Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  I looked Bear square in the face. “Were you up on that hillside overlooking the canyon? Is there any way to find out what Coop knew or did?”

  If only someone had been photographing the cave—I stopped midthought. Of course people had been photographing. Crowd sourcing. Facebook, Instagram.

  I’d brought my laptop, but it would be easier to search on one of the big monitors at the library. The library was open until nine. I logged on to Facebook, which reminded me that it had been six years and forty-three days since I’d last posted anything. I joined the Tallgrass Meet-Up group as well as Friends of Kanopolis State Park, the park where Horsethief Canyon was located. I began combing through their back posts until I got to the festival.

  There were hundreds of pictures, mostly of the crowd, and of the performers onstage. There was a seemingly endless number of Lydia Zamir in a flowing green dress, some of her with Hector Palurdo, some by herself. She shook hands with fans, posed for selfies, posed with her guitar. Her smile was genuine and warm and made my gut twist when I compared her face from four years back with what she looked like today.

  There were pictures taken from hills and ridges above the concert venue, showing me what it had looked like as the crowd gathered. It wasn’t a formal outdoor theater as I had imagined, but a portable stage placed on a largish flat space in the middle of the canyon. One post included a report that the park service estimated the crowd at fifty-five hundred—a big gathering for a venue that was a half-day’s drive from the nearest airport.

  People had taken shots of the roadies setting up the stage and sound system, they’d photographed the organizers, the crowd, the banners advertising the sponsors, and, horrifically enough, the dead and wounded, lying in pools of blood. Finally, I came on pictures of the higher cliffs.

  The yellow sandstone was filled with caves and it was frustrating trying to sort out which one Arthur Morton might have holed up in. I finally realized the stage was facing east, with the setting sun behind it. I pulled all the photos of cave openings into a file and went through them, looking for the sunlit facades that would show a west-facing opening. My shoulders began to ache and my eyes dried up, but I found seventeen images that I was pretty sure belonged to Morton: sunlight flashed off metal or glass inside the cave face, but if someone was lying inside holding a weapon, they weren’t visible.

  People had photographed the cave because an eagle had landed above it. There were some pictures of the eagle soaring against the setting sun, and three of her (him?) glaring at the crowd below. So that was the person Arthur Morton had heard.

  I stared at the bird, in a futile “if only” reverie. Why couldn’t the bird have flown into the cave, used those claws and wings to blind Arthur Morton. Lydia, all the families of victims and survivors, including, really, Kelly Kay Morton, would have been saved from the quicksand of blood, horror, grief, that was sucking them down.

  I blinked a few times to clear my eyes. When I looked at the eagle again, I saw another telltale glint of sunlight on glass behind it. I enlarged the picture, fiddled with the focus. I was pretty sure I was looking at the scope for a sniper rifle.

  41

  Swimming in Liquid Lead

  I sat frozen, staring at the picture. It had been a two-legged beast above Arthur Morton’s cave, one who wanted to make sure at least one particular person had been killed.

  How had they set this up? Trawling the Net, looking for someone angry and easy to manipulate? Why had they gone through such an elaborate charade? It’s so easy to get a weapon in America, so easy to shoot someone. Unless someone very high profile was after a target and wanted to eliminate all possibility of being traced? And yet a method like this seemed full of pitfalls.

  I’d been wondering who of the seventeen dead was the intended victim, but maybe the perpetrator was a sociopath who wanted to see what they could get away with. Maybe they’d manipulated Arthur Morton into mass murder for the heinous pleasure of seeing it happen. That was so extremely disturbing that I found myself shrinking from the people around me—was it you? or you? What psychosis had been bred in the wide-open prairie? Was that the person on top of Arthur Morton’s cave?

  This investigation had always been big for a solo op, but now it felt beyond my control. No wonder Gabe Ramirez had been glad to hand the trial off to a big firm. I tried to focus on what I could do on my own. And one urgent task was to share my knowledge.

