Black River (12 page)

He used his key on the lock and then let the spring swing it shut with a dull
clank
. The line of boats sat silent and slack in the water as he hurried toward
Saltheart
, moored at the far end. He was halfway there when his hands, as if acting on their own, reached to raise his collar, and he realized that once again he could feel unknown eyes on his back.

Friday, October 20

10:34 a.m.

S
he’d become the body electric. A
flesh-and-blood software application. An extension cord for millennial
medicine. Her heart reduced to a series of green electronic waves, her
brain functions to a skittering red line on a bright white screen, her
lungs to the rise and fall of a small black bellows. Tubes going in,
tubes coming out, everything stimulating, and simulating, and yet she
lay as still as death, her fingers relaxed, her eyes motionless beneath
the lids.

Corso found himself thinking funeral thoughts. About
the nature of life and how precious little what we call
the body
has to do with the person we are. How
the body is little more than a container for the spark that makes us
alive, that makes us unique, that makes us divine, and is ultimately no
more meaningful or permanent than the red velvet box that delivers the
diamond ring.

The soft
whoosh
of the door
diverted his attention: the day nurse, a tall no-name-tag no-nonsense
African-American woman of maybe thirty-five.

“There’s a young man upstairs,” she
began.

“The boyfriend?”

She nodded. “He seems to feel—”

“Yeah,” Corso said. “I know.
I’ll be going.”

“He objects to you being here.”

“We got off to a bad start,” Corso said.
“He’ll get over it.” He fetched his coat from the
foot of the bed and shouldered his way into it. “You’ve got
my number?”

“Yes, sir. Both Ms. Taylor and Mr. Crispin were
very explicit. Any change in Ms. Dougherty’s condition,
you’re to be notified immediately.”

The look in her eyes said she was vaguely annoyed by
the extra instructions and wanted to know what the hoopla was
about.

“Thanks,” Corso said. “I appreciate
it.”

She headed for the bed, Corso for the door. In the
hall, he turned right and made for the elevators at the far end of the
corridor. At the moment he pushed the
UP
button his cellular phone rang softly in his pocket. He pulled it out,
raised the antenna.

“Corso.”

“Mr. Corso, it’s Robert Downs.”

“Where are you?”

Downs told him.

“You’re finished with the cops?”

Downs said he was.

Corso gave him directions to the hospital.
“I’ll meet you out front,” he said.

Friday, October 20

10:53 a.m.

C
orso shuffled through the pile of papers in
his lap. Pulled out a 1040 form.

“Last year, your father made thirty-seven
thousand dollars.” He pointed out over the dashboard. “Take
the next exit. Stay left.”

Downs put on his turn signal and moved to the right
lane, running up the steep exit ramp onto Martin Luther King Way South.
Doubling back over the freeway, running south alongside the northbound
freeway.

“Thirty-seven thousand dollars netted him just
over two thousand dollars a month.” Corso shuffled some more
papers. “From what I can see, he lived on eight hundred and spent
the other twelve on your education.”

Downs swallowed hard but kept his eyes on the road.
Corso found a bank statement. “At the time of his death, he had a
hundred thirty-nine dollars in his savings account.” Corso
scanned the bottom of the form. “His average savings account
balance for the past two years is one hundred fifty-three dollars and
twelve cents.”

“I don’t understand,” Robert Downs
said.

“Don’t understand what?”

“How his average balance wasn’t
higher.”

“Why’s that?”

“Early last year, maybe a year and a half ago, my
last year of med school, he missed a bunch of payments. I started
getting letters from Harvard saying I better make other arrangements
for payment or I was going to be dropped.”

“And?”

“I called him. He was never there, so I kept
leaving him messages.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Three or four months. I’d already been to
my bank. Signed the papers for a loan.” Robert Downs looked over
at Corso. “I was going to tell him it was all right. I had a
loan. It was no problem.”

“And?”

“He paid it off. Out of the blue. All of it. Not
just what he was behind but the whole rest of the year.”

“How much was that?

“Forty-something thousand.”

Corso sat back in the seat. “Really?”

“Not only that, but the last time we
spoke—”

“When was that?”

“A couple of months back.”

“And?”

