Rowe laughed.
"You gotta watch both ends, that's for sure," said Mrs. de Sauvenard.
"Yes."
"So can you find out who this Gilbert Boyd is?"
"That'll be my next step."
"Harkett," she murmured again. "I know it, of course, used to be a healthy little settlement, now it's mostly a welfare town, what's left of it. One of Silver Coast's largest holdings is out there, bordering the gorge. Been thinking of selling it, but who'd want forty-five thousand acres of timber you might never be able to log? My land's effectively controlled by the environmental lobby. They'd love for me to kiss their bran-muffin asses, but I won't do it!"
"I'd like to talk about Ivan Platonov again."
"The corrupt Russian copper baron! I have his number for you." She passed him an index card. "Do you think Leland could be working more than one scam on Silver Coast?"
Then she clapped her hands. "Oh, my gosh! I wonder what else my Kenner's up to! Do all roads lead to Harkett now?" Rowe asked for clarification, but she put a hand out. "Wait, I hear something." They listened to a faint chime coming from somewhere outside the room.
"That's the front gate," she said. "Who could it be, ringing today? I'm not expecting—"
"Let me go check," said Rowe, rising.
"No." She patted his shoulder. "Wait here; I'll just be a minute."
Rowe didn't know when he'd enjoyed a client's company as much as Mrs. de Sauvenard's. He sat back down.
There had been a non-reigning Bavarian prince for whom he'd located a wayward daughter (ski bum in Aspen), and that guy was definitely fun: meetings aboard his private jet which the prince himself had at one point taken the controls of, in order to buzz the new Cunard liner as it plowed across the ocean.
Rowe remembered the people on deck, bundled up against the North Atlantic wind, pointing and marveling at the plane as much as the people on the plane were marveling at the massive ship. "Must leave quickly," said the prince, banking the jet sharply, "in the event the crew decides we are terrorists."
"What could they do?" asked Rowe.
"Today? Don't you think a ship such as that has anti-aircraft guns? Ach, a ship such as that is well prepared!"
Yes, the prince had been a cool dude, but he decided he liked Mrs. de Sauvenard better: she was so—intelligent, so politically incorrect.
She returned carrying a colorful, dirty, scuffed box. It was a Budweiser twelve-pack, sealed shut with duct tape. "Well, this is unusual," she said.
Rowe looked at the beer carton, taped on one end. From the way Bertrice de Sauvenard held it, it obviously contained something much lighter than twelve cans of beer. She set it on the corner of her desk.
"Quite a scruffy girl there at the gate. She gave me this, saying, 'Now you'll see we're serious.'"
"A girl?" Rowe asked. "How old?"
"Oh, I don't know—a young woman, OK? She looked a little—feral, if you know what I mean."
"Unkempt?"
"That too. Ha!"
"Have you been threatened lately?"
"Heavens, no." She opened her desk drawer. "I've got a blade in here somewhere," she muttered.
"Wait." He leaned forward and inspected the parcel closely. It didn't smell of chemicals; it wasn't leaking anything oily—that was favorable, at least. "It's not ticking, but it sure looks suspicious." Here in Bertrice de Sauvenard's private study, an aristocratic room, a clean, composed room, the taped-shut beer carton looked as menacing as a Hell's Angel shambling into a Kennedy wedding. Something.
"You mean maybe it's a bomb?"
"Well—maybe. We ought to call—"
"Nonsense!" She drew a flat box cutter from her drawer. Rowe put a hand out as if to stop her, then let it drop.
A strong sadness came over him.
It was not dread.
It was sadness.
The box would be opened, and it would change everything. He could not have explained how he felt to anyone.
Except possibly Rita.
He sighed.
Mrs. de Sauvenard paused, looked at him, then back at the box. She muttered, "Well, I can't not open it." She sliced through the tape and flipped open the lid.
"Huh!" She half-pulled, half-dumped a crumpled safari shirt onto her desktop.
Much of the khaki shirt was soaked through with a dark red liquid, which had dried and stiffened the crumples. It looked like a piece of roadkill.
