by John Case
“Help you?” she asked, but his reply was drowned out as a pair of navy jets roared overhead. He’d read in the guidebook that Fallon was the location of the Top Gun pilot training program.
Mandy Renfro smiled and held up a finger. “You get used to it,” she shouted. Once the noise died down, she asked, “Now, how can I help you?”
Burke told her that he was writing a story for Harper’s about the Invention Secrecy Act.
“I see,” she said, and frowned at the flowers. “Those poor things need help.” She gave him an assessing look. “You might as well come in. You look thirsty, too.”
She invited him to sit in the tiny living room. At one end of the room was a shrine to Jack: a shelf of trophies, a couple of photos, some certificates, and a Stanford pennant.
Mandy put the flowers in water, and came out after a few minutes with two tall glasses of iced tea. Only when she had stirred in the sugar with a long-handled spoon, and put their glasses on the coffee table, did she herself sit down.
Every minute or so, a jet put their conversation on hold.
“So who did you say you’re doing the story for?”
“Harpers,” Burke replied.
Mandy Renfro gazed at him with her bright blue eyes. “Young man,” she said, “I don’t b’lieve you’re telling me the truth.”
“Well –”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “I can’t help you with Jack anyway. I know he’s out of prison because I make it my business to keep up with him.” She glanced down at her hands. “But he does not make it his business to keep up with me.”
“So the last time you saw him was in the courtroom?”
“That’s right.”
“Like everybody else.”
She took a dainty sip. “You look awful tired. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here? What’s your interest in Jack?”
Burke was tired of lying. He told her the outlines of the story, but left out the part about Culpeper. “I think he’s building a weapon,” Burke told her. “A powerful one.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Lotta anger in that boy, and why not? After all those years in that terrible place.”
Burke nodded.
“There’s two ways animals get when they been hurt bad – and Jack’s been hurt bad, you know. Some critters will curl up and pretend to be dead and just kind of keep a low profile and ride it out. The others? You hurt them and they want to hurt you back. They attack. Or they wait, and then they attack. Even dogs been known to hold grudges. Coyotes, too.” She took a sip of tea.
“You think Jack is going to retaliate.”
“Jack was done wrong. So, yes – I worry about what he might do, smart as he is, strong-willed as he is.”
“I worry, too.”
“What will you do if you find him?”
“I’m not sure,” Burke said. And it was true; he really didn’t know. “You think he’ll come here?”
“This little trailer was his special spot, but if he isn’t here by now, he’s not coming.” A sigh. She stirred her tea. “You’ve heard about it, I’m sure, that he was found in a box at the door to the hospital, with his name on one of those stickers.”
Burke nodded.
“That put Jack to feeling bad about himself – he was abandoned, no two ways about it. But I explained that sometimes a child is left like that to protect it from harm. And I told him it was a beginning in life that he shared with some mighty powerful figures. Moses for one, drifting in his little basket. And Sargon – he was the king of Mesopotamia – also found in a basket. I told Jack his start in life was right out of legend.”
Burke nodded.
Mandy had a little smile on her face. “You’re thinking how’s a lady lives in a trailer know about ancient Mesopotamia. Before I met Alan, my husband, I had two years at Boise State. And I’m a great reader. I gave that to Jack.
“Anyway, Jack came here when he was ten and we never did find out about his parents. One white, one Indian – that was clear from looking at him. He was a half-blood. Half Paiute, you might guess, because Paiutes are mostly what you have in Nevada. And then there was the name – that pretty much sealed it. Anyway, Alan and I – Jack, too, when he was older – we looked and looked to try to discover who his parents might be, all the local history in the papers and so on. Anybody pregnant, any young woman who disappeared.”
“But you never found out.”
“Nossir. Somebody with some schooling, you might think – else they never would have heard of the first Jack Wilson. And that was interesting, too, that his mama, or maybe his daddy, chose to honor an ancestor, but chose the white name instead of the native one.”
“Wovoka.”
She looked up, her eyes sharp. “So you have done some lookin’ around.”
He nodded.
“Whoever Jack’s parents might have been, it was a dandy genetic combination. Jack was just beautiful. Oh lord, with his shock of hair and big dimples and those frying-pan eyes – folks just couldn’t take their eyes off that boy. And smart? Just as bright as a penny.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“You have no idea. When he came to me as a foster child, he was still a boy, really – small for his age. He’d already been through half a dozen foster homes. Nothing against the system, they try, they really do, but they’ve got some crazy rules and they’ve got some foster parents prob’ly shouldn’t be parents at all. Some of these people take children in as a moneymaking proposition.”
“Really?”
“Oh lord, yes. They’ll have eight, ten kids – and that’s a lot, isn’t it? Especially when these are kids with issues.” She sighed and sipped her tea. “Jack got slapped around by one foster mother’s boyfriend, and then he was in a couple of these warehouse-type deals. When he came to me and Alan, he was … guarded. It took a while to win his trust. But then …” She shut her eyes and Burke saw tears glitter in the corners. “We really did become a family.”
“How long was he with you?”
