The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  LeAnne only caught a glimpse of that very last part with the scarf, because Crannack shoved her into the back of the Growler and flung his body over hers, as though she were nothing but a civilian. After that came things she only heard—shouting, running, calls for backup, the loading of ammo into weapons big and small, the whap-whap of arriving helicopters—but there were no more shots from above, and neither was there any return fire, meaning the target had not been found. LeAnne felt the beating of Luke’s heart, first pounding wildly, slowly settling down to an approximation of normal.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Someone had been talking about do-overs, but who? In the middle of the night, five miles above the ocean, LeAnne remembered: Marci. I’d like a do-over on that decision—let’s leave it there. Now LeAnne wanted a do-over of her own. But what could she have done differently? She tried out various strategies, all of them petering out in different futile ways. Would you be a better person if you assumed that whoever you were dealing with was going to have her head blown off by the end of day? She was lost in a dark mental warren when the names popped into her head. LeAnne had a pen but no paper; she wrote on her hand so she wouldn’t lose them: Wrashmin, Durkhani, Hila, Muska, Laila (2).

  Harvey met her outside arrivals at Sea-Tac. He’d had a haircut, maybe a bit too short, and looked younger.

  “Welcome back,” he said, reaching for her duffel. LeAnne held on to it. There was nothing she could do about being a civilian, but she could carry her own stuff. “How did it go?” he said.

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “No rush,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her, not smooth in action or timing, a kiss on the lips but meant to be quick. It turned into something else, something much more passionate, taking LeAnne by surprise. They held each other tight. She felt his body in her arms, kind of soft compared to men like Jamie or Luke, and wanted him anyway, despite of or because of that softness. It didn’t matter. The decision had been made. LeAnne got her hands on Harvey’s chest and gave him a little push.

  “I reek,” she said.

  “Not to me.”

  “Don’t be such a saint, Harvey.”

  “Why not?” said Harvey.

  LeAnne pulled him back, gave him another kiss, this time of the pecking kind. They entered a parking garage, rode an elevator, stepped out, walked toward Harvey’s pickup at the end of a row. In the passenger seat, a huge head rose up to window level. Barking started up immediately, plus thumping, scratching, clawing. Harvey ran over and opened the door. Goody flew past him, bounded to LeAnne, stood straight up, her paws digging into LeAnne’s shoulders and licked her face in a frantic way.

  “Hey, there,” LeAnne said. And “easy now.” Plus “that’s enough, you can stop.” But she loved it. Goody finally stopped, raced down to the end of the row, tore back to LeAnne, and went through her whole welcome home routine all over again.

  Five minutes later, Goody was asleep in the backseat, her toy dog tucked between her front paws, and they were on their way to Bellville.

  “You haven’t asked me about Mia,” Harvey said.

  “I assumed if there was news you’d tell me.”

  “Sorry,” Harvey said. “I wanted to see how you were first.”

  “So there is news? What?” All at once, LeAnne could hardly breathe, as though death had come smothering in from all sides.

  “Good news, actually—Mia’s been found.”

  “Alive?”

  “Oh, yes. And unharmed.”

  “Thank God.” Here, in some way, was her do-over, after all. She took a deep breath, felt light and strong at the same time, the way she’d always used to feel. “What happened?”

  “Max found her, actually. He decided that the distance from Coreen’s house to the bike path—three miles by the shortest route—was beyond the capability of an eight-year-old at night. Instead, he searched within a half-mile radius of Coreen’s. Mia was in a shed on the property of an older couple who spend the winter in Hawaii.”

  “But,” LeAnne said, immediately back to feeling like her new, lesser self. There was more than one “but.” She tried to line them up.

  “What did she eat?” Harvey said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Turns out the old guy uses the shed as an office. He had bottled water in there, plus snacks—peanut butter, crackers, chips, stuff like that.”

  “And . . . and . . .” It came to her. “The armband?” LeAnne said.

  “Nothing definitive on that,” Harvey said. “She thinks she went to bed wearing it but doesn’t remember what happened after she went out the window. The sheriff believes she lost it wandering around, and it’s possible that an animal or bird carried it to the swamp.”

  “For Christ sake.”

  “Or that McCutcheon got things wrong, and the armband was from some previous funeral. The point is she’s safe and sound.”

  “And the commando? Marci’s mission? All that?”

  “Now Mia thinks it must have been a nightmare. And it sure sounds more like a nightmare than a real event to me.”

  “What was she planning to do once she was in this shed?”

  Harvey shook his head. “Apparently she mostly slept, the poor kid.”

  “How long are we talking about?”

  “Why, since the funeral.”

  LeAnne’s voice rose. “In days, Harvey.”

  He glanced at her. “Eight.”

  That was all? LeAnne gazed out the window. Rain was falling, not hard. Goody made soft snoring sounds. It was peaceful in Harvey’s pickup. “Is she in the hospital?”

  “They checked her out right away, but she’s in good health. So now she’s back home.”

  “With Coreen?”

  “That’s right,” Harvey said. “Although not just with Coreen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Max is staying there, too. For the time being.”

  LeAnne sat up straight. Then came movement in the back, and Goody, too, was sitting up straight. “Why?” she said.

