But you never knew what you’d find when you got the call. Then and now, that sound is still in my head. Imprinted on my brain. The phone at the hospital with its persistent beeping, electronic and brash, and the red light flashing on the black handrest on the white Formica counter that was permanently stained by the orange dirt that traveled everywhere in Iraq. If I closed my eyes, if I hunted in the deepest reaches of my mind, the memory would unfurl like a bloody flag.
Yes.
There was that stale medical smell, that chemical bubblegum tang of soap blooming in my nose. The red light flashing as my hand reached out to pick up the handset. I answered with name and rank. A male voice was at the other end of the line.
In Little Falls, on that hot, dry night, I typed, my fingers dragging across the keyboard like I was asleep. I typed what I heard the man’s voice say in my memory: We got a tip. A soldier in a village.
“Go now,” the voice on the phone ordered.
So I sprinted through the white-and-green halls at the hospital, through the door to the airfield, and hit a wall of heat that made my eyes water. Sprinted across the tarmac … and then …
I was in a helicopter touching down at the edge of a stubbled field, the remains of a harvest brittle and crumbling into the parched earth. The bird rocked and settled. One, two, three soldiers in tan desert gear rolled out, their M16s at the ready, black barrels swallowing the morning sunlight. I was last out of the helicopter and last into the bombed-out remains of the whitewashed building a hundred feet away. Methodically, we swept through room after room, each of them littered with the shredded remains of domestic life, the air growing cooler and more stale as we reached spaces that looked like everyone had just gone out for a walk: small carpets rolled up and nestled against the wall, cushions piled in the corner, toys scattered on the floor, a calendar four months old curling on the wall. And then, at the end of a hallway, that heavy wooden door. That stench that seeped from the crack at the bottom. That buzzing …
My eyes flew open.
The last message from Mike Havers was impatient, disbelieving. Paulie died in combat.
I found him in a village. I responded. In a bombed-out building.
No.
It was in the morning. I typed as the memory faded, as its edges blurred. It was August.
August 13, 2005, Mike typed. In a skirmish. He was shot.
I shook my head. He suffocated. He was hanged.
They tried to save him at the field hospital where he worked, he responded.
There was nothing we could do. He had been dead for days, I countered.
Mike’s next message appeared immediately, urgently. You’re full of shit! Then: You don’t know anything! My brother died in combat.
Is that what they told you? I shot back. You were right, you know. On that website. You said they weren’t telling you everything.
He was in combat.
No.
He wasn’t supposed to be. But he was. He was a hero. Someone told me. The Army just won’t admit it.
I snorted. This man didn’t want the truth. He wanted a fantasy, a golden dream about a golden brother who never existed. But I had only the truth.
He was tortured, I typed. He was murdered.
There was something about those words. Tortured. Murdered. Something plain and chilling and stark. That’s why I had typed them. That’s why Mike Havers paused.
By the ragheads? he said after a while.
I cringed at the term—stupid and racist and above all, wrong—then corrected him.
No. By an American.
17
Jack Wyatt.
The firm name—“Wyatt & Johnson”—was printed in black and gold letters on the glass set in the door. Wyatt’s name was below. Johnson’s had been filed off. Beyond the glass, a woman with light brown hair shot through with gray was filing. She looked up when I opened the door.
“Good morning,” she said in a voice that made it sound like it wasn’t.
I nodded. “Is Mr. Wyatt in?”
She closed the filing cabinet and sat behind a cheap wooden desk, pulling an appointment book toward her. “You don’t have an appointment.”
“Is he in?”
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, poisoned honey dripping from her voice. My spine went stiff. “Mr. Wyatt keeps a very tight schedule.”
“Alright.” I breathed out, gritted my teeth. “When is his next available appointment?”
She picked up a pencil and drew it down the list, then without looking up, “He has a few minutes at ten thirty.”
“Great. I’ll wait.”
And I did, for two hours, watching Wyatt’s secretary on the phone, filing, typing up documents. She barely glanced at me the entire time, didn’t offer me water or coffee, despite the pot off-gassing in the corner.
Finally, at ten thirty, she ducked into his office. There was murmuring and then she emerged.
“Ms. Waresch,” she said drily, then sat down.
I walked into the inner room, a place that looked like I’d always imagined a lawyer’s office would. It was dark and stuffy, lined with leather and dark wood and old books that looked like they hadn’t been moved in fifty years. Window dressing; a set for a play, and here was the leading man.
Wyatt unfolded from his chair. He was long and wiry, his face lined and suntanned, his white hair a little wild. When he smiled, his teeth were tobacco-stained; his eyes flat, calculating.
He sat down, shifted his worn leather chair closer to the desk, creased his brow. “What can I do for you, Ms. Waresch?”
What exactly did I expect from this man? I had no more idea of that than I did of how I would get it or where he was in the chain of command. Was he the one in charge? Was he calling the shots? Maybe. Probably not. All I knew was that he was connected—maybe even the connector—and I hoped he had answers.
I tried the subtle approach. “I’m thinking about buying some property. A friend suggested I speak to you.”
He leaned back, smiled his thin smile again. “Alright. Where’s the property?”