  The universe of people who knew about another body on top of the cave where Arthur Morton had been shooting was small. I didn’t want to be the one person outside that universe who knew. I downloaded the cave photos to my own drive. I emailed them to my lawyer, with a note explaining where they had been taken and on whose social media pages I’d found them.

  I also sent them to the Cheviot labs. I didn’t think I was imagining things, but I’d been staring at photos for two hours and I hadn’t even seen the scope—if it was a scope—until I’d been looking at the image for a time. In my message to Cheviot and my lawyer I added, “This is a species of Rorschach: describe what you see. And make sure you save this file.”

  Just to be safe, I sent the file to the printer and paid the library five dollars for five copies. After all, Gabriel Ramirez had seen the messages directed to Arthur on the dark web sites Morton had looked at. And then an electronic pickpocket had slipped into the machine and removed the messages. The hand able to do that could easily stick a finger into my phone and remove my text messages, and then hike around Facebook and Instagram to manipulate their files.

  I packed up, left a ten-dollar bill in their support the library box, and went to retrieve poor Bear. I’d had to leave him in the car, and even though I’d parked in the shade and left him with water and the windows open, it wasn’t a good option.

  It was still light out, sunset a good hour away in midsummer. I drove back to the river. Families were having picnics, teens were racing around on Jet Skis, other kids were playing soccer or baseball. I found a quiet spot in the shallows, away from the boaters, where the dog could splash around and I could try to digest what I’d been discovering since arriving in Kansas.

  I’ve dealt with a lot of ugly people over the years, almost all of them filled with a sense of sublime entitlement that made them feel more special than anyone else on the planet. But pushing a distressed, unstable man into committing murder by proxy put this killer in the Mengele class.

  Bear came out of the river, plastered with mud, which he shook off so that it covered my jeans and T-shirt. Compared with the humans I was thinking about, a muddy dog seemed mighty wholesome. I wrapped my arm around his thick neck and hugged him to me.

  The more I thought about the altruistic Sea-2-Sea board member stepping forward to pay Devlin & Wickham to run the defense, the less I liked the story. It was so flimsy the wicked wolf could have blown it over with one huff—he wouldn’t even have needed a puff. And I’d bought into it.

  But a firm like Devlin depends on their reputation. They wouldn’t risk it by being part of a conspiracy to commit murder. Surely?

  I thought again of the nicotine patches on Arthur Morton’s back. Rikki Samundar had more or less indicated that she’d brought them to the prison. It was very helpful of him to kill himself and remove the possibility of an appeal where Gabe Ramirez could renew the suggestion of a second shooter, overlooked by the state.

  Another worrying thought came to me. Devlin & Wickham continued to be interested in the Morton case. They wanted to know what progress I was making in looking for Lydia, badly enough to halt Donna Lutas’s efforts to force me out of my home. I assumed it was the law firm that told the Salina police I was coming to town.

  It occurred to me that if Chief Corbitt was willing to do Devlin’s bidding, he knew what car I was driving; I was an easy target if they wanted to catch me on a violation. I didn’t know why they would, but I was feeling nervous about lingering any longer in the town.

  I wanted to talk to the warden at the county jail about Arthur Morton
’s suicide. I wanted to find Franklin Alsop, the Tallgrass Meet-Up organizer whose name the women at K-State had given me. Black Wolf, the unincorporated collection of houses and a gas station, was only six miles outside Salina. Although Salina had a dozen or more motels and hotels, I would feel less like a target if I found a place to stay remote from Corbitt’s jurisdiction.

  Another map-dot, about thirty miles beyond Black Wolf, advertised an old railway hotel. I’d go there and backtrack east in the morning.

  I bundled Bear back into the car. At least the smell of wet dirty dog covered up the moldy smell from last night’s flooding of the upholstery. I stopped at a FedEx shop to send the prints I’d made of the cave photos to my lawyer.

