The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Andrew Whitcomb stood with her. He said nothing, but he was there.

  Suddenly, Louise bent at the waist and picked up the arm. Shocked at the weight, or maybe the feel of his flesh, she nearly dropped it back on the metal gurney, caught herself just in time. “He’s cold,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s true.”

  “Like he was in the refrigerator.”

  She held his hand limply, at the wrist. Staring at the arm, uncertain. Laura could see the struggle that went back and forth behind her eyes: She didn’t want him to be her son, but instinct told her he was, and this would be her last chance to touch him.

  Abruptly, Louise Yates sat down in the chair and covered his hand in both of hers.

  She started to cry, hugging the hand to her cheek, her tears falling on the pale flesh. Running her fingers over his palm, his knuckles, his fingers, exploring the only part of her son she was allowed to see.

  Memorizing the weight, the mass, the feel of his skin against the time when she would never have access to him again.

  12

  Mark Sproule was early. He usually was. Every time he met someone he’d get to a place anywhere from fifteen to five minutes early, and even though he’d tried many times to recalibrate his timing, it never made a whit of difference. The result this time was that he found himself standing outside the Mineshaft Coffee Shop in Shoshone, California, the early morning chill seeping through his jacket, watching the sunrise. Hands stuffed into his pockets; he’d forgotten his gloves.

  I’m too old for this, he thought as he stared out at the mountains. The mountains stood out like crisp blue cutouts against the pale morning sky, just a hint of lemon between two low peaks. He’d just driven all the way to Indiana and back, a turnaround of four days, and all he wanted to do was go home.

  By thirty-seven years of age, you’d think I’d have a stable life like everybody else. But all that had been shot to shit a year ago. Now Rhonda had taken Sarah back to the family home in Indiana, and he was left out here, alone, except for his tortoises.

  His tortoises and his friends. If they really were friends. He was beginning to have his doubts. How well did he really know any of them?

  He flashed on his four desert tortoises, Hambone, Colonel Klink, Bubba, and Landshark, their ancient, shriveled faces, their wise eyes. They weren’t really his, but the state gave him a permit to care for them. That was because he was considered a law-biding citizen. He’d gotten the first two for Sarah. Now she wasn’t here to enjoy them.

  He’d have to figure out how to give them back without raising any alarms. Tell the government he was moving to Indiana, which was true.

  Stamping his feet in the cold desert light, he wondered for the hundredth time, How’d I get into this? He still wasn’t sure. Considering what he knew about the PATRIOT Act, knowing that without any explanation they could deport US citizens, how did he allow himself to get involved in this mess?

  He thought he must have just slid into it.

  They kept telling him his part was minimal, but he knew deep inside that you could never be one-hundred-percent sure of anything. He’d learned that the hard way.

  Mark rubbed his hands for warmth, lit a cigarette. Used to be he’d laugh when anyone said the government was out to get people. That was for those wingnuts in Kingman, places like that, where they stockpiled weapons and dug themselves bunkers and laid in the old MREs, spicing up their diatribes with Ruby Ridge and black helicopters.

  But now he knew. The United States—the country of his birth, the country he had pledged allegiance to as a school kid—was only as good as the people in power at the time. Like any and every other government in the world.

  Look at Yucca Mountain. Those two words sent shivers up his spine. Pretty soon the US government would start transporting nuclear waste on the highways and rails from every corner of the country and bury it out here in this pristine desert.

  But it was the nuclear plants that scared him the most. For the first time in over twenty-five years, the government was seriously talking about building new ones. If there was a nuclear plant accident like the one at Chernobyl, it would take twenty-five thousand years to recover from a major plutonium melt down.

  He’d seen a documentary on Chernobyl—people’s homes blackened and rotting, falling back down into the toxic earth. The sarcophagus housing Reactor 4, supposedly made to contain the radiation, was just a Band-Aid and was a prime candidate for a nuclear explosion. The Zone of Exclusion covered only a radius of nineteen miles. If the thing exploded, it would destroy Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine.

