by Kathy Reichs
He wrote that he was discouraged, homesick, and missed my company. The tenor was so heartbreaking, it drilled a hole through my sternum.
But Ryan’s message wasn’t as sad as the one penned by Harry. Recently, my sister and I had received shocking news not dissimilar from that which had altered Ryan’s world.
Harry’s son, Kit, had fathered a child the summer he was sixteen and in Cape Cod at sailing camp. For reasons that would forever remain a mystery, the child’s mother, Coleen Brennan, of an unrelated branch of the clan, had not disclosed to her summer love that he had a daughter.
Victoria “Tory” Brennan was now fourteen. Upon the sudden death of Coleen, Tory had relocated from Massachusetts and was now living with Kit in Charleston.
Harry had a granddaughter. I had a grandniece.
Harry was furious about all the lost years. And despondent over the fact that Kit, wanting to give Tory time to adjust, wouldn’t yet allow his mother to visit.
I was dialing Harry’s number when the front bell chimed. Thinking it was Galimore, I put down the handset and went to the door.
It wasn’t my worst nightmare.
But it was close.
PETE AND SUMMER WERE STANDING CLOSE BUT NOT TOUCHING. Both looked tense, like people waiting in line. Summer held a Nieman Marcus bag by its string handle.
Pasting on a faux smile, I opened the door. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Summer looked like the question stumped her.
“You sure you want to do this?” Pete sounded uncomfortable.
“Sure.” Oh, no. “Come on in.”
Pete was wearing flip-flops, khaki shorts, and a Carmel Country Club golf shirt. Summer had on wedge sandals, a silk tank, and designer camouflage pants that would have unnerved Patton.
Summer swanned straight to the dining room and parked the bag on the table. Pete and I followed.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked. Cyanide and Kool-Aid?
“Merlot would be nice if—”
“We won’t be here that long.” Pete shot me an apologetic grin. “I know you have more important things on your mind.”
“See, Petey. That’s your problem. Our wedding is important. What could be more important?”
Finding a cure for AIDS?
Summer began lifting items from the bag and organizing them into clusters. Napkins. Swatches of fabric. Silver picture frames. A glass container that looked like a giant lab flask.
“Now. The tablecloths will be ecru. The centerpieces will be made up of roses and lilies arranged in these vases.” A cherry-red nail ticked the flask. “These are the napkin possibilities.”
She fanned out the stack. The choices included pink, brown, silver, green, black, and a shade that I took to be ecru.
“And these are the options for the fabric that will drape each chair back.”
She arranged the swatches side by side below the lucky napkin finalists. Over her back, Pete’s eyes met mine.
I crooked a brow. Seriously?
He mouthed, “I owe you.”
Oh, yeah.
Summer straightened. “So. What do you think?”
You don’t have the sense God gave a corn muffin.
“Wow,” I said. “You’ve done a lot of work.”
“Indeed I have.” Summer beamed a smile that could have sold a million tubes of Crest.
How to maneuver the minefield?
Psychology. No chance muffin brain would catch on.
“How would you describe the floral arrangements?” I asked.
“Kind of pink and yellow. But very understated.”
“So you want simple.”
“But elegant. It has to make a statement.”
“Clearly green is out.”
“Clearly.”
As Summer snatched up the first reject, I raised my brows to Pete.
“Very funny,” he mouthed.
“Do you like a monochromatic look?”
Summer regarded me blankly.
“Things being the same color.”
“I like more punch. Ah. I see what y’all mean.”
The ecru napkin disappeared into the bag.
“Stark contrast?”
“Not so much.”
“Then black is probably wrong.”
“Totally.”
Black. Gone.
“An earthy look?”
“Not for summer.” She giggled. “Not me. The season.”
“Then forget brown.”
Gone.
That left silver and pink.
“Are you leaning toward one of the patterns?” I asked.
“I love this one.” She stroked a swatch with ghastly pink swirls on a cream background.
I remembered the outfit she’d worn on her last visit.
Bingo.
I laid the pink napkin artfully across the swirly swatch of fabric.
“Yes!” Summer clapped in glee. “Yes! Yes! I agree! See, Petey? You just have to use good taste.”
Petey held his applause.
“Now.” Summer arranged the four silver frames in a row. “Every place setting will have one of these. So the guests know where to sit. Then they keep it as their gift. Clever, right?”
“Um.”
“Which is your favorite?”
“They’re all very nice.”
As Summer pointed out the minutiae that set each frame apart, I noted that she took longer with one than the others.
“I like the dotted border,” I said.
“So do I! Tempe, we are so much alike, we could be sisters!”
Behind his fiancée’s back, Petey winced.
Summer was gathering her samples when my mobile sounded. Excusing myself, I stepped into the kitchen.
Area code 704. Charlotte. I didn’t recognize the number.
Preferring a sales pitch for funeral plans to further interaction with Bridezilla, I clicked on.
“Temperance Brennan?”
I heard a car horn in the background, suggesting the caller was outside.
“Yes.”
