Water Rites (27 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
told Voltaire to keep his tough guys in line.” Durer scowled over the rim of the steering wheel. “If he wants to start a war around here, he’s sure doing it right.”

“Take it easy, Carl.” Dan grabbed for the dash as the chief of police slammed the four-wheeler through an old wash. “You do that again and we’re going to have to walk back. What exactly did Sandy tell you, anyway?”

“Just that she’d found a body. The Wilmer girl.” He slowed a little as they bounced down into the next wash. “She was pretty upset.”

“Then how do you know a uniform’s involved?”

“Sandy said so.” Durer grunted. “I hope she’s wrong.”

He didn’t think she was. Dan scowled up at the rocky wall of the Gorge above them, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Sandy didn’t jump to conclusions. “Don’t lay all the blame on Voltaire. I think he’s trying to do the best he can, but he can’t do it on his own. He’s young.” Dan sighed. “He’s got a lot to learn.”

“He’s not that young,” Durer growled. “He doesn’t give a shit about anybody who doesn’t wear a uniform.”

Dan said nothing. No point in arguing with him. Carl didn’t like the Corps’ presence on his turf and never had. Dan wished again that the Shunt fiasco hadn’t happened. If wishes here horses . . . Well, he could understand Carter’s suspicions. He didn’t seem like a man who trusted easily. He’d hoped that Nita could talk to him, but whatever had been between them apparently wasn’t. Had to leave that one alone.

Dan fingered the faint trace of the lump at the base of his skull. It would be hard not to interpret that Shunt riot as a setup. Especially since someone had holed the Pipe while everyone was busy. He leaned back against the seat, his back aching from picking beans. His fault. He should have read the crowd better.

Where the hell had that redheaded bastard come from?

“There’s Sandy.” Durer hit the brakes and eased the car off the road. “She found the body while she was out looking for that damned goat of hers.”

“’Lo, Dan.” Sandy tried to smile, but her face looked haggard. “I’m glad Carl dragged you along. This is a little too much for me.”

“Show us, Sandy,” Durer said heavily.

Dan tried to catch Sandy’s eye but she wouldn’t look at him. She carried a blanket folded over one arm.

“Over here.” She led them down a gentle slope toward a clump of spindly firs.

He could see where a car or truck had pulled off the road, and then driven down to the trees. The tracks were just visible in the dust, sharp enough to be fresh.

“Don’t step on ’em, Dan,” Durer growled. “I’ll get Kelly to video ‘em for a match. He went out to the Welsh place to pick up the doc.”

The girl lay on the ground beneath the thin branches of the young firs. Dan looked away from her bare breasts and the bruises that mottled them. Dark blood streaked her pale skin. Cathy Wilmer. She’d turned seventeen last spring. The air was still in his hollow, protected from the wind. Dust motes glinted in the sunbeams, and a trick of light blurred the girl’s face. Her hair was dark, long. It took him back thirty years and in a moment of vision he saw his sister Amy, lying broken in the dust beneath the dry face of Celilo Falls.

“Can I cover her, Carl?” Sandy was staring down at the girl, her face pale, jaw set. “The knife’s over there.” She jerked her head. “Just tossed away. It’s an Army knife.” Her lips twitched, then thinned. “That damn fool colonel. Why the hell did he let this happen?” She shook out the blanket with a snap and draped it gently over the girl.

Dan recognized the faded flowers on the fabric. It was the spread from Sandy’s bed. He put his arm around her shoulders, feeling the tremors that shook her as he pulled her close.

“I taught her piano. She was so good.” Sandy’s voice cracked. “God damn him,” she whispered. “Whoever did this. And Voltaire, too. I hope they blow the Pipe out from under all of them. I hope they all die.”

Dan closed his eyes, holding her close, stroking her hair, hurting for Cathy, for eighteen-year-old Amy who had jumped from the top of Celilo so many long years ago. How many times could you look down on someone like this before it got to be too much and you quit trying?

The sound of an engine broke the quiet. “Kelly’s here with Doc,” Durer said briskly. He had picked the knife up carefully with a plastic bag: a big lock-blade with the Corps’ turreted castle on the handle. “I’d like to keep this kind of quiet.” He stared bleakly a the knife. “This is all we need right now.”

“What are you going to do, Carl?” Sandy’s voice shook. “Just let it go? Pretend it didn’t happen?”

