The Rivers Run Dry (31 page)

“Claire. You called
Claire
?”

“Raleigh, I didn't want your mother waking up to some stranger in the house. And the cats, they were acting very weird. Claire knows animal CPR.”

“But Claire is here.”

“Yes, well . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What happened?”

“Well, your mother was very polite, talking with that Southern drawl, but she didn't mince words.”

“What did she say?”

“She told Claire to get the hell out of the house.”

I suddenly felt warm all over. My mother, my hero. “Did she wonder why Claire was there?”

“Yes. I had to lie. I said there'd been a break-in at the store, you were out of town for work again, and I needed to clean up the broken glass,” she said. “Then your mom kicked Claire out and she came down here. I was starting to worry you'd never wake up, stay in a coma the rest of your life. I even started to—well, never mind—you seem fine now. Just like your old self.”

I glanced out the window. The rolling topography of Capital Hill crossed under a sky so blue it was malachite. The autumn leaves glowed with a burnished beauty, and when I turned to Aunt Charlotte, staring into her familiar face, I suddenly remembered the dream, the dream interrupted by Claire's flat nasal voice talking about muffins.

I had been standing at the dry river rocks again, only this time my father was beside me, lifting a stone, speaking to me. I knew he was about to offer the key to unlock this vault of secrets, when I heard: “I couldn't find any organic.”

“I had a dream,” I told her. “Dad was in it. He was trying to tell me something.”

“Something like, wake up? I was meditating on that. I'll bet you were touched by my thoughts.”

“Aunt Charlotte, I keep having this same dream—”

“Dream!” Claire hurried back into the room. “Dream! You are not gonna believe the dream I had.”

I closed my eyes.

“That girl, Raleigh,” she was saying, “the one you're trying to find? She was in my dream. Know how I know?”

When I didn't reply, my aunt said, “How, Claire?”

“Because I saw a badger. That's right. I saw a huge badger. It was staring right at me. Foaming at the mouth. Like it had rabies. It was going to attack me, but I woke up.”

“Pity,” I mumbled.

“Claire,” my aunt said, while throwing me a scolding look, “did you find the nurse?”

“On her way. Raleigh, this badger was so real I could've touched it. Just like my vision about the place of fire. We are talking animal sacrifices here. Live creatures, getting thrown into the fire.”

“Would you just—” I began.

My aunt laid her hand on my arm. “Raleigh needs to rest.” She leaned down, kissing my forehead, a scent of patchouli clinging to her tunic.

The object in her left hand grazed my forearm. Perpendicular planes of pale crystals intersected to form a perfect cross. Staurolite. A mineral cross, Mother Nature's crucifix. My aunt had been praying.

I looked up at her. “Check on Mom?”

“First thing,” she said.

After they left, I waited for the nurse. After twenty minutes, I pressed the yellow call button on the steel bed rail. Ten minutes later, I pressed it again. After that, I pressed it at every count to sixty.

Seventeen minutes later, the nurse appeared.

She wore a white apron over her white uniform, her white wedge shoes squeaking across the polished floor. Reaching up behind me, she flicked off the call button.

“You only have to ring it once,” she said, brusquely. “What's the matter?”

“Why am I here?”

She stared at me. “What do you mean, why?”

“Is anything broken?”

She squeaked to the foot of the bed, lifting the electronic chart, tapping the LCD screen with a plastic stylus. Between stabs of the stylus, she pursed her thin lips. Her fingers carried no rings, no jewelry around her neck that said whether she belonged to somebody, anybody, and I imagined her going home at night, drained of good will. I took a deep breath, releasing it slowly.

“Multiple contusions, erratic heartbeat . . .” She looked up. “I don't see anything else, but the doctor can tell you more.”

“When does he come in?”

“She. Dr. Michaela Smith's on rounds today.”

“And when does Dr. Smith come in?”

“She's a doctor. They come when they feel like it.”

The nurse walked out of the room.

I counted to ten, then pulled the IV from the back of my left hand. The quarter-inch probe dripped clear liquid onto the white bed sheet, and I pressed my right index finger against the burning vein, staunching the blood flow. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My left ankle was mottled with purple bruises. So was the right one. But they didn't hurt, which told me I was fine or full of drugs.

I shuffled to the bathroom, feeling dizzy and nauseated, and found my clothes stuffed into two white plastic bags on a metal hook. My jeans were wet, the cuffs full of sandy soil and torn leaves, and my white socks were brown, cold, but my sweatshirt was almost dry.

I finger-combed my knotted hair, looking at myself in the mirror. Under the fluorescent light, my pupils waxed and waned. I splashed cold water on my face, then walked down the hall, feeling less dizzy but more nauseated. Nobody was at the nurse's station. I walked back to my room, sat on the bed, and pressed the call button six times.

When the nurse appeared again, standing in the door, her large face bore an expression of peevish offense. That was followed surprise.

“What do you think you're doing?” she said.

“I'm checking out.”

“You can't check out. The doctor has to check you out.”

“Will you call her, please?”

“No, I won't call her.”

