by Elle Keaton
Adam could discuss late Renaissance painters and the influence of the spice trade. He’d met Alan Ginsberg once and knew his poetry. He could quote parts of On the Road like it was the Gettysburg address. He’d wanted to play football and be invited to other kids’ houses.
His dad had finally picked up an old TV and VCR from a secondhand place. They didn’t lack for money, but Adam was subjected to old movies his dad remembered seeing and could rent from the public library. So Adam knew the films of Joan Crawford, the Fondas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Mitchum.
Gah. Even in his head he sounded like a whiny baby. At least he’d made the choice to move away and live a different life. It hadn’t been forced on him. He glanced over at Micah, whose face was turned toward the window again. Adam was a selfish jerk. He was in Skagit to tie up the loose ends of his father’s estate, couldn’t hardly wait to wash his hands of the guy’s memory, while Micah was struggling to heal from a loss so profound it still affected his everyday life ten years later.
Micah asked out of the blue, “Why did you become a cop?” Mind reader.
“Fed.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m with the feds, a federal investigator. They recruited me almost before I started college.
“Okay, but you could have said no. Why not?”
Adam felt . . . something behind Micah’s question, though he wasn’t sure what. “Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
He kept driving, the car silent except for the sound of the tires on the wet asphalt and the rain pummeling the hood. Micah waited for his answer. They were only about ten minutes from the motel. Adam wanted a hot shower and a beer. And for Micah to stay.
“I’m not really sure. I mean, I always wanted to be a ‘good guy.’ We didn’t have a TV until I was in high school. I spent a lot of time at the public library. You’ve been to the Skagit library?”
Micah nodded.
“Well, it had a pretty small budget, probably still does. I mostly read true crime and mystery novels. I wanted to be that guy, the one finding out the truth.” He chuckled, embarrassed. “In about half the books, it seemed, the protagonist would spend a lot of time talking about how they were the voice of the victim. They spoke for the dead. It appealed to me. Plus, it made my dad angry. Angrier than I had ever seen him before. I figured if being a cop made him that mad, it was probably good.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“A voice for the dead?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Good.”
The motel came up on the right, and Adam pulled into the parking lot. He hadn’t asked, just assumed Micah would spend the night again. “Hope this is okay.”
The room was still dark and depressing. The bed hadn’t been made from that morning; the remains of their takeout were still jumbled on the little table. Adam considered that he should change motels.
“Why are you staying here?” Micah again echoed his own grumpy thoughts.
“When I drove into town, after I went to Gerald’s first, this place didn’t seem so bad. But I think I may have overestimated their desire to have an actual guest.”
“It’s too late to change tonight. My house … well, between the cleaning company and repairs, Brandon says a week.”
“Brandon, hmm?”
“Are you jealous?” Micah asked incredulously.
Yes. He was never going to admit it; he just looked at Micah, waiting for him to fill it in. It had worked before; it would work now.
Micah took off his coat and hung it over the back of the single chair. Last night they’d pulled the table up to the couch so Adam could sit across from Micah. He watched while Micah toed off his shoes and started digging around in the duffel they’d brought over.
Adam stood there watching and waiting until he saw Micah was dragging out the takeout menu again and flopping onto the bed, apparently not going to answer him about Brandon. He cleared his throat. Micah smiled, his dimple making another appearance, while he focused intently on the menu.
“Mexican tonight? Looks like the Three Amigas delivers.”
Adam stripped off his coat and boots and flung himself onto the bed next to Micah.
“I’ve never had anyone jealous over me. I’m savoring it.”
“I’m not jealous,” he lied. He’d never been jealous of anyone. He’d never been with anyone worth being jealous of.
Micah let out a long-suffering sigh, but he smiled, too, so Adam figured he hadn’t messed up too badly.
“Brandon and I have known each other our whole lives. Even though I was homeschooled—before you ask, not religious reasons; I was so shy as a kid I threw up every day before school. They got me through kindergarten because it was half days, but first grade, no way was I going back. I guess I can be pretty stubborn.” He smiled at the memory. “My mom didn’t mind; she was a part-time history professor, could set her own schedule pretty much. I was lucky. But I still played with the kids who lived in our neighborhood.”
“And Brandon was one of them.”
“And Brandon was one of them,” Micah answered. “After my parents, Brandon was the first person who knew I was gay. He was so confused. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t like boys and girls, like he did. We were like brothers; he lived just down the street.” He shook his head. “As soon as he left for college, his parents divorced, sold the house, and got rid of his dog.”
Adam must have looked truly horrified.
“Right?” Micah said. “He fell apart. He’d always been so fun, full of laughter and true joy. He had a breakdown. My parents took him in. He couldn’t go back to school. He came home, to Skagit, in December, and stayed until the next fall. Anyway, after . . . the . . . when my parents and Shona were killed, he was there for me. Maybe a little bit because of what my parents had done for him, but mostly because he is my best friend.”
Adam thought on that for a few minutes. Then he came back to, “They gave away his dog?” That was a line even his own fucked-up parents hadn’t come close to.
“For real. I think it was his mother who did it. That woman is a real piece of work.”