“I was telling him how I was probably going to
have to go to work for an HMO. How private practice was so expensive I
was going to have to spend a few years saving my pennies before I could
even think about going out on my own.”

“And?”

“And he told me to hang in there. Not to commit
to anything. He said he might be able to help set me up on my
own.” He lifted one hand from the wheel and waved it around.
“How could a guy with a hundred-fifty-dollar average balance be
thinking about helping me get into private practice?”

“Beats me,” Corso said. “Turn right
at the bottom of the hill.”

Downs did as he was told, making a sharp right, rolling
the rented Malibu along an access road between a Fred Meyer store and
an apartment complex.

“How much would it take to get yourself into
private practice?”

“A hundred thousand, minimum.” He threw a
pleading glance at Corso. “That’s why I always assumed he
was…I assumed he had…”

“Means,” Corso said.

“He made it sound like it was no problem. Like he
just had to move some money around and it would be okay.”

Corso ruffled the stack of papers. “If he had a
portfolio he’d have been paying taxes on it.” Corso turned
the tax form over. “He claimed nothing but his salary and twelve
dollars in interest income.”

The haunted look on Robert Downs’s face said he
was as confused as Corso was.

“Take a right at the light. That’s Renton
Avenue. The school district building should be somewhere up the road on
the right.”

Half a mile up Renton Avenue, the Meridian School
District was housed in a sleek modern building across from South Sound
Ford. Robert Downs eased into a leaf-strewn parking space marked
VISITOR
and turned off the engine. He sighed
and looked over at Corso. “What now?”

“Same deal,” Corso said. “We’re
following the money. Did he cash in his retirement fund last year? Did
he have an insurance policy he could borrow on? Was he into his credit
union big-time? We’re looking for any explanation of how a man
with an average balance of less than two hundred bucks could come up
with better than forty thousand dollars in a pinch.”

Downs grabbed the door handle. “You
coming?” he asked.

“They’ll just make me wait outside,”
Corso said. “You better handle this one on your own.” Downs
heaved a sigh and got out of the car. As he stood for a moment with
the door open, Corso could hear the rush of traffic and the car
lot’s colorful pennants snapping in the breeze.

Robert Downs was gone for thirty-three minutes. By the
time he returned, carrying a thick manila folder, Corso had been
through Donald Barth’s financial records twice.

“Anything?” Corso asked as the younger man
settled into the driver’s seat.

Downs dropped the folder on the seat between them.
“Nothing,” he said. “He’s got thirty-three
thousand dollars in his retirement fund and a ten-thousand-dollar
insurance policy, neither of which have been touched.”

“You the beneficiary?”

“Yeah,” Downs muttered, looking away.

“Nothing to be sad about, kid. It’s how he
would have wanted it. And you’re damn near halfway to private
practice.”

Downs leaned his head against the window. “It
doesn’t seem right.”

“What’s that?”

“That I could occupy such a huge part in his
life, when…you know.”

Corso remained silent. Downs rubbed the side of his
face.

“It’s like he aimed his whole existence at
me, and—you know—to me he was just an afterthought. This
distant creep my mother talked about. And all the while he was toiling
away so I could—”

He stopped talking and looked over at Corso.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I sound
like something off a soap opera.”

“Fathers are tough,” Corso said.
“There’s a lot of built-in baggage.”

Downs silently agreed, turned the key, and started the
engine. “The school district has a maintenance shop. He had a
locker.” He reached down, opened the manila folder, and came out
with a small piece of yellow lined paper. “I got
directions,” he said.

Corso took the paper from his hand, studied it for a
moment, and then pointed toward the opposite end of the parking lot.
“Take the far exit. Turn right out of the lot.”

“You find anything?” Downs asked.

“It’s what I
didn’t
find.”

“Like what?”

“Like any records pertaining to medical school
payments.”

“Really?”

“He’s got everything from your four years
at Harvard. Every bill, every letter, every invoice.” Corso
spread his hands. “Then, for the past two years,
nothing.”

“You suppose the police…?” Downs
pointed the Chevy up a steep hill, into a seedy suburban
neighborhood.

“Soon as we get back to town, you’re going
to check with them again. Make sure they didn’t miss
something.”

