“He was my soldier,” I barked. “My soldier.”
The undertaker’s thick eyebrows rose.
“My responsibility.”
Then.
The concrete block MACP. The mortuary. The morgue.
The pretty undertaker pushed the table in; I followed.
The pretty undertaker said no, tried to order me—a sergeant—out; I scrubbed down anyway. The same soap we used at the hospital—chemical bubblegum scented—stinging every one of the million cracks in my skin.
The pretty undertaker dialed a number on the phone; I suited up, marched through the big, black door.
Inside, the body bag was small under the day-bright fluorescents. It was a dark spot, like a bruise in the row of steel tables and drains and scalpels and …
I cringed when a white-suited private unzipped the bag.
Gagged when the smell, the high sweet stench of rot, poured out.
Winced when a fly’s wings glinted in the yellow light.
Then.
“Waresch. Sergeant Waresch!”
A male in the gap between the big black doors, his cover still on, the sunlight at his back.
“Waresch; to me.”
Then.
At attention, my thumbs pressed hard into the seams of my pants, my fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms.
In front of me, behind the desk, the first sergeant. Graying hair. Deep lines etched into his dark face.
“Sit down, Waresch.” But my knees were locked. “Take a seat, Sergeant.”
I buckled.
“This isn’t your fault, Waresch.”
“I denied his request,” I said. “I confined him to base.”
“You were right,” the first sergeant said. “He was too green. No business in the field.” He passed his hand over the stubble cut high and tight on his head. “Probably what got him killed,” he muttered.
A shiver went up my spine. “I failed, First Sergeant. I didn’t do enough.”
“He was AWOL, Sergeant.”
“I didn’t report him.”
“For what?”
I kept my mouth shut. No use slandering the dead.
The first sergeant sighed, wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But I—”
“He was your soldier.” The first sergeant leaned forward onto the desk, the shadow of his shoulders falling over his hands. “But he screwed up. Not your responsibility. Not your fault.”
I ground my teeth.
* * *
My eyes flew open. Grit crunched between my teeth. My face burned like it had been baking in the sun for years. Blood boiled through my veins, pounded in my temples. But yellow light snaked across the floor and died under the kitchen table. Cool, clean air caressed my sweating face. Fibers scratched my cheek, my neck where they touched cheap brown carpet. I was on the floor in my apartment. In Little Falls. In the Okanogan. Not in Iraq.
Slowly, I pushed myself to my feet, rubbed my shoulder. On the sofa, my pillow was undisturbed. But halfway across the room, my sheet was twisted and balled up, a white blotch on the carpet.
Every dream gave me more pieces. But the images that were so vivid in the dead of night were lost during the day. I had filled pages of a notebook with everything I remembered from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from every place I had been with a helicopter and an M16. But there was nothing there. Nothing that dragged up the memories that haunted me in the dark.
I sunk onto the sofa and leaned forward on my knees, stared at the brown carpet between my bare feet. A mud-brick room and a hanging body. A helicopter and a morgue and my first sergeant. That’s all I had. It felt so clear, so real. But without a name, without an identification, my memories were just nightmares. I had to know what was real. I had to know who he was. I had to know the name of the soldier who’d died like Patrick Beale.
10
How, exactly, do you talk to a teenager about—I don’t know—about things like this? In the military, it would have been simple. Soldier, you are wrong. Soldier, you will report for disciplinary action. Soldier, you will report to the stockade.
But a teenager is a wilder breed. Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Unreasonable. In the end, the only option I thought of was the worst possible option. Not that I knew it at the time, but I should have guessed.
I left a photo on the table that Thursday morning, a printout from the video I had watched the night before. Soldier boy—the man I had begun thinking of as the lieutenant—was pumping gas, the guy called Nick just visible in the front of the truck, the pump blocking the view of most of the back seat. The time stamp was in the corner.
I watched Sophie come out of the bedroom in the morning, waited for her to get her cereal and sit down at the table. I sorted through files on my computer and, from the corner of my eye, watched her a while longer, waiting for a reaction, to see if she would recognize the two men and admit it.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, her spoon halfway from bowl to mouth.
I didn’t look up from my laptop. “What?”
“This photo.”
She waved it in front of me; I took it from her hand.
“The video feed,” I said.
“What video?”
“In the mart. There’s a camera,” I said, then corrected myself. “There was a camera, anyway. The new setup hasn’t arrived yet.”
Sophie seemed shocked, but I don’t know how she could have failed to see it in all the years she had been coming to the mart. “You have a video camera down there?”
“I did. The receiver was stolen the other night with the laptop.”
Sophie had gone pale. “Wha—What are you doing with this?” she stammered. “What are you doing with this shot?”
“That?” I said, as though it was nothing. “Rhonda’s convinced one of them took something when she wasn’t looking. She wants me to get Darren Moses to ID them.”
“Did you?” Sophie stood up so violently her chair fell over behind her. “Did you give it to him?”
“Why? Do you know them?”
“N-no!”
She wrung her hands, pushed them through her hair. Then she ducked and picked up the chair. When she stood, her face was smooth, calm, but her eyes were still wild, panicked.
