Fallout

by Sara Paretsky

  I imagined Jenny covered with chemical burns, racing to the river to bathe herself head to toe, so maddened by pain that it didn’t occur to her to drive to Doris’s house. Or she’d been running after her lover who’d run off without her. I could see that, too, but that vision I kept to myself.

  The Wakarusa was a small stream, a tributary from the big Kansas River—the Kaw, Cady told me to call it.

  “Only strangers and Google Maps call it the ‘Kansas River,’” she explained. “When I was in my teens and trying to get at the truth—or at least more information than I can ever pry out of anyone in Lawrence, including my own grandmother—I went and asked the sheriff if I could see the file on my mom’s death.”

  “Gisborne?” I asked.

  “No, he was a deputy back then, when it was only a part-time job. He also sold insurance for the Reingold Agency. It was another deputy, a guy who knew my mom when they were in high school. Probably he had a crush on her. He went down to the basement where they store the old files and found the report on my mom. They had photos of the skid marks and a picture of her car, nose-down, with water all the way over the top of the steering wheel. The Wakarusa looks small on the map, but it’s big enough to drown in. You go look at it, you’ll see.”

  “Did you get a copy of the report?” I asked. “I’d like to see the photos.”

  Cady hunched a shoulder. “Sure, yeah, I guess, but you know it was almost thirty-five years ago, so there isn’t going to be any trace. That deputy, he copied the whole file for me. Then, when I got my own computer, one I wasn’t sharing with Gram, I scanned it all into my machine. I don’t know why. Every year on my birthday, I look at my mom’s hair, floating over the steering wheel. If she’d taken me with her, maybe the picture would show me floating next to her.”

  “Send it to me, okay? The report and the photos and everything.”

  Cady collected her handbag and jacket, found her car keys on the floor under the desk. “Vic, I really appreciate your taking the time tonight. I feel better about my mom, my birth—everything—than I ever did before. You’re so . . . so sensible. You don’t jump on the first wild pony of an idea that gallops past you. Thank you.”

  “Sensible” wasn’t a romantic word. Solid, sensible V.I.? I’ve been called worse, though.

  “The cans that Doris mentioned, the ones Lucinda claimed she saw—did she ever say anything about them? Had she gone back to look for them?”

  Cady shook her head. “I don’t even know why I remember it, except it’s a weird thing to say when you’re dying. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  I walked out with her so that Peppy could relieve herself one last time. The canister holding spent rods that Baggetto said he was looking for. The container that Doris had found when she was digging in the field. The cans that Lucinda saw lying around. Hard to believe they weren’t all the same. Maybe there really was radiation poisoning out by the silo. Maybe that’s what had killed Lucinda as well as Jenny Perec.

  “Cady, I found photos that August Veriden took of Doris McKinnon digging in a field.” I was startled to hear myself blurt this out.

  Cady stopped in midstride and turned to face me. “August who? Oh, that black guy you’re looking for along with Emerald Ferring. Right. What field? When was this?”

  I explained as much as I knew. “I have to believe it’s the field adjacent to the silo, the one Doris was forced to sell after your mother died, when the air force found such high levels of radioactivity in it. That’s also the place where your mother and her friends camped out all those years ago. I want to inspect it, but I might need help.”

  Her teeth flashed white in the dark. “The Cady Perec Memorial Birthplace: I know it well. I can show you just where to look.”

  “They’ve built sophisticated security into the fences,” I warned her. “If you come with me, it could mean you’d have to find some other way to save the world when you get out of prison. I’ll take a look in the morning and see what we might need to bypass it. Of course, if they’ve buried cameras in their sorghum stubble, we’re out of luck.”

  Cady laughed, then turned impulsively to hug me before getting into her car. I called to Peppy and walked slowly back into our rented room, feeling better myself for Cady’s friendship.

  I climbed into bed and started going through my photo album to look at pictures of the people I was missing. Sal, with her head thrown back, laughing, her four-inch feather earrings brushing her shoulders. Lotty, deep in conversation with Max. Mr. Contreras at the lake with Mitch and Peppy. Even Bernie, skates on, a look of ferocious concentration on her face.

