by G. M. Ford
Took every bit of willpower I owned not to tell her how wrong she was. Instead, I forced a dented smile onto my lips, and watched in silence as she followed her husband into the darkness.
“There’s no such fucking lake,” Carl insisted. “No body of water called Salvation Lake is within a hundred miles of here. Period. End o’ story.”
“Who’s in charge of lakes?” I asked.
“Whadda you mean by in charge?”
I shrugged. “You know . . . like responsible for.”
Carl thought it over. “Department of Ecology, I’m guessing.”
“Maybe they’d know.”
“Not at ten o’clock at night, they won’t.”
“Can’t you like . . .”
He sneered at me. “Just hack my way in?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” he growled. “That’s dorky TV shit.”
Before I could come up with something else, he waved a bony finger in my face. “And, I was you, Fearless Fosdick, I’d spend a lot less time trying to find out where this guy lives, and a lot more time worrying about those two assholes who keep trying to rearrange your face.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause those two are a real piece of work. I looked up this Biggs guy. Brother Biggs,” he intoned.
“What’s his first name?”
“That is his first name. Brother Biggs. No middle name. No known parents. Twenty-nine. A lifetime foster child. Broke a guy’s neck in a bar fight. Got sent to Walla Walla when he was eighteen, where he ended up doing an extra three and change for assaulting a female staff member. Listed as ‘unmanageable’ by the Washington state prison system. Spent his last two years in solitary. Pretty much the worst of the worst.”
He started flipping through a pile of paperwork. Handed me a mug shot of the little guy with glasses. “That the other one?”
I said it was.
“Chauncey Bostick,” he said. “Thirty years old. Born God knows where. Mother Wanda May Bostick gave him up to the state of Washington when he was three. Father unknown. What is known is that Chauncey likes to shoot people. Killed a childhood friend in a so-called hunting accident, when he was fourteen. Then did two stints for aggravated assault involving a firearm back in the nineties. Pretty much clean since then, except for a couple of beefs he beat in court, claiming self-defense.
“Biggs and Bostick met when they were both in the same Spanaway foster home. A local do-gooder name of Nathaniel Tuttle took both of ’em in and tried to make men of them, but by that time they were so far down the wrong path, there was no turning them around. All they did was drive him nuts. Spent half his time getting them out of the slammer, until they finally did him a favor and ran away together.”
Carl brought out a red file folder marked “Peterson” and flipped it open. “Which brings us to the honey,” he began. “Theresa Calder. Took the Peterson kid for the better part of four hundred gs on her way out the door. Last record I could find of her was when she transferred the dough from the Bellevue Square branch of Washington Mutual to the Shinhan Bank of South Korea.”
“What’s in South Korea?” I wondered out loud.
“She was,” Carl said. “The only way you can open a bank account in South Korea is in person. You have to show up with your alien registration card and your passport.”
I was still turning that over in my head when I looked down and saw that Carl had printed up the Google map of the Peterson home in Newcastle. Nestled there on the sixth hole fairway, hard by the banks of Peterson Pond.
An unaccustomed spasm of lucidity flashed across my consciousness.
“What if it’s private?” I asked.
“What if what’s private?”
“The lake. Salvation Lake. What if it’s a private lake?”
Something about gated communities gives me the willies. Maybe it’s that Frost poem from high school, where he says that before he’d build a wall, he’d be damn sure what he was walling in and what he was walling out. That sentiment was pretty much the same feeling I got every once in a while when I closed the gate at my house. That moment when it occurred to me that “they” might already be inside and all I’d just accomplished was to have locked myself in with them.
I’d followed the Google directions to something called Retribution Road, way the hell out behind Duvall.
I’d driven by the clearing twice before I noticed the half-dozen gray four-by-fours sticking up out of the ground like broken teeth. I pulled up to the rusted chain, got out, and then waded off into the underbrush.
