Rise the Dark (15 page)

B
MV records told them that Jay Baldwin lived on Twenty-Second Street West in Red Lodge, the last street off Highway 212 before it began to climb into the Beartooths. The home was a nice A-frame with a garage below the decks and wide banks of windows facing the mountains.

Mark parked on the curb, and they had just gotten out of the Tahoe when the garage door went up. A man's boots and jeans became visible, and then the whole of him—Jay Baldwin, standing at the top of a short staircase, locking the interior door to the house. He had his back to them, and when he turned and saw them he jerked and moved a hand toward his heart like they'd given him a coronary.

“Mr. Baldwin?” Lynn said.

“Yes. What?” He hurried down the steps and out of the garage. “Who are you?”

“Private investigators,” Lynn said.

He stopped walking. Stopped breathing, it seemed. He looked like they'd fired off a flash grenade in his face.

“There's nothing wrong,” Lynn said. “Nothing about you, I mean.” She offered him a card.

“Your name came up in an article about some vandalism on the high-voltage lines around here,” Mark said. “We were hoping you could tell us a little about that.”

“The lines?” He had frantic eyes. They bounced from Mark to Lynn and then out beyond, to the street. Most of the time, in fact, they were on the street.

“Yeah. In the paper, you were quoted as—”

“I don't know anything about that.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Pardon? You don't know anything about the words you provided to the newspaper?”

“I know what I said. I just mean…look, we've got public relations people for this. I can't just…” He finally brought his eyes back to Mark. “Do you think you know who did it?”

“We might have some ideas. First, though, we need to know the situation. You said somebody had been cutting trees onto the lines. You called it, I believe, intentionally malicious.”

“Right. So who do you think it was? What's his name?”

He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. A subtle movement, not as jittery as his eyes, but still restless. Something about him didn't feel right, and Mark realized what it was: Jay Baldwin in person did not convey the same impression as Jay Baldwin in the photo, the man who looked a little worn but plenty steady. The guy you'd want responding to your emergencies.

“Everything okay, Mr. Baldwin?” Mark said.

“Fine, yeah, but I can't deal with this. I just…it's not for me.” Mark saw that he had something in his hand, something that for an instant looked like a twin of the dive permit Mark carried. A small plastic chip. He put it in his pocket before Mark could see it clearly. “Listen,” he said, “I'd really like to know the specifics of your case.”

“We can discuss all of that,” Lynn said. “You mind if we come in for a couple minutes? We can tell you—”

“No!” He barked it at her, and she tilted her head back, startled.

“Okay. We can stay out here. But—”

“No,” he repeated. “I'm not the guy who can discuss things like this. It's, you know, it's a, um…a policy. It's a corporate policy. You'll have to call the company.”

He backed away from them but kept his head up, his eyes darting. The street was empty but you'd have thought there was a pack of feral dogs out there. He reached his truck, tried to put his key in the door lock, fumbled, and dropped the keys. When he moved to recover them, the white chip fell free and hit the garage floor and he swore at himself in a harsh whisper. He went for the chip before the keys, picked it up from the floor and inspected it as if he'd dropped a Rolex facedown onto gravel. He put it back in his pocket, but it was a different pocket this time. His breast pocket. He had to unzip his jacket to secure it.

Mark walked back out to the street and joined Lynn in the Tahoe as Jay Baldwin backed out of his garage and lowered the door. He pulled away without looking at them, driving too fast for the street. On 212, he turned left and headed northeast.

“Waste of time,” Lynn said. “That guy isn't much of a talker, is he? I'm amazed he gave a quote to the newspaper.”

“We scared him,” Mark said.

“He was a little leery of us. Didn't even give me a chance to charm him.”

“No,” Mark said. “We
scared
him, Lynn. Really. He was afraid of us.”

She gave him an odd look. “What do you mean?”

“Did you see the way he tried to unlock his truck with his key?”

“He dropped the key. He was flustered.”

“When was the last time you saw someone unlock a modern vehicle by actually turning the key? That's a new truck, it has keyless entry, they all do. And he didn't need to do
anything
. The truck was unlocked. When he finally did get in, he just opened the door. He was just going through motions before, like he was stoned.”

“Maybe he was.”

Mark shook his head. “He thought we were coming for another reason.”

