Cyanide Wells

by Marcia Muller

  He bought a copy of the local paper and, at the Mercantile, an area map. Then he walked over to the park and sat down on a bench by the well to study both. The front section of the Spectrum was devoted to county news; national and world items off the wire services and syndicated material filled the second; the third covered the arts. Nowhere was Ardis Coleman’s byline. He turned to the op-ed page, and immediately his eye was drawn to a boxed ad at its bottom.

  Wanted: General assignment photographer for Soledad Spectrum. Small paper experience, references required. See C. McGuire, 1101 Main Street.

  Sheer coincidence? Fate? He didn’t believe in either, yet a chill was on his spine.

  Photographer? Yes.

  Small-paper experience, references? No.

  But those he could acquire.

  After half an hour on the phone to Port Regis, making explanations to Millie Bertram that were at best half-truths and giving instructions that she carefully wrote down and repeated, Matt stepped through the door of the Soledad Spectrum. An unmanned reception desk confronted him, flanked on its left by a gated railing barring access to the area behind. Four computer workstations, three of them unoccupied, filled the rest of the room, and a trio of closed doors led to the rear of the building. When Matt came in, a slender, dark-haired man who was pounding on a keyboard at the station farthest from the reception desk glanced up and snapped, “Help you?”

  “I’m looking for C. McGuire.”

  “You’re the only one, buddy. Carly’s on a tear, and everybody but me has taken off early for a long lunch. I’d’ve gone to earth, too, if I didn’t have to finish this goddamn story on the new logging regs.” He lifted his hands from the keyboard, flopped them beside it in an exaggerated gesture of helplessness. “But my manners—where are they?”

  “You tell me.”

  The man smiled and got up, came over to the rail, and extended a hand. “Severin Quill, police/political reporter. Don’t laugh at the name. It’s ridiculous, but few people forget it.”

  “John Crowe, wanna-be general assignment photographer.”

  “All right!” Severin Quill’s mouth quirked up. He was no more than twenty-five, with a puckish face and, apparently, a sense of humor to match. “You just may be our salvation, Mr. Crowe. One—though by no means all—of the reasons for Carly’s bearish mood is the defection of our former photographer. He took off last week without a word of notice. Not that I blame him.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because on her best of days Carly McGuire is a pain in the ass to work for. I feel duty-bound to warn you of that before you go back there”—he jerked his thumb at one of the closed doors—“into the harpy’s nest.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because to any newspaper person worth his or her salt, Carly’s standards and expectations are challenges others only dream of.”

  “Then maybe I’ll take my chances.”

  The first word Matt heard out of Carly McGuire’s mouth was “What!”

  Loud, even through the closed door, and very irritated. But also low-timbred and sultry—the kind they used to call a “whiskey voice.” One that, whatever potential abuse lay behind that door, made him determined to see its owner.

  “I’m here about the photographer’s job,” he called.

  “So don’t just stand there. Come in!”

  He pushed through into a small, cluttered room. A huge weekly calendar scrawled with notations covered the far wall. Tearsheets and lists and photographs were tacked haphazardly to the others. The floor was mounded with books and papers; in its center sat a large, equally mounded metal desk. And in its center a woman in black jeans and a T-shirt sat cross-legged, glaring at him.

  Carly McGuire was around forty, slender and long-limbed, with honey-colored hair that fell straight to her shoulders. Her skin glowed with what looked to be a year-round tan, and her oval face framed rather severe features. Or maybe they only appeared to be severe because of the horn-rimmed half-glasses that perched on the tip of her nose, and the frown lines etched between her eyebrows.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I saw your ad—”

  “Of course you did. Get to the point.”

  “I want the job.”

  “And why do you think I should hire you?”

  “Small-paper experience—eighteen years. A reference—from my editor and publisher. And I’m a damned good photographer.”

  She seemed to like his response. At least her scowl didn’t deepen, and she took off the glasses, twirling them around as she studied him.

  “Name?” she asked.