Looked to me like somebody’d clear-cut about four acres. Judging from the size of the undergrowth, maybe ten years ago, something like that. What had once been a Douglas fir forest had been chainsawed into a twisted morass of scrubby oak, pasture grass, and browned-over thistles.
An old roadside sign lay facedown on the ground in front of the posts. I reached down, grabbed the edge with my one good hand, and heaved upward. It came off the ground about a foot and then stopped. Not only was it way bigger than I’d imagined, but it was all twisted up in the grown-over vegetation.
I rested it on my foot, got myself a better grip, and gave it the full monty. It rose grudgingly, tearing the long grass as it rose, and slowly showed its face to the sunlight for the first time in years.
I leaned it against the rotting four-by-fours and stepped back. The sign was too mud-caked to read, so I walked back to the car, found the hand brush I use to sweep French fries out from under the seats, and started back.
Took me a full five minutes to brush the dirt and grime from the sign. Again I stepped back for a look. Heavenly rays of sunshine, falling from an azure sky, bathing a bucolic forest setting in the Lord’s pure white light.
ASCENSION ACRES in big, puffy white letters. A GATED CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY in black beneath. On one side it read: COME HOME TO THE LORD. On the other: A LITTLE TASTE OF HEAVEN. Down beneath: SINLESS LIVING IN A COUNTRY CLUB SETTING.
In the center, a picture of a redbrick Georgian mansion, about the size of a Safeway. VISIT OUR SALES OFFICE. PREQUALIFIED BUYERS ONLY. And a big black arrow pointing west from the sign.
On the bottom, a rendering of what looked like an antebellum mansion. Fluted columns and all. OPENING SOON. MODEL HOME. SEE WHAT THE LORD HAS IN STORE FOR YOU!
As I was picking my way back to the car, I stumbled over a hummock of plowed ground. Intrigued, I climbed atop the nearest stump and looked around. From this higher vantage point, I could see that somebody had, at some time in the past, bulldozed a series of roads, fanning out from here like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Each leading to your own little mansion of glory.
I got back in my car and followed the arrow. About half a mile up the road, a muddy track branched off to the left before disappearing into the trees at an angle. No signs, no gate, no nothing. I was about to drive on when I noticed that the rainwater in the ruts was muddy, telling me somebody had driven this way in the not too distant past.
I’m a slow learner, but I’d already had my ass kicked once and wasn’t about to be driving myself into another hornet’s nest if I could help it, so I rounded up the postmortem photos I’d been carrying around for a week, locked the car, and started hoofing it up the track, keeping one foot in front of the other on the grassy berm, trying like hell to keep my shoes out of the mud.
The woods were indeed dark and deep. I was several hundred yards in when I heard the voice. High-pitched. Plaintive. A child shouting something, I thought.
I had my eyes locked on the grassy medium, doing my famous tightrope routine, when the voice pulled my head up.
“Buster,” the voice cried. “Buster.”
And there he was, running directly at me. A golden retriever puppy. All fluffy blond hair, black nose, and pink tongue of him, loping along the grass.
I stuffed the envelope under my arm, reached out with my good hand, and scooped him up. I held him against my chest as I wire-walked down the berm. He licked my face and squirmed
.
And then the girl came galloping into view. Seven or eight. Dark brown hair. Tall for her age. She skidded to a halt at first sight of me, then turned, as if to run.
“This your dog?” I asked.
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“His name Buster?”
Another nod. “He ran away,” she said.
“Puppies are like that,” I said. “Curious. Always want to see what’s over the next hill.” I held him out. “Here.”
She took me in with her brown eyes for a moment, and then stepped over and took Buster from my hand.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Lila.”
“I’m Leo,” I said, offering my hand.
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said.
“But I’m a friend of Buster’s.”
She laughed. “Did you come to see my daddy?”
“Depends on who your daddy is,” I said.
“Lots of men come to see my daddy. He preaches the Gospel.”
“Then he’s the one I came to see.”
“Come on,” she said.
