The Clouds Roll Away

by Sibella Giorello

  chapter twelve

  Fifty-four minutes past nine o’clock, I sped the K-Car down Rapland’s driveway. Blue-and-white police lights crisscrossed the dark. I counted six cruisers lined up bumper-­to-bumper behind a white EMT van, its back doors open.

  When I stepped out of the K-Car, the air smelled of incinerated rubber and scorched metal and a strange peppery scent. The officers stood together beside the EMT van, using it as a shield against the burning mess on the other side.

  Outside the eight-bay garage, the gravel had blown away, the garage doors splintered with shrapnel from the torn vehicle steaming and smoldering on the rocks. The windshield and part of the roof were gone and a stick shape leaned out of the vehicle, as if trying to see around a blind curve. One appendage dangled, terminated in red jelly and I glanced at the head, once. Soot-streaked bone. Melted hair. Restraining the gag reflex, I swallowed, tasting the green and peppery air.

  Geraniums.

  Yanking my turtleneck over my nose and mouth, I ran toward the officers. Safety glass crunched under my feet. The sheriff was speaking to the EMTs. I swallowed again, throat burning. The peppery scent blew in waves, riding a breeze off the river.

  “Sheriff.”

  He turned, startled by my hidden face.

  “Sheriff, get everyone away from this scene now.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Call Hazmat. Get these men in their vehicles—”

  “I already called the bomb squad.” He sounded defensive. “We don’t know if the gas tank already blew but we’re not stupid; that’s why we’re standing over here.”

  My eyes burned. “Can you smell that?”

  “What?”

  “The smell, like geraniums? It’s a deadly poison. Get your men out of here or you—”

  “I don’t see—”

  I turned to the medics, speaking to the older one. “Do you have gas masks?”

  He glanced at the sheriff, almost laughing. “No.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Sheriff. Please. It’s a poison, used as a fire starter.”

  He ran his flickering eyes over my face. His expression shifted from suspicion to realization. “Everybody in their cars—now!” he yelled. “Now!”

  I looked at the medics. “Start treating everyone for exposure to vesicants.”

  “For what?”

  “Blister agents.” Still speaking through the fabric of my turtleneck, I squinted to limit the fumes’ contact with my eyes. “Get everyone to the nearest hospital. Wash the skin. Check the lungs.”

  I glanced back at the main house, thirty yards away. The lights were on. Cujo stood on the front porch, his muscular form looking squat and thick.

  “He refuses to talk to me,” the sheriff said.

  “Get to the hospital, Sheriff. I’ll wait for Hazmat.”

  “But you’re—”

  “I haven’t been exposed as long, and the wind is carrying it away. Were you here when the bomb went off?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Get to the hospital anyway.”

  I ran for the house. The security lights blinked on as I moved across the lawn, throwing a long shadow on the ground surrounded by glass fragments that glittered like diamonds. On the porch, Cujo held an assault rifle, the muzzle pointed toward the porch floor.

  “Quick, get inside.” I reached around him, opening the door.

  “Are any windows open?”

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Are they open!” I slammed the door shut.

  “No,” he said. “It’s cold out, why would—”

  “Keep the house sealed tight. Don’t open any windows. Where are the chil—”

  Hearing a whimper, I turned. The woman in the batik skirt and UVA sweatshirt sat on the stairs, looking down at us. Four little boys in pajamas clung to her skirt, their brown eyes widened with fear. Another two, older, stood behind her with assorted women, all black, all scared.

  “Were they outside?” I asked.

  Cujo shook his head.

  “Don’t let them out; the air is poisonous right now. Do you know who was driving that car?”

  “Some local kid. Cleveland.”

  “That’s his real name?”

  “I don’t know. We just called him Cleveland.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Starting all the cars. You know, to keep the batteries running in the winter. RPM’s got eight cars out there, and they don’t get driven—”

  “How often did he do that?”

  “Cleveland? Once a week.”

  “Was it the same night each week?”

  Cujo thought about it. Then nodded.

  “When the bomb went off, where were you?”

  He pinched his black T-shirt, ringed with sweat. “In the gym. I heard something sounded like the end of the world. I grabbed my gun, ran outside—”

  “How long were you outside?”

  “Long enough to see the flames.”

  “How long?”

  “Couple of seconds. Everybody was screaming so I came back in here.”

  “RPM’s left for Africa?”

  “They took off about eight o’clock.”

  “When did this thing go off?”

  “About nine thirty,” he said. “I had the TV on in the gym, my show was almost over.”

  I heard a siren blaring and glanced out the window beside the front door. Two fire trucks barreled down the driveway, red lights spinning. When I looked back at Cujo, his eyes had turned to anthracite.

  “Yeah,” he said, as if answering a question.

  “Yeah what?”

  “Notice how they didn’t call the fire truck till now? This is why RPM called the Feds. Whole house blows up, and what, I’m gonna get us all out in time?”

  I glanced up the stairs. One boy had buried his face in the woman’s skirt. She patted his back. He whimpered. The others just stared.

  I turned my back, dropping my voice. “Cujo, put the children somewhere they can’t see or hear anything. Please. I’ll send a medic in to see if there’s been any exposure. But above all, stay inside where it’s safe.”

