I lay there and thought about Lance. He was a surefooted guy if there ever was one, practically a gymnast. I’d seen him walk on his hands down a banister. Joey said he’d tried to save him; well, I guess even a surefooted guy can get into trouble. Just because Joey couldn’t save him didn’t mean he wasn’t a hero for trying.
But I tried to reconcile Lance being dead in the gorge with the blood we’d encountered where we’d found his camera. A confrontation, perhaps? With this Joey Preston, perhaps? Then a pursuit to the gorge where the final struggle occurred? Or the blood could have been Gina’s, or Lance’s in an unrelated mishap. Was Joey enough of a man to overpower the muscular, agile Lance? Moreover, why the hell would he want to? Was this Joey the same one Lydia referred to at the shithole grocery store?
I roused to a small sound, like a mouse scritching. I heard a soft klunk, then George’s voice right in my face, whispering, “Rita?”
I just about had a heart attack. He’d made his way to the cabin and come in totally silently; I’d only heard him as he approached my bunk and evidently set down a bundle of his stuff.
It was pitch-black outside; he’d found his way from the road, he whispered, by the light of his keychain flashlight, Daniel’s directions, and a small compass.
“My God, I don’t believe it,” I whispered back.
“We’ll talk in the morning.” He climbed into the bunk above Daniel, which creaked loudly but didn’t wake any of the guys.
Seconds later, it seemed, he added his baritone breathing to the male cacophony inside that little cabin.
I lay wide-awake now, thinking of his virile presence up there a few feet away, the body I’d missed after I threw him out. I hoped his other girlfriend was sobbing into her pillow. I hoped he still loved me.
To some women, I think, George’s face would seem thuggish. He’d once told me that he felt men ought to look ugly except when they smiled. He’d had his nose broken once or twice, I believed. So what? Except for Daniel, every handsome guy I’d ever known was so in love with himself he could barely walk a straight line.
George’s body was powerful and compact, like the wrestler he’d been in school. Narrow hips, flat stomach. That was another thing: he worked out to keep in shape, not to build those bulging ab muscles that make sixty percent of all the guys you see in L.A. look like they’ve had implants. Maybe they have, come to think of it. They’re so proud of their abs, in their tight T-shirts.
For George, a flat stomach was enough. Time to go for a run.
So what the hell was my problem? He was considerate; he listened; he was sweet in bed.
I’d gone over it all so many times with Gina, who one night all but handcuffed us together and phoned for a mobile justice of the peace.
Sure, I would have been madly in love with George, hell, I’d have been his wife by now, if my first husband hadn’t betrayed my love so badly. Wrong of me to hold on to it, I knew.
It wasn’t fair for me to keep blaming Jeff for my reluctance to commit to George, but here’s the thing: What do marriage vows mean if they don’t mean anything, which they don’t?
Moreover, what got totally destroyed was my belief in my own powers of judgment. I’d thought Jeff was terrific, said, “I do,” and lived to regret the whole thing except Petey. Ribbons on the church pews, honestly.
Fear was clouding my heart: If wedding vows, pledging fidelity and respect and all that, wouldn’t satisfy me, what could George possibly do to prove his sincerity? It was like I was waiting for a goddamn sign or something.
Grateful though I was for his coming to our aid, part of me totally hated that I now had to cope with his presence, hence all this other shit all over again.
I was a damaged, irrational bitch.
It was impossible.
Chapter 19 – A Mystery in the Shed; Alger Returns
Daniel was up at dawn preparing to evacuate Joey Preston when George poked up from his bunk. Daniel grinned. Joey was still sleeping.
I disentangled myself from the stirring Petey and joined them outside for a powwow. We dashed through the rain to the nearby mess shelter, where we sat in the lingering warmth of sleep on the splintering wooden picnic tables. George told us that he’d driven past what he thought was a pretty lake in central Harkett until he saw a drowned cow and realized that was central Harkett.
“The sheriff’s office is underwater. City Hall is underwater. Good old stone building, now’s gonna have a nice high-water mark on it.”