“Maybe they’re holding out on
us.”

“Maybe,” Corso said, without believing it.
“And then you need to call Harvard. Get a complete copy of your
payment records. College, med school, the whole thing. Have them
overnight it to you.”

Friday, October 20

11:47 a.m.

“I
’ll tell you the same thing I
told the cops. Donald Barth’s been with us fifteen months. A
model employee. Never missed a day.”

Dennis—call me Denny—Ryder was foreman of
the West Hill Maintenance Shop. Age was turning his thick blond hair
the color of dirty brass, but it hadn’t stopped him from
plastering it back into a duck-tailed pompadour that would have made
Elvis proud. A black Harley Davidson Road King Classic rested lovingly
along the rear wall. Corso was betting it was Denny Ryder’s.

Ryder wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and
forefinger and then flicked a glance over at Robert Downs, who was
holding his father’s uniform shirt up in front of his face,
studying the fabric as if it were the Turin Shroud.

“Nice quiet fella. Did his job. Kept his mouth
shut.”

“Where’d he work before?” Corso
asked.

Ryder’s eyes took on a furtive cast.
“Before what?”

“Before fifteen months ago.”

“Musta been somewhere else in the
district.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“He transferred in with his seniority intact, so
he must have worked somewhere else in the district.”

“Must have?”

“I don’t do the hiring and firing,”
he said disgustedly. “The eggheads up in Human Resources do that.
I just keep ’em busy when they get here.”

Again, he flashed a quick look over at Robert Downs,
who had folded the two uniform shirts over his arm and now stood,
staring dejectedly off into space.

“Like I said. I really didn’t know the guy
very well.”

Corso turned to Downs. “You ready?”

Downs looked startled by the question.
“Oh…yes, sure.” he seemed to shudder slightly as he
started across the floor. He stuck out his hand. “Thanks for your
help, Mr. Ryder,” he said. Denny Ryder mumbled the obligatory
condolences and then followed Corso over to the door, where he once
again managed a furtive smile and a clumsy testimonial on the subject
of Donald Barth. Hell-of-a-guy, good-bye.

Outside, the weather had gone to hell. A steady rain
slanted in from the south. What an hour ago had been a bright blue sky
was now a black blanket hanging twenty feet above the treetops like
cannon smoke.

Robert Downs had raised his foot, as if to jog to the
car, when Corso put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll meet you
in the car,” Corso shouted over the rush of the wind.

“I…” Downs began to stammer.

“I’ll be right there,” Corso assured
him.

Downs nodded blankly and began jogging toward the car.
Corso waited until the car door closed before turning and walking up
the three stairs into the maintenance office.

Dennis Ryder’s expression said he had half
expected Corso to come back and wasn’t happy about it.
“Lose something?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Corso said. “But I’m
not quite sure what it is.”

“What’s that mean?” His tone held a
challenge.

“It means I hear you talking, but I don’t
hear you saying anything. You sound like Jeffrey Dahmer’s
neighbors, talking about what a nice quiet boy he was.”

Ryder swallowed a denial, scratched the back of his
neck, and sighed. “I mean, what am I gonna say? With his kid here
and all.”

“I understand.”

Ryder checked the room. “Barth was a first-class
asshole,” he said. “A complete loser loner. Thought he was
better than everybody else.” He waved a hand. “Cheapest
sonofabitch I ever met.” He threw a thumb back over his shoulder
at the pop machine. “Never saw him so much as buy a pop. Never
saw him buy a bag of chips or a candy bar. Two sandwiches and a bottle
of tap water.” He cut the air with the side of his hand.
“That was it. Five days a week.”

“So how come you don’t know where Barth
transferred in from?”

Ryder’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say
that. I said Human Resources didn’t provide me with that
information.”

“But you asked around.”

“Wouldn’t you? You come in one Monday
morning.” He waved a hand around. “I remember it was the
fifteenth, because it was payday. And all of a sudden here’s this
guy who the district says is going to work full-time. They say
he’s got seven and a half years’ seniority, which is more
than anybody here but me.” He shook his head, sending a single
yellow lock down onto his forehead. “So naturally, I want to know
where this guy came from. And you know what they say?” He waited
for the question to sink in. “They say it’s none of my
damn business. Just put him to work. That’s it.”

