Authors: David Vinjamuri
I thought about that for a moment. I’d visited the Sheriff’s office because I knew firsthand how uncomfortable things could get in a small town if the Sheriff felt you were sticking your nose into his business. I hadn’t planned to ask for help tracing the license plate from the Dodge Ram pickup; but the moment I sat down with Casto, he asked me if I was running into any trouble with my investigation, so I told him about being followed and he offered to get the information. I neglected to tell him that I’d run the truck off the road and hoped to find the girl before I’d be compelled to actually track down the owner of the Dodge. Since I knew where Heather went after leaving the Reclaim camp, my plan was to go there and find her, to call Alpha then leave the state as quickly as possible.
“Sheriff Casto, I’m taking unpaid leave from my job to find Heather Hernandez. I’m doing this as a favor to a friend. I am in no way qualified to do what you’re asking of me.”
Casto looked down at his feet for a moment. When he looked up, he was smiling. He stood up and walked around the desk, then lowered himself back into the chair.
“Modesty is a virtue, son, but if the governor has faith in you, so do I. Pardon me for being out of line, but I hope you can understand my desperation. All I’m asking is that if in the course of looking for Miss Hernandez, you find anything that’d help us figure out who terrorized and killed these innocent people, you let me know.” Casto pulled a card from his pocket, turned it over and scrawled a phone number on the back. “That’s my cell number. You can reach me day or night.”
“Of course, sir.” I realized that whatever I did, I was going to feel guilty. If I found Heather without shedding any light on his case, I’d feel complicit in letting killers go unpunished. But Casto didn’t realize what he was asking. Sending a man like me to investigate a murder is like opening a can of beans with an axe. You’ll get the can open, but all you’ll end up with is a big mess and a fistful of regrets.
A deputy knocked once on Casto’s door before entering to hand the Sheriff another manila folder. Casto pulled a pair of reading glasses from a flapped breast pocket on his uniform, flipped them open and slid them onto his nose before examining the file.
“The truck that followed you is registered to Ethan Wright.”
I read the tone of his voice and the set of his jaw. “I take it you know him?”
“Not him, but the family if I’m not mistaken,” Casto said as he flipped to another page in the folder. “Let me just see here first. It’s taking me some time to get the knack of reading these records. The department has its own language.” Casto turned another page and read for a moment before taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of nose as he looked up toward the ceiling. “The family is actually from Boone County, but we see plenty of them here. Pretty much anything bad that happens in this part of West Virginia involves the Wrights in one way or another.”
“How is Ethan related?”
“He’s one of Jethro’s nephews. Goes by ‘Little Boy,’” the Sheriff flipped a page, “which he’s not. He’s 6’3” and 275, or was the last time he was arrested.”
“What was he arrested for?”
“Auto theft, but it didn’t stick. The witness recanted. I remember it. It was all anyone talked about around town for weeks. That kinda thing happens a lot with the Wrights. Little Boy served five years in Lakin for assault, though.”
“Where could I find Mr. Wright?”
“It might be better if I came with you, to calm things down. The Wrights are legendarily short-tempered.”
I shook my head. “He might not talk to me, but he’s definitely not going to talk to you. I may not even visit him, but I’d like to have the option. Maybe there’s a place I could approach him other than his home? Does he have a regular job?”
“He’s still on probation. I have his last report here. Let me see...looks like Little Boy works at a body shop in Spurlockville. That’s in the south part of the county near the Big Ugly, a wildlife conservation area. Which seems appropriate.”
7
“Ahem, everybody, attention! Willow has something to share,” a solidly built woman in her late forties named Miriam announced. Heads popped up from bowls of quinoa laced with sweet potatoes, walnuts and raisins. A slender blonde with flyaway hair stood up and fidgeted nervously before starting to talk.