“What about the road into here?” I asked, remembering how high the water was when we came through. “The bridge?”
He rubbed his jaw as Petey came running up to join us. “It was part of the river, essentially, covered with water. I got out and checked it, and I found the actual roadbed was only under about four inches of water. The river’s wider there, see. So I got back in the car and made a run for it.”
“Wow!” said Petey.
“Oh, you should have seen it!” George told him. “The spray must’ve gone a mile high!” He paused, silent. “As soon as I crossed it, I heard a tremendous crash, like a huge, uprooted tree had slammed into the bridge and torn it to matchsticks.”
Daniel and I exchanged pale glances.
“I stopped the car to investigate.”
Petey asked, “What was the sound?”
“A huge, uprooted tree had slammed into the bridge and torn it to matchsticks.”
“Wow!”
George shrugged. “I’d stopped in Port Angeles for more food,” he told Daniel, “like you asked, plus a couple of sleeping bags. I carried in almost all of it, except some food’s still in the car. We can hike back for it any time.”
I said, “Petey, please go and make sure the lake looks OK.” He swiveled his head to the lake, which was right there, and said in a puzzled tone, “It looks OK, Mom.”
“I mean, go check it from another angle, like from the boat launch. Any fish jumping? Maybe we can catch some later.”
“OK!” He sped off.
George said, “Not being able to reach the sheriff’s office here, I phoned the state police as soon as I hung up from you guys. I told them about this Joey Preston—critically injured evacuee—and about Lance. They said they’d do what they could, when they could. At this point, even if they wanted to send a fleet of Hummers in here, they couldn’t. For the time being, we’re alone here with whoever else is in these woods.” He told us briefly, shockingly, of Kenner’s bloodstained safari shirt landing on Mrs. de Sauvenard’s desk.
“She thinks it’s a prank, and she may be right. He’s been obsessed by this movie he wants to make, right? We know he needs money. But given the ambiguous circumstances around Lance’s death, the fact that Gina’s missing, and then the shirt to the mother, plus a demand of ransom money to be delivered to an address in Harkett—which as I mentioned is underwater now—I need to figure out what’s going on here.”
He looked at Daniel, who was shifting from foot to foot, as was his habit when processing new information. George said, “You’ve done a hell of a doctoring job on that guy.”
“If the leg doesn’t get infected,” Daniel said, “he might really come along. I don’t know. He seemed lucid as of last night. I suspect he might feel better when the swelling goes down some, I hope another day or so. The codeine in my mountain kit’s almost gone, I only had a few pills.”
“I brought a bottle of ibuprofen.”
Daniel practically hugged him.
You know, it’s funny about guys. Most straight guys are terrified of fags, but George was so secure in himself he didn’t have anything but respect and affection for Daniel. I suppose if Daniel had been a shrieking wuss, George wouldn’t have liked him, but then, neither would I.
As for Daniel, he didn’t have to play power games with anybody. Being tall and gorgeous and athletic and unflappable helped.
“The police,” said George, “will know they need a helicopter as soon as they realize that bridge is out. I didn’t see any c
hoppers working the flood area, but I didn’t see anybody in distress there either. So I guess the Coast Guard’s busy elsewhere.”
“Couldn’t they send a floatplane?” I suggested.
Daniel looked at me like, Wow, and George said, “That is why I love you.”
“Shut up.”
“Let’s hope somebody on the other side thinks of that,” said Daniel.
George was smiling at me.
He did not bring up the spaghetti-throwing episode, nor did I.
We returned to Badger Cabin, where George gently interrogated Joey Preston. Daniel went to prepare breakfast while I lingered, listening to George and Joey.
“I was hiking,” Joey said, “just by myself, you know, doin’ some scoutin’ for huntin’, and I seen this guy—actually I heard him first, he was hollering, and I went to see. He’d gotten hisself stuck, uh...”
“Yeah?” said George softly, from his squatting position next to Joey. “Stuck where?”