“So?”

“I called the union.”

“And the union said?”

“The union said, If they want to give us an extra
position, we’re sure as hell gonna take it.”

“But you asked around anyway.”

“Damn right I did.”

“So?”

“So I find out he’d been working over in
the North Hill shop. I call Sammy Harris—he’s the lead over
there—and I ask Sammy what the deal is, and he tells me pretty
much the same thing I just told you. The guy’s a loner.
It’s like he thinks he’s better than everybody else or
something. Eats lunch out in his truck by himself. Listens to classical
music. Don’t attend any of the social things. Just comes in,
does his job, and goes home.” Ryder stopped talking and squinted
out the window. A white pickup with a Meridian School District logo on
the door drove along the side of the building. Then another. And a
third. “Crew’s coming back for lunch,” Ryder
said.

“So how come they transfer Barth over
here?” Corso asked.

“Well, that’s the
sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now, isn’t it?” Again
he checked the room. “Seems our friend Mr. Barth took a
four-month leave of absence. By the time he got around to coming back,
they didn’t need him over on North Hill anymore, so they sent him
here.”

“Four months?”

“Yeah…from a job where if you’re out
more than three days in a row, you gotta bring a note from a doctor to
keep from getting docked.”

“Weird,” Corso said. “When was
this?”

“About this time last year is when he showed up.
So he must have been out since early June sometime.”

“Anybody tell you why he was gone?”

He shook his head. “Nope. District said I
didn’t need to know. Just put him back to work. Said it was
confidential.”

“What did Sammy have to say?” Corso
asked.

Ryder chuckled. “Sammy said he don’t have
any idea either. Just gets a call from Human Resources one morning.
They say Barth won’t be in for a while. Period. That’s it.
Just won’t be in for a while. But don’t take him off the
union rolls.”

Corso pulled his notebook from his coat pocket.
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Sometime last
summer, Barth walks off his job and doesn’t come back for over
four months.”

Ryder nodded. “Fourth of June to the eleventh of
October. I looked it up for the cops yesterday.”

Another pair of district pickup trucks rolled by the
window.

“Then he shows up over here one morning, four
months later, and you’re supposed to just put him to work and not
ask questions.”

“That’s it.”

“Then what?”

“Then—what?—a couple of months ago,
he stops coming in. I wait a few days—you know, HR already told
me it was none of my business—so I wait a few days and call. They
tell me to hang loose. Don’t take him off the payroll.
Don’t do nothing. Just hang loose.”

“And?”

Dennis Ryder’s nostrils fluttered, as if the air
were suddenly rank. “I’m still hanging when the cops come
waltzing here Tuesday afternoon. Start showing me all these pictures of
what’s left of Barth and his truck.” He eyed Corso
closely. “I been straight with you, mister,” he said.
“How about a little comp time? You know what’s going on
here? Ain’t often some guy we work with is found buried in the
side of a hill like Jimmy Hoffa or something.”

“Not a clue,” Corso said. “I’m
getting the same picture you laid out for me: a loner, kept away from
everybody else, cheap.” Corso shrugged. “If he had a vice
it might have been that he liked the ladies a bit too much.”

“Who told you that?”

“His ex.”

Ryder took a deep breath, held it, looked around again.
“You won’t quote me.” His eyes narrowed. “This
kind of thing’d get me fired.”

“No problem.”

He pushed the breath out through his nose. “There
were
a couple of complaints.”

“What kind?”

“Sexual harassment.”

“Do tell.”

“One over on North Hill and another one
here.”

“For doing what?”

Ryder made a rude noise with his lips and put on a
disgusted face. “Who the hell knows, these days? You sneeze and
somebody takes it wrong. You hang up a girlie calendar, and somebody
feels like their constitutional rights are being shit on.”

“You’ve got no idea what the beef
was?”

Ryder shook his head. “District’s real
tight-assed about that kind of thing.” He scratched a pair of
quotation marks in the air. “Confidentiality,” he said.
“I’m not even allowed to ask.”

Corso thought it over. “The person he was
supposed to have harassed while he was here…”

Ryder was already shaking his head. “I
can’t tell you that. They’d have my ass in a New York
minute.”

