by Gwen Florio
Lola noted with increasing satisfaction that it was the first time she’d seen Thor lift a finger in the kitchen. Maybe Charlotte needed to have more bad days. Thor fussed with teabags while he spoke. “Lola, before I forget, I got a call from some girl at your newspaper.”
Some girl. Lola thought how Jan would bristle at the characterization. “What did she want?”
“She asked me some questions about that same girl you’ve been talking about. And some other girls, too.”
Dammit, Lola thought. Until now, Thor hadn’t known the scope of the story. She’d hoped to find more about the other girls before she took her questions to Thor. “We like to be thorough. What did she want to know? You know—so we’re not doubleteaming each other.”
The sheriff dragged a hand across his eyes. “I can’t remember now. It was before the day went all to hell.”
“Let me help,” said Lola. She went through the cupboards and located the mugs and set three on the table. “I heard there was an accident,” she ventured.
“Bad,” Thor said. “Thought I’d seen everything ’til I saw this. Guys die in all sorts of inventive ways out on those rigs. Trucks run over them. Something sparks and there’s a fireball. I had to go out and pronounce the obvious.”
“Thor’s the coroner, too,” Charlotte said.
Her husband poured tea into her mug, Charlotte added sugar, then more, and stirred and stirred.
“I heard about it down at The Mint,” Lola said. She tried to recall the unfamiliar word. “Something about a wire. Were they electrocuted?”
Thor joined them at the table. “A wire line. It’s about as thick around as your thigh. Well, probably not yours. Maybe Charlotte’s.” Thor’s payback for Charlotte’s brief flash of defiance had begun, Lola assumed. She hoped Charlotte wouldn’t back down. Start with small things, she silently urged her. Maybe a scorch mark on one of those uniforms. But Charlotte, snapping her teabag in and out of the water, seemed oblivious to Lola’s attempts at telepathic sisterhood.
“The line goes down into the well,” Thor said. “There’s a safety mechanism to keep it there. But somehow this one got loose, whipped around. You can’t imagine the force of those things. The head punched right through one man’s chest and when his friend grabbed him, it went into the friend’s gut. Killed the first guy outright, but the second one, he died hard. He was still alive when I got there, but only for a few minutes. I had to walk around afterward, bagging little pieces of skin and guts.” He’d been staring into his tea while he talked but now he looked up. “Sorry.”
Lola battled twin surges of nausea and impatience. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of the victims’ identities. “How do you tell somebody’s family about something like that?”
Thor blew on his tea and took a swallow. A brown crust rimmed his fingernails. Lola’s stomach engaged in more antics. “First you got to find their families,” he said. “A lot of these boys don’t have much in the way of roots. Their crew boss is trying to scare up next-of-kin information for me. When he does, I’ll make those calls. I’ll spare them the details. Oh, I almost forgot.” Thor patted his pockets, starting with his pants and working his way up to his shirt, settling on the left chest. He unbuttoned the flap and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He smoothed the creases. It looked as though he’d Xeroxed two driver’s licenses. Lola took the paper from him and held it beneath the tinkling chandelier.
Thor had enlarged the images, badly blurring them. But the numbers and letters remained readable. Ralph Wayne Cooper. William Charles Swan. Lola skimmed past the names and fixed on the faces, the exuberant sideburns, the embarrassing teeth. “That’s them. The ones I was supposed to meet.” She knew the coincidence should have surprised her. It didn’t.
“I know.” The sheriff repeated his routine of checking his pockets. This time, he handed her something enclosed in a plastic baggie. Her own business card, blood smeared across its raised lettering. “This was in one of their pockets. I disremember which.”
Lola thought of the angry scratch across Swanny’s face. Maybe Judith had inflicted it. Maybe that had infuriated Swanny. Maybe Judith had fled into the frozen night, preferring the risk of an impersonal death in the snow than the certainty of one at his hands. Too many maybes. Now she’d never know for sure.
