by Mark Stevens
“They should be, I suppose. Maybe working late up at the barn.”
With the long cord on her phone, Trudy could talk and drift into her greenhouse, two steps down off the back of her kitchen. She pinched a dead leaf from a Weeping Fig.
“I’ll be up later,” said Jerry. “Now that I think about it. Looks to me like we had a great day, based on how tired everyone looks around here.”
Daily receipt fluctuations. A favorite topic. In his perfect world, every day would be better than the next, a steadily rising line of income and profits like no other business in history.
“I’ll button up here and head your way,” said Jerry. “But don’t wait up. Might take a while.”
thirty-four:
wednesday evening
“Turn around,” said Allison.
They had gone a half mile, her tired body clinging to Colin as she sat behind him on Merlin.
“What?” said Colin. He turned to face her as much as he could. She had her arms around his waist. Her chest pressed against his back. He used an old-fashioned western saddle with a low cantle so doubling wasn’t too uncomfortable.
“Let’s go back,” she said.
Colin’s look was to see if she was serious. “You’re soaked,” he said.
“We’ll build a quick fire, dry these things out.”
“That’ll take an hour or two, it’s almost dark already.”
“The better to sneak up on them.”
“It’s four miles back. You need a shower, real food,” said Colin. “And a beer.”
“The voice of reason,” said Allison. “I’m fine. Now that you’re here. Feeling better.”
“What are you going to see?”
Colin sighed, turned back to face forward. Light was on its last legs. A broad meadow around them slipped toward darkness.
Allison thought the answer was obvious but said it anyway: “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to go.”
“And what are you going to do?”
Colin’s tone was conversational. They could have been discussing a supply list for the hardware store.
“It depends,” said Allison. She tried to match his quiet approach.
“Depends on what?”
“On what’s happening when we get there,” said Allison.
“Probably a whole lot of grown men hanging out and, if anything else, hanging out some more. It’s already dark in case you hadn’t noticed and it’s at least two hours back, maybe more since we’re doubling up here and can’t exactly push Merlin too hard.”
“Okay, then, modified plan is we go most of the way back, find a place to settle in for the night and we’ll be there first thing in the morning, when it’s light.”
Colin didn’t say anything, which was its own form of response.
“I’ve got one blanket,” said Colin.
“All we need,” said Allison.
“I’ve got about five or six of Trudy’s granola bars.” Her version included cranberries, dates, and apricots. Nutrition bullets.
“I know a pond back off the trail,” said Allison, noting the talk had moved to a how to make this work mode.
“Build a fire, dry your clothes, boil some water so we can drink it later. You’d be nekkid for a while.” Pronounced it like a hillbilly.
“You could keep me warm,” said Allison. “But only until the clothes are dry.”
The plan was a jolt to her spirits. Going back to mess with the campfire jerks pleased her to the core. A chance for rest, food, and a fire put the situation in an even sweeter spot.
“What about Trudy—or Jesse. Can we call?”
Colin dug into a jacket pocket. “Pulled your phone out of Sunny Boy’s saddlebags,” he said.
“You are even smarter than you look,” she said.
Allison flipped open the phone. Low battery, no signal. They were down in a broad, flat-bottomed valley. Ridges and obstacles stood between them and civilization’s mysterious cell grid.
“Jesse knows you’re out looking?” said Allison.
“And I told him not to worry until about this time tomorrow,” said Colin.
Which meant that Jesse wouldn’t really start to worry for two or three days. He was as stoic and carefree as your average rock and one of the hardest workers she’d ever met.
“The Oklahoma group called again today,” said Colin. “They were out buying supplies and made up some excuse to call. The guy made a crack about whether they should plan on buying an extra freezer for all the meat they would need to store.”
“Another blood-thirsty realist,” said Allison. “My favorite.”
Time was an issue. Allison’s only positive thought was her standards for cleanliness and organization were so much higher than the average outfitter that she was ahead of the game based on her own baseline. Few clients would notice an off year. The new clients would think she was average. But wandering into an elk herd and filling a tag or three would make any hunter overlook whether her ship was tidy.
They found a flat spot on the north side of the pond, guarded on two sides by trees. The other two sides appeared open, though it was solely an impression. They picked a spot to sleep with the aid of a flashlight. Colin found a place to lead Merlin to the water and the horse slurped noisily.
“I’m going back,” said Colin.
Allison gave him a look, but he couldn’t see it.
“Two hours each way,” said Colin. “Back by 1 or 2, maybe a little later. We need another horse.”
The plan made sense, much as Allison wanted to dispute it. “I’ll go with you.”
“You rest up. You need it.” The idea of stretching out, putting her head down, sounded delicious. “I’ll leave you everything I’ve got. Flashlight, matches, blanket.”
It wouldn’t be like her to complain about being alone. Going so quickly back to being alone, if only for a few hours, felt too abrupt. But Colin was right.
“Got any fire starter?” said Allison.
“Fresh out,” said Colin. “But you know all the tricks.”