Lynn already had her phone in her hand. “Is there any place in this state with a good cell signal? I've got a dossier on Pate from the office, but I can't download it. Can you find us someplace with Wi-Fi?”

“Sure.” Mark started the Tahoe, drove out to 212, and turned toward town. The main street looked just as he remembered it. The flickering neon sign of the Red Lodge Café was even still there. When they'd had the money, his family ate breakfasts there. It was also the last place Mark had stopped for coffee before he'd left the state of Montana entirely, heading south. At the stoplight by the gas station, Mark could see the taillights of Jay Baldwin's pickup as he headed out of town. He felt like he was missing something, that Jay had shown Mark something he should have understood but had failed to pick up on. He wondered what the plastic chip was and why Jay handled it the way Mark handled Lauren's old dive permit.

“He showed his hands,” Mark said.

“What?”

“He made a point of it. Like a guy might do if he's hustling cards and he knows people are watching close. He made a point of showing his hands. Even when he didn't need to, like the bit with the truck keys. That was about showing his hands.”

“Why would he think we cared?”

“Either somebody is watching our boy,” Mark said, “or he thinks somebody is.”

Jay's truck had vanished down the highway, and the reddening pines stood silent as the sun fell behind the Beartooths.

T
hey found a motel in Red Lodge called Benjamin Beartooth's Last Chance Inn that promised Wi-Fi. The supposed last chance did not have anything to do with rooms, apparently—when they asked if there were two available, the clerk laughed and said they could have twenty if they wanted to pay for them. Mark's mind was still on Jay Baldwin as they walked to Lynn's room so she could set up her laptop and download the files her office had sent. She sat at the desk, clicking away, and he went to the window, looked out at the same street he'd traveled a hundred times in what now seemed like another lifetime, and wondered about the fear he'd seen in Baldwin. It was a particular kind of fear—fear of being caught.

But caught doing what?

Lynn said: “I thought you said Eli Pate had never done prison time.”

“Correct.”

“Incorrect.”

Mark turned from the window in surprise. “I ran his name last night.”

She had a small smile, one that was smug but not in an unattractive way. Pleased with herself, that was all. Still, he felt stupid, a step behind.

“What did I miss?”

“Amsterdam,” she said.

“What?”

“We have an office there.”

“Of course you do.”

The smile widened and filled her eyes. “Pinkerton Global,” she said. “Isn't this what you were having so much fun with, giving me shit over my firm?”

“I gave you only respect. If anything, it was envy disguised as respect.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Just tell me what the hell I missed.”

She pushed back from the desk so Mark could come close enough to see the screen. He bent down and looked at the dossier her office had sent.

In 1998, a youthful Eli Pate had been arrested in Rotterdam on charges of conspiring against the state, which led to four years in prison in the Netherlands before his eventual extradition back to the United States. He'd been in the Netherlands on a student visa, studying petroleum engineering and history.

“What exactly does
conspiring against the state
mean?”

“Keep reading.”

There was a short abstract detailing the charges. According to the Dutch authorities, Eli Pate had been involved in a plan to blow up sixteen ships in the Waalhaven harbor of the Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest port. Although he was aligned with members of a self-described environmental watch group, all parties agreed that he was not himself a member. Rather, he'd attempted to recruit them to
his
cause. Affidavits claimed that Pate's express goal was to “make a statement” about the shipping industry, which was responsible for more air pollutants than all the cars in the world, he explained. Due to the fact that nobody had made any real progress with the plan—news of it was leaked to Dutch intelligence agencies before Pate had secured any recruits, let alone explosives—the prosecution didn't garner as much attention as it might have. Following his prison stay, he was sent back to America, leaving behind an unfinished degree and a two-hundred-page thesis on the energy theories of Nikola Tesla.

“I wonder what that thesis reads like,” Mark said.

“I can ask our Amsterdam office to put together a file.”

“You really like saying that, don't you?
Our Amsterdam office
.”

She grinned at him. She had a hell of a smile. Mark hadn't seen much of it because she was all business most of the time, and he felt the same—this wasn't a pleasure trip. He felt the same, at least, until he saw that smile. When the smile reached her eyes and they took on that beautiful dark light, he wanted to forget why they were there. He wanted to forget about Eli Pate and Janell Cole and even Garland Webb.

He wanted to forget about his wife.

