Black River

by G. M. Ford

  Outside, the weather had gone to hell. A steady rain slanted in from the south. What an hour ago had been a bright blue sky was now a black blanket hanging twenty feet above the treetops like cannon smoke.

  Robert Downs had raised his foot, as if to jog to the car, when Corso put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll meet you in the car,” Corso shouted over the rush of the wind.

  “I…” Downs began to stammer.

  “I’ll be right there,” Corso assured him.

  Downs nodded blankly and began jogging toward the car. Corso waited until the car door closed before turning and walking up the three stairs into the maintenance office.

  Dennis Ryder’s expression said he had half expected Corso to come back and wasn’t happy about it. “Lose something?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Corso said. “But I’m not quite sure what it is.”

  “What’s that mean?” His tone held a challenge.

  “It means I hear you talking, but I don’t hear you saying anything. You sound like Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors, talking about what a nice quiet boy he was.”

  Ryder swallowed a denial, scratched the back of his neck, and sighed. “I mean, what am I gonna say? With his kid here and all.”

  “I understand.”

  Ryder checked the room. “Barth was a first-class asshole,” he said. “A complete loser loner. Thought he was better than everybody else.” He waved a hand. “Cheapest sonofabitch I ever met.” He threw a thumb back over his shoulder at the pop machine. “Never saw him so much as buy a pop. Never saw him buy a bag of chips or a candy bar. Two sandwiches and a bottle of tap water.” He cut the air with the side of his hand. “That was it. Five days a week.”

  “So how come you don’t know where Barth transferred in from?”

  Ryder’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say that. I said Human Resources didn’t provide me with that information.”

  “But you asked around.”

  “Wouldn’t you? You come in one Monday morning.” He waved a hand around. “I remember it was the fifteenth, because it was payday. And all of a sudden here’s this guy who the district says is going to work full-time. They say he’s got seven and a half years’ seniority, which is more than anybody here but me.” He shook his head, sending a single yellow lock down onto his forehead. “So naturally, I want to know where this guy came from. And you know what they say?” He waited for the question to sink in. “They say it’s none of my damn business. Just put him to work. That’s it.”

  “So?”

  “I called the union.”

  “And the union said?”

  “The union said, If they want to give us an extra position, we’re sure as hell gonna take it.”

  “But you asked around anyway.”

  “Damn right I did.”

  “So?”

  “So I find out he’d been working over in the North Hill shop. I call Sammy Harris—he’s the lead over there—and I ask Sammy what the deal is, and he tells me pretty much the same thing I just told you. The guy’s a loner. It’s like he thinks he’s better than everybody else or something. Eats lunch out in his truck by himself. Listens to classical music. Don’t attend any of the social things. Just comes in, does his job, and goes home.” Ryder stopped talking and squinted out the window. A white pickup with a Meridian School District logo on the door drove along the side of the building. Then another. And a third. “Crew’s coming back for lunch,” Ryder said.

  “So how come they transfer Barth over here?” Corso asked.

  “Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now, isn’t it?” Again he checked the room. “Seems our friend Mr. Barth took a four-month leave of absence. By the time he got around to coming back, they didn’t need him over on North Hill anymore, so they sent him here.”

  “Four months?”

  “Yeah…from a job where if you’re out more than three days in a row, you gotta bring a note from a doctor to keep from getting docked.”

  “Weird,” Corso said. “When was this?”

  “About this time last year is when he showed up. So he must have been out since early June sometime.”

  “Anybody tell you why he was gone?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. District said I didn’t need to know. Just put him back to work. Said it was confidential.”

  “What did Sammy have to say?” Corso asked.

  Ryder chuckled. “Sammy said he don’t have any idea either. Just gets a call from Human Resources one morning. They say Barth won’t be in for a while. Period. That’s it. Just won’t be in for a while. But don’t take him off the union rolls.”

  Corso pulled his notebook from his coat pocket. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Sometime last summer, Barth walks off his job and doesn’t come back for over four months.”

  Ryder nodded. “Fourth of June to the eleventh of October. I looked it up for the cops yesterday.”

  Another pair of district pickup trucks rolled by the window.

  “Then he shows up over here one morning, four months later, and you’re supposed to just put him to work and not ask questions.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then—what?—a couple of months ago, he stops coming in. I wait a few days—you know, HR already told me it was none of my business—so I wait a few days and call. They tell me to hang loose. Don’t take him off the payroll. Don’t do nothing. Just hang loose.”

  “And?”

  Dennis Ryder’s nostrils fluttered, as if the air were suddenly rank. “I’m still hanging when the cops come waltzing here Tuesday afternoon. Start showing me all these pictures of what’s left of Barth and his truck.” He eyed Corso closely. “I been straight with you, mister,” he said. “How about a little comp time? You know what’s going on here? Ain’t often some guy we work with is found buried in the side of a hill like Jimmy Hoffa or something.”

  “Not a clue,” Corso said. “I’m getting the same picture you laid out for me: a loner, kept away from everybody else, cheap.” Corso shrugged. “If he had a vice it might have been that he liked the ladies a bit too much.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “His ex.”

