Little Falls

by Elizabeth Lewes

  That had to change.

  On my work laptop, I scanned through the maps I had saved, duplicates of the ones I had hung on the wall of my apartment, then burned in a fit of paranoia. I flipped through them, layered the data, unlayered it, racking my brain to find a pattern, a central location where they congregated. Someplace convenient, but hidden, maybe in plain sight. Someplace for me to start again, to reevaluate. But almost everything was a one-off. I had seen the Suburban once in Omak by the fast-food places, once on the road out to Little Falls, once at the football field where Patrick Beale had been laid in a box. I had seen Nick or King twice in my mart, three times in Chelan. Rhonda had seen them once in Oroville. I had seen their dirty work twice in the hills above Little Falls and twice north of the Res.

  I traced my finger over the roads and smack in the middle, on the way to everywhere else, I saw the link: the Chelan airfield.

  The helicopter.

  It was essential equipment. It was how they got product out, probably how they got supplies in too. If I could find out when they were using it—who was using it—I would be that much closer to the truth.

  * * *

  The airfield looked the same as it had a week before: gray sheds lining the gravel road, tufts of yellow-brown grass waving in the breeze. A dog, something big and golden and panting in the heat, watched me drive slowly toward the office. It smiled, but didn’t get up when I climbed out of Rhonda’s little red sedan.

  “Hello?” I called when the tinkling bells died down. That was new. The bells, I mean. Or, maybe I just hadn’t noticed them before.

  There was no response. I waited a minute, then wandered through the small office and down a short hallway past the bathroom to the back room and back again. I shivered, my arms going all pimply in the AC, so I went out the other door, toward the airfield, and scanned the wide expanse of grass and cracked tarmac.

  I didn’t see the male I had spoken with before, but at the other end of the airstrip was a female wearing a green ball cap. She was talking to a guy with shiny silver hair and a gold watch that flashed like a beacon in the sun. He signed something on a clipboard and handed it back to her, then grimaced when she kept talking. Words like “safety” and “on my watch” drifted back on the breeze.

  I waited. Eventually, the old guy waved her off and climbed into his little four-seater and started the engine.

  The female with the green cap stood on the grass beside the apron, her arms crossed over her chest, the clipboard clutched in one hand. She watched the old guy steer his plane down to the runway and wait as the propellers turned faster and faster until the plane, wobbling on its stork-like legs, sped down the airstrip and caught the breeze. Her head swung up, watching the plane wing toward the mountains, climbing up and up and up before banking toward the north, then toward the east, and finally toward the southeast. That was when she saw me.

  “Mornin’,” she shouted, then began the long walk back toward me and the office.

  “Good morning.”

  “Nice one, isn’t it?” she said when she was within spitting distance. “Hasn’t been this clear since June.”

  “Yeah.” I inclined my head toward the runway. “That guy giving you some kind of problem?”

  “Naw. Just needs to be a little more careful on my airfield. You know how it can be with folks who aren’t from here.”

  How the hell she knew I was local, I had no idea, but I nodded and followed her into the office. She placed the clipboard on the desk, took off her ball cap, and tightened her graying ponytail.

  “What can I do for you?” she said, still standing.

  “You’ve got a helicopter here I’d like to see.”

  The woman frowned. “Don’t think any of our airframes are for sale at the moment.”

  I shook my head, tried the same lie that had worked so well with her colleague. “No, I’m from the Assessor’s Office. I need to follow up on something.”

  “Oh, sure.” She sat at the desk, pulled a battered notebook toward herself and flipped to the front. “What did you want to look at?”

  “Helicopter. It’s a Sikorsky S-76, registered to CLA LLC.”

  She frowned. “Don’t think we got one of those.”

  “Could you please check?”

  The woman shrugged, then scanned the page, ran her finger down the margins. When she looked up, she shook her head. “Nope. Don’t have any Sikorsky.”

  I went to the desk, looked at the register myself. “Well,” I said and shrugged. “It was here last week. Hangar seven.”

  “Last week?” she echoed, her brow furrowed.

  “Yeah. Tuesday. Your colleague opened the hangar for me.”

  “Who’s that then?”

  “Big guy, orange shirt. Didn’t get his name.”

  The woman glanced at the phone, glanced back at me. “Ma’am, I’m the only employee here. Maybe he was the owner?”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, shaking my head. “But he went into the back room and got a couple of keys and took me out to hangar seven. And that Sikorsky was in there.”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t have any records for a Sikorsky. The only helicopters we’ve ever had have been two-seaters anyway.”

  “Look, maybe I’m remembering wrong. Can I just show you what I’m talking about? I know what it looks like.”

  She studied me for a few seconds. She had laugh lines around her eyes: pale in the shallows, deep brown at the peaks. She brushed a few wisps of her hair behind her ear, then shrugged again, pulled on her cap, and stood up. “Alright. I’ll follow you.”

  “Don’t you need the key?” I said.

  “Got ’em right here,” she said and patted a lump in her jeans.

  We went outside—I led—and strode down the apron past hangars one through six. Hangar seven was exactly as it had been before: trim and well-painted in the same dark gray I’d seen at bases from Georgia to Baghdad.

