On Location

by Elizabeth Sims

  Platonov said, "The deal is done. No going back and talk again."

  Slowly and distinctly, Rowe said, "If you don't agree to negotiate, I'll blow up this deal. I can get more from the FBI and INTERPOL's corruption bureau for your hide than I'm getting from this deal. I'm not a wanted man! You are, Ivan! Ivan? Ivan?"

  Rowe shut the phone. He watched a young couple in shearling coats walk past him, leaning into the wind, laughing, his arm around her waist. Rowe tossed the phone into Puget Sound.

  ——

  I pondered Joey's statement, I tried to save 'im.

  What did it mean? That he saw the person in distress down in the river, tried to climb down but fell? Was the other person a companion who'd done something foolhardy?

  While Daniel rested, Petey and I worked to make Joey comfortable in Badger Cabin.

  We made a warm bed for him with Daniel's and my sleeping bags, piling some extra clothing under his leg to elevate it, and I refilled our water jugs from the lake and added purifier tablets. I held Joey's head and helped him drink from a cup. His color came back, and he was able to swallow an antibiotic pill and a codeine pill.

  "Thank you," he said, and fell asleep. He looked a lot better. The scrapes on his face had cleaned up nicely.

  Petey roamed the camp and returned with news of a cabin we'd missed before. "There's like cool stuff in it!"

  The cabin sat back in the woods, engulfed in English ivy that someone must have planted for decorative purposes beneath the windows in the days before everybody knew the stuff would take over the world.

  This two-room building had been camp headquarters; now dungeonlike, daylight seeped in greenishly through the ivy.

  The commandant's desk was littered with mouse turds and dead bugs, the blotter—quaint item!—having been gnawed for nesting material. Still visible on what remained of the yellowed top sheet were little obsessive doodles of checkerboards in blue ink.

  The floors of these places were surprisingly firm, made of thick boards. Our footsteps thumped authoritatively on the un-rotted planking.

  Reflexively, I looked for a phone. Of course there was none; no telegraph key either, for that matter. But Petey was right: on a wooden table sat an incredibly cool radio thing with dials and knobs and a three-pound-looking Bakelite handset. There was no battery or generator connected to it, and the thing was a wreck anyway, corroded and wires sticking out and all, but still it had that old-time gravitas of stuff built in the days before microchips and focus groups.

  Yellowjacket nests the size of softballs, abandoned for the winter, hugged the rafters. Petey eyed them respectfully, having once conducted an experiment at Plummer Park on exactly how much poking with a stick a yellowjacket nest will sustain before coming alive. At the person with the stick.

  Back of the office was a storeroom, equally musty.

  I braced myself for bats to swarm out of the cupboards and told Petey to hold the door open. There were no bats, and my heart lifted when I found a suitcase-sized metal box filled with first-aid supplies. While the adhesives were petrified and the aspirin ancient, clean bandages abounded, along with gauze, scissors, and even a Red Cross handbook.

  The wooden cupboards housed motley junk, moldering stacks of papers—camper files, I supposed—but a couple of metal cabinets looked promising. I opened the first to find bales of tent canvas and a stack of navy-blue T-shirts with CAMP SASKEE-WEE-WIT in white rustic log letters and the camp emblem, a pair of crossed hatchets beneath a raccoon's face. The coon stared frankly, as they do when you come upon them.

  We heard Daniel calling.

  "It'll get dark in a couple of hours," he told us when we joined him. "I don't think I can hump him all the way to the car tonight. It's at least twice as far as from the river to here. I looked in his wallet; he's a Harkett guy, Joseph Preston. If we can get him through the night, I'll be able to get him out at first light tomorrow."

  "Then we're going back to the river," I said. "Now."

  He dropped his head in weariness.

  "Daniel, I have to know."

  "I know."

  "Petey can stay here with Joey. We've got to at least pull that body out, secure it somehow, even if it's not practical to carry it here."

  I'd been tuning into my deepest sister-to-sister gut ESP, especially since Petey had spotted that body, but so far I wasn't getting a clear reading. I wasn't getting a She's dead and you know it reading, but neither was I getting a She's sitting in a Starbucks in Reno or wherever the hell she and Lance eloped to reading. The inner crystal ball was cloudy.

