“Shit,” said Lance.
“Most people don’t know about it,” she reassured him. “And those who do often choose not to draw attention to their families by applying. But if you’re willing to complete the necessary paperwork, I can . . .”
“Noel, don’t open your door.”
Too late. My hand was already on the handle, and I was listening more closely to Chandra than to my husband. Moreover, I wasn’t paying attention to the way the car was jiggling. To make matters worse, I had never adjusted to the ease with which the minivan and convertible opened in contrast to the primate-mobile. I didn’t merely open the door, I threw it wide with all my force.
Travis Kendal, in his trademark plaid shirt, spilled into the parking lot, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and thrashing like a caged animal.
CHAPTER 26
Dear Nora:
I’m failing algebra. I do okay on homework, because my prof’s computer program tells me the right answer when I plug in the wrong one. I just type in the wrong thing for everything so I can turn in the right answers and get a good grade. But the exams don’t tell me whether I’m right or wrong, and the prof grades whatever I submit without giving me a chance to fix the errors. What do I do?
Non-plussed
Dear Non:
Study.
Nora
“I’m a scout mom.” Norma Anderssen followed Chandra back outside. “I always have a lighter, a knife, and a corkscrew handy.”
While I called for emergency services, Lance grabbed several times at the cloth grocery bag knotted over Travis’s head, but Travis wouldn’t be still. Lance finally got Travis’s attention as Chandra returned from reporting the emergency to the school. “Travis, it’s Lance Lakeland. Cool down and let me get this off of you.”
Travis said something incomprehensible as the bag ripped free.
“And in case you’re wondering,” Norma continued, “you can use a corkscrew for lots of things besides opening wine. Lots.” From her car, she had retrieved a giant pocket knife, the sort of thing a school would never have allowed indoors. It took a few yanks for her to pry it open, making me doubt its efficacy in an emergency, but it served its purpose now. Travis grew still and let Lance saw away at the ropes binding his body.
“The school guidance counselor . . . uh . . . found something to cut him free,” I reported to the emergency dispatcher. “But his face is going to be harder. He’s got a goose egg on the back of his head and duct tape wound around his mouth and scalp.”
Travis kept trying to talk, urgently grunting the whole time Lance released his bonds. When he was finally free, he rubbed his wrists then clawed at the duct tape, and Lance set down the knife to help him.
After the tape was dislodged and jammed under his chin, he took two deep breaths. “Noel, I caught you in time,” he babbled in a hoarse voice. “The chair is trying to tank your interview. I saw him putting rotten fish in the conference room this morning. I wanted to text, but he’s suspicious I know, and . . .” Suddenly, he stopped, breathing heavily. He touched the swollen knot above the duct tape in his hair and flinched away from his own fingers. “Ow,” he said.
“Head between the knees, don’t pass out on me, Buddy.” Lance prodded Travis into a semblance of the appropriate posture.
Travis shook him off. “It’s not today anymore, is it? No, that’s stupid. Of course, today is always today, and tomorrow is . . . never mind. The point I’m after . . . I guess I’ve forgotten.” He brooded a few seconds, with his chin on his knees. “Lost track of time, I think. That’s what I meant. I haven’t been able to see much. How long ago was today? Damn . . . I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean.” Lance hunkered beside our colleague. “Yesterday. Noel’s interview was yesterday. You should try to relax.”
“What happened to you?”
Lance shot Chandra a glower that suggested she shouldn’t have inquired. The dispatcher and I weren’t talking now, but the woman remained on the line, holding my hand across the miles until emergency services arrived.
“I don’t know. I smelled something heinous and looked out in the corridor. The chair was carrying a picnic-sized cooler into the conference room. I almost offered to help him with it, but . . . you know how many stupid chores I do for him already. I hid at my desk. But something still stank to high heaven. I followed the smell to the conference room and found that cooler under the table with the lid half off. It was full of dead fish. Raw dead fish. Disgusting. I dumped the whole thing in the trash and put the trash in the hall. I know he saw me do it, because he came along to ask about the odor not a whole minute later. Ha! As if he didn’t know where it came from.
