I threw my legs over the side of the sofa, forced myself to breathe slowly, calmly. Listened to the night outside; listened to the insects hum and the wind sigh; and, far away, a coyote howl. Eventually, the tide ebbed.
Havers. Private Havers.
He died like Patrick Beale. He lived like Patrick Beale: arrogant, greedy, and criminal.
But was he real?
As Friday dawned, I found what I needed to prove that my dreams were memories, not just nightmares: a black and white and red web page, crude. It screamed for justice for Private Paul Havers, for a soldier whose death the Army had tried to cover up, tried to pawn off as enemy action. Its manifesto dripped with venom, the words mostly crazed, but some of them … some of them were so rational, so clear, they might have been the truth. So plausible that I nodded as I read them, heard myself saying, yes, he couldn’t have died by enemy action, not in the friendly town in which his body was found. Yes, the Army’s failure to return his personal effects, the contents of his footlocker and ruck, couldn’t have been an accident—maybe they had been purposefully destroyed. Yes, taking four months to release his remains was suspicious, and God knew what they had done with them in the meantime. And were they even his? They were just ashes, after all.
The page appeared to be dormant, no recent posts, just the same rabid words screamed into the void of the internet for years. The Facebook page it linked to was similarly quiet, the most recent post a three-year-old, misspelled note from a random veterans group that sounded like it identified more with Hitler than Uncle Sam. At the top of the page was a banner with “Justice for Pvt. Paul Havers” printed across a photo of a wiry white kid, his eyes laughing at the boot camp photographer, his green dress uniform pristine, the flag hanging limply behind him like the ruffles on a girl’s skirt. It stopped me cold. He seemed familiar, but in a far-off way. Like I’d seen him somewhere before, but not in my dreams. He was different in my dreams. But nothing in a dream is real, not really real, like you could put your finger on it.
Below the veterans group post, the comments were like acid, cutting and ignorant. “You’re a fucking traitor. US Army is USA!” “Some towel head shot your brother.” “You should have been in the sandbox too.” The words of people who had never been. No wonder the page had gone so quiet.
I tried to message the organizer, but hit a login window. I opened an account under an old email address and reached out to a guy by the name of Mike Havers, whose profile picture showed a young man with a shaved head and a grin behind a pair of sunglasses.
I have information. Are you Havers’s brother?
I glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. 4:53 AM. It was a long shot, but I waited anyway. After a few minutes, I got up and made a pot of coffee. When I sat down again, I was surprised to find a response in the chat window.
What do you know?
But I wasn’t ready to spill my guts yet, especially before I knew whether I would get anything for doing it. So I responded in kind: Are you Pvt. Havers’s brother?
I sipped coffee, growing more anxious, more doubtful as each minute slipped by. Twelve minutes after I sent my message, Mike Havers was back.
Why do you want to know?
Why did I want to know? Why did it matter, if he had the information I needed?
I want to know I’m talking to someone who cares, I typed. It sounded fake, even to me, but it was the closest thing to the truth I had to offer.
And, anyway, that wasn’t really what Mike Havers wanted to know. He wanted to know why I was contacting him, to know I wasn’t just some random person on the internet, another crazy who was going to make fun of him, tell him he should be dead too.
My cursor flicked on and off in the chat line. My palms began to sweat, my fingers poised over the keyboard.
Finally: Are you a journalist?
Relieved, I dashed off an answer. No. I was stationed with him. I knew him. I hit “Send” before I could stop myself.
Oh. Then: Yeah. I’m his brother. Mike. And on a new line of dialogue: When did you know him?
I needed his trust. But I also needed him to be hungry. I couldn’t give him too much too soon.
In the Army.
When?
His reply had been immediate. I had his attention and I had to keep it. The question was, how much to tell him? The simple truth: 2005? Or the provocative truth: when he died? In the end, I went with simple.
2005. You all are from Arizona, right? Do you still live there?
Yeah. Were you with him in Iraq?
I stalled, tried to pull him out a little more. He always said he didn’t mind the heat.
No. He went out in the desert a lot when we were kids.
Interesting. Private Havers had been rebellious before the Army. Or maybe just stupid. Only one way to find out.
What was he doing? I typed.
Don’t know.
He ever take you with him?
No.
Did he have friends he went out there with?
Don’t know. Maybe.
Do you know where he was going?
No answer. Seconds dragged into minutes, dragged into a quarter of an hour. He could have been driving. He could have been at work. Or I could have pushed too much.
A breeze swept down from the mountain and through the window. I shivered and shifted my chair into the sunlight stretching across the room. When I pulled the laptop toward me, Mike Havers had reappeared.
Who are you?
It was a good question. I chose a cop-out. Just a friend. I want to see justice, just like you.
OK. Then, a few seconds later, What do you know?
I know who killed your brother. I typed it and for ten minutes, stared at the letters on the screen. Did I? I thought I did. But I couldn’t prove it. Yet. I deleted the message and logged off. Better to leave him hungry.
12
Later that Friday morning, I was on the road, way out in the county, following up on what Harry German had given me. It was gold, he’d said on the phone that morning, gold he had dug out of the state records: every property owned by any company that looked a little fishy and every property that had Jack Wyatt’s name associated with it.
