Part 4 (1/2)

”Good. Not our problem.”

”We got enough of our own.”

”Yep.”

The men chuckled, and now it shrank to a sliver, the wedge of ice in Agent Crane's gut. Later, after a greasy dinner at the Rattlesnake Prairie truck stop, they checked into a no-tell motel, left a 5am wakeup call with the night clerk.

Crane donned his bifocals and burned the midnight oil, scanning a briefcase load of papers, including geological surveys on the substrata of the Wenatchee Valley region and a corresponding environmental report doc.u.menting its effects on the local ecosystems. Then there was the twenty-page compilation of homicide, a.s.sault and missing persons statistics. This latter read like a segment from the Detroit Free Press crime insert rather than the description of an agrarian county populated by vineyards, orchards and farms. Eventually he switched off the bedside lamp, sat against the wall, sipping bottled water. Barton snored across the room. Agent Crane couldn't banish Plimpton's red mouth from his mind. Freezing rain pelted the roof. The wind returned, hungry. The tall lamp in the parking lot emitted a cheerless glow and at some point it wavered and snuffed like a blown candle.

Black.

Right before Agent Crane went down for the count, the night terrors of childhood rushed over his skin and paralyzed him on the cheap bed in the unlit room. A door squeaked softly as it swung to and fro, to and fro, and stopped. The blinds s.h.i.+vered as if beneath the faintest stir of breath. He was a child in dread of the yawning closet door, a grown man pinioned to a bed, a federal agent leaning over a dying man in a rundown farmhouse, and his personal gloaming approached from all points at once.

Plimpton whispered, They Who Wait love you, Tommy.

Agent Crane inhaled to scream, but the blood was already pouring in.

CHAPTER THREE.

The Rabbits Running in the Ditch (Now) Autumn was around the corner after a scorching summer. Of late, the days remained dry and hot, while evenings saw starry skies and crisp temperatures. Don wandered to the yard some evenings and watched the star fields blink and burn, his heart filled with a profound sense of disquiet he couldn't identify. The cold impa.s.sive stars didn't bother him so much as the gaps between them did. He was old, though. Old and unsteady in mind and body. A real flakey dude, according to his loving wife.

The feeling was always gone by morning.

During the last official week of summer, he dusted off his beloved 1968 Firebird and squired Mich.e.l.le into town for dinner and drinks as an early sixtieth anniversary present. Don had booked reservations at the Inn of Old Wales, a traditional Welsh pub and restaurant incongruously transplanted inside a refurbished Spanish mission, half an hour from their farmhouse in the Waddell Valley. Due to a combination of circ.u.mstances and her reticence to appear anywhere within a thousand yards of a tavern, this was but the second occasion he'd managed to drag her to the inn.

It was a now or never sort of proposition. The twins would arrive for an impromptu vacation in the morning: Kurt and his new wife, the princess from Hong Kong; and Holly with a girlfriend who accompanied her every summer on various adventures. Next week, Don was scheduled to moderate lectures regarding the Cryptozoic Geomorphology exhibit at the Redfield Memorial Museum of Natural History, and Mich.e.l.le would leave for an anthropology summit in Turkey, the latest destination of her annual Eastern pilgrimage. Don wished like h.e.l.l he could hop a ride with his wife; he dreaded moderating the panel of stuffed-s.h.i.+rt academic rivals, all of them with axes to grind and scores to settle, before an audience of, well, dozens, if one included the light and sound technicians, the caterers and custodians.

Don and Mich.e.l.le took the impending hubbub in stride. Theirs were lives characterized by steady, placid routine, punctuated with moments of absolute anarchy. Hers was a formidable presence in the field of comparative anthropology, due in part to no mean skill at writing brilliantly flamboyant papers and securing lucrative grants through savvy and guile. Her detractors grumbled that she wasn't likely to depart the game unless it was feet first, and probably in the belly of an anaconda, or after succ.u.mbing to some dreadful foreign scourge such as malaria. Meanwhile, Don served the Evergreen State University as a geophysics professor emeritus.