  “John Crowe.”

  “From?”

  “Port Regis, British Columbia.”

  “Here for?”

  “A change of scene.”

  “Reason? Fired? Divorced?”

  “Neither. Leave of absence for now, but it could become permanent.”

  She nodded. “Okay, none of my business and rightly so.”

  “I’m glad you realize that.”

  She compressed her lips and studied him some more. Then she unfolded her long legs and scooted over to the edge of the desk, knocking several files to the floor but sliding off gracefully. “Let’s have you fill out an application, and then I’ll put you to the test.”

  “What test?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Carly McGuire seated Matt with an application form at the still unmanned reception desk and disappeared into her office. Before he could get started, Severin Quill expelled a dramatic sigh and swiveled away from his workstation. “The piece is finished, and so am I,” he announced. “Lunchtime—a long, liquid one. Sorry to leave you here to fend on your own, Mr. Crowe.”

  “If you hear screams, come running.”

  Matt waited till Quill had left the building, then scanned the desk where he sat. A Rolodex, fat with cards, stood on one corner. Quickly he turned it to the C’s, located Ardis Coleman’s name, and copied the address and phone number onto a piece of scratch paper.

  Easy, but things are if you think them through.

  He then turned his attention to the job application.

  Former employer: the—fictional—Port Regis Register. Contact: Millie Bertram, editor and publisher.

  Position: chief photographer.

  Employed: 1984–2002.

  Education: BA, English and prelaw, Northwestern University. McGuire wouldn’t check with the college, given the passage of time.

  Address and phone number—

  Damn! He’d registered at the motel under his own name. But…

  He reached for his wallet, took out the slip of paper that Sam—last name D’Angelo—had written her phone number and address on when he’d delivered her there the night before. He’d phone, ask her to field his calls. If necessary, he’d take her to dinner as payment for the favor. No, he’d do it anyway; the kid could use a good meal.

  He was signing the application with Johnny Crowe’s name when Carly McGuire emerged from her office, smiling fiendishly.

  “What’s this?” Matt asked, staring at the red Ford pickup with the white camper shell on its bed and a Save the Redwoods sticker on its bumper. It was pulled up against the wall in the alley behind the building.

  “The test,” she said.

  “You want me to take pictures of a truck?”

  “I don’t want you to take pictures of anything.” She seized the strap of his camera bag and relieved him of it, then slapped a key into his hand. “I want you to make it start.”

  “Huh?”

  She tapped the toe of her cowboy boot on the gravel. “You said small-paper experience. I don’t know about the Port Royal Register—”

  “Port Regis.”

  “Whatever. But here at the Spectrum we all pitch in to do whatever it takes to get the paper out. And if I can’t get this truck started, I can’t get the week’s issue to the printer down in Santa Carla by six o’clock tonight. In all the years I’ve owned the Spectrum we�
��ve never missed press time.”

  “So if everybody pitches in to get the paper out, why haven’t any of them already gotten the truck started? Or offered you the use of their vehicles?”

  McGuire’s mouth drooped and she suddenly looked tired. “A couple of them tried and gave up. And I don’t like to drive other people’s vehicles.”

  Meaning other people didn’t like to lend theirs to her. “How about calling a garage or Triple A?”

  “I have a…problem with the local garage. And I accidentally let my Triple A membership lapse. Can you fix it or not?”

  Fortunately, he’d spent most of his life poking his nose into various engine compartments. “I can fix it.”

  It wasn’t an old truck—1999 Ford Ranger, and appeared to be well maintained. But when he eased himself into the driver’s seat and tried to turn it over, the idiot lights flashed and bells rang, but there wasn’t even a click, just the faintest of hums.

  “It’s not the battery,” he said.

  “I know that! It was the first thing the others checked.”

  He jiggled the gearshift lever, depressed the clutch, turned the key again. Nothing. “This an alarm system?” he asked, pointing to a unit with a blinking red light mounted beneath the dash.

