I watched him move away. Hatch and Macon stood together near the cash register, waiting for Nancy to take their money. My conversation with James hadn’t gone unnoticed, though both men made a big display of their disinterest. Rafer returned, entering the cafe without the technician, whom I assumed was busy at the cabin with his little brushes and powders. Rafer eased into the seat, saying, “Sorry about that. I told him we’d join him as soon as we finished here.”
When we reached the cabin after breakfast, the door was standing open. I could see smudges of powder along the outside edges of the sills. Rafer introduced me to the fingerprint technician, who rolled a set of my prints for elimination purposes. Later, he’d ink a set of Cecilia’s prints, along with the prints of any cleaning or maintenance workers. He could have saved himself the trouble. The cabin yielded nothing in the way of evidence: no useful prints on the window glass, nothing on the hardware, no footprints in the damp earth leading to or from the cabin.
The interior seemed dank, the bed still lumpy with the pillows I’d tucked under the pile of blankets. The place was drab. It was cold. The digital clock was blinking, which meant there’d been another power failure. The adrenaline had seeped slowly out of me like gray water down a clogged drain. I felt like crap. A rivulet of revulsion trickled over me and I was embarrassed anew at the inadequacies of my attempt to defend myself. Anxiety whispered at the base of my spine, a feathery reminder of how vulnerable I was. A memory burbled up. I was five years old again, bruised and bloodied after the wreck that killed my parents. I’d forgotten the physical pain because the wrenching emotional loss had always taken precedence.
While Rafer and the tech conferred outside, talking in low tones, I hauled out my duffel and began to pack my things. I went into the bathroom, gathered up my toiletries, and tossed them in the bottom of the bag. I didn’t hear Rafer come in, but I was suddenly aware of him standing in the doorway. “You’re taking off?” he asked.
“I’d be crazy to stay here.”
“I agree with you on that, but I didn’t think you were finished with your investigation.”
“That remains to be seen.”
His gaze rested on me with concern. “You want to talk?”
I looked up at him. “About what? This is a simple job to me, not some moral imperative. I’m getting paid for a piece of work. I guess I have my limits on that score.”
“You’re going to quit?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ll talk to Selma first and thenwe’ll see where we go from here.”
“Look, I can see you’re upset. I’d offer you protection, but I don’t have a deputy to spare. We operate on a shoestring-”
“I appreciate the sentiment. I’ll let you know what I decide.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to have help. You know anybody who could pitch in on personal security?”
“Oh, please. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t do that. This is strictly my problem and I’ll handle it,” I said. “Trust me, I’m not being pig-headed or proud. I hired a bodyguard once before, but this is different.”
“How so?”
“If that guy meant to kill me, he’d have done it last night.”
“Listen, I’ve been beat up in my day and I know what it can do to you. Screws your head up. You lose your confidence. It’s like riding a horse-”
“No, it’s not! I’ve been beaten up before-” I raised a hand, stopping myself with a shake of my head. “Sorry. I didn’t meant to snap at you. I know you mean well, but this is mine to deal to spend another minute in this godforsaken place.”
“Well,” he said, infusing the single syllable with skepticism. He paused, silent, hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. I zipped the duffel, picked up my jacket and my handbag, looking around the cabin. The table was stilled littered with my papers and I’d forgotten about the Smith-Carona, still sitting in it’s place with the lid half closed. I snapped the cover into place and stuffed papers into a manila envelope that i shoved into an outer pocket of the duffel. Using my left hand, I lifted the typewriter case. “Thanks for the ride and thanks for breakfast.”
“I have to get on in to work, but you let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
:You can carry this,” I said, passing him the typewriter. He did me one better, carrying both the duffel and the Smith-Corona as he escorted me to the car. I waited until he pulled away and then I headed for the office and stuck my head into the door. There was no sign of of Cecilia. The usual table lamp was still on, but her door was shut and I imagined her catching up on the sleep she’d lost taking me to the emergency room. I got into my car and pulled out of the parking lot, turning left onto 395.
I kept an eye on the odometer, clocking off a mile and then began to look for the spot where Tom’s truck had been parked the night he died. As Tennyson indicated, it wasn’t hard to find. Two massive boulders and a towering pine tree with the top missing. I could see the raw white inner wood where the lightning had slashed away at the trunk.
I eased over onto the berm and parked. I got out of the car, draping my heavy leather jacket across my shoulders. There was no traffic at this hour and the morning air was silent. The sky was massed with dark gray, the mountains obscured by mist. Snow had begun to fall; big lacy flakes that settled on my face like a series of kisses. For a moment, I leaned my head back and let the snow touch my tongue.
There was, of course, no remaining trace of vehicles having been parked here six weeks before. If the truck, Tennyson’s patrol car, and the ambulance had chewed up the soil and gravel along the shoulder, nature had come afterward and smoothed away any suggestion of events. I did a grid search, my gaze fixed on the barren ground as I walked a linear pattern. I imagined Tom in his pickup, the pain like a knife wedged between his shoulder blades. Nausea, clamminess, the chill sweat of Death forcing him to concentrate. For the time being, I set aside the image of the woman walking down the road. For all I knew, she was a figment of James Tennyson’s imagination, some piece of misdirection designed to throw me off. In any investigation, you have to be careful about accepting information without a touch of skepticism. I wasn’t sure of his motivation. Maybe, as implied, he was just a genuinely helpful guy who took his job seriously and wanted to apprise me of his recollection. What interested me here was the possibility that Tom had dropped his notebook out the window, or that he’d somehow destroyed the contents in the final moments of his life.
I covered every inch of ground within a radius of a hundred feet. There was no notebook, no pages fluttering in the breeze, no confetti of torn paper, no nook or cranny into which such detritus might have been secreted. I kicked over rocks and dead leaves, set aside fallen branches and dug into crusty patches of snow. It was hard to believe Tom had dragged himself out here to take care of such business. I was operating on the assumption that his field notes were sensitive and that he’d made some effort to secure the confidentiality of the contents. Then again, perhaps not. The notes might not have been relevant.
I returned to my car and turned the key in the ignition, not without struggle. The tape on my right hand made everything slightly awkward and I suspected that the compensatory effort over the next couple of days was going to wear me down. While the injury wasn’t major, it was annoying and inconvenient, a constant reminder that I’d suffered at someone’s hands. I did a U-turn onto the highway and headed back to Selma’s. By ten A.M., I was on the road for home.
TWELVE
Shortly after leaving Nota Lake, I’d thought I caught a glimpse of a county sheriff’s cruiser keeping me company from half a mile back. The car was too far away to identify the driver, but the effect was to make me feel I was being ushered across the county line. I kept my eye on the rearview mirror, but the black-and-white maintained a discreet distance. When we reached the junction of 395 and 168, a road sign indicated that it was five miles to Whirly Township, seven miles to Rudd. The patrol car turned off. Whether the escort was deliberate or coincidental, I couldn’t be sure. Nor could I determine whether the intention was benign or belligerent. Earlene’s husband, Wayne, was the deputy who worked in Whirly Township, so maybe it was only him on his way to :work.