  ——

  Deep shadows had overtaken the river gorge by the time Daniel and I hiked to the lip.

  The body was still there, a dark shape in the foam.

  Daniel said, "This ain't gonna be easy."

  "Can we use the log bridge? You know, as an anchor somehow?"

  He had carried three more coils of rope and some climbing hardware. "Well, we've probably got enough rope," he said, "but we need another anchor point. It's about ninety feet clear down there." He considered. "Because if you come off the rock, you'd just pendulum from the bridge and slam into the other cliff."

  "I could belay you from a tree like we did before," I suggested.

  He looked at me.

  "Rita, I'm exhausted."

  "You mean..." I scrutinized him for the first time since we'd set off with Joey, and yes, he was spent, his face corrugated with strain lines, his body sagging. He had dug deep to heave Joey out of this gorge to safety, and he was thinking about the four miles facing him tomorrow.

  So often, I am a dummy.

  "You can do it," he urged. "You can get down there, anyway. The route's not that hard. See how it's a much more gradual descent from here? It's like a staircase, almost, the way the ledges form a series. You can practically walk down, and with me belaying you, you'll be safe. I'm worried that if I come off, I'll get good and banged up, with my body weight against your belay. You're not that experienced."

  I remembered losing my grip as Petey and I hauled up Joey, his anguished grunt.

  Daniel finished, "You're so little, you'd be easy for me to handle. You should at least be able to determine—who it is. Then either leave the body there or see if you can get this piece of webbing through their belt and then around a rock to keep it from getting lost downstream."

  I squared myself as he had done. "OK, let's do it."

  With Daniel belaying me from the bridge, the line feeding through an anchor point at a tree above me, he could see me and my route as I picked my way down the wet cold rock. Have I mentioned that it was still raining?

  Like.

  A.

  Bitch.

  "Don't use your knees," Daniel called. "Keep your weight over your feet!"

  Should you ever have to downclimb a wet cliff in a river gorge to identify a dead body, remember this truth: every possible route you could take is five times harder than it looks from above.

  Surprisingly, once I got going I wasn't afraid; my brain had all it could do to figure out where to put my feet next. I slipped once, but Daniel's belay caught me instantly, and I barely bumped an elbow. My heart, however, leaped into my mouth, and I felt the sick rush of panic until I calmed myself and continued.

  As I descended, the river's roar increased in proportion to Daniel's voice diminishing, so that when at last I arrived at the water's edge, I couldn't have heard a jet engine twelve inches from my head.

  I could tell the river had risen since we'd first spotted the body—now only the feet were visible above the surface. They were bare, and I realized the current must have ripped the shoes and socks away.

  I edged over the slick boulders. The feet didn't look like Gina's, but dread sank its talons into my heart as I reached out and grabbed the jeans.

  I expected to have to haul with all my strength against the current, but the vector of my tug must have been just right, for the body shifted and the current seemed to surge and lift it. I tugged again, an
d the body, which was intact, flopped facedown on the flat rock next to me.

  It was clothed in a red rain jacket, it had a short dark-auburn haircut and a sturdy neck, and even before I turned the head to see the water-warped face with its five-day stubble and eyes so wet and clear they looked like he'd just put his contacts in, I knew it was Lance de Sauvenard's.

  Chapter 18 – A Signal on the Log Bridge

  Daniel and I stood on the log bridge high above that magnificent, terrifying river, the gorge a fissure in the earth's great composure, and he held me while I cried.

  I cried for Lance and I cried for Gina—no, that's not accurate; I cried to her, because my ESP, though thrown for a violent jolt here, was not registering the absence of Gina on this planet.

  She was here, somewhere. Somehow. Her resonance was still here.

  I keened for her return.

  From the vibe of Daniel's arms, the protective curve of his shoulders, I knew he believed Gina was gone: washed downstream, her body maybe to turn up in Harkett at the bend in the river, bobbing like a bedraggled Hiker Barbie against a stony beach where Harkettonians bring their picnic baskets in the dead of summer when the rain eases to high overcast and the temperature soars to a blistering sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

  What a godfuckingforsaken place.

