by Mark Hazard
“Fuck you, then.”
“Huh?”
Pineda wrapped his overcoat tightly around himself. “Remind me not to tell you shit about my hopes and dreams.”
“I wasn’t making fun.”
“Whatever.” Pineda crossed his arms and stared out the window.
They hit the bridge and were halfway across the massive span when Corus realized Pineda had gone minutely stiller.
“What’s your first name?” Corus asked. “What’s your favorite food? You look like a tofu guy.”
Pineda glared at him, face turning red.
Corus edged off the gas pedal, and the giant support beams of the bridge passed by a little slower.
Pineda pursed his lips. “Carlos. Pizza,” he croaked.
Corus sped up. “What don’t you like about me?”
Pineda gauged the remaining span and glanced down at the gas pedal, making a mental calculation. “Too good.”
Corus pushed his lower lip up. “I think I take your meaning. Is there any chance you and I can get along as coworkers?”
Pineda shrugged.
Corus hit the gas in a show of goodwill. “I can’t think what I’ve done to offend you. Is it just that I fell in with Jim?”
Something flashed in Pineda’s eyes.
“And being on first name basis with him just pisses you off more. I get it.” He watched Pineda begin to shake and bead up with sweat. “I had every expectation of keeping my head down as a FNG. I never saw any of it coming. For whatever that’s worth to you.”
The hum of the Nissan’s tires changed in pitch as they left the bridge, returning to interstate pavement.
Pineda released his breath and huffed to get his air back. “Why’d you join the Army?”
“Honestly? To piss off my father. It sounded cool.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“That was most of it. Why do you ask?”
Pineda grunted, eyes transfixed by the layers of geological strata passing by as they ascended out of the Columbia Gorge. “You from money?” He turned his gaze on Corus, but not unkindly. “I smell it on you.”
Corus didn’t like answering such personal inquiries, but Pineda knew somehow.
“My family on both sides has money.”
“Where you from? Not where you went to high school. Where are your people?”
Corus winced. “I left all that behind. That’s why I loved the Army so much. It gave me something completely different to belong to.”
“So, you’re not rich.”
“This car was a wedding present from my father-in-law — he’s a Nissan dealer. Spent all my combat pay on medical bills. My wife works part-time teaching painting, which is the only thing helping us scrape by until I get my first paycheck.”
Pineda’s grunt was thoughtful as far as grunts went.
Corus pointed to the ridgeline above the interstate. “You wanna climb up to the horses? It’s not too windy.”
“What horses?”
“The iron horse sculptures on the hill that gives Vantage its name. You can see for miles down the river canyon.”
“Got a bum knee. We shouldn’t waste time.”
“Sure,” Corus said. “You’re probably right.”
TWELVE
Olive Tanner huddled near a space heater to ward off the dank chill of the old seed barn. She clutched a coffee and a hard cookie, items Randall had dropped off so rapidly, she hadn’t been able to utter a word before he dodged out of the barn again.
She sipped the hot drink and nibbled the cookie, wondering if there was any way to salvage the commission for old man Phillips’ house. Maybe the police wouldn’t dirty it up too much. Elvin Berkemper, the lawyer who oversaw the sale of the farm, would likely execute Phillips’ will. Berkemper and Phillips were old friends. He would surely be grief-stricken. She ought to act as if she were the listing agent and that was that. Being so bold might even do him a favor by taking a matter off his plate, but she knew she wouldn’t do that. She believed deep down that there was a version of herself that could, but she’d yet to find it.
The barn door creaked, and Randall whispered her name.
“Yes?”
“It’s so blerrie dark in here. Hold on. My eyes have to adjust.”
“I’m right here. Randall—”
“I’m sorry for this, miss. It’s a very strange day.” Randall squatted next to her on one knee, sharing the thin light streaming in through cracks in the old siding. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“No, miss. Best not.”
“I thought with the hiding in the barn, maybe it would be like old times, but—”
“You know how sorry I am for—”
“It’s fine.” She waved a hand. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
They stared at one another a while, hands clutched about the other’s forearms.
“It still feels like something out of a movie,” she said. “Me and the hot farmhand.”
“I’ll have you know my title is ‘Operations Supervisor.’” His smiling eyes glinted in the dark. He was being brave for her sake.
“You must be so lonely.”
“I have Moses.”
She chuckled. “Shush. Is your family coming? Your wife?”
“It doesn’t look that way. Maybe in a few years.”
“Your children must miss you.”
“They were so little when I left, they don’t even know me. Please, let’s not talk about it.”
“Then what can we talk about? Why am I here? What were you doing in old man Phillips’ house?”
Randall sat back on his rear, elbows perched on his knees, and took off his hat. “Ag, miss. The police will have come, and they’re going to see that blerrie great hole in the ceiling and a blerrie great divot in Old Man Phillips’ upper half and a blerrie great disaster of a closet and they’re going to want to know what made it.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Randall.”
“Miss, I thought you knew. I really thought you knew.”
Olive’s pulse quickened, shoving a lump into her throat. “What don’t I know? You were expecting that huge bag, weren’t you?”