“I’m having a date with Jesse tonight. I’m gonna have sex with him. I want to get pregnant,” she proclaimed. She sat down abruptly. Thirty heads swiveled toward a shy kid with a dark ponytail and wisps of a beard who turned cherry-red as he tried to avoid detection by remaining absolutely still. A long dialogue ensued about Willow’s motives until the girl eventually revealed that she’d been having sex with a number of the men in recent weeks, trying to get pregnant. There were some uncomfortable coughs around the room. Willow was questioned intently about her motives for seeking motherhood. After twenty minutes of discussion, Willow finally admitted to the group that getting pregnant might not be her best choice. Jesse exhaled loudly, stirring up some laughs. Then Willow announced she was still going to have sex on the date, and Jesse colored again.
“The only way to succeed in a communal situation like this is not to have any secrets. We do the Telling at lunch so if anybody’s feelings get hurt, they get an afternoon of labor to work them through,” my host, the man they call Bear, whispered to me after Jesse’s ordeal ended. The Telling sounded more like a New Age version of
The Real Housewives
than group therapy to me, consisting on that day of a complaint about missed duties, a confession of jealousy, a prolonged dispute over the menu for the upcoming weekend and half a dozen personal dramas along the lines of Willow’s news. The lunch, which I joined in progress, went on like that for an hour while I waited for my turn to speak. Finally, when I had long since given up on the quinoa, Bear cleared his throat.
“Hi, CCs! We have a visitor named Michael here today!”
“Hi, Michael!” The response came simultaneously from the assembled residents of the Creative Collective Farm. I felt like the new kid in a first grade class. Bear gestured to me and I stood slowly. I don’t like public speaking.
“I’m a friend of the Hernandez family. They’re trying to find their daughter, Heather. She was a protester at the Hobart Mine, but I understand she left last month to come here. I’m wondering if you can help me find her.” I held up the picture and saw heads nodding.
“She was such a sweet girl, never had anything bad to say about anyone.”
“Real peach that one. Always finished her chores lickety-split and helped somebody else out.”
“She helped me with my knitting. She’d finish off all my loose threads at the end of a sweater.”
“Real good cook, too. Did amazing things with kale.”
I could see where this was headed. I interrupted. “Can I speak to Heather?”
“She left a few weeks ago...When was it, Betty?”
“It hasn’t been that long, Frank—it was just over two weeks ago, when we finished with the apples. It was after that.”
“I can’t believe she left with him.”
“He never helped anyone. I don’t think he even understood the Principles.”
“What did she see in that Anton?”
“Don’t you call him ‘that Anton’!”
“I don’t think we should say bad things about anyone!”
“He wasn’t kind, Florence, you know it! That boy was a taker.”
“Anton was a sweet boy, Nathaniel, just misunderstood.”
“He was no boy! I’d bet he was nearly forty—just looked younger because he had all his hair. And he only sweet-talked you to get you to sneak him extra food!”
“Nathaniel James Butler!”
I cleared my throat. “Heather Hernandez left?” Heads nodded. “Around two weeks ago?” More nods. “Where did she go?” Lots of blank looks and a head shake. “What’s Anton’s last name?” There was some grumbling. Nobody seemed to know.
Bear leaned forward. Sitting, his lips almost reached my ear as I stood. “We have some records,” he whispered. “I can get you the name after lunch.”
“Okay, one more question: was anybody here very close to Heather?” Nobody answered, but I watched faces. Several eyes involuntarily flicked toward a redheaded girl with freckles who looked as if she’d just reached adolescence.
* * *
“She was sweet. Really, really nice. But she was also fragile,” Christina, the redheaded girl, told me. Her voice was a half-octave lower than I expected and I gathered she was a good deal older, too. It took some coaxing, mostly from Bear, to get her to talk to me. When she agreed, she made a cup of hot tea while I poured some black coffee from a dented urn into a faded ceramic mug. We sat outside on a bench in the damp autumn air. Bear left us to speak alone, possibly because there was no room for him on the bench.
“How do you mean?” I asked, watching Christina closely for a moment before looking up. It was clearing a little, the cloud cover having separated into tufted cotton clouds. Bits of blue sky were visible.
“You could tell that she felt things very intensely. I remember one day we were harvesting cauliflower and one of the biddies—” Christina said, then rephrased when I raised an eyebrow, “—older ladies didn’t like how she was soaking it to get the cabbageworms out. Thought she was using too much salt or something. Heather must have mentioned that about a dozen times the next day. She was really sensitive to criticism, like it was some kind of punishment she’d earned and had to work off.”
