by Gwen Florio
“Do you know where I could look at the county budget?”
The clerk’s eyes strayed back toward a boxy monitor that looked a good decade old. Lola saw photos of beaches and palm trees and a come-on for cheap airfares. The clerk clicked on one. An array of umbrella drinks leapt to prominence.
“I’d like one of those, too,” Lola said, pointing to the drinks. “More than one, actually. The budget?”
“I can print you a copy. Ten cents a page.” Another click. A man and a woman reclined poolside in lounge chairs, their bodies bronzed, their bathing suits brief. The clerk’s face was pale and lumpy as unevenly risen bread dough. Her sweatshirt bulged in the wrong places.
“It’s not going to be like that,” Lola said of the image on the screen. “How many pages in the budget?”
“How do you know? You ever been to Hawaii?” She made it two syllables. Huh-why. “That budget. It’s a big, fat thing. I don’t know how many pages, but a lot.”
“I’ve never been to Hawaii,” Lola admitted. She generally didn’t take vacations, her trip to Montana the previous summer to visit Mary Alice a rare exception. And look how that had turned out. “How long would it take for you to make me a copy?”
“More time than I’ve got. I’m busy. You see these?” She patted a stack of manila envelopes that rose high above her inbox. “Building permit applications. Every one I review, three more come in. My eyes are about to fall right out of my head.”
So you’re resting them by looking at vacation ads, Lola wanted to say. She bit her tongue, reminding herself that she badly wanted to see the budget. She told the woman as much.
“Then whyn’t you go to the library? It’s right across the hall. They’ve got it on file. You can look there for free. ’Less you want a copy of your own. Then I’ll have to do it.” Her lower lip pooched out, letting Lola know exactly how she felt about that.
“The library will be fine.” Lola fled.
She stopped just inside the library door. There must have been books somewhere inside the library—actually, there were, in long shelves against the far wall—but most of the floor space was taken up by rows of computers, men parked in front of them, thousand-yard stares retrained upon screens far closer at hand. Lola saw pages of e-mail, housing ads, even some porn. The place was every bit as crowded as The Mint or, for that matter, the Sweet Crude. Except that instead of the clink of beer bottles and driving hip-hop, the hum of electronics and clicking of keys provided the soundtrack. She wasn’t going to get to look up Charlie’s child until she got back to the house after all. There were no vacant terminals; in fact, across the room by the bookshelves, a line of men waited for their own turn at a connection with home, a crack at a better job, a chance to look at naked women without having to pay for watery cocktails. Not one, Lola noticed, pulled a book from the shelves to while away the time while he waited.
She located the information desk and asked about the budget and within short order found herself with a weighty paper copy. She leaned against a bare spot of wall, and leafed through the pages. She halted when she came to the county-run health clinic, with its lines for a physician’s assistant and two nurses. Lola blinked at the salaries, thinking maybe a comma had been misplaced, a zero lost. She skipped ahead to the sheriff’s department. There wasn’t much to see. Some money for expenses, for maintenance. A request for a new cruiser, denied. Ditto the request for a deputy. Thor’s salary was barely forty thousand dollars. Lola wondered what it was like for him to arrest men paid three times that. To watch them bond out of jail with greasy wads of cash, only to show up again the next week. It had to get under his skin. Not just his, but Charlotte’s, too, as she gave them antibiotics and sent them back out the clinic door. And it had to bother the county clerk and her dreams of Hawaii as she shuffled through land deals worth more than she’d make in her lifetime, and the librarian even now rapping on her table and warning a roomful of unhappy men that their fifteen minutes of free computer time was up and would they please make room for the people waiting? Given what the oilfield jobs paid, Lola thought it entirely possible that the entire contingent of civil servants in Burnt Creek turned over every few months. Except for Thor. For some reason, he hung on. She closed the budget book and started back to the librarian’s desk and gave her a dime in exchange for a copy of a single page of the budget, the one detailing allocations to the sheriff’s office. Nowhere on that page, or in any other likely spot in the unwieldy document, was any record of Dawg’s presence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lola picked up her phone, put it down, picked it up again and watched until its clock advanced another minute. She’d passed an hour at The Mint waiting for Swanny and Ralph, but they had yet to show. Even given that she’d arrived fifteen minutes early, it was time to worry.
