Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  “I don’t know if they actually believe what they’re alleging, or if they’re trying to rattle me, or just want a scapegoat to pin the blame on.”

  “We’ll have to address all three possibilities.”

  “I’m scared witless,” she said.

  “If the police, or the media, or anybody else wants to talk to you, refer them to me,” Nussbaum said.

  “What can you do?”

  “Guard your back. Be ready if they arrest you or try to take you in for more questioning.”

  “Nothing, in other words.”

  Nussbaum’s expression was melancholy. “Keep your mouth shut and your head down. I’ll deflect the incoming missiles.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said.

  28

  Rory got back to the house midafternoon. It felt strange to be home at two p.m., instead of in a buzzing office, or in a drafty warehouse filled with documents, or in an old Range Rover, carrying a backpack and refugees’ files. Two p.m. meant Judge Judy reruns and commercials for companies that bought your gold jewelry at ten cents on the dollar. Two p.m. was the time of loose ends.

  And she had a bad feeling that she herself had become a loose end of the very worst kind. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  She checked her messages. She’d applied for twenty jobs so far: with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and law firms in New York, L.A., San Francisco, and even, as a safety application, Ransom River. For a numbing second she saw herself at the checkout stand at Beddie-Buy, thirty-five years old, worn out, holding a silent competition with Riss to scan customers’ throw pillows the fastest. Then she checked e-mail and perked up. A San Francisco firm wanted to speak to her. A phone interview: the first elimination round in job jujitsu. But it was a start.

  The knock on the front door made her jump like a cricket. She ran upstairs, peered out the dormer window, and saw Seth’s truck parked in the driveway. He was directly below her, standing on the porch. She ran back down and let him in.

  “How’d the meeting with the attorney go?” he said.

  “If you enjoy eating bile, it was amazing.”

  For a second he looked disappointed, as though he’d hoped she might simply welcome him in and be glad to have him there. But the world had moved on from those days.

  “The gunmen. I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  She led him into the kitchen and put on a fresh pot of coffee. She avoided looking at the television, as though it might flare to life of its own volition and suck them through the screen into an episode of Dog, the Bounty Hunter.

  “My brain’s fried. Feed it to me,” she said.

  “Church and Berrigan. Here’s the point I keep coming to. Not only was the attack not personal, but it was never supposed to develop into a siege.”

  Rory had two mugs in her hands. “What do you mean?”

  “The gunmen were there to grab four hostages and take them away. But the attack went wrong.”

  She set down the mugs. “Because the bystander counterattacked. There was chaos. That slowed them down.”

  “They were supposed to get in and out with you and the other three ‘chosen’ hostages. But they blew it. They didn’t move fast enough. The cops arrived before they could escape with you and the others.”

  “That makes sense,” she said.

  “That’s why the gunmen ended up barricaded inside. That’s why you ended up against the window. That’s why they wasted time inventing demands that sounded ridiculous: because there weren’t supposed to be demands.” He paused. “Just an abduction.”

  “Me.”

  It jumped into clear relief against the confusion and mayhem of everything that had happened. “It was a kidnapping that went bad.”

  The chill drip of adrenaline, of threat and fear, began working down her arms to her fingertips.

  “Why?” she said. “To cause a mistrial? Certainly not to influence my vote. Nobody in the history of jury tampering has attempted to rig a trial by kidnapping a juror from the courtroom. Not even Tricky Dick Nixon and his pal Ronnie Reagan.”

  “No. Jury tampering generally leans toward blackmail and quiet bribes.”

  “Nobody does it in front of the judge and lawyers and the press, in the middle of testimony.”

  “So it wasn’t your role in the trial. It was you.”

  “That is goddamned freaking me out.”

  He stared at her. She hadn’t moved.

  “Aurora Mackenzie. The ice sculpture of freak-outs,” he said.

  “Is that an insult?”

  “Hardly. Rory, you could be on fire and you’d have exactly the same expression on your face.”