My memory of last night was vague, but I recalled talking to someone who wasn't there. I presumed it was by cell phone. “I'd like to have my cell phone back, too, before I leave.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Who do you think you are?”

“Nobody. I just want to go home.”

“This is unacceptable, totally unacceptable. I'm calling the doctor.”

Funny how that worked, I thought, as she pivoted with a rubber squeak and left the room. I counted to fifteen, then walked down the hall in the opposite direction of the nurse's station, deciding that McLeod would have taken my cell phone, if I'd had one.

Although my vision was blurry, I squinted and saw the green exit signs for the stairwell. Following the stairs down to the lobby, I came out next to the gift shop. A bank of pay phones waited on the wall. I asked the operator to make a collect call, then heard the operator ask Lucia Lutini if she would accept the charges.

The operator thanked me for using AT&T.

“Raleigh, are you all right?” Lucia said.

“I'm fine. Can you pick me up?”

“They're releasing you?”

“Pretty much.”

In the background, I could hear a flurry of voices, the emphatic inflected Italian that Lucia answered almost as emphatically. I waited. She came back on the phone and said, “I'm down at Danato's. My dad wants to know if you want a sandwich.”

The warm foil in my hands smelled of sage and caramelized onions, and I decided that if I was salivating, I must be fine. Lucia drove her Camry down Madison Avenue, the hills so steep I had to press my feet into the floorboard to keep from sliding forward on the leather seat. My left ankle throbbed.

“You left without the doctor's permission?” she said.

“What makes you think that?”

“No wheelchair. They wheel people out, particularly in your condition.” She glanced over. “Do you remember anything from last night?”

“The sound of water. Red lights. Somebody screaming.”

“That was you.”

“I was screaming?”

She nodded. “You're lucky to be alive. After the perp tossed your transmitter, we lost you. The plane reported two images, then the figures split up. One ran down the mountain. You.”

“Did we get him?”

“We lost him. We didn't get the money either.”

“We had eleven agents out there. How did we lose him?”

She stopped at the light on Second Avenue. “All those $10,000 bundles he told you drop along the trail? It was brilliant. It meant one agent stayed there, waiting for a pickup. He split our forces. By the time you got to the top, we had one guy left and he was neutralized.”

“Neutralized?”

“The perp didn't kill him,” she said. “But he knocked him out, then took his gun and radio and cuffed him to a tree. The lab is running the cuffs, trying to source them, along with the duct tape.”

“Didn't the plane's infrared catch this?”

“The plane was following you, remember? McLeod's orders were to save the agent, not the money.”

“But where did we lose him?”

She gave one of her Italian gestures, signifying an unknown. “Somewhere on that mountain.”

“He just disappeared?”

“It sounds better than saying we lost him, and the money. The VanAlstynes took it as you might imagine. The kidnapper got away with the money, didn't release their daughter, and now there's absolutely no reason to expect we'll hear from him again.”

She pulled into the parking lot by the waterfront, stopping behind the Barney Mobile. Somebody had driven it over.

“What about the birth father, we connected him to this?” I said.

“It was a good theory,” she said. “He's in custody, denying any involvement. And . . .”

“And what?”

“I watched tapes of his interrogation, Raleigh. He's got some weird religious convictions, certainly. But he was in custody while you were on that mountain. And I don't believe he's capable of working with an accomplice.”

“What about the handwriting?”

“The state lab is examining the note, maybe there will be something to it.” She looked at my hands. “You should eat that sandwich before it gets cold.”

I nodded, taking a moment, weighing my words. “What's your take on Jack?”

“Jack? He's an egomaniac.”

“But have you ever considered him unstable?”

“Unstable.” She glanced toward Puget Sound. A green and white ferry pulled away from the pier's creosote-coated pilings, water churning under its engines. “Years ago I turned Jack down for a date. After that, he ignored me. No stalking. No persecution. But he has a massive ego, the personality of a showoff. Of course, the same thing could be said for half of the guys in Violent Crimes. They all want to slay the dragon, save the world, win the princess's heart.” She paused. “What are you asking me, Raleigh?”

As carefully as possible, I told her about Jack's number appearing on Stacee Warner's cell phone. How he answered the phone when I dialed the number, what he said about a close call. And I described the moment we ran into Stacee at the casino, how Jack pretended not to know her.

“Maybe he didn't know her then,” she said.

“Lucia.”

“Okay, so Jack's dating somebody who's also part of a case. It's a big no-no. He should have reported his involvement. But it's also a big no-no to walk out of the hospital without a medical release.”

“The dating occurred to me too,” I said, ignoring the comparison. “But there are some other factors. The soil in her boots matches what Jack had me collect on Mount Si. And then Ernie Suggs, he's her boss at the casino, he works the card game at Sea-Tac. And she just happens to be the roommate of the missing girl? Lucia, it's like I can see the web, I just can't find the spider.”

“Then bring her in,” Lucia said. “Ask her some questions.”

“And Jack?”

“I wouldn't mind seeing Jack squirm.” She smiled. “Let's keep an eye on him.”

On the way to Aunt Charlotte's, I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the sandwich. Danato Lutini, I decided, was a miracle worker. After eating his food, I started to feel almost normal.