The Clouds Roll Away

by Sibella Giorello

  “What’s the number go to?” I asked.

  “Aberdeen,” she said. “As in, bang, bang.”

  After the United States declared war on the Central Powers of Europe in 1917, our government decided the world wasn’t getting any nicer. It was time to expand weapons testing. After a long search, the army chose several thousand acres near the Chesapeake Bay, the same land that saw Jamestown settlers warring with Indians three hundred years earlier. But the stubborn Maryland farmers refused to move. It took an act of Congress, two presidential proclamations, and finally two hundred dollars an acre for the government to relocate several thousand people and their twelve thousand animals. Even the human remains were moved from family graveyards.

  Today it was doubtful that anybody would want to move back. Aberdeen employed nearly fifteen thousand scientists over as many acres that formed a literal killing field. The elite force of scientists, researchers, engineers, and technicians figured out ways to eliminate life. I’d always wanted to visit. But when I explained what I was working on, the woman who worked as the liaison to law enforcement told me to forget it. Her name was Hannah Hamer.

  “Nobody’s here,” she said. “And clearance to visit would take weeks.”

  “I’m an FBI agent.”

  “Weeks.”

  “All right. What about the chemicals?”

  “We had mustard gas,” she said. “But it’s old news. The military never liked it. It incapacitated our troops as much as the enemy. Too difficult to control.”

  “What about lewisite?” I asked.

  “Nettie told me you were interested in that. We had some here, the records show.”

  “The government made some?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Stored at Aberdeen?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Why do you need to know this again?” she asked.

  I went through the cross burning and car bombing a second time. Once again, it was my description of the teenager’s violent death that softened her.

  “I do know we kept hundreds of tons of mustard agent here,” she said.

  “Kept it how?”

  “In one-ton containers.”

  “Any go missing?”

  “Agent Harmon, it was guarded around the clock by armed forces.”

  “And?”

  “And we blew it all up.”

  “When?”

  “Last year. We didn’t need mustard gas anymore. It was neutralized in the disposal plant.”

  “Every last bit of it?”

  Hannah Hamer sighed. “We keep vigilant supervision over our weapons. I can guarantee the mustard gas is gone.”

  “Understood, but somebody down here got hold of some.”

  “They didn’t get it from us.”

  “What about lewisite?”

  Another sigh. “I’m very busy with—”

  “Please. It’s a hate crime.”

  “I’ll see what information we have. But I need to get the information’s release cleared first.”

  “When can I expect to hear back?” I asked.

  “Monday at the earliest. But don’t get your hopes up,” she said, as if this had been one big uplifting phone call. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas.”

  “I’ve noticed. But the guys using this stuff haven’t. Can you call me as soon as possible?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

  My plans were foiled at 2 p.m., when I got a call from Pollard Durant—the agent in charge of the task force.

  “Your phone replacement has the flu,” he said. “Any chance you can work tonight’s shift, with no overtime?”

  “Can I work alone?”

  “I’ll talk to Phaup.”

  At five minutes to four, I walked into the T-III room carrying three bags of food.

  Beezus Jackson stared with shock. “Raleigh! What happened to your hair?”

  I placed three bags on the table, the results of my successful forage for food on Broad Street. Big Macs. Crispy fries from Burger King. An Oreo milkshake from Hardee’s. I wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity about my hair, but I also wasn’t about to deprive myself of salt and grease at a time like this.

  Stan stared at my head. “It’s different,” he said. “But kinda cool.”

  The right side of my hair touched my collarbone while the precisely cut ends tapered at an angle across the back, layered seamlessly to the other side. When I tilted my head, the hair fanned in sexy ellipse. But I didn’t feel like I could pull it off—I felt inferior to my hair. I bit into a Big Mac.

  Stan left the room and I tapped the volume button, raising the static in order to block the penetration of any comments from Beezus. After several more bites of the Big Mac, I began to feel better and by the time I polished off the fries, the phone line was popping up. I felt the old thrill coming back. My road less traveled? My bliss? Hunting down the bad guys.