The drive went pleasantly enough, even if the Firebird's brakes were tight and Don tended to overcorrect on the bends-he'd packed the beast away a decade past and only fired it up for a yearly shakedown cruise. His wife preferred he stuck to the Volvo or their minivan, especially now that he wore thick gla.s.ses and his reflexes were nearly shot to pieces and he tended to forget things, although that part had gone on for several decades, at least. She claimed it was against her policy to ride around in a muscle car with a octogenarian at the wheel.

We must hurry, my sweet, or the Grand Prix shall start without us, he'd said when he zoomed up to the front door. She frowned in dismay at his prescription sungla.s.ses, driving gloves, and the checkered scarf wrapped around his neck-which he'd worn just to get her goat. Don eventually coaxed Mich.e.l.le into the car by champing a rose in his teeth and patting the pa.s.senger seat. Oh, you old fool, she said, t.i.ttering into her hand.

They crossed into Olympia under orange skies, and followed potholed avenues through historic neighborhoods, winding serpentine along the ridges; then, racing between the majestic shadows of one-hundred-twenty-year-old maples. The road continued until the coastline curved and separated from the city proper.

Mich.e.l.le gasped happily when the inn hove into view atop a bald crest several switchbacks above their rapidly moving car. ”Oh, my-I'd forgotten how lovely it is.” Her sungla.s.ses reflected the fires of sunset. She wore a kerchief and bonnet like Vivian Leigh.

He cast sneaking glances at her, admiring the exquisite beauty she'd matured into, feeling a pang of l.u.s.t that he hadn't shaken since their first date, the first time she'd lifted her dress and wrapped her powerful legs around his waist-and he belayed that line of thought immediately lest they fly off the road into a ditch due to his amorous distraction.

At eighty-two and a half, Mich.e.l.le conceded to a solitary vanity: her long, dark hair had bleached dead white and she preferred to disguise that fact in public. The scars, on the other hand, didn't affect her self-confidence. Her face and torso bore marks from injuries suffered during a jeep wreck. Years and years ago, while on an expedition into the heart of Siberia, her driver flipped their vehicle on a muddy road in the foothills two hundred miles from the nearest town. She'd nearly died on the forty-hour trip to the hospital and no amount of surgery ever disguised the disfigurement-a jagged, white valley that slashed from her left temple, across her breast and arced to its terminus at her hip bone. Don was consulting a mining firm in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula and didn't receive news of the accident and Mich.e.l.le's brush with death for nearly a week. Yet another hazy interlude of his past that he'd resigned himself to never fully recollecting. Perhaps it was better to forget.

Don smiled at Mich.e.l.le to disperse his sentimental melancholy and talked about their destination. He'd been meeting Argyle Arden, Robby Gold and Turk Standish and the rest of the boys here for fifteen years to drink and play at darts. In 1911, the mission had been transported, brick by brick, from San Francisco and rea.s.sembled at its current perch above the Olympia Harbor. It was soon converted to a Roman Catholic priory at the behest of local founding father and resident eccentric, Murray Blanchard III.

The building changed hands numerous times during the Depression, and again after the turmoil of the '40s and then sat vacant until 1975 when Earlagh Teague bought it from the city for a song. The Welshman, with the a.s.sistance of a dynamo wife and five doughty sons, transformed the relic into something of a monument; a cross between fine contemporary dining and old world hostelry. Inside, it was vaulted and airy. Balconies formed a wide crescent above the oak bar and the scatter of small dining tables and booths. The darts room lay beyond an arch just off the main gallery, sporting the requisite cork targets and a set of shopworn pool tables. There, a handful of bawdy old salts and genteel ruffians congregated daily, slugging beer and laying wagers on their shooting hands or whatever sporting event might be televised on the ancient black and white.

Miller, party of two, Don told the hostess, a mildly impatient girl with preternaturally rosy cheeks. She was new; staff came and went with regular frequency. They were escorted to a table on the northeast balcony with a lovely bay window view of the distant swath of darkening water and countryside. Tiny lights of sloops and barges bobbed on the harbor, glittered on the wooded hillsides where deep green gave way to streaks of red and gold, and approaching night.

They ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter lighted candles in elegant wrought iron sconces. A few couples drifted in, trailing murmurs of conversation and laughter. Finely dressed seniors; the men wore oversized watches and crisp silk ties; the women were decked in stately dresses, feathered hats and pearl necklaces; and everybody's dentures snowy white and aglow with petroleum jelly. Below, on a small dais, a white-bearded fiddler in a plaid jacket and a bowler tuned his instrument and began a Celtic jig. Mich.e.l.le sipped her wine. She studied the pennants and heraldic s.h.i.+elds, and the stained gla.s.s mosaic of Mary that reflected its colors across nearby tables.

Don adored his wife; her radiant joy warmed him more thoroughly than the half bottle of Merlot had. At moments like these, the wrinkles and seams smoothed away, she very much resembled the baby-faced bride he'd whisked off to that quaint resort in Maui for their honeymoon. It boggled him Truman manned the Oval Office while they spent the last of their meager savings on two hedonistic weeks of sun, surf and s.e.x.

Dinner came and went, and most of the wine too. For dessert, the staff lugged in a six-layer chocolate cake, and, on a silver platter, the imperiously decorous headwaiter presented Mich.e.l.le with a platinum chain in a mother of pearl box. Don secretly ordered the gift at Malloy Jewelers some months prior to this joyous event. Mich.e.l.le dangled the chain in the candlelight, cheeks flushed, lips quivering, and burst into tears. She buried her neatly coiffed head between her forearms.

”I'm just glad I've still got what it takes to make you happy after all these years,” Don said drolly. He quaffed the remainder of his gla.s.s. Mich.e.l.le's shoulders shook harder. Her answer was m.u.f.fled by her arms and when Don said, ”What's that, dear?” she raised her mascara-streaked face and sobbed, ”I am happy, d.a.m.n it!” He considered this development and poured another gla.s.s for both of them. Silence is indeed golden, my boy, his grandfather had often muttered as a piece of advice gleaned from a long, rocky marriage to a woman vastly more temperamental than Mich.e.l.le. Dear old Grandma. She'd been a case to the end, G.o.d love her.

Mich.e.l.le s.n.a.t.c.hed a hanky from her purse and bolted for the ladies room. Don noted she'd taken the chain with her, which was a good sign. He hoped. Mich.e.l.le didn't cry often-she'd never been an overly emotional girl. She claimed high pa.s.sion dangerous to people in her profession, especially afield. Peruvian Bushmen and New Guinea headhunters weren't impressed by weepy foreign broads.

Don gazed out the window, down into the parking lot, and noticed a couple of people lurking near his car. For a moment he stared, bemused, leaning sideways in his seat, the gla.s.s halfway to his lips. The parking lot was rather cramped, and populated by perhaps a dozen vehicles. The sodium lamp had fizzed to life, thus he easily discerned the dark figures on the pa.s.senger side. He hesitated, wondering if they might belong to the Studebaker parked two slots over; but no, the shadowy fellows were quite plainly crouched to get a better look at the interior, and gads! had the Firebird slightly rocked, an unmistakable precursor to the door or window being jimmied?

”Well, good luck, mate,” said an elderly gentleman in a leisure suit and bowtie. He patted Don on the shoulder in pa.s.sing. The man's companion, a handsome woman with tall, burnished hair, smiled at Don. You pathetic lout, her cold, pitying expression seemed to say.

”Eh?” He groped for understanding of this exchange, and then realized they thought Mich.e.l.le had fled their romantic dinner due to some churlishness on his part. ”Er, yes, thank you.” He quickly checked the lot again and caught not one, but four mysterious figures skulking away into the deeper shadows-and they hadn't been crouching; they were kids. A gaggle of miscreant children, he realized. Brazen hooligans having a last bash before summer vacation came to a cras.h.i.+ng halt and they went swept into the loving arms of the public education system. Their handiwork was everywhere these days; the downtown bus terminal vandalized with graffiti and broken windows, shattered street lamps and mangled mailboxes. Luckily, the blinking red dash light of the alarm system was sufficient to deter would-be scoundrels.