“Okay, so I was a little jealous.” And I have no right. Adam kept that thought to himself.
Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Micah convinced Adam they needed to get out of the motel the next day. He’d been quizzing Adam the evening before. Trying to fit him somewhere in his lexicon of Skagit, since they had both grown up there at the same time. He was horrified by the things Adam hadn’t done or seen. Micah said he was making a mental list of the worst offenses. He wouldn’t tell Adam where they were going today, though, just, “It will be worth it.”
“There are tour buses that do this now, but I like it better this way,” Micah said as he drove his ratty 4x4 eastward.
Adam stared out the car window, watching the barren trees flash by. They were heading toward Mt. Baker again. He’d missed the mountains, too, along with the rain. Even with the influx of people since he had moved away, the sheer ruggedness of the North Cascade mountain range was something to behold. The mountains were unforgiving and magnificent.
“This highway wasn’t even finished until 1972,” Micah said. “Can you believe that? No one knows how many men worked on it. Because, of course, by the time it was finished, any records from the earliest days were gone.”
It was easy to imagine rugged mountain men sweating blood and risking body parts putting this road through. Currently they were on a flat stretch with wide meadows on both sides and a few lonely stumps here and there. A dead tree with its tangled limbs reaching out in all directions. A sign indicated the road was soon going to be a series of switchbacks. Micah slowed down as the road narrowed and they entered the Mt. Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest.
“It’s almost lighter here now than during the summer, because the leaves aren’t blocking the sunshine,” Micah said.
It was kind of sunny. The cloud cover was relatively m
eager, letting a few rays through here and there. Adam supposed the temperature was just above freezing. His L.A. was getting a serious beating. They turned off onto a forest road Micah drove expertly, dodging potholes the size of ponds, downed trees and branches strewn everywhere.
“I camp up here a lot.”
“By yourself?” Adam couldn’t imagine Micah camping with a bunch of drunken idiots.
“Yeah, I park at one of the trailheads and hike in. It’s amazing how a bit of a hike cuts down on the number of people you run across. There are more people than when I was a kid, but I can still come up here in August and find a spot to myself a couple of miles off the highway.”
Adam had gone hiking as a kid and teen. He had sullenly followed Gerald around what were probably gorgeous hiking trails. Trillium, great. Wild orchid, great. Can we go home now? He’d forgotten they’d done that together.
Micah pulled to a stop in a small cutout to the left of the road. There weren’t any other cars there now, but Adam could see tire prints and impressions where vehicles had parked recently.
A muddy footpath that had seen a lot of use led them down toward the riverbank. The cedars dripped relentless damp, and the path was pocketed with puddles neither of them could avoid. Adam’s boots were soaked, his jeans stuck uncomfortably to his thighs. He didn’t care. He was happy. And shit-scared. But happy. Lost in thought, he was unprepared for what awaited them around the last bend in the trail.
There must have been over a hundred bald eagles camped out in the evergreens along both sides of the river. Raw and stunning, the river was running so fast it was hard to hear each other over its raucous pandemonium. The eagles were loud, too. It stank like bird shit and dead fish. It was overwhelming.
Somewhere along the way Adam had forgotten or lost touch with the part of himself that needed this. Years of tromping around crime scenes, trying to see what wasn’t there or what shouldn’t be there, had muted the pure joy of the scent of cedars and sounds of birds—even eagles, which are damn stupid and ugly, he thought as he watched a couple of young eagles fight over a salmon carcass only to have it stolen by a smarter, mature eagle.
“It’s actually not quite viewing season yet.” Micah’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. “Last year there were over three hundred by the end of the season. And it’s better really early in the morning, but . . . hey!” Micah pointed across the river, about eighty feet away from where they were. “Is that a bear? Holy cow!”
“Jesus Christ,” Adam muttered.
“It’s just a black bear; they’re pretty skittish.”
“I cannot believe you camp up here on your own.”
“You didn’t, as a kid? I mean, with … anyone?”
Micah hadn’t asked too many direct questions about Adam’s childhood. Adam supposed the fact that he hadn’t been back in almost two decades spoke volumes. His dad had tried for a while. Until whatever it was Gerald struggled with weighed him down so heavily that he couldn’t function. Until the steady string of girlfriends who each thought she would be the one ended. Gerald had been a handsome man, and a rich man. All the single girls had tried, and his dad let them. Led them on, letting them cook and clean and take care of his son until they got tired of it, and then he’d let them leave. Kind of like Adam had left when he was eighteen.
The girlfriends had stopped trying when Adam was ten or so. That was when Gerald began “collecting,” and his cronies stepped in and basically mooched off him. Maybe that’s why the women stopped coming around. And, yeah, Ed had been one of those guys. So had Don, but now they were trying to help clean up the mess Gerald had left behind.
Maybe Gerald had done the best he could.
“Gerald and I went hiking a few times when I was a kid. The only animals I ever saw were deer and chipmunks. He was big into wildflowers.”
“Oooh, killer chipmunks. Gotta watch those, native only to the Skagit Valley.” Micah smiled at him. Even though they were standing precariously on rocks with the Skagit River crashing below them and a few other weekday eagle visitors, Adam couldn’t help but lean in and kiss him.