  The woman from the office turned the key in the lock, opened the door wide, and stepped aside. Inside the hangar, the air was stifling. No air-conditioning that day. The banks of fluorescent lights buzzed and sputtered to life, but under them: nothing. No helicopter, no lift, not even a drop of oil. Just a wide expanse of scrubbed concrete.

  “This what you wanted to see?” the woman said, her voice gentle and wondering. But when I turned toward her, she stepped back.

  “It must be out,” I said shortly. “It must be out on a run.”

  “No, ma’am. The only airframe supposed to be in this hangar is a little orange Ag-Cat, one of them old crop dusters. That’s what I been trying to tell you.”

  “Where is it?”

  “No idea. This isn’t a library, ma’am. Owners can come and go as they please.”

  “I want to see your flight records.”

  “Well, now.” She squared her shoulders, squared off her hips. “I’m not supposed to share those with the public.”

  “Now.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully, her head tilted a little to the right, her tiny blue eyes sparkling like diamond chips. “You said you’re from the county?”

  I nodded. She did as well.

  When we stepped outside to go back to the office, the sun was almost directly overhead, almost hot enough to burn through my hair. Way up in the stratosphere, it dazzled on the wings of an airliner.

  In the office, the woman unlocked a cabinet under the desk and pulled out a big black binder. She pointed at it with her chin and said, “Here you go. They’re organized by hangar number.”

  I thanked her and flipped through the first few pages. The handwriting at the top of the pages was all in one person’s tiny, neat style, but the handwriting for the list of flights below that varied.

  “Who signs out the aircraft?”

  “The pilot’s supposed to.”

  “They don’t always?”

  “Like I said, this ain’t a library.”

  When I reached the page for hangar seven, I sputt
ered. “Why is this blank?”

  The woman in the John Deere hat shook her head. “I’ve never seen it go out.”

  I rifled through the pages, trying to find any entries for a helicopter or, hell, a crop duster. There was nothing.

  “You got what you need, hon’?”

  “When are the planes allowed to fly?” I demanded. “What time of day?”

  “Most everybody flies during the day. This airfield isn’t equipped for night landings.”

  “But could someone go out at night?”

  The woman shrugged again. “I suppose.”

  “Would anyone see them? Is anyone here at night?”

  “No, ma’am.” She glanced at her watch, a tiny, delicate golden model. “There’s no one here after five.”

  * * *

  I’d say I returned to that party house that afternoon, but that would mean I intended to go back there, that I’d had a plan and executed it. I didn’t. After I left the airfield, I was on autopilot, watching the scenery pass by, rather than going anywhere in particular. First, I drove up the hill to Chelan from the airfield, then into town. Before I knew it, I had blown through Chelan entirely, gone past the campgrounds and the boat launches and the ritzy houses sprawled along the lake’s shore. And then I was there, like my gut knew better than my head where I needed to be. It was the same house, the same off-white paint and dark gray trim and bushes lining the front walk. But now there was also a realtor’s sign, swaying gently in the breeze blowing off the water.

  I parked the car and got out, climbed up the concrete front steps, approached the long, frosted window stretched alongside the door—and halted.

  The door was ajar.

  For a long moment, I listened, the breeze washing over one ear, the other straining to hear anything from inside the house. Finally, faintly, indistinctly, I heard a female voice lilting at the end of each statement, straining to sound enthusiastic. Then creaking from above: footsteps. And a man’s voice, questioning, and the same female voice, responding.

  I reached out and pushed the door open, stepped soundlessly inside the front entrance. Three pairs of shoes stood on hardwood floors that extended through a living room wider and deeper than my entire apartment, with a ceiling that soared to the roof. A massive stone fireplace rose up one wall, and a grand staircase, the railing studded with antlers, wound down another.

  I straightened my ponytail, smoothed the front of my tank top, and ran my tongue over my teeth. Then I reached back and knocked on the front door.

  “Hello?” I called out toward the staircase. “Is there an open house today?”

  There wasn’t, but the real estate agent—a short woman with a blonde blowout that added more inches to her height than the stiletto heels parked beside the door—reluctantly let me tag along with her expensive-looking clients.

  I followed them through the luxe kitchen with windows that looked out on the water, the marble-tiled bathroom, the sleek modern den with a projection screen. I walked out the folding glass doors with them to take in the view I hadn’t had time to notice when I had been there searching for Sophie the week before. There was nothing in the house that hinted at the shotgun or the booze or the drugs I was sure were there that night. It was just a house, a fancy, bland house that would sell for more money than I’d ever earn, more money than I could ever get for the hundreds of acres of orchards I had inherited from my father. But even fancy houses have places to hide skeletons. So after the expensive clients drove away in their big, black BMW, I asked to see the basement.

  “There isn’t one,” the blonde agent said.

  “Oh, but I saw some windows outside?” I said as innocently as I could.

  She waved her hand, fluttered her blood-red nails. “That’s just a crawl space.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  The agent sighed. “There isn’t anything to see. And”—she glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist—“I need to meet someone in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be quick.” I smiled and crossed my arms across my chest.

  She sighed again, but turned back toward the kitchen. “It’s through here.”

