by Paula Boyd
“Steel drums,” Jerry said, nodding.
“The contamination might not have shown up right away. Nothing much would have looked different for a while.”
Jerry nodded, thumping his fingers on the steering wheel. “How corrosive the soil is would determine how long it would take before the barrel rusted and leaked—if they were sealed well initially. If they weren’t, they could have contaminated the soils immediately.”
“If they didn’t leak for years,” I said, playing out the possible scenarios, “the land would look normal on the surface. But when they did leak, depending on how deep they were buried, the contamination would soak through the ground and the vegetation would die.”
“Right. Anything that got a root in it would die. Soil and water conditions would be factors as well though,” he said. “If the leak went down and not up then it could still look normal on the surface and be contaminating water below.”
“Or, it could be doing both, Jerry. That placed looked horrible in the aerial. And Tiger found contamination in water somewhere, we just don’t know where. Nothing about this is good. And we’re back to the same questions we started with ‘who’ and ‘why’.”
“As we’ve talked, different people are motivated by different things. Love, money and revenge come to mind.” Jerry propped an elbow on the door by the window and tapped a finger against his chin. “The seven deadly sins are always available too, you know. But don’t forget redemption and protection. And remember, people will defend imagined threats just as vehemently as they will real ones.”
“True. Our brains don’t know the difference between real and imagined experiences and we feel the emotion of it either way.”
“It’s why I can do certain things,” he said, reaching over and gently running his fingers along the back of my neck, “and you’ll have a reaction as if I’ve done something far more intense.”
Heat flushed through me, confirming his statement. “I think that’s a different thing,” I croaked.
He grinned and pulled his hand back. “It’s still your brain doing the work. You’ve learned that when I touch you on the back of the neck, more good feelings follow.”
No question about that. “So, Dr. Pavlov, since you’ve rung the bell do we still have to go to the courthouse?”
“Yes, Jolene, we do.”
“Well, then I would say that you have used your power unwisely and it will never work again.” I rolled the window down and stuck my head out, letting the cool night air crash against my face and hopefully un-trigger my brain.
“It’ll still work,” he said, chuckling. “You’ll just be anticipating it even more.”
I did not find the situation amusing at all. “Someday I’m going to figure out how to do that to you and then we’ll see how you like it.”
He leaned over and tickled my neck again. “You already do,” he said in that deep rumbling voice that makes shiver. “You just don’t realize it.”
I jerked my head back in and glared at him. “Well, that’s even worse.”
He laughed. “Yeah, it really is.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
The Bowman County Courthouse was a looming ancient structure, at least by western world standards. Built in 1882, the brick and stone building was constructed on the typical town square program and was still in pretty good shape. It had been remodeled a time or two through the years, the most recent being in the late seventies, or somewhere thereabouts, probably during the last big oil boom. The dark stained wood, yellow walls and old-style asbestos floor tiles still gave it that “old world charm.”
The sheriff’s offices were on the backside of the courthouse, so from the front you couldn’t tell that anyone was in the building. Other than our Expedition and an old Chevy Cavalier—our overtime clerk, no doubt—the place looked deserted. It also looked and felt creepy, like a place you would never ever want to be after dark. But here I was anyway. I didn’t bother asking Jerry if we really had to go in because I already knew the answer. And, we were only a few feet from the front door.
The entry was fairly well lit, which took down the creep factor slightly. That the doors were already unlocked as we walked in did not. Inside, a few fluorescent lights hummed overhead, but the hallway was still dimly lit. Jerry headed directly to the stairs in front of us. When we got to the lower level, he led us down a narrow hallway. Various markers perched out from the walls on each side like street signs. “License Plates,” “Property Taxes,” standard stuff. “We went in the door under “Records.”
A tall counter ran the length of the room, which was maybe twelve or fifteen feet with a swinging door on the left. The small open area in front of the counter had a couple of chairs and fake plants. Behind the counter, a couple of desks were set out in the open with panels forming cubicles behind and to the right. The left was mostly hidden from view, but it looked like it was storage of some kind. Probably the “records.”
“Be right there, Sheriff,” came a raspy female voice from a back cubicle.
In a few seconds, a thin, hard-looking woman in a low-cut silvery blouse and short black skirt came wobbling in on spiked heels. If she was going for a sexy strut, she missed by the proverbial mile. I put her age somewhere near fifty, but it was hard to tell. A malodorous mix of sickeningly sweet perfume and stale cigarettes wafted over me. Even without the nasal evidence, the thick lines and coarse skin of her face said she’d been a heavy smoker for a very long time. Glassy eyes indicated that alcohol, drugs or both were probably involved as well. Whatever her vices, none of them gave her a youthful glow. The cosmetic overkill didn’t help either, and neither did her frizzy shoulder-length hair, which varied in color from a light mottled brown to shoe-polish black. The woman needed to get a professional dye job or give it up entirely. (Yes, it takes one to know one, but we are criticizing someone else at the moment and there is still much to be done.)