  And Jake. Playing onstage at Ravinia, at Symphony Center in the Logan Center for the Arts. In my apartment, his face alight with music and the joy of connecting to me through it.

  Jake wasn’t a coward or a grudge holder. If he wanted to break up with me, he’d tell me directly, not play a cruel game of silence. If he was out of touch, I was guessing he’d done something he was ashamed to report—sleeping with another woman came to mind first. It was a hurt but not a disaster.

  I took a deep breath and tried to put Jake not out of my mind—I couldn’t—but in a corner where that little wound beneath the diaphragm wouldn’t keep me from working.

  I came to the pictures I’d been taking since arriving in Kansas: Peppy running freely in the Flint Hills our first morning here. Had that been only last week? It felt like a lifetime ago. The copse at Fort Riley where the quarters for Negro soldiers used to stand. And on to Lawrence.

  I had forgotten the pictures I’d taken at the Lion’s Pride when I was waiting for an ambulance to collect Sonia Kiel. I stopped to look at her, poor little bundle of rags under the iron staircase, and then at the frames of Naomi, the college student, comatose on the concrete stairs, her pink cami straps slipping from her shoulders.

  I’d photographed a trio of young men who’d been gawking and making crude jokes about Naomi, taken a couple of shots of them emptying their little bags in the gutter when the cops arrived. I wondered now if their stash had included the roofies that knocked out Naomi and Sonia, but of course those pills would be long gone.

  I was about to move forward to the pictures I’d taken at Riverside and St. Silas Churches when a face behind the trio of punks jumped out at me. It wasn’t quite in focus, an observer behind them in the street who’d faded from sight when the EMTs showed up.

  That was why I’d thought I’d met Marlon Pinsen when I met him at the hotel last night. First introduced to me as a student cadet up on the hill, identity changed tonight by Colonel Baggetto to computer hotshot at the army college in Fort Leavenworth.

  I put his name into every database I subscribe to, but none of them had ever heard of him.

  33

  Picking Through the Bones

  I came fully awake, heart pounding. Someone was in the room, bumping into the furniture. I rolled off the bed onto the floor, fumbled until I found my phone on the nightstand. I crawled to the outside door, stuck up a hand to undo the chain lock, and yanked it open, backing outside before switching on my phone flashlight.

  My light discovered Peppy, whose head was stuck underneath the low-hanging drawers of the corner desk. She inched out and looked at me sheepishly.

  “Dog, what on earth? It’s two-thirty in the morning.”

  I got to my feet, my teeth chattering as my muscles relaxed: I was nearly naked, and it was cold outside. I locked the door again and turned on a lamp before investigating the space where Peppy had been scrabbling. I shone my flash under the space where the drawers ended. One of the chicken bones that I’d dropped earlier had landed there.

  “You are a merciless hunter, aren’t you?” I said severely.

  Peppy’s eyes were bright; she started licking my face, delighted that I was helping her. I pushed her aside, lying on my back so I could stick my arm all the way underneath.

  That was when I saw a tiny metal circle underneath the desktop. It was about the size and sha
pe of those silvery gadgets that come in sewing kits to help you thread a needle, but this one had an orange circle in the middle and a minute piece of wire where the threading arm would be. I started to reach my free hand up for it, then lay back down.

  Colonel Baggetto had been sitting at this desk eating his pizza. No wonder he’d been happy to talk to me in my room instead of at a restaurant. Of course, a guy with his skills could have broken in anytime, planted any number of devices in the room, but the homeowner might have come in on him, wondering why a stranger was in her house. So much easier to do it while asking if I was a vegan.

  Peppy gave a short, angry bark: Was I going to get that chicken bone or not? I pulled it out and got to my feet but annoyed her no end by taking it outside to the trash—this time with a jacket over my nightshirt.

  “You deserve a special reward, my mighty huntress,” I said while we were still outside, out of mike range—I hoped. “Just not that bone.”