  “No kidding,” Cujo said.

  I pulled my turtleneck back over my nose and mouth, opened the door, and ran for the K-Car.

  Windows up, vents closed, I watched from inside the car as gas-masked firemen sprayed down the blown-up vehicle. It still smoldered in the cold, gray clouds rising from its scorched form. When the state Hazmat team arrived, I flashed my headlights and somebody wearing a yellow protective suit and visor lumbered toward my car. I cracked my window two inches, introducing myself. My throat stung. I hoped it was just the cold air and my run earlier tonight. I introduced myself.

  “Tom Brennan,” he said, speaking through the plastic helmet. A black tube connected an air pump to his suit.

  “Tom, it’s an obscure but deadly vesicant,” I said carefully. “There might even be two blister agents, but I smelled one in the air when I got here. It’s something called lewisite, it smells like geraniums. You might also be dealing with mustard gas.”

  “So why are you still here?” he asked.

  I slid my card through the window. He fumbled it with his thick gloves, managing to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “When you’re finished here, call my cell,” I said. “I’ll tell you where to send the evidence.”

  There was a sudden flash of light and we both jumped. But it was a large security light on the side of the garage, triggered by a Hazmat technician who was waving both arms. The bright white beams made him look like an actor onstage.

  Tom Brennan began walking over and I turned the key in the K-Car, driving slowly around the keyhole curve, cutting around the fire engines. The spotlighted technician was kneeling now, trying to pick up something. The object was large and unwieldy, and as Brennan approached, the technician stood, holding a rectangular slab of metal in both hands. One edge was torn. The gray surface dented.

  But eve
n from here I could see it was the car’s door. And I could read the paint. The letters were red, dripping like blood.

  KKK.

  chapter thirteen

  Winter sparrows greeted Tuesday’s dawn with their song about poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, but as I walked across the Bureau parking lot, all I heard was: dead body, dead body, dead body.

  And upstairs, Phaup was waiting.

  “Did you get an ID on the deceased?” she asked as I took a seat in her office.

  “Nothing confirmed.” I cleared my throat. It felt a little raw still. “The man who works security out there says he was a local kid.”

  “He wasn’t in the car?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think, Raleigh?”

  “RPM is in Africa.”

  “So they missed him.”

  “Probably.”

  She raised both eyebrows, feigning dismay. “Probably?”

  “Somebody’s watching that property. They lit a cross and planted a bomb without being seen under huge security lights with armed guards. They made sure the bomb went off after he left.”

  “You opened a file on the sheriff?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She reached into her taupe silk blouse, tugging. I glanced out the window.

  “I spent one year in Mississippi,” she said, “another two in Louisiana, now five in Virginia. The South is racist and that infects local law enforcement. Take a good look at that sheriff. And I want this case resolved before the new year.”

  “But my work on the phones—”

  “I’ll find a replacement—you’re not exactly essential to the task force. Word got out on the Internet about this bomb. I’ve already taken calls from four reporters this morning. You want to hear their angle? The FBI is dragging its feet on this because he’s black. So if this isn’t closed by—”

  “I got it.”

  She stopped.

  I ran the tip of my tongue against the back of my teeth, pressing out the rest of the words. “No disrespect meant, ma’am. I’ve been up most of the night tracking the evidence and getting a medical checkup for exposure to—”

  “Sounds like you need a less active field office.”

  For several moments I held eye contact. But she was better at this, and I was wrung out. Shifting my eyes, I stared at the lapel of her crisp navy suit. The clothing that was climbing gear for the FBI ladder.

  “If you want to stay here, Raleigh, this case gets closed by the end of this month,” she said. “Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly,” I said.

  Next to the echoing stairwell, I typed up a version of last night’s events, removing every ounce of emotion from the crime scene, pushing aside the image of the dead kid and the scent of burned flesh among deadly geraniums. I typed facts into a wall that could repel armies of invading defense attorneys, and with my standard precaution I printed everything in triplicate: one copy for the Bureau, one for the U.S. Attorney’s office, one for the fiery catapult launched by the defense. With my hoarse voice, I left a message for Nettie Labelle in the mineralogy lab.

  “You’ll be getting a package from the state today,” I said, explaining what was inside and what happened. “Obviously the case is an even more serious expedite, so I’m thanking you in advance for your time.”

  Most of the material would go to explosives, but Nettie was the first person in the chain of command since she received the first pieces of evidence in the case. By rights, the sheriff had jurisdiction over the crime scene, but it didn’t take much last night to convince him to use the FBI’s lab. When I left Rapland, I found him and his deputies and a state trooper at the Medical College of Virginia’s emergency room. One man was vomiting. Another complained his eyes were on fire. A state trooper was taking a shower. And the sheriff ’s normally ruddy complexion looked almost green.

  After directing the paperwork to its respective homes, I drove to McDonald’s and ordered hot tea with extra honey and an Egg McMuffin. I tried to choke down the food, then I drove out New Market Road under a midmorning sky that couldn’t decide whether to cloud or clear. The gray cumulus shapes fulminated like sea foam before breaking, exposing the blue that lay beyond. And then covering it up again.

