Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  Matthew stopped ten feet from me, hands clenching, his eyes dark pockets of hatred. Then he began to move toward me again.

  I grabbed the place where the jacket was caught and ripped. Still I was not free.

  From behind me, a bit of gravel whizzed past my ear, plinking Matthew Karsh squarely in the face. He brayed in rage, grabbing at his eyes. The jacket pocket ripped free. I jogged backward several steps, stumbled up against another car.

  I heard whistling, then, “Hey there, Sherlock, how’s life been treating you?” The voice was familiar: Timothy “Duke” Swege, in the flesh.

  At the skinny little man’s approach, the enormous Matthew turned and lunged back into the trees. Duke swaggered up like he was joining me at the bar, all reek of aftershave and broad-toothed bonhomie, ready to make a hit. His thin blond hair was slicked back, a gold chain glinted from the base of his chicken neck, and the heavy cuffs of his jacket were turned up to expose his bony wrists where they rose from the pockets of his jeans.

  “Thanks,” I panted.

  “’Twas nothing, fair lady,” he soothed, taking my bandaged hand and kissing it. With his opposite hand, he produced another fair-sized chunk of gravel and added, “I always got something hard to offer someone as lovely as you. You just gotta call me a little earlier next time, so you can save your lather for me.”

  I leaned on the car, adrenaline crashing through my veins, uncertain whether to thank him or slap him across his pustule-ridden face. I settled for muttering, “Got a flashlight, Galahad? I dropped some car keys here.”

  The Duke turned. “Hey, Grandma! Got a flashlight?”

  “What, dear?” I heard, from beyond the cars toward the street.

  “Don’t call her in here!” I urged. “That monster’s still out there somewhere in those bushes!”

  Duke laughed. “Matthew? Don’t worry about him. He’s a big coward.”

  I stared at him. “That coward was coming straight at me!”

  “Oh, really?” he taunted. “Well, he took off fast enough, didn’t he? You just can’t let them know you’re scared, darlin’.”

  This was the limit. After getting scared witless, being lectured by a banty rooster about how to strut was beyond what I could stand, even if the rooster in question had just saved my skin. I lunged toward him, grabbing at the front of his jacket, but as I did so, I kicked the keys and heard them ring against the gravel. I sighed, my anger collapsing under its own weight. “Want to help?” I said, opening the trunk of the car and dropping the load of bread summarily into Timothy Duke Swege’s scrawny arms. “Into the hall. Double step!” I slammed the trunk. Hard.

  “Hey, don’t get so jumpy.” He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on my none-too-awesome bosom. “You’re taking life way too seriously, Sherlock. You know what you need? You need a man around you, that’s—”

  “Oh, dry up!”

  Duke turned his narrow shoulder toward me and shrugged it. “Okay, darlin’, but just remember, things get too tough for you in Sherlock land, you just give old Duke a call.”

  * * *

  INSIDE THE HALL, I marched straight to Dierdre Karsh and pushed the keys into her hands, making a point of brusque physical contact. She took the pressure impersonally, as if hit by a sudden gust of wind. I stared into her pale gray eyes, ready for whatever bullshit excuse she might hand me.

  A tiny light kindled in her eyes. She used that tone. “Is there something wrong, dear?” she inquired.

  “Your son just tried to assault me. Again,” I seethed, wondering why I couldn’t say it more directly: You set me up.

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she soothed, offering me a lovely little smile, a prim thing that suggested a curl of her dry lips could make the last five minutes mean nothing.

  So innocent was the look that I almost bought it. “No. I am not mistaken,” I assured her.

  Her eyes went dead. They did not shift, did not stray from their focus on mine, but one moment she was seeing me, and the next instant her eyes were vacant. Blip. Door locked. Occupant gone away.

  I heard a voice behind me, too close for comfort: “Is something the matter, Dierdre?”

