“So we should try that again. You with the rods in your lap and me driving over bridges and—”
“So the killer you’ve got in custody just clammed up, I guess? He’s not giving you any idea where the other two could be? Is that it?”
He didn’t reply.
“Is it because he never wanted us to find Luna Quinn?”
“I can’t really talk about—”
“So we’re just going to drive over every frickin’ bridge in Washington?” It was a ridiculous idea. “There are probably hundreds. Maybe thousands. It’s a stupid idea.”
“I’ll pay you for your time.”
That pissed me off. Like I was some prostitute out for hire who’d accept his money and do his bidding.
“I don’t have time to just drive all over the place like that. It’s dumb.”
“Don’t you see? It’s all I’ve got!”
His fists pounded against his steering wheel. The force of his anger was a hot surge that caused me to flinch and shift my weight closer to the door. Then I looked at him, his back hunched and defeated. I relaxed.
“My rods are at home. I’ll meet you there.”
He followed me all the way, close to my bumper and not a single mile an hour over or under what I drove as if afraid I’d take off. What would he do if I had? Would he put pedal to the metal and chase me down the I-5? When I pulled up to the trailer, he parked directly behind me and waited in his car while I grabbed the rods. I didn’t bother to take my bag with boots and gear. This trip didn’t feel like it warranted that level of confidence. I let Wookie out for a minute and he promptly peed against the agent’s tires.
When we were on the road, rods on my lap and off to God knows where, I finally asked him.
“Have you been following me?”
He glanced at me and opened his mouth as if to vehemently deny it then instead simply winked. The look was so absurdly out of character I laughed.
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Just in case...” He nodded to my lap.
My mouth opened and closed a couple times wordlessly until I blurted, “In case I stumbled across another body?”
The idea was so ludicrous that it smacked of foolish desperation. I wanted to rant about the laughable nature of his assumption but then I remembered what was at stake. There was a glimmer of empathy under my skin when I realized how heavy his responsibility was to find the abducted girls.
“For the record,” I said, taking a deep breath. “If I do just happen to trip over the other two, I promise to call you.”
“I appreciate that.”
We both seemed to relax and enjoy the ride. Well, enjoy it as much as you possibly can when your goal is to find the dead. I plugged my earbuds in and listened to my book while the divining rods remained inert in my lap.
Agent Pierce probably had a reason for crisscrossing over certain areas and towns, pulling U-turns and doubling back in what appeared to be innocuous locations but he never offered an explanation and I didn’t ask. From what I knew, the towns we drove through were not near the locations where the girls were abducted. However, we’d found Luna Quinn far from her hometown so maybe he had no clue and only a hope and a prayer. There’d been times when those two things had kept me from losing my mind so I wouldn’t judge.
After a couple hours we stopped for coffee and pie and to use the restroom in a town so small that the coffee shop seemed to be the entire village and the smattering of people inside the whole population.
“You ever think of moving away?” he asked me from behind a thick white ceramic cup. “Heading off to the big city?”
I put my own mug down. As I considered the question the waitress delivered our pie, apple for him and lemon meringue for me.
“I did move away. Right after high school I moved to Portland, then Seattle and Tacoma.” I dug into the pie and placed a bite full in my mouth. The tart of the lemon balanced perfectly with the sweet meringue on my tongue. “I’d come home only for holidays.”
And even then, seeing Gramps had hurt my heart and listening to Grandma had been venom for my soul.
“You moved back after your grandmother died.” He took a bite of his apple pie.
I nodded. “Gramps is pretty self-sufficient but, still, I wanted to be close to him. He’s not getting any younger.”
“But you didn’t want to be close to your grandmother.”
“She was...” I sipped my coffee, then shoveled another forkful of pie into my mouth while I struggled for the word. After I swallowed I said, “She was difficult.”
His eyes met mine and they bruised as he tentatively poked around in that abscessed part of me.
“You ever think about going back to your wife?” I countered, wanting to match cut with cut.
“No. She died a few years ago.”
Shit.
“I’m so sorry.” The fork was midway to my mouth and I placed it back down on the plate and reached my hand to briefly touch his. “I shouldn’t’ve asked. I just saw the white space where a wedding band used to be and thought, you know, that you’re divorced or separated.”
“It took me a while to take off the ring,” he admitted.
We ate our pie in silence for a few minutes. I tried to chew and swallow nonchalantly but inside I cringed for being presumptive. I wanted to ask how she died and how long they’d been married and whether they had kids but I just swallowed my questions with the lemon and crust. We didn’t speak for the rest of the time in the diner and, when we resumed our journey, our words were few. He slowed and looked at the rods in my lap at every small bridge that lay over every single creek bed. Jesus, how many brooks, rivers and streams were there in Washington? The answer seemed to be: a fucking lot.
Even though it was probably a million to one shot we’d find any bodies this way, I found myself also wishing the rods would twitch. But nothing.
“How did you find me?” I asked him eventually, more out of boredom than really caring.
