The Lonely Dead (14 page)

'Cute.'

'I guess so,' Tom said. 'Taken, though.'

'Everybody's taken these days, Tom. Including you, judging by the wedding bands you got there. Is there anything I need to know about that? About how come you're up here all on your own?'

'There was some difficulty back home,' Tom said. 'I came out here to clear my head.'

'Okay. That will do for now.'

Tom wondered how long it would be before the man decided he had to know more about that, and how he could keep him away from that information. He set his beer down and looked at him. From his neat shirt and suit alone you'd know this was a guy just up from the city, and who maybe wasn't quite as smart as he thought. As usual, he was smiling. Tom supposed that was a trait that came in handy when getting people to tell you things. The man — whose name was Jim Henrickson — worked for
Front Page,
whose red and white logo Tom had recognized from twenty yards. Fashion, fame, celebrities — along with Hitler's Hideout in Antarctica, Aliens Abducted My Pay Check, and Fish Boy Born To Idaho Beauty Queen. And now … Suicidal Designer Finds Bigfoot.

The difference being that
Front Page
headlines were never actually that bald, and the writers went to some trouble to look like they were proper journalists. Even if some of the stories wandered into the realms of the bizarre, they were soberly written and took an even-handed approach. Plus it was glossy. The entertainment world took it pretty seriously and their film and fashion people got invites to all the big parties. It was, as celebrity hack mags went, pretty classy. That made a difference. If Henrickson had been from the
Enquirer
or
World News,
Tom would be elsewhere by now. Eating, probably. But the news had to start somewhere, and in the last half-hour, Tom had gradually started to think that he might have an audience for his announcement after all.

'You believe me,' he said.

'Actually, I do.'

Tom felt exhausted, and strange, and tearful. The man saw this, and gently clapped him on the shoulder. 'It's okay, my friend.'

'Why?' Tom asked. 'Nobody else does.'

'Main reason is you just don't seem like a liar, and most of the nonsense I hear is lies rather than mistakes. Second thing is that this is not the first time I've been up around here on a story like this. Nine months ago three hunters fifty miles north east of here, up near Mazama, reported a very similar incident. Something appearing in their camp in the night. A pungent aroma. They heard strange noises, too, a kind of quiet wailing. You hear anything like that?'

'No. But… I was very firmly asleep, before I woke.'

'Right. Well, it freaked them out. These were three big ole boys, been going out in the woods since they were kids, and they came running scared out of their minds.'

'I don't remember hearing about that.'

'Read us every week, do you?'

'No,' Tom admitted. 'In waiting rooms, mainly. Sorry.'

'Your implication saddens me, Tom. Waiting rooms are an important environment. We get men and women through that pre-dental anxiety, more power to us. No, well, you didn't hear about the hunters because we didn't run with it. Hearsay from three beardy guys in plaid may be enough for our competitors, but it's no use to FP's sophisticated readership. Our whole USP is that though we'll cover the Weird Stuff, we won't even table it unless we think we've got a case.'

'Hitler's Hideout in Antarctica?'

'What can I tell you?' The man laughed, throwing his hands wide. 'It was a strange old rock formation and no mistake. Personally I wouldn't have run that one, I admit it freely, but I'm just a field grunt. Sold a shitload of copies, that's for sure. Hitler, the perennial bad boy. We miss him now he's gone. Anyway, my point is if BF's going to be found anywhere, it's going to be up here in the Pacific North West. You have literally hundreds of reports over the years, back to a guy called Elekah Walker in the 1800s — and there's deep background stuff too. All around this part of the US you can find ancient rock carvings of things that look pretty monkey-like, despite the fact you've got no native primates, or so They say.'

'Wasn't there some footage, too?'

The man shook his head. 'The Patterson film. Turned out to be a fake, only recently in fact. All of it does, either fake or could-be-fake and nothing to prove otherwise. That's your biggest problem right there. There's lots of people who don't want the Truth to be known. You give Them the slightest opening and They're going to take you down. But we'll get there.'

Henrickson took a sip of his beer, eyes bright with good cheer. 'You want to know what else I think?'

'Okay,' Tom said. His own beer tasted good but was making him feel strange. It was probably a bad idea, but he didn't want to stop just yet. In the meantime, he was happy to let the other man talk.