He meant it to be a quick “Thank you for showing me this,” but somehow he found himself pulling Micah toward him and kissing him hard. Full of an emotion he was still scared to name, Adam broke the kiss and buried his face in Micah’s warm neck so he wouldn’t be able to see the look in his eyes. Micah seemed to understand, or at least didn’t question. They stood there, together, next to a river full of life—a bear on the other side, for Christ’s sake—just holding on.
Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
Work on Gerald’s house was going slowly. The weather continued to interfere with yard cleanup. At least the county wouldn’t be breathing down his neck calling it a fire hazard. The inside of the house was complicated. With the trash mostly gone, Adam could see where persistent neglect had taken its toll. There was a lot of water damage. The downstairs bathroom had clearly flooded or had a broken pipe more than once. Underneath the sink and shower, the flooring was nearly rotted through. The kitchen was squalid; all the appliances would need to be replaced, along with more flooring. The refrigerator was the same one Adam remembered from high school. The stove didn’t seem to work at all. Adam was having a hard time imagining what his father had eaten in his final years.
The last time they had spoken had been about a year before Gerald died. They hadn’t had much to say to each other. Adam couldn’t discuss his cases, and Gerald hadn’t wanted to hear about them anyway. Adam had been distracted, working on a brutal kidnapping. His dad had been rambling on about “jackbooted thugs” and the police state evolving in Skagit. From what Adam had gathered, the county had responded to a complaint by one of his new neighbors. The new house, taller than the others, had a partial view of Gerald’s backyard, and they did not like what they saw.
Adam understood. But he’d also known his dad. Gerald dug in over this threat to his freedom. Plus, he’d been in the county for decades, unlike the neighbors, and his paintings still brought money and tourists to Skagit. Adam had not envied the county official who had to deal with Gerald.
There was some mail stacked in a Tupperware container that Adam should probably go through. He figured it was important since Gerald had made the effort to protect it from harm. Adam stacked the tub and some photo albums and took them out to his car. He’d been out at the house all day and was tired. Physically and emotionally. He didn’t know what he would do without Ed and Don and the rest. They were standing around in the front; Don’s friend Tim was smoking a cigarette and looking guilty about it.
“Hey, guys. Let’s get out of here.”
By mutual agreement they all headed into town for dinner and beers on Adam. The Beaver was everyone’s favorite place, and over the last week or so they had become regulars. Well, Adam had become a regular; the older guys already had their semi-permanently reserved table. Tonight they had included Buck and his employee Miguel in the mix. Adam wasn’t sure Buck could hold his own with this crew.
“Micah joining us tonight?” Ed asked. As soon as they had gotten a whiff of the budding whatever-it-was between Adam and Micah, they’d begun to tease him without mercy. For whatever reason, these red-nosed blue-collar guys who’d spent their entire lives in a piddly little town thought he and Micah were the romance of the year. He shuddered, thinking of the embarrassing questions they had asked the first couple of times they’d gone for drinks. Adam had to have more than one drink to answer them.
“Yeah, is that cutie joining us? If you don’t get a move on, I’m going to join the other side and ask him out myself.” Don cackled with glee at his joke and took a big swallow of the beer he was holding. Adam shook his head. These guys were amazing. Clearly the thing holding him back from whatever he might want with Micah was not his dad’s old friends.
“Ya know, Adam, we weren’t born yesterday. There was this era called the 1960s, and most of us were young men then. We may not all play for your team, bu
t we’ve been around.”
Adam did not want to know what kind of “been around” Tim was referring to. Miguel chuckled, while Buck just shook his shaggy blond head.
The door to the pub swung open, and Micah walked in. All the guys catcalled him and whistled. Adam wanted to crawl under the table. For some reason this behavior only made Micah laugh, not melt into a puddle of embarrassment. He made his way to their table, high-fived the guys, and sat down where he belonged, next to Adam. It felt weirdly like a family dinner. It felt scarily perfect. It felt scary.
His phone vibrated. This was the other thing. If it wasn’t a woman walking her dog, it was his fucking phone ringing. For some reason, Adam knew this wasn’t going to be Ed McMahon or whoever had taken over calling to give him a big fat check.
Outside under the awning, he listened to Mohammad’s update of what they did and didn’t know, what they suspected, and what possible next steps would be.
They’d already known the body was Jessica’s. Thirty-seven-year-old Karol Abrahams was mourning her twenty-two-year-old daughter. Adam shivered and felt kind of sick to his stomach, nodding while Mohammad kept the facts coming fast and hard.
The memory card alone was cause for federal involvement. Lieutenant Nguyen had no choice now. Adam was very glad he hadn’t seen more than that quick look. The child-porn industry was a depraved beast. He had so much respect for those investigators who were able to stomach it and come out the other side somewhat normal.
The card held over two hundred explicit pictures of approximately twenty different children who appeared to be as young as five years old. One of the pictured teens had been pregnant. Pictures of Jessica had been on the card as well, although according to the date stamp she had been over eighteen. Adam wanted to throw up.
“One more thing,” Mohammad said.