“Well, I was going over missing children in Washington State. Your name appeared in two reports saying you found the bodies. Not how you found them, just that you had. That seemed like an unlikely statistic. Most people will go their entire lives without finding a body.”
“Aren’t they lucky,” I murmured.
“I stopped in to visit one of the families since the mom had moved to Seattle and her address was close to my office. She said when her little girl went missing they’d heard through the friend of a friend about your, um, abilities. They hired you to find their little girl who was presumed drowned in the Nooksack River.”
“Oh. Mrs. Buchanan. Nice family. At least she was nice. Her husband was a bit pissed that she was spending money on me. Geez, that was a long time ago. I was only...”
“Sixteen,” he finished.
Same age as Luna Quinn, I thought and closed my eyes against the image of the white ribbon.
“Yes, well, Mrs. Buchanan described exactly how you did it walking with the rods. She said the river had been dragged numerous times but they never found her daughter but you went out in a kayak—”
“That was my first time ever in a kayak. I really liked it. I thought it would be tough to keep steady but it’s really not as hard as it looks. Maybe I was just lucky ’cause the river was calm, but it was kind of cool and—”
“There was talk that she’d been abducted and thrown in the river.”
“Really? No, everyone ’round here always said how she liked to swim in the river even though she wasn’t a strong swimmer. The river was just too strong for her that day.” I paused. “I like to kayak.”
Why the hell was I was rambling about being in a frickin’ kayak? I let it go.
“I like kayaking too.”
His voice was wistful and faraway for
a second, and I wondered if that was something he had done with his wife but didn’t dare ask.
“Anyway, Mrs. Buchanan said a friend paddled and you held the rods out and about a mile downstream from where everyone had been searching, you found her daughter caught up in a fallen tree on the shore.”
The mom had hugged me and thanked me over and over. She’d been so nice and had bragged to all who would listen about how I’d given them their daughter to lay to rest. When word got back to Grandma the price I paid made me stop dowsing until I moved out after graduation. She said she was going to beat that devil out of me. I almost died when she tried.
The quicksand tugged and pulled.
“I’m just going to listen to a book for a while.” I plugged my headphones into my ears and turned away before he could answer.
I listened to three complete chapters and was tired of driving around. As we drove out the east side of the town of Sedro-Woolley, I was going to ask him to call it a day but then Pierce abruptly pulled the car to the shoulder. I yanked out my earbuds and turned to look at him. He had his phone to his ear and was talking in a clipped monosyllable tone. Flipping open the center console between us, he tugged out a notebook and a pen and began scrawling notes in rapid cursive. When he ended the call, he looked at me and flashed a quick smile.
“We’ve got a tip.” He made a U-turn in the middle of Highway Twenty. “Know where Acme is?”
“I think so, maybe fifteen or twenty miles north of here.”
“Yup.”
“What kind of tip?” I asked warily.
“The kind where you’re going to need those things.”
He nodded to the rods in my lap and I covered them protectively with my hand.
From my estimation it should’ve taken about twenty minutes to reach Acme but Pierce was on a mission and his foot was heavy on the accelerator as we rocketed north on Highway Nine. We arrived in Acme but he just blew on through and veered northeast on Mosquito Lake Road and kept driving. He slowed when we reached a truss bridge over the Middle Fork Nooksack River.
“Ready?” he asked me.
I nodded but my throat was dry and I felt an ache in my bones.
He took the road over the bridge at a crawl. His eyes were on my lap and I remained motionless, both wanting to help him and not wanting to face another body. After we crossed he turned the car around and crossed again. Even slower this time. When nothing happened he pulled to the shoulder and looked at me.
“Is there something you need to do?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“Like... I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. “Let’s get out and walk around.”
“Okay.”
The truss bridge was behind us a few feet. He started walking along the road to cross the bridge and then he looked at me.
“Coming?”
I took a few steps and stopped.
“I don’t like bridges. The kind like this...you know...high ones.” I swallowed.
He walked back until he was standing directly in front of me.
“We just drove across the bridge twice. It’s strong enough for a car. It’s not going to collapse under your hundred pounds.”
“One-twenty,” I corrected but my feet didn’t move.
“How about if you walk right down the center of both lanes? Not on the sides. I’ll stay right beside you. Traffic is light and we’d probably cross a dozen times before another car came along.” He talked calmly but, when I didn’t reply, impatience lifted off him like steam. “Give it a try.”
“Okay.”
But it didn’t feel okay at all. It felt like I was going to throw up and wet my pants and, quite possibly, both of those things at the same time.
The bridge was about three hundred feet long and maybe sixteen feet wide. The metal triangular truss structure did not look weak or dilapidated in any way so I understood that my reluctance could be seen as silly. But fear is a monster with two heads and just because you can distract one set of teeth doesn’t mean the other won’t bite you in the ass.