“Here. In the county.”
“And what will you do with it?”
This was the question I had wrestled with since I had decided to seek this man out. How much to tell? How much to bluff?
“I’ve got some business interests in mind.”
“Agriculture?” He smiled in a way that should have looked benign, like an old man making a harmless little joke, but it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. “That seems to be the thing to do around here.”
“You could say that.”
“Wheat? I hear the market is coming back.”
“A specialty crop.”
The lawyer folded his hands on his chest, nodded slightly. “That can be complicated.”
I inclined my head. “I understand you’re experienced with complicated things.”
Wyatt’s eyes were still flat, but I could see the wheels moving in the shadows behind them. “Who did you say your friend is?”
“Let me put it this way.” I smiled and smoothed the air between us with the palm of my hand. “My friend said you set up a company for him. It’s called CLA LLC.”
Wyatt frowned, his untamed eyebrows knotting as he studied me. “CLA?”
“Yeah,” I said. Then—compulsively—corrected myself. “Yes, sir.”
He smoothed his mustache with gnarled fingers, shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know that name.”
I was prepared for that, had prepared my bluff that far. “Your name is on the records online, on the state website.”
It wasn’t, but it was in the documents Harry had gotten for me. Wyatt didn’t need to know the difference. But he was no idiot; I should have figured that out by then.
He smiled faintly. “Is that so?”
I watched him expectantly, as though I demanded a response there and then. He picked up a letter opener shaped like a golden snake, ran his finger down the edge and back again, still smiling that faint
smile.
“Will you do it or not?” I said impatiently. “I don’t have much time.”
He made a show of looking at his calendar, drawing his middle finger like a claw across the tiny, cramped handwriting scrawled over the week ahead. And then he shook his head sadly, almost sorrowfully.
“I’m afraid not, dear.” He looked up, his eyes full of fake concern. “But perhaps I can refer you to another practitioner in the area?”
He knew it and I knew it: I had overplayed my hand.
* * *
The glass in Jack Wyatt’s office door shuddered when it slammed behind me. I marched down the street, took a left and then a right at the end of that block, then climbed into my borrowed Bronco. Inside, I gripped the steering wheel so tightly it should have broken in two. I was a fool. Screaming, I slammed my fist into the ceiling of the truck once, then again and again.
This was part of it, the rage. Part of my trauma, my “condition.” It wasn’t just anger. Anger I had wanted, craved for days. Anger banished fear, made it go and hide in a dark corner where it could be forgotten. Anger fueled. But rage … rage destroyed. Rage was—is—it’s like staring into the sun, standing so close my skin smokes, my eyes melt. It’s like a geyser in my chest, the pressure building and building until it’s all let loose through my fists.
When my vision cleared, I was panting, hunched over the steering column, knuckles scraped raw.
Fool.
They wanted me to fear them. They wanted me to back off. So why not kill me? Why not just hang me up in a barn like Patrick Beale? Because they didn’t think I was close enough yet to go to the trouble. And now? Had I said anything to that lawyer to make them think differently? Or was I still just flailing around, blind and deaf in a locked room?
I sucked the blood from my knuckles, scanned the busy streets and the quiet buildings of summertime Chelan. The phone rang.
Darren.
Sergeant Moses.
He never called me. So, why? Sophie was safe in Michigan—she had texted me when she landed the night before. Looking into the truck would take days, and it’s not like he’d report to me about any other evidence. Had Wyatt called me in? Had he reported me for harassment, intimidation? Yeah, because that was exactly what he would think of me after my half-assed impression of a drug dealer. What then? Darren calling to tell me to lay off the investigation, probably. Maybe someone had seen me at the lawyer’s office, or maybe the lawyer had a contact at the Sheriff’s Office.
The ringing stopped.
I slid the key into the ignition and held it there, the wounds on my fingers starting to sting and throb. At the end of the street, a family turned the corner, walked lazily toward me. Mom with light hair, dad with dark, two kids in shorts and shirts faded by the sun, sprinting ahead, then skipping back, their small voices piping. I reached over and rolled down the window, hung on to every word, every shout, and the thick coconut scent of sunscreen that lingered long after they’d passed. Family. It sounded so right, smelled so right, so sticky and sweet and reckless. But that was the closest I was ever going to get. An observer. A voyeur.
My gaze fell. Blood seeped from the scrapes on my knuckles, dripped onto the smooth gray plastic of the steering wheel, and ran.
Focus.
I fired the engine and while it coughed, I glanced over at my phone again, lying on the seat beside me. It was ringing, the sound drowned out, but unavoidable. Darren’s number on the screen again.
“Where are you?” Darren’s voice was harsh, clipped; his sheriff voice. Shit.
“What?” I said and revved the engine. “Can’t hear you.”
“Where are you?”
He was checking on me, checking that I wasn’t interfering. That lawyer had called me in. I guess that gave me some kind of answer about his involvement, his reach: he was letting the sheriff do his work for him. Why waste his own guys when the sheriff would do it for free? Or did he have the entire office on the payroll?
“Camille?” Darren said, his voice rising.