'Conspiracy theories are bunk.'

'Right,' said Tom, nodding. 'Okay. Which one?'

'Not one.
All
of them. All conspiracy theories are false. They have been invented by the Authorities — to hide what's
really
going on.'

Tom laughed. 'Good one.'

'I'm not joking.'

'Oh.'

'The only theory which can be true is this one, because I know for sure it has not been put about by Them, because
it was invented by
me. The more bizarre it appears, the more likely a theory is to be true — because it only sounds weird in the context of the lies we've been trained to accept.'

'You've lost me,' Tom said. 'Could be the beer.'

'The authorities control all information — therefore they must have invented these theories too. They plant 'conspiracy theories' because the real truth would be even worse for us to know. Example. You know this idea that we never really landed on the moon, right? That it was all a fake?'

'I saw a television show. Plus there was a movie…'

'Right.
Capricorn One.
And a bunch of books, dah dah dah. But the truth is that the idea we didn't go there is
itself a
fake conspiracy theory, invented to draw attention away from the real truth. There is no moon.'

'Excuse me?'

'There's
no moon.
No planets or stars either. Everyone's yakking about did we go there or not, and so they miss the real truth. There's no there, there. Galileo was on drugs. This is it, my friend; this ball of rock is
all she wrote.
Which also explains the 'The Government Knows About Aliens And Is Covering Them Up' theory, right? Fact is there
are
no aliens, because — see above — there is no rest of the universe. The idea was invented back when it got obvious we needed a new horizon, otherwise we'd kill each other by Tuesday. Gives us something to focus on. Who's going to get to the moon first, us or those super-bad Reds? Then we land there, but it's like we get bored immediately and don't bother any more. Isn't that kind of
weird?
We got there with forty-years-ago technology, but we don't do it now we could fit those computers on the head of a pin?'

'But there's the space shuttles.'

'Right. And every so often one of them blows apart. 'So
that's
why we haven't made it to Mars yet, boys and girls — because space is
dangerous'.
It's all bullshit, and that's what the Little Green Men are for. We don't go out there, but it comes down to us, therefore it must exist. And it's not just far horizons crap, either. Tell me this: who killed John F. Kennedy?'

'I don't know. My impression is it's sort of a mystery.'

'Right. And why is that?'

'You're going to tell me, I suspect.'

'To cover up the fact that Kennedy isn't dead.'

'He's not?'

'Of
course
not, Tom. Actually kind of a sweet story. He was forced out by the people he and his family had pissed off, the mob, Cuban nationals, the CIA; and it's like, 'Go forth, or we're going to whack you'. So he struck a deal so he and his one true love (Marilyn, who else?) could disappear. Their deaths were faked and now they're living in Scotland together. They started an alpaca farm. One of the first in Europe, I believe. It's small stuff, but they do okay and, you know, they've got each other, right? That's why shit keeps happening to all the other Kennedys. Some of them know about JFK's secret love farm. They're supposed to keep quiet about it, otherwise the whole conspiracy base will come to light and people will think 'Shit, if they can do that, then what else isn't true?' The first sign a Kennedy's going to squeal, and splat! They're history. Discredited, dead, or both. There's a rumour Lady Diana got wind of it too, need I say more?'

'You don't really believe all that.'

The man smiled. 'No,' he admitted. 'That's not what happened to JFK. But that's the first thing you learn in my business. What's true is immaterial. It's what people
believe.
Belief is the truth.'

There was a soft clunk at Tom's elbow, and he saw a new beer had arrived. He didn't remember seeing it signalled for. Another skill that probably came in handy in a job like Henrickson's.

'Jim, you don't have to get me drunk,' he said.

'Tom, Tom, Tom,' Henrickson said, shaking his head. 'Jeez! And you think
I'm
paranoid. Trust me. I'm in the mood for some suds, and you're keeping me company. You're in the system now, and that means you're not going to get screwed around. We have a story here, I'm hoping, and that means you're going to get paid big time. Though I do want your word, right here and now, that you're going to talk to me only on this, not anybody else.'

'Sure,' Tom said, knowing no one else would listen.

'Excellent. Which means we only have one remaining thing we're to sort out.'

'Some kind of proof.'