  And these assholes were planning to do more of it here.

  So here he was, taking a risk that probably wouldn’t change a thing in the long run. But he had to do it.

  Plus, there was the money. Don’t forget the money. Not a whole hell of a lot, but enough to get him to Indiana, get him set up in an apartment, see him through the first six months. Enough to let him be near his little Junebug. And maybe what he did here could start a national dialogue, get people to wake up and see what was happening before it was too late. He knew from his own experience that a person needed a jolt every once in a while if they were going to ever learn anything.

  An old blue truck pulled into the parking lot. Bobby Burdette driving, Glenn Traywick leaning his elbow on the passenger-side window.

  “Hop in!” Bobby Burdette yelled.

  Mark threw his cigarette on the walkway and ground it out under his boot, walked over and squeezed into the cab. “You sound happy this morning.”

  “I am happy. I found the perfect place.”

  As usual, Glenn had that serene, sunny-seeming demeanor, but his blue eyes were neutral—you could never really tell what he was thinking. He wore stiff, dark denim head to toe, his jacket collar pulled up to hide the strawberry mark on his neck, the blocky gimme cap with a lightning bolt and the words GLENN ELECTRIC on it pulled low over his grizzled eyebrows. Guy had his own business, and he was doing this—Jesus.

  Glenn always wore the hat. Mark was there when Glenn saw the cap at an electrical repair shop, couldn’t resist that his name was on it. When he wrote letters to the paper, he signed himself Glenn Electric.

  Bobby, Mark noticed, was sporting a new haircut. Military short with whitewalls. New, mean-looking sunglasses, wrap-around, that you couldn’t see into. He looked like a cop. All he needed was the mustache.

  Bobby pulled out of the parking lot, and Glenn Electric’s styrofoam coffee cup spilled onto Mark, not scalding, but bad enough.

  “Shit! I’m sorry. These damn lids never do what they’re supposed to.”

  “Rag on the floor,” Bobby said.

  Mark stared at the red rag under his feet. It looked like it had been left out in the elements for months, stiffened into frozen whorls and crusted over with oil. What was he doing with these people?

  He used to teach fifth-grade biology, and now here he was with a guy who wore a hat labeled GLENN ELECTRIC and looked and acted like a poster boy for Soldier of Fortune.

  Twenty minutes later, they reached Micaville. Or at least the sign for Micaville. Some poor taxpayer had paid good money for the green reflector sign, but there was nothing in the road except a broken foundation in the weeds, lined by a foot-high parapet of stacked wafer-thin flagstones, and one toasted brown Joshua tree.

  Bobby pulled off the road in a funnel of dust.

  Mark said, “This is where we’re gonna meet?”

  “No,” Bobby said, pointing out the window to the left. “We’re gonna meet over there.”

  Mark squinted against the bleached whiteness of the landscape, the puffs of dusty sage like dirty sheep, saw the orange-slice shape way out there, corrugated metal dulled by the sun.

  “What’s that?”

  “Hangar,” Bobby said.

  At that moment, Mark felt his bowels wanting to let go. They really meant it. It wasn’t a game. They were serious, which meant so was he. He sucked it up, literally, willing
the cramp in his gut to go away.

  It did. But the airplane hangar stayed where it was.

  The apartment Kellee had rented in Flagstaff was red brick accented with wooden beams and a shingle roof. The Swiss Chalet Apartments were neatly laid out around a common area. A walkway wound between snippets of bright green winter lawn and tamed bushes. Flower boxes filled the lower windows, and brown wooden balconies containing the detritus of college students—beach towels, bicycles, grills.

  Apartment 409C was on the second floor. She didn’t have to knock; the door was open, and some song she didn’t recognize floated out. The male voice was deep and scratchy and meandered tunelessly.

  She called out, “Is someone home?” Had to shout three times, louder and louder.

  A barefoot, brown-haired girl in short shorts and a skimpy top appeared in the doorway. Her hair was held up over her neck in a big clip. Pert nipples poked through the thin material of her top. Laura concentrated on the girl’s face, which was pretty despite a row of pimples across her forehead and a good paving-over of base makeup. “Can I help you?”