Allison liked to think she could start a bonfire in a driving rainstorm, but every bit of the terrain was dripping wet. They were setting up camp on a soaked sponge.
“Don’t need any merit badges,” said Allison. She’d been a Brownie once but after graduating to Girl Scouts had only lasted a year. Something about ranks and mottos and preparing herself through prescribed tasks was unappealing. The checklist approach to conquering the home, the outdoors, and personal improvements didn’t sit well. Neither did selling cookies.
“I’m not awarding any today anyway,” said Colin. “No such authority has been vested in this particular cowboy. However, if you complete your task I do have a different sort of reward, depending on your point of view.”
Colin rummaged around in Merlin’s saddle bags. Like a magician plucking a fat gold coin from behind a stranger’s ear, held up a pint of tequila. He blasted the bottle with the flashlight. Hornitos.
“Okay,” she said. “Now get.”
Allison cracked the bottle and took a swig, passed it back to Colin.
“One for the road,” he said. “Though I shouldn’t drink and drive.”
She kissed him hard, touched tequila tongues, and then for a moment let her head rest on his shoulder. Releasing her weight into his grasp was as good as an hour-long massage by a pro.
“Hurry back,” she said. Kissed him again.
Colin climbed up and headed off without another word. He wasn’t born to linger.
If all went well, she’d have a fire hot enough to dry clothes within twenty or thirty minutes. Another forty minutes to an hour for the clothes to dry, or close. First thing she’d need was a downed dead aspen. Right under their bark, the wood would stay dry in a hurricane. She followed her flashlight beam back toward the woods, counted steps
as she went. Tipped her head back to the sky, rolled her neck around. One faint star winked hello.
thirty-five:
wednesday evening
The old woman was about the last person he was going to engage. She had emerged from an old Buick a half-block from Glenwood Manor and ambled along the sidewalk. Each arm lugged a stuffed-full shopping bag. She stared at the sidewalk as she moved, her head bent over. She was the picture of someone minding her own business.
Bloom was expecting the big blow-off, maybe a grunt or “go away.” Instead, she set down her load as if she’d been hauling bricks, and smiled as if there was no difference between helping a reporter and helping a lost child. She had to be pushing seventy. She was small. She wore bifocals in heavy dark blue frames with a flourish Elton John might have designed. Her hair was pulled back and taut. Her eyes focused like a house cat eyeing a bird through a window. Her name was Marsha Painter.
“How well do you know this neighbor, the one who was arrested?” said Bloom.
“Being held,” said Painter. “That’s what I heard. Not arrested. Being held for questioning.”
“So, how well?”
It was night. A streetlight gave him enough to see his notes and show her lined but pleasant face.
“About a year ago,” said Painter. She thought it through, wanting to be accurate. “My LeSabre wouldn’t start. The battery went click, nothing. He helped me jump it and we got to talking. It didn’t take much. Scratch the surface and off he’d go on how miserable he was with the government, the price of everything. I specifically remember him mentioning the crimes being committed by illegals and how they’re ruining our country. As if Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and Timothy McVeigh were all from Juarez, for crying out loud.”
It was such a great line, Bloom took extra care with his notes.
“That was it? The last time you saw him?”
“Yes.” Painter was emphatic. “I mean, to have a conversation. Saw him around every now and then.”
“Did he ever say anything else?”
Painter smiled. “I didn’t want to engage.”
“You’re sure it was the same person they’re holding?”
“No question,” said Painter.
“What’s his name?”
She inhaled, studied Bloom’s eyes like a drill sergeant. “You’re going to use my name?”
“I can talk to my editor,” said Bloom. “Might make an exception in this case.”
“What if he’s a racist goofball and the police let him go, for some reason. If he comes back.”
“I don’t have to use your name,” said Bloom. “At least, I won’t use your name unless I call you back and get your permission on what we want to print.”
Marsha Painter pursed her lips, looked down, sighed. “He told me to call him Frank but his real name was Emmitt. Emmitt Kucharski. After the cops questioned me, I went and looked on his mailbox.”
Bloom couldn’t imagine growing up with such a mouthful of a name. No wonder he went by Frank.
“How old? You know, roughly.”
“Mid-thirties. Might be pushing forty.”
“Big guy?”
“Oh no, the opposite. Slender, slight though he looked plenty strong too.”
“Were you at home, in the building, on the day of the shooting?”
“Right there,” said Painter. “I was half tempted to walk downtown and at least lay eyes on Mr. Lamott, even if I knew for a little old lady like me it would be a struggle. But I stayed home, let the great world spin on its own.”
“Did you see your neighbor that day? Was there anything that morning that made you feel something was unusual? Out of sorts?” Bloom didn’t want to seem too over-eager or let her know she was a fountain of gold. “Did you hear the shots?”
Painter gave him a sideways look. The smile was gone.
“Easy now, big fella,” she said. “One question at a time. I’ve seen him before, like I said, but not recently.”
“How about since the morning Lamott was shot?”
Painter took a full breath, looked like she was working hard to keep her story straight.
“This is the part the police were most interested in, too.”
