True Intent

by Michael Stagg

  Liselle looked around the room. “Who am I going to tell?”

  “Still. I mean it.”

  “I understand.”

  “You understand this is a huge problem if it comes up?”

  “Will it?”

  “I doubt the prosecutor knows about it. But if I found it, they might too.”

  “But I didn't do anything!”

  “I understand. And I should be able to keep it out.”

  “But you might not.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  We ate for a time, not really saying anything. Eventually, I said, “I'm going to St. Louis and Fredericktown to investigate a few things.”

  “Good.”

  I could see Liselle thinking of something. “What is it?”

  “I hate to ask but…could you pick up a few things for me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the Forest Service suspended me, they packed up my things at the office.” She raised her leg to show the ankle monitor. “I haven’t been able to get it and they won’t pay for shipping. Would you mind?”

  “Where’s the office?”

  “Right there in Fredericktown.”

  I thought about what I planned to do on the trip.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” she said, “except it’s mostly research I don’t want to lose. It’s just a box or two and a small filing cabinet.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Great.” She stood up, went back to her room, then came back a moment later and handed me a keychain that looked like an oak tree. “This one's the office. I'll send you the address.”

  “No problem.” I wasn't quite done eating but I decided that dinner should be done anyway. “I better get going,” I said and stood.

  Liselle walked me to the door. She opened it for me and then leaned in a little as I went past. “I didn’t hurt him, Nate.”

  I wasn’t sure which one she meant. “I know. I'll call you when I get back from St. Louis.”

  “Okay.”

  She didn't shut the door right away. Instead, she stood there and watched as I backed out of the driveway. It wasn't until I turned the corner that she shut the door.

  25

  Three days later, I was driving to St. Louis. It was only about an eight-hour drive from Carrefour and I figured if I was going to be bringing some things back for Liselle, I might as well load it in my Jeep rather than try to haul it back on a plane. I didn’t mind the extra road-time; it was better than sitting in an empty house on the weekend.

  I left after work on Friday, arrived in St. Louis a couple of hours after midnight, and stayed in a Marriott on the south side of town.

  I slept in the next morning then drove another hour and a half south to Fredericktown, where Liselle lived and kept a small office. It was a tiny town of no more than four thousand whose primary attribute seemed to be that it was situated right in the heart of the Mark Twain National Forest. There were no hotels to speak of, which was why I had stayed in St. Louis.

  My first stop was Liselle’s office. I took the main road south through town then turned left down a private drive that was lined with ash trees.

  They were still alive. It affected me more than I expected.

  I came to a nice old colonial house that appeared to have been converted to office space. A sign out front indicated it was the home of “Zane Borrune, D.C.” and “MO Department of Natural Resources/Forest Service.” I parked and went up to the “B” side of the office-house and let myself in. I felt a vaguely uncomfortable being there even though I’d been invited. The air was a little stale as I went straight to Liselle’s desk and computer station. Sure enough, there was a packed box sitting on the desk and a small, two drawer file cabinet next to it, just like she’d said.

  I inspected the file cabinet. The top drawer was labeled “EAB studies.” I opened the drawer and scanned the hanging files. One file was labelled “Michigan,” so I picked it up and leafed through it. It was a history of the spread of the emerald ash borer across Michigan, from its arrival in the shipping containers in Detroit, to its discovery in 2002 in the Downriver area, and from there on to the woodlands across the state. The bottom whole drawer was labelled “Missouri” and was far more detailed. There were maps and geology surveys and quarantine plans and infected zones and clear-cut zones and chemical application theories and optimal replanting plans. From the little I could see, Missouri was losing the same way Michigan already had. I shut the drawers, picked up the file cabinet, and took it to the Jeep.

  After the file cabinet, I loaded the box and then went back to the office to make sure I’d gotten everything. Sure enough, I’d missed one more map that was spread out on the desk itself. It seemed to show the year by year progress of the borer’s voracious path across Michigan. I folded it up and prepared to leave.

  A blinking light on the phone caught my eye. The phone was an older model and it looked like you could get voicemail just by hitting the lit button. I didn’t know if Liselle could access the system anymore so I found a pad and a pen, hit the button, and listened to the messages over the speaker. Most of them were spam, but the eighth one was something different.

  “Hello, Ms. Vila?” said the voice. “This is Missy Lincoln from Gateway Animal Rescue. Mac, the Toller that Mr. Phillips adopted, has been returned to us. I know you had some affection for Mac too so I was calling to find out if you’d be interested in adopting him. I'll be able to hold him for a week or so but after that I'll be posting him for open adoption.” Missy Lincoln of Gateway Animal Rescue then left the number and address of the shelter with an invitation to call.

  I wrote down the information and left.

  My next stop took me due west to Springfield, Missouri, which was about three hours away. That meant a drive through sections of the Mark Twain National Forest. It was late fall so there was still color; leaves of red and gold and green. At times, the trees were back a ways from the road and, at others, the trees came in and met overhead so that I was driving through a multi-colored, living tunnel.