“She—I’m assuming it was a
she.”

Ryder nodded vigorously. “Yeah.”

“She still here?”

“Why?”

“I was thinking maybe you could ask her—you
know, confidentially—if she might be willing to talk to me about
it?”

Ryder chewed his lower lip.

“She says no, I’ll take a hike,”
Corso added.

Ryder thought about it, made a what-the-hell gesture
and turned and walked toward a door marked
EM
-
PLOYEES
ONLY
. “Stay here,” he said, over his shoulder.

Corso watched the second hand sweep around four times
before the door opened and a woman stepped into the room. She was
younger than he’d expected: thirty or so, with a lot of city
miles etched around her eyes and mouth, slim-hipped and flat-chested,
with shoulder-length brown hair framing a pale oval face. The patch on
her uniform read
KATE
. She carried half
a sandwich in one hand and a can of Diet Pepsi in the other.

“Cops were here yesterday,” she said.

“I’m not a policeman,” Corso said.
“I’m a writer.”

She recoiled slightly. “I don’t want my
name in the paper.”

“No problem,” he assured her. “I
write books.”

“Don’t want my name in a book
neither.”

“Still not a problem,” Corso assured her.
“I’m just trying to figure out how a guy like Donald Barth
ended up buried in the side of a hill.”

She shook her head. “Weird, huh? Nothing like
this ever happened anywhere around me before.” She took a bite of
her sandwich. While chewing, she took Corso in from head to toe. After
washing the sandwich down with a big swig of Pepsi, she asked,
“So what is it you want from me?” Her tone suggested she
might be willing to entertain suggestions above and beyond mere
information.

“You filed a complaint against Mr.
Barth.”

She rolled a piece of plastic wrap into a ball and
threw it in the garbage can, then took another big pull on the
Pepsi.

“He was a jerk,” she said.

“Did he harass you?”

“What he did was piss me off,” she
said.

Corso kept his mouth shut, figuring she wouldn’t
have agreed to talk to him unless she wanted to tell her story.

“We had a thing going for a while,” she
said. “Nothing too serious, but you know…it was
passable.”

“Everybody says he was a loner. Did everything by
himself. How’d you manage to get involved with him?”

Her expression suggested she’d never considered
the matter before. “I guess that was part of it,” she said
tentatively. “He had like this mystique about him. All secret and
silent and withdrawn. He was different. He just sorta sat back and
waited, like a spider.” She skittered across the room as if she
were on wheels. “Looking back on it, I guess that was his
technique. He made it so’s you had to chase after him.”

“So what happened?”

She walked over to the window, spread the blinds with
her fingers, and looked out. “It’s like it was more
exciting that way.” She turned back toward the room and gestured
toward the shop. “You know, what with the rest of the guys always
coming on with the ‘oooh babay baby’ routine.” She
made a suggestive move with her hands and hips. “It’s kinda
refreshing to be on the other side of it once in a while.”

“So?”

“So he’s tellin’ me how it’s
been years for him. How he hasn’t been involved with a woman
since his divorce and all that.” She gave Corso a sideways smile.
“You know; and that’s got its appeal too. It’s like
you’re in charge or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

She brought one hand up to her throat. “I know
I’m clean. I get myself tested every time I—you
know—strike up a new friendship, so to speak. And he’s
supposedly been living like a monk for years, so we can do it au
natural, so to speak, which is a joy all to itself, if you know what I
mean.”

Corso’s confirmation seemed to encourage her.
“So almost right away—soon as we get past the sweaty palms
part in the beginning—I can tell something’s wrong. Never
back to his place. Always gotta be mine. We never go anywhere in
public, ’cause—you know—we work together, and people
might be thinkin’ it’s bad to mix business with
pleasure.” She made a rueful face. “At least that’s
what he said at the time.”

She rested a hip on the desk and folded her arms.
“So right away I’m thinking he’s gotta be married or
something.” She held up a hand. “I got a rule. No married
guys. Period. That’s it.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve got a friend in payroll, who
tells me that, lo and behold, he’s single. Got him a son who he
doesn’t have on the health plan, which means the son’s
either too old or has coverage someplace else.”