County Line Read online

  When the last car passes, we return to the hotel. I wait in the cafe while Pete goes upstairs to change into dry clothes. Out on the patio, the rain tapers off to a drizzle. The ferry is loading a few people going to Friday Harbor. I snag a couple of scones, a banana and another coffee. Complimentary with the room. Pete returns, but says he isn’t hungry. He refills his coffee and joins me at a table near the window. All we can do is wait.

  “I almost spoke up out there.”

  I look at him over the rim of my coffee cup.

  “I still love her. I almost said so when she asked. But I couldn’t.”

  Grey mist filters out of a colorless sky.

  “I know I’m the one who ruined everything. I know we’ll never get back together. She’s moved on. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help her.”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations.” I doubt Pete believes a word he said. I’m sure he hopes by coming so far he’ll prove himself to Ruby Jane. It’s a belief I understand, since I share it. You left me in that hospital but I followed you anyway. Pete and I may be two fools playing at being the hero. “I’m here to rescue you.” The one thing we haven’t considered is maybe Ruby Jane neither needs nor wants rescuing.

  “I’m going back out.”

  He doesn’t have my capacity for waiting. “Be careful, Pete.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” The day has hardly started, but he already sounds defeated.

  The clouds break as he drives away. I return to the porch, fresh coffee in hand. Time passes like sap melting. Ferries come, ferries go. I doze from time to time, awake with a start when cars bring noise and exhaust. At one point, one of the walk-on passengers, a woman in multi-colored Lycra leading a pack-laden bike, pauses at pier’s edge in order to puke into the water. A similarly bedecked fellow puts his hand on her back. She slaps him. I look away, and spy an eagle perched on top of a Douglas fir on the headland beyond the landing. Every so often, a gull dives screaming toward it, pulls up short and flies off over the water. The eagle is a lesson in stillness. I watch him until the next ferry draws my attention. When the last of the debarking cars passes I look back at the fir tree. The eagle is gone.

  My cell phone rings, a 937 area code. Familiar, but I can’t place it. Ruby Jane could have picked up a pre-paid cell anywhere.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this Mister Kadash?”

  Nash. I deflate. “What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found Ruby yet, have you?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Your lieutenant told me she thought you went to see Bella.”

  Susan could always see two steps ahead of me. “You’re working late, Chief.” It’s after eight where he is.

  “I’ve learned a few things and I figured you want to hear.” A pair of gulls lights near the eagle’s perch. “You know how everyone always thought Ruby went up to Dixie to finish school after she left Valley View? Turns out she never attended Dixie. She got a GED instead.”

  “Okay.”

  “She could have finished anywhere. GED is an odd choice.”

  “Maybe she was sick of high school.”

  “Not like she didn’t have cause.”

  “But that’s not it, is it?”

  He hesitates, long enough for me to wonder if I lost the call.

  “She had a baby.”

  I open my mouth, but my voice fails me. The cries of the gulls are muted, as though my ears are stuffed with cotton balls.

  “A boy, born at Good Sam in January 1990. According to the birth certificate, his name is Bidwell Denlinger Whittaker.”

  A leaden shock plunges through me. “Holy fuck.”

  “Holy something.”

  “Biddy Denlinger is Ruby Jane’s son.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Christ. It gets worse?”

  “I don’t know about that. He was adopted three weeks after he was born. The adoption file is sealed, but I’m working on that. Be nice to find out where the boy ended up.”

  In the two-and-a-half years I’ve known her, Ruby Jane has never even hinted about a baby.

  “Mister Kadash?”

  “You’re sure about all this, Chief?”

  “They’re the facts as I far as I can determine.”

  Facts can hide a lot. I look for the eagle, but all I see are the damned gulls. Out on the water, a flight of ducks crosses, wing tips skimming the waves. Biddy Denlinger Whittaker. He’d be eighteen or nineteen now—my mind can’t quite work out the math. Is that old enough to cross the country committing assault and murder?

  “You okay, Mister Kadash?”

  “Not sure.”

  “I know what you mean.” He whistles lightly. “I’ve informed the SFPD, just so you know, along with your lieutenant.”

  I thank him, my voice flat, and disconnect the call.

  With a will of their own, my feet carry me through the village. Searching. I don’t know for what. Nothing. A coffee … a bourbon. I glance through shop windows, weave among children chasing each other as their ice cream cones melt over their hands. I find myself on the boardwalk, uncertain about how I came there. The ferry horn sounds. Cars start. I inhale exhaust, listen to the engines. My head starts to ache and I look toward the hotel. The Starboard Harbor View room might offer a moment’s respite from the noise and dizzying air and anxious worry. Or come to feel like a prison.

  I leave the boardwalk and screaming children behind. The cars have begun to move, slowly enough I can weave between them without incident. Across the ferry holding area, I find a narrow, empty road which rises gently through the trees. I climb, huffing and gasping, until the road levels out and curves past a dirt lot next to an electrical sub-station. The sun drops behind a cloud and a sudden chill descends, followed by a splash of misty rain. A moment later, the clouds clear again. I continue up the road. My injured arm is heavy at my side. My feet feel like stones. I keep moving.

  Behind the sub-station I see a boxy, older sedan in familiar faded blue. A heaviness collects behind my heart. Ruby Jane’s beater Corolla is from the last model year before they went bubbly and round in the early 90s. Water gathers in my eyes as I draw nearer, but I force myself forward.

  It’s empty.

  - 49 -

  No One Home

  The car is much as I remember it, wearing its years in dings and scrapes. A walk-around reveals nothing. I find the spare key in the magnetic box hidden in the left rear wheel well. I’ve opened a few trunks over the years, and I know they’re empty far more often than not, the evidence of film and TV notwithstanding. A breeze carries the scent of sea and evergreen, but odds and clean air do nothing to calm the tremor in my hand as I pop the trunk.

  Inside, I find relief—and more questions.

  There’s a green holdall with some of Ruby Jane’s clothes, and a cardboard carton with packs of dried fruit, Sun Chips, half-empty boxes of crackers. A small cooler holds a couple of bottles of Jones cola floating in dirty water. Cane sugar and caffeine for the long drive west—no way to know how often she could get a decent cup of coffee.

  I can’t tell if Ruby Jane parked the car and walked away, or if it was dumped by someone else. The spot is out of the way, unlikely to be noticed quickly, but close enough to the village landing that whoever left it could easily have made their way elsewhere, on island or off. After San Francisco and Preble County Line Road, I’ll assume it was dumped until I prove otherwise.

  I dial Pete on my cell phone. No answer. Fuck him. I don’t bother to leave a message, dial 911 instead.

  The dispatcher doesn’t see the emergency. In her shoes, I’d have been skeptical too. I ask about Inspector Eldridge’s request for an interview of Bella Denlinger, but there’s no reason she’d know about that. At last, I get her to have a deputy meet me at Isabella Farm.

  As I trot back to the village, I give Pete another try. Still brooding. The interior of the Gremlin feels like a sauna under the slanting sun. A ferry has begun to
unload as I pull out, and I have to wait for a long line of cars to climb past to Orcas Road. My impatience vibrates through me on the drive north, the traffic ahead uncharacteristically committed to the speed limit. After a mile or two, a few vehicles turn west toward Deer Harbor, but the main parade continues north. Yet once I reach the turn off to Bella’s, I go a little faster. The Gremlin strains to climb to the top of the ridge. In those rare moments when the road levels out, sharp curves slow me. I make better time after I get over the top, and all but coast the last mile or so to Isabella Farm.

  A deputy named Rolf meets me at the end of the driveway.

  “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.