Lola gave Thor back the copies of the driver’s licenses. He studied them. “Seems strange doesn’t it, that they get killed on the very day they were supposed to meet you? And in one helluva bizarre accident. There’s no way that wire line should’ve gotten away like that. It’s almost like someone interfered with it. I might have a criminal investigation on my hands. If I were you, I’d watch your back. Good thing you’re leaving in the morning.”
Lola hadn’t said she was leaving. “I’m not sure I am,” she began. There was the matter of the other girls. Maylinn, she reminded herself. Annie. Carole. Nancy. All along she’d thought that maybe they’d followed Judith to the patch, drawn by the lure of easy money dancing. Of course there was the worse scenario, that none had gone willingly, and that they’d been pressed into far more unsavory service. But now, with so many deaths in such quick succession, the stakes had risen considerably. She’d relegated them to second-class status while she focused on Judith. But Judith was beyond help, and these girls were still alive. At least, she hoped they were. The tea burned acidic in her stomach.
“Of course you’re going home,” Thor said. “Everything happening here is going to keep me pretty busy for a while. I can’t be of much help to you, and for sure it’s not safe for you to be wandering around on your own.”
Lupine, she thought. Her stomach lurched again, swift, insistent. “I think,” she said, “I ate something bad at The Mint.” She tried to remember what she’d eaten there. She’d never ordered a meal. “The butter on the rolls, maybe. It might have been rancid. Excuse me.” She just made it to the tiny bathroom under the stairs before she threw up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Once again, Lola sat wan on the sofa, wrapped in the afghan. “I’m never going to get out of Burnt Creek if I stay on this couch.”
Charlotte patted her shoulder. “Best place for you. I don’t wonder that you got sick. All of this stress, this violence. You’re not used it. None of us are.”
Actually, Lola thought, she was used to it, on a far larger scale and even more violent. But she couldn’t explain to herself, let alone to Charlotte, why these deaths bothered her so much more than the routine butchery she’d witnessed in Afghanistan and other places during her years overseas. Certainly the fact that she’d had a passing acquaintance with Judith and DeeDee and Ralph and Swanny was part of it. And yet again she found herself silently protesting that life wasn’t supposed to be so cheap in her own country.
“You must see your share of it at the clinic,” Lola said. Maybe she and Charlotte had more in common than she’d first thought. But Charlotte shook her head. “Oh, no. Anyone hurt bad goes straight to the hospital at Williston. The clinic here is more a sore throat-and-sniffles sort of place. That, and STDs. Well, really,” she said at the look on Lola’s face. “What did you expect? All these men away from their wives and families. I hear the clinic hands out more condoms than aspirin these days. Doesn’t seem like they’re using them, though.”
“What do you mean, you hear? Aren’t you there?”
Charlotte lifted her chin and sniffed. “I stick with the sore throats and sniffles.”
Lola wondered how anyone got through nursing school, let alone actual practice, with delicacy so firmly intact. She scolded herself for the thought. The upheaval the oil boom had brought to Burnt Creek was nearly akin to wartime, all the old rules turned on end, hardest on women and children, and Charlotte’s job at the clinic had given her a ringside seat to its most unsavory aspects, whether she opted to deal directly with them or not. In fact, Lola wondered if she should have asked Charlotte about prostitution instead of Thor. She launched a clumsy attempt. “Where are they catching al
l those diseases? There’s hardly any women in this town.”
Charlotte turned away and fussed with the sofa cushions. “Williston, most likely. I hear anything and everything—and everyone—is for sale up there.”
It hadn’t occurred to Lola that Judith might have been working in Williston. It made sense. It was the biggest city in the patch. Maybe she’d gone there after leaving The Train. But no, Lola was sure that Swanny had mentioned Burnt Creek that morning at Nell’s. Charlotte pushed something toward her. “You want to watch a little TV? Here’s the remote.”
The prospect of canned laughter and overpaid inanity amid the reality of recent and violent loss set Lola’s stomach churning anew. “No, thanks.” The girls, she thought. The girls. Thoughts of them pushed past her desultory chatter with Charlotte about the clinic, grabbing the forefront of her consciousness, holding tight. Lola slid her hands under the coverlet and tapped a text to Jan under the afghan as Charlotte moved restlessly about the room, rearranging the Hummels, blowing nonexistent dust from their chubby painted cheeks.