“Hell no, woman.” Durer flushed. “I’m going to ram this down Voltaire’s throat ’till he pukes, and he’s going to do a DNA test on every damn man on that base. But I’m doin’ it in private. Word’ll get around soon enough,” he said grimly.

“Stupid to throw the murder weapon away like that,” Dan said. “’Specially when it has your name on it, sort of.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” Durer said heavily. “I haven’t convicted yet.”

Yeah, whatever Durer’s private feelings were, he was a fair and honest man. Kelly had driven up with the doctor, and Dan watched Durer surreptitiously pocket the bagged knife. He needed to talk to Carter. Kelly had the biggest mouth in town. Knife or no knife, folks were going to draw their own conclusions once word of this got around. He might have to try the back way onto the base. It was a big risk, with tensions as high as they were. Getting shot wouldn’t help anything.

“Can you drop me back at the market?” he asked.

“Sure.” Durer nodded, giving Dan a sideways glance. “Someone’s got to tell the Wilmers.” He cleared his throat.

He had done this kind of things too many times already. Dan wondered suddenly whom they would tell first, when he got shot. Sandy?

“I’ll do it, Dan.” Sandy touched his arm, her face calm and in control again. “I know Anne real well. Dan? What I said before . . .”

“I know.” He touched her lips to silence her, kissed her gently on the forehead. “Thank you,” he murmured. “For doing this.”

He and Durer didn’t talk much during the ride back to the market. From Durer’s expression, he was as pessimistic as Dan about the future situation. Someone outside was trying to set Army against the locals; Dan was more sure of it than ever. And they were doing a damn good job. The only question was who. If he had that answer, Carter would listen to him. He’d have to listen. “You haven’t heard any news of that Bill guy?” he asked as Durer turned down the main street. “You know — the red headed trader I was asking about?”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. No, no one’s seen him that I know of.” Durer pulled over against the curb. “Looks like someone borrowed your truck.” He nodded.

It was just pulling up. Dan walked over. Nita sat in the passenger seat and a stranger drove. She’d been crying.

“What’s up, Nita?” He eyed the stranger, who had shut off the engine, but sat still behind the wheel. “Are you all right?”

“I sold all the beans. I had to go . . . check on something.” She slid down from the cab, not meeting his eyes.

Something was very wrong.

She looked up quickly, as if he’d spoken his worries out loud. “Can I tell you later?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

“Sure,” he said gently. “Or not at all.” The blond driver had come around to their side of the truck. He was leaning on a stick, had some kind of joint disease from the look of his crooked hands.

He remembered a boy with hands like those. Dan felt a cold breath on the back of his neck. A kid, out in the Dry. A kid who had had . . . magic in his crippled hands. He had been twelve, which would make him thirty-two now. Dan met the stranger’s eyes, his flesh contracting into goose bumps. “Jeremy?” It was as if something had waked the past today, drawn it out of the dry soil like smoke rising from a buried fire. “Your name isn’t Jeremy, is it?”

“Hello, Dan.” An insect popped into the air between them, glowing like pale fire in the sunlight.

He’d called it a firefly, all those years ago. He’d asked Dan if that was what a real firefly looked like. “My God.” Dan stared at it. “I heard someone was doing a magic show in town, but people said it was some kind of light show.”

“I always wondered how you made out. I wondered if I’d ever run into you again.” Jeremy didn’t hold out his hand, just stood there.

Dan became aware of Nita, still and silent, watching them intently. “I thought after . . . that they might have killed you.” He said it awkwardly. It was hard to meet those cool blue eyes. “I almost went back for you,” he said. “Made you come along. But I didn’t. I just . . . kept on running. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Jeremy shrugged. “They didn’t kill me. You didn’t run out on me.
I
decided to stay, remember?” He reached into the bed of a pickup and retrieved a battered pack.

“Do you need a place to stay? I’ve got room.” Awkward words. From the expression on Jeremy’s face, he heard that awkwardness.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” He slung his pack over his shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Nita.”

“Did he ever understand? Dan asked softly. “Your dad?”

Jeremy stared out into the riverbed without answering. For an instant, Dan caught a flash of green from the corner of his eye, an afterimage of grass and gray water, like one of Jesse’s paintings.