“On the rocks, by where I was. By where you guys found me. I tried to grab his hand. He tried to jump for my hand, kinda, but he fell. He just fell down the rocks into the river.” Joey’s face crumpled. “Oh, Lord, Lord, I tried to save him.”
I sneaked into the interview by taking Joey’s hand and asking, my voice as soft as lotion, “Might it have happened a little upstream of where we found you?”
“Ohh.” His eyes widened. “Well, yeah, it could’ve been, now that I remember. I think it might’ve been just a little up from there.”
“And then you sort of took a misstep, when you tried to climb down to him once he was in the river?”
“Ma’am, that was exactly it.” He sank back with a look of relief. “I’m obliged to you guys, you know, there’s a falls down just a little ways, a big one. I was so scared I’d fall in and go over it.”
“Did he tell you his name?” George asked.
“No, I don’t know who he was. Have no idea.”
“Joey, are you the same Joey who works at the garage in town?”
His eyes flipped wide again, but just for an instant. “No, that would be some other Joey.”
“Do you happen to know him?”
“No, ma’am.” He said this stoutly.
“He’s lying,” I said when we joined Daniel outside.
George waited.
“Even though Lance’s body,” I said, “was well downstream of where we found Joey, he didn’t know that. He had no idea where Lance ended up, all he was trying to do was hang on to that cliff. When I suggested maybe things happened differently, he agreed, realizing that we must know something more than he thought we did. And he doesn’t know this other Joey who works at the garage? The town has like fifty people in it. I guarantee you everybody knows everybody, so either he knows that other Joey or he is that other Joey, and in that case he’s got a grudge against Lance.” I related what Lydia at the store had told me about Lance having played a camp prank on Joey. “Besides, he’s just got lying mannerisms.”
“Like what?” George wanted to know.
“Like I don’t know, he was hesitant, not being straight with us.”
“He’s in pain,” George said. “He’s had a bad shock, and he’s scared.”
“It’s his vibe, he’s hiding the truth,” I insisted.
“Furtive,” put in Daniel.
“So you guys think he killed Lance, then dumped him over the cliff? Or just sneaked up behind him and pushed him over?”
“Yeah!” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Daniel.
“For what reason? Because Lance pissed on his sleeping bag when they were ten?”
We shrugged.
Petey was busy with his telescope, focusing it on the opposite shore of the lake, then into the woods back of the cabins, as if hunting the mutant dinosaurs he kept fantasizing about. He’d dash for cover under some trees or the stone-paved mess shelter and get out his pencils and pad to draw.
He was having an absolute ball.
George said, “Let’s not paint Joey too evil yet.”
We all worked together to prepare a breakfast of canned bacon and beans, bread, and coffee. The guys ate prodigiously, then set off for the gorge to see if they could retrieve Lance’s body.
Daniel had helped Joey Preston go to the bathroom and wash, and he made sure he was as comfortable as possible in his bunk. Given that the bridge to town was destroyed, we could be caring for him for days. I brought him some food, and he was able to sit up and eat a fair amount, two slices of bread and two rashers of bacon. Daniel had told me not to give Joey coffee, because of the mild blood vessel-constricting properties of caffeine, but he wanted it.
As soon as they left, I gave Joey about three fingers’ worth in my tin cup.
“What the hell,” I said, handing it to him. The guy could up and die any minute with some mysterious internal injury.
Though he looked better today, his color having improved still more overnight. He was a thirtyish guy with a dumb, pink-cheeked, scared face. Was he a murderer?
“I guess my cigarettes got ruined,” he said after slurping down the coffee.
“Yeah, Daniel found them crushed in your pocket.”
“Got any?”
“No, sorry.”
“Sure wish I had me one. Any dope?”
“Can’t help you there either.”
His shredded pants were a bloody pile in the corner where Daniel had tossed them; Joey now wore Daniel’s spare pair of briefs beneath the sleeping bag. He also wore a Camp Saskee-wee-wit T-shirt and did not want more covering on his upper body. Like many beefy guys, he gave off a lot of heat.
