"Because I don't want to talk about it. It's nobody's business where I went."
"Who were you with?" She shook her head.
"It's not germane."
"It was Carrie Grethen, wasn't it? And some weeks ago she had convinced you to participate in a little research project, which is why you got in so much trouble. In fact, she was stirring the liquid rubber when I came to see you at ERF." My niece looked away.
"Why won't you tell me the truth?"
A tear slid down her cheek. To discuss Carrie with her was hopeless, and taking a deep breath, I went on, "Lucy, I think somebody tried to run you off the road."
Her eyes widened.
"I've looked at the car and where it happened, and there are many details that disturb me a great deal. Do you remember dialing Nine-one-one?"
"No. Did I?" She looked bewildered.
"Whoever used the phone last did, and I'll assume that was you. A state police investigator is tracking down the tape, and we'll see exactly when the call was made and what you said."
"My God."
"Plus, there are indications that someone may have been on your rear with lights on high. You had the night mirror flipped on and the sunscreen up. And the only reason I can imagine you might have the sunscreen up on a dark highway was that light was coming in the back windshield making it difficult to see." I paused, studying her shocked face.
"You don't remember any of this?"
"No."
"Do you remember anything about a car that may have been green? Perhaps a pale green? "
"No."
"Do you know anybody who has a car that color?"
"I'll have to think."
"Does Carrie?" She shook her head.
"She has a BMW convertible. It's red."
"What about a man she works with? Has she ever mentioned someone named Jerry to you?"
"No."
"Well, a vehicle left greenish paint on a damaged area on the rear of my car and took out the taillight, too. The long and short of it is that after you left Green Top, somebody followed you and hit you from the rear.
"Then several hundred feet later you suddenly accelerated, lost control of the car, and went off the road. My conjecture is that you accelerated about the same time you dialed Nine-one-one. You were frightened, and it may be that the person who struck you was on your tail again." Lucy pulled the covers up around her chin. She was pale.
"Someone tried to kill me."
"It looks to me like someone almost did kill you, Lucy. Which is why I've asked what seem very personal questions. Someone's going to ask them. Wouldn't you rather tell me?"
"You know enough."
"Do you see a relation between what's happened to you at ERF and this?"
"Of course I do," she said with feeling.
"I was set up. Aunt Kay. I never went inside the building at three a.m. I never stole any secrets!"
"We must prove that." She stared hard at me.
"I'm not sure you believe me."
I did, but I could not tell her that. I could not tell her about my meeting with Carrie. I had to muster all the discipline I could to be lawyerly with my niece right then because I knew it would be wrong to lead her.
"I can't really help if you don't talk freely to me," I said.
"I'm doing my best to keep an open mind and clear head so I can do the right thing. But frankly, I don't know what to think."
"I can't believe you would… Well, fuck it. Think what you want." Her eyes filled with tears.
"Please don't be angry with me. This is a very serious matter we're dealing with, and how we handle it will affect the rest of your life. There are two priorities.
"The first is your safety, and after hearing what I've just told you about your accident, maybe you have a better idea why I want you in the treatment center. No one will know where you are. You will be perfectly safe. The other priority is to get you out of these snarls so your future isn't jeopardized."
"I'll never be an FBI agent. It's too late."
"Not if we clear your name at Quantico and get a judge to reduce the DUI charge."
"How?"
"You asked for a big gun. Maybe you've got one."
"Who?"
"Right now all you need to know is your chances are good if you listen to me and do what I say."
"I'll feel like I'm being sent to a detention center."
"The therapy will be good for you for a lot of reasons."
"I'd rather stay here with you. I don't want to be labeled an alcoholic the rest of my life. Besides, I don't think I am one."
"Maybe you aren't. But you need to gain some insight into why you've been abusing alcohol."
"Maybe I just like the way it feels when I'm not here. Nobody's ever wanted me here anyway. So maybe it makes sense," she said bitterly. We talked a while longer, then I spent time on the phone with airlines, hospital personnel, and a local psychiatrist who was a good friend. Edgehill, a well-respected treatment center in Newport, could admit her as early as the next afternoon. I wanted to take her, but Dorothy would not hear of it. This was a time when a mother should be with her daughter, she said, and my presence was neither necessary nor appropriate. I was feeling very out of sorts when the phone rang at midnight.
"I hope I didn't wake you," Wesley said.
"I'm glad you called."
"You were right about the print. It's a reversal. Lucy couldn't have left it unless she made the cast herself."
"Of course she didn't make it herself. My God," I said impatiently.
"I was hoping this would be over, Benton. "
"Not quite yet."
"What about Gault?"
"No sign of him. And the asshole at Eye Spy denies Gault was ever there."
He paused.
"You're sure you saw him?"
"I would swear to it in court."
I would have recognized Temple Gault anywhere. Sometimes I saw his eyes in my sleep, saw them bright like blue glass staring through a barely opened door leading into a strange, dark room filled with a putrid smell. I would envision Helen the prison guard in her uniform and decapitated. She was propped up in the chair where Gault had left her, and I wondered about the poor farmer who had made the mistake of opening the bowling bag he had found on his land.
