County Line

by Bill Cameron

  The ride takes forever. My head is swimming with diesel fumes. Pete sags against me. Taya stares at a spot on the roof of the fiberglass cap, shotgun across her lap. Only Ruby Jane seems alert. After the second or third turn, she leans forward and prods Taya’s knee with her foot.

  “Don’t talk.”

  Ruby Jane has a sad smile on her face, and her eyes glitter in the dark. “You don’t have to do this, Gabi.” Her voice is soft.

  “That’s not my name.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You need to be quiet now.”

  “You think when he has what he wants he’ll take you with him?”

  “Shut up!”

  Ruby Jane settles back again. Even in daylight I’d have no clue where we’re going. We pass dark forest and open pasture, the occasional house set back from the road. The truck springs protest every turn, and the engine whines when we climb. The full moon appears on the horizon as we turn off pavement onto gravel. The quality of darkness changes from slate to silver and I realize we’re among gravestones and mown grass. The pickup stops.

  No one moves until Biddy opens the tailgate. Taya slides out and stands beside him. He gestures for us to follow. Ruby Jane and I help Pete despite his protests.

  “I’m fine.”

  He doesn’t sound fine, but he keeps his feet. Biddy thrusts a flashlight into Ruby Jane’s hands. “Lead the way, Mom.” Taya goes tense beside me.

  “First we need to come to an understanding.”

  “There’s only one understanding. Show me the money.”

  “You have to let my friends go.”

  He doesn’t like the sound of that, but I can see his mind working, trying to figure out a way to get what he wants while still addressing the problem posed by our very existence. If I was a stone killer, I wouldn’t want to leave any witnesses either.

  “How much are we talking about? The old lady said it was hundreds of thousands.”

  Ruby Jane is smart enough to know how this is likely to go down. But her face reveals nothing. “Do you want me to show you or not?”

  “Get going.” It doesn’t sound like we’ve reached an agreement, but Ruby Jane moves ahead of us across the grass. She knows exactly where she’s going. Biddy carries the shovel in one hand, the shotgun in the other. When I try to move alongside Biddy, Pete pushes between us. Taya puts an insubstantial hand on my arm and we move through the grass, spreading out. I’m not sure if this is by design or accident. Biddy doesn’t strike me as one with a gift for tactical thinking.

  The headlights of the pickup shine behind us, illuminating our path. We pass upright stones and flat markers. The cemetery isn’t big, a few acres bordered on three sides by trees. I gaze up at the broad star field, struck by the thought I will soon be there. Then Ruby Jane points out a grave marker, flush with the grass.

  Taya’s shotgun barrel brushes my legs and I realize she’s no longer holding it up. I turn, but all I see are shadows. Pete’s head hangs down. His breathing is ragged and wet. In the uncertain illumination—truck headlights, flashlight, moon and stars—Ruby Jane’s cheeks shine with a strange, electric energy. She holds the flashlight tight, like a club. Biddy seems to sense her intensity and keeps his distance, gun trained on Pete.

  “Where?” His words are breathy with anticipation. “Show me.”

  She clicks the flashlight on and sweeps the beam across the grave marker. I see letters carved into the surface, but the beam doesn’t hold still enough for me to make out the name.

  “This is it? It’s buried here?” His voice has gained half a semitone in his excitement. “Damn, you are one crazy lady.” He jams the head of the shovel into the ground and moves closer, pushing Pete forward with his elbow. Then he stops. Ruby Jane fixes the beam on the marker. The angle of the light throws the letters into sharp contrast. Even from fifteen feet away, I can read the name.

  BIDWELL DENLINGER WHITTAKER

  “LITTLE HUCK”

  JANUARY 14, 1990 – DECEMBER 11, 1990

  “The original stone said Biddy Denlinger, but six or seven years ago, Jimmie bought a new one. He told Bella it had to include Whittaker, plus the name I’d intended for the baby.” There’s a calm, sing-song quality to her words, as if she’s sharing a sadness with which she’s long since come to terms. “She never knew how to care for a child.” Her voice trails off until all I can hear is the faint whisper of a breeze through the trees at the edge of the cemetery. In the shimmering moonlight, Ruby Jane’s face is like a portrait reflected in a dark mirror. She’s looking at the grave marker, trace of a haunted smile on her lips. Her cheeks shine with reflected starlight.