  Moon, the guy who blessed Zennie Lewis with an illegitimate child, dialed the number that belonged to XL’s cell phone.

  “Yo, dawg,” he said.

  “What’s up?” XL sounded sleepy. It was 6:23 p.m.

  “You got numbers for the game?”

  “Bulls by three.”

  “Dig.” Moon paused. “I’m supposed to take orders tonight?”

  “Odds are.”

  “Can’t.”

  There was silence on XL’s end.

  “I can’t,” Moon repeated, as if a question was asked.

  “You mean won’t.”

  “Zennie asked—”

  “Naw, dawg, naw—”

  “Listen, she says it’s serious. Something with Zeke. The boy’s my blood.”

  My index finger hovered over the Stop button. Technically, this conversation wasn’t about criminal activity, unless XL explicitly said something more about taking orders. I waited for the next sentence, hoping, hoping.

  “Tomorrow night I’m there. Saturday too. The busy nights, yo.”

  “Moon.”

  “You hear from the man?”

  I waited, hope waning.

  “Moon.”

  “He’s gonna be surprised.”

  “Moon.” XL’s voice sounded cold. “You want the fat man to come down the chimney or not?”

  “Honor the father,” Moon said. “No other gods before him.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “So I see you tomorrow night. I be there. I promise. And—”

  XL hung up.

  The rest of the night sounded like the drive-through window at my beloved McDonald’s. Dozens of numbers outside our wiretap called XL’s cell phone. The voices sounded young and tense, mostly white. They pretended to call for taxis and takeout and tonight’s special—all the lousy code language for drug orders. Between sales calls, XL dialed the number that belonged to the man with the foreign accent, the man they called Minks. XL asked if his car was gonna need repairs and whether the man thought he’d be working this weekend. To everything, the man gave one reply: “Yah.”

  “So you got everything for Christmas?” XL asked.

  “Yah.” But he couldn’t pronounce his w’s. I heard it when he said, “Ve haf everything for Christmas.”

  I wrote notes and between the calls I gave my own monosyllabic responses to Beezus’s questions about my hair. When my shift was over, I drove home and, avoiding my mother and my mirror, fell into bed with much weariness, more questions, and even more gratitude.

  Then I woke up on Friday and realized I had a date to keep with DeMott.

  chapter eighteen

  After work in the morning, I spent the rest of Friday jogging from one end of town to the other, attempting the impossible, trying to run away from myself.

  When chimney smoke joined the darkening sky, I settled into the carriage house’s claw-footed bathtub for bubbles and Scientific American. Soaking in the suds, I read a good story about DNA, marred only by the author’s assumption that our double
helixes of nucleic acid were the product of chance.

  Quite an assumption. It was like saying blueprints could write themselves.

  And not just any blueprints. Our DNA contained three billion complex sequences—for each living creature. The statistical probability of this happening by random selection was laughable. It was like saying tornadoes can rip through junkyards and build jumbo jets. Never mind that the second law of thermodynamics proved that over millions of years we grew closer to entropy than order, the opposite of what evolution claimed.

  Scientifically speaking, evolution was whacked.

  But try telling that to the smart people—the people who believed fish scales turned into feathers and sludge somehow squeezed out higher life forms. Try explaining the degree of planning and order and creative genius necessary for just one hundred working sequences, let alone three billion.

  Try it. They’ll call you delusional. Go figure.

  I tossed the moisture-rippled magazine on the floor and climbed out of the tub, skin blushing rose, and searched my closet for my Mata Hari dress. It came into my life from a consignment shop near DuPont Circle. The perfect velvet sheath, sleeveless. The store’s owner claimed the dress once belonged to a CIA agent stationed in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. The former spy, now in her nineties, was living in a convalescent home around the corner. I not only bought the dress, I purchased the saga.

  Three weeks later, my father was murdered. The dress never came out of my closet.

