by G. M. Ford
“It was, wasn’t it?”
She put on her conspiratorial face. “Let me ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Do you ever…” She wagged a finger in my face. “Tell the truth. Do you ever wish that I had a set like that?”
I tried, “A set of what?” But it didn’t float. She cupped her hands and held them about a foot from her chest.
“Arthritic hands?”
“Answer the question.”
“You mean knockers?”
She nodded. I gave her my best shit-eating grin and my best southern drawl. “Hell, darlin’, you had you a pair a hooters like that, I’d never leave the house.”
She got to her feet and put two bucks on the table. “You’re an evil man,” she said.
12
THREE-POINT-NINE MILES PAST THE BRIDGE, I PULLED THE car into a turnout. Two hundred yards ahead, the dirt road turned sharply to the right. “This is about where the sheriff said the accident took place. Let’s see if we can find the spot.”
On the left, the road cut rose ten feet into the dark trees above. On the right the ground fell away in a hurry. The absence of reliable light persuaded the vegetation to experiment. No two trees or bushes or vines grew from the earth at precisely the same angle. Dark shoulders of granite loomed among the sword fern and bracken.
Rebecca said what I was thinking. “Sheriff Hand said you could see it all the way in town, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Ahead the ground grew steeper, and the plants fewer. Mostly native scrub oak. The boulders ran in lines like knuckles across the slopes. “There,” she said. Must have been two hundred feet down the ravine. Looked like it had been hit with a meteor. A thirty-by-thirty boulder blackened nearly to the top. A quarter acre of black, scorched earth.
“Went over right here,” I said, pointing to a broken piece of embankment right in front of my feet. Thirty feet ahead, the tow trucks had plowed a path with the burned-out chassis. Rebecca walked over, looked down the chute and said, “Let’s go.”
It took us ten minutes to get down to the wreck site and half an hour to climb back out. Not because the climb was so arduous, but because it was on the way back out when we finally got smart and stopped obsessing on the destination and started paying attention to the journey. Actually, she, not we.
The site itself was nothing special. We tramped around on the sooty vegetation for a few minutes, as if we were going to learn something through osmosis, and then started back up, this time taking the elliptical route the car had taken, rather than the nearly straight up-and-down section we’d descended. We were halfway back up the hill, sitting on a boulder for a breather, when Rebecca looked at her hands.
“Did I touch anything when we were down at the scene?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Then why are my hands all dirty?”
I checked mine. Same deal. All black.
“Must be coming from the bushes,” I said, referring to the omnipresent scrub oak that we’d both been using to pull ourselves back up the ravine.
“I thought the scenario was that the car hit the rock and then, for reasons unknown, burst into flames.”
I reckoned how that was likewise my conception. We continued up, paying attention now, getting down on our knees to rummage among the leaves. No doubt about it. Halfway down the hill the car had been on fire. The wiry oak stalks were singed. Here and there, half-burned leaves lay among their freshly fallen brethren. By the time we reached the top, we were certain. When J.D. Springer’s car had left the road, it had been fully engulfed in flames.
“Maybe he lit a cigarette or something?” I tried.
“What with…a blow torch?”
We started for the car. “I want to drive,” I said. I took it easy, nosing my way around the blind corners all the way to J.D.’s place.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Rebecca announced.
I started up the incline toward the shop. I didn’t like what I was thinking at all. When I opened the spigot on the tank marked U, I liked it even less. U for unleaded. D for diesel. I tried to shake the tanks but they wouldn’t budge. I stooped down and put my back under the unleaded tank as if I were going to dead-lift it. No way.
I searched the perimeter of the building and came up with a weathered piece of one-by-two about five feet long. I climbed the makeshift stairs at the back of the tanks, unscrewed the bung on the unleaded tank and stuck the oneby-two down inside. The tank was nearly full. My high school math had deserted me even before high school, so I was forced to look at the tank and ask myself how many fifty-five-gallon drums it would hold. Four, I figured. Something like two hundred gallons of gas.
“Leo,” Rebecca yelled.
I hustled down the hill. Her face was in a knot.
“I called J.D.’s parents. They’re frantic. They haven’t heard from Claudia and the kids, either. Not since she shipped the body back.”
“How’d you get the number?”
“They were autodial number one,” she said. I told you. A smart girl. Her face forced me to play my hand.
“Okay, listen…this isn’t for sure or anything, but I think maybe Claudia and the kids are over on the reservation. Probably at the daycare center where she works.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because the inflatable boat she’s been using to go to work is missing.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Well, why in bloody hell didn’t you say so?”
“Because it was a lot more likely she was with J.D.’s folks. And because I didn’t want to get your hopes up and then turn out to be wrong.”
She poked me in the chest with her finger. Once for every word. “Tell you what…from now on, I want you to feel free to get my hopes up…okay?”
I checked my shirt for holes and said I would.
“Why would she go over there?” she asked.
“Maybe because it’s safe,” I said.
I jogged inside and pulled the keys to both jet boats from their hooks in the kitchen. Each had a blue floating key chain with the Three Rivers logo.