“You sure?” I said carefully, trying to look how I imagined a concerned parent might.
“Yeah.”
I nodded, turned back to my work. “Anyway, he has the video.”
Sophie pounded back to the bedroom, and the door slammed shut behind her. I waited until Roseann picked her up and then waited some more. But when I searched the bedroom, I didn’t find anything that pointed toward those men or what she’d been doing with them out past town. I didn’t find any clothes that smelled like wood smoke or brake fluid, nothing dyed red from phosphorous or blood, nothing that reeked of ammonia, and nothing—not even the bottom of her shoes—with any obvious chemical residue. I did find shirts reeking of marijuana and cigarette smoke, a handful of condoms, and a bottle of cheap booze. And I was glad that was all I found.
* * *
The building Patrick had lived in was on the fringe of Omak, just off the highway on a street right before the foothills broke off at a golden-brown cliff. Long gray streaks stained the yellow-brick building; the pavement in the parking lot was so cracked that my truck swayed like it was traveling over a dirt road.
I had gotten the address from Sophie’s phone. It was buried in a long string of text messages and photos of things I would have given a lot to unsee. Kids I recognized as Sophie’s friends smoking bongs or throwing flaming fireworks up in the air, the orange afterglow arcing through the night sky. Kids I didn’t know, shit-faced and glassy-eyed, their shiny faces pressed too close to the camera. Sophie, nearly naked in her bedroom at my father’s house. And a boy—Patrick—shirtless, his worn jeans hanging below his boxer shorts, standing in front of a mirror in a dingy, yellow-tiled bathroom. That was April. And then
the texts dwindled, ran out. Nothing for a month. And then on July 7: Where you at? Somebody wants to meet you.
Somebody.
I could guess who.
Cars sped by on the street, but no one was around at the apartments. I parked the truck in the shade, then pushed my sunglasses up and went to the stairs: they were concrete, worn black nonskid strips peeled off in patches. On the second story, I hung a left and kept going until Christine Beale stopped me on the threshold of apartment 2D.
“Camille?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
I had no explanation, no story, no believable response. Nothing beyond the fact that I couldn’t let go of her son’s murder, that it haunted me. That his death was opening so many doors in my head, was pulling so many blood-soaked memories out of my brain that I was this close, this close to—
I shivered.
And then I lied. Badly.
“Sophie told me to pick her up here.”
Christine shook her head. “Sophie?”
“Yeah, she said she would be here with a friend.” I fumbled my phone, stooped, picked it up. I turned it on, made a show of looking. “It was, uh, the address was—”
“This is Patrick’s apartment,” Christine said, her voice hoarse. I glanced up and she shook her head, raised her fingertips to her forehead, smiled sadly before correcting herself. “This was—” she said, but then her voice caught in her throat. “God. This was—” She pressed her hand against her mouth.
“Oh,” I said, faking the shock, but not the confusion. “I, uh—I guess Sophie gave me the wrong address.”
We stared at each other then. Me, paralyzed, my brain spinning for the right thing to say. Christine, her watery brown eyes red-rimmed, her pale face puffy, her blonde hair slack. And behind her, open boxes, tidy stacks of clothes. A small stereo. A backpack on the ground, a couple of notebooks spilling out.
Christine sniffed, wiped her eyes, then her nose with a tissue that was already crumpled and damp.
“Can I help?” I said. “I could … I could keep you company.”
Christine sobbed, closed her eyes, then opened them again. She smiled a little. “What about Sophie?”
“Sophie?”
“You were gonna pick her up?” Christine prompted.
“Right,” I said quickly, remembering my lie. “Sophie. I’ll just—I’ll just call her.”
So I went to the railing and pretended to call, said loud enough for Christine to hear, “Can your friend take you home? I’ll be there a little later.” Then I waited a moment to make it seem real, said something like, “Just helping a friend,” even though that sounded even less believable than the truth.
When I stepped through the doorway, Christine was stacking kitchen things on the narrow stove. Two plates, three bowls. A handful of forks and spoons. Four glasses. While I watched, she wrapped them carefully in newspaper, nestled them in a box like so many tiny babies. She cried freely but quietly, her tears staining the newsprint as she dropped them one by one into the box.
“He was a good kid,” she said, more to herself than to me. “My Patrick. My son.”
I nodded. My throat was closed, my voice trapped.
“I found his things, you know,” she whispered. Then she cleared her throat and, her voice suddenly firm, suddenly parental, said, “They was right there in the closet. Right there for me to see.”
I glanced toward the back of the apartment, past the unmade queen-size bed to the cracked mirror on the closet door.
“It’s a good thing it was me.” Christine scrubbed her tears off her face, the heel of her hand leaving a trail of mascara. “If his father—if Ed had found ’em, he would have killed—”
Christine was quiet then, her mouth working over the words repeatedly, silently. Killed him. He would have killed him.
“But he didn’t,” I said, too loudly.
Christine’s head snapped toward me. She looked at me like she had never seen me before, like I was an intruder. I guess—no, I know: I was.
“What didn’t he find, Christine?” I said gently. “What was in the closet?”
“Magazines,” she said hoarsely. “With girls in ’em.”
My heart sank. Porn? That’s all?