  On my way out of town I passed a big-box store. Just to be prudent, I bought a couple of burn phones and a few groceries so I wouldn’t end up fasting again tonight. A sheriff’s car was in the lot when I got back into my car. I turned off my smartphone, hoping that would keep it from broadcasting my whereabouts. When I left the parking lot, the sheriff was behind me. It looked as though the Salina police chief had shared his anti–Chicago PI feelings with the county sheriff.

  I signaled every turn I made, had my headlights on, came to a complete stop at stop signs and on yellow lights. I joined the interstate at a modest fifty miles an hour. The sheriff stayed with me until I crossed the county line. I counted three exits, and then slid off the highway to side roads. I made a number of turns, onto gravel roads, back to a paved two-lane highway, and decided I was clear—clear enough to check in with Arlette and Mr. Contreras. I pulled onto a gravel shoulder that abutted a gate leading to a field.

  Pierre had given me the number of a friend in Quebec City so that I wouldn’t call the mountain retreat to ask for news. I had to take my smartphone out of its safety pouch to look up the number, but I called on the burn phone. Pierre’s friend assured me that all was well, that Pierre had good security in place, but that Bernie was going stir crazy—did I know how long the Fouchards would have to stay at the retreat? I wished I could give a timetable, but I didn’t know what I was trying to find out at this point, let alone when I’d find it.

  My worries deepened when I hung up: I knew Bernie wouldn’t stay put forever, or even for very long. Think, focus, take action, I commanded myself, but I felt as though I were swimming in liquid lead, trying to reach an unreachable shore.

  In lieu of other action, I called Mr. Contreras, who grumbled about the dog walkers. This was a pair I’d worked with for many years. My neighbor always grumbled about them, partly because he hates having to admit he’s not fit enough to walk the dogs himself, partly because he thinks I’ll come back sooner if I believe the dogs aren’t well cared for.

  “Did Donna Lutas come around asking about me?” I asked when there was a break in the flow.

  “Yeah, she did. I asked, was she wanting to slap some eviction notice on you and she said, no, she was just wondering because her firm was giving you help on some old trial. Is that right, doll?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “They wanted to talk to me about a mass murderer trial, the one I’ve come down to Kansas to look into.”

  “Can’t believe a sourpuss like her would be willing to help you on anything, but it just goes to show.”

  It showed that Lutas would curb her killer instinct until Devlin & Wickham found out what they wanted. I didn’t say that to my neighbor—he’s uncomfortable when I’m cynical. Instead, I promised to call again the next day.

  I was getting ready to pull back onto the road when Murray called. I’d forgotten to turn off my smartphone.

  “Where are you, Warshawski? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

  I looked at my message box. Three from Murray, a dozen from various clients. And one from Peter, letting me know he was in Turkey. My spirits sank—it hurt that I’d missed hearing his voice.

  “I was in a library,” I said to Murray. “You know—turn off your phones, don’t disturb the other patrons.”

  “You’re a walking disturbance whether your phone is on or not,” Murray grumbled.

  “I love being insulted as much as the next person, but I’m short on time now, so if that’s why you’re calling, put it in writing.”

  “It’s the pictures you sent. If they’re genuine, they’re a political hydrogen bomb. I got our photo department to enhance them, and it looks like a plan to put in a luxury development along the lakefront—the mile stretch between Forty-seventh and Thirty-ninth. Town houses, condos, shops, private harbor, and a PGA golf course. I want to go public with it, but my editors are being super cautious. They want the pedigree for the information. And we both want to know if it’s a real plan or someone’s daydream.”

  “When I looked at the photos, I thought they were getting rid of Lake Shore Drive.”

  “Rerouting it, meaning tearing up homes and whatnot on the west side of the Metra tracks. I need the pedigree.”

  “I don’t have one,” I said. “I think these were diagrams put out by the Park District, but I can’t trace them. And I don’t know if it’s a wish list or a genuine plan. I actually stopped at their offices to ask Taggett about the plans, before I’d seen the pictures, and the next day he sent some gorillas around to scare me. Can’t you submit some FOIAs?”

