“You bastard.”
“I’m losing my patience with you.” Kyrellis got to his feet again and stepped toward the door. “I know he’s a cop. There’s a badge on the dresser in one of the pictures. And I know she’s from Wyoming. It’s just a matter of time before I find the right cop.”
“And then what?”
“And then he’s going to pay me to keep these in a safe place. Unless you’d like to do that for him.”
“I’ll turn you in before I do that.”
“No, you won’t. If you turn me in I’ll hand over the evidence that you murdered Albert Darling.”
Hershel stared at Kyrellis, unable to find words for response.
“I thought you were just playing me, but I can see now that you really don’t remember. You don’t remember that you were coming back from disposing of his body the night you had your accident. The evidence is all over your car, which—” He looked solemnly at Hershel. “Which belongs to me.”
Hershel’s breath evacuated and his scar ached. He suffered a dark and fleeting image of the broad backs of hogs and mud. He could smell the stench. “That’s not true,” he said, completely unsure.
“Really? Then you tell me what happened that night? Where were you coming from?” Kyrellis waited for a response, but none came. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life. How will you protect her then?”
A few customers lingered in the dining room as Silvie wiped down the empty tables, preparing for the end of her shift. Her feet were on fire. She’d have to get more comfortable shoes, and she guessed that she had enough in tip money between the two days to buy a pair if she was frugal. She would ask Karen to recommend a place once Hershel had the car running.
She didn’t know why she’d seduced him. The first time she slept with Jacob, he’d been coming by the tavern to get her for nearly six weeks. He’d worked his way up to the big event. After the ice-cream cone that first day, he’d hinted that she might like to do something for him, but he didn’t say what exactly. On the second afternoon that he took her out, he asked her to take off her top as she sipped the root-beer float he’d bought her. They were parked at the reservoir on a cold spring day, but the sun felt warm through the windshield of his pickup. She understood that it wasn’t right. But what else could she do except comply with his wishes?
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, everything is going to be okay,” Jacob had told her, which confused her more than it comforted.
Kyrellis stood in the doorway and spied her, then surveyed the room, choosing a table in the corner near the window, where he chatted convivially with the next table. Silvie looked for Karen. Technically, her shift was over; she could pull her apron off and walk out. She peered through the service window into the kitchen.
“Got a new table out here,” Silvie said.
Karen set down a large bucket of bleach water and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked exhausted. “Can you stay a little longer and handle it?”
Silvie glanced back at the man, who was watching her from the corner of his eye as he recommended wineries. “Sure.”
“Afternoon, Silvie,” he said as she approached.
She pulled an order pad from her pocket. “What can I get you?”
“Just coffee.”
“Coming up.” She set a cup in front of him on the buttery wood, but her hand shook and she spilled the coffee. She leaned in to wipe up the mess and he took a napkin from her, calmly finishing the job. When he was done he smiled up at her, and had he not stolen the most relevant and damning thing to her in the entire world, she would have thought him to be a warm, engaging gentleman. He had a way about him, incongruent with what she knew.
“Please return them,” she said quietly.
“Who is he?”
“I’ll tell him who you are before I tell you that.”
“I know he’s a cop.” Kyrellis eyed the table next to him, but the couple were deep in conversation.
“What do you want?”
“I might be willing to trade some of them back to you for a favor or two,” he said. “I’m sure we can work something out.” His eyes slid across her shoulders and down her front.
She had hoped this man had a price, but being faced with the certainty of doing him favors made her stomach roll.
He turned his attention to the menu. “Certainly the idea isn’t that distasteful. Is it?”
“Tell me exactly what it would take. For all of them. Not some. All!”
“I’ll have to think about that.” He poured sugar into his coffee and stirred slowly. “I think your friend, whoever he is, will pay a high price. Tell me his name and I’ll give you back all the ones where we can tell it’s you.”
“He’ll kill me. He’ll hunt me down and kill me like a rat.”
The couple at the next table went silent, the man eyeing Silvie and Kyrellis. Kyrellis smiled, as if to tell the man it was a joke, and he returned to his conversation.
“Then he’ll kill you,” she whispered.
“I don’t think your judgment is reliable in this matter. After all, you’re already sleeping with the most dangerous man you could possibly find.”
Silvie struggled to follow him.
“Ask your new friend Hershel where he was coming from the night of his accident.” Kyrellis lowered his voice. “Seems you have an appetite for murderers, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
Kyrellis stood and placed two dollars on the table. “That’s for the coffee.” He then pulled a twenty from his wallet and pressed it into her hand. “That’s for the service I think you’re capable of.”
She tossed it on the table, but he was already on his way out. When she turned away, the couple at the other table were staring again. Silvie bit her lip, whisked up the twenty, and shoved it into her apron.
Hershel stood in the middle of his wrecked office, his knuckles bleeding and his head throbbing. He kicked the upturned file cabinet. The drawers of his desk were broken, mingled with the shattered remnants of a coffee cup.