  A sharp, metallic crack splits the night—the sound of two hammers locking back.

  “You fucking cunt.”

  Between the hit-and-run and the beating, my joints are like rusty gears filled with sand. Pete’s no faster, but he’s in better position. He deflects the gun barrel toward the ground with his hands. I push across the lawn, indifferent to Taya. I don’t know if she’s even there. She’s a ghost to me. My only concern is for Biddy, and for the two barrels he fights to bring to bear on Ruby Jane.

  The shotgun goes off. Double-ought buckshot shreds grass and soil. Pete drops to one knee and screams. He’s ten feet from me, clutching at his legs. My shoulder protests as I reach out, lunging.

  Whatever I hope to accomplish, I’m too slow.

  But Ruby Jane rises out of shadow as if she was made for this moment, wielding the weapon Biddy brought at her request. She swings the shovel at his head, connects as he fires the second barrel. The sound hits me like I’ve slammed into a taut sheet of canvas. Pete stops screaming and falls.

  For an instant as long as the night everything freezes: Pete on the ground, Biddy’s shattered face, Ruby Jane with the shovel. Then, behind me, Taya materializes and fires. I don’t know who she’s targeting. Searing pain blossoms in my shoulder, but Biddy takes most of the blast, upper body and head. He drops without a sound, falling across Pete like a sack of potatoes. I’m there in an instant, toss him aside and kneel beside Pete. Ruby Jane flings the shovel at Taya, but she’s already faded away. Then Ruby Jane is with me, with Pete. He makes a desolate, bubbling noise. I can’t make out his face in the darkness, but I can feel his warm blood, so much warm blood. Ruby Jane cradles his head and whispers his name, over and over. “Pete, … Peter, …” The bubbling ends with a long, hollow rattle as the pickup starts behind us and tears away with a clatter of flying gravel.

  I reach out and pull Ruby Jane close to me. She falls against my chest and sobs. I stroke her hair as my own tears flow, and she squeezes me tight and says my name. Soft, soothing sounds rise out of me as if someone else has taken charge of my voice. I’m not sure who’s comforting whom.

  That’s how the San Juan County sheriff’s deputy finds us, minutes or hours later.

  - 52 -

  Going Home

  They keep us all night and all day. Deputies and techs come and go from the island by sheriff’s department boat and by ferry. I don’t pay much attention. My only interest is Ruby Jane as she tells me the long story of where she came from and how she grew to be the woman I love. All this time, so much I never knew, so much she tried to leave behind. I ache to hear it all: Bella Denlinger, Clarice Moody, a young girl named Gabi, a boy named Finn. A stolen emerald ring … Jimmie Whittaker. A dark night on Preble County Line Road. A baby boy.

  “She took him away from me. She called him Bidwell Denlinger, after the mother and father who’d disowned her. She thought she could win her inheritance with the empty gesture of a stolen child.”

  “What does that mean, she stole him?”

  “It means I was a coward. I felt so alone. Jimmie wouldn’t talk to me. I couldn’t face people at school—not even Huck. My feelings for him were too tangled up with what happened to Gabi. I spent all my time out running, or shooting baskets at the elementary school. Or writing for Mrs. Parmelee—she was the only one I could trust. I wanted t
o run away, but then I found out I was pregnant and it was like the ground gave way beneath my feet.” Her tears don’t stop. “That’s when Bella swooped in. I was too young to be a mother, she said. I told her she wasn’t fit to raise a plague rat, let alone a child. But she threatened to turn me and Jimmie in for Dale’s murder if I didn’t do what she wanted.”

  “Dale was alive.”

  “I couldn’t prove that. For all I knew, his body would turn up a county or a state away, dead from Jimmie’s bullet. No one had seen him since that night. Besides, I’d watched enough cop shows to know just because there was no body in that hole didn’t mean we’d be safe.”