  Back inside I gave her some peanut butter, then cleaned chicken grease and floor dust from my arms and went back to bed. The mike made me feel vulnerable, overexposed, but I wanted to leave it in place. Better Baggetto not know I’d discovered it.

  To my surprise I slept soundly, despite the ear underneath the desk. I should ask Baggetto if I snored. None of my lovers has ever complained, but chivalry might have been trumping annoyance. In the morning I put my iPad on the desktop and tuned in to WFMT radio in Chicago, high volume, while I did a full workout. Baggetto and his sidekick, AKA Marlon, deserved a chance to listen to Haydn.

  I wondered if I had malware on my phone, perhaps in my computer and iPad as well. It would be prudent to assume the worst, which would mean Baggetto and his army computer sidekick had access to all my case notes, including the photos August had taken. Which meant anything new I learned, I needed to write by hand. They say writing by hand makes the brain expand, so this was a good thing. I should send the colonel a thank-you note—handwritten, of course.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes shut, trying to remember last night’s conversation with Cady Perec. We were inside when we discussed whether something like a radioactive gas leak had made her mother roar off without her. It wasn’t until we were outside that we’d talked about trying to get into the Sea-2-Sea field. We were safe, sort of.

  I’d go for a run, drop Peppy off at Free State Dogs, then leave a note for Cady at the junior high, giving her a burner phone number to text or call. I was pulling on my sweats when my phone rang, a local number, not one I recognized.

  I wasn’t sure how sensitive Baggetto’s mike was, whether it could pick up voices on incoming calls. I took the phone into the bathroom and sat next to the shower with the water running. Of course, if there was malware on the phone, what difference did it make?

  “Is this Detective Warshawski? It’s Sandy Heinz at the hospital. I’m the ICU ward head you spoke to on Wednesday.”

  “Sonia Kiel.” I turned off the water.

  “She’s regained consciousness. I don’t know how much she can talk or tell you, but you can have a few minutes with her this morning.”

  “Does her family know?” I asked.

  “Dr. Cordley—she’s the attending, you may recall—phoned Dr. and Mrs. Kiel, but I don’t think she spoke to them: I heard her leaving a message for them to call her.”

  “Ms. Heinz, as my investigation has progressed, I think it’s possible someone deliberately harmed Sonia, hoping to kill her. I’ll get to the hospital as soon as I can—in half an hour anyway—but can you make sure you or another nurse is with her if anyone comes to see her? Anyone besides me or Sergeant Everard?”

  “Detective, the only person trying to hurt Sonia Kiel is Sonia Kiel herself, but we have a duty to her care. No one can harm her in the ICU.”

  From your lips to the NSA’s ears, but that I said to myself. No point wasting time arguing, especially when it could get me labeled as a nutjob who shouldn’t be allowed near a patient. I pulled off my sweats and dressed in jeans and my good jacket. My Italian dress boots, with a change of shoes, two pairs of socks, and my windbreaker for the car. And a change of shirt. A water bottle. Gun with an extra clip, which I locked in the trunk. Yes, today was going to be full of fun.

  I didn’t want to leave Peppy alone, in a car or in the B and B, so I took the time to drive over to Free State Dogs before heading into the heart of the downtown.

  If Baggetto had bugged my room, chances were he was tracking my car. I parked in the library lot again and stuffed my phone and other electronics in my foil-wrapped day pack. “Tin-Butt” Warshawski, that’s what my South Chicago classmates would be calling me.

  One of the town parks was behind the library. I walked through it, slow pace, looking for cars that were dawdling, for bicyclists, anyone on foot. It was morning rush hour, and even a small town has a lot of rush-hour traffic, so it was hard to be a hundred-percent sure I was clean, but no one was on foot, and I didn’t think I saw any Buick Enclaves, at least not twice.

  When I got to the nurses’ station at the ICU, a young woman at the counter texted Nurse Heinz for me. The charge nurse appeared a moment later and escorted me into the back.

  Heinz paused outside the door to the unit. “Do you really think her life is in danger? It sounds extremely dramatic, like the kind of thing Sonia would make up, not something that could actually happen.”

