One of the things Kyle had managed to keep after his divorce—thanks to David Abrams—was the state-of-the-art combine that his father had purchased the year before his death. With careful planting this year, so that the rows and combine head were equally matched, he’d been able to bring in a little more than his estimated harvest, and the feed corn had already been delivered to Bob Branson.
And now Kyle could concentrate on his future—the experimental crop that he’d been working on since high school. To minimize loss and kernel damage, he would handpick the acre filled with the prototype seeds’ growth. This year, he had a winner. Bob thought so, too.
The older man was coming for Monday night football that evening and bringing a steak dinner courtesy of the saloon in town, plus a hamburger for Grandpa. Now that the major crop was in, Kyle could easily grill them a couple of slabs of beef, but Bob insisted, and Kyle wasn’t about to argue.
The divorce was taking its toll on Bob and, to Kyle, he looked frail, though Bob insisted he was fine. The eighteen-hour days he was putting in seemed to support that.
It was the first time in the almost two years since the stroke that had initiated Grandpa’s downward spiral that Bob had agreed to have dinner with them at the farm.
Kyle had just finished his breakfast and was listening to Clara sing to Grandpa as she bathed him when he first smelled the burning.
His initial thought was that he’d left a towel or plastic utensil too close to a stove burner. But the stench was unusual, acrid, and it wasn’t coming from the kitchen.
“Zodiac!” His urgent call was met by silence. Kyle couldn’t remember whether the dog had been underfoot while he was cooking breakfast. But then, the eight-year-old German shepherd came and went as she damn well pleased since Sam had given her a doggie door for her birthday.
Kyle rushed past the table and outside. The smell was worse. Pungent. Like chemicals. At the barn door, he skidded to a halt long enough to haul the big door aside. The warm interior seemed to be just as he’d left it. Rad and Lillie popped their heads over the stalls, telling him good-morning—as they did every day. But Lillie’s nostrils flared and her eyes darted with an uneasy glint.
Zodiac was nowhere to be seen.
“Easy girl,” Kyle said softly, stroking the mare’s nose as he checked her stall, Rad’s and the six empty ones. All fine. Not wasting a second, he let the horses out to the pasture and went to check the supply barn. Maybe there was a clue…
Kyle coughed, inhaling the distinct smell of smoke. And that’s when he saw the cloud on the horizon—above the land the government paid him to leave unplanted as part of an ecological program to regenerate the earth.
There was nothing out there to burn but dirt and clover. Nothing that would send up such a stench.
The dirty gray plumes of smoke were shooting higher into the crisp morning air while he stood there, reasoning to himself why there couldn’t be a fire.
Making a run for the house, Kyle called to Clara to keep Grandpa in his room, grabbed his cell phone off the kitchen counter and dialed 9-1-1.
Sam was at Kyle’s place before the fire was out. She wasn’t on duty until noon. But he’d called.
“Did you find her?” she shouted as he met her car in the drive. Zodiac was still missing.
“Not yet.” His face was grim. “I can’t get anywhere near the fire,” he added.
“I know.” The authorities had ordered Kyle to stay away from the site because of the chemical odor he’d reported. But at the moment, the fire wasn’t his only concern. “I’ve checked all of her haunts,” he continued, his long hair more mussed than usual. “She’s not down by the stream or in either of the barns.”
“What about with Grandpa? You know she likes to sleep beside his bed in the mornings.”
“Checked. Clara’s here, anyway.”
“Did you look at your mole traps? Could she have gotten caught in one of them?”
“I checked. Nothing.”
“I’ve never known her to leave the property.”
“She doesn’t. Unless she’s with me.”
One look at the pinched skin around his mouth and she said, “You think she’s at the fire.”
“It’s a damned good possibility, wouldn’t you think? Zodiac is missing at the same time there’s a fire on our property. If someone was out there, and she heard them…”
“If she’s there, the authorities will look out for her, Kyle. They’re trained to deal with animals. I drove a mile on both sides of your property and didn’t see a sign of her,” she told him. At least she hadn’t found the dog dead on the side of the road, Sam thought.
Hands in his pockets, Kyle looked toward the smoky horizon and she knew how hard it was for him to just stand there when his family’s land was in danger.
“The fire’s contained,” she told him. “They should have it out soon.”
“Have they said how far it spread?”
“No more than an acre.” Which was good news.
“Any word on what caused it?”
“Not yet.” But from the call that had come in over her radio, she knew chemicals had been involved. They’d called in hazmat. Sam didn’t want to think about that. Not now.
Not until Zodiac was found.
Chuck’s cruiser pulled up behind Sam’s Mustang and the deputy climbed out, a limp dog in his arms.
God. No.
Kyle’s movements were stilted as he approached the deputy.
“She’s alive,” Chuck called out. “But she needs the vet.”
“I’ll drive.” Sam had the engine going and the car turned by the time Kyle, his unconscious German shepherd cradled in his arms, climbed into the passenger seat beside her.