  A body helps in a murder conviction, but it’s not always critical. If enough evidence piles up, reasonable doubt erodes. Those toolboxes and the gun might have been enough to sink her. Certainly enough to make her life hell.

  “What happened?”

  “Her plan failed. Her parents saw right through her. So she found some new guy to leech off of and followed him out here with my baby. By that point, I think she was keeping him out of spite. But then she let him die. Viral encephalitis was the official cause, but I know the truth. She was a terrible mother.” She draws a long, shuddering breath. “She wouldn’t even let him have his own name.”

  “Huck.”

  An EMT checks us out. Ruby Jane is uninjured, but I’ve got a hole, front to back; Taya’s #2 lead shot went through the trapezius muscle above my injured collar bone. He cleans and bandages the wound. “You need stitches.” I don’t argue, except to insist Ruby Jane and I not be separated. We ride together in the back of a patrol car to a clinic in Eastsound Village, where a doctor sews me up. He observes I appear to have a grudge against my shoulder. The bruises from Preble County Line Road haven’t faded.

  Another deputy takes us to a sub-station and sticks us in a conference room. We give our statements, mine in a weary monotone. Ruby Jane adds little. Then we find a couch and she falls asleep leaning against my good shoulder.

  After a while, I slip away and spend some time tracking down Pete’s sister, Abby, who lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter. She doesn’t sound surprised he’s dead. I tell her Ruby Jane wants to hold a memorial in Portland, but we both understand that as family, Abby’s wishes come first. She’s as peremptory as I remember from our last encounter, two-and-a-half years earlier. Says she’ll get back to me and asks to speak to someone with actual authority. I’m grateful I used the sheriff’s phone to make my call.

  In the morning, a man in a suit identifies himself as a county attorney and takes me aside. If he offers a name, I don’t hear it.

  “You’re the cop.”

  “Retired.”

  “Right. I spoke with your lieutenant.”

  She’s not my lieutenant, but I don’t see any point in clarifying the situation.

  “What’s the story?”

  “We picked up Taya trying to board the morning ferry. She’s going to cooperate.”

  “Let me guess. It was all the boyfriend.”

  He smiles wryly. He’s a young man, not more than thirty, but with dark brown serious eyes. His manner is calm and confident, which is a comfort to me. “Robert Earl Perry. Someone she met while she was at school in Bellingham. After Bella’s husband—her second husband, I guess—passed, Taya worked part time at the farm, went out twice a week to clean. Perry tagged along sometimes. Apparently he was there the day the county tax letter came. Bella was years behind and at risk of having her property seized. Her alpacas never paid.”

  “Do they ever?”

  “Bella was out of her depth on her own.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I guess she started raving about her husband Dale and a big wad of hidden money which could fix everything. The story is confused, but apparently she claimed her son murdered her husband and her daughter buried the body back in Ohio.”

  “Nobody has buried Dale Whittaker. He died a week ago in Portland. Probably still in the ME’s cooler.”

  “Well, it didn’t matter, because Bella stroked out. When she talked at all after that, it was only about some kid named Biddy, her grandchild, I understand. I’m not clear on the details, because Taya isn’t, but it seems Perry dug through that old house and found enough to give him an idea of what might have happened. He went to San Francisco to take a run at James Whitacre, the alleged patricide, and left Taya behind to look after Bella.”

  “They never took Bella to a hospital, I suppose.”

  “Perry felt Taya was sufficient medical care.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I doubt Jesus had anything to do with it.”

  I look at my hands.

  “SFPD tells me Perry posed as Biddy Denlinger and got a little cash out of Whitacre, but Bella’s ravings had convinced him her ex-husband spirited away hundreds of thousands of dollars, that it had been missing ever since he died. She bounced between claiming it was buried in his grave, or her son had it, or her daughter knew where it was.”

  “There was no grave.” Someone will tell this attorney about the toolboxes and rusted gun, I suppose—Nash, most likely. But none of them will ever learn what happened that night on Preble County Line Road. “So when things in San Francisco didn’t work out—”

  “Perry decided to go after Ruby Whittaker. But rather than getting suckered in a blackmail scheme, she slipped away. I guess she went looking for the money on her own.”