  Ryder took a deep breath, held it, looked around again. “You won’t quote me.” His eyes narrowed. “This kind of thing’d get me fired.”

  “No problem.”

  He pushed the breath out through his nose. “There were a couple of complaints.”

  “What kind?”

  “Sexual harassment.”

  “Do tell.”

  “One over on North Hill and another one here.”

  “For doing what?”

  Ryder made a rude noise with his lips and put on a disgusted face. “Who the hell knows, these days? You sneeze and somebody takes it wrong. You hang up a girlie calendar, and somebody feels like their constitutional rights are being shit on.”

  “You’ve got no idea what the beef was?”

  Ryder shook his head. “District’s real tight-assed about that kind of thing.” He scratched a pair of quotation marks in the air. “Confidentiality,” he said. “I’m not even allowed to ask.”

  Corso thought it over. “The person he was supposed to have harassed while he was here…”

  Ryder was already shaking his head. “I can’t tell you that. They’d have my ass in a New York minute.”

  “She—I’m assuming it was a she.”

  Ryder nodded vigorously. “Yeah.”

  “She still here?”

  “Why?”

  “I was thinking maybe you could ask her—you know, confidentially—if she might be willing to talk to me about it?”

  Ryder chewed his lower lip.

  “She says no, I’ll take a hike,” Corso added.

  Ryder thought about it, made a what-the-hell gesture and turned and walked toward a door marked EM-PLOYEES ONLY. “Stay here,” he said, over his shoulder.

  Corso watched the second hand sweep around four times before
the door opened and a woman stepped into the room. She was younger than he’d expected: thirty or so, with a lot of city miles etched around her eyes and mouth, slim-hipped and flat-chested, with shoulder-length brown hair framing a pale oval face. The patch on her uniform read KATE. She carried half a sandwich in one hand and a can of Diet Pepsi in the other.

  “Cops were here yesterday,” she said.

  “I’m not a policeman,” Corso said. “I’m a writer.”

  She recoiled slightly. “I don’t want my name in the paper.”

  “No problem,” he assured her. “I write books.”

  “Don’t want my name in a book neither.”

  “Still not a problem,” Corso assured her. “I’m just trying to figure out how a guy like Donald Barth ended up buried in the side of a hill.”

  She shook her head. “Weird, huh? Nothing like this ever happened anywhere around me before.” She took a bite of her sandwich. While chewing, she took Corso in from head to toe. After washing the sandwich down with a big swig of Pepsi, she asked, “So what is it you want from me?” Her tone suggested she might be willing to entertain suggestions above and beyond mere information.

  “You filed a complaint against Mr. Barth.”

  She rolled a piece of plastic wrap into a ball and threw it in the garbage can, then took another big pull on the Pepsi.

  “He was a jerk,” she said.

  “Did he harass you?”

  “What he did was piss me off,” she said.

  Corso kept his mouth shut, figuring she wouldn’t have agreed to talk to him unless she wanted to tell her story.

  “We had a thing going for a while,” she said. “Nothing too serious, but you know…it was passable.”

  “Everybody says he was a loner. Did everything by himself. How’d you manage to get involved with him?”

  Her expression suggested she’d never considered the matter before. “I guess that was part of it,” she said tentatively. “He had like this mystique about him. All secret and silent and withdrawn. He was different. He just sorta sat back and waited, like a spider.” She skittered across the room as if she were on wheels. “Looking back on it, I guess that was his technique. He made it so’s you had to chase after him.”

  “So what happened?”

  She walked over to the window, spread the blinds with her fingers, and looked out. “It’s like it was more exciting that way.” She turned back toward the room and gestured toward the shop. “You know, what with the rest of the guys always coming on with the ‘oooh babay baby’ routine.” She made a suggestive move with her hands and hips. “It’s kinda refreshing to be on the other side of it once in a while.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s tellin’ me how it’s been years for him. How he hasn’t been involved with a woman since his divorce and all that.” She gave Corso a sideways smile. “You know; and that’s got its appeal too. It’s like you’re in charge or something.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She brought one hand up to her throat. “I know I’m clean. I get myself tested every time I—you know—strike up a new friendship, so to speak. And he’s supposedly been living like a monk for years, so we can do it au natural, so to speak, which is a joy all to itself, if you know what I mean.”

  Corso’s confirmation seemed to encourage her. “So almost right away—soon as we get past the sweaty palms part in the beginning—I can tell something’s wrong. Never back to his place. Always gotta be mine. We never go anywhere in public, ’cause—you know—we work together, and people might be thinkin’ it’s bad to mix business with pleasure.” She made a rueful face. “At least that’s what he said at the time.”

  She rested a hip on the desk and folded her arms. “So right away I’m thinking he’s gotta be married or something.” She held up a hand. “I got a rule. No married guys. Period. That’s it.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ve got a friend in payroll, who tells me that, lo and behold, he’s single. Got him a son who he doesn’t have on the health plan, which means the son’s either too old or has coverage someplace else.”