She sipped at the remainder of her second glass of wine and wondered if she should make the rounds of the bars. Ralph told her that Swanny had worked an extended shift out on the rig, spending days catching a few hours’ sleep in the on-site trailer instead of returning each night to the man camp. Maybe after a stint like that, Swanny wanted quicker oblivion than a few beers over a meal would provide. Or maybe he wanted more. Lola wondered what it cost to stay with a woman an entire night. According to Ralph, Swanny had “claimed” Judith. That must have entailed more than the standard transaction. Although, Lola realized, she had absolutely no idea what the standard transaction was. The longer she spent in Burnt Creek, the more she realized how unprepared the years overseas had left her for the realities of her own country. She could identify ordnance from jagged scraps of metal, tell factions by the wrap of turban and length of beard, sneak a roadside pee and refasten her pants before her male traveling companions even realized she’d stopped. Aside from persistent wistfulness about plumbing, her years in Afghanistan had turned her recollections of home scornful.
She thought of how she and her friends used to complain about crime in Baltimore. Purse snatchings, smash-and-grabs from parked cars. Never once had any of them worried about being blown to bits as she walked from the front door to the curb to collect the morning newspaper. As for the endless discussions among women about the fecklessness of men, Lola had often passed bitterly pleasurable moments in imagined conversations comparing a broken promise to call in the morning to the reality an Afghani woman faced if she so much as looked at, let alone spoke with, a man who was not her husband or a relative. Lola had written so many stories about forced marriage and bride burnings and stonings as to earn a curt e-mail from an editor one day: “Try writing about the other 50 percent of the population once in awhile.”
It seemed that an entire group of women in her own country faced equally serious repercussions for the wrong sorts of encounters with men. She thought of Judith’s stiffening body, the nightgown fluttering bright beneath her sweatshirt, of the girls who’d disappeared as completely as burned brides in Afghanistan. She’d spent the afternoon before her meeting with Swanny and Ralph perched on the narrow bed in Thor and Charlotte’s house, tapping restlessly at her laptop, coming up dry in her attempts to find any reference to Charlie’s child, then surfing statistics as a way to fill the time. She flipped through her notebook, reviewing the data she’d jotted down. On some reservations, Indian women were more likely to die at a man’s hand than afforded the dignity of breast cancer or heart disease or easeful old age. Across Indian Country, one in three was raped, but prosecution of their attackers was so rare as to be laughable and, if the men weren’t Indian—as most of them weren’t—legally impossible anyway. The women who survived lived in isolated areas together with the men who got away with hurting them. Lola scowled at the inexcusable numbers. The story they told, she thought, should have merited front-page news around the country. “Nobody cares about this?” she said aloud.
“How’s that?” Ellen stopped in front of her and banged down a basket of rolls. Lola wondered if the girl had changed her mind about working in one of the bars. More likely, she was just
waiting to turn eighteen. “You want to go ahead and order food?” Ellen asked Lola. “Looks like your friends aren’t coming.” Two empty place settings flanked Lola. She’d felt lucky to snag a table when she’d gotten to The Mint, but credited it with her early arrival. An hour later, though, only half the tables were full and the room was uncharacteristically quiet. Big men who’d ordered the Roughneck’s Special—a chicken-fried steak with half a fried chicken and french fries on the side—pushed crispy bits of food around their plates like finicky children.
“Where is everyone?” Lola asked. “Did they all go home for their break at the same time?”
“Where’ve you been?” Ellen’s tone was newly assertive. She’d caked on the foundation as usual, but had added cat’s-eye swipes of inky eyeliner and green glitter on her lids, and switched her old pinafore apron for a waist model, showing off a clingy sweater whose neckline dipped so low Lola could see the bow on her bra. Lola fingered her own turtleneck and thought of how the cold would rush right into Ellen’s shirt. On the other hand, she imagined that Ellen had doubled her tips.
“I’ve been working. Did I miss something?”
