move in with you if she was planning on getting married?”

“It came up suddenly. Even though they dated all last year, Kell never mentioned marriage before. So when I suggested she move in with me after my other roommate left, she jumped at it.“

“Must have been a shock when she told you.”

“Tell me about it. All of a sudden, it was, like, we’re getting hitched! That’s what she said, the night they both came back here and announced it.
I
think,”—she unconsciously touched the pimples on her forehead—”they got all jazzed-up and decided, you know, ‘It’s now or never.’ It was like they fed off each other’s excitement.”

“Why weren’t you her maid of honor?”

Again, the touch to the forehead, feeling along the row of zits as if it were Braille and she could read some answer in them.

“She asked me, but I couldn’t do it. I had an exam Friday, the first of three mandatory exams. If I missed one, it would bring my whole average down. She knew that. She knows how important school is to me. I’m in premed. I plan to be an orthopedic surgeon.”

“You knew about the brain tumor? Do you think that’s the reason they decided to get married?”

“Well, that’s the logical conclusion. People often act impulsively when faced with their mortality.”

Analytical. Almost pompous in her pronouncements. Laura had a feeling this girl was riding for a fall when the shock wore off.

“Anything you can tell me about that day?”

She shrugged. “Dan showed up about seven. Kellee grabbed her stuff and they took off.”

“Anything else? Something that sticks in your mind?”

Amy looked inward, scanning her memory banks. Wanting to be as helpful as she could.

“Nope. Just that Dan said they needed to hurry. They were picking Shana up on the way.”