  Laura showed her shield and introduced herself.

  The girl hung on the door, confused. “I talked to a detective the other day.”

  “This is just a followup.”

  “Oh.” She left the door open and walked into the apartment. After turning down the music, she threw herself onto a cream-colored couch.

  The room was mostly white or cream, with dark brown rattan furniture that looked as if it had been bought all at once. Aside from several large textbooks, notebooks and loose paper, the place was neat and well-cared-for. Laura sat on a chair opposite her.

  Amy answered her questions intelligently and thoughtfully. She would be a perfect witness. Laura got the impression that Amy was a very smart person and was using her intellectual capacity to distance herself from the trauma of losing her friend and roommate. She was dry-eyed, articulate, and helpful. Offering her opinions on the relationship between Kellee and Dan (“They both were old souls, but nonetheless there was a naïve quality to them”), on her own relationship with Kellee (“I saw her more as a sister than a friend—we were, like, family”), and on Kellee’s family (“Kellee and I spent a couple of days down at their cabins this summer”).

  Laura remembered what Richie had said, his conclusion that Kellee and Amy had recently just met. He’d been wrong about that.

  “How long have you known each other?”

  “Since psych class last year.”

  “But you only became roommates recently? Why did she move in with you if she was planning on getting married?”

  “It came up suddenly. Even though they dated all last year, Kell never mentioned marriage before. So when I suggested she move in with me after my other roommate left, she jumped at it.“

  “Must have been a shock when she told you.”

  “Tell me about it. All of a sudden, it was, like, we’re getting hitched! That’s what she said, the night they both came back here and announced it. I think,”—she unconsciously touched the pimples on her forehead—”they got all jazzed-up and decided, you know, ‘It’s now or never.’ It was like they fed off each other’s excitement.”

  “Why weren’t you her maid of honor?”

  Again, the touch to the forehead, feeling along the row of zits as if it were Braille and she could read some answer in them.

  “She asked me, but I couldn’t do it. I had an exam Friday, the first of three mandatory exams. If I missed one, it would bring my whole average down. She knew that. She knows how important school is to me. I’m in premed. I plan to be an orthopedic surgeon.”

  “You knew about the brain tumor? Do you think that’s the reason they decided to get married?”

  “Well, that’s the logical conclusion. People often act impulsively when faced with their mortality.”

  Analytical. Almost pompous in her pronouncements. Laura had a feeling this girl was riding for a fall when the shock wore off.

  “Anything you can tell me about that day?”

  She shrugged. “Dan showed up about seven. Kellee grabbed her stuff and they took off.”

  “Anything else? Something that sticks in your mind?”

  Amy looked inward, scanning her memory banks. Wanting to be as helpful as she could.

  “Nope. Just that Dan said they needed to hurry. They were picking Shana up on the way.”

  “Do you know Shana?”

  “I met her once.”

  Terse. Disapproving.

  “So they were picking Shana up on the way? Did anyone mention Shana’s boyfriend?”

  “I know Dan didn’t want him there. At the wedding.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t like him. Neither did Kellee, but she gave in when Shana insisted she wouldn’t go unless he could be in the wedding party, such as it was. Kellee is—was—like that, a peacemaker. She’d rather give in than have any unpleasantness.”

  “So Kellee and Dan didn’t like Bobby Burdette?”

  “That was pretty clear. Kellee couldn’t understand what Shana saw in him. She thought he was a bad influence.”

  “How so?”

  “Something Kellee said. She was worried about Shana getting in trouble. When I pressed her on it, she wouldn’t say anything else.” She shrugged. “Sometimes Kellee could be like that—she’d just clam up.”

  “Did you ever meet Bobby?”

  “Just the one time I met Shana. I didn’t like him either. Kellee was worried about it, but if you ask me, it was just a transition thing.”

  “A transition thing?”

