“Maybe he doesn’t.”
“Maybe your obligation should be to her family.”
He glanced at the crane. She was flying over the same patch of carpet, ear buds dangling, with her head cocked this way for better acoustics.
“Wait here,” he said.
He didn’t come back for quite some time. I checked my watch, felt a stab of panic, and spent several more minutes watching the crane powder the carpet. The smell made my eyes itch.
I stepped into the small foyer by the front door, where I could still see the priest’s door but not smell the powder as much. Eight more minutes passed. Nine. My impatient gaze drifted to the pamphlets in the wire rack. Things about drug addiction. Adoption. Counseling. Depression.
The priest stepped out. Alone.
He walked to the foyer. “Mason has nothing to say to you.”
“To me,” I clarified. “But he had plenty to tell you. After all, it’s time for confession.”
“I wouldn’t tell—”
I pointed to the bulletin board next to the pamphlets. It listed the weekly schedule. Sacrament of Penance, daily 11-1.
“He just made it,” I said.
“I hope you have a nice day, Raleigh.”
He walked away.
And the vacuum kept sucking.
Just like my entire day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I walked out of Our Lady of Snows muttering under my breath.
First, because Mason Leming was using the church like it was some type of diplomatic immunity—God’s turf, no questions allowed. And second, this horrible little detour cost me valuable time. Now I’d really find out if Eleanor would pay my speeding tickets.
But the reason for muttering was maybe biggest of all.
Now I had to call Jack.
He didn’t pick up the first time. I called back.
On the fifth ring, I heard: “Harmon.”
“Stephanson,” I shot back.
“Where are you?”
“Still in Leavenworth.” I walked across the parking lot to The Ghost. Those two shovels were propped up in the passenger seat like crash test dummies who lost their heads. “I’m outside Our Lady of Snowjobs.”
“You sound angry.”
Digging the car key from my back pocket, I described today’s adventures in investigating. I passed Mason’s truck and glanced into the cab. A white T-shirt was on the bench seat. Black boots on the floor. So he must’ve ran into the church barefoot. Empty Sprite cans on the floor. Strands of hay lodged in dirt clumps.
“You’re thinking he did it?” Jack asked.
“He’s acting guilty.” I moved around the truck, checking the tires for soil.
“So what are you going to do?” Jack asked.
I gazed into the truck bed. Blue tarp. Chain saw. Rope. Shovel.
I stopped.
“Harmon?”
The metal face was chipped. Dented.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Harmo—”
I slid my finger across the screen. My backpack was waiting in The Ghost. I took out latex gloves, snapped them on, and plotted revenge. Grab the shovel. Take it to the office, run the comparison. Nail this jerk.
I glanced back at the church. The doors were closed.
But I kept looking. Like something else was there.
Go away.
I yanked Ziploc baggies from the pack and my camera.
Go bother someone with a conscience.
I walked toward Mason’s truck, but kept glancing at the church. It was like something was standing at the doors. Invisible, but real.
Leave me alone.
Standing next to Mason’s truck, I glared that shovel. I could see the dent in its face. The soil that clung to the edges. I took photos of it, making sure to show the truck, too. With time and date stamped on the image. Authenticated.
I reached over the side. Take the shovel. Keep it so Mason can’t get rid of it. So you can hike it up the mountain and test it on site.
Right?
I looked back at the church. My personnel file at the Bureau was full of examples. Choices bring consequences. How many times had my ends justified my means.
“Fine,” I groused to the invisible. “You win.”
Lifting my camera, I took three more shots. And left the shovel where it was.
“But, Mason,” I said, “you are going down.”
* * *
The Ghost hit 90 on the highway’s straight sections. When I crossed the mountain pass, I backed down to 80. Then 70 when I hit the town of Cle Elum. Then 50 in North Bend because rain was pelting the windshield.
By the time I got to Tacoma, traffic ground to a near-halt.
I grabbed my phone and called my aunt. The wipers were going full speed.
“Aunt Charlotte?” I said into the speaker.
“Raleigh! Can I call you back?”
“Sure…”
“I just got a shipment of fire-blood quartz and people are lined up out the door!”
“No problem.”
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Yes,” I sighed. “I’m fine.”
* * *
Madame and I arrived at Western State forty-five minutes late. The feudal gang had already left for dinner.
“She’s waiting for you,” said Sarah the nurse.
“She didn’t go to dinner?”
Sarah’s smile was just this side of pity. “She wanted to wait for you.”
I dipped my face to the shoulder of my shirt, wiping off the rain and sweat. Madame panted in my arms. My wet shoes squeaked on the white-white-white vinyl flooring. I couldn’t feel my feet.
My mom sat on the plastic-covered mattress. She was rocking forward and back. The bed springs laughed. A metallic laughter. Squee-squah-squee.
“Mom?”
Her gaze was on the window, out beyond the chicken wire that was embedded in the safety glass. Beyond the iron bars. Beyond the rain that fell in flat gray shavings as though somebody just above us was trying to file away the security bars.