  “It’s what Mia wants.” Harvey cleared his throat. “There’s talk of some sort of shared custody, Mia spending maybe the school years in Seattle and the summers with Coreen.” He glanced her way again, expecting who knew what.

  The miles went by, ten, twenty, more. LeAnne began to see her whole life in three missions, the first two—Midnight Special and the interrogation of Katie—as complete failures. That left mission number three, last chance to get it right: What’s her future if something happens to me?

  “I want to see that shed,” LeAnne said.

  Harvey sighed. “Is that a good idea? Mia’s fine, and that’s what counts. Plus Max is her father, when all is said and done.”

  “I hate that expression,” LeAnne said. “Just drop me off at Shady Grove.”

  The rain fell harder. Harvey bumped the wipers up to maximum speed. “I’ll take you to the shed.”

  Harvey drove down a cul-de-sac with a vineyard at the end, the vines all in blossom, as though a dusting of snow had just come down. The last house stood at the end of a long driveway. Harvey parked in front of it.

  “They don’t come home till June,” he said.

  LeAnne knew he was talking about the old couple in Hawaii. What she was unsure of was the current month. She got out of the truck. “Goody? Let’s go.”

  Goody, her toy still between her paws, looked up but didn’t move.

  “Goody?” This wasn’t like her. “Has she been acting strange?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Harvey, “but in her normal way.”

  “Goody. Now.”

  Goody rose, yawned, stepped outside, and stretched. Harvey led them around the house, across a wide lawn—very green but not manicured in the suburban way—to a low shingled building, more like a cottage than a shed. LeAnne peered through a window into a pleasant-looking room with hardwood floors, a desk, an easy chair, and a small fridge and hot plate in one corner.

  “How did sh
e get in?” LeAnne said.

  “The door. Apparently the old guy often forgot to lock up.”

  “Who says?”

  “That’s what his wife told the sheriff on the phone.” Harvey pointed to the vineyard. “Up that slope and down the other side and you come out at the end of Coreen’s street.”

  LeAnne had already gotten that part—half-mile radius, an eight-year-old at night, Max’s theory—and didn’t feel like giving it any more thought. She glanced down for Goody, expecting her in her usual place on the bad side, but Goody wasn’t there, instead she lay on her back, halfway across the lawn, paws in the air.

  “Goody! Come here!”

  Goody ambled over, sat on LeAnne’s foot, yawned again, then got busy scratching behind her ear.

  “I’ve seen enough,” LeAnne said.

  “Doing anything for dinner tonight?” said Harvey, pulling into Shady Grove.

  A normal, everyday question, but it seemed to come from an unfamiliar world.

  “Or maybe you just want to catch up on sleep,” he said, after what might have been an uncomfortable silence.

  LeAnne glanced at him and nodded. “How about another time?” She patted his knee, resting her hand there for an extra moment. They looked at each other.

  “Sure,” Harvey said. “Anything you want.”

  LeAnne shouldered her duffel, walked up the white-gravel path, opened the door to cabin six. Goody, toy in her mouth, burst past her and leaped onto the bed, wriggled around, got comfortable. LeAnne went into the bathroom, stripped off the clothes she’d been wearing for way too long, turned the shower lever to hot, and stepped in. Too late she thought of the names on her hand. She looked: they were all blurred, and now they washed away.

  LeAnne got into bed.

  “Move over.”

  Goody did not move over. LeAnne didn’t have the strength to do anything about it.

  A hand touched hers. It felt familiar. A woman spoke. “I’m here, angel.”

  The voice, too, was familiar. LeAnne put these impressions together, made the right guess.

  “I told them not to let you in.”

  “It’s all right. I’m here to help.”

  “Help? How the fuck?”

  Her mother stroked her hand. “Whatever you want. Just say.”

  What did she want? Nothing but impossible things, nothing but miracles. “Gingerbread men,” she said, the only realistic want that came to mind.

  LeAnne awoke to the sound of Goody slurping up water from the toilet. Nighttime. She checked the clock. Zero one forty, meaning she’d slept with no interruption since . . . she didn’t know exactly, just remembered that it had still been daylight. LeAnne rose, rummaged through her duffel, got dressed. Goody bolted past her on the way out the door, and moments later was sitting up straight in the Honda, all business.

  A crescent moon shone in the sky, about halfway to the horizon. LeAnne didn’t like moonlight on a mission, but this thin little moon wasn’t so bad. It gleamed on the wet patches in the swamp to LeAnne’s left as she drove up former logging road N31, making lots of tiny earthbound crescents. She leaned forward, watching for that squat, rotten stump on the hilly side, her depth perception so poor. After a few minutes, Goody went tense, her head jutting forward in an aggressive way. The stump appeared at the limit of her headlight beams a moment or two later. LeAnne pulled over.

  She took the flashlight from the glove box, and they got out of the car. “No barking, no noise, no bullshit.” LeAnne switched on the light, and they made their way past the stump and started up the steep, overgrown slope. LeAnne had been slow on this same climb by daylight, and was slower now, but Goody seemed even speedier than before. She bolted beyond flashlight range and disappeared. “And no running ahead,” LeAnne added, way too late and pretty much talking to herself.

