by Iain Levison
Probably wouldn’t be too much sun up there, he figured. It wasn’t going to be like Texas, with the girls walking around in shorts and fanning themselves on their porches and smiling at him, real friendly. Girls up there probably wore heavy coats year round, and had those cold ruddy faces like the girls in Jersey. It would take some getting used to. It suddenly occurred to him that in a week or two, Alberta was going to be a reality, no longer a cell-block daydream, and despite all the research he’d done, he’d never been there so didn’t really know it.
“Farmland’s cheap for a reason,” Fat Bill Guyerson had told him. Guyerson was a fifty-year-old, bearded Canadian who had bilked some wealthy Texan widow out of millions, and they had caught him racing for the Oklahoma border in a Ferrari. Dixon knew Guyerson wasn’t going to be in the cell block long. When they met, Guyerson had been mulling over the possibility of giving the local DA some information on his friends, who were running a mail fraud scam, in exchange for early release. You didn’t mull something like that over for too long. The first time you saw a dude getting his head slammed in a door, or getting shoved down a flight of metal stairs for some real or imagined insult, the idea of selling any info you had started to look real good to you. You could deal with the issues of loyalty later. Right then you just had to get the fuck out of there.
Dixon had never had anything to sell, so for him, loyalty had never been an issue. He had never thought any less of the guys who bent over for the DA. If there was a way out, you took it, everyone knew that. And he had enjoyed talking to Guyerson during breaks on the metal lathe, because, like any good con man, Guyerson had little tidbits of information on every subject.
“Where’s a good place to go if you’ve got a bag full of money?” he had asked Guyerson one day.
“My home town,” Guyerson had said. “Just outside Edmonton, Alberta. That’s where I was headed when the troopers pulled me over.”
“What’s so good about it?”
“Simple life up there. Real cheap farmland. You farm and mind your own business.”
The only thing Dixon knew about farming was that everyone left farmers alone. It seemed like a good way to live, as no one was leaving him alone down here. When he was in, they would look up his ass to see if anything was hidden up there, and when he was out, they would check his piss with chemicals to see if anything was hidden in there.
“The thing about Alberta is, if you tell all your neighbors a fake name, after a while, it becomes your real name,” Guyerson told him.
“I ain’t much of a farmer.”
“No big deal. Get an alpaca ranch. That’s all the rage now. Everyone’s getting an alpaca ranch. I was thinking about it, too.”
Dixon imagined himself riding around his alpaca ranch, herding alpacas. “What’s an alpaca?” he asked.
Guyerson laughed. “They make you money.”
“Maybe I’ll just stick to chickens and cows.”
But the idea had been born. He had gone to the prison library and looked up every last detail about Alberta, had studied the worn Rand McNally map with the cigarette burns in it until his eyes were red-rimmed, had learned the names and populations of all the small towns from Athabasca to Vermilion. He knew the elevation of the Cheecham Hills and the Caribou Mountains, and the distance of all the towns to the US border, which he knew he would never cross again. At the time, he had a prison job for a corporation called Travel International, and on their website he was able to view photos of the region. It looked like a pretty but frigid wasteland, only slightly different from the baking hot wasteland where he had been born and raised. It was perfect.
Then he had looked in the 1952 World Book Encyclopedia and learned about alpacas, which seemed to be giant, hostile sheep. Their coats were valuable, but everything he read about them spelled trouble, including a warning that they like to spit and bite. Maybe he really would just stick to chickens and cows.
“Farmland’s cheap for a reason,” Guyerson had told him again, the day before he disappeared, whisked off by the COs, who came and got him with a discharge notice. Guyerson had become concerned that in Dixon’s enthusiasm for Alberta, he might have created a monster. “It’s cold up there,” he had warned.
Dixon had waved him off.
Now Dixon sat underneath the tree, the rain drowning out other noises and all feeling. His dreams of the last five years were becoming a reality, complete with the problems and details of reality. In his prison daydream, he didn’t have to worry about the fact that he was on his way to Canada without a heavy coat. Did they have coyotes up there? What kind of ID did you need for a Canadian driver’s license? Could you drive a farm tractor without a license? How much did a tractor cost? Did he need a tractor, or should he just get a horse? What fake name should he pick? Phil would still be good, but Dixon, no way. He’d have to have the name ready. You couldn’t pause and think when someone asked you your name. How about Turner? That had been his mother’s maiden name. No, traceable. He’d have to make something up.
A slow, steady grin spread across his face, as he realized that, for the first time in his adult life, he was going to deal with problems that had nothing to do with prison.
Denise listened to the rain drumming on the roof of the musty hotel, as high as she had ever been, and became aware of a connection to the case, to Kohl, to all things human. She even had a sudden touch of fondness for Carver. She was filled with a sense of certainty that Dixon was in town, and she felt an obligation to Kohl to find him. They would find Dixon and she would see that Kohl got more than his share of the credit, and Kohl would shoot up the ladder, have a glorious career, and he would never forget her.