  At one point, I came to an area that opened into a valley so that I had a view of tree-covered hills for miles in the distance.

  For the first time, I saw swaths of dead trees on the hillsides, like cancerous streaks amidst the greenery. The streaks were thin and you might not notice them if you weren’t looking for them, but since I was, I knew lines of dead ash trees when I saw them. I traversed the valley and the trees closed back in, so close that the broader picture was hidden. But I knew it was there.

  I arrived in Springfield around mid-afternoon and followed my navigation app to the southwest side of town to an industrial warehouse near Interstate 44. A weather-faded sign declared that I’d arrived at Ozark Components. I parked on the gravel because all of the spaces in the small asphalt section were filled. I’d called ahead and found out that the shift ended at four so I had a few minutes before the press operator I’d come to see got off work. I pulled out Liselle’s “Michigan” file again and leafed through it.

  I didn’t have to read much to see that Michigan never stood a chance. In the early 2000s, people wondered why the ash trees southeast of Detroit were sickening. A lot of time was spent thinking it was a disease until a guy named Dave Roberts found larvae in a tree and sent it to a series of entomologists that led from Deb McCullough to Richard Wescott to Eduard Jendek, who finally figured out that an obscure bug from across the ocean was to blame. On July 9, 2002, they identified the emerald ash borer and quarantined the wood in five Michigan counties soon after. But it was too late. The borer had already spread and there was no way to stop it.

  Little was known at the time about the emerald ash borer except that it was a burrowing pest that was indigenous to China. They eventually figured out that the emerald ash borers had hitched a ride to the port of Detroit in cargo ships and from there, disembarked to attack the woods in the surrounding Downriver area. In China, the ash trees had built up a resistance to the borers but the ash
trees of Michigan? Well, those were fresh, defenseless meat.

  The speed with which the borer spread was staggering. It's estimated that they first hit Detroit in the late 1990s but no one’s sure since they weren’t discovered until 2002. By the time my Sarah got involved in fighting the borer, it was 2007 and far, far too late. They tried everything: clearcutting, outlawing transportation of wood, you name it. But by 2014, almost every ash tree in the State of Michigan—damn near every single one—was dead. It had happened before we even knew it had hit.

  I sighed and picked up a file labelled “Missouri timeline.” Missouri had had warning. The first ash borer was found in July 2008 in southeast Missouri. By 2013, there had been a quarantine on ash wood in every single county in the state and in the city of St. Louis. But by August 2018, eleven more counties had reported finding emerald ash borers and where you found those, you found dead ash trees. I could see from the clippings and from her diligent journaling that Liselle had not given up, that she thought that there was an experimental pesticide being manufactured in Wisconsin that might give them a chance. But I could also see from her schematics and colored maps that the ash borer was making its relentless way through the state, and, from what I'd seen in Michigan, if you could see the results, it was already too late. I had a feeling that the ash trees in Missouri were seeing their last seasons. It was a bleak thought; the relentlessness of it, the remorselessness, the fact that there was nothing left to be done except watch all of these beautiful, century-old trees die.

  A stream of men began to leave the building then and I tossed the ash borer apocalypse folder onto the front passenger seat. I got out of the Jeep and made my way toward the building as men filed out toward the forty or so cars in the lot. I saw the man I was looking for. He was a little over six feet, good size, with curlyish brown-blond hair. He had a few days growth of beard and still looked as if he could run for a touchdown or knock down a pass, which he’d done as the star running back and safety for Poplar Bluff some years ago. He carried a small cooler and his Carhart coat in one hand as he pulled out keys with the other.

  “Nick Heyward?” I said.

  Nick looked up, cautious. “Yeah?”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Seems like you are.”

  I looked around the lot. “Is there somewhere to get a beer near here?”

  His eyes narrowed. “That sounds like more than a minute.”

  I nodded. “Probably two beers worth.”

  “I don’t have that kind of time, man.” He clicked his key fob and the lights on a blue F-150 next to me blinked.

  “It’s about Liselle Vila.”

  Nick stopped. “What does she want?”

  “She doesn’t want anything. I need to ask you some things about her.”

  Nick’s eyes darkened. “If she had a kid, it’s not mine.”

  “She didn’t and that’s not it. Please. Two beers.”

  Nick was clearly torn. He looked at his truck then at me then back at the truck, as if he were picturing his exit. “Fine. Two beers. But I drink fast.”

  “Sure. Where are we going?”

  “Follow me.” I stepped back as Nick climbed into his truck, started it, and pulled out of his spot without waiting.

  I hustled back to my Jeep and gunned it to follow him. I thought I was going to lose him until I saw the blue truck up in the distance pull into the Cardinal’s Nest, which looked like Springfield’s highway-side sports bar.

  Nick’s truck was already parked when I arrived. I parked myself and jogged inside.