The street was empty, but I was exposed. I threw the truck into reverse.
Faintly, barely audible over the whine of the gears, another voice on the other end of the line said, “Where d’you want the tape, Sergeant?”
Something scraped against the mouthpiece of Darren’s phone, his hand maybe, because then, his voice muffled, so faint I almost didn’t hear him, he said, “There.”
I pressed hard on the phone’s volume button, cranking it up as far as it would go.
“Sure you don’t want it on the gate?” the other man said.
“Yeah. Use the stakes,” Darren said, then so loud it hurt my ear, “Camille?”
“What?”
“Where are you?” He said it like I was a suspect.
“Why?”
“Just tell me.”
“In town.” Slowly, I pulled into the street, my foot perched over the gas pedal, ready to slam it to the floor.
“Omak?”
“No.”
“Okanogan? Are you at the building? Good. Stay there—stay in your office. I’m gonna send someone over.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not at the office.”
“Goddamnit, Camille,” he said, but his voice was strained, eroded somehow. Frustrated. “Don’t fuck with me right now. Just … just tell me you’re safe.”
Safe?
My heartbeat quickened. I glanced in the rearview, the side mirrors; quickly scanned the street and the sidewalks.
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
At low speed, I rolled past Hank’s, the ice cream place where I had been with Sophie and Lyle a few days before. I didn’t recognize any faces.
“Hold on,” Darren said.
Again, there were other voices on his end of the line, muffled by the palm of his hand. I rolled up the window, but all I heard was something about a shotgun and a rag. And then, out of the static, a name: Leamon.
“Leamon?” I said, then shouted Darren’s name.
When he finally brought the phone to his lips, all he said was, “I gotta go.”
“What happened to Jeremy Leamon?” I said. But he didn’t hear me; the line was dead.
From Chelan, it’s an hour and a half to Jeremy Leamon’s front door, depending on how many big rigs you get stuck behind. I made it in an hour and ten.
At the foot of the drive, a little way back from the big wooden gate, a deputy stood in front of a line of police tape, sweat streaking down his face. He was crimson under his wide-brimmed hat. Beyond him, a quarter mile across a stubbled field, sat the house I had walked into uninvited just four days before. And parked in front of it were a couple of sheriff’s cruisers and an ambulance, its rear doors open, its lights off.
“How you doin’, ma’am?” the deputy on the drive said, hunching over a little to look in the window of the Bronco.
I pointed up at the house. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing to worry about, ma’am.” He tilted his hat forward, wiped the back of his neck, then winked at me. “Just a little po-lice matter, ma’am.”
So that’s how it’s going to be.
“Huh.” I rolled my shoulders back, tried to smile. “What kind of matter is that?”
He grinned broadly, his teeth stained and ragged. “Nothing to worry about.”
You said.
“Well,” I said, trying to simper, “I got something for Mr. Leamon. I’ll be real quick. You won’t even know I was here.”
“Sorry, darlin’. Can’t let you through.” He extended his hand, pointed with a finger too stubby for his height. “See that tape? That’s po-lice tape. No entry, not even for pretty gals like you.”
We’ll see about that.
“You think he might come down the road to get it?” I pressed.
The deputy—“Walker,” his badge said, “F. Walker”—slid his pink tongue over his lower lip.
I’ll remember that, Walker.
He hooked his thumbs in his belt, rocked back on his heels, and looked back at the house. Everyone else was inside or out back or someplace other than around the vehicles. I had switched off the truck and the engine was cooling, its steady plinking the only sound except the scrape of the deputy’s boots when he took a step closer to the Bronco.
“I reckon I could take it to him.”
I blinked, long and slow, but before my little smile cracked, the front door of the house opened. A black-shirted male backed out, then descended the stairs, carrying one end of a stretcher, a black bag on top of it, swollen, zippered shut. I didn’t know it, but I felt it. A shotgun and a rag and Jeremy Leamon. Murdered.
“I mean,” the deputy stammered, “I could take it up to the house. If you want to leave it.”
I swiveled back to Walker, clocked his discomfort, his realization that I knew his game.
My little smile was gone, my shoulders were steeled, my voice was all business. “Sergeant Moses here?”
Walker shook his head. “No, ma’am. He was, but he left.”
A new knot formed in my stomach.
I turned the key in the ignition and when the engine roared to life, I threw the truck into reverse. When I looked up, the EMTs were nowhere to be seen, but a moment later, a brown-uniformed man walked out from behind the house, his stride long and loose, his hands cupped around his mouth as he lit a cigarette, his hair blazing red in the sun.
Lucky Phillips. Why are you always there, Lucky Phillips?
He slid something into his pocket, and pulled out his phone, dialed quickly, spoke briefly, and put it away. Then he turned and shaded his eyes, squinted … and saw me. The phone reappeared in his hand—
“Ma’am?” Deputy Walker had remembered his job, was pulling out his notepad. “Ma’am. I’m going to have to get your name.”
“Not today, Deputy.” I put my foot on the gas and reversed, the Bronco bucking in the potholes, spewing a thin cloud of dust into Walker’s mouth as he ran after me.
Little Falls Page 16
