by Jon McGoran
He looked at me like I was crazy. “No.”
“Well, maybe he ran out of gas.”
“Oh.” He sat there for a moment, thinking about that. “All right, that’s true. Well, we can check it.”
“We?”
“Yeah, come on. I need you to come with me to check it out. Give me your cop-ly take on the situation.”
“I can tell you that much right now. Your friend’s a junkie, which means he’s a fuck-up, which means he blew you off and he’s probably out dozing off his latest fix.”
“Doyle.”
I’d met retired cops who spent their lives looking for mysteries to solve: wondering whose dog was crapping on their lawn or which neighbor was stealing cable. Sure, some of my suspicions had turned out to be right, but I had also spent the better part of three days doing background checks on a vegetable patch. I didn’t want to become that guy. But the look on Moose’s face told me he wasn’t going to drop it, and I was curious about whether Squirrel’s whereabouts maybe had something to do with Roberts and Arnett. My cop-ly instincts were intrigued.
“All right. Go make some coffee.”
38
Moose brought me two granola bars and a cup of coffee that I suspected was reheated, but that was fine. At this point I was just looking for the active ingredient.
When I got outside, he was sitting in the driver’s seat of Frank’s truck with the engine running. I gave him a look as I walked to my car and got in. Somehow I could tell Moose wasn’t the kind of driver I’d have the patience to ride shotgun with. And even though my car was beat up, it was running fine. I started the engine and Moose got in next to me, giving me some kind of look, but I didn’t look over at him.
Squirrel’s truck was barely half a mile away, so we went there first, to make sure it was still there and that Squirrel wasn’t asleep in the back.
Moose directed me down Pear Tree Lane, just off Valley Road. “It’s right up here,” he said as we came around a bend in the road.
I slowed down to look, and still had to jerk the wheel to miss it. Some kind of old panel truck, like a station wagon on steroids, rust–colored and beat to hell. It was parked between two trees, perpendicular to the road with its rear wheels resting on the edge of the embankment. The tailgate was down, jutting out into the road right at windshield level, like a blade.
“What?” Moose asked, apparently oblivious to how close he had just come to decapitation.
“Thanks for the warning.”
I pulled over just past it, and we got out.
“The Bronze Bomber,” Moose said with affection as we walked up, patting the side of the truck. “A 1983 Jeep Wagoneer. Thing’s just about indestructible.”
Not only did it look destructible, it looked halfway destructed.
The driver’s side window was partially open, and the seat was damp from rain. The gas tank was half full. In the back was some lumber and a couple of milk crates, one filled with empty canvas bags, the other with plastic tubing and a couple of beakers. I picked up a beaker and looked at Moose.
“That’s just supplies for making his squish,” he told me.
Nothing else looked suspicious. I put the beaker back and closed the tailgate, but a second later it fell open again.
Moose nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, the latch is tricky.”
I closed it again, this time with a little more force, but it fell open again. This time I ignored it. “So where else did you look?” I asked him. “And where else didn’t you look?”
* * *
We started at Squirrel’s house, a tiny square bungalow surrounded by a lawn that Moose informed me was not weedy but “native.” The tiny, unpainted wooden porch had no steps.
Moose had keys, but I knocked on the door twice and waited a couple of minutes in between. When there was no answer, I stepped back and motioned for Moose to have at it.
He stepped forward and raised the keys, but stopped. “You’re here as a friend, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, you’re not here on official business, right?”
“I’m not anywhere on official business. I’m suspended, remember? Why?”
“Well, this is where Squirrel makes his squish, and I don’t want him to get arrested or in trouble or anything.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not even illegal unless he’s selling it.”
Moose gave me an awkward smile.
“Beautiful. Well, I don’t give a crap about any of that.” I wasn’t going in there hoping to find evidence of an illegal still. I was hoping to find evidence of his drug involvement. “But if we’re going in, let’s go in.”
With a shrug and a sigh, he opened the door and we stepped inside.
I was expecting a drug den, but the place was clean and about as tidy as my apartment back in Philly on a good day.
The furniture was old but solid, a mish-mash of styles, like a used-furniture showroom. In the middle of the coffee table was a note Moose had left, asking Squirrel to call him. We walked through to the kitchen, which was yellow and white, with a lumpy linoleum floor. The yellow Formica countertop was worn white in places.
In the bedroom, the bed was tightly made, the corners of the covers folded crisply under the mattress. Moose held up his arms. “See? He hasn’t been home all night. The bed’s still made.”
“He always makes his bed like that?”
“Yeah, ever since he got out of the army.”
“The army? That little flea?”
Moose nodded solemnly.
“Well, he probably made it again, right after he got up. That’s how they do it in the army.”
Moose shook his head. “He doesn’t make it until after lunch, because that’s when he knows whether he’s going back to bed or not.”
Any respect I had for Squirrel because of his stint in the army evaporated. “Are you serious?”
“It’s like a routine with him. A ritual. I actually teased him about it.”
“I bet you did,” I said lightly, but I could see in Moose’s eyes that he was seriously worried. “Is there a basement?”