"I'm sorry, too," Wesley was saying.
"You can't imagine how sorry I am." Then I told him I was sending Lucy to Rhode Island. I told him everything I could think of that I had not already told him, and when it was his turn to fill me in I switched the lamp off on the table by my bed and listened to him in the dark.
"It's not going well here. As I've said, Gault's vanished again. He's screwing with our minds. We don't know what he's involved in and what he isn't. We have this case in North Carolina and now one in England, and suddenly he shows up in Springfield and appears to be involved in the espionage that's gone on at ERF."
"There's no appears to be about it, Benton. He's been inside the Bureau's brain. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"At present, ERF's changing codes, passwords, that sort of thing. We're hoping he's not been in too deep."
"Hope on."
"Kay, Black Mountain's got a search warrant for Creed Lindsey's house and truck."
"Have they found him?"
"No."
"What does Marino have to say?" I asked.
"Who the hell knows?"
"You haven't seen him?"
"Not much. I think he's spending a lot of time with Denesa Steiner."
"I thought she was out of town."
"She's back."
"How serious is this with them, Benton?"
"Pete's obsessed. I've never seen him like this. I don't believe we're going to be able to pull him out of here."
"And you?"
"I'll probably be in and out for a while, but it's hard to say." He sounded discouraged.
"All I can do is give my advice, Kay. But the cops are listening to Pete, and Pete's not
listening to anybody."
"What does Mrs. Steiner have to say about Lindsey?"
"She says it could have been him in her house that night. But she really didn't get much of a look."
"His speech is distinctive."
"That's been mentioned to her. She says she doesn't remember much about the intruder's voice except that he sounded white."
"He also has a strong body odor."
"We don't know if he would have that night."
"I doubt his hygiene is good on any night."
"The point is, her not being sure only makes the case against him stronger. And the cops are getting all kinds of calls about him. He was spotted here and there doing suspicious things like staring at some kid he drove past. Or a truck like his was seen near Lake Tomahawk shortly after Emily disappeared. You know what happens when people make up their minds about something."
"What have you made up your mind about?" Darkness clung to me like a soft, comforting cover, and I was aware of the timbre of the tones in the sounds he made. He had a lean, muscular voice. Like his physique, it was very subtle in its beauty and power.
"This guy. Creed, doesn't fit, and I'm still disturbed about Ferguson. By the way, we got the DNA results and the skin was hers. "
"No big surprise."
"Something just doesn't feel right about Ferguson."
"Do you know anything more about him?"
"I'm running down some things."
"And Gault?"
"We still have to consider him. That he did her." He paused.
"I want to see you." My eyelids were heavy and my voice sounded dreamy to me as I lay against my pillows in the dark.
"Well, I've got to go to Knoxville. That's not very far from you. "
"You're seeing Katz?"
"He and Dr. Shade are running my experiment. They should be about finished."
"The Farm is one place I have no desire to visit."
"I guess you're saying you won't meet me there."
"That's not why I won't."
"You'll go home for the weekend," I said.
"In the morning."
" Is everything all right?" It was awkward to ask about his family, and rarely did either of us mention his wife.
" Well, the kids are too old for Halloween, so at least there are no parties or costume making to worry about. "
" No one's ever too old for Halloween."
" You know, trick-or-treating used to be a big production in my house. I had to drive the kids around and all that."
" You probably carried a gun and X-rayed their candy."
" You're one to talk," he said.
17
In the early hours of Saturday morning I packed for Knoxville and helped Dorothy put together the appropriate accoutrements for someone going where Lucy was. It was not easy to make my sister understand that Lucy would need no clothing that was expensive or required dry cleaning or ironing. When I emphasized that nothing valuable should be taken, Dorothy got quite upset.
"Oh my God. It's like she's going off to a penitentiary!" We were working in the bedroom where she was staying so we would not wake Lucy.
I tucked a folded sweatshirt into the suitcase open on the bed.
"Listen, I don't even recommend taking expensive jewelry when you're staying in a fine hotel."
"I have a lot of expensive jewelry and stay in fine hotels all the time. The difference is I don't have to worry about drug addicts being down the hall."
"Dorothy, there are drug addicts everywhere. You don't have to go to Edgehill to find them."
"She's going to pitch a fit when she finds out she can't have her laptop."
"I'll explain to her that it's not allowed, and I am confident she'll understand."
"I think it's very rigid on their part."
"The point of Lucy's being there is to work on herself, not on computer programs."
I picked up Lucy's Nikes and thought of the locker room at Quantico, of her being muddy from head to toe and bleeding and burned from running the Yellow Brick Road. She had seemed so happy then, and yet she could not have been.
I felt sick that I had not known of her difficulties earlier. If only I had spent more time with her, maybe none of this would have happened.
