I wondered again about the girl.
Did she climb to contemplate math theories? Did she relish conquering steep hills, ticking off the trails on her way to winning a bet with her roommate? And her parents, the man and woman at a bedroom table, tense and frightened, his competitive drive honed as buffed quartz. If the old boyfriend could be believed, the father knew his daughter took risks. Maybe his daughter assumed a net was always under her high-wire act.
But would that girl simply walk away?
“I found you!”
Madame barked. I jumped. My right hand reflexively reached for my Glock.
“I’m exhausted.” The woman came up behind me, panting, then bent to Madame. “Oh, that’s a good doggie. Good doggie. Yes, you’re a nice doggie.” She straightened. “I’ve been calling your name, ‘Yoo-hoo, Raleigh.’ Just about to go home. But now I’ve found you.”
Her platinum blonde hair was cut into spikes that stood on her small head like asbestos fibers. Her facial features—tiny eyes, button nose, pink mouth shaped like a bow—gathered in the center of her face, as though fearing proximity to the hair. Her short legs were sheathed in bright red leggings, the elastic shining with the stretch.
“Do I know you?” I said.
“I’m Claire. Your aunt called me. She said you were out here by yourself with no protection.” She stuck out her hand, a lump of clay. “I’m a clairvoyant.”
“Excuse me?”
“Charlotte and me, we go way back.” Panting between sentences, she unzipped a blue fanny pack that hung from her abdomen like a marsupial pouch. “Here’s my card.”
The card showed a drawing of a head, both eyes closed, with one open eye in the forehead. Claire the Clairvoyant, it read. I see what you mean.
“Charlotte Harmon sent you here?”
“Yuh-huh. You’re in danger. Your aunt’s getting a strong vibe of danger. And she thinks I can crack this case wide open.”
“What case?”
“She said you’re always in trouble with your bosses.”
“Wait a minute. What did my aunt tell you?”
“You’re looking for someone. Or something. She didn’t know which, but I don’t need much to put two and two together.”
I handed back her card. “Thank you for your concern, Claire. If you’re really interested in helping, contact the Issaquah police.”
“The whole way up here I was picking up very strong signals. Definite harm, bodily harm. It’s in the force fields. And fire.”
“Fire?”
“Yuh-huh. I keep picking up the word fire.”
“There’s a drought.”
She grabbed my arm, gasping.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Listen! Somebody’s coming!” She released my arm and scrambled into the thick brush beside the dirt trail, kicking at the undergrowth of grass and fern and fallen leaves. When she crouched in the alder bushes, her crimson knees were skirted by red-tipped ferns.
“Get over here,” she hissed. “Danger’s coming!”
Madame trotted over to her, wagging her tail, ready to play the game. Claire shooed her away.
I continued to look down the trail, the wind gusting, the leaves filling with sibilant whispers. But the bend in the trail prevented me from seeing more than ten yards back.
Suddenly a man emerged. I heard Claire gasp.
Madame barked.
“Where’ve you been?” Jack Stephanson demanded. “And your cell phone—you turned it off?”
“It must not get a signal up here,” I said.
Claire slogged from the sidelines, brushing fern fronds from her leggings. One red maple leaf clung to the shards of hair, a jaunty feather in a spiked cap.
“You know this guy?” she asked.
“Who’s this?” Jack said.
Claire placed her hands on her hips. “I am Claire the Clairvoyant. Who are you?”
“None of your business.”
She pointed at him, turning to me. “This is the dangerous force I was picking up. He took the person you’re looking for.”
“What?” Jack said.
“Dark energy is pouring out of him, Raleigh. See it? Oh! I can’t breathe.” She placed one hand over her heart, closing her eyes. She began to hum, a low monotonous tone like somebody imitating an electrical transformer.
“Who is this freak?” Jack asked.
“I am Claire the Clairvoyant.” Her voice continued the mono-tone, her eyes still closed.