We walked up the road together. The sky was beginning to spit rain.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I asked as we strolled along.
“I’m homeschooled,” she said. “Momma is my teacher.”
“You like that?”
She shrugged, kissed the puppy on top of his head, and lowered her voice. “She’s not really my mom. My real mom is in heaven.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I mumbled.
“Me too,” she said with a sigh.
As we rounded yet another muddy bend, the house suddenly came into view. Same Georgian house that was painted on the Ascension Acres sign. Truth in advertising.
Always seemed to me that every house has a personality. My gloomy old Tudor seemed to whisper about scheduled eye gougings and last week’s bungled beheading. This one here spoke of jodhpurs and red jackets and packs of eager hounds thrashing about the countryside in search of a wily fox. All teatime and tallyho, you know.
“Lila,” a man’s voice called.
Aaron Townsend was about forty yards away, walking in our direction. Lila took off running, babbling all the way. “This is Leo, Daddy, Leo found Buster after Buster ran away from me, I kept calling him but he wouldn’t stop and I was calling and calling and then Leo gave him back to me and then we”—Townsend threw an arm around Lila’s shoulder and pulled her close—“and we were walking up the road and . . .”
He was a very handsome guy with thick dark hair that seemed to repel the rain. Quite a bit shorter than either his voice or his reputation had led me to imagine. Maybe five eight or so, but well built in a subcompact sort of way.
I walked over and stuck out my hand. “Leo Waterman.”
He ignored my offer of a hand. “Didn’t you see the signs?”
“I . . . uh . . . I was . . .” I stammered.
“This is private property,” he said. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Lila ducked out from under his arm. “But he found Buster,” she chirped.
He pinned me with an Old Testament gaze. Lila began pulling on his leg.
He swallowed his anger. “Thank you for rounding up Buster. That dog seems to have a mind of his own.”
I was sorely tempted to say “Unlike your parishioners,” but instead went with, “I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“Please, Daddy. He’s nice. He found Buster,” Lila whined.
He held my gaze for about two seconds longer than polite company demands.
“Leo Waterman. Any relation to Big Bill Waterman?” he asked.
“He was my father.”
Mercifully, the heavens intervened, and I was spared the usual historical repartee regarding my old man. A sudden volley of rain raked the yard like grapeshot. I ducked my head and brought a hand up to keep the rain out of my ear.
“Come out of the weather,” another voice called.
What I figured had to be the new Mrs. Townsend stood in the doorway, beckoning for us to come her way.
Aaron Townsend heaved a resigned sigh. “Come on,” he said grudgingly.
I winced a thank-you, ducked my shoulder into the wind, and followed him up the front walk. The new Mrs. Townsend was an absolute stunner. A blonde bombshell, put together in that opulent fifties kind of way. Dressed to the nines, heels, pearls, and all, on a rainy weekday afternoon. To complete the illusion, the house smelled of cookies. Almost too good to be true, I thought as I wiped my feet.
She produced a bath towel and wrapped it around Buster. “Alice Townsend,” she said by way of introduction. “Come into the kitchen,” she said, scrubbing the dog as she walked away. “I’ve got something in the oven.” The noise she made walking will be welded into my psyche till they put me under the sod.
I shook the rain from my shoulders and my blood supply back to where it belonged and then followed along.
We could have played soccer in the kitchen. Two of every appliance and a kitchen table big enough for a rugby team. Several dozen chocolate chip cookies were cooling on the counters. Alice set Buster on the floor. He clattered off with Lila hot on his heels.
“Let me take your coat,” Aaron Townsend said.
I held up a restraining hand. “I can’t stay,” I said.
Over his shoulder, Lila was trying to pick Buster up, but he was having none of it. Mrs. Townsend was removing another tray of cookies from the oven.
“What happened to Ascension Acres?” I asked.
He stifled a grin. “It never got off the ground,” he said.
I did it for him. “I guess I walked into that one, didn’t I?”