  I turned. Valentine Reeves stood inches away. He peered down into the well of my eyes, arrogantly taking his time, searching for the exact nerve on which he would apply his pressure. When he spoke again, he smiled as if we were having a lovely conversation, but kept his voice too low to be heard beyond my ears: “You’re a stranger here. I’ve checked you out. You’d best consider leaving now, because this is a very tight community.”

  The gloves were off.

  * * *

  I STAYED IN the firehouse until the Feed was over, waiting until the firemen were close enough to cleaned up that I could ask Jim Erikson to walk me to my truck. But before I asked, he said, “Want to maybe go out for a beer?”

  “Me?”

  Jim glanced around like, Can’t you be a little quieter about this, and said, “Yeah. You know, like a beer.”

  “Well, okay.”

  As I waited for him to get his jacket, I began to wonder just what he and Valentine Reeves had been saying to each other. A beer, huh? Just whose idea was this tête-à-tête, really?

  As Jim and the others shuffled out the door, I let myself be carried along in the flow. As the flow ebbed away, Jim turned to me and smiled shyly. “My vehicle’s right over here,” he said, as he put a hand out and touched the small of my back, guiding me toward his truck.

  I stepped away from the warmth of his hand, wary from my earlier foolishness. “No, that’s okay,” I said firmly. “I have my own truck right here. I’ll follow you; that way I can just continue on from there, and you won’t have to bring me back.”

  “Okay,” Jim said. I couldn’t read his face. It was in shadow. We got in our respective vehicles and turned west on Occidental Road, which twisted and turned for several miles before spilling us out in a little town stuck in a cleft between wooded hills. The shop fronts were early-twentieth-century clapboard specials done up with trendy signs advertising restaurants and knickknack emporiums. Jim led me into the bar in the Union Hotel, a nice old joint with wooden tables and chairs, and ordered a couple of long-necks. He hadn’t spoken as we walked in from the parking lot, just kept his hands in his pockets and his head down, and now that we were seated, he didn’t seem have a whole lot more to say.

  My heart sank. If indeed this man had ever found me attractive, the combination of Reeves’ private words with him and my standoffishness had quashed it. Sure, I had good reason to be cautious around Jim, after what I’d been through and with where I was heading, but as I sat there watching him look everywhere in the room but at me I realized that I did indeed like him, even though he wasn’t Frank Barnes. Unfortunately, in that lonely moment, sitting with a man I didn’t know in a half-empty bar in a town I’d never seen before, I needed Frank sitting beside me.

  I made an attempt at conversation. “You’re an electrician?”

  “Yeah.” He waved at a friend who passed through from the street to the restaurant beyond.

  So much for conversation starters. With a heavy spirit, I gave up trying to be sociable and put my mind back on my work. “So Reeves builds lots of projects around the area?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Low-income stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That seems fairly enlightened.”

  “Oh, he’s helped out a lot around here, building housing for old folks and poor folks, so they can be part of the community they work in or grew up in, and he’s been buying up old places and renovating them, so the area keeps the old flavor.”

  “You sound doubtful.”

  Jim stared uncomfortably at the tabletop. “Oh, I guess some people think he’s doing it to us instead of for us.”

  I asked some more questions, but Jim didn’t seem to want to say any more about Valentine Reeves. The silence began to drag. Our beers came. We nibbled chips. He waved at another friend. I felt even lo
nelier and more out of place and even more frustrated, and wanted to leave. The combination of loneliness, fatigue, and my burgeoning paranoia began to send my mind to places it didn’t belong. I began to imagine things. Such as that he was working directly for Reeves. Reeves had set the entire community against me. Therefore, Jim had brought me here so that Reeves’ henchmen could wire a bomb to the undercarriage of my truck.

  “I kept overhearing people talking about a water project,” I said, trying to distract myself. “What’s that all about?”

  Jim took a pull on his beer and stared at me. “The Mills has its own local water district, a set of wells with water treatment, supplies about half the community.”

  “And that’s a problem?”

  “Well, everyone had their own wells before, and most still use them to water their gardens. The problem was more quality than quantity. They say the water stank and tasted like, well, you know.”

  “So what’s the problem now?”