Kyrellis had gotten the best of him—sent him searching vainly for anything to put this man, Albert Darling, back in his brain, back into the context of his life. But Hershel had found nothing, and the harder he’d looked, the more frantic he’d become, until he’d suffered a fury so deep that he couldn’t stop himself. He had let loose three months of ineptitude, inability, lost identity.
Hershel slumped down in his office chair, spent and nauseated.
A knock at the door, and a muffled voice. “Boss? You okay?”
Hershel closed his eyes. This wasn’t the first attempt Carl had made. “Yeah,” he said.
There was a silence on the other side. Then Carl said, “You need anything?”
“No.” Hershel kicked at the pile of papers near his foot.
Carl swept the warehouse floor, preparing to lock up until Monday afternoon, when they would allow people in to preview the sale. The ad had run in the Hillsboro Argus the previous day, generating a slew of phone calls from dealers and collectors wanting specific details about the architectural items. Another would run in the Saturday Oregonian in the morning. It would be a good sale, with a big crowd, and he noticed that Hershel was assembling a long list of specific items in a particular order. Carl had found the list on Hershel’s desk that morning, grateful, and endeavored to organize the merchandise into a systematic pattern to match the order in which Hershel would call it up.
The front door creaked open and Silvie came in, shaking rain off her jacket.
“Afternoon,” Carl called.
She paused when she saw his face. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just got into a little scrape is all.” He hoped the swelling would be gone by the Tuesday-evening sale. He was tired of the attention it drew.
“I’ve got feet to match your face,” she said, taking a seat on a box near the door and pulling off one shoe. She peeled down her sock and exposed a red and oozing blister on her heel the size of a qu
arter.
He whistled. “That looks downright angry.”
She picked at the skin around it, scrunching her face against the pain. “I’m not used to waiting tables. And these shoes are terrible.”
Carl went into the concession stand and retrieved a small first-aid kit.
“Is Hershel here? I didn’t see his truck.”
He knelt down on the floor and unfolded a small wipe soaked in alcohol. “Went over to Les Schwab in Sherwood after some tires.”
Silvie sucked her breath in as he laid the alcohol pad on the blister. “That stings.”
“It’s good for it. Hold it there a sec. How’s your other foot?”
“Same as this one.”
He felt her eyes on him and glanced up. She looked away and began unlacing her other shoe.
“Where was Hershel coming from the night he had his accident?”
Carl took his time cleaning the blister and covering it with a bandage. He started swabbing the matching blister on her other foot, carefully weighing his response. “Why?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. Something Kyrellis said.”
“When did you talk to Kyrellis?”
“He stopped at the South Store. A special visit just for me.”
“Hershel told me that he’s got something that belongs to you,” Carl said. When he saw her cheeks burn red, he wished he hadn’t brought it up. “Did you get it back?”
“No.”
“This is my fault. I can try and help you. Maybe talk to him.”
“I suppose Hershel also told you what it is?” She sounded angry.
“He didn’t.”
“I don’t think you can help with this.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe there’s something I can do.” He pressed a bandage over the second blister and sat back on his heels. “How’s that?”
“Much better,” she said, pulling her socks on. “Thank you.”
“You know where to find me if you need anything,” he said, returning the first-aid kit to the concession stand.
“If I tell you what Kyrellis has,” she began slowly, “you’ll think differently of me.”
“I don’t think any particular way now. How could it be different?”
“Believe me, it can.”
“Silvie, there isn’t much you can tell me that would shock or surprise me. I’ve seen and done worse things in my life than most people could even imagine. I try to make a general habit of not judging other people.”
She pondered this so long that Carl stopped waiting for her and picked up the broom again and began sweeping.
“Do you think I can trust Hershel?”
The question wasn’t what he’d expected. Carl sized her up, weighed her need against his experience with Hershel Swift.
Hershel turned the ignition and pulled onto Tualatin-Sherwood Road, past the cinema and across Highway 99. Sherwood was no longer the same town he’d grown up in. It had boomed in the past ten years, growing from six thousand to sixteen thousand residents. Where the Borscher farm once stood, there was now a Safeway. The open fields where Langers had grown onions and harvested walnuts were now strip malls with fast-food restaurants, a dry cleaner, gas stations, and a brewpub. New streetlights caused traffic congestion, backing up miles of SUVs and high-end sports cars that had never been part of his Sherwood. What was once a farming community was now one of the more affluent suburbs of Portland, despite the fact that it was more than twenty miles away from the city’s center.
As he passed the mini-storage, he craned to see if Woody was at the counter. Should he stop? There was no reason to. Woody had asked if Albert Darling was still bothering him; clearly he believed Darling was alive. And maybe he was. But something about Darling was trapped in Hershel’s blotted-over memory, like inky stains obliterating some critical fact. It left him to guess and extrapolate, question himself and Kyrellis. The man knew something, but was he telling the truth?
He turned onto Scholls-Sherwood Road, and the familiarity of the countryside returned to him. Rolling corn and onion fields, now dormant, stretched narrowly between hills of Christmas trees and filberts. A few more vineyards had sprung up, their clean lines and open space bringing a gentle order to things, even with the absence of leaves. He breathed in the cool, fresh air and promised to take Silvie to the top of Chehalem Mountain in the spring, when the trillium and wild dogwood bloomed white and dotted the misty hills.