“Clairvoyant.” Jack looked at me. “This is how you work?”
“She came out here by herself,” I said.
Claire’s blue eyes flashed open. “I’ll have you know I’ve worked with detectives in Seattle. They all know Claire.”
“I’ll bet,” Jack said.
“Claire, we appreciate your offer,” I said, “But you need to leave.”
“I understand much more than you do, Raleigh.” Her eyes danced between my face and Jack’s. “You will hear from me when the channels clear again. And I won’t tell Charlotte about this . . . man. It will only worry her more. But you have my word. I will crack this case wide open.”
She picked her way down the striated boulders and broken bark, moving like a red beetle afraid of getting dirty.
“Now why didn’t I think of a clairvoyant?” Jack said.
“Somebody sent her out here.”
“You’re talking to people about your cases?”
“No.”
“Must be how they work down South. Call the old ladies, see if their bunions hurt. Maybe the clairvoyant’s a step up for you.”
I counted to twenty—fifteen never being long enough—but Jack jumped into the silence.
“You said K-9’s already been through here.”
“Yes, but they couldn’t get a continuous scent. The dog ran in circles. The girl was on the trail, then she was gone.”
“Abducted by aliens,” he said. “Write up the 302 on the whack job and pass the case to the CIA. That’ll impress the rich parents. Put some spooks on the trail.”
“Jack, go home.”
“Harmon, I get it. Barbie didn’t call her parents and they’re worried. But some rich girl deciding to run away doesn’t rank with terrorists who want to wipe out thousands of people in a split second. When the entire town of North Bend gets nuked by some crazy Arab, see what kind of calls McLeod gets from headquarters.”
I started up the trail, Madame fell in beside me.
“Yeah,” he said to my back, “go find Barbie. Forget the terrorists, they’re a figment of my imagination. I’m leaving. Good luck, Raleigh.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” I said over my shoulder.
“Figures,” he said.
Two hours later I still wasn’t ready to surrender and admit Jack Stephanson might be right. And the very real possibility that he was kept me hiking the mountain trails until the sky turned dark opal and gold leaked out of aspens. My eyes ached from watching loose rocks under my feet. Madame’s dark shape was nearly invisible, her movements heard among the ferns rather than seen. She rustled out the juncos and robins who chirped the close of day, and when a soft rain began to fall, it was more mist than any-thing. My mind wandered, traveling from Courtney VanAlstyne to Jack Stephanson to Claire the Clairvoyant to whether Jack would report her weird appearance to McLeod. My heart clutched with anger, at all the relentless hazing, this disciplinary status, this unwanted move west. Harsh words filled my mind, fierce retorts that would put Jack in his place, and just then my right heel slid across wet rock and I fell, landing on my back, the hard ground shoving the air out of my lungs.
For several moments, I lay still, feeling my tailbone throb. And my fingers burned, the skin raked by a branch I tried to grab on the way down. When Madame ran over, licking my face, I rolled on my side and crawled to stand. There was a massive scrape on my right thigh, numb, just beginning to bleed. My breath came ragged. For several moments I stood still, trying to gather myself. I loo
ked around at the trees and my first thought was that I was seeing just another leaf. An odd autumn leaf. But even in the failing light, the color didn’t look right. It wasn’t red or orange or yellow. It was white. And blue. When I stepped closer, I saw the knot cinching the fabric to the branch. It was one turn, hastily tied. The fabric’s edges frayed from fresh ripping.
Adrenaline pumped through my heart as I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my back pocket, snapping them on my stinging fingers. I dropped the fabric swatch into an evidence bag and searched the area, found nothing more, then carefully made my way to the parking lot.
A dusty white Corolla with a radiating crack across the wind-shield was parked ten feet from the trailhead. The car hadn’t been there this morning, and I hadn’t seen anyone on the trail. I took down the license number, just in case, then I drove into Seattle.