  “You know her personally?” I asked.

  “We were in high school together. She didn’t have friends, so she’d say anything to get attention. And it was always something made up—about the Russian spies her father was outwitting or the lover who died a tragic death trying to reach her through a fire.”

  “I’ve never talked to her when she’s been awake, so I don’t think she’s infected me with melodrama. A week or maybe ten days ago, Sonia was out in the country and encountered Doris McKinnon.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A farmer, around ninety, who was murdered soon after Sonia saw her. Yesterday McKinnon’s body disappeared from the state’s morgue before the pathologist could perform an autopsy. It was all over the local news.”

  “I see so many hard things in here that I keep away from real life when I’m off duty,” Heinz said.

  “Who can blame you?” I said. “But here’s what has me worried: Last night I was reexamining the pictures I took outside the bar where I found Sonia. I hadn’t looked at them before, but I recognized someone in the background, a guy who supposedly is here in Lawrence from some army college—it has a fancy name—something something staff college.”

  “Oh, yes,” Heinz said. “Over in Fort Leavenworth.”

  “I don’t know if he’s there or not. I get a different story about him every time I ask, and I’m not sure I’ve even been told his real name. I was photographing a trio of guys who’d been hanging around outside where I found Sonia and the young college student, and Mr. Staff College was in the background. Did he give her roofies? Or give them to this trio to give her?”

  “Or he was a drinker who happened to be at a late-night bar at the same time,” Heinz said sharply. “I would think a detective like you would have enough experience to know that coincidences do happen.”

  I nodded. “You could be right—maybe I am melodramatic. I don’t want to take a chance, that’s all. Sonia saw something odd at Doris McKinnon’s farm last week. If anyone is afraid she’ll start spreading it around . . .”

  “No one would believe her.” Heinz smiled sourly. “Everyone in Lawrence who knows her is so used to her theatrics that they don’t pay attention to her.”

  “But the people who don’t know her . . .”

  Heinz thought about it. “Maybe. However, you’re the only person who’s been here for her the whole time she’s been unconscious. One of her brothers has called several times, but I don’t think she’s on anyone’s radar, for good or bad. And in any event, it’s most unlikely she’ll remember anything from the Lion’s Pride—she was extremely drunk before sh
e took the roofies on board.”

  She let me into the room. Although Sonia was breathing on her own, she had an oxygen feed attached to her nose, a heart monitor, tubes dripping saline and sugar into her arms.

  When I sat next to her and lightly clasped her hand, her eyes fluttered open. “Doctor?”

  Her throat was dry, her speech slurred. Heinz pointed at a carton of lemon-glycerin swabs. I took one and put it in Sonia’s mouth.

  “I’m a detective, Sonia. I found you last Tuesday. You called me from the Lion’s Pride because you’d seen the people I was trying to find. You’d seen Emerald Ferring and August Veriden.”

  She sucked on the swab, her eyes closed. “Em’ral’. Show-off.”

  I kept my fingers around her hand, pressed lightly, didn’t speak.

  “People at missile, muns, muns. Em’ral’ comes July Fourth, picture in papers.”

  Months and months, I finally translated. “Were you there for months and months?”

  Her slack mouth contorted in a frown. “No, Daddy shit fit. Always wrong. Get out bed, wrong. Wrong clothes. Fat, stupid. Matt, darling dear. Dad super mad, stupid boy, what he doing?”

  “Matt didn’t camp at the silo, did he?” I said, voice just loud enough to carry over the machines. “He went out to visit Jenny Perec. And the baby.”

  “Jenny, baby, try keep Matt. No good. She died. I saw her on the cartafalque.”

  The effort to speak wore her out, and she drifted off. Cartafalque? I supposed she meant catafalque, but it was an odd image.

  I sat for a time, resisting the urge to pull out my computer and answer e-mails or to look up. The hardest thing in the world, just to sit. One of the nurses came in several times to check on Sonia, but she didn’t try to make me leave.

  After about fifteen minutes, Sonia opened her eyes again. “Doctor?”