  “Well, there’s this group that doesn’t like having the county manage it for them.”

  I recalled the fanaticism in Liza’s eyes, and the combativeness of her words. “Why?”

  For the first time since we’d sat down, Jim smiled, a crimp at one corner of his mouth. “I’m not in the district. Thank God.” He looked away across the room.

  The conversation lagged again. I couldn’t think clearly about the investigation, let alone any questions that Jim might be able to answer for me. I began to count the minutes before it would seem polite to leave.

  A weird sense of agitation started to gnaw at me. Suddenly it began to feel important to leave, and to leave soon. I began flashing on Janet’s boxes back in my motel room. The sense of urgency grew, a need to get back to the motel and protect those boxes.

  “Is something the matter?” Jim asked, his spine straightening as he went into EMT mode.

  My ears began to ring. “No. Yes. I’m sorry, but I got to go. I—uh, don’t feel well. Yes, I really think I ought to leave now. Sorry.”

  Jim reached across the table and touched my forehead with the back of his hand. “Has this happened before?”

  The agitation had my mind racing, and my skin felt oversensitized. The last thing I wanted at that instant was someone touching me. “No. I have to get back to where I’m staying. Now.”

  Now Jim had hold of my wrist, feeling for my pulse. “You look pale, and you’re perspiring. Your pulse is fast. Here, put your head down on your knees,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling my chair out from the table so I’d have room. His hands moved over my neck and shoulders with authority, urging me to lower my head. “Had anything unusual to eat lately? Drunk water from a pond or anything?”

  I fought his attempts to lower my head. “No, never.” But as I thought that thought, Suzanne’s weird tea came to mind. Was this some aftershock from whatever toxins had been in that draft? At that instant I could almost taste it again, all woody and astringent on my tongue, now badly entwined with the garlic and beer. “I’ll be okay, really; I just want to get going. Please.” I stood up abruptly.

  Jim gripped my arm. “I’ll carry you.”

  “No, damn it, I can walk. I just want to go!” I hurried out of the bar and lurched back to my truck. My hands shook as I pressed the keys into the door lock.

  Jim hovered by my side, the authoritative fireman quickly crumpling into an uncertain boy. “Let me come with you, just to make sure you’re safe.”

  “No need,” I insisted, opening the door of the truck into his face.

  “How can I reach you? I’m—worried about you.”

  “I’ll give you a call.”

  “Promise?” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and raised his shoulders up to his ears like he was cold.

  “Sure. I’ll leave a message at the firehouse,” I said, my mouth spitting out any words I thought might get him to let me go.

  “Okay,” he said doubtfully, but I cut him off, slamming the truck door as I drove quickly away.

  23

  I found the door to my room ajar.

  I stepped to one side of the door and pushed it farther open with my toe, but even as it swung open those few inches, I knew the maid hadn’t just left it unlocked while leaving. The lock had been struck with a heavy object, and a light was on in my room. It looked like a tornado had touched down. Janet Pinchon’s personal effects were strewn madly across the floor.

  I’m not a complete idiot. I didn’t go right in, I ran to the lobby and told the manager what had happened.

  Her eyes grew wide. “Someone is in your room?” she spat, indignant at the thought.

  “The place has been ransacked. Call the police,” I said, turning to see if anyone was coming around the side of the building. I heard her say, “I’m right behind you. I’m dialing now.” Still watching the walkway, I waited until I heard her speak the essentials into the phone and then the clacking sound of the phone landing back in the cradle, and started to run back to my room. Kicked the door open. Saw no one. Ran in and roared with anger: each box had been dumped; each book, each item of clothing, whipped into chaos. The bedclothes had been ripped back as if by one mighty hand. There were red letters on my sheets, scrawled in big ugly strokes from one of Janet’s marking pens. The letters formed just one word: WHORE.

  I heard a sound behind me. I dully remember thinking it was the manager coming in.