'I'm not talking court-of-law proof, of course. We had that then I'd say screw
Front Page,
let's get talking to the BBC and CNN and NYT But we need something. You got a description that sounds promisingly like the thing the hunters ran into, but you could have picked that up somewhere else.'

'But I hadn't heard…'

'I believe you. Others won't. You had a footprint, too, but that will be long gone, plus there's the inconvenient old woman with her stupid boots.'

'But that's it,' Tom said. 'That's all I had.'

'Actually no.' Henrickson shook his head. 'Not from what you said. You might have something you don't even realize. Tomorrow we'll go take a look.'

Tom just looked confused. 'Trust me,' the man said again, and winked.

—«»—«»—«»—

Al Connolly was leaving the station for the night. A quick conversation with Patrice Anders had explained Melissa's find: she had put the herbs there. The situation was nice and tidy again. He considered heading over to Frank's for a soda and some wings, but decided it had been a long day and that a beer in front of the tube at home would do just as well. His house was big and empty, but it was quiet and the phone wouldn't ring.

That sounded good.

13

Ten minutes after her phone conversation with Sheriff Connolly, Patrice was still standing in the little kitchen area of her home. A scant four-by-six-foot corner of the main living space, it had a window that looked out into the trees. She was looking out through it now, though if the truth be told she wasn't seeing anything. Not anything anyone else would see, anyhow.

—«»—«»—«»—

For almost all their lives Bill and Patrice Anders had lived in Portland. When the kids left home in the mid 1980s the adults started tentatively to remind themselves how you spent free time: like staff from an abandoned zoo, released with the animals back into the wild. They began to go for weekends out of the city, enjoying themselves in a somewhat aimless way, but it wasn't until they discovered Verona that they had horizons once again.

Little more than a bump on 101, the coast road down the state's Pacific edge, Verona has a few streets, wooden houses, a grocery, not much else: chances were you'd be through and past without it occurring to you to stop. But if you were dawdling south, and kept your eyes open as you left town, then just after the bridge over the inlet there's a sign for the Redwood Lodgettes. A sign burned into an old log, pointing into trees. Patrice saw it, and they pulled in to have a look. That whim changed the rest of their lives.

The Lodgettes were a piece of fading history, the kind of old-school resort that used to mark the end of a morning's driving and the dawn of an afternoon's swimming and shrieking and padding to the sea and back with sand and pine needles underfoot; mom happy because the place was nice and had somewhere to wash clothes, father relieved a budget had been met; the children knowing these things, however vaguely, and basking in the warmth of a family bound in simple satisfaction for once. Fourteen cabins were dotted around a couple of wooded acres, bordered by rocky shoreline on one side and the inlet on another. On that first visit Bill insisted on sketching out the layout of their cabin (Number 2), so taken was he with the way it had been put together: sitting area, kitchenette, bedroom, bathroom and storage eking every spare inch of living space out of sturdy log constructions twenty feet square. A wood-burning stove in the sitting room made it the perfect place for chilly spring evenings; the bedroom was cosy on cold winter nights. The wraparound porch was where you lived in summer and autumn, listening to the birds and the distant sound of water, musing about what you might have for supper, keeping a book open on your lap to legitimate not doing anything, including reading it.

In the evening they wandered over the bridge back into the tiny town. They found a bar that stood on stilts in the bay and had pool tables and loud music they recognized, and further up the hill a restaurant as good as any in Portland. They drank local wine and local beer and were enchanted. It was a long time since that had happened. Enchantment isn't easy to come by, in this day and age. Verona pulled it off, in spades. Bill and Patrice found themselves breathing more slowly, holding hands on the beach and smiling at fellow walkers, looking out to sea and feeling the curvature of the earth. They chose the same appetizers three nights running. The old couple who ran the Lodgettes — the Willards — were calling them by first name by the second day. When it came time to leave Patrice had to be hauled away by a tractor, and extracted a promise from her husband that they were coming back as soon as they could.

It was decided there and then. When the world needed getting away from, this was where they'd come.