I got the right key in the right boat on the first try. Set it neutral, quarter throttle, turned the key…started right up with a deep throbbing sound. I let it idle.
“What were you doing up there on the hill?” she asked.
“Checking those tanks.”
“And?”
“And the one marked ‘U’ has about two hundred gallons of unleaded gas in it. Which begs the question—”
She finished for me. “Why a man with that much fuel at home would be riding around with ten gallons of gas in his car?”
“If he’d been traveling toward town,” I began, “then maybe—”
“But he wasn’t,” she said. “He clearly was on his way home.”
Implications hung above us like cannon smoke. I pushed the red handle forward a notch, increasing the rpms. “I don’t like it,” I said after a minute. “I don’t like it that the guy who owns the only gas station in town can’t answer a simple question about whether or not he sold J.D. some gas. I don’t like it that J.D. needed ten gallons of gasoline like a fish needs a bicycle, and I really don’t like it that the car was fully engulfed in flame when it left the road. Something stinks here.”
“Great minds think alike,” she said.
As Rebecca cast off the bow line, I eased the boat out into the current. J.D. had been right: As we moved downstream over the mouth of the boat ramp, I could feel the deep rumbling of the hole in the bedrock beneath my feet. I gave it some gas and sent us sliding over the water toward the far shore. I worked the bank upstream for the better part of a mile and didn’t see a thing, so I turned around. Six hundred yards downstream from the homestead, I saw the Avon, tied to a little floating dock set back in a recess in the bank. I eased the sled over to the downstream side and tied us up. We followed the power lines into the settlement and then the signs that said DAYCARE CENTER—with an arrow,
no less—to the daycare center. Modern woodsmanship. Northwest Indian tribes learned a great deal from the mistakes of their eastern brothers. They hired first-rate lawyers and ended up with the choice real estate instead of the land nobody wanted.
The building sat on an outcrop of rock overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Painted in traditional red and black and white, a stylized eagle adorned the area above the door. To the north, forty or so houses looked out on a narrow bay and ramshackle marina. To the left, a stone breakwater stretched nearly all the way across to the nearest island. North and south for as far as the eye could see, the ocean was studded with rocky outcrops, some big enough to have trees growing on top, others barren and sharp as teeth. Daycare occupied the landward end of the building. Two women and about eight kids were playing a board game at a table. The shrill sound of children echoed from elsewhere in the building. One of the women rose from her chair and crossed the room. She was short and stout and had probably never in her life cut her hair. It hung to the backs of her knees like a shiny black curtain. “Help you folks?”
“We’re looking for Claudia Springer,” Rebecca said. The woman’s face closed like a trap. “Don’t have anybody by that name.” Before either Rebecca or I could respond, she asked, “You folks know where you are?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“No,” she said quickly. “I do not excuse you. This land belongs to the Hoh people. They said it in court and on a paper. You have no place here. Go back to the United States where you came from.”
“Please—” Rebecca began.
“Would you rather I called the tribal police?”
And it probably would have ended right there, except at that moment two more women entered the room from a doorway to our left. They led a column of about a dozen chattering children into the room. Why, I don’t know—it’s not like I’m any good with kids; maybe he missed his father and somehow, in his little mind, had us connected—but Adam Springer broke from the ranks and ran to my side, holding out his arms and shouting my name. I picked him up and kissed him on the cheek. He stuck his face into my neck and hugged me. The little guy was a bit ripe. I guess getting shot at will wreak havoc on a guy’s potty training. The woman smiled. “Children don’t lie,” she said. “You come with me.”
13
“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” I SAID. “THE NIGHT AFTERJ.D.’s death. After his body…after he was already on his way to his parents…that’s when the house got shot up?” Claudia nodded.
“And you didn’t use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I was so scared. I just grabbed the kids and ran for the boat. I knew they couldn’t follow me here,” she said.
Since the night of the fire, Claudia and the kids had been living in two rooms over the tribal offices. Sheriff Hand had brought the news of J.D.’s death late on a Wednesday afternoon. Knowing that Claudia and the kids were out there alone, he’d brought along a trio of local church ladies, who’d made tea, fussed with the kids and done all the things that well-meaning souls do in a moment like that. They’d provided everything from shoulders to cry on to helping with the delicate business of telling J.D.’s elderly parents the news. They’d called the Springers’ car insurance company. They’d called J.D.’s life insurance provider. Two of the women had stayed overnight. As she spoke, I remembered what Ramona Haynes had said about small towns and a sense of belonging. First thing in the morning, right after Deputy Spots drove off with the church ladies, Claudia had begun to pack. What she wasn’t planning to take, she carted up and locked in the shop. About three o’clock that afternoon, a gray Ford Taurus pulled to a stop in the driveway. Claudia’d given me his business card. J. Morris Thompson, Senior Adjuster, Prudential of North America. Seattle address and numbers.
“How much was he insured for?”
“Three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Good service,” I’d commented.
Her eyes filled with tears. “They’re not going to pay,” she said.