“I said I was cleaning out the fridge for Noel’s interview. As if he didn’t know! But he couldn’t exactly call me on it, could he? He told me to take it to the Dumpster. I did, and I was standing down in front of the Dumpster. I had my phone out to text you, but then, nothing. Then, I was tied up and screaming. I don’t know.”
As soon as the ambulance arrived, I hung up with the dispatcher and texted Bryan. “Travis found. Doing okay. Head bump. Talking. Meet him at Ironweed General.” Then Lance and I rode down to see Drew and spent a long time answering questions and signing reports. We finished long past lunchtime, and only after several flurries of texting with Natasha and my mother.
Mama is even more of a texting neophyte than I am. For the first six months of owning a cell phone, she only took pictures. Answering the machine was a catastrophic adventure, and nobody ever knew if she’d pick up or forward the call through mystic means to another relative. Texting required her to use her phone’s tiny keyboard, pay attention to its autocorrect, and be concise, none of which were easy for her. I could sympathize with the first two, at least.
Lenore Rue: Do you ever forgive this child?
Noel Rue: What? What happened? Do you mean Sara or Nasturtium?
Lenore Rue: Lunch! She acts like she never saw food in her entire life. I found her half a pound of spaghetti noodles, then she still wanted desert!
Natasha Oeschle: She means feed, Noel, not forgive. She’s asking because Sara’s all the sudden way hungry.
Noel Rue: She’s usually picky.
Natasha Oeshchle: I said so, too. But she’s eating broccoli so your Mom will make cookies. I think she skipped breakfast to play dress up.
Noel Rue: Broccoli?! You got her to eat bronchitis, Mama?
Lenore Rue: All it needs is cheese.
Lenore Rue: Relax. It’s organic. And none of the cookie ingredients concern palm oil. I know how you furl about that. And Tuba is eating some, too.
Natasha Oeschle: Hey, I want the cookies! It’s not a bad deal.
Noel Rue: Carry on, then. It sounds like you have everything under control.
Lenore Rue: Well u see hours understudy project.
Noel Rue: What? Mama, I can’t make that one out.
Natasha Oeschle: I think it’s supposed to be wait until you see our upstairs project. But she’s in the cabinets now. Do you want me to ask?
Noel Rue: Don’t. If it’s upstairs, it’s seamstress stuff, and I don’t want to find out she has Sara running her Sergei.
Natasha Oeschle: The serger? That’s my job. Sara’s in charge of the sewing machine.
Noel Rue: WHAT?
Natasha Oeschle: j/k
Noel Rue: WHAT?
Natasha Oeschle: Just kidding. Okay, she’s got a bunch of stuff out. I think we’re on to baking.
“It’s like one of those word substitution games,” said Lance, reading over my shoulder.
“Only harder to understand.” I tucked the phone away, but it buzzed immediately. The conversation I exchanged with Trudy was more concise.
Trudy Jackson: All’s well here. Don’t leave the police station without Darnell.
Noel Rue: As if he’d let us.
“And to think I’d never even sent a line of text before June,” I grumbled, stowing the phone for a second time. Once more, it bu
zzed. “Seriously?” I ignored it.
Drew was still talking on the phone to Darnell, who was en route. “While we’re waiting, I’m going to see if the vending machines have anything edible,” Lance said.
“Did you check in on William?”
“He’s fine. Nothing unusual at all about his day, unless you count crabbiness.”
“That’s something.” Now the phone didn’t buzz, it outright rang. “For pity’s sake! What?”
“Noel, is this a bad time?” It was Christian.
“It’s as good as any, I guess.”
“Did you get my text?”
Did you get my text? I mouthed the words back at him, glad he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes. “No, Christian. I didn’t. What did you need?”
“Hang up and look at it.” He clicked off, precluding me from a reply, because he knew both that I was irked and that I didn’t know how to talk and text simultaneously.