Ellen lowered her voice. “It’s always like this when somebody dies. Creeps them all out.”
Given the time the men seemed to spend in strip bars, Lola thought maybe that was understandable. Most of them probably knew DeeDee, whose face was prominently featured in that day’s edition of the newspaper. Lola pulled a roll apart and rubbed a pat of butter against one of the pieces with her knife. The butter was cold, and crumbled back onto the plate. “Poor DeeDee,” she said.
“Who?”
“The girl who was killed.”
Ellen gave a little wave. She sniffed. “Oh. Her.” Lola wondered if Ellen would feel the same way after she’d been dancing a few months. Ellen scooped up the other two place settings. “You know what they say. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. But I guess she won’t be getting up anymore.”
Lola balanced the bits of butter atop the roll and took a bite. The roll was stale. “I’ve got to ask. If that’s how you feel, why are you considering dancing?” Knowing the answer even as she asked. Ellen thought she’d be different. Every girl probably did, at least when she started. “And how come they’re all so upset?” Lola jerked her head toward the men in the room. Any direction would have worked. As usual, she and Ellen were the only women there.
“Because of the accident.”
Lola abandoned the roll. “It wasn’t an accident. Someone killed her.”
“Not her. Those other guys.”
Lola put her knife down very slowly. “What other guys?”
The ability to show off some exclusive knowledge seemed to restore Ellen’s good humor. “A wire line got away from a couple of guys out on a rig today. Killed them both. You want some more wine?”
Lola’s breath came fast. “What guys? What rig?” Knowing even as she spoke that it was useless. She didn’t really know either of their names, and she certainly didn’t know which rig they worked on.
Ellen lifted a shoulder that emerged pretty and bare from the thin stuff of her top. “Does it matter? Roughnecks come, roughnecks go. The only ones who stay are the ones who die here. Like those two.” She laughed at her own joke, then tried to cover the laugh with a cough as heads lifted around the room. She drifted away.
Lola called her back. “Check.” Her mouth was dry. She drank the remainder of her wine in a single swallow. She reminded herself that hundreds of roughnecks crowded Burnt Creek’s man camps and sardine-tin apartments. It seemed impossible that the two men who were her sole links to Judith could have vanished so decisively. “They’re in a bar,” she told herself, taking reassurance from the thought that had so angered her moments earlier. She laid some cash for the wine atop the check. She’d been glad of the appointment that kept her away from the sheriff’s house that evening. Now, despite her misgivings about Thor, she fumbled with her parka’s zippers and toggle fastenings and hurried from The Mint, hoping to catch the Breviks before they finished their own meal. If anyone could tell her who’d been killed, it would be the sheriff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Brevik home was dark and still when she arrived. Lola tried the door and laughed. Despite the couple’s bemoaning of the influx of bad characters into Burnt Creek, their door was unlocked—as, Lola suspected, were all the neighbors’ doors.
She made a quick check to be sure Thor and Charlotte really were gone, then let Bub follow her into the kitchen. Her missed dinner at The Mint had left her ravenous. She stood with Bub before the open refrigerator and selected pieces of cold chicken from a platter trussed up in layers of shrink wrap. She pulled bits of meat from the bone and fed them alternately to herself and Bub until each had eaten far more than necessary. She stooped and let him lick her greasy fingers, then rinsed her hands in the sink. A grinning pig of a cookie jar beckoned. Lola lifted the lid and jumped at the loud mechanical “oink.” She selected two oatmeal cookies from the neat stack and fed one to Bub and ate the other herself, breaking off a piece for Bub. “You’re lucky these aren’t chocolate chip,” she said. “Dogs can’t have chocolate.” He wagged his tail.