“And booze,” she said. “I can’t think where he got it. He’s only nineteen. I mean—”
Was. He was only nineteen. No one needed to say it. It just hung there in the air.
Christine’s head dropped, then she sank into a cheap, metal-framed chair and gazed down at the peeling yellow linoleum, her face in her hands.
“Was there anything else?” I said.
Christine shrugged, shook her head. “The police—the sheriff—they took some stuff. There’s a list. They wrote it all down.”
I glanced around the apartment, searched for something official looking. But there was nothing. Just debris.
“It’s in my bag,” Christine volunteered.
I didn’t dare ask to see it, but she reached over and dragged a turquoise leather purse toward her across the table. Then she pulled out a piece of paper that had been opened and folded so many times it was ready to tear. She let it fall open on the table and read it silently, her lips forming the syllables. I read over her shoulder. An ounce of marijuana had been confiscated, a few prescription uppers he had no prescription for. An unlicensed .45. And a laptop. That was all. A short inventory for a short life.
“Christine,” I said quietly.
But she just stared at the sheriff’s list of her son’s possessions, gently caressing the edge of the paper like it was her boy’s cheek.
“He was a good boy,” she whispered, though her words were against all the evidence.
“Christine,” I said more loudly. I rested my hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t budge.
I took up the newspaper and wrapped up the rest of the kitchen things. When she still hadn’t moved, I put the clothes—neatly folded, the way a mother would—into the boxes that stood open on the floor. When I was done, Christine looked up at me, at the apartment, with flat, dry eyes. Eyes that had cried out all their tears.
She mumbled, “Thank you,” but didn’t stand until I held my hand out and helped her up. Then she took the box from the stove and walked out the door. I followed her down the stairs once, twice, five times, until the only things left were the dingy furniture and the stained mattress that came with the place.
We stood together in the doorway. I scanned the place to make sure we had everything. Christine bent down to pick up her turquoise purse. Then—
“No!” Christine said suddenly, her voice filled with panic.
I spun toward her: was this the break? Was cleaning out her son’s place the thing that pushed her over the edge? Her knees smacked into the concrete floor under the thin carpet when she dove for the bed, her fingers tearing at a scrap of blue and white fabric poking out from under the bare box spring. When she craned her head over her shoulder, her eyes were wild and red, her face contorted with anxiety, with grief.
“Help me!”
I ran to her and heaved the mattress and box spring up off the floor. Christine fell back, pulling out the fabric. It was nothing special, just a man’s buttondown that had seen better days. Old cotton. Pearly snaps. But Christine hugged it to her chest fiercely. And then she sobbed into it, her shoulders heaving with every breath.
I wrapped my arms around her then, held her as tightly as I could and waited for the shudders to stop. When they did, I got up and picked up her purse, walked with her to the threshold and stood by while she closed the door.
“Do you want me to take you home?” I said quietly.
Looking down, her fingers still on the doorknob, Christine shook her head. Slowly, she lifted her chin and set her jaw, then turned and walked unsteadily to the stairs.
I followed her to her car; told her to call me if she needed anything. Then, hands in my pockets, I watched her drive away.
Back in my truck, I sat and picked the tape off the f
lash drive I’d pulled from the wooden frame of the old box spring in Patrick Beale’s apartment.
It had been right there under the bed. Right there for me to find. Why the sheriffs hadn’t, I couldn’t guess. But when I lifted the bed for Christine, my fingers closed over it, and as Christine began to sob, I ripped the drive off and put the bed down, pushing the evidence into the pocket of my jeans as I stood.
Right there in the parking lot, I opened my laptop beside me on the bench seat, slotted the drive into the USB port, and waited for the files to load. There were only a handful on the drive, but fewer that mattered. Photos mostly: a meth lab set up in a small kitchen with sunshine-orange countertops, the backside of a truck with a light-haired man leaning out the window, the inside of an aircraft—a Sikorsky helicopter; I would have bet my life on it. And an audio recording.
The sound was distorted, scratchy. It began with a roar like a toilet flushing, then a clatter. A toilet seat closing? Breathing. Not heavy, but near. And quiet, like someone was trying to keep it quiet. Then scraping, plastic against something hard. Someone standing on a toilet? Finally—faintly, like it was coming from the bottom of a well—a man’s voice.
“Tuesday.”
A moment of silence.
“Yes, sir,” then a few seconds later, “Yes, sir,” again.
A semi’s horn blared, swept by in a wave of sound. And when it had passed: “Drop point is forty-nine point—”
In the background, water rushed loudly enough to drown out the rest of the coordinates. And in the foreground, quiet and desperate: “Fuck.”
The water stopped. Air swept across the mic. Then a long, faint squeal, like a hinge that needed to be oiled, followed by the thud of wood slapping against wood.
“I don’t have it yet,” the voice at the bottom of the well said.
Then: “I said I would get it.” He was impatient. Irritable. “Sir.” Insubordinate.
“Yeah,” he said more meekly. “Tomorrow.”
That creak again. Plastic under strain. That scraping sound, plastic against something hard. A grunt from nearby. Skin slapping against something flat: concrete?
Little Falls Page 10