The Metro buses ran empty down abandoned streets, looking destined for ghost towns, and a spittle of rain fell on my windshield, barely enough for wipers. Below the FBI office the garage was empty and I took a spot marked for visitors, cracking the windows and telling Madame to stay. I rode the elevator to the Violent Crimes unit, similarly purged for the weekend. I boxed soil samples from the trail, then e-mailed a former colleague in the mineralogy lab in DC, notifying him about the soil coming through Bureau mail.
To my surprise, Eric Duncan e-mailed back.
I dialed the lab long distance. He picked up on the second ring.
“What are you doing in there on a Saturday night?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said.
Eric Duncan had worked in the mineralogy lab for more than twenty years, not all of them by choice. About ten years ago, he went to Quantico to become a special agent. But during his second week of training, he noticed his left hand losing strength. Before long he was struggling to wash his hair. Bureau physicians ran a battery of tests and Eric Duncan was diagnosed with early stage Multiple Sclerosis. He returned to the mineralogy lab. When I left the lab for Quantico, he was my biggest cheerleader.
“You saw my e-mail,” I said. “I’m working. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m cleaning out my desk. Monday’s my last day.”
“What?”
“When you came up here this summer, you saw the crutches. I said the wheelchair was next—”
“But—”
“Raleigh, when they built this behemoth of a building, the government didn’t hire cripples. You think my MS is waiting around for the Bureau to match the Americans with Disabilities Act?”
I searched for words. My mind came up empty.
“Did you read my e-mail?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“The guy’s in Spokane, which, unlike the rest of the East Coast, I realize is on the other side of the state. I can even pronounce it correctly. He’s an excellent geologist, among the best at forensics. Send him your samples. Better yet, drive out and meet him.” He paused. “How’s the move anyway?”
“I saw rain today.”
“What I’d give for a walk in the rain.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, you didn’t mean that. And I’m not feeling sorry for myself.”
“Really?”
“Maybe just a little.”
We laughed, but my heart was filled with an aching sensation. I swallowed. “Eric, I’m really sorry this is happening to you.”
He was sighing, I thought.
But after several long moments, when all I heard was air moving, air crossing an invisible network of wires from one side of the continent to the other, I felt my heart open. And the feel-ing seemed more real, more tangible, than the phone I held in my hand.
When Aunt Charlotte moved to Seattle, she carried with her a massive financial payoff from an alcoholic ex-husband. Her departure was preferable to a nasty public divorce concerning infidelity and physical abuse on the husband’s part, particularly when Charlotte’s brother sat on Virginia’s Superior Court, roundly admired by every attorney in town.
Several years later she opened a small store called Seattle Stones, which I always assumed was a geological store, the same way that I mistook the pink tourmaline at my father’s funeral. But just after 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, I walked down University Avenue, five blocks south of Mama Mia’s pizza, and followed three slouchy teenagers through the door of Seattle Stones. A series of Himalayan mule bells rang as the door opened, startling one of the slouchers to grab at his jeans, which were the size of elephant feed bags.
“Raleigh!” Aunt Charlotte said. “Nadine, look, it’s Raleigh.”
My mother was packing a corrugated brown box, wearing a circle of tape like a bracelet. Around her neck was a series of polished red stones. She offered me a smile.
One of the teenagers scuffed to the glass counter where Aunt Charlotte stood extinguishing a stick of incense. He stared down into the glass, the halogen lights illuminating displays of geodes and amulets and silver jewelry twisted around crystals. When he looked up, his blue eyes were stagnant ponds surrounded by rivulets of blood.
“You got any, like, paraphernalia?” he said.
“Sure do,” said Aunt Charlotte. “All my paranormal stuff is in that far corner. UFOs, telekinetics, it’s all there. And check out that moon rock. Looks exactly like the Montana granite next to it, which just goes to prove we never were on the moon.”
He blinked. A slow blink. A momentary hiccup in a brain medicated for deep sleep.