  That, for some reason, nearly made her crack. She turned to the coffeemaker and poured mugs for both of them.

  “The media is playing up the terror angle,” she said. “Cop hatred. But the gunmen had the perfect opportunity to execute the defendants, and they didn’t.”

  “It wasn’t political,” Seth said.

  “It was about me.”

  He watched her for a moment. “Your NGO work. Political? Dangerous?”

  “Always political. Rarely dangerous. Seth, I spent ninety percent of my time evaluating case histories and court filings and transcripts of deportation hearings. I bought myself a parka because I worked for seven months in a warehouse outside Helsinki, reading bureaucratic reports. I wasn’t hired for my razor-sharp legal mind. I was a glorified paralegal. A document drone. That’s not what the siege was about.”

  “Dangerous,” he said.

  “No.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I went into the field only twice. And not to places where the government is going to reach out to America and seek revenge against an expat aid worker.”

  “Where?”

  “Once to Syria.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “Before the unrest. I cadged my way into flying with an ICRC delegation. It was safe.”

  “Like Russian roulette is safe.”

  “We’re talking about a repressive state, not a first-person-shooter video game. I traveled everywhere in an air-conditioned Range Rover. We ate at five-star restaurants. Watched CNN at the Sheraton.”

  He shook his head, seemingly disbelieving. “Syria. Then you spun the chamber and headed where?”

  “Zimbabwe.”

  As she said it, the vista rose in her mind. Red earth. A vast bowl of blue sky. Acacia trees gracing the horizon, tall trunks spreading to lacy green canopies. The air thick with the smell of wood smoke from cooking fires. It clung to people’s clothing, dense and earthy.

  “Again, not personally dangerous to me.”

  “‘Personally?’” he said.

  She paused. “That country…” She tried to explain it. “It’s beautiful. And completely messed up. We went to a village in the bush, about a hundred miles from Bulawayo.”

  “Why?”

  “Family that had escaped to South Africa and then to Britain. They spent fifteen months in a detention center in northern England—mom, kids, a grandfather, all cooped up in a dormitory behind razor wire—before their request for asylum was rejected. They were judged economic migrants rather than political refugees. They were sent back. We went to see if they were still alive.”

  Seth was looking at her strangely.

  “We found them. They…” She had to pause. “The grandfather had died. Been grabbed by thugs, driven out to the bush, and had his legs broken before being dumped and left to crawl home. He didn’t make it. The mom and kids were alive. Mom had been raped by soldiers. The kids were ragged, but they had a roof over their heads and were in one piece. We couldn’t do anything. We left.”

  Seth stared at her, hard, for a long minute. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. We drove back to Bulawayo, hopped a commuter flight to Harare, then British Airways to Heathrow.”

  “So how come your face is as pale as a sheet of paper, and you look like you’re about to break out in hives?”

&nb
sp; The view in her mind flared white again, and she smelled the smoke that clung to Sarah’s dress and heard the clarion laughter of the little girl, Grace. Four years old, racing her tiny brother. Running hard, with unbridled joy. Smile on Grace’s face, full of mischief. She had looked thin.

  “It has nothing to do with me. My group was completely safe.”

  “But?”

  She turned away and stared blankly at the television. “We planned to file an appeal on their behalf with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But…”

  “Rory?”

  “Asylum Action lost its funding.”

  Four years old. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed it all. She sensed Seth approaching and hovering near her shoulder.

  She shook herself out of it and stepped away from him. “The courthouse attack had nothing to do with their case. Zimbabwe doesn’t strike out at aid workers like me after we come home to California. It’s preposterous.”

  “Rory.”

  “The whole thing’s a farce.”

  “Hey.”

  She turned. “We live in a sick little world, Seth. But that sickness isn’t what’s infecting my life right now. So tell me what else you’re thinking.”

  He paused and looked at her like she was an unstable and possibly explosive substance.

  Two years with Asylum Action. Two years, and what good had she done?