Lola wished he’d barked. The silence in the house was oppressive, nothing to distract her from her thoughts, which returned relentlessly to the sheriff. The discovery that Dawg was working off the books. The failure of the two men to show for dinner—and the fact that Thor and Charlotte were the only people who knew she’d planned to meet them. Unless the men had talked. “It’s entirely possible,” she told Bub, “there’s someone out there we haven’t even considered.” Bub ignored her and trained his eyes on the cookie jar, signaling as clearly as he was capable that another cookie was his highest priority. “Forget it,” she told him. She couldn’t do a damn thing about the chance that Ralph and Swanny might have been in touch with someone else who might have more information about Judith or the girls. But she could investigate Thor more thoroughly. She went into the living room and shoved heavy draperies aside. The sheriff’s house sat at the far end of a street that ended in prairie, the backyard an unbroken sweep of snow past the town’s boundaries. The street itself was empty, vehicles tucked into the relative warmth of garages. She knew their batteries would be plugged in for good measure. The house was too well insulated for Lola to hear an approaching vehicle, but with the drapes open, she’d see headlights well before anyone arrived. Thus reassured, Lola began a methodical search, Bub so close at her heels that she shooed him back a step or two. The sheriff and his wife slept on the main floor, in a cherrywood four-poster bed that sagged on one side. The dresser top was bare save for a set of perfume bottles on Charlotte’s side, and a small wooden box on her husband’s. Lola held the bottles to her nose and sniffed, transported in an instant from a bungalow on a frozen North Dakota prairie to childhood trips with her mother to the department store cathedrals of Baltimore, their glass-counter altars set as though for communion with mirrored golden trays of crystal vessels. She’d have known the scent without reading the label: Shalimar, the one her mother used for special occasions. The bottle was nearly full. She wondered when Charlotte had last lifted it to the nape of her neck, tilted her head this way and that, shivered in delight as the mist settled onto her skin. Had Thor given it to her as an obligatory Christmas or birthday or even—although Lola doubted this—an anniversary gift? Or, sadder but infinitely more possible, had Charlotte ordered it for herself, perhaps in a sporadic attempt to seduce Thor back into romance? Lola replaced the perfume bottle and lifted the lid of the wooden box, only to find pennies. She slid open drawers and saw clothing neatly sorted and folded, nothing like her own jumble. She fell to her knees and lifted the bed skirt. Nothing, not even dust bunnies. In the closet, Thor’s uniforms, starched and knife-creased, hung beside Charlotte’s pastel scrubs. Lola hadn’t noticed a dry cleaner in Burnt Creek’s small business district. She imagined Charlotte standing over an ironing board, steam rising, and dampening
her face as she sprayed and pressed and otherwise took infinite care of the clothing worn by a man who seemed to have so little regard for her feelings. The fabric made disapproving shushing noises as Lola pushed the clothing aside to see if it concealed anything. It didn’t. The bathroom was more rewarding, if not in a particularly meaningful way. Disposable syringes filled a shelf in the medicine cabinet. Lola guessed that Charlotte had diabetes. Not surprising, she thought, given the woman’s weight and artery-clogging meals. She shook a bottle of blood-pressure medication—a few pills remained; it was time to renew—and paid closer attention to a prescription sleep aid. Charlotte’s name was on that one, too, but Lola thought of Thor’s frenetic talking and wondered if he had trouble winding down at night. Something flickered at the corner of her vision. Headlights.
She closed the medicine cabinet and ran to the living room and tugged the drapes shut, then hustled Bub into the mudroom, and sprinted up the stairs. She sat on the bed, then lay back and scuffled at the covers. She waited until she heard the front door open, then stood and moved slowly back downstairs, trying to make as much noise as possible on the carpeted steps. She turned the corner into the living room. Two haggard faces turned her way. “Sorry,” she said. “I finished up earlier than expected. I came home and took a nap.”
Charlotte pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and fell into it and let her head drop into her hands. Lola wasn’t sure if the groan came from Charlotte or the chair. “It’s been a hard day,” Charlotte said. “For me, for once. Thor’s not the only one who’s overworked.”
A small thrill shot through Lola at the barb. She’d thought of Charlotte as one of those beaten-down wives, too readily accepting of her husband’s criticism. Lola was glad to hear she could dish out some criticism of her own. She wanted, badly, to ask about the accident on the rig, but felt as though she were intruding on a private moment. Thor took a teapot from the stove and filled it with water. He twisted a knob on the stove and the scent of gas cut the air before the flame caught. “Anyone want tea? After the day we’ve all had, it might be better for us than coffee.”