  I followed her past the sparkling appliances and down a short hall to the door of what I had assumed was a closet. She turned the knob and pulled open the door, stepping in front to try to hide the two inches of solid wood door, the heavy steel knob, the thick deadbolt, all of them pointless for a crawl space that went nowhere, but perfect for stashing your drugs or your guns. Or a kid who’s gone narc.

  “I just need to make a call,” the agent said and glanced away. She bit her glossy pink lower lip.

  “I’d rather you went down there with me.” I laughed haltingly, my nerves on fire, my paranoia acute. “It’s silly, but I’m a little afraid of the dark.”

  The blonde rolled her eyes but didn’t put her phone back into her monogrammed purse. I stepped aside, then followed her down. And while she stood and sulked at the bottom of the stairs, holding her phone out this way and that to get enough bars to make her call, I did a circuit of an unfinished room that reeked of bleach and Pine-Sol. A wide drain, covered with a cross-hatched grate, punctured the cold, gray concrete floor. Heavy steel brackets, spaced perfectly for shotguns, studded the longest wall. In the harsh light of the single bare bulb, it was clear the lowest row of brackets had been removed and the drywall repaired almost perfectly—except at the farthest point from the door, the perfect place to shackle a man seated with his back against the wall. I looked up, trailed my hand across the sill of the high window—no dust or cobwebs. Pristine. But outside, caught between the low branches of a spiky shrub and the concrete foundation, a red plastic cup.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the agent. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, her spiky fingernails flashing over her phone, her pedicured toes curled on the cold concrete floor. Who was she texting so frantically? She’d said she had another appointment. Maybe she was just saying she would be late. Maybe my paranoia was winning.

  She hit “Send” and looked up at me, my fingertips still on the windowsill, watching her. She shifted, stepped back, and put her heel on the bottom step, her hand on the flimsy wooden rail. Something dark—fearful, desperate, and dark—flickered across her eyes.

  In a breath, I’d closed the space between us. She threw up her arm, phone in hand, to bar my path. No. Not paranoid. I pushed past her and pounded up the steps, two at a time.

  “Wait,” the agent shouted up the stairs, her bare feet slapping on the concrete. “Don’t you want to see the second floor?”

  “Don’t want to make you late for your appointment,” I tossed over my shoulder.

  She scrambled up the rest of the stairs, shouting, “Wait!” and something about the view. I detoured, darted left out the kitchen door, jumped over the deck railing, then sprinted up the hill to the car, pausing only to snatch the red plastic cup.

  I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t imagining everything, that my fractured mind wasn’t making it all up: the party, the helicopter, the real estate agent’s clumsy attempt to lock me in the basement. I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t just desperate for a solution, for something to make the nightmares and the paranoia and the terror stop.

  Still, I knew what I had seen. A hole where a nineteen-year-old kid could have been locked up. The cheap red plastic cup, evidence of the party where some asshole had gotten a shotgun out because my teenage daughter gave his boss the finger. And the text message on the agent’s phone when she’d raised her hand to block me: Keep her there. On my way.

  No, motherfucker. I’m on my way.

  I sped through the shiny suburbs, then past the lakefront, past the kitschy little stores selling kitschy little shit, when, almost at the eastern edge of Chelan, I caught a glimpse of a sheriff’s cruiser headed the other way. Stuck at a light, I strained to see who was driving, hoping—needing—to see Darren’s black buzz cut, his chiseled brown face still and impassive, always the calm in the storm.

  The dist
ance between me and the cruiser closed to three blocks, two blocks, one. The cruiser turned down a side street and I saw the driver clearly: red hair, face tanned and freckled and smiling, always smiling, even with the worst news. Even for the dirtiest jobs. Lucky Phillips. And two cars behind him, a black and red Suburban.

  * * *

  I got a call from an unlisted number that afternoon. I glanced at the screen of my phone while I drove through the dry hills, then put it down, ignored it. But then it rang again. And again.

  “You got a pen?” a man’s voice said.

  “Who is this?” I shouted over the wind sweeping in through the windows.

  “Just get a pen, Waresch,” the man said, like he was trying to be quiet and quick.

  The windows squeaked shut. “Who is this?” I said again, my suspicion sharpening.

  “Pull over.”

  He sounded pissed off, anxious, stressed. Like someone who had just broken a rule he knew he shouldn’t have.

  “Harry?”

  “Pull the fucking car over and get a pen.”

  I swerved and let the engine idle on the narrow shoulder. Then I rummaged.

  “Go ahead,” I said seconds later, a pink pen from under Rhonda’s passenger seat held at the ready over a fast-food napkin spread over the center of the wheel.

  “Indian valley meats at unipoint dot cn one niner six three kennedy.”

  I stared at what I had written. I blinked. “What?”

  “Indian valley meats at unipoint dot cn one niner six three kennedy,” Harry repeated.

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  “Log in at twenty-three twenty-two tonight. The record will be in the draft mail folder.”

  My brow unfurrowed, my jaw dropped. “You got Kingman’s record?”

  “Five minutes, Waresch. It will be there for five minutes only.”

  “Okay.” I reread my scrawl. “Okay.”