There was a picture of Baldwin accompanying the story; it showed a man standing beside a utility truck. He held a hard hat in one hand and a radio in the other and appeared weary but not worn-out. It was a compelling shot, really—he looked like the exact sort of man you wanted responding to emergencies.
Mark fixated on the picture, and when he blinked back to reality, he blamed the Ambien for the pointless level of scrutiny of a simple photograph. He closed the computer. It was time for bed—past time, in fact—and he’d be jet-lagged tomorrow after the flight to Montana.
The state’s name chased the photo of the lineman through Mark’s brain in a spiral of odd images as he drifted toward an unsettled sleep. That name had texture, somehow, rough and jagged and ready to wound: Montana. It got nothing but love from tourists, but tourists didn’t understand it. You had to see it through four full seasons to know a damn thing about Montana.
Mark had seen it through plenty more than that.
The dreams that came for him were varied and vivid. He dreamed first of Ridley Barnes, more memory than dream, Ridley in the endless dark of Trapdoor Caverns, warning Mark that great responsibility and great pressure awaited him on the surface. Then Ridley was gone, replaced by an unfamiliar man with no hands standing in a moonlit stairwell with odd symbols painted on the walls behind him.
She held all the beauty of the world, the man said. Her only mistake was her taste in men. The way she died wasn’t her fault, you know.
In the dream Mark said, I know, it was mine, because he thought the man was talking about Lauren. By the time he realized that the stranger wasn’t, it was too late, because a wave struck the house, a tremendous splash of gray-green salt water like a hurricane’s storm surge, and it swept up the stairs and drove the handless man away from Mark. They were in the water together and Mark thought that Lauren was too and maybe someone else, a woman he knew but couldn’t name, but as the waves rose and fell, they all drifted farther apart until Mark couldn’t see or hear the others anymore, and he was alone in an empty sea. The waves were towering and powerful but never drove Mark under. Instead he rode them through sleep and toward dawn, and though he’d lost track of the others in the water with him, he didn’t feel any panic, because he knew they were merely out of sight and earshot, not truly gone. The storm was raging, but they were all in it together.
The water faded then, receded in the abrupt fashion of dreams, and mountains replaced the waves. High, menacing peaks.
The mountains just sat there, lonely and wind-whipped, impenetrable and unyielding. All the same, Mark was grateful for the alarm that shook him from sleep and forced the image from his mind. The hurricane dream had somehow been more peaceful than the mountain image, despite all of the crashing waves and the loud power of the storm.
In that dream, he had not been alone.
26
The phone began to ring when Jay was three blocks from the police station. Unknown number. He stared at it without answering, let it go to voice mail, and continued walking. Almost immediately, the phone chimed with a different tone—not a voice mail, but a text message.
GO BACK HOME, JAY.
He stood dumbly on the sidewalk, looking from the phone’s screen to the empty streets around him. There was nobody in sight, no watchers. And yet…
The phone rang again. This time he answered.
“Jay, Jay, Jay.” Eli Pate sighed like a disappointed parent. “You’re not making wise choices. Certainly, you’re not thinking of Sabrina. What a risk you just took! Imagine what could happen to her. Imagine what you could have just provoked. Why, Jay, I might have been incited to do terrible, horrible things. Just think about it! Can you picture those things? My God, what you have invited into her life!”
Jay said, “Please, don’t.” His voice broke.
“Please? Well, okay, since you said please.” After a long pause, Pate spoke again, and the humor was gone from his voice. “Go home, Jay. I expected you to try once. I’d have been wrong about you if you hadn’t. But I’ll tell you this: I do not expect you to try again. Because now you know better. You’ll go home and think about the things that might have happened, and you’ll think about electricity in wires and wonder how on earth you could have made any decision other than to simply do as you’ve been asked. Go home. When you step inside, please wave to the camera.”
The camera. He had a camera. Where in the hell was the camera?
Eli Pate began to laugh. “Lord, you really believed that would work, didn’t you? A vacuum, Jay! That is brilliant.” His laugh, rich and carefree, boomed through the phone again. “Oh, that was beautiful. But I don’t have the time to waste letting you try again, I’m afraid. You’re going to need to understand that. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll believe you this time. But Jay? I can replace you. Can you replace her?”
The call disconnected.
Jay Baldwin lowered the phone, looked up the street toward the lights of the police station, and then turned and walked back to his dark house.
27
They were thirty thousand feet in the air somewhere over the Dakotas when Lynn Deschaine fell asleep with her head on Mark’s shoulder.
She’d been dozing on and off for a while, and so it was likely that she’d slipped down in her seat a bit and was unaware of the contact.
He was very aware of it, though. He was frozen by it. He could smell her hair and feel her warm, slow breaths on his neck, and he didn’t want to so much as blink for fear of waking her.
He also wanted to push her away.
As they flew through the cloud cover, Mark was both grateful for her presence at his side, the touch of her skin, and angry with himself for enjoying it. He realized there was no need for the latter—you can’t cheat on the dead.
