Book of Days: A Novel

by James L. Rubart

  Cameron left the theater two hours later. He glanced around the lobby looking for Ann. Why did he do that? Would he ask her to go for ice cream if he found her? Hardly. She was wrong for him, not even close to what he would want because no one could ever take Jessie's place.

  He needed to get his mind back on the book. Tomorrow he would take another run at getting Taylor Stone to talk. A hard run.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ann chose the wrong movie. A romantic comedy was the worst salve possible for a heart aching over a guy she couldn't have. She tried to keep from putting herself onscreen, but it was impossible when the male lead reminded her of the Cameron she knew before Jessie died.

  When the lead started to throw away his collection of classic baseball cards to prove his love—with a smile on his face—Ann laughed and cried at the same time. That scene was Cameron personified.

  And she would have stopped him just like the scene played out onscreen.

  After the closing credits, Ann strode out the theater with her head down. "Get out of my heart, Cameron!"

  A couple walking out of the theater with her tried to hide their laughter.

  She turned her head toward them. "I'm thinking about the classic girl-loves-boy-but-there's-no-way-they-can-ever-be-together-but she wants-to-be-more-than-anything storyline."

  "And you're the girl?" the woman asked.

  She was the girl.

  He took one more glance at Cameron's notes, then let out a chuckle as he lifted them from under his reading lamp and filed them away inside his oak cabinet. It was such good news. Cameron's late wife had a stone she gave to him. And it was the key to finding the book?

  Fascinating.

  But where was the stone? Cameron must have it with him. It certainly wasn't in the hotel room.

  Didn't matter. The stone was another confirmation the book truly did exist in physical form. He would keep watching. And waiting. And learning. Young Cameron was doing his work for him.

  Thank you very much.

  He picked up his Glock and looked at it from all angles, the oil he'd used earlier allowing the gun to spin easily around his fingers.

  "We haven't played together in a long time, have we?" He laid it on his desk and spun it counterclockwise. "Have patience. We will dance together again soon. I can feel it. Can't you?"

  He leaned back, smiled, and gazed at a map of Three Peaks and the surrounding land. He picked up his knife by the point, let it settle into his callused fingers, then flung it at the map.

  Thunk!

  It pierced the center of the map and sunk into the wood paneling behind it. "Wherever you're hiding, I will find you. And you will be mine."

  CHAPTER 19

  The Monday morning sun was bright as Cameron approached Taylor's house, the late model Ford truck out front throwing off little bursts of light like a disco ball from the seventies. The guy must polish it every day.

  When no one answered the doorbell, he walked around the back of the house and found Taylor sitting on his back deck, wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, khaki shorts, and nothing on his feet.

  He didn't acknowledge Cameron but had to know he was there. The boards on the deck squealed as Cameron walked across them, announcing his arrival as loudly as the mermaid wind chime would have if a wind had been blowing.

  Cameron grabbed one of the Adirondack chairs against the house and pulled it within a few feet of Taylor and sat. A few minutes later, Taylor broke the silence.

  "My feet roast in anything but sandals, still. Till age five I don't remember wearing shoes at all from April through September, except in church. Maybe sitting on those church pews—hard as granite, mind you—shoved the memory right out of my mind."

  Taylor reached in and pulled something metal from his pocket. "I hated church. Not just 'cause of having to wear shoes. Every Sunday morning Pastor Davis Darton ranted about God's love and God's forgiveness but with a red face that looked like an overripe tomato ready to burst. I couldn't figure out how God could forgive anyone if He was perpetually angry.

  "One Sunday after service, I snuck up to see if the spot where Pastor Darton pounded on his podium each week was dented. It wasn't, but the wood in the middle was a lighter color than the rest of it. To me, church wasn't a building; it was Annie singing one of the hymns we both loved or lying in the meadow with my eyes closed listening to her read from the Bible."

  Interesting. Ann. Annie. "Who's Annie?"