“Ja, miss.”
“It wasn’t some sort of accident?”
“It was an accident and a half.”
“What was in that bag?”
“I dare not tell you, if you don’t know already. You mother would have me shot.”
“Are you keeping me away from her?”
“I’m trying to keep you away from all of it, but there’s no good way. Maybe your mother’s cunning could come in handy, but if I take you up to the house, you two will get the way you get, and it will just make things worse.”
She gripped his face in both her hands. “You’re really worried.” Her thumbs brushed under his eyes, pushing aside dark circles.
He gripped her wrists in his warm, callused hands. “It’s public knowledge you were having an open house. You can’t pretend you weren’t there. You saw Mr. Phillips, then you freaked out. You don’t know what happened to the bag.”
“I don’t. Not after you took it.”
“No, Olive. You don’t know what happened to it. You saw no one. Not me, not Moses. No one. You left, crying like you do. And you went for a drive, and when your head cleared, you realized you had to talk to the police.”
“But my car. It’s still in front of the house.”
“I had Moses move it straight away. It’s just here around the side where no one will see.”
“What do I say? What do I do?”
“Tell them you freaked out about seeing a dead man. Because that’s what happened.”
She bent to kiss him, then stopped herself, knowing it was no good. “Just tell me. Are you in some kind of danger?”
“I’ll be all right, miss. I just have my stomach in a knot. Once you’ve talked to the police, everything will be bett
er.”
They helped each other up and shared a long hug.
“I miss you so much,” she said, tears welling up.
“Don’t say it, miss.”
“I know I can’t.”
“Come now. Be brave. Do this for me, ja?” He led her by the hand and put her in the car. “Straight to the police station. Everything will be fine.”
She nodded and drove away before she started sobbing.
THIRTEEN
As they turned southeast off of I-90 toward Walla Walla, they encountered a landscape of scablands that reminded Corus of the burned moors or the surface of Mars. Austere, but a cohesive landscape: the hardy grasses that survived the winter, copses of trees with leafless black branches, basalt outcroppings, and huge, smooth granite boulders standing about like a giant child had left their marbles out. All the remains of lava flows that once covered the earth, only to be split by glacial floods of biblical proportions, then covered with wind-blown silt from the Columbia and Snake river valleys and ash from Cascade Range volcanoes, the most recent of which had erupted only twenty-six years previous.
The uneven terrain began to undulate. The grasses grew greener. They entered the Palouse.
In Corus’ research, he’d found that his father’s proclamation about the area’s agricultural fertility was grounded in fact. The gently rolling hills held some of the finest soil in North America, helping Washington punch much higher than its weight in agricultural production.
“You really fuckin’ love Mandy Moore,” Pineda said, breaking his train of thought.
Thoughts of geological time had put Corus in a chipper mood. “I have her face tattooed on my ass. Wanna see?”
“What? No.” Pineda shrunk away. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m not. Happy to change it up if you’re sick of Mandy.”
Pineda flipped through the radio stations but had a hard time coming up with anything, so he switched it over to AM, where it was nothing but religious programming and sports radio. “I hate sports. Let me know when they have radio shows about wrestling.” He kept scanning and hit a channel playing Mariachi music. Their eyes met.
“That’s fine,” Corus said.
“You think ‘cause I’m brown I like Mariachi? Screw this hokey shit.” Pineda turned the radio off. “You got any other CDs?”
Corus pulled out Karen’s CD case and handed it over to Pineda who unzipped it and flipped through the plastic sleeves. He pulled one out and slipped it in the stereo.
“People say Evanescence is a Christian band,” Pineda said. “But they’re just a band who are Christians. There’s a difference.”
By the time “Whisper” rounded out the album, they pulled into Walla Walla, Washington, population 30,718 according to the sign.
Corus rolled off the highway into a central district with a grid layout running diagonal to cardinal directions. He pulled into the parking lot of a Budget Suites, a motel chain that gave good discounts to military and law enforcement. Corus wasn’t planning to mention that he was police or former military on this particular trip, but still liked giving them his business.
“Made it in just under four hours. Not bad. This place okay by you?”
“We’re not sharing a room,” Pineda said.
“What’s standard procedure?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t never traveled for work before. But we’re not sharing a room.”
After acquiring rooms and getting situated, Corus sat on the bed. Immediately, a sense of profound loneliness stung him. He expected the surprising feeling to pass, but it persisted.
He’d spent many nights alone in the field and felt fine even when sleeping rough. But in the safety of a Budget Suites, he felt a sense of isolation, as if it were a normal reaction.
He asked himself if being alone in an actual bed felt strange, after being married for years, but that wasn’t it.
Corus stared at the blank screen of the TV, where his mind projected an image of a boy, seven or eight, wearing a suit to dinner out of habit, even though he was eating room service in his suite alone. The bellman who brought his dinner accepted his tip with a wry smile and asked if the young gentleman would like for him to put a cartoon on the TV while he ate.
The young man had declined.
Corus blinked at the blank TV.