Zodiac had no broken bones. No cuts or other external injuries. But she was suffering from acute smoke and chemical fume inhalation. The vet had given her oxygen therapy and had her on respiratory support. An IV attached to her left front leg, just above her paw, was filling her with a combination of drugs to clear fluid from her lungs. Sometime in the past few hours she’d been given electrolytes and bicarbonate.
If she made it, they’d probably be looking at daily nebulization therapy for a while.
If she made it….
Sitting beside the dog in the special room they’d set up as a favor to Kyle, he watched his unconscious friend struggle for her life and wondered how in the hell he was going to pay the exorbitant vet bill.
Wondered, and worried, yet knew he would spend whatever it cost to keep the dog alive. Zodiac was going to make it. As soon as she woke up, he could take her home.
“Hey, they told me I would find you here.” Sam stuck her head in the door before coming the rest of the way in. In her uniform, her hair back in its bun, she must have just gotten off work. “Dan says she has a fifty-fifty chance.”
He didn’t want to hear about chances. The dog was going to make it. Kyle asked for very little. Expected very little. Didn’t need much. But Zodiac was family.
“Is it past eight already?”
“It’s almost ten. You need to go home. Get some rest.”
“I told Dan I’d stay with her.” The veterinarian had known Kyle since he was a toddler. He’d been the only vet Kyle’s dad had allowed near his prized horses, and had agreed to let Kyle stay at the twenty-four-hour clinic for as long as he needed to. One of the benefits of small-town living, he supposed. “Clara’s staying with Grandpa for now. James and Millie will relieve her at bedtime and stay the night, if it comes to that.”
James and Millie Turner were Kyle’s next-door neighbors.
“I see that the bench has a pad.” She motioned to the orange plastic cover upon which he sat. “But it hardly looks comfy.”
Her voice was light. Her eyes told another story.
“What’s wrong?”
Shaking her head, Sam closed the door behind her and sat down beside him. And he was glad.
They’d brought him a night-light, taken from the boarding kennel s
ection of the clinic, but Kyle hadn’t yet turned off the bright overhead examining light. He was watching Zodiac’s intravenous drip.
“Bob Branson called me.”
Oh, hell. “I completely forgot. He was bringing dinner.”
“Yeah, but he heard about the fire and phoned first. When he didn’t get you, he tried me and I told him about Zodiac. He says to tell you that if you need anything, let him know.”
Much earlier that day Kyle had left briefly with Sam to retrieve his truck and feed the horses and check on Grandpa while Dan was with Zodiac. Everything else could wait.
“Have you eaten?”
“No.” He’d been nauseous on and off for most of the afternoon. Probably a result of the smoke he’d inhaled when he’d run out, cell phone in hand, to the site of the fire, before he’d been ordered back to the house.
He had a hell of a headache, too.
Both symptoms would pass. Kyle had taken enough chemical safety classes during college to write the manual. If things got worse, he’d see a doctor.
“So what’s wrong?” He knew the woman beside him as well as he knew the smell of rain.
“It was a chemical fire.”
That was hardly news.
“Arson?”
“It doesn’t look like it. More likely someone threw a lit cigarette out of a car window.”
It didn’t make sense for a piece of land to go up like that from a lit cigarette.
Zodiac’s ribs rose and fell. Rose and fell.
He just needed her to open those damned eyes so he could take her home. To the old white house that needed a coat of paint and had nail dings in the walls from all of his school pictures and his dad’s before him. To a frail old man who didn’t know who he was half the time.
Home.
Where they belonged.
“So what are you telling me?” he asked.
“That field was a toxic landfill.”
“Toxic landfill. As in contaminated ground? Up until two years ago I was growing corn on that land.”
“I know.”
“I tested it regularly. It was fine. Healthy.”
“I know.”
“Was it something with the groundwater?”
Gases rose. It could happen. But what a nightmare if that was the case. God, his entire property, his recent harvest…the experimental crop…
Where did the pipes run on the land? He tried to envision site plans he hadn’t looked at in years.
“It was being used as a dump site for used chemicals, Kyle.”
Someone was dumping on his land?
What the hell.
And because of it, Zodiac was lying here fighting for her life. Tired way beyond his years, Kyle yearned for his backyard, stars in the sky and a beer.
“What kind of chemicals?” he asked. He remembered Sam’s accusations. And the chemical missing from his barn.
“It’s a meth lab waste dump.”
Shit. The string of words that mentally followed would have shamed Kyle in his younger days.
“I have a warrant to search your property, Kyle. I just want you to know I’ll take the inside and make sure that Grandpa isn’t upset.”
Kyle heard Sam’s voice. He saw the beige polyester pants on the seat beside him.
And almost threw up.
God, he hated that uniform.
12
Chandler, Ohio
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
“Hey, you busy?”
Startled, I looked up at Deb from the file I’d been reading. I could count the number of times my receptionist actually walked down the hall to my office. Her preferred mode of imparting information was to let her fingers do the walking to the intercom button on our ancient phone system.
“No,” I said, pushing aside the transcripts from a deposition I’d taken part in a few days before in a child endangerment trial. I had to be completely sure of my findings before I’d write anything that could take a child away from her mother. “What’s up?”