Joey’s arms were thick and rosy and looked like they could carry a sick calf or sling seventy-pound bales of alfalfa for three hours before lunch, like the farm boys back home. Good ole boy arms. The little finger on his right hand was bent out sideways from an old, unfixed break.
Needless to say, I was anxious to resume searching for Gina. But I understood the importance of getting Lance’s body to safety, if for no other reason than decency.
I wandered the camp, poking into new crevices. I thought I’d carry a stack or two of Camp Saskee-wee-wit T-shirts back to Badger Cabin so they’d be on hand if we needed them, but before getting them I noticed a small shed we’d missed before. I thought it might be an outhouse, but the shape was wrong, too wide.
Petey had evidently found it and used it for climbing practice, as fresh sneaker prints his size were clearly visible on the low metal roof.
He had apparently tried to get inside but found the door, warped in its frame, too hard to budge: this from his footprints in the mud before the door as he must have shifted back and forth, yanking on the handle. I was surprised he hadn’t figured out a way to force his way in, given his headstrong will and increasingly strong body.
And then I saw one of his sneaker prints squashed over by a man-sized boot print, and wondered why Daniel had been here too, and not mentioned it. Little Grand Central Station here.
I grasped the rough, weathered handle, planted my feet, and yanked. On my third effort the door whumped open, vibrating tong-tong-tong on its hinges. The shed was small enough that the open door provided enough light to see by. The floor was sand. A few junky hand tools lay around, plus a lawn mower and a metal gas can, circa God knows when—the mower looked like my grandpa’s, with a cast-iron housing and exposed spark plug. The rusted machine looked so incongruous here, but I imagined the camp had been a much better manicured place in the old days. Of course they’d have mowed the rodent-and-snake-harboring weeds around the cabins and mess shelter.
I turned to go but paused to notice one more thing: a bright bit of orange plastic.
I bent down to find myself jaw-to-jaw with the rugged housing of a chainsaw. Now this was a much more normal item to see in these parts.
Except for one thing: the saw was very clean, no rust, looked nearly new, and smelled of fresh two-stroke mix. It was a hardy-looking Stihl, with a slick
bar guard and everything.
Living on the farm in the summer, I was no stranger to chainsaws. If your farm abuts a wood, you need a chainsaw every so often: to keep the beeches and sumac from taking back your alfalfa fields, to cut up whatever hardwood the storms bring down.
My brothers had received basic training on Uncle Fritz’s Husqvarna chainsaw, and at my insistence they’d taught me. At one time in my young life I’d harbored the ambition to Work In Wood.
Who the hell was storing their nice Stihl with a two-foot bar in this shed? I touched one of the cutting teeth: very sharp. I opened the fuel cap: full. The chain oil reservoir was full too.
Hmm.
_____
Gina had expected to go insane, stranded in the middle of the Quilmash River, which swept endlessly, dizzyingly, past. She was warm and dry enough with the blanket and tarp, and she chewed the loathsome jerky to keep her energy up.
Gramma Gladys used to say hunger is the best sauce, which she’d probably ripped off from Plato or somebody.
Well, it was true, unless all you had to eat was jerky. It probably wasn’t even normal beef jerky; probably was weasel jerky or coyote or some other disgusting thing. It tasted of musk.
Yes, she should be miserable, just like she had been the first night.
Yet she wasn’t. The river had somehow begun to work on her. Very odd. She had spent her second night on it—in it—against her will, and by rights she should have been growing more and more enraged and frightened, second by second.
They had done something terrible to Kenner. She’d felt tremendous love and gratitude toward him when he showed up hunting for her and Lance. Had they killed him?
An odd calmness had come over her. Beyond odd, really, it was a—well, it was fucking serenity, she admitted to herself.
The river continued to rush by, but it was no longer dizzying. As she sat in her cocoon of warmth, she began to feel rooted in place. She watched the river, and she watched an unusual bird that seemed to live in it.
The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Page 80