  She squeezed through the space between the two big rocks, which looked strangely insubstantial in the flashlight beam, and entered the small clearing where they’d found Max smoking a cigarette. LeAnne swept the beam from left to right, found Goody on the far side, her tail standing straight up. She crossed the clearing, followed Goody’s gaze, saw nothing but massive tree trunks growing closely together, the spaces between them dense with vines and brambles, all of it overhung by a heavy, pressing darkness. Goody lowered her head, sniffed a bit, and then moved forward, slowly now, at a pace LeAnne could keep up with. No easy or even possible route appeared in the cone of light, but that didn’t seem to matter. All she had to do was stick to Goody.

  They climbed over a fallen tree and went up a sharp rise, LeAnne forced to use her hands once or twice, holding the flashlight in her mouth. At the top, she paused to remove a thorny vine that had attached itself to her sleeve. She took a look around, shining the light here and there, and saw they’d actually come upon a trail. Very narrow, overgrown, almost disappearing in places, but: a trail. There was something she needed to remember. She stood there and waited. After a few moments, Goody growled and made a sort of jabbing motion with her head, getting impatient.

  “Shut up.”

  And then it came to her. Max in the clearing down below: The next two miles or so are pretty much impassable. But they’d gone nothing like two miles, maybe not even a quarter of a mile, and here was a path. The fog that had dwelled in her mind since the night of January seventeenth lifted a bit.

  LeAnne studied the trail, pretty much level in both directions. Through the treetops, she found the North Star, to the left of the moon and higher in the sky. The trail, at least on this stretch, ran east to west. East, deeper into the mountains, had to be right. She started walking east, saw that Goody had made the same decision for reasons of her own and was already rounding a bend about fifty yards ahead.

  Past the bend, the trail began climbing the mountainside in a series of switchbacks. There was no sign of Goody, but LeAnne could hear her, ignoring the switchbacks and taking a straight line, up and up. She could also hear flowing water to her left, and soon she came to a simple bridge, just two thick planks stretched over a narrow stream. Goody was drinking down below, moonlight in her eyes and in the drops of water falling off her tongue. The dog seemed to be watching her. The strange, chopped-off tail wagged back and forth. Goody hopped up onto the bridge, with no sign of effort, and pressed against LeAnne’s leg. LeAnne scratched between Goody’s ears, just the way she liked. Goody pressed harder, hard enough to knock LeAnne right off the bridge if she hadn’t braced herself. LeAnne got the feeling that Goody would have been happy to simply stay like this forever, and envied her.

  They crossed to the other side of the stream, climbed another rise, went by some man-high boulders. Through the trees to the left, LeAnne spotted a dark, squared-off silhouette. She shone her light in that direction, saw a small, rough-hewn wooden cabin with a stovepipe poking through the roof. Her fog-free mind came through with exactly what she needed: The third time—this was out in an old hunting cabin of his family’s, always too much boozing in a place like that—she left.

  But it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Goody was zigzagging toward the cabin, nose to the ground, cutting back and forth so powerfully that LeAnne could hear her claws tearing at the soil. Goody raced around the cabin, stopped at the door, and rose up to her full height against it, pawing and pawing.

  LeAnne went to a window, shone her light inside. No one there, but she knew that already. She saw a room with a woodstove, and in the back another room with two bunk beds. The door to the bedroom was open, but there was a key in the lock: on the outside. LeAnne walked around the cabin until she found the window to the bedroom. There were bars on the window, a grid of steel with spaces of no more than four inches. She peered through, saw a blanket on the lower bunk of one bed, and the upper bunk of the second. Kids liked that upper bunk.

  Goody squeezed against her, also peered in, tail wagging so hard LeAnne felt the breeze.

  “Good girl.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The crescent moon sank from
view, and the North Star and all the other stars faded away. LeAnne was parked on Apple Street, four houses down from 136, Goody sleeping beside her, partly in the passenger seat, partly stretched across the center console, her heavy head on LeAnne’s leg. LeAnne straightened up and rubbed her eyes, which was kind of weird: why rub the fake? But it felt right.

  A car went slowly by, rolled-up newspapers getting flung into driveways and onto lawns from the driver’s-side window, almost like they were ejecting themselves. It was a beautiful sight and somehow fragile in a way she couldn’t explain. She was starting to think that she was understanding less and less about life as it went on, when the door to 136 opened and Max came out. He wore a blazer and blue jeans, carried a large envelope, was maybe on his way to work. Something about lumber? Max got into an expensive-looking sports car, not small although it had seemed that way with him standing alongside, and drove up the street, meaning toward her. LeAnne sat motionless. Max passed by, gaze straight ahead and intense, the engine of his car throbbing, low and powerful. Goody raised her head.

  “Best if you stay here,” LeAnne said. Goody thumped her tail on the seat. “Won’t be long.” LeAnne opened the door. Goody sprang past her, out onto the street.

  They walked to 136. “Don’t fuck up.” LeAnne knocked on the door. Goody, on her right side, started panting. LeAnne knocked again, and Coreen opened the door.