He made an expansive gesture with his hands. “This is all there ever was. They used it as a model home and as the sales office.”
I couldn’t resist. “How come it never took wing?”
“One of my parishioners from years ago . . . his name was Nate Tuttle. This was his brainchild. Nate was a pious man but not the most practical of people.”
“How’d you end up with it? He leave it to you?”
“Actually . . . he left the property to Alice before he passed last year,” Townsend said. “Alice was always bringing him food and inviting him to holidays. Nate didn’t have anybody. We were as close to family as he had. I think it gave him joy to leave it to Alice.”
The explanation sounded canned to me. Like he’d said the words plenty of times before. I wanted to keep him talking, so I changed the subject.
“Where’s Salvation Lake?” I asked.
He indicated I should follow and walked to the rear of the kitchen. He pointed out the window. “There she is,” he said. “Salvation Lake.”
And indeed it was. Three acres or so of weedy man-made lake, with a little wooden jetty jutting out into the water. “Nate named everything on the property for something biblical. Salvation Lake. Retribution Road. Heavenly Haven. Everything.”
Before I could manufacture another segue, he asked, “So . . . what is it I can do for you, Mr. Waterman?”
I threw my eyes Lila’s way. Townsend picked up on it.
“Lila,” he called. “Why don’t you take Buster out to the garage and give him some food and water.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said from around a cookie. “Come on . . . Come on, Buster . . .”
She skipped from the room with Buster gamboling along in hot pursuit.
I pulled the envelope out from under my arm and walked over to the table.
“Without going into all the whys and wherefores of the thing,” I began, “what I want to know is whether you know who either of these men are.”
I pulled both postmortem photos from the envelope and when I smoothed them out on the table, I had to stifle a chuckle. Each photo had a little sticker in the corner that read Cradduck Data Retrieval. You put something in Carl’s hands and it came back to you with one of those stickers on it somewhere.
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br /> Mrs. Townsend was drying her hands with a dish towel as she leaned in close. The scent of her suddenly filled the air. I heard the breath catch in her throat at the sight of the grisly pictures.
“They’re . . . I mean . . . they’re . . .”
“Yes,” I said. “They are.”
“Never seen either of them,” Aaron Townsend said.
“Poor souls,” Alice Townsend said.
“Why would you think we might know these men?”
“I thought they might be parishioners,” I said.
“I’m afraid not,” Townsend said.
I slid the photos from the table and put them away. “Well then . . .” I said. “I’m sorry to have intruded on you. Please accept my apologies.”
I started to leave. Aaron Townsend put a hand on my back and helped me toward the door. “Mr. Waterman,” his wife called. When I turned she was wrapping half a dozen cookies up in tinfoil. “Take these for your ride back.”
I walked over and took the package from her hand. “Thanks,” I said. “I . . .”
And then the words froze in my throat. Behind her, on the second shelf of a huge mahogany china cabinet, stood their wedding picture. On the left, Aaron Townsend and what, from the eyes, had to be his father, each with an arm around a much younger Lila. On the right, Alice and her parents. Alice’s parents I’d seen before. Lately. Those were the same smiling faces I’d seen at the Peterson house. Only then, the faces were in Blaine Peterson’s wedding picture. They’d been Theresa Calder’s parents. I felt as if my brains might be leaking out my ears.
“Thanks for the cookies,” I mumbled.
“Thanks for rescuing Buster,” she said as she slid yet another rack of cookies out of the oven.
Aaron Townsend offered me a ride back to my car. I told him I wanted to get some air. We shook hands in the doorway. I don’t remember the walk back to the car.
“They sure as hell don’t look like each other,” Carl said. “I mean . . . look at the anvil chin on the Calder broad. She could be Jay Leno in drag.”
Laid out on the table in front of him were the driver’s license photo of Theresa Calder and the family photo on the back of Real Belief. Lila in between Aaron and Alice Townsend. All warm light and fuzzy sweaters.