Moose nodded, then paused before leading the way through a door in the kitchen. The basement was dirty and unfinished, smelling of dust and vinegar. An old washer and dryer sat in one corner. There was a concrete laundry sink and a floor-to-ceiling cabinet against one wall. On a table across from it was a disassembled electric juicer. The rest was taken up with a dozen empty five-gallon buckets. I opened each of the cabinets, poked around inside. Mostly it was empty wine bottles and plastic jugs, but I moved stuff around and looked under it and behind it. I saw no signs of drug paraphernalia, although that could have been hidden anywhere, but I also saw no reaction from Moose, although that didn’t prove anything, either.
When I was finished looking around, I turned to Moose and shrugged, then followed him back up the steps and out onto the porch.
“Look,” I said. “If you really think he’s missing, you should probably just go to Chief Pruitt.”
Moose shook his head vigorously. “No. I’m with you on that guy. He’s a dick. Plus, I don’t want him to see Squirrel’s setup here.”
“Okay, well, if you really want my help, you have to tell me everything you know, and I mean including anything about drugs.”
Moose rolled his eyes, but he looked like he was going to cry. “Doyle, I swear to you. Squirrel is not into drugs. At all.”
I sighed, wondering if he really didn’t realize his friend was a junkie. “Okay,” I said, against my better judgment. “So, where else do you think he might be?”
He took out a piece of paper and started to unfold it. “I made a list.”
* * *
For such a small town, it turned out there were a lot of places to look. Over the next four hours, I learned more about Squirrel’s day-to-day habits than I ever wanted to know. We went to the mini-mart first, where we also got lunch, burritos that we ate as we drove to the library. Then we went to a c
omic book store, two picnic spots, and three friends’ houses.
The friends eyed me warily, even after Moose assured them I was cool. Two of them looked like they’d been using. None of them knew where Squirrel was.
By the time we got home, the lines on Moose’s face were deeper than when we’d left. He’d been worried before, but now he was seriously considering the possibility that something bad had happened to his friend. I was considering it, too.
“Look,” I said as we parked. “If you’re that worried, the police are the only ones with access to the resources you need.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Or just wait a bit. He’s probably fine, and he’ll be wondering what you were so worked up about.”
“Right. I’m going back to his place. See if he turns up.”
“All right. Don’t sweat it. He’ll turn up.”
39
I sat on the porch steps, watching as Moose got into the truck and drove off. He was obviously worried about Squirrel, and I wondered again if he honestly believed Squirrel wasn’t using. Then I reminded myself that Moose was probably using, too. Maybe he was worried because he knew more than he was letting on.
Once he had disappeared around the curve, I abruptly got to my feet. I immediately felt a slight wave of nausea, bringing back a taste of the misery I’d felt when I woke up on the roof.
I closed my eyes again and put a hand on the railing. But as I waited for the moment to pass, I also remembered the strange lights I’d seen in the fields behind Nola’s farm. When I opened my eyes, instead of going up the steps and into the house, I crossed the street to Nola’s house, went around back and plunged into the bushes.
When I emerged from the dark thicket of green, the sky had streaks of happy orange clouds that somehow made that tall fence look more sinister in contrast. I walked along the fence for fifty yards, looking down the rows of corn stubble and slowing when I reached a spot that was roughly even with where I had seen the lights. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I squinted into the twilight, staring down one row after another until a spot of color in the growing darkness caught my eye.
I strained but couldn’t make out any details, just a little smudge of red against the faded corn stubble and the dark earth. The fence seemed even taller up close, but it was still just a simple chain-link fence.
And if Moose could do it, I damn sure could.
Hooking my fingers into the links above my head, I kicked off the ground, pushed with my toes, and started pulling myself up.
The musical ring of the chain-link against the pole brought me back to younger days—as a uniform chasing lowlifes, or even younger, scrambling over fences just ahead of one angry pursuer or another. But it was always either chasing or being chased. I couldn’t remember ever just climbing a fence like this from a standing start. Without the adrenaline rush, I bogged down just shy of the top. With no forward momentum, my toes had a hard time gripping the chain link, and I had to rely on arm strength alone to pull me up to the top. The no-tresspassing sign seemed even louder as I ignored it.
I paused at the top, just for a second. It was brighter up there, closer to the sky, but the shadows on the ground looked even darker. The red smudge I had spotted earlier was barely visible now. I felt exposed, perched up there in the open.
I swung my leg over and lowered myself down to the other side. It occurred to me, as my feet hit the ground, that a trespassing arrest could turn into a major problem with my recent history. Pushing that thought out of my mind, I trotted down the rows of stubble, toward the red spot. Even crouching right over the thing, I needed a few moments to see that it was an apple, halfway embedded in the mud.
Kind of strange, an apple in the middle of a cornfield. I stared at it for a few seconds, wondering if it meant anything at all. Probably not, I decided, but as I stood up and looked around to see if there were any other apples, something else caught my eye.
Looking one way, I saw rows of corn stubble extending evenly back to the fence. Looking the opposite direction, I saw the same rows extending just as evenly into the distance, disappearing over a slight rise forty yards away. But looking out across the rows, I could see a jerky, wavering line cutting a crude diagonal across the rows. The line was made of mud and crushed corn stubble, as if something had churned the soil. I thought I could make out footprints, but in the gloom it was hard to tell.