As I continued my assessment, she morphed from semi-sober off-duty records clerk into lust-crazed tramp on mission right before my very eyes. She put her hands on her breasts and thrust her chest forward, growling and panting. Thank God for the counter or she’d have been humping Jerry’s leg like a scraggly poodle in heat.
Apparently she didn’t see me lurking in the corner by the fake ficus tree, or maybe it just didn’t matter. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the first time this nut job had done this.
She licked her lips and cooed, in a gravely sort of way, and ran her hands down over her waist and hips. “I’m glad you called. I knew you would, sooner or later.” She lowered her lids into what she apparently thought was a seductive look. “Whatever you want, Sheriff, it’s yours.”
Oh, please. The only thing anyone could want from that was to throw up.
“What I want,” Jerry said matter-of-factly, ignoring her overt and disgusting, display, “are the specific records I mentioned on the phone. Jolene and I would like to get finished with this as soon as possible.”
“Jolene?” Cindy muttered, turning from lustful and languid to embarrassed and furious. “What!”
“Come on, honey,” Jerry said, motioning me forward. “Cindy has the files pulled for us.”
I stepped out from the corner, realizing that he’d just called me honey. And in an oh-so-subtle way put Cindy-slut in her place without a scene of any kind. Smooth. Really smooth and classy. I just loved that man.
Turning back to Cindy, he said, “Are those in the main room?”
Flaming tramp eyes were locked onto me and venom was sputtering from between her teeth. “Who are you?”
Sheriff Parker didn’t miss a beat, just kept speaking as if Cindy were a sane and normal person, which clearly she was not. “Cindy, you remember Jolene Jackson, from high school. She’s helping me tonight.”
“Jolene,” the tramp spat. “Jolene Jackson.”
Why do people have to say it like that? Jolene. Jolene Jackson. With sputtering even. It’s like my mere presence unleashes some pr
imordial internal storm that requires a theatrical re-stating of my name before I even open my mouth. I just don’t get it. And while I seemed to have struck an instant discord with her from twenty-five years ago, I didn’t have the first clue about who she was.
I stepped up beside Jerry and gave her a fake little smile. “Hello.”
Jerry put his arm around me affectionately and moved me in front of him, keeping his hand on my shoulder as he spoke to Cindy. Apparently this was something that Cindy did not like at all because flaming arrows were now shooting from her bloodshot eyeballs and spittle was foaming at the sides of her mouth.
“Is there a computer back there with access to the Internet?”
“The one on the desk,” she growled. “Just like any other computer around here.”
“We’ll probably be about an hour,” he said evenly, guiding me through the little swinging door.
With a vindictive huff, she added, “I don’t care. I’m on time and a half.” She flung herself around and clickety-clacked her spiked heels toward a back office, mumbling something that I am reasonably sure was not very nice at all.
Jerry chuckled and guided me down the office hallway toward the media rooms. I glanced at the various desks and divided cubbyholes lining two walls of the room. Ledgers, boxes, and folders were piled on a table behind where Jerry sat at the computer and little white boxes of microfilm and stacks of microfiche were scattered at various stations. The electronic age was being acknowledged, but all the records were apparently not in digital form just yet. However, Cindy had apparently written out explicit notes on what could be found where.
Jerry walked over to the computer in the center of the room, pulled out the chair and motioned me over. “If you’ll get us an aerial view, I’ll sort through what we have to work with over here.” He then moved to the stacks of films and fiches. “By the way, that was Cynthia Ann Riley,” he said, rummaging through the files. “Murphy now, although she’s been divorced for a few years this last time. She was a grade behind us in school. And I’m smarter than that, Jolene, so don’t even think about it.”
Oh, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I am not the jealous type and we all know it. “She sure thought it was her lucky day,” I said smiling and waggling my eyebrows. “She wants you bad.”
“You don’t remember her, do you?”
“Not at all.”
“She was in the band.”
I ran down the band roster until something clicked, or actually smacked. “Oh, Cynthia. She played clarinet. I sort of remember her. Always smacking her lips and playing with her reeds.”
“That’s the one.”
“Do I just inspire global hate or does she have a specific reason for her scorn?”
“I don’t know, but envy and jealousy would be my guess. You excelled at everything and were pretty confident about it.” Jerry coughed to cover a chuckle. “You could have been a little intimidating at times.”
Me? I always felt intimidated. I never knew I’d been dishing it out. Yet another topic requiring further introspection. In the meantime, however, I’d found the site I needed and had zoomed down from space to the area around my mother’s house. The clarity was exceptional. “Here it is. Now that I’m convinced it’s a toxic waste dump, it looks even worse than it did this morning.”
Jerry walked up behind me and leaned over my shoulder. “It definitely does not look good.”
“That can’t be all from normal production and salt and stuff, can it?”
“I’m sure some of it’s normal. But that’s a huge area, actually several huge areas. Not anything like I’ve ever seen before.” He leaned closer. “It’s hard to tell how much might be on your mother’s property, but some of it certainly is.”
“I can’t believe that she’d condone deliberate contamination. She’s a deceitful and borderline insane, but she wouldn’t actively participate in that kind of thing, would she?”