  “I don’t think she cared about the money. I think she thought she would find a family heirloom, something her grandmother promised her and her father stole.”

  “Bet the money wouldn’t hurt either.”

  I’m not going to try to explain Ruby Jane to a cynic.

  “So then you got involved in the hunt after Miss Whittaker went back east. First down to San Fran, then to Ohio, finally up here.”

  “It got complicated.”

  “Evidently.” The DA is quiet while he studies my face. I’ve washed up a bit, but I’ve barely slept in over a day. I’ve been beat up and shot. I’m sure I look a mess.

  “Your lieutenant thinks Perry may have had a hand in a death in Portland. What can you tell me about that?”

  “Ruby Jane’s father. He showed up a few weeks ago after a twenty-year absence. He was still there when she left for Ohio.”

  “And he died of complications from diabetes.”

  “I’m not involved in law enforcement anymore. Susan will have more for you if you need it.”

  “But you’re sure it’s Bella’s husband, Miss Whittaker’s father?”

  “Ruby Jane confirms it. She spoke to him.”

  “I wonder why Perry didn’t go to him if he was supposed to have the money.”

  “May not have known who he was. He was going by the name Chase Fairweather.”

  He looks at me sharply. “Chase Fairweather?”

  “You know him?”

  His face is pensive. “Chase Fairweather has been kicking around the islands for the last few years. Never quite a vagrant, never quite making it either. He did odd jobs for people. I know he worked for Bella from time to time, back when she had more animals. Lived in the shack at the back of her property. We’ve had him before the court a few times. Public intoxication and disorderly conduct. Never anything serious.”

  “Bella had to know who he was.”

  “You would think, but then Bella was notoriously flaky and a heavy drinker.” He shakes his head slowly. “I guess Perry connected with him in Portland somehow.”

  I could mention Biddy Denlinger was too blunt an instrument to pull off anything so subtle as sugar pills. But that would only raise questions of motive and opportunity, deflect attention from the real monster here. The day may come when Ruby Jane and I discuss Chase Fairweather’s final hours, but that conversation will occur well out of earshot of prosecutors with dogmatic notions of law and order. As for Robert Earl Perry, well, some people are just wrong, and he was one of them.

  “Just as well he’s d
ead.”

  The attorney looks at me. “That how you see it?”

  I think about Pete and Jimmie, nearly me. Nearly Ruby Jane. “The fucker would have racked up premier class frequent flyer miles traveling to all his trials. To hell with that. Let him rot.”

  “He will be doing that.”

  “Why Biddy Denlinger?”

  “Taya says he thought it was funny—and a way to get noticed. Neither of them knew the real Biddy was dead.”

  He lets me return to Ruby Jane. There’s more. Questions, questions. A deputy shows up with my cell phone, recovered when Taya was arrested. I call Susan, but there isn’t much to say. She’s pleased Ruby Jane is safe, which is all I care about myself. The district attorney wants to keep us another night, but I convince him we will make ourselves available as needed. We need to go home. Taya figures to plead out, so there won’t be a trial. If I can arrange a deposition for the grand jury, San Juan County may not need us again.

  We make the last ferry, 10:30 from Friday Harbor, and land in Anacortes just before midnight. I offer to find a motel, but Ruby Jane wants to keep going. On the way, she calls Marcy to let her know we’re returning in Marcy’s car—I’ll fly back in a few days to fetch the Toyota.

  Marcy is at the carts, her voice so loud I can hear her side of the conversation. She’s damn glad to hear RJ is coming home.

  “I’ll need another day or two before I can get back on my feet.”

  “Just so long as I know you’re back, honey, I’ll be fine. But I want a week off.”

  “You can have two. Paid. And a raise. I owe you that much.”

  “Shut up, beotch.”

  Ruby Jane dozes. When she’s awake, she rests one hand on my leg and gazes out the window. There’s nothing to see except headlights and taillights and interstate chaff. I-5 between Seattle and Portland is about as boring a stretch of road as I’ve driven, but I have no problem staying awake. I’m going home with Ruby Jane.