“Until he was sixteen. Six years. Alan and I … we helped him look into his heritage and made sure he knew about Paiute history. I took him to Pyramid Lake and introduced him to the people there. Would you like to see a picture?”
“Sure.” Burke followed her into a tiny room.
“This was Jack’s room,” she told him. “And that’s Jack with Peter Whitecloud.” She pointed to a framed photograph of a twelve-year-old boy smiling beside an older man in blue jeans and a sweater. “Peter was head of the tribal council then. A real V.I.P.”
“Is he still around?” Burke asked.
“No,” Mandy said. “He passed a few years ago.”
There was a posterboard next to the bed, and Burke went over to it. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Oh, that – that was a ninth-grade project Jack did. He got an A plus!”
Under the heading 200 Years of Losing Ground was a series of beautifully drawn maps of the continental United States. Burke looked closer and saw that color-coded areas represented the lands of various tribes. There were six maps in all, starting in 1775 and ending in 1975. Sidebars in small boxes noted the enactment of laws and treaties affecting the Indians, mostly for the worst. The maps dramatized the rapid diminution of land belonging to Native Americans.
In the last map, there were only a few specks of color east of the Mississippi. In the West, the biggest chunks of Indian land were in the Dakotas and in the Four Corners region. Even in Oklahoma, the whole of which had been declared “Indian Territory” in 1835, reservation land was now but a tiny fraction of the state.
“They’re still suffering,” Mandy said. “Folks think the casinos have changed it all, but the truth is, Native Americans are still the least healthy, least wealthy, and least educated of all the peoples in the United States.” She sighed, and led him back to the living room. “I don’t mean to rattle on,” she said.
“What happened when Jack was sixteen?” Burke asked. “W
here did he go?”
The old woman squeezed her eyes shut. “My husband got liver cancer. They can’t really do a damn thing for it – except, maybe, a transplant. Alan was on the list, but … we ran out of time.” She sighed. “Anyway, when Alan was diagnosed, I didn’t let on about it. I should have, I know, but I was afraid they’d take Jack away.”
“You mean Child Services? Why would they do that?”
“Because we were old – or not ‘old,’ but old to be Jack’s foster parents. I was fifty-five and Alan was sixty when he came to us. It was just pure old-fashioned luck that we got him. They had to place him, we were willin’, and at the time, they had nobody else. But when they found out that Alan was sick and that I was spending a lot of time taking care of him, that was that.” A quick intake of breath.
“I’m sorry.”
She dabbed at her eyes with her knuckles. “He didn’t want to go. We were all the family he had, plus he knew I couldn’t take care of Alan by myself. Without Jack’s help, Alan would have to go to a hospice. And that’s what he did.” A sigh. “I had to be real firm with Jack. I knew he’d try to run away and come back, but I made him promise not to. I told him that it would be the death of me if he spoiled his chances. Even back then, he wanted to go to Stanford, and I knew he had a real shot at it. But not if he got into trouble. And ‘running away,’ they treat that like it’s a felony, you know?”
Burke nodded.
“Jack got to a place in town that wasn’t too bad – lots of kids and they made him pray all the time. But Jack was old enough by then to look after himself. And he got to stay at the high school, which was great. He went with me to visit Alan most weekends, and I met him at the library a bunch of times. We did his college applications there.”
“But they didn’t let him come back after your husband died?”
She shook her head. “I was too old to look after him – that’s what they said.”
“But he got into Stanford.”
“I was so proud! Bright as he was, it was still a miracle. And then to do so well. And that invention! He was so excited! It would have been a tremendous boon. He was going to buy me a house, which I didn’t need. But he would have loved to do that. It would have made him feel … I don’t know. Real good about himself.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped. Suddenly, she looked very tired. “I still can’t believe what happened,” she said. Her eyes teared up, but she didn’t cry. “Now, maybe he was mad – he certainly had the right to be mad – but he never would have hurt anybody. Not my Jack.”
“Not then, but … what about now?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Burke leaned toward her. “What worries me is … I think he might be involved with this Culpeper thing. And that Culpeper might not be the end of it.”
“Oh my God –” Her hand flew up to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know a thing that could help you.” Her damp eyes shone like crushed jewels. “I don’t know him anymore. I only know the person he used to be. Even in court, even by then, he was different. You could see it. Eyes closed down, hard as a stone.” She shook her head. “He’s been out for months now, and he hasn’t called.”
“But if he does …”
She pursed her lips, and nodded. “If he does, I’ll call you.” She offered a square of paper from a basket. It was the reverse side of a page from a one-a-day calendar of flower photos. He gave her his number in Dublin, and told her he’d check his messages each day.
He was saying good-bye, on his way out the door, when her voice stopped him. “You know …” she said.
When he turned, she was looking at the calendar page.
“I don’t see how this can help,” she told him, “but if Jack … does something … I can guess the date.”
“When? How?”
“June twenty-two. It’s an important date for a lot of Native Americans. Because it’s the solstice.” She pressed her lips together. “You say ‘sundance’ now and everybody thinks of Robert Redford. But the Sun Dance was the biggest ceremony of the year for many tribes. The government outlawed it way back when – and I know Jack wrote a paper about it in high school. He said it was like outlawing Christmas.”