  “The transition from adolescent to adult. The end of high school, trying to decide what to do? It hits all of us in some way or another. Even people who have it all together and know what they want to do. So many rules you grew up with now don’t apply—college is your first great freedom. Unfortunately, a lot of kids abuse that freedom and get into trouble.”

  “You think Shana was in trouble?”

  “What do you think? Twenty-one years old, she’s already divorced with two kids. Forget college. In my opinion, that girl painted herself into a real corner.”

  Laura ignored the holier-than-thou tone and pressed on. “Kellee ever mention that? The fact she wasn’t going to college?”

  “Oh, no. Kellee was the kind of girl who respected people’s privacy. She tried very hard not to appear judgmental. Besides, I think it was just a general worry. Dan probably didn’t like the fact that Shana was so dependent on his parents. Here they are, they’ve already raised their children, been responsible adults, you know? And then they get saddled with—maybe ‘saddled’ is too strong a term; there’s something in it for everyone in these kinds of family dynamics—but Dan was such a stand-up guy, you know? The kind that didn’t lean on anybody, and Kellee was the same way. It had to bother him on some level.”

  Laura added to her notes and then said, “I need to look at her room again.”

  “The other—” She stopped herself and smiled. “Just a followup, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Her parents already came and got her stuff.”

  “I’d like to take a look anyway.”

  “Why not?” she said brightly.

  As Laura looked through Kellee’s room, she contemplated the Byzantine tunnels of Amy Dawson’s mind. “Forget orthopedic surgeon,” she muttered. “You should be a psychiatrist.”

  Laura drove back to Williams and stopped by Shade Tree Mechanics on the way into town.

  As she opened the door to the glassed-in office, she noticed a young man in a blue-gray jumpsuit slamming his palm against a soft drink machine. Big kid. His movements ponderous, like a bear’s, as if standing upright wasn’t all that comfortable for him.

  “Jamie Cottle?” she asked.

  He turned to look at her, blinking furiously. Freckled bovine face, unusually thick jaw.

  “No, I’m Walt.”

  “Is Jamie here?”

  He
turned his attention back to the machine. “It always does this.” He kicked the vending machine hard. Coins trickled down into the tray and he scooped them up. “Jamie’s not here on Mondays. He working on your car?”

  “No. Where can I find him?”

  “He lives with his folks on Oak.”

  The house on Oak Street yielded nothing except the perception of the kind of people who lived there. A blue spruce dominated the front yard, a few stray pinecones littering a neat, green lawn as perfect as velvet. The house was a pale yellow ranch with a shingle roof, a travel trailer tucked up along the side. A satellite dish up top, a flag hanging from a pole attached to the garage. No answer to the illuminated doorbell. Laura left her card with a note on it for Jamie to call her.

  Laura’s phone rang the minute she got to her car.

  “I’ve got the tent back,” Richie said. “How about we meet at the lake in twenty minutes?”

  When Laura got to the lake, sunlight was bouncing off the water and into her eyes. Normally, there would be fishermen standing at the edge, fishing lines catching the light as they whizzed out through the air. There would be a soft plunk, the egg sinker quickly falling down through the water. Not much more noise than that, maybe the sound of a cooler lid coming off, a rattle of a paper bag or Saran Wrap unwinding from a sandwich, the scrape of a shoe on dirt as someone shifted hindquarters to a more comfortable position—all sounds magnified by their proximity to water.

  A solitary sport done in the company of strangers, easygoing but insular.

  That’s what this lake should be.

  Or maybe there would be kids splashing and chattering and screaming. The smell of charcoal smoke drifting over the water. But today there was no one. Just a police car parked across the entrance and yellow crime scene tape quivering in the breeze.

  It seemed strange, as if people had not just deserted the lake but the world on this silent early afternoon.

  Laura remembered the times she and Billy had gone camping up on Mt. Lemmon near Tucson. They had a red tent just like Dan and Kellee’s, the kind a young couple might get at Kmart. She remembered what it was like to be a college kid off camping with her boyfriend, the world full of promise, madly in love and burning from it. The world revolving around them.