I turned and looked behind me, but the line ended under my feet. At the apple.
Images from the night before came back to me, a line of lights snaking across this field in the darkness. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture it, tried to superimpose those lights over the path that cut across the field. But between the lightning and rain and the alcohol last night, and now the darkness and the different perspectives, it was useless.
I looked back at the fence for a moment, at the blank back of the NO TRESPASSING sign. Then I looked at the diagonal line, and took off at a jog along it.
The field was bigger than I expected. The landscape rolled gently, and I dipped and rose with it. The fence and the trees quickly disappeared behind me. Eventually, I came over a rise and paused. Down the slope in front of me, the path that I had been following ended at a small grove of trees enclosed in a fence. Beyond the grove, angled off to the right, was a large trailer, like you would see on a construction site. A couple of pickup trucks were parked on a graveled area next to it. One was green, but I didn’t see any marks on it, and I couldn’t tell if it was the one that had run me off the road.
I approached the trees cautiously. My gun was back at the house, tucked safely under my mattress. I was acutely aware of its absence. The stand of trees was thirty yards across, and it was surrounded by another chain-link fence, similar to the one I’d scaled to get onto the property, but only six feet high. Still, I wasn’t crazy about the thought of scaling another fence. I crept along the fence and came to a gate, but it was padlocked.
Just past the gate, a branch extended out over the fence. The sky was almost dark by now, but even in the dim light, I could see an apple hanging from the branch. I reached up to touch it, maybe to pick it, but as my hand approached, I heard a loud crack and the apple exploded.
40
Three men were coming at me, running. One of them stopped to aim a rifle, and as I dropped to the ground, I heard another shot and a bullet passing right over me. Staying low, I sprinted off in the opposite direction. When I reached the next bend in the fence, I grabbed the pole and swung myself around the corner.
Ahead of me, seemingly adjacent to the fenced-in orchard, was a long white tent, looking almost blue in the last of the twilight.
I ran straight at it, locked into my route by indecision. Whoever was chasing me would be rounding the corner behind me any second. If I angled out to the left, toward the far end of the tent, I’d be outlined against it, an easy shot for even a mediocre marksman. If I stopped and tried to scale the fence surrounding the orchard, I’d be an even easier target. And if I somehow made it over, I’d probably be trapped inside the enclosure. My only hope was if there was a space between the tent and the fence surrounding the orchard, I could slip in between them.
When I heard the men shouting at me to stop, I found a little more speed. I had almost reached the tent when I heard the crack of a gun, and I almost went sprawling, trying to duck and still keep my feet underneath me and pumping. When I looked up, I cursed; the tent and the fence were tightly tethered to each other. But with the next crack of a handgun, another option presented itself.
The wall of the tent snapped and billowed as the bullet punctured it, and I saw two bullet holes, maybe a foot apart, right at waist level.
The tent looked like plastic sheeting, or at least I hoped it was, and not some coated canvas. I had no idea what was inside it—a brick wall or a Bengal tiger or a dozen armed men like the ones behind me—but at that point, I was committed.
I pumped my legs a little harder those last few steps, then launched, feet f
irst, aiming for the two bullet holes in the tent.
My feet hit one of the holes and penetrated it, followed by my legs and my hips and my waist. And then I stopped. My shoulders, arms, and head were protruding from the plastic, which was now pulled tight around my ribs. I couldn’t see my pursuers, and hanging there, half inside the plastic and half out, I expected a hand to grab me at any moment, or a bullet to end it all.
Reaching up, I hooked both index fingers into the second bullet hole and pulled, tearing the plastic, trying to join the two holes. But the plastic stretched as much as it tore, like a bad dream, the holes weren’t getting any closer. The plastic constricting my ribs made it hard to breathe. I started to feel lightheaded, and my arms were growing weaker. I could feel the edges of panic and it occurred to me that, if I didn’t get out of there, I could pass out and die of asphyxiation without anyone laying a hand on me. But at the sound of footsteps thudding on the dirt, I gave a last frantic tug. The two holes finally merged and I slid to the ground, my lungs filling with air. Inside the tent, I pushed myself up onto my feet and scanned my surroundings.
The tent was unlit, but the roof was clear and in the light coming through it I could see the space was huge—maybe fifty feet wide and eighty feet long. Five rows of tables ran the entire length of the tent. The tables were covered with plants, with racks running down the center of each table. On the table in front of me, I could see stacks of clay pots and saucers and various tools hanging from hooks.
Overhead was a lattice of thin pipes, like a sprinkler system, and unlit fluorescent lights above them. The place smelled like a greenhouse—fertilizer and chemicals and dirt and humidity—but with something else, too; flowery but with a hint of decay. The air was damp and warm, and I could feel sweat trickling down my skin in half a dozen places.
I could make out what looked like potted flowers, but in the darkness, the colors seemed drab and dull. Other plants grew taller, with some sort of fruit or pods hanging from them. As I was reaching out to touch one, I heard voices through the hole in the tent.