  Two years, and what had Seth done?

  “Go on,” she said.

  “The siege,” he said, slowly. “If it’s about you, then why? There’s only one thing I keep coming back to. It’s not just you but your family, and Ransom River.”

  “What?”

  “Rory, you haven’t done anything in Ransom River except grow up here, and win a case full of trophies, and get the hell out of town. So how come the gunmen came after you?”

  “What could it have to do with my family?”

  “We have to find out.”

  She began to feel angry. “Why do you think it’s my family? How come you don’t think it’s something to do with you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But we’re talking criminals here, and you’re the ex-cop. That’s your milieu.”

  He burst into an incongruous smile. “Girl, I gotta love you just for your vocabulary.”

  “Your stomping ground. Your scum bucket. The slime in which you swim.”

  He raised his hands, calling truce. “The people who sent the gunmen have to be after huge money. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “But you aren’t rich. Neither are your parents.”

  “Hardly.”

  She saw where he was going. She put down her coffee.

  “So where’s the cash?” she said.

  “That is the question.”

  “Do you have any idea how to find out?”

  “Yes.” His face darkened. “From the last person who’ll want to talk about it. Especially to me.”

  “Somebody from the police department?”

  “My dad.”

  29

  Lucky Colder lived in one of Ransom River’s oldest neighborhoods, tucked under live oaks near the Hill—the one that Ransom River was over, the one that separated it from the San Fernando Valley and the crawling energy of Los Angeles. The homes had been built in the forties, when aerospace came to the town. Later, a popular television western had been filmed there. Most of the sets at the Callahan Ranch, as it had been called on TV, were long gone. But the house where the matriarch held sway, standing hands on hips astride the front porch while her seven sons rode out to wrangle cattle and fight varmints, had been preserved as a city park. The show itself lurked in a vault somewhere, waiting for its resurrection as a period piece, retro chic.

  Seth drove slowly, almost reluctantly. The trees looked heavier. The homes looked smaller. Flashback City.

  “How long since you’ve seen your dad?” she said.

  “Longer than he’d like.” He smiled. “Last month.”

  He stopped at the curb. Exactly where he’d always parked, to the inch. He left the engine idling for a moment, as though he might decide to floor it. The Colder house was tidy, with a covered porch and neat rose beds. An old Chrysler New Yorker was parked in the driveway. A bumper sticker said, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE DEPARTMENT. They got out and walked toward the door. A sign was nailed next to it: FORGET THE DOG, BEWARE OF THE OLD MAN.

  Lucky lived a quiet life, but it hadn’t always been that way. Though Rory hadn’t known it as a kid, Lucky had lived hard. Only years later did Seth tell her about his dad’s struggle with alcohol and how his parents’ marriage had gone to the brink before Lucky got sober. He’d been an AA sponsor for years now. And he had been on his own since Seth’s mother died from cancer five years earlier.

  Rory asked, “How’s he doing?”

  Seth’s expression said, Let’s find out. He knocked.

  Inside, footsteps creaked toward the door. When it opened, Lucky Colder stood surprised. His expression was so quiet that it looked wooden, and for a moment Rory worried that he might slam the door on his son. His half-glasses had slid down his nose. He had a newspaper in his hand. He was wearing good slacks and Rockports with a short-sleeved button-down shirt. And suspenders.

  Then his face split with a grin. He clapped Seth on both shoulders.

  “Dammit, I was all ginned up to debate the Jehovah’s Witnesses and send them away in tears.” He turned to Rory and shook his head. “But look who we have here. My goodness. What a day.”

  “Hello, Mr. Colder.”

  “For God’s sake, girl, it’s Lucky. Come here.” He hugged her, patted her hard on the back, laughing. He smelled of aftershave. Something he’d had on the shelf since 1968. Hai Karate, maybe.

  He raised his nose and eyed her through his half-glasses. “My, you look fine.”

  “So do you, you rogue,” she said.