Bloom let her find her own way into it.
“I wonder if the police really want all this in the newspapers,” she said. “I guess I can kind of see why they asked me to not talk about it.”
Bloom opted for low-key and a touch of flattery. “I’m sure the police have a million leads.”
Painter pursed her lips, squinted. “I’ve got ice cream,” she said. “It’s melting.”
Bloom waited.
Glenwood Manor had become a hub of police activity since the crime scene had shifted—or, more accurately, lurched—from the hillside to the rooftop. An all-white vehicle like an oversize UPS truck had become a fixture on the street. The van was a mobile crime lab, no doubt on loan from a rich-uncle law enforcement agency.
Bloom wanted Marsha Painter to think he had all night. Her feistiness wasn’t a streak of her nature, it was her essence. Being concerned about her name’s visibility gave credibility to the story, though of course he would want corroboration. Coogan would, too.
“The cops will figure it out,” said Bloom. “But it’s not a small coincidence. The shooting. Your neighbor. The fact that you haven’t seen him lately.”
“Yes, but look how easy it is to convict in the papers before one single day in court. That poor guy in Atlanta who they thought bombed the Olympics? That French finance guy visiting New York they thought had raped the hotel maid.”
“Did he have friends?” said Bloom, more than a bit impressed with her memory for the wrongly prosecuted.
“Didn’t see him enough to know.”
“Did you notice anything at all unusual?”
“You asked me that already.”
She smiled like a stern English teacher. Barely.
“And I don’t think you told me,” said Bloom. He smiled back enough to say he wasn’t being confrontational.
“It wasn’t that day,” said Painter. “It was the day before.”
Bloom waited.
“I was up at some ungodly hour. Used to be able to sleep regular, but not anymore.”
“What time was it?” said Bloom.
Bloom took notes as she talked. He found himself oddly calm.
Five a.m. Maybe a train woke her up. Went for a walk. Us old folks don’t sleep so well.
Usually I walk for an hour. Came back, it was still dark.
This guy Frank—Emmitt—is out front but he’s down on the corner. Standing there. Doesn’t see me. Streetlight. I can tell who it is.
He’s impatient. Looking around. I go to my room, right on the corner, looking down. He’s unloading all this stuff from a car. Car is in the middle of the street.
Painter took a breath. She was reliving the fact that she had seen the would-be killer. No doubt she had given the cops the same detail a dozen times. Now she had the highlights down cold.
Loading in cases of some sort. Two cases, maybe three. One looked like the right shape. A rifle case.
Some rifles snap together. You never know. Not duffle bags. These were cases. The look of equipment.
“And his friend?”
Painter paused again.
“Never forget him,” she said. “I sat for two hours telling the police artist yes or no over and over as he drew. And that face tattoo, like a scream to the world. One big tattoo. Hideous. Now, I must tend to my ice cream soup.”
Bloom watched her go.
Bloom hadn’t been to church since the early days of high school, but journalism appeared to have its own god-like entities. Sometimes those gods dropped off an easy-to-open gift on your front door. They knocked gently and then left. You had to go open the door,
unwrap the package and figure out what the gods wanted you to do.
Other times, and it only happened rarely, the journalism gods opened the front door and dropped the gift in your lap.
When you opened the gift, you felt like your bank account had magically doubled in size or that the prettiest and smartest girl had purposely waved you over to the bar for a chat, her phone number already scrawled on a napkin.
thirty-six:
wednesday, late night
The slow crunch of tires on the dirt road cut through the night like a gong at a Buddhist monastery.
The sound was unnatural, grinding. A pair of yellow parking lights led the way and, as the vehicle came into view, the lights snapped off. At the same moment, a light popped inside the cab, bringing shape and definition to the truck. The light came out of the driver’s side window and it moved. A flashlight.
The beam stabbed the night, jerked around on the treetops and field and the clouds and came to rest on Allison’s A-frame, several hundred yards to Trudy’s left. The beam whipped across the open space and Trudy ducked and held still on the porch. The beam stopped on her door, three feet away.
And snapped off.
Trudy’s heart tried to crawl its way up the back of her throat. She tightened her grip around the gun, the only one she kept from ex-husband George’s cache. It was meant for bears, if needed.
Her mouth went dry. She sat up, but barely, and tucked herself down by the wicker chair on the front porch. She had an angle on the car. The parking lights snapped back on and the car turned toward her and stopped. Doors opened and the interior light popped on, enough to see two figures stand up, one from each side. The vehicle was a pickup or SUV.
The motor cut. The doors slammed. Boom-boom.
Footsteps headed her way at a deliberate pace. A low mumble rippled across the night. The mumbler was male. Three or four words. The speaker was confident, relaxed.
Trudy moved her butt to the wicker, jabbed her elbows on her knees, perched the gun in two hands. The wicker chattered slightly. The gun shook in Trudy’s hand and she realized now she was stuck. She should have headed inside at the first sign of their lights and started moving away, away, away. Here, she was cornered. Jumping back into the house now would be too noisy, too obvious.