  Taylor sat without moving or speaking for at least two minutes. Finally he opened his hand and stared at the object resting on it. A window crank. He brought it up to his face and pressed it into his cheek until his skin turned bright red.

  He sighed, dropped his hand, and began spinning the crank around his fingers. The sun flashed off it with each rotation, and with each rotation Taylor winced. After the seventh or eighth turn, Taylor squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head.

  Cameron shifted in his chair and tried to find something in the yard to focus on. It felt like he was sitting in on a Catholic confessional. Whatever crime Taylor was in the midst of paying penance for was serious.

  Taylor raised his head and looked at Cameron. "Would you like to see it?"

  "The . . . what?"

  "This."

  Cameron nodded and held out his hand.

  Taylor held up the window crank for Cameron to look at but didn't hand it to him.

  Cameron studied the crank and the blood rushed from his face. Why would Taylor have one of those?

  "Do you know what this is, Cameron?"

  He swallowed hard. "It's a window crank made sometime between 1965 and 1967. Standard on Ford Mustangs during those years."

  "Not bad." Taylor squinted at him. "How'd you know that?"

  He hesitated, then said, "I restored a '65 Mustang and gave it to my wife for a Christmas present one year." He didn't add that the only time Jessie drove it was to the airfield on the day she died.

  A wave of what looked like surprise washed over Taylor's face, but he recovered a moment later. "That model was a great car." He sighed and laid the window crank on his knee.

  They returned to silence and watched the wind blow through the pine trees bordering Taylor's property sixty yards away.

  "Do you think God really forgives everything, Cameron? And if He forgives, does He forget? Or does He write everything down in that book of yours so it lasts forever?"

  What was Taylor asking him about God for? Or was the question directed more toward Taylor himself?

  "I don't know if He forgives, forgets, remembers, keeps track . . . God and I have never done a lot of communicating."

  "Annie said He forgives it all. Past. Present. Future. For everything we've done that we're ashamed of. And remembers it no more. Our part is accepting it."

  "Nice thought."

  "If it's true, He must have to take a big spiritual eraser to those parts of your amazing Book of Days."

  "Industrial-strength eraser." Cameron smiled.

  "Annie would have forgiven me for what I did to her. In an instant. My head says that. But my heart . . ."

  It was the third time Taylor had mentioned Annie. Cameron couldn't help asking again, "Who is Annie?"

  "I've said way too much. Waaay." Taylor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he propped his elbow on his knee and spun the window crank again, faster this time. When he finished, they sat in silence for a long time.

  Finally Taylor said "Here" and handed the crank to Cameron, as if it were a gem-encrusted dagger.

  "Who did it be—?"

  "Belonged to me. Off a car of mine." Tears threatened to spill onto Taylor's cheeks. Cameron couldn't be sure if Taylor's tears came from the pain of the sunlight flashing off the crank into his eyes or from remembering. Maybe both.

  "When something you would die for is destroyed by the hand of another, you can almost learn to live with it. When you do the destroying yourself, it's impossible."

  Exactly. Almost learn to live with it. And the
part that remained was brutal. "What was destroyed?"

  "Cameron . . ." Taylor stood and offered his hand. Cameron took it and found himself yanked to his feet with a surprising strength. "Tricia asked me to talk to you about some things I know about. But I can't. It's nothing against you. You're a good man, and we have some things in common. More than I thought. But some things are meant to be sealed forever. Do you understand?"

  Taylor strode into his house without waiting for an answer, without looking back. The screen door smacked shut with a sound like the blast from a .22.

  Cameron stared at the door and took two steps backward. He had the sensation of being watched and looked toward the upstairs windows. Tricia Stone gazed down at him, her face expressionless. Then she slowly mouthed the words I'm sorry before turning away.

  As Cameron made his way back to his car, he ran his hands through his hair. The scene in Taylor's backyard was another confirmation that the man was in the thick of the Book of Days' mystery, but prying that door open would take a crowbar the size of Paul Bunyan's ax. So be it.

