by Bill Cameron
“She left Valley View before her senior year. To my knowledge she never played again.”
“Why? If she was that good?”
“It’s complicated. Her father, … he left ruin in his wake. Her mother went so far as to suggest Ruby had something to do with his disappearance. Can you believe that? A mother accusing her own child?”
I was a cop long enough that nothing surprises me.
“Then there was James.”
“I’ve met him.” I don’t mention he’s lying in a drawer in the San Francisco medical examiner’s office.
“When James left for college, her mother went off the deep end. There was a police investigation, which came to nothing of course. Men run off.”
“That must have been hard on Ruby Jane.”
“She coped through sports, I think. She played hard, but to her credit she worked in class too. She never tried to use her status as an athlete to curry favors from her teachers.”
“Why did she quit?”
“There was another girl—Mister Kadash, you have to understand that even on the same team, athletes are very competitive. And girls have their own issues as well. This other girl, she wanted to be the team’s focus. She didn’t like the attention Ruby drew. It all came to a head one day in the wake of a tragedy which was particularly hard on Ruby. She hit the other girl and broke her nose.”
I think of Clarice Moody, her nose pointing over the horizon.
“Naturally, discipline was swift and sure. Ruby was suspended for a week from school and for seven games the subsequent basketball season. A lot of people argued for leniency, including me. She’d never been in that kind of trouble before. I was worried about her scholarship prospects if she missed so many games, but Ruby said the punishment was fair. She withdrew into herself, spent a lot of time in the school library or out running. She did a lot of writing for me too. Thoughtful material, though impersonal. Then, at the end of the year she transferred to Dixie.”
“And that’s when you lost track of her.”
Her hands are a tangle in her lap. “Her mother moved away after she graduated, but she didn’t stay at home her senior year.”
“Where did she live?”
“As I recall, her mother sold the house when she left. I don’t even know who lives there now.”
Not what I asked. I’m getting close to matters she doesn’t want to share, and I wonder if Ruby Jane stayed here her senior year. Mrs. Parmelee looks at the clock again. “Am I keeping you from something?”
“No, of course not.”
I finish my coffee. My hand has a slight tremble when I set the cup on the coaster. “How long ago did she leave?” My voice is almost a whisper.
“She left when Chief Nash called.”
“Does he know she’s here?”
“No one does, to my knowledge.”
“Where’d she go?”
She sighs. “She won’t be happy I told you, but we didn’t know it was you the chief was sending over. She thought someone from the old days recognized her on the road or something. I was supposed to brush them off. But it turned out to be you. Skin Kadash.”
Her lips press together as she glances at my neck, as if for the first time, then she lets out a breath. After all these years, I’m used to the reaction, my neck cuing up a standard response in connection with my name. But just once it might be nice if someone shrugged it off.
“You can call me Thomas if it makes you more comfortable. Or Mister Kadash is fine.”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m feeling a little caught off guard, and let’s face it. I’m an old retired teacher. I’m not used to subterfuge.” She flashes a quick smile.
“Why did she come back here?”
“I don’t know exactly. She showed up, asked if she could stay for a little while. She’s told me a lot, but only of matters far away. All about her coffee shops, and her life in Portland.” When she smiles again, it’s more at ease. “She told me about you.”
My face feels hot.
“She goes out every day alone. Running, she claims, but I think it’s something more.”
“Running?”
“Along her old routes. In high school, I was more likely to see her running than sitting still.”
“And today?”
“Her medium run. Eleven miles.”
“Yes, but where—”
“It is you. Right?”
“Me.”
“Skin.”
I don’t know what she means, but I know what I hope she means. “I need to find her, Mrs. Parmelee. Please, tell me where.”
She nods, still smiling. “I’ll give you directions. She’ll be on Preble County Line Road by now.”
- 12 -
Preble County Line Road
Pete is waiting outside. As I climb into the car, Ruby Jane’s phone rings. According to caller ID, the number is restricted. I feel a strange certainty it’s her. But when I answer, all I hear is a ticking quiet.
“Is someone there?”
“I know you.” The voice whispers. I can guess who it is.
“Congratulations.” I’m not feeling patient. “What’s your next trick? Remembering your own name?”
“I won’t let you interfere.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m not fucking around here.”
I pull the phone away from my ear long enough to confirm the incoming number is restricted.
“I don’t take orders from Captain Ambiguous.”
The call ends.
I drop the phone in the center console. Peter looks at me sideways from behind the wheel. I can’t read his expression, a circumstance I’m growing used to. “What was that about?”
“No idea.” My tone has an edge. I press my lips together and face the windshield. The sunlight is bright and harsh, rimming the hickory leaves in front of Linda Parmelee’s house with a lucid halo. The breeze carries the scent of mown grass through the windows. A kid drags a backpack down the sidewalk across the street. The scritch of the bag on concrete and the call of a bird I don’t recognize are the only sounds.
“Where are we going?”
I don’t answer.
“Skin—”
“Head north out of town.”
“Any particular route?”
“Look around. How many routes do you think there are?”
“Fine.”
