The Terror of Living (24 page)

    In his side mirror he saw something white on the ground. It was the only thing in an otherwise dark lot. He stopped the truck and got down from the cab. He walked back and looked at the coffee cup lying sideways on the gravel. With his toe he investigated it and watched the cup roll over, then stop. He could hear the river. A horse moved in the trailer, and he turned to the sound and walked back to his truck.

    THE DRIVER TOOK A RAG FROM UNDER THE SEAT AND cleaned the sledgehammer. The two men were sitting with the doors pulled open on the Lexus, looking back at the gates of the lawyer's house. There was sweat on the driver's brow as he finished with the hammer and threw the rag into the shadows at the side of the road. The pits of late-summer cherries everywhere, the cherries themselves long gone and rotted away all around them on the ground, barren cherry trees overhead. Cold, fungal smell of rotting leaves. "You know the address?" the other man asked.

    "I know it," the driver said, getting out of the car and walking around to the back, where he popped the trunk and put the sledgehammer away.

    The other man watched him, and when the driver came back he asked, "Grady Fisher?"

    "Works as a cook somewhere in South Seattle, does errands for the lawyer."

    "What kind of errands?"

    "Errands no one else wants."

    "Those kind of errands."

    "Those kind."

    The driver started the car and they pulled out onto the road and drove south. Neither of them said anything till they reached the interstate. It was late evening and the lanes were all but empty. A lone semi ran past them carrying a double trailer, the sound like a train passing.

    "You going to call anyone?" the driver asked.

    "Everyone," the man said.

    THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO BUT STUFF NORA IN THE trunk. For a while she had made those horrible sounds, punching at the metal, kicking the backseat. For five miles he put up with it, just figured she would get it out of her system. He stopped the car on the side of the road. The night immediately came on, moths and little flying insects drawn to the Lincoln headlights, cold mountain air, the smell of pine. Underfoot small droppings of pine needles, gravel, the rutted side of the road, depressions filled with rainwater. He stood listening to the sounds coming from the rear of the car. When they didn't stop, he brought the key out and opened the trunk to look in at her.

    A leg came out at him. He sidestepped and grabbed her ankle as it passed. Holding her with one hand, he gave her a quick punch with the other and hoped that would calm her. She didn't pass out, so he punched her again and this time she went. He hoped Hunt loved his wife. He was counting on it, and he knew people did stupid things for love. They did stupid things all too often. And he thought this was probably how they had all come into this mess. How it had all begun for them. Stupid.

    HUNT DROVE THE BIG DIESEL, FOLLOWING THE RIVER and waiting for his phone to find coverage. One bar poked up on the display, then quickly disappeared. He didn't know which way Grady had taken her; the road out of town had run east and west. He drove west, toward the mountains, hoping he was right. He slowed the truck, coming to a small town that, like the one he'd just left, ran along the river. Everything was built to look out on the river and everything it brought with it. He tried his phone again and couldn't get a signal. He drove across the only bridge and parked by a closed restaurant.

    He got down and walked toward the river, his phone in his hand. He watched for a signal. Nothing. When he reached the river he walked out on the bridge. Nothing moved anywhere, only the water below him. Dark water moving fast. He looked back at the truck. The restaurant beyond was built of painted white bricks, and across the street from that was a general store, with a bench and a few neon beer signs. He toed a loose piece of gravel into the river. He watched the splash and the current take it and the ripples moving out while the water went on.

    From the middle of the bridge, he could see the entire town, not much of a sight, a gas station out by the main road and a small, closed-up produce stand. There were a couple of houses farther down on the river. He looked at the phone and waited. He turned it off, then turned it back on. One small blip of a signal popped up, and he tried Nora again. He listened to her voice mail. Thought about leaving a message but didn't.

    "Fuck!"

    He went back to the truck and put his arms out on the hood and stretched, hung his head between his arms, and breathed in the night air. He looked at the phone again. He checked the time, then walked back over to the bridge and called information. After about a minute, the operator put him through to the hospital.

    "There's a Vietnamese woman who came in today on an overdose."

    "Are you family?"

    "Only family she has." "Do you want to tell me who you are?" "I want you to tell me about the girl." "I can't tell you about the girl." "Why can't you do that?" Silence. "Who is this?" "Is she alive? You can tell me that, can't you?" "I can't tell you anything till you tell me who you are." Hunt heard something on the line. He thought it was someone else at the hospital listening in. He hung up.

    EDDIE VASQUEZ HAD BEEN DEAD ALMOST TWELVE HOURS by the time Driscoll pulled into the motel. No one had found him till eight in the morning, sitting there at the table with that curtain of blood drawn across him. The local sheriff had been called, the county paramedics, a group of volunteer firefighters who served one way or another as deputies to the sheriff, and Driscoll.

    Drake walked over to the Dairy Queen and looked back at the scene. He could see the EMS ambulance, neon green with flecks of blue. He saw the sheriff's cruiser and about six big-bodied pickup trucks he imagined hadn't been there till the man in room 5 came out and found the clerk sandwiched between his car and the neighboring truck. The drag marks were still in the gravel. Driscoll had picked up some small pebbles clotted with blood from the ground near the office and held them in his hand, examining them.

    Best he could tell, the clerk had been shot because she'd seen whatever had been going on in rooms 11 and 12.

    "He's the agent," the sheriff had said. "What is it you do?"