  He had to be curious to the point of combustion. Maybe he was secretly alarmed to see her with Seth. But his enthusiasm seemed unpretentious and genuine. It warmed her.

  His face sobered. “You in one piece? I saw the news yesterday.”

  “They didn’t hurt me.”

  “Awful thing. Dreadful.” Lucky glanced at his son and back to Rory. “That why you’re here?”

  She nodded.

  He led them to the living room. It was still paneled with fake pine. “Yesterday must have scared the bejesus out of your parents.”

  Seth said, “Rory’s okay.”

  “Parents’ worst nightmare, even when your kid’s an adult. Enough to make the toughest bastard pray.”

  Seth looked at the floor.

  Rory said, “Yeah. Mom built a Santeria altar, and by the time I got home Dad had made a giant sculpture of Jesus out of butter.”

  Lucky laughed, bearlike. “Your dad still with the Forest Service?”

  “At a desk more than he’s with the Hotshots, but of course.”

  He cleared newspapers from the sofa. “Sit. Seth, give me a hand with some coffee, would you, son?”

  They headed across the hall to the kitchen. Rory sat. The living room was as she remembered. A green plaid sofa. Coffee table with a chunk whacked out of it, a victim of the catapult Seth built to fire ball bearings across the room. Photos completely covered one wall, the frames dusty. Commendations from the Ransom River Police Department. School photos of Seth and his three older brothers. They all had the same sandy hair and dark eyes, but Seth’s photos revealed his restless energy.

  The only addition was an eight-by-ten photo of Seth’s late mother, in a silver frame, on top of the television.

  On the entire wall of photos, not one showed Seth with Lucky. And not one showed Seth in a police uniform.

  In the kitchen, Lucky grabbed mugs and spoons. Seth lingered near the door. Lucky spoke to him in murmurs, but Rory caught “out of the blue” and “last thing I ever expected,” and “mind my own business, but…”

  Lucky shoved a carton of milk into S
eth’s hands and they came back into the living room. Lucky handed Rory a mug of coffee. She sipped. It was strong enough to make her nerves ping like a radarscope. Seth ambled to the window and looked out.

  Lucky eased himself onto the sofa. “It’s good to see you both, but I know this isn’t an ice cream social. What brings you here?”

  His gruff, blunt, teddy-bear manner had undoubtedly served him well as a detective. Depending on what he wanted to get out of you, he could be either cuddly or ferocious. When she was a kid, he had terrified her. He’d always been warm and welcoming, but his intelligent glower, the look on his face that seemed to say, I’m watching you and you won’t get away with it, had been enough to petrify her.

  He sat with his arms crossed, his coffee steaming on the table. He seemed to be trying, intensely, not to look at Seth. She realized that he had not come to grips with Seth’s decision to quit the force. It seemed to still be a raw scrape, unhealed and stinging.

  Seth scanned the street outside and turned from the window to face his father. “This has to be off the record. Nothing leaves this room.”

  “Of course,” Lucky said.

  “Rory and I have come to the conclusion that the attack on the courthouse was designed with one purpose in mind. To abduct her.”

  Lucky’s only reaction was to raise an eyebrow.

  “I got the gunmen’s names,” Seth said. “They had to be doing it for money.”

  Lucky slowly leaned forward. “You’d better lay it out.”

  Seth explained. Lucky listened and didn’t interrupt. After five minutes, he picked up his coffee cup. Seth stood by the window, his shoulders slanted, a challenging expression in his eyes. Rory waited for Lucky to tell him to stand up straight.

  But Lucky said, “You okay, son?”

  Seth shifted. His face pinched, as though with pain. “Yeah.” He paced across the room. His gaze panned the wall of photos.

  Lucky blinked and looked away. After a second, he cleared his throat.

  “I’ll buy it,” he said. “Makes sense, what you’ve come up with. So what do you want from me?”

  Seth turned. “Where’s the money coming from? And why do they think it has something to do with Rory? That’s what we don’t understand.”