—«»—«»—«»—

Ten years passed, with twenty visits, maybe twenty-five. The Willards retired in 94, but nothing much changed: Patrice and Bill kept pulling in to the Lodgettes like seabirds bobbing up on a twice-yearly tide. They nearly brought their children, once, but the visit fell through. This was far from unusual. When discussing Josh and Nicole one time, Bill described the relationship they had with them as 'cordial', and that pretty much nailed it. Everyone loved each other, there was no question of that, but they kept their heads about it. Nobody went berserk with affection. Phone contact was regular, visits friendly. They met for the major festivals, when well-chosen gifts were exchanged and everyone was helpful in the kitchen. Their children worked hard. If their careers were more important than visiting, there wasn't a great deal that could be said. They went down to Verona anyway. It was nice to have the place to themselves, not to have to worry whether others were finding it quite so comfortable as them. They didn't suggest a family trip again.

Then they happened to be in Verona for a weekend one late August and fell to talking to the new owners. It wasn't that they had a close relationship — unlike the Willards, Ralph and Becca seemed to forget them after each visit and affability had to be forged anew — but they soon picked up something was afoot. There was an air of non-renewal. They asked, and Ralph confirmed it without much evident regret: this was the Lodgettes' last summer.

On hearing this Patrice's heart was pierced, and her hand went up to her mouth. She barely heard as they were told the business wasn't making enough money, though the town was growing in popularity as Cannon Beach and Florence and Yachats got too expensive and people looked further down the coast for romantic minibreaks. This wasn't helping the Lodgettes. Young money didn't want rustic cabins. It wanted DVD players and organic juices. Stone Therapy was a baseline requirement. The resort occupied a prime location and a spa hotel there would be a no-brainer for someone who knew the business. Bill later muttered to Patrice that if Ralph or Becca had mastered the art of remembering guests between stays then things might have gone differently, but that's the way it was. A developer up from San Francisco had made an offer they weren't prepared to refuse.

They sat on the deck of the bar before dinner, sipping their Verona drinks: a rare beer for him, an even rarer Sweet Manhattan for her. Patrice felt more glum than in a long, long time. Why did life have to be this way? It seemed as if with every passing year the world accepted into it more and more things that meant nothing to her, innovations that seemed trivial or confusing but were heralded like the dawn of a new age. She put up with all that stuff, did her best to understand the attractions of cell phones and Windows and Eminem: but why did the parts that mattered to her have to get shoved aside in the process? Bill was also quiet. There was a look on his face, the one he got when he was trying not to think about something. He was reserved during dinner, not even bothering to look through the wine list, something which — since more or less giving up beer — he'd tried to get in the habit of doing. Patrice put it down to him feeling the way she did, to asking himself the same questions, most of all a question she was too sad to put into words.

Would they still come to Verona?

With the Lodgettes gone, vanished beneath just another hotel of the kind you could find by the bushel in glossy books telling couples of a certain age where to go to rekindle their love (or have affairs with their brokers or neighbours, more likely), where would they stay? There was already a hotel further up 101, on the north side of town, but it was a characterless brick sprawl with a treeless lawn, nowhere you'd go on purpose or twice. They could try the new place after it was built, but it would be disloyal to something that mattered, unfaithful to the old place. She knew the paths between its trees. She couldn't take breakfast on a balcony over a parking lot where their cabin had once stood.

So what would they do? Find somewhere else? She didn't want to. She didn't want to have to start afresh. Having Verona meant they took far more breaks than they might otherwise. A decision was saved. They knew every mile of the drive, stopped at the same places for lunch there and back. They'd lose all of that, along with countless other rituals too small to have a name, down to the little joke by which they referred to the elderly gay couple they exchanged nods with on the beach as The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Of course there were other places along the coast, and it wasn't as if Verona was actually heaven on earth (the grocery store remained very functional, so they always stocked up in Cannon Beach), but you can't find another bolthole just by looking.

One of the walls of Patrice's inner house had been taken from her, and she couldn't find any way to feel good about it.

As they walked hand in hand down the road after dinner, still quiet, Bill surprised her by suggesting a nightcap. In the early years they'd always done this: people-watching the locals, a quiet cigarette for Bill out on the deck hanging over the bay. Gradually they'd found that dinner left them comfortably tired, and had taken to just wandering home.

Patrice smiled, said yes. She was glad. He was good like that. He didn't always talk about things out loud (which had driven her crazy on more than one occasion over the years), but he always understood. She sat out on the deck while he fetched the drinks. She could see lights in some of the cabins across the inlet, just as always. They were like stars to her, something by which to navigate through life. She realized that next time these lights would have been extinguished, and knew there and then this was their last visit. When she turned at the sound of Bill coming out with a drink in each hand, her eyes were wet.