  But Cameron hoped the crowbar wouldn't break before the door opened.

  After leaving Taylor's house, Cameron headed for the mountains and did a climb rated a 4.5. It wasn't technically difficult, just a good workout. The air was absolute crystal, something Seattle's skies still aspired to, but they didn't reach this level of purity.

  As he gazed out over the trees below, he pulled out the stone Susan Hillman had given him and watched the sun bounce off its surface.

  He turned it over slowly in a continual motion, studying the intricate pattern the red sparkles made. It was like a map. A treasure map. Yeah, right. Wouldn't that be nice? When he was a kid—eleven, maybe twelve—he'd made a treasure map and hidden it in his fort, twenty feet up in the maple tree in his backyard. He looked at Susan's stone again. A map to the Book of Days? If only it were that easy.

  Maybe it wasn't a map; maybe it was a road sign. On impulse he snatched his cell phone out of his climbing pack.

  "Hello?" said a low, booming voice.

  "Hey, Scotty, it's Cameron."

  "Who?"

  "Cameron Vaux. In college we—"

  Laughter. "I'm just messing with you, man. I'd know your voice even after four and a half years of silence, which, by the way, it's almost been."

  "Sorry."

  "Why?"

  "I, uh . . ."

  "Shut up, Cameron. My fingers can dial too. Hang on a second." The sound of Bono singing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" in the background snapped off.

  Cameron snorted out a laugh. The timing of the song would be much funnier if he wasn't the butt of the joke.

  "Okay, tell me what you want."

  He smiled. When it came to geology, few were better than Scotty. When it came to tact, no one was worse. He wouldn't be able to look up subtle in a dictionary for a thousand bucks and Cameron loved him for it.

  "I need a favor, Scotty."

  "Anything."

  "I'm going to overnight you a rock. I need you to examine it fast, see what kind of stone it is, that kind of thing . . ."

  "No problem. I'll get you the composition, age, where it's from—"

  "I know where it's from. Three Peaks."

  "What state?"

  "Oregon."

  "What're you doing there, Cam?"

  "Looking for a book God wrote, that records the past and tells the future."

  Scotty snorted. "That's how you're wasting your time these days? If I thought you were serious, I'd tell you how stupid you are."

  "Thanks."

  "Your timing is decent. I can do it tomorrow afternoon and give you the stats tomorrow night. Will that work?"

  "Perfect. I owe you."

  "If I added up all your IOUs, Vaux, I'd be traveling in Europe forever and you'd never be able to reach me."

  Cameron hung up, watched the wind rustle the tops of the trees, and smiled. The pieces were appearing. Maybe he was losing his mind, but he wouldn't stop trying till this puzzle was locked into place.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ann slowed her pace slightly on the dirt road on Monday afternoon and glanced at the woods around her. Why had she let herself get so far from civilization? She wasn't worried about being alone in these woods. It was just . . . Okay, she was worried. She'd seen too many stories of women who disappeared in her exact situation.

  Her pedometer said she'd come 4.7 miles. Time to head back to Three Peaks.

  But the solitude of the rutted logging road and the pines sending out waves of perfume muted her fear and pulled her around one more corner, then one more, and one more.

  Out here she could think. About the multiple reasons she'd come to Three Peaks—but mostly about the game she was playing with herself when it came to Cameron.

  In her mind there was no game. The answer was clear. Stay away. God was her life. Cameron wasn't even sure God existed. Never the two shall meet. But her heart said game on.

  Why not? Jessie had done it.

  Yeah and Ann had seen what it did to her. Jessie prayed for Cameron daily, waiting for him to fall in love with Jesus, but he never did. And though she'd kept it from him, it broke her heart.

  Ann picked up her pace, timing her strides so her feet landed on the shadows the trees cast on the dirt road.

  She'd relaxed too much at the movie theater and let her feelings seep out of her heart, into her mannerisms and reactions. Did Cameron notice?

  And what about him?