  Thick, rough fingers closed around my throat and squeezed. I tried to scream. I pried at the fingers, trying to free myself, trying to twist around and get a look at the person who was pressing the life from my neck, but my head was held firmly in place and all I could do was flail at the heavy form that stood rooted behind me. My fists hit soft, cushiony flesh that covered a body as thick as a stump.

  The hands began to force my face down toward the sheets. Before my face reached the bed, the room grew gray and splotchy, then very quiet.

  I saw nothing but tiny stars in a dark heaven.

  24

  The darkness was made of coal-black velvet. There was a loud ringing in the middle of the darkness, and far away and below me there was a planet that called to me, but I didn’t want to go there, I wanted to stay out here in the darkness. The darkness was comforting and lovely, and the planet such a cold and lonely place.

  Then I found that there were words in my head, snaking around my brain like shining ribbons, registering more as sight than as sound. They said, “Oh, I see it’s happening to you now. But you can live, so why don’t you?”

  I twisted in the darkness, searching for the source of the words, but instead began falling toward that planet. I called out, my words flying like bits of color, “Who? Who are you? Let me see you!” When the reply came it was muffled, the colors fading out: “I’m Janet. I live out here now.”

  Then the velvet darkness extinguished, degrading into just an absence of light and a dull throbbing. As the world swept up under me, smacking me with the law of gravity, I felt the soft pressure of bedclothes against the front of my body, and knew that I was lying across my bed. My legs canted painfully off the edge of my bed, their weight resting on the tips of my boots, which seemed to be filling with the pressure of settling fluids and agonized flesh. I couldn’t find the strength to open my eyes. I tried to cry out, but could manage only a tiny aaah.

  I heard a clearing of bad sinuses and a familiar voice. “She’s coming to. Is the ambulance here yet?” Why was Deputy Dexter here, and who was he talking about? Who needed an ambulance?

  A numbness at my throat gave way to the beginnings of pain, and I understood at last what had happened. I had been strangled. And an old riding injury in my coccyx began to throb. I managed to slide a hand over toward one hip to make sure that my jeans were still in place, and said a prayer of thanks that I had been spared at least the humiliation of showing my bare buttocks to Deputy Dexter.

  “Here it comes,” said a second voice, distraught, feminine. The manager. “Ah, she’s alive then? Gracias a Dios!
” I felt her cool hand against mine. I tried to thank her, but my voice still hung in ribbons back there in the velvet darkness.

  “Did you see who did this?” Dexter asked her.

  “No. When I came, she was already like this, the door open. No one else was here. I called the ambulance from that phone by the bed and covered her to keep her warm. I couldn’t tell if she was still breathing. Can I put the blanket back on her now?”

  Dexter let out a long, tired breath. “She’s lucky. The perp must have heard you coming and had to run for it before he could finish her. Yeah, you can go ahead and cover her up.”

  I heard the siren grow louder and louder, impossibly loud, then shut off. The sound of a vehicle pulling up outside the door. Footsteps.

  I felt the manager’s warm breath close to mine. “Help is here. You be okay, hear?”

  “What’s the name?” Dexter asked the manager.

  “Mine?” she replied.

  “No, hers. She looks familiar.”

  “Her name is Emily Hansen. Wyoming license. She’s been here about five days.”

  There was a pause, then Dexter’s voice again. “Hansen? Oh, her.”

  More people hurried into the room, feet trampling Janet’s beautiful books into a sorry mat of frayed pages. “Watch it,” Dexter barked. “This is a crime scene. Leave me a little evidence, why don’t you?”

  “What do we have here?”

  “Strangulation. She’s breathing.”

  Sure hands touched me here and there, feeling for pulse and respiration. A firm voice told me to take it easy and rest, that I was going to be okay, not to worry. Someone pressed a protective collar into position around my neck. I grabbed at it, tried to tear it away from my throat, tried to push myself up from the bed. Big hands flew all around me, restraining me. I tried to speak, to beg them to take the collar off, but my tongue seemed to fill the entire cavity of my mouth. Then they rolled me over. The room spun and I wanted to vomit. I opened my eyes.