Denise decided she would be his mentor. She would teach him how to do a suspect interview, what signs to look for. She would be firm with him, but never overly critical or harsh, and she hoped a situation would present itself where she could prove her value, one instance where she could make a dramatic and lifelong impression. She imagined Dixon had disguised himself as a janitor at the college and she would be the first to notice him, and Kohl would be awed by her skills of observation.
She chuckled, embarrassed by her fantasy. Still daydreaming that the FBI would respect her, after all these years. Would she ever give up? There was still fight left in her, she decided. Her career wasn’t over. She felt a rush of respect for herself, at not giving in, not resigning, not taking a teaching job somewhere. She wished she had someone she could talk to, a mentor of her own, a Dick Yancey who still cared. She needed a female friend at the Agency, she decided. Or she needed a male friend at the Agency. She needed some kind of personal contact other than Agent I-don’t-know-I’m-a-cabbage Kohl.
Speak of the devil, Denise thought, as she heard the car pull up directly outside the window. The headlights shone through the thin, worn drapes, and the engine idled for a while, then shut off. The car door opened and closed, and there was a gentle knock at the door.
Oh shit. Kohl had seen her light on, and wanted to talk to her. The possibility that he wouldn’t go straight to his room had never occurred to her. The small, musty room reeked of pot and Denise’s eyes were probably as red as a bunny’s. She hopped up from the bed in her bra and panties and said, “Just a minute.”
“I didn’t want to . . . wake you up,” said Kohl, through the door, and he started to explain something, while Denise searched frantically around for something to cover herself, gave up, and wrapped a towel around her waist. Her hair was still a little damp from leaning out the bathroom window in the rain storm, so it was believable she had just gotten out of the shower. She opened the door a crack.
“What’s up, Agent Kohl?” she asked. He was soaking wet. Good. This wasn’t going to last long. She hoped that her calling him Agent Kohl, rather than using his first name, had set the right tone of professionalism. What was his first name?
“Hi,” he said. “Sorry . . . I . . . just wanted to make sure you were all right. What with the storm and everything.”
Denise was leaning behind the door, trying to look alert, and her left hand was hooked around the door as she peered out. She noticed, because of the odd focus of the marijuana, that Kohl was acutely aware of her fingers. She realized he was expecting, or hoping, that she would pull the door open.
“I’m fine,” she said. Trying not to sound cold, she added, “thank you.”
Kohl took a step back and leaned towards his room. “OK then,” he said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Denise, softening her voice. Kohl turned back to his room, his shoes squelching. He must have got caught right in the middle of the downpour. “Agent Kohl?”
He turned around hopefully. “Yes?”
“I was wondering . . . what’s your first name?”
His smile was genuine for once, not political. “Chris,” he said.
“Good night, Chris.”
Kohl said goodnight and she closed the door. Chris. She should have known that. Nice smile. She hopped back on the bed, suddenly, inexplicably pleased with herself, and began to flip channels with the TV muted, watching silent images flicker by.
7
The morning was so beautiful that Elias almost didn’t acknowledge his screaming hangover. His head throbbed as if an elephant had sat on it while he slept, but a cup of coffee and three aspirin dulled the pain. The ride to work along tree-lined streets, with the leaves turning a hundred different shades of red and gold, almost rid him of it altogether.
Most days Elias had nothing good to say or think about Tiburn. He just wanted to escape it. The locals were either wary country folk or rich pretentious hippies from Boston or New York who thought that moving into the woods had placed them on a moral plane above the rest of humanity. A delicate balance existed between the two groups, which the newcomer hippies pictured as the harmony of nature, though Elias saw it more as the relationship between a parasite and its host. The wary country folk got to sell the city hippies furniture and arts-and-crafts crap at a phenomenal mark-up, and the hippies walked around glowing with pride that they had furnished their homes with “authentic” goods, a word which nearly made them achieve orgasms of pious consumerism. Their friends back in Boston bought fake shit at Crate and Barrel, but they got the real deal at Billick’s – the store in which Elias had been caught shoplifting Playboys when he was fourteen and had never set foot in since.
But sometimes the fall was different. The light fog that hung around the tops of the trees, and the chill in the air, with the occasional odor of burning leaves, reminded Elias of the one pleasant memory he could think of from his childhood. When he was in elementary school, his mother used to take him on walks through the woods near the house, and he would tell her about all the things he had done that day. He remembered describing his introduction to fractions, and discussing a short film they had seen about Japanese culture, where the custom of removing shoes upon entering a house had intrigued him. Then they would return to the house, which was warm and filled with the smells of dinner to come. She had been an excellent cook. Often she would make him a small batch of cookies while he continued to chatter.
Even though his mother was listening, Elias had noticed, in retrospect, a far-off and dreamy quality to her responses, as if she was imagining a totally different life. Which, it turned out, she was.
Often, as an adult, Elias remembered those days and wondered if his mother had been afflicted with some mental condition – maybe that explained why she had abandoned him? The note she had left on the kitchen table seemed so clearly rational. She had waited, she explained, for “her chance to leave” until Elias’s twelfth birthday, which in many cultures was considered reaching manhood. Elias had researched the matter and couldn’t find a single culture, not even among the goatherding nomads on the African plains, where twelve was considered manhood. Thirteen, in a few cases, but twelve never. Elias concluded that his mother had done the same research and merely subtracted a year out of desperation and impatience. As for her sanity, there was no firm conclusion, and given that adult life had likewise convinced him that there was a better life outside of Tiburn, he could hardly fault her for that.