'I know,' he said, sitting opposite her.

He put his hand on hers, looked out at the lights for a moment. Then he picked up his drink and held it for her to knock against. She shrugged. She didn't feel like it. There was nothing to toast.

He insisted, keeping his glass high. Stranger still, she saw he had a cigarette in his hand — and he hardly ever smoked by then. Patrice began to suspect his faraway look hadn't meant quite what she'd thought. She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and then her own glass.

'I've got an idea,' he said.

—«»—«»—«»—

As she stood now, still looking out at the forest, Patrice could remember that evening with a clarity missing from almost all of her life since. The last big decision. The last thing that had felt like a step upwards rather than more standing in place, or worse, slipping sideways into some place she'd never been.

'We've talked about buying some land,' Bill said. 'Somewhere cheap, with trees.'

That was true. They had. Or Bill had, anyway. She'd listened and nodded and been vaguely positive, not thinking it would ever happen. They didn't need somewhere else. They had Verona.

Except… now they didn't.

She said: 'We don't really have enough…'

'Money. Yes we do. For the land.'

'But not to build a house.'

'Right. So how about tomorrow morning I go to Ralph and make him an offer on one of those cabins?'

She stared at him, willing him to say it.

'Cabin Two,' he said, and by then her eyes were wet again. 'We do a side deal with Ralph. Developer's not going to want them — they're just in the way. They don't have to knock it down, and we get it moved to wherever.'

'Can you
do
that?'

They talked about it for an hour, until both were wild-eyed and starting to gabble. Next morning Bill did as he'd said.

Ralph made a phone call and half an hour later the deal was done. The faraway look didn't quite leave Bill's eye, however: by the afternoon things had progressed and they were the owners of not one, but three of the cabins. Bill told her they could have one for them, one for an office/study, one for guests. The kids, perhaps. Patrice didn't really care. The main thing was that Cabin Two was safe. She still wished it could stay in Verona, that the Lodgettes would be there forever and nothing had to change, but if that wasn't the way it was going to be, then they weren't taking it lying down. She wanted to fix stickers over the cabin saying it was their property now. She wanted to lift it up onto the car's roof rack and take it right away. She wanted to set up a machine-gun post.

Once they had three cabins to find a home for, buying a piece of land changed from a vague notion into the thing they were doing next. They spent a few weekends looking for a spot and settled on the area just north of Sheffer, on the east side of the Cascades. It was an afternoon's drive from Portland, up 5 and over 90; a nice little town, charming without being fake, and land was still reasonably priced. Developers had staked out stretches on the roads out of town, but there hadn't been any takers so far and some of the For Sale signs were beginning to fade. They bought a forty-acre lot way out at the end of the access road, complete with a ton of trees and its own cold little lake. If you climbed over their back fence you were in National Forest, and no one was ever going to be able to change that. This time Cabin Two had a permanent home.

Most utilities were on site, and the rest didn't take long. They got the cabins moved, ritualistically following them up the coast in their car. One had to be virtually rebuilt at the other end, a cost they hadn't anticipated, but when she saw them in place Patrice stood and looked with tears running down her face. She didn't turn to Bill. She knew he didn't really like her to see him cry.

Cabin Two went near the lake, the 'office' a little further around, and the guest cabin right the other side. By the time they had been on their plot for a week, Bill and Patrice knew this was where they lived now. They sold the house back in Portland, got rid of most of their stuff, and committed themselves. He tweaked and customized the office and guest cabins, learning skills he'd never realized he wanted to have. She did a little landscaping around the cabins before the snows came down, and then sat by the fire with plant and seed catalogues, planning for the spring. They spent the Christmas up in Sheffer, getting to know the town, what it had, what it didn't. Both children called on Christmas Day, which was nice.

On January 1st, 2001, Patrice was led out of the cabin to see that Bill had built her a bench which went around the biggest tree by the lake — manhandling rustic chunks of wood down there by himself and in secret. They sat shivering on it together, drinking a big thermos of mulled wine, and she grew warm in his arms and believed she was about as happy as she could ever be.