"I still think it's ridiculous. If I had to go to a place like that, they certainly couldn't stop me from doing my writing. It's my best therapy. It's just a shame Lucy doesn't have something like that because if she did I'm convinced she wouldn't have so many problems. Why didn't you pick the Betty Ford Clinic? "
"I see no reason to send Lucy to the West Coast, and it takes longer to get in."
"I suppose they would have quite a waiting list." Dorothy looked thoughtful as she folded a pair of faded jeans.
"Imagine, you might end up spending a month with movie stars. Why, you might end up in love with one of them and next thing you know you're living in Malibu."
"Meeting movie stars is not what Lucy needs right now," I said irritably.
"Well, I just hope you know that she's not the only one who has to worry about how this looks."
I stopped what I was doing and stared at her.
"Sometimes I'd like to slap the hell out of you." Dorothy looked surprised and slightly frightened. I had never shown her the full range of my rage. I had never held up a mirror to her narcissistic, niggling life so she could see herself as I did. Not that she would have, and that, of course, was the problem.
"You're not the one who has a book about to come out. We're talking days, and then I'm on tour again. And what am I supposed to say when some interviewer asks about my daughter? How do you think my publisher is going to feel about this?"
I glanced around to see what else needed to go into the suitcase.
"I really don't give a damn how your publisher feels about this. Frankly, Dorothy, I don't give a damn how your publisher feels about anything. "
"This could actually discredit my work," she went on as if she had not heard me.
"And I will have to tell my publicist so we can figure out the best strategy."
"You will not breathe a word about Lucy to your publicist."
"You are getting very violent, Kay."
"Maybe I am."
"I suppose that's an occupational hazard when you cut people up all the livelong day," she snapped. Lucy would need her own soap because they wouldn't have what she liked. I went into the bathroom and got her bars of Lazlo mud soap and Chanel as Dorothy's voice followed me. I went into the bedroom where Lucy was and found her sitting up.
"I didn't know you were awake." I kissed her.
"I'm heading out in a few minutes. A car will be coming a little later to get you and your mother."
"What about the stitches in my head?"
"They can come out in a few more days and someone in the infirmary will take care of it. I've already discussed these things with them. They're very aware of your situation. "
"My hair hurts." She made a face as she touched the top of her head.
"You've got a little nerve damage. It will go away eventually."
I drove to the airport through another dreary rain. Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal, and the temperature had dropped to a raw fifty-two degrees.
I flew to Charlotte first, for it did not seem possible to go anywhere from Richmond without stopping in another city that wasn't always on the way.
When I arrived in Knoxville many hours later, the weather was the same but colder, and it had gotten dark.
I got a taxi, and the driver, who was local and called himself Cowboy, told me he wrote songs and played piano when he wasn't in a cab. By the time he got me to the Hyatt, I knew he went to Chicago once a year to please his wife, and that he regularly drove ladies from Johnson City who came here to shop in the malls. I was reminded of the innocence people like me had lost, and I gave Cowboy an especially generous tip. He waited while I checked into my room, then took me to Calhoun's, which overlooked the Tennessee River and promised the be
st ribs in the USA.
The restaurant was extremely busy, and I had to wait at the bar. It was the University of Tennessee's homecoming weekend, I discovered, and everywhere I looked I found jackets and sweaters in flaming orange, and alumni of all ages drinking and laughing and obsessing about this afternoon's game. Their raucous instant replays rose from every corner, and if I did not focus on any one conversation, what I heard was a constant roar.
The Vols had beat the Gamecocks, and it had been a battle as serious as any fought in the history of the world. When men in UT hats on either side occasionally turned my way for agreement, I was very sincere in my nods and affirmations, for to admit in that room that I had not been there would surely come across as treason. I was not taken to my table until close to ten p.m., by which time my anxiety level was quite high.
I ate nothing Italian or sensible this night, for I had not eaten well in days and finally I was starving. I ordered baby back ribs, biscuits, and salad, and when the bottle of Tennessee Sunshine Hot Pepper Sauce said "Try Me," I did. Then I tried the Jack Daniel's pie. The meal was wonderful. Throughout it I sat beneath Tiffany lamps in a quiet corner looking out at the river. It was alive with lights reflected from the bridge in varying lengths and intensities, as if the water were measuring electronic levels for music I could not hear.
I tried not to think about crime. But blaze orange burned like small fires around me, and then I would see the tape around Emily's little wrists. I saw it over her mouth. I thought of the horrible creatures housed in Attica and of Gault and people like him. By the time I asked the waiter to call for my cab, Knoxville seemed as scary as any city I had ever been in.
My unease grew only worse when I found myself waiting outside on the porch for fifteen minutes, then half an hour, waiting for Cowboy to come. But it seemed he had ridden off to other horizons, and by midnight I was stranded and alone watching waiters and cooks go home.
I went back into the restaurant one last time.
"I've been waiting for the taxi you called for more than an hour now," I said to a young man cleaning up the bar.
"It's homecoming weekend, ma'am. That's the problem."
"I understand, but I must get back to my hotel."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Hyatt."
"They have a shuttle. Want me to try it for ya?"
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