“No, um, smoke stuff?”
“Séance candles come in next week. Just in time for Halloween.”
I watched his mind click into gear. He shifted his red eyes toward the other two who were curled like fossil ammonites over the moon rock and matching Montana granite. At his signal they walked out the door, in search of a real bong shop.
“That happen often?” I asked.
“Not having what somebody wants?”
“Never mind.” There was no polite way to explain that the sign outside could be read “Seattle Stoned.”
“Last week,” she said, “I had a woman come in asking about kitchens. She thought I sold granite countertops. I told her, ‘Honey, granite is for sissies. What you need is some nephrite. That’ll get you cooking.’”
Around 6:30 p.m., Aunt Charlotte closed the shop and I followed her wheezing black Volvo wagon home, driving down Montlake Boulevard, reading her tailgate bumper stickers that looked like a political version of Tourette’s Syndrome. Sharp declarations about animal testing, war, authority, and women who needed men like fish needed bicycles, a sentiment that made no sense to me since aquatic life would be a whole lot more interesting on wheels.
We drove up the east side of Capitol Hill, and as soon as we got home I climbed into the claw-footed bathtub upstairs, soaking with my eyes closed until my muscles released. When the water cooled I dried off, wrapped myself in a robe, and fell on the bed, hair wet on the pillow.
My memory of the details surrounding my father’s murder had a staccato quality, like misshapen chips knocked off a large tumbling boulder. I remembered working at my desk in the FBI’s mineralogy lab, a plagioclase specimen resting under my micro-scope. And I remembered the phone ringing. But my next memory was sitting in a car outside my parents’ house in Richmond. How I got there, who drove, it was lost to me. So were the words spoken during the memorial service. Yet I could still recall the white hands of the mortician at Bliley’s Funeral Home, the bird-shaped tie tack he wore, and most clearly of all, a series of extended nights on the couch in the den, wrapped in my father’s favorite sweaters, breathing his warm, safe scent and realizing that with every passing second, the scent was fading.
And after my bath, I had a dream in which my father appeared so vividly I later doubted it was a dream. He was standing in the forest I had just hiked, his arms open. He was smiling, about to say something, when Aunt Charlotte walked into my bedroom.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?”
She wore an expectant expression, like someone who offered a present and wanted to hear the recipient’s gratitude.
“Aunt Charlotte, about Claire . . .”
“Raleigh, she once told me something was wrong in my house and right there Beryl choked on a hairball.”
“Beryl, the cat?”
“She went into cardiac arrest.”
“Claire?”
“Beryl. I started screaming and Claire just picked her up, laid her on the table and started CPR. She blew the breath of life into that animal. I’m telling you that woman can sense trouble. That’s why I asked her to go find you.”
“I appreciate the thought, but Claire’s interfering with my work.”
She drew herself up. “What do you mean?”
“She’s a civilian, Aunt Charlotte. She can compromise an investigation.” I didn’t have the energy to explain how defense attorneys salivated over something like this. And the media that seized any opportunity to make the Bureau look chaotic or cracked. “Please don’t ask her to help me.”
In the broad plain above her eyes, I saw my father’s face, his thoughtful countenance. But then she looked away, staring at the bookcase directly across from the bed. The smell of incense from her store, an oily musk, clung to her cerulean blue tunic.
“Actually, I’m more concerned about your mother right now,” she said.
I froze. “Why is that?”
“This morning she told me her spirit’s dying. I said, ‘Honey, you come work with me at the store. It’ll lift your mood.’ You know, like we said, give her something to do. I thought she was enjoying herself today, meeting people, helping ship orders. But in the car on the way home she asked if I wanted to go to church with her. ‘Nadine,’ I said, ‘I haven’t set foot in a church since David died and I only went in there because he was my brother.’ After what the Episcopals put me through with my divorce? No more.”
The Rivers Run Dry Page 7