Rebecca beat me to it. “What?”
“He said they had some questions regarding J.D.’s death and were withholding payment of the claim until they were satisfied about how he died.” Rebecca and I eyed each other. She took the lead. “We had some questions, too,” she said. We took turns. She told Claudia how we knew the car had been fully engulfed when it left the road. Claudia just shook her head; she seemed numb, as if unable to process the ramifications of the news.
When I started with the unneeded gasoline, however, Claudia perked up.
“That’s exactly what I told him,” Claudia said. “And he’d never have carried gas in the Subaru, anyway. That was the family car. We had an agreement about not carrying messy things in the station wagon.” She pounded the table in front of her with the flat of her hand. “That’s even more ridiculous than J.D. not paying the taxes.”
“You’re saying he paid them?”
“Of course he paid them. It’s right there in our checkbook.”
Checkbook notations only prove you had a pen that worked, so I asked, “Do you have a receipt?”
She nodded. “The county says it’s not one of theirs.”
“It’s not on letterhead or anything like that?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s just a plain receipt. It’s not even signed,” she said. I thought she was going to bawl, but she kept it together.
“What did we know? It was the first time we’d ever paid them. We had no idea what an official receipt looked like.”
“What about the check?” I tried.
“It’s never been cashed,” she said.
I felt like I was lost in the Twilight Zone, so I backtracked.
“Tell me again what the insurance guy said.”
She started to sob, so it was hard to understand.
“He…he…didn’t quite come out and say it…he…” She balled her hands. “He said that…considering J.D.’s position and all, they weren’t satisfied that it was an accident.”
“Neither are we,” I said.
Now she began to bawl. “You don’t understand,” she said, struggling to get it out. “They think J.D. killed himself so the kids and I could have the insurance money.” A dam broke somewhere inside. Her body was wracked with sobs. Rebecca went to her side and held her as they rocked slowly back and forth on the sofa.
Rebecca’s arms were around Claudia, but her eyes were locked on mine. We’d never even considered suicide, and yet, if you looked at it that way, suicide explained everything. Faced with bankruptcy and ruin, J.D. doesn’t see any way out for his family except to stage an accident. That way no matter what happens with the property, his family has a nice little nest egg.
What didn’t make sense was the timing of the attack on the house. In a town the size of Stevens Falls, everyone knew what had happened to J.D. Springer within an hour of when he went over that embankment. I mean, who’s going to sneak out in the dead of night to terrorize his widow and children? To what end?
“What happened after the insurance guy left?” I asked. She blew her nose, swallowed most of a Dr Pepper and told me the story. Naturally, she’d been upset. She’d been telling herself that no matter what, at least she’d be getting the insurance money. “I guess I kind of went to pieces,” she said. By the time she had regained some measure of composure, it was just about dark. She’d called J.D.’s parents to say there had been a change of plans and that she and the children would be over tomorrow afternoon.
The shooting had started at about ten-thirty that night. The kids were asleep. Claudia was lying in bed looking at pictures of their life in Montana. Like I’d figured, the first barrage took out the lights. By the time shots had started tearing through the windows, she and the kids were hunkered down in the living room, with two log walls between themselves and the shooters. By the time she worked up the courage to do something about the fire, smoke had filled the upper half of the cabin.
“I waited till after the firing st
opped,” she said. “It got really smoky. I was afraid if I left by car, they’d be waiting for me up on the road, so I put the kids in the Avon and came over here.” She looked from Rebecca to me and back. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said and began bawling again. Rebecca held her while we both assured her that she’d done exactly the right thing.
She separated herself from Rebecca and ran both hands over her face. “I’ve got to get myself together,” she said. She looked at me.
“Do you think J.D. killed himself?” she asked. I answered truthfully. “I don’t know,” I said. “From what I know, I’d have to say it was a possibility.”
Rebecca jumped in. “It’s also possible it was an accident.”
“Or that…,” Claudia began, “that somebody did that to him.”
“Equally possible,” I agreed.
“We could try to narrow it down,” Rebecca said.
“How?” I asked.
“The body was neither embalmed nor autopsied. No telling what it might be able to tell us.” She turned to Claudia. “He wasn’t cremated, was he?”
She shook her head no. I thought she was going to cry again, but instead she wiped her nose and said, “That was his wish. He wanted his ashes sprinkled on the Yellowstone.”
She dropped her hands to her sides. “But after what happened…how he looked…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t burn him up the rest of the way.” She turned to Rebecca. “Are you saying that you want to…”
Rebecca stopped her. “I want to do whatever you want to do,” she said. “And I want to be honest with you, Claudia. I’ve seen pictures. With the tissue in that condition, it’s going to be quite a challenge.”
Claudia paced the room. “Do his parents have to know?”
“The matter is totally in your hands,” Rebecca said. “You’re the only one with the power to exhume.”
She paced some more, talking more to herself than to us.
“I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had to decide anything. I’ve always deferred to J.D. J.D. always knew what to do.”
After a while, she stopped pacing and seemed to steel herself.