Hershel glanced at his watch. It was nearly three o’clock. Silvie would be ready. The thought of her waiting for him at his warehouse—waiting to go home with him—caused the nagging sense of unease to evaporate.
When Hershel reached Scholls and the auction barn, the sun had broken through and he had momentarily forgotten about Kyrellis and Albert Darling. He anticipated an evening with Silvie. He’d grill a steak for her, he thought, then considered stopping by the grocery first. Or maybe he’d take her out for dinner. The occasion deserved celebration. When was the last time he’d felt this excited and optimistic about another human being—about anything, really?
A ray of sun penetrated the dusty window above the concession stand, and Silvie basked in it. How long since she’d experienced the sun? Winter was hard in Wyoming—hard in the cold sense—but the sun still showed up frequently. She thought she’d go out of her mind if she had to live in the overcast gray of Oregon, where the clouds scraped along the landscape, obliterating color and warmth.
Jacob was more on her mind today. She’d stolen from him, caused him untold distress, and now she’d cheated on him. He’d forbidden her ever to be with another man. In fact, he had warned her so many times that she’d finally implored him to stop, that she understood. She promised she would never do that to him.
An engine outside returned her to this place. That would be Hershel. She hopped off the stool and collected her backpack, but paused with it slung over her shoulder. Jacob’s face had been near hopeful, as if he wanted to believe her, but something stood in the way of full trust. In that moment, she’d been desperate to prove her devotion. It wasn’t simply the threat of what he might do but a genuine desire to please the man who had pulled her from the muck of a ruined family and given her a strange new status as the sheriff’s girl.
16
“Carlos,” Yolanda shouted, running to meet him where the unmarked road to the migrant camp intersected the highway. He quickened his pace to meet her, and when she reached him she was breathless. “Carlos, they came. They took half the camp.”
“What? Who?”
“Immigration came this morning, just after light. They went from cabin to cabin, checking our documents.”
“Your sons?”
“Gracias Santa María.” She crossed herself. “Away still.”
Carl breathed relief, but Yolanda was no less tense.
“Don’t come here tonight. They say it was you.”
“Me what?”
“What called immigration. Even Jimmy Arndt is looking for you.” As she spoke, she assessed his bruised face. She ran a cinnamon-scented hand gently along his jaw, but no words were necessary.
“I didn’t call those bastards. I wouldn’t!”
“I know. But listen to me; it’s not safe.”
“Yolanda, what am I supposed to do? Just leave? I live here.”
She gave him a pained look. “Please, Carlos. I can’t stand it for something to happen to you.”
Carl tipped his face up to the gray sky and blew his breath out. His ribs ached. He’d been looking forward to the warmth of his woodstove and the softness of his bed.
“I hear them talking. Some men want to burn your cabin down while you sleep.”
“Yolanda, I didn’t do it.”
“I know, Carlos. I know.”
He shook his head and looked back up the highway, in the direction from which he’d just come. “I guess you better not be seen out here talking to me.”
“Oh, Carlos.” She put her hand to his cheek again, and he grasped hold
of it. He pressed it to his lips and kissed her palm.
“I’ll be at Swift’s barn if you need anything.” He looked into her dark eyes. “Anything at all.” He let go and started up the highway. When he glanced back, she was still watching him.
Hershel took a back road to get to the restaurant, winding through steep and narrow canyons before cresting a low mountaintop, where he pulled onto the gravel shoulder and they took in the wide, velvety green-and-yellow valley. The coastal range stood blue and hazy to the west, hemming in the patchwork of farmland. A low ceiling of clouds scraped along the highest glens, leaving ragged tufts of mist in the crevices where deciduous trees stubbornly held on to the last of their summer foliage.
He seemed lost in his own thoughts, and she wondered if she’d done something wrong. His knuckles were scabbed, as if he’d beaten someone.
“That’s Yamhill County,” Hershel said quietly.
“It’s beautiful.” It reminded her of pictures of the English countryside. Everything lush and vibrant even though it was nearly winter.
“If it was a clear day, you’d be able to see Mount Hood right there.” He pointed at the simple gray horizon. “It comes out when it feels like it.”
He’d pulled back onto the road, which wound down a steep hillside with tight switchback curves, through a nameless town three times the size of Hanley, and up another mountain. This one was cultivated and pristine. Signs advertised wineries along the well-maintained road. And Silvie marveled at the beautiful buildings and perfectly groomed grounds of these establishments. Erath, Rex Hill, Alloro. The names were as exotic as the bright flowers that lined their entries, so unexpected in this late month.
“These look expensive,” she said, hoping he didn’t plan to take her inside one of these luxurious places with wrought-iron gates and cobblestoned driveways. She thought of the wine tasters she’d served that afternoon, with their crisp new jeans and turtleneck sweaters. Their sparkling Mercedeses and Acuras, and their still-soft suede shoes. Armani sunglasses. White teeth. Perfectly trimmed hair. She didn’t belong.
Damaged Goods Page 13