“The coroner?”
I felt my scalp tighten. “Who is this, please?”
“You got Eli Hand at the morgue.”
The voice was muffled, as though coming through a filter. I couldn’t tell if it was the same one that had uttered the menacing two-word voice mail.
“Who is this?”
I heard a click, then three beeps.
“Damn!”
“Everything OK?”
I whipped around.
Pete was watching me, his face tight with concern. I was so freaked I hadn’t heard him enter the kitchen.
“I”—I what?—“got an unexpected call.”
“Not bad news, I hope.”
“No. Just—” Adrenaline made it feel like crickets were trapped in my chest.
“Unexpected,” he finished for me.
“Yes.”
“You can remove the phone from your ear.”
“Right.”
“I want to thank you for”—Pete jabbed a thumb over one shoulder toward the dining room door—“that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“She’s really very bright.”
“You’ve got to have a penis to hold that view.”
Pete raised his brows.
I responded in kind.
“How’s Boyd?” I asked.
“Talks about you constantly.”
“I miss him.”
“And the Chow feels likewise. He’s crazy about you.”
“That dog is an excellent judge of character.”
“Recognizes rare qualities that others fail to appreciate.”
I’d no idea what to respond. So I said nothing.
Pete studied my face for so long, the moment grew awkward.
“Guess you should be moving along,” I said.
“Guess so.”
“I doubt you’ll be enjoying a chatty evening.” I smiled.
“Perhaps
not a bad thing.” Pete didn’t.
Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise? I knew Pete. And he sounded unhappy.
Back in the dining room, Summer had been joined by Birdie. The cat was on a chair, batting at a napkin she was dangling above him.
I narrowed my eyes at the little turncoat.
He gave me the cat equivalent of an innocent look.
“Good luck,” I said as they made their way down the front steps.
I meant it.
As soon as they’d gone, I phoned Larabee. He’d just returned home from a ten-mile run.
“Do we have someone at the morgue named Eli Hand?”
“Not to my knowledge. Who is he?”
I told him about the call.
For a full thirty seconds no one spoke.
“You don’t suppose—”
Larabee finished my sentence. “—it could be a tip about the landfill John Doe.”
“That was my first thought.”
“How do we find out about Hand?”
“Do you have contact information for Special Agent Williams?”
“Hold on.”
I heard a thunk. After a brief pause, Larabee returned and read off a number.
“You think Williams will know something?” he asked.
“I think he’ll know a lot.” “Keep me looped in.”
Williams answered on the second ring.
I identified myself.
If my call surprised him, he didn’t let on.
“Eli Hand,” I said.
The silence went on for so long, I thought we’d been disconnected.
“What are you asking me?” Williams’s tone was flinty.
“Was Eli Hand John-Doeing it at our morgue?”
“I can’t comment on that.”
“Why not?”
“Why are you asking about Eli Hand?”
“I got an anonymous tip.”
“From what source?”
“See, that’s the anonymous part.”
“How did you receive this tip?” Terse.
“On my mobile.”
“Was the phone able to capture the number?”
I gave it to him.
“Who is Eli Hand?”
“I’m not at liberty—”
“With or without any of that famous FBI cooperation, Dr. Larabee and I will find out who Eli Hand is. Or was. And we will find out if Hand turned up dead in a barrel of asphalt in the Morehead Road landfill. Should that prove to be the case, Detective Slidell will find out why.”
“Back the attitude down a notch.”
“Then give me some answers.”
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
Next I phoned Galimore.
Got no answer.
Between the anonymous threat, Summer’s idiocy and Pete’s gloominess, the call about Eli Hand, Williams’s arrogance, and Galimore’s disappearing act, sleep was elusive when I went to bed.
My mind kept juggling pieces, repositioning and twisting to make them interlock. Instead of answers, I ended up with the same questions.
I knew from Williams’s reaction that the landfill John Doe would turn out to be Eli Hand. Who was he? When had he died? Why did his body show signs of ricin poisoning?
Abrin was found in Wayne Gamble’s coffee. How had it gotten there? Surely Gamble had been murdered. By whom? Why?
Cale Lovette had associated with right-wing extremists. Had they helped him vanish? If so, how had he managed to skim under the radar all these years? Had they killed him?
Descriptions of Cindi Gamble did not jibe. Was she smart, with NASCAR potential, as Ethel Bradford, Lynn Nolan, and J. D. Danner suggested? Or dull, a poor driver, as Craig Bogan said? Was she in love with Cale Lovette? Or terrified of him?
Accounts given by Grady Winge and Eugene Fries disagreed. Was one of them simply in error? Was one of them lying? Why?
Had Owen Poteat actually seen Cale Lovette at the Charlotte airport ten days after he disappeared from the Speedway, or was this deliberate misinformation? If so, why? Had someone paid him? Who?
Ted Raines was still missing. Raines had access to ricin and abrin. Was Raines involved at all?
I kept trying to find a connection. Just one. That connection would lead to another, which would lead to another. Which would lead to answers long overdue.
