Dark to Mortal Eyes (22 page)

While Graham watched him from the patrol car above, Marsh clutched taproots and muddy rocks and descended twenty feet into the ravine. By the time he joined the policeman next to the mangled wreckage, his loafers were ruined, and his hands were smeared with the earth’s gritty scent.

“Warned you it wasn’t pretty.”

Marsh took a deep breath. “I need to know what went on here.”

Nearby, a stream played over polished gray rocks. Marsh ventured a closer look, saw the Z3’s front window frame jutting out like a dorsal fin while the oval snout pointed into the water. The shark wanted back in its element.

Funny, the things that go through your mind at a time like this
.

He moved to the cockpit. Yes, same tannin red dash and interior, same chrome accents. On Kara’s sheepskin seat covers her initials—KDA—were handstitched. He could still see her on her birthday four weeks ago at the sales lot in Eugene. From the driver’s seat, she had tossed back golden hair and gazed over her shades at him with lighthearted passion. His response? He’d whipped out the checkbook and marched to the sales office, buying her favor in the manner he knew best.

Here, staring into the wreckage, he felt a surge of anger. It seemed that some cosmic force was out there laughing it up, relishing his discomfort, branding his efforts with a big stamp of disapproval.

Kara’s unknown whereabouts and the details of this accident dropped into his stomach. He doubled over. Growled. Slammed down his hand on the tilted chassis.

“What now?” said Officer Lansky, with a surreptitious glance.

“Who is behind this? You have any ideas, any at all?”

“Still weighing possibilities. It is her car, isn’t it?”

Marsh nudged aside a half-deflated air bag. From a jumble of papers spilling from the glove box, he retrieved a pumpkin-colored flier that announced a community Thanksgiving dinner and named his wife as the coordinator. News to him. How would he write it off at year’s end if she didn’t keep him in the loop?

Stop. Business can wait
.

He rolled the paper in his hand and looked up. “It’s hers, no question.”

The officer cleared his throat, tossed a glance up the cliff where his partner stood ready at the guardrail. “Any reason she might’ve done this of her own volition?”

“Done what?”

“This. The accident.”

“Are you … What’re you asking me exactly? Cut through the bull.”

“Was she experiencing any depression, taking any medication?”

“Suicide, Officer? Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Simply covering all the bases, sir.”

“Who do you think you are? You have some nerve, you know that?” Marsh’s broad frame led him back around the car where he aimed the rolled flier at the policeman’s chest. “Did you bring me down here to see if I’d crack, to pressure me into spilling some dirty little secret? Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m in the dark here, same as you, and it’s my wife who’s missing. That make even one iota of sense to you?”

“Back off, Mr. Addison.” On the rocks above, Graham stood with legs apart, a hand on his holster.

“Listen,” said Lansky. “We want to find your wife, same as you. At this point we’re treating it as a routine accident investigation. But there are some curious facts we need to face.”

“I deal in facts. Lay it all out. Go on. What do they tell us?”

Lansky ticked them off. “First, based on the info at our disposal, we could have a straightforward accident here, driver not yet located or identified. Could be a suicide attempt—now hear me out on this—and the body may have washed downstream. Another possibility’s a life insurance scam. Not uncommon. She might’ve hoped the car would catch fire, destroying any evidence. Looks good on television.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s been tried more than once.”

“Okay, fine, the facts could lead to several possibilities. I know my wife though, and Kara’s not a destructive person.” He handed over the flier. “There, that’s more her style. I’m forty-four years old, I’ve known her over half my life, and I’ve never seen her try to hurt anyone—not physically, not intentionally. Believe me, it’s not her nature.”

“I’m sure that’s the case, sir. Of course, there’re other theories linked to the scene in your study, which you have yet to explain.”

“Well, I sure wish someone would explain them to
me
. You know, I don’t give a rip about your insinuations. I have the right to remain silent, remember?” Marsh knelt by the stream and scrubbed his hands in the rippling water. Was she out here somewhere? Dead or injured?

“Kara,” he called out.

The stream’s draft carried her name through a tunnel of overhanging limbs and foliage. On the opposing bank, a squirrel darted across a fallen hemlock; in the trees, a rook called out, then took flight. Where was she? Who was it he’d talked to in the study? Had to be her, of course, but that didn’t explain the accident. With his own eyes, he’d seen her leave in the Z3 yesterday. Had she survived and returned to the manor on her own? Was she down here somewhere?

Or had someone taken her? Steele Knight?

“Kara,” he cried out again. “If you can hear me, say something.”

A voice. Weak, but distinct. Whispering from the stream. “Marshall …”

“Is that you! Kara, honey, speak louder.”

He was skeptical; she couldn’t have survived a crash such as this.

From high above, winged seedlings fell in lazy helicopter spins. Against the October sky, it looked to Marsh as though they formed black and white links that came looping around his neck. He winced and, lowering his eyes, strained to hear his wife’s voice. He thought of all the times he had tuned her out.

“Over here, Marshall,” the stream whispered again.

“I’m here. Where are you? Talk to me.”

“Here. Please, don’t leave. Please.”

Stahlherz clambered up the stairs to a two-bedroom apartment over a Chinese restaurant. Though the Golden Dragon would not open for another hour and a half, scents of broccoli and ginger filled the single-light-bulb stairway.

