County Line (43 page)

“I’m the one who called.”

He looks me over, and I wish I’d bothered to put on clean clothes this morning. His eyes linger on my neck. “I’ve already been up to the house, sir. No one is home.”

“They must have taken her.”

“Taken who?”

“My friend—Ruby Jane Whittaker. She’s Bella Denlinger’s daughter.”

He studies me. “I did a walk-around. No evidence of trouble.”

“What about Taya?”

“Taya who?”

“I don’t know. She’s Bella’s aid or whatever. Since her stroke.”

“I wasn’t aware Miss Denlinger was sick.”

“Do you know her?”

“To say hi at the farmer’s market. I don’t know anyone named Taya though.” He shrugs. “We get lots of visitors to the island.”

“She said she’s local.”

He shrugs again. “No one is home, sir.”

“What about the car, my friend’s Toyota? She never would have abandoned it.”

“What do you think happened?”

I take a breath, try to explain things to him. I can sense his impatience, but after I run through the highlights—Chase Fairweather, two hit-and-runs—he makes a few notes. I describe Ruby Jane and her relationship to Bella Denlinger. I also give him Susan’s name and number and suggest he call her. He nods. “Wait here.” He goes to his car and gets behind the wheel. I can see him on a cell phone. After a few minutes, he returns.

“Where are you staying?”

“Did you talk to Lieutenant Mulvaney?”

“Someone will call her. Where are you staying?”

“The Orcas Hotel.”

“Nice place, isn’t it?”

I run my hands through my hair and resist the urge to scream. He frowns.

“I’ll take a look at the car, but you need to understand that most likely your friend thought she found a handy spot to park. She shouldn’t have left her car there though. It’ll get towed.”

“She didn’t leave it there.”

“Go back to the hotel. Someone will be in touch.”

“That’s it?”

He’s getting annoyed. “Sir, we’ll check this out. Relax. Go have a scone or something.”

He waits until I get into the Gremlin, then follows me to Orcas Road. I turn left toward the ferry but he goes right, giving lie to his assurance he’d investigate Ruby Jane’s car. As soon as he drives out of sight, I turn back.

I leave the car at the foot of the driveway. An eagle circles above the ridge against sapphire sky criss-crossed by pillowy contrails. I walk along the lodgepole fence. The wood is smooth and warm under my hand. There’s no sign of Ringo. The pasture connects to the stable via a broad chute. A wide door in the near end of the structure stands open. Perhaps he’s inside.

Swallows dart through the field as I approach the house. The curtains in every window are closed. The place exudes a quiet emptiness. I climb the steps. The two iced tea glasses remain on the wicker table where Pete and I left them. A dead yellow jacket floats in one. I look through leaded-glass panes in the front door, but all I can see is the darkened foyer.

I return to the driveway and head around the side of the house. The L-shaped stable stands in the far left corner of the deep yard. The driveway stops at a pair of garage doors in the short arm of the L at the rear. Beside the drive, a wide lawn stretches from the house to the trees below the bluff. Another outbuilding sits on the right side of the lawn: a small, cedar-sided shed with a bare-earthed pen on one side and a fallow garden on the other. Weeds and a few volunteers—tomatoes and stunted peas—push up through layers of composting straw covering the broad plot.

The back of the house is as dead as the front. The curtains hang motionless in the windows. I look through the glass door onto an enclosed back porch, but see nothing unusual. A row of rubber boots lined up beside the back door, rain gear on hooks above. A pair of binoculars rests on the sill of one of the porch windows near a round table and a pair of wooden chairs. I rattle the handle, but the door is latched. I decide to check the outbuildings before I resort to breaking-and-entering.

The grass is soft and mossy under my feet. Inside the shed, the concrete floor is swept, the air dry and stale. Double doors lead to the pen at the side. The walls are hung with shears and steel combs. There are wooden racks along the back, like newspaper racks at a library, and an old-fashioned spinning wheel next to a modern stenographer’s chair. The space is tidy, but disused—a layer of dust coats every surface. I close the door and cross back to the stable.

The long arm of the barn red structure has a row of Dutch stall doors facing the driveway, all shut. I start with the short arm, raise the nearer of the two garage doors. It rattles and shrieks on its tracks. I expect the arrival of stormtroopers to investigate.

No one comes.

A battered Ford pickup with a fiberglass truck cap is parked next to a huge riding mower with a rototiller attachment. Rakes and shovels hang from the rear wall next to a work bench with a peg board above it. Hand tools and containers of screws, nails, nuts and bolts. Like the shed, everything is tidy and in its place—and long idle. For a moment I recall Ray Malo’s perfect house, then pass behind the truck to the bulkhead wall which separates the garage from the stable.

A wide ladder climbs up to a hayloft, but I’m more interested in the shuffling sound I hear coming through a wide opening in the bulkhead. The opening is barred by a length of rope stretched about waist high. I stoop under the rope into a long room with stalls on the left and an open space on the right. Light streams in through the doorway at the far end and filters between the gaps in the Dutch stall doors. The rear walls, not visible from the house or driveway, are hinged in segments at the top and tilted open to form a kind of open breezeway, not unlike a carport. The lodgepole fence extends up from the pasture and continues behind the building and out of sight. The floor is gravel, not the concrete I expected.

About halfway up, Ringo noses around in one of the stalls. He raises his head, then clops toward me, a redolent aroma two steps ahead of him. I freeze, but his movement isn’t threatening. He stops to nuzzle my outstretched hand. His lips feel like dry, prehensile leather. When he looks up, his eyes seem disappointed I have nothing to offer. He moves into the stall nearest me and noses the empty water trough. I watch until he lifts his head up and stares at me. There’s a spigot at the end of the trough. I step into the stall, plug the trough drain with a rubber stopper suspended on a chain, and turn on the water.