“No.” Jeremy shrugged, finally. “I scared him. Listen.” He frowned, threw Nita a quick glance, then turned back to Dan. “Not everyone thinks that what I do is wonderful. Don’t tell people it isn’t a light show, okay? She’ll tell you.” He touched Nita’s arm, and his face softened suddenly. “Take it easy.”

“I will.” She took his hand.

Bemused, drowned and surrounded by ghosts and the past, Dan watched Jeremy limp down the street and disappear around the corner. “Where did you meet Jeremy?” he asked absently.

“Right here in The Dalles.” Nita was looking at him, her forehead creased in thought. “I didn’t realize you knew him.”

“It was a long time ago.” Dan shook himself, wanting to brush the nagging past away as if it were a cloud of springtime gnats. “You look beat,” he said. “Which is how I feel. Let’s go home.”

“Sounds good,” Nita said, and sighed.

*

The town looked ugly in the level beams of the setting sun, dry and dusty. Empty. A scrap of paper skidded down the middle of the street, pushed along by the wind. Dust eddied in a doorway. But the town wasn’t empty. It was full of invisible murmurs. I don’t want to hear them, Nita thought. She leaned back against the seat as the truck climbed up to the rim of the Gorge, missing the dry folds of the coast mountains with a terrible intensity. Their tent had smelled like honey. David had laughed when she tickled him awake in the dawn coolness. He had put his arms around her, kissed her face and neck, made love with her on the rumpled blankets. His love had the feel of beesong, soft and gentle.

She had traded the tent for the food she had needed for the trip. The bees were dying. Nita stared down at the angled line of the dam as they drove up along the wall of the Gorge. The gray concrete wall looked forbidding, like a fortress built on the stony dryness of the riverbed, closed and unfriendly. Nita held her restless daughter tightly in her arms as the truck bumped along the narrow road. Dan was quiet, full of his own shadows, small darknesses flecked with razored bits of pain and guilt. He had hurt Jeremy, or thought he had. And Jeremy thought so, too. He had been angry — closed up and resentful.

I don’t want to know this, Nita thought sullenly. I can’t change anything, Jeremy. What do you want from me?

Something. The memory of his needing nagged at her, making her angry.

When they reached the house, Nita busied herself with Rachel, nursing her, cleaning her with the oil that she’d bought at the market. For once Rachel was all too willing to fall asleep. Nita pinned a diaper on her daughter and tucked her into the bed. Rachel’s eyes were blue, like David’s eyes. Pain moved inside her, squeezing a lump up into her throat.

Whose bones lay under that rock? David’s? Do I
want
them to be his? she asked herself. A tear spilled over to slide down Nita’s cheek. She sighed and wiped her face as she felt Dan’s quiet approach. He held the blue pack in his hands, the flap folded over to show the crooked letters. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.

Nita nodded, then turned back to the riverbed. “Someone found it,” she whispered. “Near some bones.”

“I’m sorry.” Dan’s sadness fell around her like the twilight shadows. He came to stand beside her, and as he looked down at the rocky falls of Celilo far below, his sadness deepened. “The past is walking tonight.” He tried a laugh, but it came out crooked. He was staring down at the dry falls as they vanished into darkness.

“Who died down there?” Nita asked softly.

“My sister, Amy.” Dan looked at her sideways, a little startled. “It’s that obvious?”

Nita shrugged.

“She raised me. I guess she just got tired out eventually. We weren’t doing too well. She jumped.” He frowned down at the shadowed falls. “You know, I asked Jeremy once to make her face for me, so I could see it. And . . . he did.” He let his breath out in a rush. “It wasn’t just a picture, it was Amy, like he’d brought her back to life.”

The dry falls had vanished into shadow, and it was getting cold. Nita shivered and Dan put his arm around her. For a long time they looked down into the riverbed. The sky had deepened to a royal blue and the first stars winked like dry eyes, low on the horizon. Nita leaned closer against Dan’s warmth. His arm tightened around her shoulder and Nita felt the warm stir of his desire.

She closed her eyes. If she tilted her head, he would lean down and kiss her. Once their lips touched, there would be no going back. They would go into his room and make love on the narrow bed, beneath the paintings of Jeremy’s river. When she woke in the darkness tonight, she would feel his warmth beside her, smell his sweat and his skin, hear the sound of his breathing.

She would be safe.

Nita took a small step away from him. He gave her a wry smile, lifted his arm from her shoulders gently. Silently, without touching, they went back into the dark house.