“What?” Lynn said. Her smile was gone and she looked concerned.

“Sorry. Mind wandering.”

“Low blood sugar.”

“I don't think that's it.”

“Well, it sure is for me. We haven't eaten all day. You're the local guide. Surely you can find a decent meal in this town for us?”

“There's a Mexican-and-pizza restaurant called Bogart's that isn't bad.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A
Mexican-and-pizza
restaurant called Bogart's?”

Mark shrugged. “It's Montana. We don't need to make sense to the tourists.”

We.
He'd said it easily, no hesitation, as if he belonged to the place. You can't go home again, or so the saying goes.
Bullshit,
Mark thought.
You just take it with you.

They walked down the street to Bogart's, a brick building with a sign featuring Bogie's face, and Lynn said, “You weren't kidding. It's really about him. Why?”

“I honestly have no idea. But the food was good once. It maybe still is.”

They went in and sat at the bar and Mark looked at the beer taps and saw that they had Moose Drool. He ordered one.

“Moose Drool,” Lynn said. “You actually wish to consume this. You're even willing to pay for it, I gather. Unless the bartering system is employed here? Do I need to find some pelts and beads?”

“It's a damned good beer. Now, my uncles drank Rainier, mostly. They didn't have much interest in craft beer. Rainier they called fuel. ‘Markus, run in the gas station and grab us a case of fuel for the road.'”

The Moose Drool tasted the way he'd remembered, a brown ale with a smooth finish. Lynn ordered the same, took a drink, and gave a small nod indicating that it was at least palatable.

“How'd you end up with the Pinkertons, anyhow?” Mark said.

“Swung and missed on the FBI. Came out of law school and wanted to get into the Bureau but they didn't take me. I didn't blame them, really, I was straight out of school and didn't have any other experience. I thought I'd beef up the résumé with private-sector work. I ended up just liking the private-sector work.”

“You enjoy it?”

“I enjoy it. It's hell on relationships, though. I travel a lot, and I can't talk about why I'm traveling. All the things that men expect women to tolerate, they don't do a very good job of tolerating themselves.” She held up a hand. “Sorry.”

“No need to be. It sounded like the truth.”

She nodded. “So I like the job. Enough that I didn't try to get into the Bureau again. I've been treated well, I've been promoted fast, I've gotten good cases. I didn't love the Boca Raton assignment, but it was a step forward. Just not my scene.”

“Where are you from?”

“New Hampshire, originally. My first assignment was in Cleveland. You'd think it'd be hard to miss Cleveland, but I do. I miss the seasons. Florida, it's hot or less hot, you know? You don't feel the turnover. Spring comes, and it's nice, but…”

“You don't feel like you've earned it.”

She smiled and pointed at him. “That is
exactly
the problem. If you don't have to work to get through winter, what difference does spring make?”

They ate and drank and talked about the intel report on Pate. Drank more. As the beer went down Mark began to feel looser about the town, that cold dread of arriving here going a little warmer, and then he was telling Lynn stories about his uncles. The good stories, the ones that always got laughs. They got plenty from her. He loved hearing that laugh. He didn't tell her any of the bad stories, or the sad ones. He didn't tell her any about his mother. Lynn didn't ask either. She'd heard all she needed to from the deputy in Powell, probably. Mark was grateful that she was content to leave it there. Lauren always had been too.

“You said Ronny is dead,” Lynn said after he'd told a particular classic about Larry getting arrested for public intox. Larry had been cuffed and was being guided to the patrol car by a cop when Ronny walked leisurely across the street wearing a ski mask and carrying a shotgun, which, as one might expect, got the attention of the cop. Both activities were perfectly legal in Montana; it was an open-carry state, and although wearing a ski mask in July when it was damn near ninety degrees outside was strange, there wasn't anything criminal about it. While Ronny was explaining his fears of sunburn and skin cancer to the officer, Larry simply walked away from the patrol car, still wearing his handcuffs. Mark cut the chain later that night with a hacksaw, which made life easier for Larry but not exactly problem-free.

Eventually Mark's mother showed up and picked the lock. She was a Houdini with locks.

He left that part of the story out.

“Ronny is dead, yes,” he said. “Cancer took him young.”

“And Larry?”

“You heard the deputy today. Sounds like he's in Sheridan.”