”Honey, look who I found,” Mich.e.l.le said. Her face scrubbed and cheerful in a runner-up at the beauty pageant kind of way; the chain gleamed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She stood arm-in-arm with a matronly woman Don vaguely recognized. What was her name? He racked his brain while Mich.e.l.le smiled expectantly and her friend waited with the blandly uncomfortable expression of a confirmed stoic. ”You remember Celeste, don't you, dear? We worked in Alaska on the Tlingit cultural study in '86. Her husband's Rudy Hannah. Rudy Hannah? Lead occupational therapist for North Thurston Public Schools.”

”Why, of course,” Don said, not remembering anything of the sort, although it sounded right. Another example of the white gaps in his mind. Now that he was old enough to be entombed in a pyramid, everyone wrote his lapses off as incipient dementia-during middle-age his distaff students thought his stammering and stuttering to retrieve an elementary fact or quote, or his constant neglect of personal grooming, or his tendency to misplace his gla.s.ses and notes, were endearing qualities. In his prime as a spelunking, devil-may-care geologist, that stuff had made his friends and colleagues very nervous. It used to make Don nervous as well, but he'd learned to adjust. No other choice besides madness.

As for this vaguely familiar Celeste person, he gave himself a pa.s.s. His wife was a popular lady; from Was.h.i.+ngton to Beijing, her a.s.sociates were legion. ”Hullo, um, Celeste. A pleasure.” He rose and pecked the woman's hand, surrept.i.tiously checking the window in the process. Mr. Bowtie and his big-haired wife were slamming the doors of the Studebaker. When he looked up, Mich.e.l.le pretended not to be annoyed, and Celeste gave her a patently fake smile, a perfunctory gesture of civility. We both know your husband's an a.s.s. She might as well have rolled her eyes. Don had that effect on women. Invariably, and despite his best efforts at urbanity and charm, they sniffed out his essential oafishness, or so he'd come to believe. There were worse curses. Mich.e.l.le put up with his occasional bouts of idiocy and that paid for all.

”I asked Celeste to join us. Look, Celeste, there's an extra chair at that table.” Before Don could open his mouth to express an opinion one way or another, they were all cozy and ordering another bottle of wine. Don listened to them chatter and considered asking where Rudy might be, and decided against it. One never knew when one might be setting foot in a bear trap. He smiled aimlessly when the cone of conversation turned his direction; otherwise his mind wandered.

He eventually stood and walked to the landing, ostensibly to stretch his aching back. He flagged the next waiter, a tall kid named Roy Lee, according to his tag. Don requested he compliment the chef, and also, management might wish to know some local kids were scoping the parking lot.

The waiter nodded. ”Yes, thank you, sir; I'll relay your concerns to my supervisor.” He lowered his voice in a gesture of sincerest confidentiality and said, ”One of the girls chased them out of the ladies room earlier. I guess they were vandalizing the stalls. We don't get this sort of thing too often. Middle school pranksters, I'd wager.”

”Heavens! You alerted the authorities, I presume...”

”We don't like to disturb our guests. Besides, Marie never really got a close enough look to identify them.” Roy seemed embarra.s.sed. ”I think they scared her. She won't talk about it.”

”Really?” Don said. ”That's despicable. Poor girl.”

”Yeah, she's rattled. I hope you don't mind me saying I'd like to thrash those little punks if they threatened her.” He cracked his knuckles.

”I understand,” Don said. ”Thank you again.”

Roy shook it off and his mask of obsequiousness snapped in place. ”By all means, sir.”

On the way home, he said to Mich.e.l.le, ”What did Celeste say about Istanbul?” They'd exited the well-lit city streets and were zipping along stretches of pasture broken by hills and copses of old-growth trees. He kept his eyes glued to the road, alert for deer. Clouds crept in during supper and it was black as a mine shaft. The radio was down so low it might as well have been off. She didn't care for music anymore unless it was tribal or certain strains of Bronze Age Korean court music.

”Oh? She asked if I'd packed for the trip yet. She procrastinates-like you.”

”I don't procrastinate. She's going too, eh?”

”Every year, dear.” Her face was slack from too much wine, and slightly green in the eerie dashboard glow. She slurred ever so faintly when she said, ”Me an' Barbara, an' Lynne-”

”Lynne Victory? Oh, man alive. She's a looker.”