Mrs. de Sauvenard did not recoil.
Rowe stood up.
"Huh," she said again.
Rowe thought there might be something wrapped in the shirt and did not want Mrs. de Sauvenard to handle it, so he stepped forward and began to uncrumple the shirt.
Both of them could smell the blood, as well as the dampness that rose from the shirt.
Rowe tried to block her view, but she crowded in. She watched him smooth out the cloth. He knew he shouldn't be doing this with his bare hands—he should be using nitrile gloves—but if he didn't, she would.
She reached in and plucked up one of the cuffs, saying, "Aha! Yes, it's Kenner's, all right, here's his monogram. Ha! You see how determined he is."
"What are you talking about?" Rowe felt in the shirt's pockets, nothing. No amputated finger, no toe, no ear. Well, OK.
"Don't you see?" she said. "Kenner's been bugging me to invest in this movie he wants to make. I said no. Now he's enlisted some lowlifes to stage a kidnapping for ransom. This is ridiculous, it's laughable except for the fact that I really ought to be angry. No has always meant no with me."
Rowe stared at her.
"Mr. Rowe, I know my boys."
He cleared his throat. "You said the woman who delivered this told you—what again? 'Now we're serious'?"
"Yes. Look, I received a call last night from someone claiming to have abducted Kenner and demanding—get this—one point two million dollars. I just laughed. I mean, really."
"Where did they ask you to send the money?"
"Some street address in Harkett, I don't remember it." She was getting annoyed.
"Harkett, for God's sake? Have you heard from Lance?"
"No; actually he's supposed to be out that way too, with Gina. Huh, I bet Kenner's got Lance in on this gag too." Speechlessly, Rowe gestured to the shirt.
Mrs. de Sauvenard laughed. "So he cut his finger and dripped blood on his shirt! So what!"
"This is rather a lot of blood. Not a few drops."
"Well, guess what, Mister Detective: it might not even be human blood. Right?"
That was so.
"From what's on the news," she said, "I don't think they're having a very pleasant campout."
"There's too much going on in Harkett, Mrs. de Sauvenard."
"Do you know what that country's like?"
"I guess pretty rough. I've never been out there."
"It's about one step beyond the covered wagons and longhouses. Look, I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. Let's just let Kenner's—tantrum—play itself out. That's what I say."
"But if this thing with Kenner's related to what Harris is up to—"
"I don't care if it is! If I give in to this, I'd be a fool." She touched his arm so reassuringly, so motherly, he was almost convinced.
But he excused himself and took out his cell phone. Neither Gina nor Rita answered her phone. He knew that if no one else was keeping track of Gina, Rita would be.
He tried Daniel's number.
Nothing.
That was enough for him.
Chapter 17 – A Body in the River
Despite the aid of Petey's telescope, I could not ascertain whose upper body—if any—was connected to the bobbing pair of legs in the river. I could not tell if the butt was male or female; I could not tell what brand of jeans.
Joey was too incoherent to tell us what happened to him, or whether he had had any companions.
"If we get him back to the boys' camp, get him warm and hydrated," Daniel said, "I bet he'll come around. Good thing he w
as wearing such a good coat, or he'd be dead from hypothermia." Joey had been able to sip some water, and at moments he'd mumbled urgently as if trying to tell us something, but he couldn't get the words straight.
"We've got to recover that body!" I said.
"Right now," Daniel said evenly, "I need you to keep helping me."
As he eased the last of Joey's torn jeans from beneath his broken lower leg, both bones of which had to've been snapped at the same place, he said, "Petey, I need ten smooth stones about one inch by one and a half inches."
"I'll get 'em!" He hustled off.
"What are the stones for?" I asked. "So he won't watch?"
"Yeah." Gently, he removed Joey's boot and sock.
Joey went out cold when he got a look at his grotesquely crooked, swollen leg. It really is shocking to see a human limb with an angle in it like that.
"OK, he's providing his own anesthesia," said Daniel. "I'm gonna straighten this leg right now. Rita, can you hold his thigh just above the knee? Hold it tight. I gotta align the foot with the kneecap."