“She was conscientious?”
“It wasn’t just that. She needed approval. She didn’t do well without it.” Christina was starting to relax. She didn’t sound as guarded as she had when Bear was around.
“I was a little like that, too,” I confided. “My dad always made me feel like I didn’t measure up. So I looked for approval in other people.” One day in my freshman year of high school, after a game where I’d sacked the opposing quarterback three times, the new linebacker coach took me aside and told me I had a real gift and that he’d work with me to develop it. After the game, my father grunted at me and said, “Boy, you blew your zone in the cover 2 in the second quarter and missed an interception.” I could smell the beer on his breath.
Christina regarded me with her pale blue eyes. “I think Heather has some issues with her dad, too, but I don’t know what they are. I got a sense that coming to West Virginia was more like running away for her than venturing out.”
“How did you get to know her?”
“We were roommates. Everyone shares rooms here, so there’s no privacy. You get to know people pretty well. I’m pretty lucky because I’ve been in a double since we moved the commune to West Virginia last year. It’s a tiny room with bunk beds, but having just one other person in the room is nice. Heather was the second roommate I’ve had since we got here.” Bear had already mentioned the relocation to me, explaining that the Creative Collective Farm moved whenever land values rose and taxes increased. The commune was founded during the seventies in California, then moved to Texas and North Carolina before settling in West Virginia.
“So you weren’t at the Hobart Mine with Heather?”
She shook her head. “No, I joined CC in North Carolina.”
“Did Heather talk about why she left Reclaim?”
“There was some kind of disagreement and a whole bunch of them left. Some of them came to stay here, but most left after a week or two. There was too much real work for them, I guess. But Heather fit in pretty well.”
“So why did she leave?”
“She was in love.”
“With Anton?” Christina nodded again as she chewed her lip. Her arms moved to pull a hand-knit shawl around her shoulders. “So what was the deal with him?”
“He wasn’t a good person. I know that’s judgmental, and it’s against the Principles, but it’s true.”
“In what way?” I asked, taking a sip from my mug. The coffee was easier to stomach than the quinoa.
“He knew how to charm. He was a lot older than Heather—at least ten years, maybe more. He wouldn’t talk about his age. He understood people, knew what they wanted to hear if you know what I mean. But sometimes he slipped up and you’d see what he really thought. He was a control nut and a racist. He had tattoos. He covered them up pretty well around here but I saw him once with his shirt off...”
“What kind of tattoos?”
“A swastika on his stomach and lightning bolts on his shoulders. And a lot of writing on his chest. I heard Ellie ask him about them. He said that he’d been a stupid kid and was getting them taken off, but that it was expensive. I didn’t believe him.”
“He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy Heather would go for,” I suggested. Then again, there’s no telling what type of guy a nice girl will go for.
“In a weird way, I could see it. He was constantly complimenting her on little, very specific things. She was really pretty and you know I’m sure she’s had dozens of guys tell her how good she looked. But he would notice that she held the door for Esther or how she put an extra piece of bread on Bear’s plate, that kind of thing, and specifically mention it back to her. It was just so clear to me that he figured out exactly what she needed and he was feeding it to her.”
“She wasn’t here for very long, though. How did he convince her to leave with him?”
“They didn’t meet here. He came with her from the Reclaim camp. They were already dating there. She told me that after they’d dated for a couple of months she wasn’t sure how she felt. Then he left for a week and when he came back, she knew she was in love. So she let him follow her here. When I saw what kind of guy he was I tried to talk to her about him. It was just once, early on, but she shut down and walked away, you know?”
“And she left here with him?”
“Yes, she asked me to forward any mail she got to the Premier Bank in Beckley. I think she had an account there.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, not exactly anyway. She said Anton was moving on to join another group and that she was going with him. I didn’t get the feeling she was going very far, but I think he wanted to keep it very hush-hush. I don’t think there’s another commune near here, so I don’t know what he had in mind.”