“Probably not, but she’s done plenty of things I wouldn’t have guessed she would,” he said, stepping away. “She’s definitely hiding something.”
He certainly had a point there, and I had the unpleasant feeling that we had only scratched the surface of what she’d been willing to do and was now willing to keep us from finding out about. “So where do we start?”
“I’ll set you up over here to search property records. The county map shows ownership. Look for mineral rights or other assignments on each parcel. After that, we’ll try to cross check names and numbers with Railroad Commission records.”
“Okay,” I said, hitting the print button. “I’ll get a few views printed off so we can compare them with maps again. What are you going to do?”
“I have a hunch or two I want to check out. Shouldn’t take long.”
Records searches are tedious business and Jerry’s estimate of an hour seemed highly optimistic. I hoped that was all the time we had to spend because otherwise it looked like we could be at it all night. I started searching through the ledgers, files and films as Jerry had directed. I had file numbers that were supposed to make things easier to find, but that upside down and backwards part of microfiche-ing is just confusing. I had finally worked out a system on how to find research and document the information on each parcel when Jerry interrupted.
“Jolene, you better come take a look at this for yourself.”
I walked over to where he sat and looked at the screen. A familiar name jumped out at me. “Lucille Janette Aston.” He was looking at marriage records. “Oh, my God,” I said, seeing but not believing the official record. “She was married to Bob Little?”
“Right out of high school I would guess,” Jerry said. “Cindy left instructions on how to access the vital records databases. We have birth, death, marriage and divorce records at our fingertips in one way or another. For all her faults, she’s good at this part of her job.”
I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about praising the tramp for much of anything, but said, “Yes, I’ll give her that. She’s doing her part to make these little skeletons just zoom out of my family closet at warp speed.”
“The only thing this confirms is that your mother made a mistake as a teenager. Nothing more.” When I started stuttering and sputtering, he added, “It doesn’t mean she had an affair with him later.”
“It doesn’t mean she didn’t.”
“Step back from it for a minute and let’s get some more facts. Go over to those old index file drawers over there and see if there are any divorce records filed here. Look up both names and get any corresponding file numbers.”
“Fine. And you may as well find out how many more husbands she had before she married my father.”
One part of my brain continued background stewing while the other did as directed and found the facts. As Jerry had suggested, the marriage had lasted less than a year. There were no children and there were no itemized property settlement documents although there were several pages of legalese that referenced a separate private settlement, which was not attached. Odds were pretty good that the 160-acre parcel of land was part of it. The city lots had been bought years later, no doubt because of their prime location next to the secret ranchland. I wondered if Dad ever even knew about it.
We learned that Lucille had not married anyone else before latching on to my father. Bob had married a woman named Glenda Hicks several years before. No record of divorce, however. I never remembered seeing him with a woman. Couldn’t remember any kids. Then again, I was having enough trouble keeping up with the revelations of the moment much less what happened forty years ago.
In the last thirty-six hours, my head had collected a semi-truck load of details, not to mention a significant amount of nitrous oxide and duct tape, and the warning light was flashing on my overloaded circuits. Maybe more memories would work their way up through the fog tomorrow. Tonight, however, I was fading fast. I glanced down at my watch. It was after ten. Considering everything, it was a minor miracle I wasn’t comatose. “I am just about
to drop, Jerry. I don’t think I can take much more tonight.”
“Me either, Jolene.” He pulled his phone from the case on his belt. “I’m going to call Fritz to make sure he doesn’t let Lucille out of his sight. Technically, she’s no guiltier than she was when we left her with him, but it sure seems like she will be.”
“Now you sound like me,” I said, trying to chuckle and failing.
“I know you’re exhausted, but could you check one more thing while I make some calls? Then we can go.”
I didn’t want to, I promise you. “Sure.”
Jerry stood up from where he’d been sitting at the computer. “See if there’s a death record for Glenda Hicks Little. There are pull-down menus on the left side under the main topics.”
I sat down and studied the website, found the correct category then followed the requisite links to a search engine. It took a couple of tries with variations on the name, but I had Glenda’s death certificate on the screen faster than I would have ever guessed.
He clicked off the phone and shoved it back in its case. “Find it?”
“Yes. And now I know why I didn’t remember her. She died the same year I was born. I never met her.”
“What’s the cause of death?”
“Complications of childbirth. Guess that explains why Bob Little has no children either. We didn’t find where he remarried, right?”
“Right,” Jerry said, staring intently at the screen.
“Something wrong?”
“I was just thinking.”
“You think Glenda’s death has something to do with what’s going on now?” I turned and looked up at him. “You don’t think Bob Little killed her and she’s buried in one of those toxic waste pits, do you?”
He stood and shook his head. “You’re tired. I wish I could tell you that a nice soft pillow was in your immediate future, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Your mother is not at Fritz’s house.” He waved aside my sputtering commentary. “Don’t bother. She apparently ‘ran home to get a few things.’ But he was just sure she’d be back any minute.” He sighed. “The man knows better.”