    "Identifying bodies seems to be my specialty these days," Drake said. They were standing across the room from Eddie. In the opposite corner, Driscoll was using a pen to look Eddie over. Nothing had come back on him, and they didn't know a thing except that he was dead. In one of the dresser drawers, they found a case for a gun that was missing. There were still three clips pressed into the foam, and a slot in the shape of a cylinder.

    "For the silencer," Driscoll said. "A twenty-two."

    "Kind of light for these guys," Drake said.

    "Perfect for these guys. This stuff started popping up in the fifties and sixties, mostly CIA spooks. Small and light enough to carry without gathering attention, the only production gun that could be effectively silenced. In the seventies it was the weapon of choice for mob hits. Whole series of murders taking place in basements all over America. Neighbors didn't hear a thing."

    Both the outside door to room 11 and the inside door leading from room 12 had been forced open. There were two bullet holes around the lock of the outside door. The inside door had gone much easier, hollow inside and made of wood as light as balsa, cracked right off the hinges. Near as Drake could figure, the woman had been in room 11.

    "You think she made it?" Drake said.

    "You think she could fit out that back window?"

    "I don't even know what she would have stood on."

    "I don't see a horse trailer anywhere."

    "Did you find a Lincoln?" Drake asked the sheriff.

    "Only thing we found was that old hatchback up there by the office." The sheriff was holding a small purse in his hand, and he gave it over to Drake. "Found this tucked up under the seat. There's some pictures inside. Is that the lady you're looking for?"

    Drake gave the bag a look through, a picture of two Asian children standing with a young Vietnamese woman. He looked at Driscoll. "This isn't the woman I met the other day."

    "Who'd you say that hatchback was registered to?" Driscoll asked.

    "A Roy Clemson out in Lummi."

    "Roy Clemson doesn't sound very much like a lady, or an Asian lady at that," Driscoll said.

    "You think he's our assassin?" Drake said.

    "Don't know," Driscoll said. "I think we better go up there and sit him down for a talk, though."

    "Looking at these two bodies, I'm half-worried what we'll find when we get up there."

    Drake walked around to the back of the motel. There were wide tire tracks in the gravel, same as he'd seen in the mud up by Silver Lake. On the ground he found a paper coffee cup. They were playing catch-up and he knew it.

    At the coffee shack, Drake ordered a coffee. The woman in there looked to be about his age, maybe a few years older. "This your place?" Drake asked.

    "Put it up almost three years ago."

    "What kind of business you do out of this thing?"

    The woman handed him over the coffee. "Mostly we get people heading up for the mountains, more in the winter when the lifts open up. But we get a good amount in the morning."

    "Not a lot of people walking up and ordering coffee."

    "No. Mostly it's drive-through."

    "Were you here last night?"

    "No," the woman said. She was using a dish towel to wipe a bit of spilled coffee by the register. "I have a few girls who do nights for me."

    "Think they know anything about what happened over there at the motel?"

    "I don't think they know much about anything yet. They're both a little dreamy at times."

    "Who was working last night?"

    The woman paused and gave him a look. "Are you with the sheriff?"

    "In a way."

    "What kind of way is that?"

    "If you can believe it, I was told this would be a vacation."

    "Nice vacation."

    "Yeah, that's pretty much how my wife put it."

    "You want me to have the girl give you a call when she gets out of school?"

    "Sure, I just want to talk to her. We have statements from everyone staying in the motel, but I'd like to know if she saw anything."

    "We close around sunset. I don't know if she would have seen any of that mess."

    Drake wrote down his number and gave it to the woman. "Let her know I'd like to talk to her." He paid for his coffee and thanked the woman.

    IN THE CITY THE RAIN HAD BEGUN TO COME IN WAVES, windswept sheets of water moving up the street like ocean rollers. The two Vietnamese men sat in the Lexus, a half block down from Grady's house. The car was parked on the opposite side of the street, with a clear view of Grady's porch and front windows.

    The house clung to the back of a small hill, overgrown grass lining the foundation and a set of cement stairs that climbed up from the sidewalk and briefly flattened into a path that led to the porch.

    No car in the driveway, just the empty carved-out feel of the house, no lights on, the rain falling everywhere. The patter of water spilling from the sky onto the windows and pinging on the Lexus. The driver watched a cat skitter out from under a torn couch and run half-crazed across the street, where it disappeared into one of the neighbor's yards.

    The man in the passenger seat dialed a number on his phone and raised it to his ear. Two hundred feet down the block a light came on, silver blue, through the windshield of a darkened car. "Anything?"

    They were waiting, all of them. The rain falling was the only thing to keep them company. No conversation. No jokes.

    The driver slumped down and rested his head against the seat. The rain still falling. Nothing to do but watch the house. Large- shingled siding, scraped gray paint, dull brown in places where it had been swept clean by time.

    Smells of the car, the sour, upturned odor of cigarettes, and the old smells of food. Hands still raw from hefting the boulder. Arms still sore. The man in the passenger seat finished the call and clapped the phone closed. Down the block, the other light went off. They went on waiting.

    GRADY PULLED THE LINCOLN UP ONTO THE INTERSTATE, a forest of white pine surrounding him. He pushed the accelerator and felt the engine take him, leveling the car south on the interstate toward Seattle. Nora's cell phone rested on the dash. He watched the phone and waited till a strong signal showed on the display. With one hand, Grady toggled down through the numbers, and when he found Hunt's number he pushed Send.

    Hunt answered, and the first thing Grady said was, "Found her."

    After a moment, Hunt said, "What do you want to do?" His voice came out shaking and he fought to calm it.