There’s no reason to let my apprehension boil over onto Pete, but it’s not like he’s been so easy on me the last few days. I suck in heavy air, let it out as he pulls a fast U-ey. He heads back through town, turns left and accelerates. Bucolic small town gives way to fields interrupted by narrow stands of trees almost immediately. We pass ranch houses set back from the road, big front yards with those oversized brick baskets. I don’t see a single cow or horse. After half a mile or so we pass a biker in spandex who might have been teleported right off a Portland street.
“What am I looking for, Skin?”
“Turn left when you come to Chicken Bristle Road.”
“Chicken Bristle?”
“Didn’t you grow up out here? You should be used to this.”
“Hell knows there isn’t a single farm or stretch of open road in all of Oregon.”
After a minute or so, he points two-fingered without taking his hands off the wheel. “Chicken Bristle.” The new road is narrower and rougher, but straight as a rod. To the left are a couple of older houses on multi-acre lots, to the right, a broad field with row after row of young sprouts. Corn, soy beans, I haven’t got a clue.
“What are we looking for, Skin?”
“Ruby Jane.”
“Damn it, I know that—”
“Surely she told you all about her high school athletic activities back when you were actually getting to know each other.”
His jawline goes rigid.
I sigh and rub my eyes, then describe Ruby Jane’s medium run: out Farmersville-West Alexandria Road to Chicken Bristle, west to Preble County Line, then nor
th and beyond. Eleven mile loop, modest hills, quiet roads. Good air in the spring and fall, if oppressive in summer and bone-chilling in winter. Fields, scrub woods, hundred-year-old farm houses, twenty-year-old McMansions.
Ask her about that night on Preble County Line Road. Neither one of us has to mention Jimmie’s words in the bar minutes before he died.
What happened out here, RJ?
“She used to run this route in high school.”
“And she’s out here now?”
“She left shortly before you dropped me off.”
“How long does it take her?”
“In high school, between eighty-four and ninety minutes. But I don’t think she’s gotten much running in since she opened Uncommon Cup.”
“What else did that woman tell you?”
“A lot of things.”
The road dips into a shallow, wooded depression and crosses a weed-choked stream over a culvert. To our right, the terrain climbs into trees, but south the land spreads out in a broad fan. Peter is going about thirty miles an hour. I don’t know if he wants to make sure he doesn’t come upon Ruby Jane so suddenly he startles her, or if he’s afraid to find her at all. We pass a house here, a house there. White clapboard with hundred-year-old windbreaks, some with barns and outbuildings. I see bikes in front yards, a dog sleeping in grass, a woman in a white sun hat working in her garden. Within a couple miles, Chicken Bristle Road T’s at a stop sign, still no sign of Ruby Jane.
“Preble County Line Road.”
“Turn right.”
“You sure she came this way.”
“No.”
He blows through his teeth, but he makes the turn. Out the window I hear a strange singing hum. Bugs, birds. I don’t know. Everything looks normal enough to feel utterly exotic. The road climbs. Corn, I decide. Woods. Farmhouse. More corn. A mailbox shaped like an old red barn. The fields are edged with heaped stone, like walls which have eroded into formless debris. At the far edge of a field a tractor as big as my house chugs, green and gleaming in the sunlight. Beside me, Peter draws a sudden sharp breath and the car slows. Momentum throws me forward. I see a figure ahead at the side of the road. Auburn hair, long legs and running shoes.
My eyes go wet. She waits at the end of a driveway.
“What should I do?”
The question doesn’t require an answer. He slows to a crawl, edges out to the center line. She doesn’t react until Peter stops beside her. The quiet which descends when he shuts the engine off is almost too painful to bear. I listen for the hum, but all I hear is a distant popping like gun fire. Ruby Jane rubs her eyes, then looks into the car. Her face registers nothing, no surprise, no anger. No pleasure.
“RJ—”
She turns away. I can see the tension in her shoulders. Pete shifts beside me, makes a little sound in the back of his throat. He wants to talk. I want to talk too, but I’m not sure what to say after coming so far.
When Ruby Jane turns back, she looks from me to Peter and back to me again. I believe I catch the faintest hint of a smile in her eyes, a sad smile. I hope it’s not wishful thinking on my part. “I understand why you’re here.”
“We were worried—”
“You don’t have to say it. I understand.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. I can see a sweat stain on the neck of her t-shirt, a thin film of perspiration on her upper lip. She blinks in the clear air, her eyes glinting sapphire. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Can we—?”
She shakes her head. “Tell Peter to stay in the car.”
I turn and look at him. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. His eyes get hard and his hands grip the steering wheel.
“Give it a minute, Pete.”
His voice is so sharp it cracks. “Hey. I got nowhere else I need to be.”
I climb out, don’t close the car door. Now that we’ve reached this point, found who we are both looking for, the girl of our dreams, I don’t have the heart to close Pete out. I can’t pretend I’m not pleased to be the one she wants to talk to, even if I fear what she might say. I’ve tracked her across the country, ignorant of what brought her so far. The one thing that’s clear is if she wanted me to know where she’d gone, she’d have left a message. As I look at her, my heart pounds in my chest. I think about Mrs. Parmelee, and wonder what it would have been like to know Ruby Jane when she was in high school.