“Mom.”
“I saw your car.”
I placed Madame on the sterilized white floor. She was shaking but otherwise didn’t move. I gave her a soft push forward. She took three steps and circled back to my ankles. I picked her up.
“Sorry we’re late.” I walked toward the bed. “Traffic was—”
“Where did you get that car?”
“What car?” No. That was the wrong answer. I tried again. “Oh, that white car? It belongs to a friend.”
“Why do you have it?”
“She’s letting me drive it.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have a car.”
She looked at me, and narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you have a car?”
Oh, the rotten trade. It was back. I was telling the truth and it drew ten suspicious thoughts into her mind. Why don’t I have a car? I combed the words, pulling each one from the sentence to examine it. Why. Because I don’t have a car. That’s why. But why didn’t I have any money to buy one. Why? Because I changed jobs. What job. Why wasn’t I living with Aunt Charlotte. Why, why, why and even if I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, my mom’s mind would still find something to suspect.
I set Madame next to her on the bed.
“Mom, I—”
“Who are you?”
“Raleigh.” I pressed my voice down. “I’m Raleigh. Your daughter.”
She stared at me like a stranger. “That car. You were going to take me away in that car.”
“What?”
“For a haircut.” Her mouth tightened. “There’s nothing wrong with my hair.”
“We wanted—”
“We?”
I hesitated. “Me and Aunt Charlotte.”
She laughed, coldly, as if the whole conspiracy was now revealed. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out, whoever you are.”
“But—”
“Get out!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I carried Madame down the stairwell. My hands went numb.
I stopped at the front desk.
“Excuse me,” I said. My lips felt swollen.
The receptionist looked up. She was playing a shooting game on her cell phone.
“Is Dr. Norbert here?” I asked.
She looked at me with a blank stare. “You want me to find out?”
“Yes.” I licked my swollen lips. “Please?”
She picked up a phone on her desk and swiveled the visitor sign-in sheet to read the last name on the list. “How d’you pronounce it?”
“Raleigh.” I took a breath. “Like the city.”
“And Dr. Norbert knows—”
“He’ll know exactly what this is about.”
* * *
Dr. Norbert’s office had the cavernous feel of a wooden skull whose brain had been scooped out for the sake of science.
“Have a seat, Raleigh,” he said.
I took my familiar position on the Freudian couch across from his ergonomic chair.
Right back to square one.
I set Madame at my feet. She sniffed his blue rug, then looked at me.
“I warned you about this weeks ago,” he said, throwing Madame a look of disdain. “These visits were highly risky. I told you that missing one visit would destroy any gains—”
“But I haven’t missed a day.”
He gave me that condescending expression I’d seen too much of during my undercover work for the Bureau. “Today?”
“I was late. I didn’t miss it. Not completely.”
“Perhaps you’ve notice that we follow very stringent routines. We don’t change our visiting hours from one day to the next. We don’t alter meal times. We don’t suddenly give meds at a different hour of the day. You see? Structure is crucial, absolutely crucial. Particularly for someone like your mother’s who’s suffered a highly traumatic psychotic break. We keep life under control. Because she can’t.”
“Have you been on her ward?”
He leaned back in his ergonomic chair. “Why are you asking?”
“Because they are lunatics.”
“This discussion will not continue unless you change your attitude.”
I looked away. His office was a shrine to psychology and himself. Books and medical journals and four different degrees from universities and there was nothing to be gained by arguing with this man. “How can I get her trust back?”
“That’s up to your mother, frankly.” He glanced at Madame and gave a pedantic sniff. “The reports state that your mother enjoys seeing the animal.”
I glanced down at Madame, just so he couldn’t detect the pain in my eyes.
“I’m fairly certain she will want the animal to continue visiting.”
“But not me?” I looked up.
He glanced at his watch, then out his window. More chicken wire and iron bars. How many people wanted to jump out this guy’s window? Especially when he left questions hanging in the air like this.
“Okay, look, I’m no longer your patient, I get it. But I’d appreciate some help. Tell me what I should do.”
“Don’t be late again.”
Was he kidding? I waited, even smiling. “Is that a joke?”
“And stop feeling so guilty,” he said. “Guilt is a fabrication of the mind.”
I waited longer. He had to be kidding. Right?
Wrong.
He checked his watch again. I stood, picked up the dog, and forced myself to sound polite. He was my key back into this crazy kingdom.
“Thank you.” I shoved a smile onto my face. “That’s terrific advice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I wasn’t ready for Eleanor.
Or cocktails.
Or Tennessee.
With Madame in the passenger seat, I headed north to Seattle, the car’s windshield wipers swiping at the rain and doing almost no good. I parked in a lot across from the Smith Tower and walked with Madame down the sidewalk. No umbrella. No hood. But somehow I couldn’t feel the rain. Car wheels hissed past us.
Inside the elegant white building that was named for that “silly gun man,” Patterson stood up behind the guard’s desk.
“Miss Eleanor with you?” he asked.