  “Either of which is okay with you.”

  “Sure,” she says. “I’m not looking for anything permanent. I just want to make sure I’m not tearing up some other girl’s world.”

  “Then?”

  “Then it all goes to hell,” she said. “We been together maybe two weeks, and all of a sudden he’s not showing up at my place after work anymore. Doesn’t say a word, just stops coming over.” She bumped herself off the desk and put a hand on her hip. “So I see him at work and say, ‘Hey, what’s the deal? Haven’t seen you lately.’ And you know what he tells me?”

  “What?”

  “He tells me to get over it. Says he’s moved on and I should move on too.” Her free hand joined its mate at her waist. “Like I’m some snot-nosed kid or something.”

  “Ah,” Corso said. “The woman scorned.”

  She laughed. “No, no,” she said, “I was okay with it. I’m still thinking I woke this guy up after a long hibernation, and now he’s running amok.” She shrugged. “It figures. You know how guys are.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Until I tell my friend Susie about it—Susie’s the one in payroll—anyway, a coupla days after I tell her about it, she calls me one night and tells me she went through his personnel file and guess what?”

  “He’s already had a sexual harassment complaint filed against him.”

  “Bingo.” She began to smile. “Now I’m starting to get pissed. So I get the name and find an excuse to go over to the North Hill Shop, and, lo and behold, he ran the same number on her he ran on me.” She raised her voice and added a singsong quality. “I haven’t been with a woman in years. I’m not sure I still know what to do. Oh my, oh my.” She shook her head disgustedly. “He gives her the same damn song and dance.” She cut the air with her hand. “Unbelievable.”

  “And then he dumps her too.”

  “He doesn’t even bother to tell her. She has to find out on her own.” Corso waited. “Yeah. She comes back to the shop one night for something she forgot, and there he is sitting there in the parking lot in his truck mauling some little Asian honey.”

  “Not good.”

  “Damn right it’s not good. Turns out this jerk is risking our lives. We’re having unprotected sex with a guy who’s screwing the known world.”

  “Ah.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about a complaint until she—the other girl—told me that’s why she filed one.” She nodded slightly, as if once again confirming her decision. “I decided she was right. This guy was putting our lives at risk. Any trouble I could make for that jerk was okay with me.”

  A buzzer sounded out in the shop.

  “I gotta go,” she said and headed for the door. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “As far as I’m concerned, Donald Barth got exactly what he deserved.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Corso said.

  She gave him a wicked smile. “Come back sometime.”

  “It’s been years,” Corso said with a grin.

  She burst out laughing. “Yeah, sure.”

  21

  Friday, October 20

  5:05 p.m.

  Warren Klein paced back and forth in front of the jury like a lion in a cage. Ray Butler stood ready at the easel, which held a picture of the collapsed back wall of Fairmont Hospital, taken from a slightly different angle, so as to exclude the tiny foot. Renee Rogers sorted through a mountain of paperwork on the prosecution table, handing Klein folders whenever he strutted her way.

  “Mr. Rozan,” Klein said, “can you tell the jury the magnitude of an earthquake that could be expected to cause damage of this nature?”

  Sam Rozan looked like your local greengrocer: bald little guy with a big mustache and thick wrists. Turned out he was chief earthquake engineer for the State of California and an expert of world renown. A man whose consulting résumé included every major planetary
shake in the past fifteen years.

  “That would depend almost entirely upon soil conditions.”

  “Have you had occasion to inspect the soil around the Fairmont Hospital project?”

  “I have.”

  “What were those conditions?”

  “The ground is virtually undisturbed.”

  “Virtually?”

  “None of the signs of ground failure are present at the scene.”

  “What signs would those be?”

  He counted on his fingers. “Ground cracking, lateral transposition, landslides, differential settlement.” He stopped with four fingers in the air. “And at the extreme end of the spectrum, the liquefaction of the soil beneath the structure.”

  “So you’re saying that—”

  “Objection.” Elkins was on his feet. “Mr. Klein is leading his own witness, Your Honor. If Mr. Klein wishes to testify—”

  “Sustained,” Fulton Howell said.

  “I’ll rephrase the question,” Klein said.

  Turned out he didn’t need to. Rozan spoke up. “None of the ground conditions consistent with damage of that nature were present.”

  “None?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Having satisfied yourself that ground failure was not to blame, did you and your colleagues make a subsequent examination of the site in order to ascertain other possible causes for the collapse?”

  “Yes. My staff and I conducted a full-scale on-site investigation.”

  “Were you able to come to a conclusion as to the cause of the tragedy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Klein looked at the jury box like a kindly uncle. “For the sake of clarity, Mr. Rozan, are you saying that you were absolutely able to reach a conclusion, or that you believe the conclusion you reached to be absolutely true?”

  “Both,” Sam Rozan said, without hesitation. “The reasons for the structural failure were staring us in the face. It was a no-brainer.”

  The room caught its collective breath, waiting for Elkins to get to his feet and fight for his client, but Bruce Elkins remained seated and impassive.