He’s drinking before the flow has barely covered the bottom of the trough, slurping like a clogged drain clearing. I leave the spigot open until the trough is nearly full. Ringo inhales water for another minute or so. When he lifts his head, the water streams off his cheeks and down the matted wool of his neck. I raise my hand and he nuzzles it again, then moves past me out of the stall. I follow, leaving the gate open so he can return for a drink later. He moves toward the doorway, pausing next to a stall further up. He peers through the gate for a long moment, then back my way before trotting out into the sunlight and out of view.

The space smells of hay and old dung, an earthy scent not altogether unpleasant. There’s something else as well; a faint trace of underlying foulness stings my sinuses. Flies buzz between the light fixtures on the plank ceiling. I find myself holding my breath as I move toward the far end. Each stall bare, the troughs and hay boxes empty. Taya said Bella had sold most of her stock. Only Ringo remains. I wonder when he was last fed.

As I near the far end, the foul smell grows stronger, a sweet and sour rot. I hesitate, and put my hand into my pocket to grip my cell phone. There are only a couple of stalls left, but I already know the one Ringo paused near isn’t empty. My feet scrape on gravel. The stall gate hangs partway open. At first, all I can see are flies contending over a shapeless lump on the floor. I stagger back as the lump snaps into focus and the full force of the rotten stench hits me.

A woman with long grey hair and arthritic claws for hands lies in a twisted heap on the gravel floor, a puppet dropped and forgotten. I see no obvious injury, though I’m not interested in a detailed forensic examination. She appears to have been dead a while, a week or more. I back away from the stall, stumble out the door into the open air.

Something hard slams into the crease between my neck and shoulder. Pain shoots down my spine. My legs crumple. I try to catch myself, but another blow lands between my shoulder blades, then a boot drives up into my belly. The twin barrels of a shotgun flash in the corner of my eye as vomit spurts from my mouth onto the dusty ground. A shadow passes over me.

“Soon as he’s done puking, toss him in with the other one.”

- 50 -

Shotgun Speaks Loud Enough

I’m not sure who I feel worse for: the woman I assume was Bella Denlinger, or Ringo the friendly alpaca. In my experience, only humans and other scavengers will linger in the presence of death—except in most dire need. The poor beast must have been desperate for water. By the time I raise my head, Ringo is down at the bottom of the pasture nosing a cluster of blue-eyed Mary.

I feel empty, and not just because my stomach contents are soaking into the dry ground. I’ve been late from the start. Late returning from my so-called retreat, late reaching Jimmie Whitacre. Late finding Ruby Jane on Preble County Line Road. I was too slow to catch her when she ran from the hospital. I missed her coming off the ferry. Discovered her dead mother only in time to have my guts kicked out of me by the tall, lean figure I last saw in Portland. If he’s here now, I’m too late to help Ruby Jane.

He’s shed layers down to a denim shirt over a white tee, jeans and Doc Martens. His brown hair hangs in shaggy clumps, as if he went after his own scalp with a set of Bella’s shears. I can’t see a trace of his mother in his lean, boyish face, except perhaps in the blue of his eyes.

Taya stands nearby, holding her own shotgun, watching Ringo—she’s only halfway here. The kid’s lips pull back, revealing straight white teeth.

“You’re Biddy Denlinger.”

“It doesn’t matter who I am.”

“The police know I’m here.” The words taste foolish in my mouth.

“We saw the deputy. I didn’t get the idea he left with any reason to come back.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t check the barn.”

He rams the gun stock into the meat above my collarbone. As I gasp, he pulls the cell phone from my pocket. “You’re lucky you’re not with her.”

Beside him, Taya flinches. He turns to her. “Take him up. I’ll be right there.” He gestures with the shotgun, then tucks the stock under his arm. It’s a double-barrel side-by-side with external hammers. Old enough I wouldn’t be surprised if it first saw use on a stagecoach a century earlier.

When I meet Taya’s gaze, she turns away. “Come on.” Her weapon is newer, a weighty single-barreled twenty-gauge. It may lack the punch of the twelve-gauge monster in Biddy’s hands, but at this range, it’s enough. She points toward the far end of the garage. I get to my feet and hobble across the driveway. Taya’s footsteps behind me sound like the popping of small caliber arms fire.

Beyond the garage, the yard opens into a broad fan-shape with trees to either side and the bluff ahead. Thirty paces away at the edge of another fenced pasture, there’s a weathered grey shack flanked by a pair of Norway maples. “Over there.” The nose of Pete’s baby pickup is visible from behind the shack. The air cools noticeably when we move into the shadow of the trees. I can smell vomit. The scent moves with me onto the low, plank porch of the shack.

“Could I have some water?”

Taya shakes her head and gestures with the gun barrel. The door barred by a two-by-four. As I lift it free of the brackets, I contemplate its concussive effect on Taya’s forearm just above the wrist. Hard to fire a shotgun with a snapped radius and ulna. But when I turn, Biddy is approaching from around the garage. I prop the board against the wall and pull the door open.

The interior is dim and dusty. One room, with a pot belly stove and a plywood counter in the back. There’s a deep basin sink in one end of the counter. The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling is off, as is the old lamp on the table under the lone window.

Pete lies on a cot against the side wall. He’s not gagged, which surprises me until I realize he’s unconscious. I move closer. His mouth is bruised, and threads of dried blood run from his split lip and nose. There’s a red welt above his left eye. The orbit is swollen and bleeding. His hands and feet are bound with clothesline. Only the ragged sound of his breathing offers any reassurance.