She’s half-turned away from me. I can smell the shoots of corn behind me, a scent green and airy. I don’t know how long she’s been here, if she was able to run all this way, so far, so many years from a time when this was routine. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair a wind-blown disarray.
“You’ve come a long way.”
“So have you.”
I swallow. “I spoke with Mrs. Parmelee.”
“She’s always been so kind to me.”
“She seems very nice.”
Ruby Jane shrugs, her eyes remote. “What did she tell you?”
“She said a lot of things. You had a hard time, she said. Your father—”
She throws a hand up, cutting me off.
“It was such a dark night. There were thunderstorms all around, but by the time I got out here they’d tapered off to a steady rain.” She draws a shuddering breath. “It was right about here.” I follow her gaze up off the road into an open stand of trees. There’s a house at the end of a long gravel driveway. Two stories of faux colonial, brick and white shutters, broad porch and tall columns. A free-standing four-car garage is off to the side, flagstone patio between. In the gap between the house and garage I can make out the edge of an above ground pool in the backyard. Though the nearby trees are tall, the landscaping has an antiseptic perfection, the lawn a checkerboard of establishing sod, the bushes under the tall windows head-sized balls. The flowers in the beds are no bigger than the nursery pots they came from. This house wasn’t here a year ago.
“We tried to bury him right about where the garage is, I think. It’s been a while. Jimmie stopped digging. He ran away. He drove off and left me here.”
Even now, despite the recent development, the location is remote. I can’t imagine what it must have been like twenty years earlier on a dark night under rain.
“Jimmie your brother?”
“What other Jimmie is there?”
I’ll have to tell her he’s dead, but I can’t bring myself to say anything about it now. I’m too busy trying to make sense her words … tried to bury him right about where the garage is …
She looks from me to Pete, runs her fingers through her hair. “Do you love me?”
She could be speaking to either of us. I can feel Peter at my back, burning, a dark flame. A thick gob gathers in my throat and conspires to cut off my voice—long enough for Pete to speak if he’s going to. He doesn’t.
I swallow. “Yes, I love you, Ruby Jane.”
She looks down at her hands. Her fingers are winding themselves into knots. Off in the distance over the sound of wind through the trees I hear a car approaching, a low diesel rumble. But I keep my eyes on Ruby Jane. “I never thought I would have to come back to this. I hate being here.”
“Then let us take you away. Come on.” I reach out to her. The rumbling engine draws nearer. The throttle drops as the driver shifts. A truck, I think, but I can’t take my eyes off of Ruby Jane. I feel as though I’m falling, but I don’t care. I don’t care about Peter seething behind me, I don’t care about Chase Fairweather or James Whitacre or the strange and ordinary landscape, the high vault of the sky, the whispering leaves, the soil. I’m staring into her fathomless blue eyes when the truck rams the rental car from behind. I’m still looking into the blue abyss when the sky jumps at my feet and goes black.
PART TWO
August 1988 – April 1989
Roo
- 13 -
Interview, April 1989
They came for her on Chicken Bristle Road, a quarter mile short of her
second turn. Two police cars pulled off to the side in front of her, one a Farmersville vehicle and the other from the township. Werth Nash, the cop who did the DARE presentations at school, drove the Farmersville car. The chief sat next to him in the passenger’s seat. Together they made up forty percent of the full time Farmersville police force. Lute Callan, a Jackson Township officer, drove the second car. She didn’t know the man with him, or why it required so many cops to chase her down. So what if she broke Clarice’s nose? It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong.
Ruby Jane glanced at her watch and checked her heart rate with two fingers on her neck. She was three miles into her run, a planned eleven at an eight-and-half minute pace. Easy, an unconscious pace. She doubted she’d get to finish.
Nash climbed out first. Callan and the stranger followed from the township car. The chief stayed behind. Heart rate: 105. Hardly worth the effort.
“Ruby? How you doing, darling?”
She eyed Nash for a long, uncomfortable moment, then turned her attention to the stranger. He wore a Farmersville patch on his shoulder and three stripes on his shirt. His face was pale, and a wattle hung below his chin. “Who are you?”
The men gaped at each other. Nash took another step.
“You know Officer Callan. This gentleman is Sergeant Grabel. He’s new to the department.”
He wore sunglasses, had prominent veins on his forehead and slicked-back hair the color of steel wool. Sweat gleamed on his cheeks despite the cool morning.
“A city boy.”
Grabel’s head popped up. Nash forced a quick laugh. “Sergeant Grabel did serve in Dayton before joining us.” Nash shifted from one foot to the other, crunching gravel under his heel. “He needs to ask you some questions.”
“How’s he gonna manage that? He’s obviously a mute.”
Ruby Jane shook her head a fraction of an inch at the predictable shock on their faces, then turned to look across the cornfield beside the road. The cool morning air hung heavy above the green rows, new shoots barely ankle high. She could feel the policemen close by, seething with energy. Overhead, the power lines hummed.
Nash broke the silence. “Ruby, everyone knows you’re a smart girl when you wanna be.”