  Twenty minutes after leaving town, I reached the point where the James River divided into an oxbow and followed a colonial-era road down to the water, passing sheep fields and slave quarters and barns that once hid soldiers wearing blue and gray. The three-story house at the plantation’s center was set on a bluff overlooking the hairpin twist in the river. It was a place the Chickahominy Indians called Weyanoke—meaning “where the water turns around.” Robert MacKenna named his plantation after it, and the Fieldings who followed never changed it.

  As I pulled up, DeMott Fielding was lifting a wooden mallet, cracking a croquet ball across the estate’s perfectly level front lawn. A dozen people stood with him. Guys in down parkas and chinos. Girls clad in bright scarves and wool coats. His sister MacKenna turned, watching DeMott jog to my car.

  A green croquet ball sizzled across the cold grass. The girls jumped around, hugging each other. The guys groaned.

  DeMott didn’t turn to see what happened. His skin was russet from the cold, his smile wide and white. My throat was feeling better after the hot tea and honey, but when I looked at DeMott, it started closing again.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Mac’s making up for lost time,” he said. “Throwing party after party before the big day. Not that I blame her after a grand jury bumped her wedding.”

  Harrison Fielding, their father, held vast reserves of money and did things with it that the FBI frowned upon. His grand jury indictment was tangentially related to one of my cases.

  I cleared my throat. “I didn’t create that situation, DeMott.”

  “No, you didn’t.” His blue eyes were luminous. “You want to go for a drive or something?”

  “DeMott!” MacKenna called across the lawn.

  A girl blessed with gazelle legs, and knew it, Mac wore her standard outfit, jodhpurs and black riding boots. Her leather-gloved hands held a silver tumbler, making her look plucked from imperial India.

  “DeMott, your turn!” Her honeyed Virginia accent carried an edge.

  DeMott waved the mallet. “Stuart can take it.” He dropped his voice, muttering, “He can cheat up a win for the guys.”

  “Can I talk to you?” I said.

  He pointed the mallet toward a stand of old tulip poplars, their dark limbs unraveling against the marbled sky. We stopped beside the icehouse, a short round building that tunneled into the earth. At one time, the plantation’s only refrigeration.

  “Did you hear anything last night?” I asked.

  “You mean the bomb?”

  “You know.”

  “I thought it was thunder. I went outside and saw the sky turn bright pink downriver. So I called Flynn. She told me a bomb went off at Rapland.”

  “You called Flynn?”

  “Who else would I call? The girl pins her ear to that beloved ground every morning.”

  “You could call the sheriff,” I pointed out.

  “Flynn’s got the dirt on everybody and everything. Much as I respect Tink.”

  “Tink?”

  “Sheriff Tinkham. Ron Tinkham. Around the county, he’s known as Tink. What’s all this about anyway?”

  “Did Flynn happen to mention that a kid was incinerated? That women and children were inside the house? Did she tell you that?”

  “Hey, Raleigh, take it easy.” He held up the mallet like a crossbar. “All I know is what I just told you.”

  I glanced back at the croquet party. A tall man with a buzz cut wrapped his arms around Mac, pulling her close. Stuart, the groom, the man I met in Flynn’s greenhouse. Despite his affection, Mac stared petulantly toward us. I was ruining her party.

  “How well do you know the sheriff?” I asked.

  “Don�
�t go there, Raleigh.”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “All right, here’s what I know. His daughter’s a meth addict. She’s in prison. Tink and his wife are raising her two kids. The kids happen to be black and they love them to pieces. That’s what I know.”

  “That’s all great. But this entire county has the population of one small town. He’s been sheriff out here nineteen years, and he thinks Hale Lasker was the end of the road for racists.”

  He tapped the mallet against the side of his boot. “If I could give you the name of somebody to talk to, would you return the favor?”

  “Who is it?”

  “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “What’s the favor?”

  He laughed. “You’re one careful girl, Raleigh. Mac’s throwing a fancy shindig Friday night.”

  I tried to read his expression, whether this was casual or serious. “You’re asking me for a date?”

  He nodded.

  “But we’re making a deal for it?”

  “Because I know you. If some purpose isn’t attached, you won’t come.” He continued to bounce the mallet against his boot, then looked down. “And I didn’t know what you’d say if I just asked you. Because of what happened last time.”

  Last time. Prom night. Ten years ago. When I woke up with DeMott passed out next to me and half my clothes off. He assured me nothing had happened, but when he asked me out again and again, I said no and no, then left for college, thinking I’d never look back.

  “Mac won’t mind? I’m not exactly her favorite person.”

  “Do you really care?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Way I look at it, once you land on somebody’s list, you might as well ride it all the way down.”

  He smiled.

  Snap went my heart.

  “Seven o’clock Friday night,” he said. “Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said. “What’s the name?”

  The sky gave up the ghost on my way back into Richmond, turning to lead. It suited the mood in Detective Greene’s office.

  Sitting at his desk, he gripped his head between his hands. Even after I stepped inside, closing the door, saying, “Hello?” he continued staring down.