“If there’s anything there,” he’d said, “you’ll find it at one of these places.”
He’d listed them out, address by address, on the phone, well aware that giving me state records was against the rules, smart enough to not put anything in an email or to send it through a fax machine. The list began with Gorgon Four’s future pot farm up in the hills and finished with Gorgon Six’s barn, where Patrick Beale had hung, rotting, for days. And in the middle? I was making my way through the middle.
I’d left the mart just after the sun rose, driven past the town sign and on past the lake, shining like a mirror in the rising heat. I’d been heading out for an inspection when Harry called, but after we hung up, I swung the truck around and went the other way. By ten o’clock, I had already seen two places: one empty and forgotten, farmland untouched for so long that trees sprouted in the furrows like ghosts rising from a burial ground, and the other a respectable place with a tidy little house and a tidy little garden and a couple of kids out doing chores. I skipped the next few, turned north, then headed east down a narrow road just north of the Colville Reservation.
I was coming around a curve, the sun in my face, when a black truck came screaming down the hill so fast, so recklessly, I thought its brakes were out. I swerved off the road, my tires skittering wildly on the edge of a fifty-foot drop. I wrestled the wheel, fought for purchase on the dry dirt that spilled over into nothing. Two wheels, then three, and finally four stabilized, spun on solid ground. I slammed on the brakes and the truck lurched, stilled except for the engine idling. I jerked my head over my shoulder to get the license plate number, but the truck was long gone. The tarmac of his lane was completely clean; thick black streaks of rubber snaked wildly in mine.
“Mother fuck,” I said and folded over the ste
ering wheel. When I stopped hyperventilating, I gave the engine a little gas and gritted my teeth as the tires slid in the dirt before catching, and the truck finally lumbered back onto the pavement.
Past the crest of the hill, stands of trees swept down toward the road, and the scent of musty pine needles drifted through the open windows. A couple of miles further, the trees opened, and dried grass rippled in a broad clearing bordered by a long gravel track. Beside the track was a battered mailbox, its old plastic numbers peeling off but clear enough to match to the address on my list.
I drove down the gravel slowly, the dust barely rising from the truck’s rear tires. The trees closed in again, and the hill tapered down. Just after I crossed over a trickling stream boxed up into a culvert, I saw the trailer. It was a double-wide, cream-colored and mushroom-like in a small clearing off to the side. A car, broken up for parts, lurked under a tree. Spots of oil speckled the dust in the drive.
I did a three-point turn and parked the truck with its nose pointing toward the road. The clearing was quiet, calm; just the wind rifling through the trees until, far away, a hawk screamed. On the metal-mesh doorstep of the trailer, there was a bottle of bleach—a big one—and a box of rags like you’d get at an auto shop, a narrow receipt peeking out from under one corner.
I rapped on the hollow metal door, but the only response I got was the faint twang of country pop on a cheap stereo somewhere inside. I tried again, but no one stirred. Around back, the music was louder, drifting out an open window. But there was no response when I knocked on the back door or when I shouted, “Hello!” So, I circled the trailer, glancing casually into every window, all of them wide open, every room empty, until I reached the last one.
Inside was a bedroom, big and open, with seafoam-green walls, tatty yellow linoleum, and a gold-flecked bathroom through a partly open door. But there was no bed, no nightstand, no clothes hanging in the open closet. Instead, there was a plastic tarp decorated with dried blood and a wooden chair with rubber straps hanging from the arms. In front of the chair, where a seated person’s feet would rest, a truck battery with clawed metal leads and a pair of pliers rested in a disposable aluminum pan, a pool of blood in one corner.
I backed away from the window, stumbled over my own feet, and landed on my ass. My heart pounded in my chest, the sound of it echoing in my ears. I sprang to a crouch, scanned the clearing like it was a war zone. No camera. No watchers. No weapons. I spun in a tight circle, my fingertips in the dirt, my thighs tight and strong, ready to charge. I scanned the trees, but there was nothing. I was alone.
At the nearest tree, I slid down the trunk and closed my eyes, pressing my hands into my face. Battery. Pliers. Blood. That tarp. They’d tortured him. That’s what the doc said. That’s what I had known, even when I didn’t know what I knew. They beat him. They burned him. They ripped out his fingernails at the root. Here. In the cream-colored trailer. On the sunshine-yellow linoleum. And then they washed their hands in that golden sink, and they took him out and strung him up to die alone, in the shadows, in the dark. They’d made him bloated, blackened, unrecognizable. His chest bare, his feet bare …
Jesus Christ, make it stop.
My eyes flew open. The trees were still. The grass in the clearing was still. But the radio played on. Who’d left the music on? The truck. That truck tearing down the mountain like the driver had forgotten something important. How long ago was that? How long a drive to the nearest store? How long until the devil returned?
On the radio, a commercial ended, and a steel guitar beat out a frantic tune. I tore my phone from my pocket and went back to the window, photographed everything I saw from every angle I could capture. And then I fled like a rabbit, ran to the truck like I had a battery of rifles on my tail, throwing it into gear and barreling up the dirt track and out onto the county road, my eyes shifting frantically between what was in front of me and what was behind.