Explain that one to your heart, though. Anyone who’d ever had to try, Mark thought, would understand.
When the flight attendant came down the aisle to see if anyone needed fresh drinks, Mark made the slightest motion possible, a tiny shake of the head that came more from the eyes: No, thanks, and please don’t disturb her. The attendant moved on in polite silence, and Lynn didn’t wake, and her breaths came steady and slow against Mark’s skin and his throat tightened and he closed his eyes and made himself think of his wife.
At some point, Lynn woke, realized her position, and moved away from Mark quickly. He felt her turn to him, no doubt prepared to apologize, but he kept his eyes closed so she’d think that he was asleep, and she didn’t say anything. He was glad of that. His neck cooled as the memory of her touch faded.
He didn’t open his eyes until they touched down, but he never slept.
There were only four gates at the Billings airport—A and B, 1 and 2. Mark was struck by how small it was and said so upon landing. Lynn looked at him with surprise.
“I thought you were from here? Sounded like quite the Montana expert.”
“I’ve never been in the airport. I could tell you what the bus stations are like.”
She tilted her head and studied him. “How exactly did you end up in Tampa?”
“It was a circuitous route,” he said. “That’s the best I can explain it. There was never a destination in mind.”
That was the truth. He’d had destinations he wanted to avoid, however, and they’d just arrived in one.
As they left the airport and crossed to the rental-car parking lot, Mark felt his breath catch a little. The Billings airport was built on a plateau above the city, and while the mountains were far off in the hazy distance, the big sky was right there on top of you. The Montana sky felt older than time and endless as space itself.
It was a humbling sky.
They took I-90 across the Yellowstone River and out of Billings, followed it to Hardin, and then angled south through the Crow Indian Reservation and toward Wyoming. He saw Lynn rubbing her face just above her eyes.
“Headache?”
“Yes. Strange.”
“Not re
ally. Elevation change. You came from sea level, and we are going to hit ten thousand feet. Let’s stop for some aspirin.”
They stopped at a gas station in Crow Agency. Then they drove out of the town, and she was quiet as she watched it go by. He understood why. To drive through the places where the natives had been when the white settlers found them and then to drive through the places those settlers had left for those natives seemed to demand shame. Or should have.
“You should hear the music at a powwow,” Mark said, and she looked at him with confusion.
“The chants and drums. It’s powerful. Really powerful. I’ve never heard anything else like that, where the sound brings the past into the present. There’s a place called the Medicine Wheel that feels like that, though. Feels the way the music sounds.”
He was talking too fast and felt foolish for bringing it up. He wasn’t making any sense, and he was telling her things he’d never shared with anyone. It was all the fault of this place, the sensory memory of the return.
“Who introduced you to the music?” Lynn asked.
“My mother, I guess, but I’d hate to give her the credit.”
He hoped his tone indicated that the subject was done, and it seemed to, because Lynn didn’t press him.
They continued south into Wyoming, and in Ranchester they broke off the interstate and headed west, into the mountains. At least thirty minutes passed in silence and Mark was lost in thought when Lynn said, “What are you smiling about?”
He hadn’t realized that he was. “Lot of memories, that’s all.”
“Let a girl in on the fun.”
He glanced at her, saw that she was smiling, and went along with it, though he knew better.
“We drove a stolen car out of Sheridan on this highway once, me and my two uncles,” he said. “One of my uncles was convinced that it was a legitimate thing to do because the guy he’d boosted it from owed him more in poker debts than the car was worth. But what he didn’t know about the car was that the gas gauge was broken. This road gets up as high as ten thousand feet, basically two miles in the air, and we were right near the top when the car died. The argument my uncles had there on the side of the road was one for the ages. Then, once we got to walking, they turned philosophical and carried on for a few miles about how much easier things were in the days of the horse thieves, because at least you could tell what you were getting. It was harder stealing cars, because unless you were a damn mechanic, you might get screwed. I always liked that logic. Sucks to steal a car that’s a lemon, you know?”
When he looked back over at her, she had wide eyes, but there was no indictment to them. Just that faint amusement.
“A circuitous route to Tampa,” she said. “You weren’t kidding.”
He nodded and drove on as the rode wound in sharp switchbacks and climbed steadily—seven thousand feet, eight thousand, nine. The Bighorn Mountains closed around them, still snowcapped on the peaks, weeks from wildflower season. At Baldy Pass they crested ninety-five hundred feet, Mark’s ears popping as they drove just below the clouds, more like flying low than driving a car. Melted snow was all around them now, bleeding out in the sun in the places of trapped shadows where it had been able to survive so long. A voice inside Mark’s head that was not his own said, Welcome home, and it wasn’t kind. It was a mocking voice.
And a knowing one.
The post office box in Lovell was all they had for Eli Pate, but lounging around the post office waiting for him to show up was hardly the most effective way to go about finding him. Still, they started there, asking the girl behind the counter if she knew Pate. Mark thought he saw a ripple in her face, like the name had a sour taste.