“Why was it outlawed?” Burke asked.
She shrugged. “Because it was bloody – for some of the tribes, at least. White people were repulsed by it.”
“What did they do?”
“It was different from tribe to tribe, but it always involved a lodge pole, like a May Pole, but bigger, standing in the ground. The Plains tribes would attach a buffalo skull to the pole, and stuff it with offerings of grass. Other tribes tied a buffalo penis to the pole. But the idea was the same: The land should be fertile, and the people, too. There was always a lot of drumming and dancing and singing, and, well, this is the part that got so many whites upset. Some of the men would be tethered to the pole by straps attached to hooks in their chests or backs.”
“Jesus,” Burke exclaimed.
“Well, you can imagine,” Mandy said. “They’d fast and suffer for days, dancing in a circle around the pole, pulling against their own flesh, hallucinating and having visions. The way Jack explained it in his paper, it was a symbolic death, part of the great cycle. When they finally broke free from the pole, it was like … a resurrection.” She frowned. “Anyway, Jack’s essay won a prize and all. I’m thinking that if he was going to make a gesture, that’s when he’d do it.”
Burke frowned. Today was June 13.
Mandy saw the look on his face, and guessed what he was thinking. “I know,” she said, “it’s not even ten days.”
Forty-four
San Francisco | June 14, 2005
THE CITY AT night. It took your breath away.
Wilson drank it all in as he headed into town. The hills tumbling down to the water. The contours of land, made visible by the city’s lights, ending at the harbor’s inky edge. It was gorgeous, and it just got better the closer you came. A galaxy of skyscrapers glittered against a backdrop of stars, the Golden Gate ablaze with the lights of cars.
The natural setting was spectacular, but it was technology that made the city beautiful at night. Wilson smiled at the irony. The glittering world in front of him was a direct descendant of the first illuminated metropolis: the White City of the Chicago World’s Fair, which Tesla’s inventions had helped to light.
Ironically, Wilson thought, it was Tesla’s technology, improved upon by himself and manifest in the transmitter atop the lookout tower in Nevada, that would put out the lights forever. America was about to return to more natural, diurnal rhythms.
How long, he wondered, until the cars disintegrated? Decades, he guessed, even in the Bay Area’s moist air. Some of the metal might be scavenged. The rest would oxidate. But the plastic? The rubber? It would be there for centuries, an eyesore and a reminder, except in the country’s more fecund climates, where it would disappear in the midst of encroaching forests.
And the bridges? The bridges would remain until an earthquake pulled them down.
Driving into the city, he felt the lure of it: the normal life. He and Irina could be happy here. He could sell the ranch and buy a house. Get a job, or start a business. Felon or not, a good engineer was a rare commodity. He could introduce Irina to the silver-dollar pancakes at Sears, and watch her dimpled smile as she enjoyed the role reversal of being waited on. They could go to Chinatown and Golden Gate Park. Their kids would play t-ball and soccer. He’d buy her a minivan, and head north along the coast to the Russian River, where people from her part of the world settled a century ago, trapping and fishing.
Right, Wilson thought. We’ll do that. And then we’ll hold hands and sing “We Are the World.”
He pulled up in front of the Nikko, and let the valet park the Escalade. The transmitter he’d used in Culpeper was locked down under the bed’s cover. Then he checked in, went to his room, and cleaned up.
He grabbed a bottle of water from the minibar, dropped into
a comfortable chair, and removed the tiny photograph of Irina from his wallet. He looked at it for a long time. There was something almost inscrutable about her expression, a mixture of sadness and hope … and something else. He couldn’t quite figure it out, but that was okay, too. She’d be flying into Vegas in a few days, and after that, he’d have a lifetime to learn her secrets.
*
It was raining the next morning. Brake lights bled onto the slick black pavement. The Escalade’s wheels hissed as it rolled along a network of one-way streets, arriving, just a few minutes later, at the courthouse.
The building didn’t open until nine, but he wanted to get to it early, so he could scope out the parking. He needed exact GPS coordinates for both the spot where he’d be parked and the courtroom he was targeting. Culpeper had been a more amorphous target, and therefore comparatively easy.
The awkward part was the need to expose and elevate the weapon. It didn’t look like much, it didn’t even look like a weapon, but it looked strange – there was no question about that. And while he needed clean sight lines, he also needed to park in a spot where no one was likely to notice the truck for the few minutes it would take to do what he had to do.
In the end, any number of places might have been suitable, but the decision as to which was best was a no-brainer. He smiled as he pressed the button and retrieved the ticket for the Turk Street garage. It was so early that only the first two levels were occupied – with a sprinkling of cars on the third. After that, nothing.
Wilson drove straight to the roof. Rain pounded the windshield as he emerged into the open air. It was clear at a glance that at eight a.m. on a weekday, level five was likely to be empty.
After checking the locations of surveillance cameras, he backed into slot 952.
Standing at the truck’s rear, Wilson looked out directly at the courthouse. The CCTV cameras would be able to see the bed of the truck, this was true, but one camera’s visual field would be partially impeded by a post and the other would be somewhat obscured by the truck’s cab.