  Nick was sitting in a booth in the back corner, as if he were uncertain about being seen with me. That was fine because I felt the same way—I hadn’t seen anyone follow me but still. As I slid into the booth, I saw that he had two long-necked bottles of Busch Light sitting in front of him and that one of them was half gone. “Nancy will get you a beer if you want since your tab is already open,” he said. He took a long pull on the half-drunk beer so that now only a quarter was left. “So what does Liselle need with me after all this time?”

  “I need to ask you about the party when you collapsed.”

  Nick half smiled and then took a sip. “Back in high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What happened?”

  “There was a big party. I drank beer. I took molly. I collapsed and ended up in the hospital for three days.” He took another long pull and set down an empty bottle.

  I waved to the waitress and gestured for two more. “Did Liselle go to the party with you?”

  “No.”

  That was a relief.

  “We hooked up there.”

  Never mind.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “We had broken up a few months before and so we didn’t really hang out anymore. But everyone we knew and a shit-ton we didn’t went to that party so we both ended up there.”

  “Did you take the molly together?”

  Nick shook his head and then took a drink. “I'd come with a group of eight or nine guys and girls. We all took it in a cluster and I saw other clusters of kids doing the same.”

  “How did you end up dancing together?”

  Nick took a drink and smiled. “Have you ever taken molly?”

  “No.”

  “We all ended up dancing together, right there in the middle of the barn.”

  “You remember dancing with Liselle?”

  “I do.”

  “Did you mind?”

  “Have you seen Liselle?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you know the answer is fuck no, I didn't mind.” Nick took a drink and I saw with some dismay that it was half gone. I looked around for Nancy and the next two beers but didn't see her yet.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “That's kind of personal, isn’t it?”

  “I mean, do you remember collapsing?”

  “No. I remember dancing with a bunch of people and I remember dancing with Liselle for even longer and then I remember waking up in the hospital and being told I was lucky I had avoided brain damage.”

  “Was it summer?” I asked.

  Nick took another drink and made a face over the top of the bottle before he said, “Why the fuck does that matter?”

  “Because I've read that one of the main risks of molly is overheating, that it raises your body temperature so you can dehydrate.”

  Nick smirked a little. “That is one of the risks. It's why people always make sure they drink water when they're tripping.”

  “So did the doctors tell you what happened?”

  “They did.”

  Then Nick tipped the bottle, took five long swallows, and set down an empty beer. “Thanks, man,” he said and stood. “Those hit the spot.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “You said two beers, I drank two beers.” He slipped his Carhart coat on and began to walk toward the door. Just then Nancy returned and set two beers on the table. “How about two more?” I said.

  Nick turned and he stared at me for a moment and then he walked back. He picked up one of the beers, put it to his lips, and drank it in one continuous pull.

  “Liselle said you were dehydrated,” I said as the last of the beer glugged away.

  Nick set down the empty bottle and belched. “That's what everyone thought because that's what the paramedics said when they showed up. That's not what happened though.”

  Nick looked at me then and the look was strange. A mixture of caution and rue. “It was the opposite,” he said. “I had hyponatremia. Water intoxication.”

  “You had too much water?”

  He nodded. “That happens too. She wouldn’t stop giving them to me.”

  I kept my face neutral. “She?”

  Nick picked up the last beer. “Liselle. She was paranoid that we would dehydrate.”

  “So Liselle gave you the water?”

  Nick nodded. “Close
to a dozen bottles of it. Bitch almost killed me.” He paused. “But Jesus could she dance.” He shook his head and raised the last beer. “I'm taking this one to go.”

  Shit. “Two more?”

  “Bye.”

  With that, Nick Heyward walked out the door of the Cardinal’s Nest. And I knew that if he ever walked in the doors of the Carrefour courthouse, Liselle Vila was doomed.

  26

  I paid for four beers I didn’t drink and left. I didn’t think I’d get another shot with Nick and I knew where he was if I had to subpoena him. Which I never, ever would.

  I decided that Springfield had shown me all I cared to see and hopped onto I-44 to head back to St. Louis.

  I’d logged a lot of time behind the wheel that day so I should have been tired but all I could think about during the three-and-a-half-hour drive was that it had happened before. Not exactly, maybe, but close. Fourteen years ago, Liselle had danced with a guy until he’d collapsed from hyponatremia.

  I’d heard about people getting sick from drinking too much water, mostly because it had happened to some poor woman at one of Sarah’s triathlons—the woman had been so worried about dehydrating that she’d drank herself to death. It sounded like the same thing had almost happened to Nick. He’d been worried about dehydrating when he was on molly so he’d drank too much water.

  Correction—Liselle had given him too much water. While she was dancing with him. And this guy who had broken up with her a couple of months before had almost died.

  I made myself pull back a little bit. This didn’t look good from a practical level—if a jury heard it, they might make the leap that there was some kind of pattern. But this seemed to be an accidental overdose, on water, by young, stupid kids. There was nothing to show that this was anything but accidental and there was nothing to show that Richard Phillips’ death was anything but natural and accidental. There was still no evidence that I could see of motive, of a reason Liselle would want Richard Phillips dead.