  McGuire came over and peered through the open door. “Yeah. The dealership put it on because there had been a lot of thefts off their used-car lot. I didn’t want to pay for it, and they were supposed to make an appointment to have it taken off, but they never got back to me. I don’t even know how it works.”

  “Raise the hood, will you?” While she did, he set the ignition to Start. When he went around to the front of the truck, he found McGuire staring at its innards with a bewildered frown.

  “I hate mechanical things,” she said.

  “Maybe if you knew more about them, you’d like them better. D’you have some pliers?”

  “There’s a toolbox in the bed. I’ll see.” She went away, came back with a pair. “These okay?”

  “Yep.” He took them from her and went to work connecting the ignition wire directly to the solenoid. The engine roared, then began to purr.

  McGuire smiled as if the sounds were the opening notes of a favorite symphony. “What was wrong with it?”

  “Well, it could be a problem with your starter, but my guess is that the truck’s paranoid.”

  “It’s what?”

  “The kind of alarm you have prevents theft by keeping the vehicle from starting. Apparently your truck decided somebody was trying to steal it and activated its own alarm.”

  She scowled. “Is this a joke?”

  “Truck’s running, isn’t it?”

  She transferred her scowl to the Ford. “Is it fixed for good?”

  “No. I bypassed the alarm for now, but it should be disconnected.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether I have the photographer’s job.”

  McGuire sighed. “You have the job, Mr. Crowe.”

  A difficult woman, Carly McGuire. Puzzling and contradictory, too. But Matt couldn’t afford to dwell on her. After he spent half an hour disconnecting the Ford’s alarm, he had more immediate matters to attend to.

  First the call to Sam, who was so eager to help him that she hadn’t asked why he needed to use her address and phone number, and so happy to be invited to dinner that she offered to cook for him. He didn’t think it was a good idea, but when she insisted, he agreed.

  Next he went to the Jeep, removed the standard lens from the Nikon, and attached the F2.8 telephoto with 1.4x teleconverter—a combination that afforded the equivalent of a 400 F4.0 lens without the bulk and length. On the area map he’d bought earlier, he located Drinkwater Road, northwest of the Knob, along the creek of the same name. Before he left town, he bought a sandwich and a Coke at a deli and ate while he drove.

  Aspen Road led him across the eastern side of the meadow toward the Knob. To either side of the pavement, houses spread behind rustic split-rail fences: new, with much glass, yet weathered to blend in with their surroundings. An exclusive development to match the tricked-up little town, here in what he’d learned was a poor county where the economic bases of logging, mining, and commercial fishing were eroding. Perhaps luxury dwellings and services for retirees and second-homers would provide the answer to Soledad County’s dilemma, but to Matt it seemed they would only create a dangerous gap between the haves and the have-nots.

  Ahead, the Knob rose against the clear sky: tall, rounded on top, slightly atilt, eroded and polished by the elements. He couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps it had resembled an upended doorknob to the settlers who named it, but to him it looked like a huge erect penis. God knew what the retirees in their expensive homes thought about spending their declining years in the shadow of an enormous dick!

  Drinkwater Road appeared some two miles from town. He followed its curves as it meandered north along the creek bed. The stream was swollen with runoff from the mountain snowmelt, and its water rushed over rocks and foamed between them. To the road’s left, wooden bridges led to dwellings on the creek’s other side; eucalyptus and pine and newly leafed aspen blurred the buildings’ outlines. To the right of the pavement rose a rocky slope, broken occasionally by dirt driveways with mailboxes. He didn’t need to consult the slip of paper on which he’d written Gwen’s—no, Ardis Coleman’s—address; he’d already committed it and the phone number to memory.

  He drove slowly for several miles, taking careful note of his surroundings: blind curves, sheltered places to turn off, areas where there were no houses or driveways. When he saw a wood-burned sign at the end of a bridge on the creek side, bearing the number 11708, he didn’t stop. Instead he drove for another mile, still observing, then turned back.