“But you don't speak to him? Or…”

Mark shook his head and ordered a fresh beer. Lynn watched in silence.

“I don't have communication with any of them.” He took a drink. “The act got old, Lynn. It just got old.”

That was as much as he could tell her. He couldn't tell her what he was already feeling, and fearing—that he was home. That without Lauren and without his job, Florida had become foreign to him. That the smell of snow in the air on a day filled with sun and dry winds felt natural and comfortable, and that Mark suspected he could come back to this place very easily, come back and stay, but that the man who stayed here wouldn't be much like the man who'd lived in Florida.

“Let's get out of here,” he said. “I've wasted enough of our time on old bullshit stories. We've got work to do, and tomorrow we'll need to be up early.”

He was in bed but not asleep when she knocked. He got up and pulled on his jeans and a shirt but left it unbuttoned as he opened the door. She was standing there holding a six-pack of Rainier in one hand. She was wearing just a white tank top over jeans and it was too cold for that and the goose bumps stood out on her tanned skin.

“I thought you might need some fuel,” she said. Her gaze was steady on his at first, but after a moment, she looked away. “Sometimes I make bad guesses. If this is one of them, I apologize.”

“You're not wrong,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He pushed the door wide and she stepped inside and set the beer on the little table by the window and started to free two cans from the plastic rings. She was awkward with the cans, knocked one onto its side. When she opened them, she closed her eyes at the snap and sigh of the released pressure. Then she kept her eyes closed and shook her head.

“I should go back to my own room.”

Please, don't do that,
Mark thought, but he said, “Why?”

“Because this stopped feeling professional to me sometime tonight, and I do not like it when I stop feeling professional. Because I am here to do a job.”

“We both are.”

She nodded and opened her eyes, looked at him with a gaze that showed the first traces of vulnerability he'd seen in her.

“You're not what I thought,” she said. “Who I thought.”

“What does that mean?”

Instead of answering, she said, “I'm not wrong, am I? Not that you'd tell me if I was. It's up to me to decide whether to trust you.”

Mark said, “Lynn? I don't know what you think of me. What you trust or don't. I've not lied to you, and I won't.”

Still she was silent.

“If you think you should go,” he said, “then you need to go.”

She took a deep breath. “No harm in having a beer.”

“What harm are you worried about?”

She ignored the question, reaching back down for the beers as he stepped toward her. When she turned to hand him one, he was standing close, and for just a moment she paused, just long enough for a heart to skip a beat, and then he took the beer cans out of her hands and set them back on the table. She reached up and looped her arms around his neck. Her expression was both earnest and wary.

“A mistake?” she said.

“I usually am.”

They stood like that for a second, and then Mark leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were warm and soft and tasted faintly of beer, but that was good, that was right, that was Montana again. Home. The girls Mark remembered from here were not Lauren, and that was good.

Lynn slipped her hands inside his unbuttoned shirt and ran her palms over his stomach and up to his chest and drove an electric thrill into him that left him short of breath. He broke the kiss as she pushed the shirt off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She kept running her hands over his torso, but she was studying it too.

“What happened to you? You're all cut up.”

“I crawled through a broken window.”

Lynn touched a band of scar tissue that ran across his stomach and up toward his shoulder, thick as a snake.

“That one is not fresh.”

“No.”

“How'd you get that?”

“A rope.”

“A
rope?
”

“I was a rafting guide for a while. I went over once and got tangled up.”

“Ouch.” She lowered her face to the scar and kissed it, then traced its length with the tip of her tongue. Though the feeling was sensual and wonderful, Mark pulled her back up. She started to speak but he kissed her, hard, before she could. He didn't want to hear any more questions, because he didn't want to tell her how many times his wife had kissed that scar. The body remembers whether the mind wants to or not.

Right now, he didn't want to remember anything.

They moved to the bed in an awkward walk, laughing as they bumped into it and fell onto the mattress. Mark slipped his hand under her shirt and felt that beautiful dip in the small of her back, something that is entirely the province of women and is unfailingly sexy. She sat up and pulled her shirt off and then pulled his head to her breasts as she worked the button on his jeans with her free hand. They shed the rest of their clothes gracelessly, and then she closed her hand around him and guided him into her. She leaned back and made a soft sound, and if Mark could have frozen time right there, it would have been all right.