Pineda opened his door at the knock. “What?”
“I’m itching to do something useful. It’s still business hours,” Corus said. “Thinking we should head over and check in with locals. Ruiz said Sergeant Nelka was our point person.”
“Right. Sergeant Nelka.”
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
Pineda pulled at his fingers and fidgeted with his watchband with nervous energy. Perhaps, there was something he didn’t want to mention. It was hard to imagine that Ruiz would share more with Pineda than Jameson, but her relationship with the gregarious sergeant seemed strained to say the least.
“It seems like you know something I don’t.” Corus tried to appeal to his pride. “Obviously, Ruiz trusted you with it, not me, but it might behoove our efforts to be equally informed.”
Pineda practically laughed. “Nah, nah. I don’t know anything you don’t know. It’s all good.”
“Okay then.” Corus forced a smile. “Go see Nelka?”
“Lead the way.”
One of the benefits of staying at the Budget Suites was its proximity to the sheriff’s department, well within walking distance. Corus felt some of his uneasiness from before melt away in the sunshine and caught a hint of spring on the air, something unique to the drier climate that reminded him of happier times in his youth, riding horses on dusty roads between vineyards and olive groves, streams full of fish and hilltops crowned with decayed ruins.
They entered the sheriff’s department lobby where a petite woman in a red blazer and black slacks tearfully arranged things in her purse, as a female deputy consoled her. She had beautiful dark hair, a pale face with stark eyebrows and round, brown eyes. Her hands were manicured and delicate, fingers splaying artfully as she spoke, even in distress.
They passed by toward the door as Corus and Pineda approached the high counter. Two deputies sat on a dais behind a raised counter in their beige shirts with black ties, next to a civilian receptionist. One deputy had a kind, smiling face and prematurely gray hair, like a fun uncle. The other had a buzzcut and, from the angle of his body, seemed intent on chatting with the receptionist as soon as she finished with her call. He gazed down at them with displeasure.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
“We’re from King County,” Pineda said. “Here to talk to Nelka.”
“Law enforcement?”
“Yes sir.” Corus produced ID and nudged Pineda to do the same.
Buzzcut groaned as he stood and walked stiff-shouldered out of view.
The receptionist said goodbye to whoever she was talking to on her slim headset and looked at the empty chair with the tiniest hint of relief.
Nelka appeared and waved them back.
He walked more stiffly than was normal for a cop, arms out to the sides like he was carrying heavy invisible suitcases, and his black hair was freshly and rectangularly buzzed high and tight. Nelka made a quarter turn near a coffee station. “Caff, decaf, half-caff.” His hands rested on three restaurant-sized steel coffee makers. “Creamer, non-dairy creamer, soy-based creamer, almond milk in the fridge.” He pulled open a drawer. “Refined sugar, raw sugar, Splenda, aspartame-based sweeteners, stir sticks, napkins. Please help yourself to any and all.”
Corus gave an impressed nod.
“You got a cappuccino maker, too?” Pineda asked.
“We do not,” Nelka said. “But if you desire a cappuccino, Bean Slingers coffee shop is two blocks away. Makes a mean brew.”
Corus filled up on black coffee and followed Nelka to his office, a space so neat it looked like the display model from the office supply store. Nelka sat in his wide-backed chair
and leaned on his desk, elbows out wide, hands clasped, as if hugging around a tree.
“Thank you for meeting with us,” Corus said.
“That’s no trouble. Grace Ruiz and I started out together in Seattle Metro. She said it’d be a personal favor, and at the rate she’s ascending, it’s wise to help her out.”
Corus was surprised Ruiz would phrase it like that.
“Now what can I help with? Nothing scandalous, I hope.”
Corus looked to Pineda in deference to his rank, but Pineda gave a stern look back with a flick of the eyebrows in Nelka’s direction.
“You’re aware that Walla Walla county is ground zero in what we call the Princess investigation?”
“Peripherally aware. I am not involved with that particular investigation.”
“It’s in the process of being passed up to the FBI.”
“Makes sense.”
“And that’s why we’re here,” Corus said. “We want to bolster the case in the hopes the FBI gives it the priority it merits.”
Nelka leaned back and sucked his teeth. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was about to ask you that same question. We want to do things your way.”
Nelka splayed his thumbs, keeping his fingers interlaced. “We don’t have much in the way of high-tech. With our budget, we can barely afford two full time detectives. We solve most crimes via social networks, good relationship with the community. In that regard, we’re old school, but we’re open-minded.”
“My kind of people. You’re familiar with the Tanner family?”
“Funny thing.” Nelka sat forward again. “This morning there was some kind of accident at their neighbor’s house. Was supposed to be an open house today, and a realtor was showing it to a couple clients, when they came upon the deceased homeowner. Flatter than a pancake in his bed. And there was a fresh hole in the roof. The Tanner’s daughter was over there earlier, prepping for the open house. She’s a realtor. But she didn’t see what happened.”
“Wait, she left?”
“Yessir. Saw the scene and bolted out of fright. Poor kid just came back and told us what she saw. Left just as you came in.”