  But now, as I slipped sheer silk hose over my legs and shimmied into the charcoal velvet, I looked in the mirror and decided it was great being a girl.

  After some minimal evening makeup and a fluff of the new haircut, I stepped into three-inch black heels, grabbed my coat, and hurried to the big house. The night wind blowing against the house felt alternately warm and cold.

  In my mother’s kitchen, cookies were baking again. More cookies. I opened the oven and counted two dozen chocolate chip. Another dozen cooled on a wire rack on the counter. I picked one up, taking a bite. Ghastly. Like masticated chocolate clay. I spit it out in the sink, guzzling a glass of water, trying to figure out who was eating these things.

  “Oh, Raleigh Ann.” My mother walked into the room. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But you can’t wear that coat.”

  “What’s wrong with my coat?”

  In her bedroom upstairs, tea lights flickered on the bureau, releasing a mulled spice scent. Opening her top drawer, she removed a strand of pearls that looked like cabled moonlight. She dusted my bare shoulders with powder and painted my lips the color of glistening rubies.

  I looked in the mirror. Even better being a girl.

  “Now this.” She held up red velvet.

  “What is it?”

  “I wore this on my first formal date with your father. It was December fifteenth. Can you believe it? Here’s your date with DeMott, the same night. It’s a sign.”

  I stared at the red velvet. I blinked twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.

  “The weatherman called for sleet or hail or something,” she continued, “but I refused to wear an overcoat. And risking my health was the smartest thing I ever did. Your father took one look at me and said, ‘Nadine, you look like a dream revealed.’ Isn’t that just—” She drew a quick breath, eyes misting. “A dream revealed.”

  It was a cape.

  A red cape.

  Outlandish, outrageous. Perfect for my mother—or was, before she turned into a Stepford widow last month. On me, the thing looked ridiculous.

  But I wore it because I saw her smile.

  On the freezing cold drive to Weyanoke, I clutched it around me, clutching it even more tightly as I parked the K-Car at the plantation and walked a herringbone brick path to the mansion. A gibbous moon turned the stones pearlescent. At the top of the stairs, I stood for a moment outside the large double doors. The wind blew a final shiver up my spine. Ignoring my frantic heartbeat, I rang the sonorous bell and gave the cape to the maid. I kept my black clutch. It held my cell phone and Glock, as agents were required to be armed at all times. When I started down the wide gallery, walking toward the ballroom, I passed ancestral portraits of the Fieldings and DeMotts and MacKennas who had inhabited this land for hundreds of years.

  My heart raced even faster. Standing at the edge of the ballroom, smelling warm pine and sharp gin, I began to worry about my hair. From the coved ceiling, three crystal chandeliers bathed the oak parquet floor with golden light, and a band onstage played a jazzy sort of Muzak. Around the room, tuxedoed men stood with women so well manicured they appeared manufactured. Not so long ago, this was my parents’ world. My father, the esteemed judge, descended from a long line of Virginia barristers. My mother, accepted by marriage. But when he died, most of the invitations died with him. The rest died when my mother and I quit going.

  DeMott was standing on the other side of the room, speaking to a petite blonde woman. His eyes searched the crowd, but the woman kept her pretty face on him, giving him a perfect smile. Instead of a tux, DeMott wore a black suit with a white shirt and red tie. Somehow, dressed up, he looked even more rugged. He turned, his eyes locking on me. Something brushed the back of my knees.

  Turning his body sideways, he walked across the room, carving through the crowd.

  Run for the door, I told myself. You can still make it. You can still pretend you don’t care.

  “You’re here,” he said.

  “A deal’s a deal.”

  He nodded. “May I get you a drink?”

  “Club soda, two limes.”

  “Be right back.”

  The waiter passed by with canapés. I took two.

  “Raleigh?”

  I turned to see Jillian, DeMott’s older sister. The sister who liked me.

  “Did he find you?” she asked.

  “Yes, he went to get my drink.”