“Well, sure. There are less than two hundred boxes in use here. I know everybody who uses them regular, but I’m not allowed to speak about it.” She was looking Lynn’s business card over. “What’s he done?”
“Nothing. We just need to talk to him.”
“Sure. But I’m just not, you know, allowed to tell you. It’s a federal crime. If I was to tell you that Mr. Pate comes in here once every two weeks, usually on Tuesday, and he didn’t come last week, that would be a federal crime.”
Lynn smiled at her. “Then we won’t ask you to do that.”
Today was Monday.
“Be careful with him,” the girl said, and Lynn’s smile faded.
“Pardon?”
The girl pocketed Lynn’s card and glanced out the window at the street. It was empty and they were alone. She seemed to take comfort in that.
“I would’ve remembered him even if he came in only the once,” she said. “He has these real intense eyes, real dark eyes, and they’re just, like, so…so focused. And I was running the paperwork for the box and all of a sudden he reached his hands out and I almost jumped, you know? But he didn’t actually touch me. He just kept them out, like this.”
She was holding both hands flat, palms toward her breasts, hovering about six inches away from her body.
“The way you’d put your hands out in front of a vent if you wanted to know whether the furnace was running,” she said. “Like he was testing me for heat. He did that, and he smiled, and he said, You’re very weak. And I don’t even remember what I said exactly, told him he’d have to stop being weird or that he had to leave or whatever, but before I got much out he put his hands back in his pockets and said that it was a good thing. Then he acted normal the rest of the time, just filled out his papers and thanked me and left and he’s never been anything but polite since then, but still…I remember it, you know? Fucking weirdo.” She had a distant expression when she added, “And I’m not weak.”
Mark was interested that what had lodged deepest in her mind seemed to be Eli Pate’s assessment of her, not his actions.
“You ever tell anybody about that, or ask about him or anything?” Lynn said.
“No. But like I said…be careful with him.”
They left the post office and walked back to the rented Tahoe.
“Your first claim in the West, and you’ve already hit gold,” Mark said. “If he shows up tomorrow, that’d be a gift.”
“It would be a lot of waiting if he doesn’t, though. Hopefully, we’ll find him first. Next date is with the sheriff.”
“Befriend the local law,” Mark said. “You’re really sticking to that 1850s approach.”
“Hardly. I think he runs with troubled people, and in a small town, the local law is indeed likely to know him.”
“If he’s been in trouble, he hasn’t served any time. Not under that name.”
“You’ve checked?”
“I checked on a lot of things.” He told her about his searches the previous night and concluded with the vandalism near Red Lodge and Laurel. “Probably unrelated, but from a timing standpoint, it bothered me.”
“Show me those places on this map.”
The map she had didn’t show any highways or roads. For a moment, Mark thought that the interconnecting lines across it were railroad routes, but then he realized it was a map of the national electric grid. It was too large in scale for him to locate such a small town easily, but there was one point that was close.
“That’s too far west,” he said. “But not by so many miles.”
“That’s the Chill River generation station,” she said. “I’d like to talk to their security people, see if they’ve had any issues, threats. Maybe show some photos.”
“What else do you know about this guy?” Mark said. “You’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with power stations, but you don’t know anything about Pate?”
“He’s just a name tied up with Janell Cole. He’s not my focus. She is.”
Mark said, “I wrote the high-voltage lineman’s name down and found an address in Red Lodge. The quote in the newspaper was short, but he was pretty emphatic that it was vandalism. We might want to check on him, see what he saw.”
A guarded silence, then, “Yes. We might. Sheriff’s office first, though.”
“You’re the boss. It’s not a bad place to start. They’ll know we’re in town fast enough, anyway, so we might as well lead the contact.”
Lynn looked down the street. “Where is the sheriff?”
“In Powell.”
“Another town?”
Mark nodded. “You’ve got to wait for the law around here, Lynn. The small towns, you’re kind of counted on to police yourselves, for better or worse.”
“There are a lot of empty miles out here,” she said. “Do you know how to get to the sheriff’s office or should I use the GPS?”
“I’m familiar with the route,” Mark said. Numerous family members had spent time there. Unless they’d moved the jail, Mark could get there without a map.
28
The sheriff’s deputy who spoke to them in Powell said he’d never heard of Eli Pate, Janell Cole, or Doug Oriel. Mark and Lynn showed him the photos and got slow shakes of the head.
“None of my local lovelies,” he said. He was a small man and his gun belt looked oversize on him, but he was gray-haired and weathered and had probably seen everything Powell had to offer several times over by now. “That doesn’t mean you won’t find him somewhere between here and Sheridan, of course.”
“He’s not in your frequent-flier program, though,” Mark said.
The deputy grinned. “Definitely not, and we got plenty in platinum class.”
“You heard anything about the vandalism of the electrical lines around here?” Mark asked. “Chain saws and trees, is my understanding.”
He nodded. “Mine too. But this department isn’t involved. Montana grabbed that one.” He pointed at the picture of Eli Pate. “He’s part of that mess?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Lynn answered, “but we’re curious, at least.”
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