I did so, getting some traction from the thigh bandages we'd installed.
"He's getting a little shockier," Daniel noted, grabbing the space blanket and spreading it over Joey's upper body. "See how he's sweating, but his skin's pale and cold? Well, let's get this done."
He grasped Joey's splayed-out foot with one hand and wrapped the other around the ankle. In one smooth move he pulled the leg and turned the foot so the toes pointed straight up. The sound of the broken bones was like dense, splintered wood grating against itself. "The foot looks good; the blood supply's OK. You all right?"
"Yeah."
"OK, now you hold his foot and ankle just like this while I apply the splints."
I did so, feeling the weird instability of the leg bones and the creepy sensation of the broken pieces shifting slightly as Daniel worked. Joey's foot, long and hairy, was clammy.
"Gonna splint only the lower leg so I can carry him better, then maybe I'll put on longer sticks when we get back to camp."
As soon as Joey was as first-aided as he was going to be, I repeated, "We've got to recover that body!"
"Rita, we can't! Come on, we've gotta get this guy out of here. That leg could get infected before long. I've got some antibiotics in my kit in the cabin, and I want to start him on them right away. Whoever's down there is dead and we can't help them."
"But—"
"Look, we'll come back as soon as we can. That's the best we can do."
Petey watched me for calming cues, which somehow I was able to give. You always can do it for your kid. "Everything's all right, honey." I managed a reassuring smile. "Our mission now's to help Daniel, OK?"
"OK!" he shouted, picking up Daniel's daypack, now lighter from the water we'd drunk and the first-aid supplies now on Joey. It occurred to me that maybe Petey would never get his inside voice back again, with all this free and easy outdoor yelling.
"Pete, stash that rope here safely someplace," Daniel told him. "We'll need it when we come back."
Petey dropped the pack and ran with the rope to a cedar tree. He shinnied up and hung the tidy coil from a branch stub. I helped him get the pack on his shoulders and snug the straps.
Daniel reckoned we were perhaps two miles from the camp. Two miles is so nothing when you jog it around your neighborhood in West Hollywood. It hadn't even been all that hard hiking it here. But thinking about toting Joey through the dripping, tangled forest, two miles seemed like two hundred.
"Rita, help me stand him up. Come on, buddy, you just gotta stand so I can get under you. Hey!" He slapped Joey across the face. The man moaned, roused, and realized what was required of him. With our support, he grunted to a more or less vertical position, and in one move Daniel squatted and took him over his shoulders.
He stood up, squared himself, and our eyes met.
This is how we made it to the camp:
Petey carried the daypack and scouted the easiest route for Daniel and his 180-pound load of deadweight, while I held branches, trampled vegetation to make Daniel's footing easier, and served as a portable post. I'd stand firm on the other side of a log, and he could reach for my shoulder to steady himself as he eased over it, Joey's splinted leg sticking out awkwardly. I did what I could to keep the leg from catching on anything.
It was late afternoon by the time we got Joey back to the camp, pausing a few times for Daniel to rest.
Our evacuee groaned the whole way but seemed to rouse at one point, during a rest stop. "I tried to save 'im," he mumbled, his eyes momentarily clear, as if seeing something again.
"Who?" I asked. "Joey, you tried to save who?"
"Unnhhn."
——
George Rowe did not waste time returning to his hotel room in Renton. As his car waited in the Bainbridge ferry holding lot downtown, he sprinted uphill to a convenience store on First Street for a few toiletries and some food. He also picked up a second cell phone there, using one of his fake IDs.
Mrs. de Sauvenard had, in the space of five minutes, outfitted him with foul-weather gear, a rucksack, two banded packs of hundred-dollar bills ("Never hurts to have extra!"), a map of the forests of the Olympic Peninsula, and a bottle of Canadian Club. "You'll need it, believe me." She smacked his shoulder. "Keep me posted. If you see Kenner, tell him to shape up. Life doesn't have to be that serious. Hugs to Lance."