“Keep after anything you can get on those girls. People are dying out here.” Her fingers hovered over the keys. “Maybe,” she added, “it’s time to call Charlie.” He’d blow a gasket. But Lola could say, without having to widen her own eyes and stare deceit into his, that she’d gotten nothing of use when it came to Maylinn and Nancy and Carole and Annie. Hadn’t even really made a concerted effort. She’d given Jan a hard time for not writing about them when they disappeared. But she hadn’t been much better.
Charlotte laid the back of her wrist on Lola’s forehead as she passed. “I think you might be coming down with something. You’re a little warm. You’re sure about the TV?”
“Positive.”
“At least let me give you something to look at.” Charlotte pulled aside the drapes that Lola had so carefully closed. “All those flares out by the rigs look kind of pretty, don’t they? It’s like having Christmas all winter long. Before, when you looked out this window, there was nothing but black.”
Lola wasn’t sure the rigs were much of an improvement. The flares were nice enough at night, but daylight revealed rigs surrounding Burnt Creek like a forest of skeletal trees. One of those flares wavered above the site of the day’s gruesome deaths, she thought. Or maybe that particular rig was hidden beyond the swells of prairie. It might be five miles from town, or fifty. The man who’d accosted her outside her truck that first night—Dave, she remembered—had said the drive to his rig took at least an hour. She gnawed at a broken nail, trying to even out the ragged edges. Like Ralph and Swanny, he’d also mentioned a trailer. He’d said something else, too. “Anytime you’re thirsty, you stop by the Grub Steak. Between work and sleep, that’s where I live. Beers are on me.” She looked at her watch. It was after nine.
Charlotte stood. “I know it’s early, but we’re turning in. After the last twenty-four hours, Thor and I both need to catch up on our sleep. And so do you. You’ve got an awful long drive ahead of you back to Magpie tomorrow.”
Lola went through an elaborate yawn and stretch. “You’re right. Think I’ll go to bed, too. Besides, I need to pack.” She’d seen the Grub Steak on her travels around town. It was only a few blocks away, a daunting distance in the cold, but manageable. She’d wait half an hour to make sure Charlotte and Thor were asleep, then she’d check it out. If she were lucky, he’d be there. And if something in Burnt Creek finally worked in her favor, she’d get him to help her find that trailer. Given that Thor seemed so determined to push her out of town, it was her last chance.
LOLA HESITATED at the top of the steps, boots in her hand, trying to think of a good reason for going out if she encountered anyone. She listened for a sigh, a snore, a creak of bedspring. Nothing. The home’s deep-pile wall-to-wall carpet had seemed a throwback to another era when she’d first seen it. Now she blessed the way it muffled her footsteps as she crept down the stairs, and negotiated the rooms booby-trapped with their tiny, wobbly tables topped with those fragile china figurines. She turned sideways, trying to compensate for the parka’s extra bulk. She turned the knob to the mudroom door in slow motion, stooped and put her hand to Bub’s muzzle. He quivered beneath her touch. Lola knew there was no way to leave him behind. She inclined her head toward the back door. He shot to it. She pulled on her boots and eased through the door, Bub at her side. The snow squealed at each step, making her homesick yet again for the deep, hushed snowfalls of her childhood as opposed to this strange, protesting variety. Nighttime brought a new species of cold, different in ways that went beyond a simple drop in temperature. Her skin tightened. Her nostrils closed against it. But it burrowed into her lungs, grabbing at each breath, snatching it away in short gasps. She put her hand over her mouth, trying to keep her own warm breath close, almost expecting the motion to shatter the air around her like glass. She tiptoed, uselessly, for a few steps, then hastened down the darkened street toward the lights of the business district, Bub frolicking as though they were going for a summer stroll. Along the way, she listed the week’s casualties.