“Maggie Winston’s here.”
Deb hadn’t been around any of the three times Maggie had been there. “You know her?”
“Cole went to school with her mother.” Cole, Deb’s husband. “Until she dropped out their freshman year to have Maggie. He says she was a straight-A student. The mother, that is.” The woman Deb had previously referred to as WT.
I blew the bangs off my forehead. I should probably just cut them. But I liked them long. They’d always been that way. “Did Maggie say what she wants?”
“Just to see you. I know you have to get that report in and didn’t know if you have time. I couldn’t find where she had an appointment.”
I was kind of surprised she’d looked. Deb wasn’t really particular about that type of thing.
“I’ll see her,” I said, curious and relieved at the same time.
Deb nodded and left and I wondered again what was up with her.
Then I’d turned my thoughts to Maggie.
I’d talked again to Jim Lockhart at Maggie’s school. He’d said the girl had all female teachers that year and he hadn’t seen her interacting with any of the male personnel. Sam had found the same. So a crush on a schoolteacher seemed unlikely.
“I can come back another time if you’re busy….”
Maggie hovered in the doorway. A startlingly changed Maggie.
“No.” I stood and walked over to the couch as if I had all the time in the world. For now, I did. “Come on in. Have a seat.” I motioned to the cushions beside me.
Maggie, wearing jeans, a low-cut sweater and flip-flops despite the cool temperature outside, settled on the opposite end of the couch.
“You’ve changed your hair.” The highlights were still there, though probably touched up.
“My friend cut it for me. Just to give it some body. So it doesn’t always just hang flat around my face.”
Still long, Maggie’s hair curled around her cheeks, little wisps giving her a waifish air.
“And the makeup?”
“She helped me with that, too.”
I was going to ask about the tight sweater, but didn’t. Maggie’s body was slightly turned away from me and she clutched her purse on her lap. Defensive, I jotted in my mind.
“I’m glad you came by. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about you.”
“You hardly know me.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to know a person long to recognize there’s something about them that speaks to you.”
“You pro’bly care the same about all your patients.”
“Are you one of my patients?”
“No.” The answer was instantaneous. And accompanied by a tightening of the pink Coach knockoff against her body. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t need to be.”
“Tell me why you’re here.”
“It was either that or be grounded.”
“Your mother sent you here?” That surprised me.
“Yeah.” Maggie’s head turned as she glanced straight at me. “She said you probably wouldn’t see me if she asked. What’d she do, call you up and blame you for something?”
That sort of covered it. She’d been upset about Sam’s surveillance and I was to blame for that.
“She wasn’t happy with me the last time we spoke,” I said. “She’s worried about you.”
Maggie stomped her foot on the floor where she sat. “She doesn’t have to be. I’m perfectly fine. I’m not going to screw up or anything. She’s, like, obsessed that I’m going to ruin my life like she did.”
Understandable, given the circumstances of Maggie’s life. The run-down trailer park where she lived. Her lack of supervision while her mother worked. No siblings or a male father figure that experts said kids needed.
Of course, I’d done just fine without that male influence in my life. But then, I knew better than most that the experts were only making educated guesses. No one could be one hu
ndred percent certain about anything.
And not all people needed the same things.
“Anyway, she says that I have to find a way to get you to talk to me because if I don’t I’m grounded.” The girl was looking right and left.
“Okay, you did. We talked. Does that cover it for you?”
That got her attention. “Don’t you want to know why Mom wants me to talk to you?”
She was such a sweet child. A combination of intelligence and insight and naïveté all rolled into one. Self-sufficient and needy at the same time.
Strong and craving support.
She reminded me of someone and I didn’t want to admit it might be me.
“Of course I do,” I said to her now. “But only if you want to tell me about it. I’m not your enemy. I want to help, but I can’t do that if you don’t want the help.”
She let go of her purse. “It’s not that I don’t want help, it’s just that I don’t need it. My mom’s wasting your time and I feel bad about that. She’s always using people. I don’t want to be like her.”
I don’t want to be like her.
More Maggie notes.
“So tell me why your mom thinks you need to talk to me.”
“Because of my hair, of course. And my makeup. She won’t let me grow up. Any change at all and she freaks out. I was the only girl in my class who’d never worn makeup. I felt like a freak.”
“And this friend who helped you—is she in your class?” Sam had mentioned a friend who drove.
“No. Glenna’s a senior.”
Glenna. The girl Sam had talked about. The one who babysat for David Abrams.
“How’d you meet her?”
“I’ve known her almost forever. When I was little my mom took me to dance class for a year. Glenna was the student aid. She was really nice to me.”
“So you’re still close.”
“Very. She’s like the first friend I’ve ever had that I can actually talk to. She doesn’t care where I live, or that the trailer has a hole in the bathroom floor that looks down to the dirt underneath.”
Her mother had mentioned that hole, too. I wondered why they didn’t just get it fixed. Or put a board over it.
“I told Glenna about my chat loop with the sick kids and she talks to them sometimes, too. Glenna’s an only kid like me and lives alone with her mom, but her mom’s sick.”
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