She suggested a route through Bainbridge Island, across the Hood Canal, thence around the tip of the peninsula and down to Harkett.
As he paced the upper deck of the gigantic car ferry, he relaxed himself and breathed the good salt air of Puget Sound. The city got littler, and he faced forward to the snaggled peaks of the Olympic Mountains.
When Rowe was a boy, he'd had a storybook that told the tale of Pandora. Every time he read it, he'd been horrified at the naughty Pandora and her lack of self-control. There she was, her golden curls so rich and innocent, her hands busy as she sat on that ornate carved chest, stupidly determined to satisfy her curiosity in spite of all warnings.
Then: disaster. How harrowing the release of all those sting-tailed demons.
Then he would read the next story, that of Perseus cutting off the heads of gorgons, and feel better. No moral ambiguity there.
He thought about Bertrice de Sauvenard and the sealed beer carton. She was Pandora, and like Pandora she was destined to open that box. And evil came pouring out.
It suddenly struck him that evil in this world must come pouring out; it cannot be held back by wishing, even by avoidance. It will not be denied because, if all else fails, it will force its own way out of any box, no matter how tightly sealed.
Opening the carved chest had not even been Pandora's fault, he realized as he watched a gull skimming the choppy surface of the Sound, though she had gotten the blame, all right.
The task had simply fallen to her.
Bertrice de Sauvenard had somehow understood that subtlety when she sliced into the duct tape. He hadn't, until now.
He drummed his fingers on the railing wet with salt mist. The ferry had chugged into open water, and the sharpening wind blew the other passengers indoors. The gulls, so oddly nasty on the city streets, looked clean and normal out here on the water as they soared alongside the boat.
Mrs. de Sauvenard had given him a stout wool shirt to wear beneath the rain jacket, and he was perfectly comfortable in this combination. The wind bit at his face, but he was warm.
The steel railings rattled in the sea wind.
He took out his phone and saw he had great reception here on the open water. He sheltered himself in the lee of the wheelhouse and tried Gina's, then Rita's and Daniel's numbers again. Nothing. He left messages and folded up his phone.
Taking out the phone he'd just bought, he decided to place a certain call a bit prematurely.
This call should rightly be made with him staying in Seattle, where he could keep an eye on Leland Harris.
But that was impossib
le now.
Moreover, his feeling had been growing that there was much more treachery to this Harris character than had met the surface yet. This call would either confirm suspicions or prove them quite wrong.
He cleared his throat and gathered his thoughts, considering contingencies. What he was about to do was dangerous, and could result in major fallout. However, it seemed worth the risk to gain what information he could—and to see just how far he could push the situation. When he was ready, he used the digits on the index card Mrs. de Sauvenard had given him and reached Ivan Platonov with gratifying ease.
"Ya?" said a deep, unhurried voice.
"Ivan, this is Leland Harris in Seattle. Where are you?" The connection was usefully staticky.
"I am in Moscow. What do you want? Is middle of night." Blunt Russian accent.
Ching: Platonov and Harris are current associates.
"Well, I didn't know where you were. I—I have a problem. I'm not sure I want to go forward with this."
"What is wrong?"
Ching: they're conspirators.
"She's asking too many questions; she's getting suspicious."
"You haff to go through with this."
Ching: the person they're conspiring against is his client.
"I—I don't know if I can. Mrs. de Sauvenard, she's really turning into a bitch over this."
"A bitch? Bitch how?"
"She's asking for the money trail. Wants more documentation on the three million."
"Harris. Fuch her. Fuch her. You can handle her."
"But that's the problem. I put a bug in her phone. She's talking to a detective."
"Eh?" That, followed by some guttural Russian swearword.
Rowe ran his hand through his crew cut, back and forth, looking at the thick white marine paint on the ferry railing. He decided to take the risk: "I'm thinking maybe she should have her...sailing accident...sooner rather than later."
"Now is too soon."
Good Christ. His hunch had been right.
Rowe said, "Ivan, then I have to get rid of the detective. Do you understand? I need more money. I need a bigger share."
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