  Sideways glances at her when he didn't think she saw. The look in his eyes last night when she turned to wave good-bye. On top of the mountain he looked at her the way he used to look at Jessie.

  She slapped her hip hard. What was she thinking? In a few days he'd be back in Seattle, she'd be in Portland, and they would go back to pretending they didn't know each other.

  It wouldn't go anywhere. It couldn't go anywhere. Not with his agnosticism—

  Behind her an engine surged. She grabbed her iPod and put Josh Groban's crooning on hold and looked for cover. There! An opening a few yards ahead. She sprinted for the horseshoe-shaped clearing, scampered off the road, and squatted behind a large juniper tree.

  Ann laughed at herself. Relax. Yes, the road seemed abandoned, but that didn't mean cars couldn't drive on it. But something inside her pinged danger and she obeyed the sensation. She peered toward the path, hoping nothing more than her eyes would show through the underbrush.

  Ten seconds later a Ford Expedition bounced into view, pounding over the washboard road. Ann held her breath as the SUV passed her hiding spot. What was wrong with her? Cars were allowed to drive on dirt roads. The road seemed like it would be difficult to traverse by car and had been tough to find. But she was the one from out of town. The road might be frequently traveled by the people of Three Peaks. It probably was.

  The sound of the Ford's engine faded.

  Easing out from her hiding place, she breathed deep and looked up. Thank You, God. She didn't feel like having company out here.

  Her mind returned to Cameron and what he—

  The whine of the SUV accelerating pierced her thoughts. The Expedition was backing up. A second later it came into view; too fast for her to scurry back behind the juniper tree. A tinted window rolled down revealing the wide grin of Jason Judah.

  He parked, eased out, and sauntered around the side of the Ford. Leaning against the passenger side door, he lit a cigar and took off his shades.

  "You are a hard woman to track." He spread his arms. "But here I am. I can't deny that Nam gave me a few useful skills."

  "What are you doing here?" Adrenaline pumped through her. This was not the scenario she wanted to be in with Jason. Menace oozed out of the man. She'd felt it the first time they'd met, and being miles from anywhere, from anyone, the feeling intensified.

  During her years of working in television, she'd been in the center of hostile gangs in downtown Portland, been in white-water rafts where she'd come a ra
zor's edge from death—but this man made those situations seem mild. The inner bell of intuition that screamed danger rang double-time.

  "How are you, Ann?" Jason took two steps forward.

  "You followed me. What do you want?"

  "Tracked. Followed. I suppose it's the same thing." Two more steps.

  Ann planted her hands on her hips. "What do you want?"

  "Are you this abrupt with all your interviewees?" Jason tapped his cigar, too early for any ash to come off; it seemed to be a part of his act. "All I want is a little chat."

  "Why not talk to me in town? Why here?"

  "Fewer distractions."

  Ann watched the last of the dust settle that had been kicked up by Jason's Expedition. She looked at his hands. No keys. There were twenty, maybe twenty-five feet between the SUV and him. She was fast, but she'd spent her energy on the five-mile run getting up here. She wouldn't be quick enough to make it around him and to the driver's side of the car before he got in the passenger door.

  "I think you can help me."

  "I doubt it."

  "I knew it from the moment we met." Three steps forward. "We'd make a good team."

  "I disagree."

  "Why are you afraid of me?"

  Afraid? No. Terrified. She'd seen a madness in his eyes when she'd teased him onstage during his town meeting. Out here it had ramped up to maximum intensity. "You're wasting your time."

  "I don't think so." One more step. "I wonder how many people have taken the time to figure out you're the foster sister of Cameron's late wife."

  She shuddered. He'd been researching her? She hugged herself as if she'd be shielded from his gaze. "So what."

  "From what Google and Facebook tell me, the two of you were close. Not only foster sisters, but best friends. I believe it highly probable Jessie talked to you about the book. I think you know more than you're telling. Maybe even more than you've told Cameron."

  Ann backed up and stumbled over a pine branch.