“Judith—dead. My story—dead. DeeDee—dead. Ralph and Swanny—dead and dead. With my luck, Bub, we’ll show up at the Grub Steak and this guy will be on the floor having a heart attack. That is, if he’s there at all.” And she continued to curse her luck along the entire frozen route to the Grub Steak.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dave, as it turned out, was very much alive, sitting in a back booth, slouched over the remnants of a greyish burger and limp fries and the third beer of a lonely man. She slid into the booth beside him. The startled look he turned on her changed to puzzlement. “I know you. Don’t I?”
“Not as well as you’d like.” Lola reached over and picked up his bottle and took a sip. It was warm. He’d been there awhile. “We’ve met, sort of. I was in a truck. So were you. You made me an offer. I refused.” She held the bottle before her face to hide her inadequate smile. This sort of banter never came easily to her. He didn’t seem to notice.
His gaze focused. Briefly. “I remember. You were on your way to the trailer. Going after your sister. Something like that.”
Lola finished off the beer, slid the empty bottle back to him and waved toward the waitress. “I’m thirsty. Here, let me buy another round.” She left a tip sizable enough to guarantee they wouldn’t be bothered for a good long time. “I never went to the trailer. I looked around some other places first.”
Dave put his hand to his mouth to cover a belch. “Sorry.” He’d been clean-shaven the first time she’d met him. Now stubble roughened his cheeks. Lola looked away. She wondered how much more time it would take in Burnt Creek before he bothered to try to hide a burp, or apologized for one, or stopped shaving altogether. He wiped his hand across the back of his mouth. Lola’s pointed look at his napkin was lost on him. “Good. The trailer’s a bad scene,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Maybe more beer hadn’t been the best move, Lola thought. “Why is it a bad scene?”
Animation flickered in his face. “Those girls were young. Teenagers. I’ve got daughters that age.”
Lola put both hands on the bench and pressed down hard to steady herself. The girls. “You notice anything else about them?”
“I got out of there before I could notice anything else.”
Lola couldn’t help herself. “Without doing anything?”
He tilted the bottle high and downed his beer in a single long swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing like a tennis ball.
“Oh,” said Lola. So he hadn’t left.
“Just the one time. Besides.” Again, his eyes found focus. He snorted at some memory.
At this rate, Lola thought, it would be midnight before she even got around to asking him how to find the trailer. “Besides what?”
“Girl didn’t even know what she was doing. Just lay there. Hell, I can get that from my wife for free. I asked for my money back but they threw me out. Back when I
was in business, I’d have been ashamed to charge people for a no-good product.” He straightened and in that moment, Lola upgraded his former life from a cubicle to an office, put him behind a desk where he was the one handing out the pink slips until the day one came right back across the desk toward him.
Lola’s beer was nearly untouched. She lifted it, wet her lips, and set it back down again, the memories of knocking back shots with Ralph still too fresh. “Thing is,” she said, “I didn’t find my sister anywhere else. So it’s back to the trailer. But I don’t remember how to get there. Maybe you could tell me?” She held her breath.
Dave picked up a couple of fries and jammed them into his mouth and chewed. “If you’re really looking for your sister”—letting her know he wasn’t going to make this easy—“you won’t find her there. Let’s just say she’s the wrong complexion.”
Lola wanted to leap from her seat, shout her triumph to the smoke-stained rafters. She’d cast the flimsiest line onto unpromising waters and actually had landed good information. She flexed her fingers, unlocked her jaw, and wished she’d attended that poker-face class that she was sure existed at the police academy. Or at least gotten Charlie to give her lessons. “But the girls there—they might be able to tell me where to find her. This sort of trailer, it can’t be the only one in town. I’m looking for the other ones, too.” Eyes-wide stare. “But I should probably start with this one.”
“It’s in the man camp,” he said. He rasped the heel of his hand over his chin, seeming to notice for the first time that he needed a shave. “Not the old one east of town, but the big new one on the west end. You’ll never get by the guard, though. Sometimes guys sneak women into the camp—I had a roommate did that—but you’re going to have trouble on your own.”