  The house where his ex-wife lived—possibly had lived for all of the fourteen years he’d presumed her dead—was set back from the creek and screened by trees and other vegetation; the plank bridge was not wide enough to accommodate a car or truck, but there was a paved parking area to its right, currently empty. Matt stopped there, took up the Nikon, and scanned the property.

  One-story redwood-and-stone house with chimneys at either end and a number of large bubble-type skylights. Flagstone patio in front, equipped with a hot tub, table and chairs, chaise longues, and barbecue. Rope hammock in an iron stand under an oak tree to the other side of the walk.

  Nothing at all like the modest home he and Gwen had shared in Saugatuck.

  After a moment, he moved the Jeep to a different vantage point. There was a rose garden beyond the hammock, fenced off, probably against the incursions of deer. Gwen had always loved roses. And beyond that sat a child’s swing set. Gwen, unlike him, had never wanted children…

  A car, coming along the road from the south, taking the curves swiftly and surely.

  Matt started the Jeep, pulled away as the other vehicle crested a rise and sped past. Not Gwen, but it wasn’t a good idea for anyone to see him here. There was a place about fifty yards to the south that he’d spotted earlier, where he and the Jeep would be concealed from all traffic—a place that commanded a view of Gwen’s parking area.

  That was where he’d wait for her.

  By four-thirty he was cramped and tired and suffering from a severe tension headache. Best to pack it in and head back to the motel. After all, he’d waited fourteen years; another day or two wouldn’t kill him. He was now gainfully employed—general assignment photographer and truck mechanic for the local paper. That gave him a bona fide reason for prowling the countryside.

  But still he waited. Five minutes, ten, fifteen…Cars and trucks and SUVs passed—residents returning to their homes. He counted them, one through twenty, and then a white SUV appeared, slowed, and turned off into Gwen’s parking area. One of those new Mercedeses he’d seen written up in the automotive section of the Vancouver paper; suggested retail price was in the neighborhood of seventy-three thousand
U.S. dollars.

  Doing well, Gwennie.

  He took up the Nikon again as the driver’s-side door opened. Leaned forward with the lens aimed through the Jeep’s wind-shield. A woman came around the vehicle—tall and slim, with a model’s erect posture and a dancer’s graceful step. Gwen’s posture. Gwen’s step.

  She went to the passenger-side door and opened it. Said something to someone inside and turned. Now he had a clear view of her face. Her once-smooth skin bore fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and her long dark-brown hair had been cut so that it curved in smooth wings to her jawbone, but he recognized her instantly. He gripped the Nikon hard, and his nervous finger depressed the shutter.

  As Gwen moved to the rear of the SUV and opened the door, the passenger stepped down. A girl of nine or ten, dragging an enormous backpack of the sort all the kids seemed to favor these days. Her skin was honey-tan, and her features and curly black hair indicated African-American heritage. Had Gwen married a black man? Adopted a mixed-race child?

  Gwen was taking a folded metal cart from the rear of the vehicle. As the child approached, smiling up at her, Matt took another photograph. Gwen set up the cart and began filling it with grocery bags. After she finished and shut the door, she tried to take the backpack from the little girl, who resisted, laughing. Gwen laughed, too, ruffling the child’s hair; the love in her eyes was reflected in her daughter’s. The two started across the footbridge, Gwen pulling the cart with one hand, the other resting on the girl’s shoulder.

  Matt snapped a picture of them before they passed out of sight behind an overhanging fringe of pine branches.

  Well, now you know, Lindstrom. She’s got herself a nice home, nice little girl, probably a nice husband. The good life that she somehow couldn’t find with you.

  Now you know. And you know what you have to do.

  Back at his motel, he had one drink of Wild Turkey and then another. They did nothing to take the edge off. Even though he’d expected to see Gwen’s image through the camera’s lens, its actual appearance had shocked him. Altered him, too, in ways that he couldn’t yet begin to guess at. His hands were shaking as he poured another drink and the memories crowded in, their former bittersweet flavor now charred by rage.