I thrust out my arms with the rods straight and hoped that the tremble in my fingers would not be misinterpreted as a body indicator by the eager Agent Pierce. One foot in front of another was easy enough. Agent Pierce walked backward in front of me; I’m sure he felt it would offer me reassurance.
Look at me, the big strong FBI agent, walking on this bridge. If I can do it, you can do it.
There was no way to explain that the panic and trepidation was inside my head and not beneath my feet. Quicksand.
Mid-span on the bridge I picked up the pace. A slight breeze played with my hair. At any moment it could become a gust so powerful it would shove me unwittingly over the edge.
“Not much farther,” Agent Pierce coaxed.
Not far? It was far enough that the earth could heave and propel me to the side railings and long fingers of despair could pull me to climb the sides.
“You’re doing great.”
Fuck off.
Seriously.
I fought the urge to bolt past him and leave the rods in the dust as I ran.
There was maybe fifteen feet left on the bridge deck. We’d walked over the support column piers holding the bridge up. No longer over the river but suspended up on the sloped bank. The rods shimmied slightly. Another step. They twitched and swung right.
I heard Pierce’s intake of breath as I took another step and they swung sharp to my right. I kept walking straight and they resumed their straight position.
“Go back,” he said. “Don’t you have to follow where they point? Step back.”
Oh God.
I sucked air in through my teeth and did as he asked. Two then three steps backward and the arms of the rods swung right again. I shuffled over in that direction with trepidation.
“I can’t.”
“Just a little farther. Then I’ll go beneath.”
My feet skidded over the pavement in small side baby steps, the rods tugging that way, my head screaming not to follow. When I froze in place he walked over to the railing. He leaned and peered over the sides like I could never do in a million years and with a dozen Xanax. That close to the edge and the yearning to die and throw myself over would be too much. Even now it felt like the suck of a powerful vacuum pulling me to that edge.
Quicksand.
While he leaned over the railing completely oblivious to the vortex that could propel him to his doom, I sat down on the pavement and curled into a tight ball.
Abruptly there was the strident blast of a car horn and I was dragged out of the way in time for a pickup to careen over the bridge. The driver slowed enough to show me his middle finger. Pierce carried me off the bridge then crouched beside me on the dirt. I could not stop shaking.
“It’s okay.” He awkwardly wrapped his arms around my shoulders in a gawky bear hug.
I did not even know that tears flowed down my face until I saw the wet imprint on the shoulder of his shirt. Appalled by my own weakness and by his close proximity I shoved him back. Too hard and too abrupt.
“I’m good.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry...sorry.”
I let out a long breath, glanced at him and then had to turn away. I could not meet his gaze, which was concerned and empathetic but also really confused by my complete lack of control and crumbling.
He jogged back to the middle of the bridge where I dropped my rods, then returned them to me without saying a word before he scooted down the embankment. After a minute I walked farther away from the bridge and followed the shoulder a few yards where it veered into the trees. I leaned against a tall cedar and dragged air deep into my lungs. The rough bark scratched my shoulder blades as I pressed up against the tree. I looked in the direction where the agent had disappeared. I’
d been expecting him to come up immediately and declare he’d found her stuffed under the bridge just like the other but ten minutes went by without a word. When at least twenty minutes had passed, I thought he must be examining the scene. A pine-scented breeze rustled the trees overhead. I zipped up my hoodie and waited. The rods were in my back pocket and I pulled them out because I wanted to park my ass on a nearby rock. Once the rods were back in my hands, though, they twitched.
“Oh shut up,” I told them.
I took a step and they moved with force, not pointing toward the underside of the bridge at all but along the riverbank on the left. There was an easy slope cleared in the brush probably by fisherman anxious to catch a big one. I followed and the rods brought me to the edge of the rushing water and then toward an outcropping. Smoothly the batons in my hands crossed over into a perfect X formation.
The water was choked with tall weeds and smooth rocks.
Cupping my hands into a megaphone I pointed my body in the direction of the bridge and yelled, “Agent Pierce!”
I decided to wait for him to come. There was no need to go wading into those weeds. But even as I told myself to wait and heard his footsteps as they crunched in brush not far away, I still couldn’t stop myself from taking a few steps closer.
The white ribbon on her wrist was caught on a branch tangled in the weeds, or maybe she’d been intentionally moored. Her hair was a corn-yellow fern as it swayed in the rippled waves. Unseeing eyes opened in infinite surprise stared up at the sky.
Chapter Four
Pierce caught me just before I fell in the water. Don’t know why I felt faint because I’d seen bodies far more bloated and distorted than this one. Perhaps it was the bridge trauma, which made me weepy even an hour later.
I sat on the ground nearby while Pierce talked on his phone and described the scene. Then he jogged back over the bridge and brought the car closer so I could sit inside.
“I’m sorry.” I felt feeble, weak and ashamed.
“Whatever for?” He leaned on the open passenger door, looking down at me.
“The bridge thing...walking on your crime scene.” I waved my hand at him. “Take your pick.”
A Grave Calling Page 6