“Lance, Lance, look at this!”
My husband was halfway down the hall in his quest for edibles, but he came back at a run. “What’s wrong?”
“No, nothing, look!”
Someone had rigged up a tablet computer, and Lucy was pressed against the mesh of her enclosure, fingers poking for it, every bit the excited kid.
“Who gave her a computer to pull apart?” I called Christian back after giving Lance the barest of glimpses. He had, after all, been copied on the message.
“The machine never goes all the way in, and it comes out of reach when she’s through with it, but it’s helped her feel less isolated from the rest of the group. Today’s the first time with the baby, but . . .”
“The baby?”
“Didn’t you see what she was looking at?”
“I saw the top of her head, the side of her face, and a screen, Christian.”
“She’s chatting with Sabine about her baby.” Sabine was the orangutan who had become caretaker to Lucy’s infant, since the hand-reared Lucy had no idea how to parent. “We weren’t even sure she knew it existed. But they’re talking about the baby!”
“What are they saying?”
“I don’t know. There’s mostly pointing and waving, but they’ve both signed ‘baby’ a couple of times.” Until now, Lucy’s socialization had been going slowly, much as Chuck’s would have been doing if we had been housing him in appropriate social conditions. Without company, he was lonely and bored, probably a large part of the reason he kept getting out. (If, indeed, he was getting out. Did the people who tied up the deputies have orangutan boots?) Looking at Lucy with the computer reminded me how much we needed to remedy Chuck’s situation.
“I wonder if we could get something like that. Maybe she and Chuck could chat.”
Before I could get too caught up in discussion about the center, Drew joined us in the hall. “You two eat yet?”
“Gotta go, Christian. We’ll talk later.”
“We hadn’t had time to peruse your fine wares.” Lance waved in the direction he was hoping to find vending machines.
“Not much besides stale candy and weak coffee,” said Drew. “Let’s grab a bite down at the Marine.”
“We’re supposed to be waiting for Darnell,” said Lance. “He’s on his way.”
“And I’m feeling squeamish about the Marine right now.”
“We’re waiting, he won’t be long. What’s wrong with the Marine, Noel?”
I told him about William’s overreaction to the delivery guy’s car, my theory that one of the drivers might have been involved in his kidnapping seeming sillier every second. “I told Trudy,” I finally concluded. “But I doubt she’s had any time to do anything about it.”
“Huh,” said Drew. “Pepperoni pizzas and circle-dot cars. Sounds pretty far-fetched, but that’s the thing I’m getting the hang of with your son.”
“That he’s far-fetched?” Lance demanded.
“No.” Drew sounded surprised. “That he’s got a whole lot to say, but we need to learn how to listen. Where do you want lunch, Noel? My treat.”
Sara wasn’t the only one who skipped her morning meal. “Let’s eat at the breakfast chain on the bypass. I haven’t had food since last night, and I don’t care if it’s good for me or the environment, I think I could murder an overly processed cheese omelet right now.”
“Here’s what we’re looking at.” We were seated in a booth near a window while waitresses and customers buzzed past. I wouldn’t have imagined a breakfast chain could be so popular for the afternoon meal, but we were far from the only tardy lunch diners this afternoon. The moment I sat, my energy drained away. Throughout the meal, I yawned uncontrollably.
Darnell had requested a children’s menu and some crayons, and the befuddled hostess had provided them. Now, he had flipped the menu over and drawn a waxy red circle on it. “We’ve got at least two groups of individuals.” He added another circle intersecting the first. “Possibly more.”
“How do you know?” I tried to remember the last time I had functioned on so little sleep. It had to have been grad school. Maybe undergrad. Or maybe never. College came with all-night study sessions that concluded with bleary classes and parties that only ended when I had to be at work the next morning. But it was only ever a day or two of exhaustion at a time. I hadn’t slept soundly in months, and I felt as if I wouldn’t ever truly do so again in my life. Words and ideas were bypassing me without ever connecting to anything concrete to help me recall them later.
