Страница 30 из 62
"I have to get on in to work, but you let me know if there's anything I can do to help."
"You can carry this," I said, passing him the typewriter. He did me one better, carrying both the duffel and the Smith-Corona as he escorted me to the car. I waited until he pulled away and then I headed for the office and stuck my head into the door. There was no sign of of Cecilia. The usual table lamp was still on, but her door was shut and I imagined her catching up on the sleep she'd lost taking me to the emergency room. I got into my car and pulled out of the parking lot, turning left onto 395.
I kept an eye on the odometer, clocking off a mile and then began to look for the spot where Tom's truck had been parked the night he died. As Te
I eased over onto the berm and parked. I got out of the car, draping my heavy leather jacket across my shoulders. There was no traffic at this hour and the morning air was silent. The sky was massed with dark gray, the mountains obscured by mist. Snow had begun to fall; big lacy flakes that settled on my face like a series of kisses. For a moment, I leaned my head back and let the snow touch my tongue.
There was, of course, no remaining trace of vehicles having been parked here six weeks before. If the truck, Te
I covered every inch of ground within a radius of a hundred feet. There was no notebook, no pages fluttering in the breeze, no confetti of torn paper, no nook or cra
I returned to my car and turned the key in the ignition, not without struggle. The tape on my right hand made everything slightly awkward and I suspected that the compensatory effort over the next couple of days was going to wear me down. While the injury wasn't major, it was a
TWELVE
Shortly after leaving Nota Lake, I'd thought I caught a glimpse of a county sheriff's cruiser keeping me company from half a mile back. The car was too far away to identify the driver, but the effect was to make me feel I was being ushered across the county line. I kept my eye on the rearview mirror, but the black-and-white maintained a discreet distance. When we reached the junction of 395 and 168, a road sign indicated that it was five miles to Whirly Township, seven miles to Rudd. The patrol car turned off. Whether the escort was deliberate or coincidental, I couldn't be sure. Nor could I determine whether the intention was benign or belligerent. Earlene's husband, Wayne, was the deputy who worked in Whirly Township, so maybe it was only him on his way to:work.
After that, the desert landscape sped by in a monotonous repetition of scrub-covered low hills, and I spent the rest of the journey in a haze of road-induced hypnosis. The intervening towns were few-Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine, Cartago, Olancha-unexpected small enclaves that consisted primarily of gas stations, wooden cottages, coffee shops, perhaps a pizza restaurant or a Frosty Freeze, sometimes still boarded over for the winter. In most towns, there seemed to be more buildings abandoned than were currently in use. The structures were low wood fronts with a Western or Victorian feel to them. In some areas, the commercial businesses seemed to be devoted almost entirely to propane sales and service. An occasional feed store would be tucked in among the cottonwoods and pines. I passed one of those plain motel-style brown-and-yellow churches that made you suspect it would be depressing to believe whatever these people believed.
Between townships, the empty stretches of wilderness picked up. The air felt clear, warming as the road descended from the higher elevations. The snow had disappeared, soft flakes turning into an even softer rain. What should have been a clear, unobstructed view was subdivided by the march of power lines, telephone poles, and oil derricks-the cost of doing business in an otherwise pristine countryside. Out of the raw hills to my left I could see the occasional cinder cone and the dark craggy outcroppings of lava from ancient volcanic activity. Rocks dotted the landscape: green, red, brown, and cream. The area was undercut by two major fault lines-the San Andreas and the Garlock-that in 1872 had generated one of the largest earthquakes in Californian history.
Gradually, I let my thoughts drift back to events I'd left behind. I'd spent an hour at Selma 's before I'd departed Nota Lake. So far, given my four days' work, I'd earned a thousand dollars of the fifteen hundred she'd paid me in advance. That meant that I would owe her money if I decided to quit… which I confess had crossed my mind. My medical insurance would cover the expenses incurred in behalf of my bunged-up hand. She'd been properly upset by what had happened and we'd gone through the predictable litany of horror and remorse. "I feel sick. This is my fault. I got you into this," she'd said.
"Don't be silly, Selma. It isn't your fault. If nothing else it gives credence to your hunch about Tom's 'secret,' if you want to call it that."
"But I never dreamed it'd-be dangerous."
"Life is dangerous," I said. I was feeling oddly impatient, ready to move on to the job at hand. "Look, we can sit here and commiserate, but I'd much prefer to use the time constructively. I've got a big pile of phone bills. Let's sit down together and see how many numbers you recognize. Any that seem unfamiliar, I can check from Santa Teresa."
Which is what we'd done, eliminating slightly more than three-quarters of the calls listed for the past ten months. Many were Selma 's, related to her church work, charity events, and assorted friendships outside the 619 area code. Some of the remaining numbers she'd recognized as business calls, a fact confirmed by judicious use of Tom's Rolodex. I'd placed the entire file of last year's phone bills in my duffel and then I'd gone down to the basement to take a look at the storage boxes I'd seen previously. There, in the dry, overheated space that smelled of ticking furnace and hot paper, a curious order prevailed.