  A couple of years ago I'd have been a total mess for days after what I'd just done and seen.

  Two factors were working for me, the main one being that I had to keep looking for my sister.

  The second factor was the rush I was feeling doing these things. It was akin to the feeling I'd had on a couple of other occasions when I'd broken through the surface of life and taken drastic risks, even perpetrated violence. I'd experienced maximum adrenaline and decided I liked it. I liked how alive it made me feel.

  All that coursed through my mind and heart as I stood on that bridge with Daniel.

  I'd begun the process of pulling myself together and thinking we'd need to use Daniel's flashlight to find our way back to Badger Cabin, it was getting that dark, and Petey was alone there with Joey, and I knew Daniel's mind was skipping ahead too when a curious warbling sound occurred.

  We both heard it. I stiffened.

  What the hell was it? Not a bird. A totally unearthly tone, yes, it was becoming clearer as our ears focused in on it and the thrumming of the river receded.

  "It's coming from your left hip," Daniel remarked. "Burt Bacharach."

  "Oh, my God!" I cried.

  After George's and my final fight I had morosely listened to a retrospective of '60s music on the radio and been captivated by the ode to lost love "Walk On By," sung by Dionne Warwick.

  Bitterly, I'd programmed the theme into my phone as my incoming ringtone.

  I frantically dug my phone from my front jeans pocket, opened the zip plastic bag I'd been using to keep it dry, and as "Walk On By" swelled into greater coherence, flipped it open. "Hello?" I shouted before I even got it to my ear.

  The signal was weak, but George's deep voice poured into my soul. "Rita, where are you?"

  Normally, it's easy to answer a question like that.

  My heart responded in a bifurcated way, remembering our fight, which was sparked by, as I remembered, his appreciation of somebody else's tits in my goddamn sweater. Well, honestly, it was because he was seeing someone else, which was supposed to be OK with me. I'd thrown a plate of spaghetti at his head over that? Well, the point was, of course, that it wasn't OK with me.

  The other half of my heart began to throb with an incredible longing for him, a desire for him to be here and help me and Daniel figure out what the hell to do next.

  "I'm standing over the Harkett River with Daniel looking down at—"

  "I'm en route to Harkett now."

  "You are?"

  "I've just been with Mrs. de Sauvenard. She's concerned about Lance and Kenner."

  "What in hell were you doing with Mrs. de Sauvenard?"

  "I'm doing some work for her. Gina connected us."

  In another minute, talking fast in case our connection broke,

  I told him the basic, incredible facts so far. "And there's no way we can get help yet from the sheriff or the Coast Guard or anybody."

  "I'll get in touch with the state police and whoever else I can. I have to get to you. You're in more danger than you know."

  How could that possibly be? I thought, handing the phone to Daniel, who described in fairly clear terms how to find Camp Saskee-wee-wit starting from the highway bridge in Harkett.

  Our signal was lost again in the swirling storm clouds.

  I saw I had messages to retrieve, but they'd have to wait. It tore my heart to think that one might be from Gina.

  ——

  Petey was snoring in my arms, and I guess it was about two in the morning. The two of us huddled together beneath his sleeping bag in one of the wooden bunks in Badger Cabin. I dozed fitfully in spite of my fatigue. It really is hard to sleep with a snorer, no matter what his size.

  Daniel breathed regularly, fully, in exhausted deep sleep.

  Joey seemed to drift in and out, groaning occasionally.

  He'd been remarkably alert when Daniel and I had returned from the gorge, talking with Petey, who was drawing a dead frog he'd found and brought in on a moldy shingle. Joey seemed to sink back into semiconsciousness when we came in, though. Daniel checked his pupils and said he was OK as far as that went, but he was concerned about the intermittentness of Joey's alertness.

  I lay there and thought about Lance. He was a surefooted guy if there ever was one, practically a gymnast. I'd seen him walk on his hands down a banister. Joey said he'd tried to save him; well, I guess even a surefooted guy can get into trouble. Just because Joey couldn't save him didn't mean he wasn't a hero for trying.