Darnell had slept as little as Lance and I had recently. Probably less. Yet he was drawing diagrams and whispering ferociously about things we should not be discussing in the open. “Why are we even talking about this?” I wanted to crawl in a bed, any bed, before I simply fell over.
I could tell I had interrupted him. “I’ll get there. As I said, the clearest indicator we’re dealing with the two groups is the behavior we’re seeing. Your head detective disappeared from a conference in DC, his head came back here in one location, and his body is still missing.” Why did you have to say that as the eggs got to the table, Darnell?
Darnell ignored his food and doodled squares into the places where the two circles overlapped. “Two men have been dismembered. But your deputies were not. They were, in fact, hidden in a place where they were all but guaranteed to be found when the sanctuary opened in the morning. The biology department secretary was bound and abandoned in Lance and Noel’s van. William was taken but not substantially harmed. All of these people were, in fact, ultimately either released or able to escape.
“Plenty of killers of adults would hesitate to kill a child, and someone who kills once might hesitate to do it again, depending on circumstances. But we have two murders here. Someone delivered that head to the biology department when the secretary was kidnapped. Someone murdered the person on the sanctuary grounds. Someone isn’t squeamish at all about murder. Someone else is. Two groups. At least. Working together.
“We have some common denominators. William is probably Natasha’s biological brother. Natasha was living with you at the time. Someone was killed on the sanctuary grounds. Where you work. The head was dumped in the conference room where you gave a job presentation, Noel. Your department secretary was abandoned in your car. You’re sure you don’t remember locking it for certain?”
“I don’t remember anything for certain.” Drew had asked me this a dozen times. My window was not jimmied; my door wasn’t scraped. The door was unlocked with a key, if it hadn’t been left unlocked. And I was so tired I couldn’t remember.
“And we’re talking about this in a restaurant because it’s the first place you’ve stood still all day that isn’t swarming with your family. They aren’t cleared to know all this. Trudy and I don’t know who we can trust. She’s with them right now, because if one of us isn’t with you, we don’t know if you’re safe. Your friend Drew here checks out, and unless he killed his own boss and disabled his own men, I think he’s worth the risk.”
“I’m honored.”
&n
bsp; Darnell patted my hand, and I flinched away from him as strongly as Natasha ever had from me. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s not you.” But it was him. It was him, and it was Trudy, and Art, and Ace, and even Stan and Gert, who were about as peripherally related as it was possible to be.
“The federal government doesn’t send in agents to babysit bystanders, Noel. Trudy and I have been free to help you on our own time while we waited to make progress. When we were left in place here in June, we had vague instructions to investigate for additional suspects. When we didn’t find anything in three weeks, we should have been recalled. In July, our boss was doing everything she could do to buy us time at the sanctuary. Before Art was killed, back when we thought we had an animal smuggling ring, the higher-ups didn’t want to waste limited resources on a case they considered small scale. And after, they considered the job done and wanted us moved to other cases.
“But our boss has been told to leave us in place, then told the opposite. And now nobody is saying anything. Suddenly, nobody wants us moved. We had begun to think there were people above our boss who wanted us relocated because they knew what we might find.
“But when she stopped getting heat, we began to question ourselves. Natasha identifying that man as Charles Dalton was the last proof of our original theory. We were sure we had been betrayed by a federal officer, and we could prove it. But when Trudy took the evidence to our boss with Natasha, the woman was furious. She said, ‘All the work I’ve done to let you stay down there, and you’re chasing some conspiracy theory?’ ”
“Stop.” I understood his reasoning. Not about the betrayal and such. That floated through my muddled brain in a fog. It was the common denominators. I was studying his overlapping circles and the things in their center.
“Noel, you . . .”
“We’re not the only people connected to both the sanctuary and the college. Travis said the department chair dumped a bunch of rotten fish in the conference room before my interview. But the chair claimed Travis hadn’t been in the office yesterday, and nobody else could remember seeing him. So nobody missed him until Bryan started asking questions later.”
The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Page 26