  Jillian lacked Mac’s dramatic beauty, but she exuded a sensible peace, an unflappable quality. And as I’d discovered last summer, Jillian was the person you wanted in a crisis.

  Tonight she wore a taffeta gown, the deep eggplant shade matching the sapphire briolettes hanging from her ears like champagne grapes. The earrings swung as she turned to the couple beside her.

  “Raleigh, this is DeDe and Leland Morrison. They live near you on Monument Avenue.”

  DeDe said, “Which block on Monument Avenue?”

  I told her.

  “Well, my goodness,” she said. “We’re practically neighbors. Which house?”

  I told her.

  She almost caught the gasp before it fully left her mouth.

  DeMott appeared, offering me a highball glass wrapped in an emerald napkin. He took my elbow.

  “We’d love to stick around, but we were hoping to have a good time,” he said.

  “DeMott!” Jillian said.

  He was already turning away, whispering in my ear, “And if Leland Morrison knew how to have a good time, he wouldn’t be married to DeDe.”

  I looked up at him. “Thank you.”

  “Thanks for wearing that dress,” he said. “I like the new hair too.”

  “Honest?” Suddenly I was sixteen years old. “It’s not too short?”

  “Raleigh, you could shave your head bald and you’d still be gorgeous.”

  His eyes, I decided, were his best feature. They were like bi­refringent blue prisms, splitting the light into playful rays.

  “I want you to meet somebody,” he said.

  We were heading back across the room, but suddenly it filled with the tintinnabulation of cocktail forks clinking against crystal. The band fell silent. DeMott stopped and looked toward the stage, frowning. His father, Harrison Fielding, and his mother, Peery, stood on the platform with the band. Peery surveyed the crowd, her unlined face glowing above a peach-colored gown, already very mother-of-the-bride. The tuxedoed Mr. Fielding stepped toward the microphone.

  “Thank
you all for coming to celebrate my beautiful daughter MacKenna and her groom-to-be, Stuart Morgan.” He paused, significantly. “This wedding has been a long time coming.”

  There was a murmur through the crowd. DeMott leaned down, speaking into my ear. His breath felt warm on my skin. But I shivered. “Care to say something about the delays, Raleigh?”

  I tried to glare at him. He laughed.

  “My lovely wife, Peery, and I would like to offer a toast,” Harrison Fielding continued. “Please, raise your glasses and join us in wishing this young couple a long and happy life together.”

  MacKenna Fielding stepped onstage with her parents, followed by her fiancé. She wore a fir-green dress, the lustrous folds of satin falling from the narrow bodice. Standing behind her, Stuart Morgan wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “Among life’s greatest blessings is a loving spouse.” Mr. Fielding raised his glass. “May you honor each other. May you remember the great legacy each of you brings into this marriage. May you know that your mother and I, along with Mr. and Mrs. Morgan and everyone in this room, wish you nothing but happiness.”

  The crowd applauded and cheered and Stuart spun Mac around, dipping her into a luxurious kiss. The crowd erupted.

  But DeMott growled under his breath.

  I looked over. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head.

  Mac wrapped her long arms around Stuart’s neck, her hands fluttering a moment, the light from the chandeliers catching in the enormous diamond of her engagement ring. The gleaming spotlight provoked another appreciative response from the crowd.

  “That’s some diamond,” I said.

  “She needs it.” He took my hand. “C’mon.”

  The musicians were striking up a song I didn’t recognize as we worked our way to the double doors that faced the river. Back when this house was built, air-conditioning was a breeze off the water. And it still worked. Braced open, the doors ushered in a fresh snap of air, diluting the room’s heat. Sitting in a silk moiré chair, an elderly man took in the breeze.

  “Granddad,” DeMott said, “I’d like you to meet Raleigh Harmon.”

  His tuxedo shined at the seams, his red bow tie sitting cockeyed. And his hair was a sparse white Caesar ring, almost as white as his new Nike tennis shoes.