When I finally drifted off, my rest was fitful. I woke repeatedly, then dozed, dreaming in unrelated vignettes.
Birdie, walking on a table set with glassware and swirly pink fabric. Galimore, driving a blue Mustang with a green sticker on the windshield. Ryan, waving at me from very far off. Slidell, talking to a man curled up in a barrel. Summer, teetering down a sidewalk in skyscraper heels.
When I last checked the clock, it was 4:23.
EXACTLY THREE HOURS LATER THE LANDLINE JOLTED ME AWAKE.
“You good?”
“I’m fine.”
“Last night turned ugly.” Galimore sounded like he’d logged less sleep than I had.
“I’m a big girl. I’m fine.”
“You hear back from that tool?”
“No. But I heard from someone else.”
I told him about the Eli Hand call and about my conversation with Williams.
“You’re going to stay put, like I said, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m waiting for a call from Oprah.”
“You should put together an act. Maybe take it on Comedy Central.”
“I’ll think about that.”
“But not today.”
“Not today.”
Galimore sighed in annoyance. “Do what you gotta do.”
“I will.”
I was making toast when the phone rang again.
“Williams here.”
“Brennan here.” Sleep deprivation also makes me flippant.
“The number you gave me traced to a pay phone at a Circle K on Old Charlotte Road in Concord.”
“So the caller could have been anyone.”
“We’re checking deeds for properties located within a half-mile radius.”
“That’s a long shot.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Eli Hand?”
“Due to your recent involvement in the situation, I’ve been authorized to share certain information with you and Dr. Larabee. May we meet this morning?”
“I can be at the MCME in thirty minutes.”
“We’ll see you then.”
It was take two of the previous day’s scene. Larabee was seated at his desk. The specials were side by side in chairs on the left, facing him. I was to their right.
Williams began without being asked.
“Do you remember Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh?”
Williams was asking about a 1980s Indian guru who moved several thousand followers onto a ranch in rural Wasco County, Oregon, and established a city called Rajneeshpuram. The group eventually took political control of the small nearby town of Antelope and renamed it Rajneesh.
Though initially friendly, the commune’s relations with the local populace soon soured. After being denied building permits for expansion of Rajneeshpuram, the commune leadership sought to gain political control by dominating the November 1984 county elections.
“The bhagwan and his crazies wanted to win judgeships on the Wasco County Circuit Court and elect the sheriff,” I said. “But they weren’t certain they could carry the day. So they poisoned restaurant salad bars with salmonella, hoping to incapacitate adverse voters.”
“Exactly,” Williams said. “Salmonella enterica was first delivered through glasses of water to two county commissioners and then, on a larger scale, to the salad bars. Seven hundred and fifty-one people got sick, forty-five of whom were hospitalized. The incident was the first and single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history.”
“I remember,” Larabee said. “They finally nailed the little creep right here in Charlotte. It was national news.”
Larabee was right. Back in the eighties, few in the country ha
d heard of a quiet southern city called Charlotte other than for its school integration and mandatory busing. The arrest conferred notoriety, and the citizenry got a kick out of it. We Bagged the Bhagwan T-shirts did a booming business.
“In 1985 a task force was formed, composed of members of the Oregon State Police and the FBI,” Williams continued. “When a search warrant was executed, a sample of bacteria matching the contaminant that had sickened the town residents was found in a Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory. Two commune officials were indicted. Both served time in a minimum-security federal prison.”
Williams looked pointedly at me. “A third disappeared.”
“Eli Hand,” I guessed.
Williams nodded.
“Hand was a twenty-year-old chemistry major at Oregon State University. In the spring of 1984 he fell under the influence of the bhagwan, dropped out of school, and moved to Rajneeshpuram.”
“Just months before the salad bars were spiked.”
“Hand was suspected of having helped orchestrate the poisonings. Following the bhagwan’s arrest and deportation, Hand left the commune.”
“And came east?”
“Yes. Convinced his spiritual master had been persecuted, Hand grew increasingly disillusioned with the government. He spent time in western Carolina, eventually joined a group of right-wingers called the Freedom Brigade. When that fell apart, he drifted to the Charlotte area, in time hooked up with J. D. Danner.”
“And his Patriot Posse.”
“Yes.”
“So the FBI had Hand under surveillance?” Larabee asked.
“We were tracking a lot of people back then. Intel had it that Hand and his buddies hid Eric Rudolph for a while.”
“Where is he now?” I knew the answer to that.
“Hand slipped off the grid in 2000.”
“You never found him again,” I said.
“No.”
“But now you have.”
Williams gave a tight nod. “An odontologist says it’s a match.”
That surprised me. “You found dental antemorts?”
“Hand’s mother still lives in Portland. Eli had an orthodontic evaluation when he was twelve. She still had the plaster casts and X-rays. The odont said it was enough for a positive.”
“Hand’s prints weren’t in the system?” Larabee asked.
“He’d never been arrested, served in the military, or held a job that required a security clearance.”