“Not tonight.” I adjusted the backpack slung over my shoulder.
He walked around the desk, heading for the elevator.
“That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll take the stairs.”
“You sure?” he asked.
Very sure.
Madame and I climbed the alabaster steps. Remnants of rain dripped from the ends of my hair, plopping on the stone. By the third floor, my leg muscles burned. I pushed harder, faster, igniting that burn until it became the familiar pain that’s always blocked the ache in my heart. My lungs felt seared. I refused to stop.
Panting as I keyed open Harry Anderson’s old office, Madame trotted inside. I filled a mug of water for her and set it on the floor, then poured a tall glass of water for myself and guzzled without stopping. Finally, I sat at the desk and plugged in my Nikon to the brand new computer. While the photos transferred, Madame hopped the worn leather couch. She stared at me.
“Alright,” I said, picking up the phone. “I’ll call her.”
Three rings later, Eleanor bellowed, “You’re late!”
“Has anyone ever mentioned your resemblance to the White Rabbit?”
“Don’t be smart with me, young lady.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She was quiet for a moment. I heard music playing in the background. Show tunes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
Another pause. “Where are you?” she asked.
“The office.” I ran a finger over a keyboard, so new that every letter looked freshly stamped. “By the way, thank you for all of this.”
“You already thanked me.”
“I can’t thank you again?”
“Not if you’re doing it because you feel guilty.”
I said nothing.
“Raleigh, what is straight?”
“Excuse me?”
“A line can be straight. Or a street,” she said.
I swear, I could hear her chin rising.
“But the human heart?” she continued. “Oh, no, it’s curved like a road through the mountains.”
I tapped the desk. On the window facing north, raindrops traced the glass, shifting city lights into prismatic neon. “Who said that?” I asked.
“You can come home whenever you’re ready,” she said. “But only when you’re ready.”
She hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
While the new printer spit out copies of the photos, I checked my email. There was a note from Lani. I clicked it open.
She still intended to make a cell phone call, she said. But email was one way to work up to it. Her note was long, with many side trips down memory lane. It hurt to read. I closed the note, saving it for later.
I picked up the printed images. On a bare section of the wood floor, I laid the photos in a rough rectangle, recreating the basic shape of Annicka’s grave. I lined up the photo showing Mason’s shovel head with that vertical stripe cutting through the soil layers. I stepped back.
Madame raised her head. Ears pricked, she gazed at the door. A shadow fell across the pebble glass. She growled.
I stepped to the side.
“Harmon.”
Madame growled again.
“Jack?” Before I could out-think myself, I rushed to the door.
His hair was wet. So were his jeans and his wrinkled Hawaiian shirt. He needed a shave.
“Working undercover?” I said.
“How’d you—”
“The shirt.” Jack’s dubious theory was that wearing crazy-loud Hawaiian shirts while undercover kept people from suspecting he was undercover. “You should
stop wearing them.”
“You should tell Eleanor to stop calling me Stanley.”
“It’s a literary reference,” I said.
“But I’m not Stanley Kowalski.”
I stepped back, inviting him in. He lumbered forward, damp jeans loose around his tight body. Like he’d worn them for days. I stared at the back of his shirt. Really wrinkled.
“Nice digs.” He stood at the window that faced Puget Sound. “She really cares about you.”
I closed the door. Madame walked back to her couch perch. In another life, I might tell Jack about my bad visit with my mom. Instead, I just stuffed down the feelings. “Eleanor’s a generous person.”
He continued to stare out the window. I felt another strange mix of emotions. After my day to hell and back, I needed solitude. Including time away from Jack.
“Is there something you need?” I asked. “Right this minute?”
He turned, and reached into his back pocket. “Here. I ran some lists.”
I unfolded the pages, trying to not think about how warm the paper felt from being next to his body. Nine pages. I saw names, addresses, and short biographical information. The kind of information that comes from cursory background checks. “Jack—”
“Highlighted names are crossovers,” he said. “Those people stayed at both the Waterhaus and the Eiderdown both.”
“But—” I flipped the pages, disbelieving, “—this goes back years.”
“More than twenty years for the Eiderdown. From Esther Keller’s birth year to her death.”
“How did you get it?”
“They’re good Germans. They keep excellent records. Of everything.”
“But you still had to run the names through the system.” I scanned the list. At least one dozen names were highlighted in first three pages. “Anything come up with the crossovers?”
“Nearly everyone moved in one direction. They stayed at the Waterhaus, then moved to the Eiderdown.”
I felt a stab of pity for the Engels. And something else. But I couldn’t look up and say it. “Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Don’t you want to know more?”
“You’ve done enough.”
“One of the crossover guests has forty-two unpaid parking tickets. Another just slapped a tax lien on his ex-wife’s house because he’s bankrupt. Two Starbucks executives are having an affair—both married to other people, who also work at Starbucks, but these two visit Leavenworth monthly and always stay in side-by-side rooms, with a connecting door. You want me to go on?”
The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6) Page 16