Maybe there was some kind of genetic hardwiring that brought about the powerful urge to be somewhere else upon reaching a certain age. Maybe his ancestors had been some kind of nomadic tribe that was always seeking greener fields. Or maybe it was the house, which just became so horribly familiar and dull. These were the factors their restlessness had in common. Or maybe the fact that his mother had felt this way at his age was purely a coincidence.
He pulled into the faculty parking lot, clutched his head, and moaned. Time to go to work. Time to babble to kids who didn’t care about events he hardly knew about himself. His job was to read some history, then describe what he had read to bored, rich teenagers, so they could supposedly get a job that didn’t involve wearing a nametag. What a scam. If he was going to be involved in this scam, he wanted to be higher up on the food chain.
When he got home tonight, he would read Ann’s letter. It was still on the kitchen table. He wondered what Dixon would think of the whole situation, his collection of letters of abandonment from women. Perhaps his new roomie would have some kind of brilliant prison wisdom on the whole affair. He seemed like he had thought a lot of things through.
“OK, here’s how it works,” said Denise, as Kohl pulled into the faculty parking lot. “We split up. We just don’t have the time and resources to interview everyone on campus. We’ll talk to a few people from the nurse’s log, anyone who has been in the infirmary in the last few days. Then we randomly check a few names. Then we hang the fliers.” She was going to order a sheaf of wanted posters bearing Dixon’s name and mugshot, which would carefully leave out the armed and dangerous part to avoid causing panic across campus. These people weren’t New Yorkers, Denise had reminded herself. The notion of a bank robber in their midst might actually cause concern here.
“Here’s what you have to remember,” she said as they got out of the car. “Anyone who knows something they don’t want to divulge is going to engage you in conversation. It’s exactly the opposite of what you’d expect. They want you to leave and stop questioning them, so there’s a need there to appear like that’s not the case. They’ll keep you hanging around. People who really don’t know anything will just tell you that and be done with you. So keep your eyes and ears open for babblers.”
“Babblers?” Kohl was actually listening to her, she noticed.
“People who don’t want you to leave with the impression that they want you to leave. Got it?”
Kohl nodded.
“We’ll talk to ten or fifteen people each, see if anything comes up. I doubt we’ll get lucky, but you never know. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Your first drop-by questioning.” She smiled at Kohl, an almost genuine smile. “I’m so proud of you.”
Kohl rolled his eyes.
“I’m looking for a Mr White.” Elias heard a woman’s voice from the history department entrance hall. He was leaning back in his chair after his first class, wishing the throbbing in his head would go away. As usual, the class had gone particularly well. They were always more lively when he was hung-over, a phenomenon he could not explain. Severe head pain and nausea made him better at his job. Perhaps it was because there were real, rather than theoretical, reasons to be sickened by his line of work.
“Professor White,” he heard the department secretary say, “is dreadfully busy at the moment.” Good for you, Alice. He had left clear instructions as he closed his office door that he was not available, no matter how dire the need. “I can take a message and have him give you a call.”
“It’s very important,” he heard the woman say. And he knew. Instantly. This was about Dixon. Motherfucker, they had found him. Even before he heard Denise say the words “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and hunt for an ID badge, he had sat up straight in his chair, a bolt of adrenaline going through him. Fuck. He gripped his head tighter as
the movement caused an especially evil and paralyzing pain to throb anew in his temple.
What had Dixon done last night that they had found him? How could they have possibly located him in the woods up here in New Hampshire? What did they know? Shit. Shit. Shit. He fumbled around with the papers on his desk and tried to make it look like he was reading something terribly important from which he was being distracted. One of his students, a pleasant but inattentive young man named Jeff, had given Elias a flyer for a frat party on Friday and recommended he come. It was the best he could come up with at short notice. So when Alice pushed his door open and looked into the cramped little office, the dreadfully busy Professor White was studying a yellow piece of paper with a caricature of a drunk student holding a frothy brew.
“Professor,” she said cautiously. “There’s someone here from the . . . the FBI.”
“The FBI?” boomed Elias, not sure if he sounded jovial, as intended, or panicked. “Whatever could they want?” He wondered if his quickened breathing was obvious to Alice, tried to minimize his heightened senses, became aware of his hands. Were they flicking around nervously? Was he staring at the flyer too hard? He put the flyer down, then picked it up again, as if he had missed a crucial detail. “Tell them to come in,” he said.
Elias was expecting the FBI woman to be officious-looking and aggressive, and was surprised when Denise walked in. She was small, maybe five foot two, with shoulder-length black hair and amused, sensitive eyes. Elias was smitten. He felt instantly comfortable, and he put the flyer back down. He made an effort to stand up and shake her hand, but she nodded, as if he should forgo the effort.