  “I don’t have any details,” he snapped. “I need conversations or emails or some damned thing between a commissioner or Taggett or the mayor with a developer. A mechanical engineer did the drawings. We can’t get a good resolution on the name of the mechanical engineer, but it looks like a woman, something like Mina, middle initial Y, Punter. I can’t find a mechanical engineer or a firm with that name. How did you get hold of these?”

  “I told you: a flash drive left lying in an abandoned backpack.” Maybe I should have explained about it being Leo’s—probably being Leo’s—but that would have involved Bernie. Murray pushed on me for a few more minutes but finally snarled, “Don’t keep me in mind when you’re handing out favors,” and hung up.

  As I eased back onto the road, I thought of the surveyor’s stakes I’d seen in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor. Someone was ready to privatize a square mile of lakefront. The parks superintendent was on board with the deal; they’d already started marking territory. No wonder his goons had come around threatening me. The night air was thick, but I was cold.

  42

  Dots on the Map

  The sleepy man who checked me in to the old railway hotel had disappeared when I went back to my car for my bag. I brought Bear in with me then—better to ask forgiveness, and so on.

  The bed was comfortable, the room quiet. It wasn’t their fault that my dreams were tormented with images of Lydia Zamir, repeatedly collapsing onto her plastic piano, the case turning red as blood poured from her nose and mouth. Remember me and announce my fate, she sang as she expired. When I peered at her dead body, it was plastered with nicotine patches, shreds of tobacco sticking out from underneath them.

  When morning finally came, I stood under a cold shower to try to clear my head. I took Bear out for a run in a field near the hotel, but put him in the car when I went back in for breakfast.

  The waitress was a chatty woman, perhaps in her sixties. A pin on her shoulder named her as Clara; she told me she was the hotel’s co-owner with her husband.

  “He’s over to Ellsworth looking at some chickens,” she said when she brought me my short stack. “We might put a coop out back. People like the feeling that we’re connected to the Old West. How about you, hon? You driving cross-country?”

  “Actually, I’m trying to find someone around here.”

  “Your ex run out on you?”

  I produced a halfhearted smile. “A man named Coop. He left his dog with me a week ago and vanished.”

  Clara put the coffeepot down with a snap. “What makes you think he’s here?”

  “I thought he might be in the area, not right here on the premises. Is he?”

  “Pancakes are on the house. Time you were on
your way.” Her jaw was set in an uncompromising line. Her eyes looked as hard and cold as river stones.

  “How about if I tell you as much as I know, and then you decide whether to send me on my way. If we can do it outside so that I don’t have to leave Bear—Coop’s dog—in the car—this is a long story.”

  Her expression didn’t soften, but after a pause, she said I could bring the dog in—we’d talk in the lounge. This was a small alcove to the right of the front desk, where she could keep an eye on the outside door, the elevator, and the stairwell.

  Bear didn’t seem to know her; he greeted her with the polite indifference he showed most people, so I didn’t think Coop had been part of the hotel’s life. I gave Clara one of my cards, gave her some names to call to check out my credentials.

  “This is a tangled mess of a story,” I said. “I don’t know a clean and easy way to tell it, but it starts with the murders at the Tallgrass Meet-Up four years ago. One of the victims was Hector Palurdo, the partner of the singer-songwriter Lydia Zamir.”

  “You don’t need to tell me about that day. We had friends who were at the concert. I’d had a mind to go over, hand out flyers about the hotel. I’m glad I didn’t but—that boy Arthur Morton left a lot of damage behind him.”

  “Yes, I’ve been involved in some of the fallout.” I told Clara about finding Lydia living under the viaduct, about Coop constituting himself her protector, about the distress caused by the piece that Murray wrote for the Herald-Star.

  “Oh, we know all about that,” she said. “We all saw the story online, how Lydia disappeared.”

  I told her about the two murders that the police thought Coop had committed. “It’s why he ran. I think he took Lydia with him, not as a hostage, but to help her—she was living quite literally in a hole in the ground. I hope she’s with him. I hope he’s getting her the medical care she needs.”