There was no cell signal, so I called Darren on my county sat phone, told him to get the hell out there, that the trailer was everything he needed to nail Patrick Beale’s killer. By the time I saw the sheriff’s cruisers flash past the gas station where I had pulled over, there was more adrenaline than blood flowing through my veins. I sat in the truck, both of my county phones on the bench seat beside me, waiting for Darren to call me back, to tell me that they’d gotten the evidence and grabbed the guy who put it there, the guy responsible for spraying Patrick Beale’s blood all over the floor.
But the call didn’t come. Instead, he pulled up alongside me where I was parked in a sliver of shade. Then he got out of his cruiser, opened the door of my truck, and climbed into the passenger seat.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said. “Your boys went by here ten minutes ago.”
“Nice to see you too,” he said and tossed a piece of gum into his mouth. He took off his sunglasses and wiped the lenses on the fabric stretched tight over his leg.
“What about the evidence? What about the photos I texted to you?” I said, my voice rising. “What about the asshole who did this?”
“Lucky’s got it under control.” His gum popped between his teeth.
“What the fuck, Darren? Lucky isn’t enough.” I fumbled with the keys, slotted them into the ignition, and turned. I shouted over the roar of the engine, “That guy will be back soon, I swear it. The radio, the bleach! He’s going to fucking clean the place, Darren. It’s all going to be gone!”
“Camille.” Darren’s voice was soft, but the hand he curled over mine on the truck’s gear shaft was firm, unyielding. Gently, he moved my hand to my thigh, then reached over, turned the key, killed the engine. “Relax. It’s under control. Let me do my job.”
I clenched my jaw, closed my eyes, but that only made the images play more vividly against the black backdrop of my lids. Blood and flies and stained denim. Bloated flesh. And the smell. The smell I couldn’t get out of my nostrils, out of my mind.
I opened my eyes, watched the heat rising off the blacktop and studied the scrubby hills, golden in the sunlight, off to the west. They were pure, clean. They were here, now. I breathed—in, out, in, out—and felt the pressure in my veins drop. Then I leaned across the cab, opened the glove box, and handed him a plastic bag.
“What’s this?” he said, turning it over in his hands.
“A receipt,” I muttered. “It was there today, under the bottle of bleach. There’s a label in there too, for brake fluid. That’s from the place behind Jeremy Leamon’s.”
Darren’s eyes were black, inscrutable. “How did you find out about that?”
I shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“Tell me.”
I narrowed my eyes. His face cleared, the naked intensity from only a moment before disappearing behind his usual cloak.
“County records,” I said, curiosity overcoming my fear, my urge to flee. “It’s what I do, Darren.”
“When did you go there?”
“Monday.”
“What did you see?”
“You mean other than the big fucking burn pit?”
Darren nodded. He didn’t seem surprised.
“Just that label,” I lied and pointed at the plastic bag. There was no reason for him to know about the receipt I had found out there also, the one from my mart. No reason at all.
“Did anyone see you?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Did anyone see you today?”
I pursed my lips, gritted my teeth. Had anyone? Could I be sure there hadn’t been anyone in the trailer or the trees? Could I be sure no one had stayed behind?
I shook my head minutely.
“You’re sure?” Darren said urgently.
“No.”
Darren turned his head, looked out the windshield to the golden hills. His jaw was clean-shaven, his collar pressed, but his eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles.
Softly, he said, “Please stop.”
“What?”
“This.” He poin
ted to the plastic bag. “This … investigating.”
I cracked my jaw, turned away.
“Don’t get me wrong, Camille. I appreciate the tip today. It looks promising. But you’ve gotta let me do my job. And you—you’ve got to live your life.”
“This is my life.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve got your job. You’ve got the mart. You’ve got Sophie.”
“Goddamnit,” I snapped. “That’s what this is about, Darren. It’s about—”
A voice crackled over the radio pinned to Darren’s shoulder. He turned the volume up, listened to the message. Even with the static, I recognized Lucky’s voice. Even with the static, I knew it wasn’t good news.
“Shouldn’t you be going?” I said, my throat tight.
“Yeah. Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” I said tersely. “I’m fine.”
That’s when he slid his hand over mine, still on my thigh. His skin was dry and cool. Mine was hot, my veins pulsing with fevered blood. I froze.
“You did the right thing,” Darren said, like that was supposed to be comforting.
But my jaw was locked, so tight I couldn’t say any of the vicious things going through my mind or scream away the terror or tell him to never move his hand.
I shook him off and saw the hurt flicker across Darren’s face before the shield came down again. He opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, but he turned back before closing it.
“Call me,” he said. “We should …”
He paused then, long enough for me to realize that I was waiting for his next words, that I needed them in a primal way. But all he said was “We should talk.”
13
That night, the boys, Patrick, Havers …
They spoke to me.
They spoke to me where they hung. They raised their heads and stared at me, their eyes swollen with gas, crusted with flies, weeping syrupy fluid.
They said the same thing over and over again.
I was alone in the darkness, but each time I turned away from them, something pushed me back.
Little Falls Page 12