  But I tried to reconcile Lance being dead in the gorge with the blood we'd encountered where we'd found his camera. A confrontation, perhaps? With this Joey Preston, perhaps? Then a pursuit to the gorge where the final struggle occurred? Or the blood could have been Gina's, or Lance's in an unrelated mishap. Was Joey enough of a man to overpower the muscular, agile Lance? Moreover, why the hell would he want to? Was this Joey the same one Lydia referred to at the shithole grocery store?

  I roused to a small sound, like a mouse scritching. I heard a soft klunk, then George's voice right in my face, whispering, "Rita?"

  I just about had a heart attack. He'd made his way to the cabin and come in totally silently; I'd only heard him as he approached my bunk and evidently set down a bundle of his stuff.

  It was pitch-black outside; he'd found his way from the road, he whispered, by the light of his keychain flashlight, Daniel's directions, and a small compass.

  "My God, I don't believe it," I whispered back.

  "We'll talk in the morning." He climbed into the bunk above Daniel, which creaked loudly but didn't wake any of the guys.

  Seconds later, it seemed, he added his baritone breathing to the male cacophony inside that little cabin.

  I lay wide-awake now, thinking of his virile presence up there a few feet away, the body I'd missed after I threw him out. I hoped his other girlfriend was sobbing into her pillow. I hoped he still loved me.

  To some women, I think, George's face would seem thuggish. He'd once told me that he felt men ought to look ugly except when they smiled. He'd had his nose broken once or twice, I believed. So what? Except for Daniel, every handsome guy I'd ever known was so in love with himself he could barely walk a straight line.

  George's body was powerful and compact, like the wrestler he'd been in school. Narrow hips, flat stomach. That was another thing: he worked out to keep in shape, not to build those bulging ab muscles that make sixty percent of all the guys you see in L.A. look like they've had implants. Maybe they have, come to think of it. They're so proud of their abs, in their tight T-shirts.

  For George, a flat stomach was enough. Time to go for a run.

  So what the hell was my problem? He was c
onsiderate; he listened; he was sweet in bed.

  I'd gone over it all so many times with Gina, who one night all but handcuffed us together and phoned for a mobile justice of the peace.

  Sure, I would have been madly in love with George, hell, I'd have been his wife by now, if my first husband hadn't betrayed my love so badly. Wrong of me to hold on to it, I knew.

  It wasn't fair for me to keep blaming Jeff for my reluctance to commit to George, but here's the thing: What do marriage vows mean if they don't mean anything, which they don't?

  Moreover, what got totally destroyed was my belief in my own powers of judgment. I'd thought Jeff was terrific, said, "I do," and lived to regret the whole thing except Petey. Ribbons on the church pews, honestly.

  Fear was clouding my heart: If wedding vows, pledging fidelity and respect and all that, wouldn't satisfy me, what could George possibly do to prove his sincerity? It was like I was waiting for a goddamn sign or something.

  Grateful though I was for his coming to our aid, part of me totally hated that I now had to cope with his presence, hence all this other shit all over again.

  I was a damaged, irrational bitch.

  It was impossible.

  Chapter 19 – A Mystery in the Shed; Alger Returns

  Daniel was up at dawn preparing to evacuate Joey Preston when George poked up from his bunk. Daniel grinned. Joey was still sleeping.

  I disentangled myself from the stirring Petey and joined them outside for a powwow. We dashed through the rain to the nearby mess shelter, where we sat in the lingering warmth of sleep on the splintering wooden picnic tables. George told us that he'd driven past what he thought was a pretty lake in central Harkett until he saw a drowned cow and realized that was central Harkett.

  "The sheriff's office is underwater. City Hall is underwater. Good old stone building, now's gonna have a nice high-water mark on it."

  "What about the road into here?" I asked, remembering how high the water was when we came through. "The bridge?"

  He rubbed his jaw as Petey came running up to join us. "It was part of the river, essentially, covered with water. I got out and checked it, and I found the actual roadbed was only under about four inches of water. The river's wider there, see. So I got back in the car and made a run for it."