He reached the landing, cursing his mortality and the tightness in his
limbs. The talon wound on his forearm throbbed, a reminder of his feathered friend and its burst of unruliness in Café Zerachio. Stahlherz had never allowed his rooks to seize control. An isolated incident. Yet, like an isolated pawn in a game, he felt weakened.

In the apartment, three recruits were gathered: two men, one woman. A Trailblazers blanket was tacked over the main window, lending the apartment a dark, crimson hue.

“Fortune favors the daring,” the trio chanted.

Stahlherz reciprocated, then drew back an edge of the blanket to verify Darius’s position in the lot below. His driver was wired and happy, a sentinel armed with a quad-shot white mocha. The girl at the drive-through espresso booth had taken his order with a flirtatious smile that said she was impressed—in more ways than one.

“Is the Professor coming?” the woman recruit asked Stahlherz.

“No.” He dropped the blanket. “Is that a problem? Am I incapable of delineating your task?” He tried to fix each individual with a stare; instead, with the flaring of his social anxieties, he blinked. No, no, no. Control. He must guide these pawns, exhibit strength. “Thank you for gathering on short notice, my friends. The time is upon us.”

From far-flung Roseburg, Astoria, and Umatilla, these three political dreamers had converged upon the city of Salem with the pillars of the capitol in their eyes. The years, however, had picked apart their ideals, and at their first
tête-à-tête
he had instructed them: “Don’t try to remove the splinter from your friend’s eye. First remove the pillar from your own. Here in Salem, as you’ve discovered, that pillar is the system. It has blinded you. Or tried to. You must pluck it away, with no fear and no regrets.”

They’d hung on every word. Ulcerating in the bosom of the political monster.

In cauda venenum!

From his carpetbag, Stahlherz removed a canister and set it on the coffee table. “Don’t let its simplicity disappoint you. This vessel is a means of storage and dispersion, nothing more. Tomorrow evening you will bring it with you to the site I’ve designated. From that point, then, you understand your instructions?”

The woman said, “Of course. We’ve been reconnoitering for the past year.”

The older man said, “Will it be safe, Mr. Steele? For us, I mean.”

“Safe? Did you learn that word from brown-nosing politicos? Radical change comes by veering from the path of comfort and security. It’s time to strike before being struck, don’t you think? Only last month a handful of al-Qaeda sympathizers confessed their guilt before a judge in Portland. Did they accomplish their goals beforehand? I think not. Will you, too, shrink from the dangers inherent?”

“We wouldn’t be here if that was the case, sir.”

“You—we—are threads in the garment of revolt.” Stahlherz warmed to his oratory. “Here are some samples from history’s tapestry: 1940 … the Japanese start an outbreak of the bubonic plague by dropping ceramic pots of contaminated rice and fleas on China’s Cheking Province—”

“That does it for me, no more meals downstairs.”

“In 1763, the English give smallpox-laden blankets to those Indians loyal to the French. In 1346, in what is now modern Ukraine, the Tartars attack a seaport by catapulting diseased carcasses over the city walls in hopes of starting an epidemic. Finally, and particularly apropos, is the story of Hannibal in 184
B.C
. While fighting a naval battle in Pergamum, he orders earthen pots to be hurled onto the decks of the enemy ships.”

“Pots? What was in ’em?”

“An ancient evil. A creature known to spark fear and enmity.”

“Snakes?”

Stahlherz grinned. “He made sure they were filled with ‘serpents of every kind’ so that his enemies caught a glimpse of the pain they had coming.”

“Not to question your plan, Mr. Steele, but a couple of snakes?” The oldest recruit frowned. “Honestly, how many does this canister hold? Am I missing something?”

Marsh saw nothing at first. A gust of wind wrenched the Z3’s chassis against the river rock. Between boulders, the stream narrowed and gurgled, then
fanned into a pool that reflected iron-bellied clouds and protruding tree limbs.

“Kara?”

“Sir, what’re you doing?”

He kicked off loafers and dress socks. Ignoring Officer Lansky’s inquiry, he stepped into the water. “I’m right here, Kara.” He waded to his knees. Wetness crept up his pant legs as he picked his way over moss-coated slabs. A crayfish raised its pincers, then spurted out of sight.

“Here, Marsh.” A thin cry of pain.

A splash of color arrested his attention, and he reached for it, gathered chiffon material from the tugging nubs of a tree. Kara’s scarf. He remembered her tying it on before her departure on Wednesday morning.

“Here … over here.”

“Coming.”

He ducked his shoulders beneath a canopy of branches and found himself enveloped by shaded silence. And there she was. Kara was a shimmering butterfly, emerging from the stream’s watery cocoon onto an extruding rock. Her arms were like wings, beaded with drops of water as they tried to stretch. She was created for flight; she was struggling to position herself.

“Kara! What happened? Are you okay?” Marsh steeled his emotions, surveyed the scene. “You must’ve lost it on the curve. The car’s ruined.”

She pulled herself another foot from the water and struggled for a secure purchase, for a point of takeoff. For her first—her final?—flight.

Marsh splashed toward her, and as he set a big hand on her shoulder, she moaned under the weight. He told himself he’d have to be the strong one. She needed him, needed his poise at this moment. To his astonishment, there wasn’t any visible blood; the branches must’ve somehow cushioned her fall into the stream. To this point, she’d survived. But he had no delusions. She would need immediate medical attention.

“Can you move your legs?” he asked. Was it safe to lift her?

She shook her head.

“Anything broken?”

“Don’t think so. But … not sure that I’m … going to make it.”