Drift (13 page)

She edged farther out and reached out a hand for me to join her. I picked my way closer and sat next to her on a small rock, our bodies pressed together.

She scanned the horizon with the binoculars, looking for something. Then she handed the binoculars to me.

“There,” she said, pointing off to the west. “See if you can find a white church spire, then follow the road behind it to the right.”

I found the church, then the road. “Okay, what am I looking at?”

“See that white house, with the porch wrapping around it?”

“Hey, that’s my folks’ house! And there’s yours, right across the street.” I could see the thick green hedge behind Nola’s blue-corn patch, and from this angle I could even see the rows of corn behind it. Beyond the corn, barely visible in the hazy distance, was a long, low white building. “What’s that white building?” I asked, handing back the binoculars.

She put the binoculars back up to her face. “What white building?”

“Behind your house. On the other side of the fence, past those corn fields.”

She looked out through the binoculars for a moment. “Looks like some kind of tent … It’s huge.” She let the binoculars slowly fall away from her eyes. “Huh.”

“What?”

“If that’s a tent, maybe Moose is right. Maybe it is some kind of GMO thing. Sometimes they use tents to prevent drift.”

“What drift?”

“Pollen drift, remember? When the pollen from one plant pollinates another plant. You get a mixture. Usually not such a bad thing, unless you’re growing something rare, like my heirloom corn, or if it’s some kind of GMO stuff.”

“So the tent is to prevent pollen drift?”

“Maybe.”

“You think it’s a GMO?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“So, shouldn’t something like that be registered somewhere?”

She looked at me with sudden clarity. “Yes, it should.”

“So how would you find out if it is?”

She looked at me for a moment, but before she answered, her phone chirped. She glanced at it, then quickly closed it and slipped it back into her pocket. A crease formed around her mouth.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Let me see it.”

She glared at me for a second. Then her shoulders slumped, and she handed me the phone. It was a text message: “Sell.”

I handed her the phone back. “Call the police,” I told her. “Right now.”

“I will,” she said. “Later.”

“That was a threat, and they can trace it.”

“It wasn’t a threat.” She started packing up the picnic, stuffing the food back into the basket. Just as she closed the wicker flaps, her phone chimed yet again. She looked at it, more confused than angry.

“It’s a photo,” she mumbled, squinting at the screen.

I stepped up next to her, looking over her shoulder at the smudge of bright yellow and orange on her screen. I couldn’t make out what I was looking at, but Nola seemed suddenly to recognize it.

“Oh, no,” she exclaimed, her voice breaking as she pulled the binoculars out of the basket, scattering the remains of lunch across the rocks. “No!” she sobbed, as she scanned the horizon.

That’s when I saw it—a little ball of black smoke in the distance, rising into the air over Nola’s house.

I took the phone out of her hand and looked again at the picture, a wall of orange flame, her front porch barely visible through it.

She called 911 as we sprinted down the mountain trail, but we got to her house before the fire trucks anyway. The smoke obscured the house as we approached, but as we bounced up into her driveway, we could see that the house itself wasn’t damaged. For a moment, Nola’s face showed relief, but as her eyes welled up I followed her gaze. The heirloom patch was gone. The only thing left standing was the little chicken wire fence that surrounded it. Everything else had been reduced to charred, smoking ash, flames still licking up here and there. The air was thick with the smell of burnt corn and gasoline.

She got out of the car, pulling her shirt up over her nose against the strong smell of gasoline. I went after her, but she only managed two steps before collapsing to her knees and sobbing.

I knew it was futile and I was uneasy at the proximity of fire, but I stomped out a few of the hotspots until my shoelaces caught fire and I retreated, swatting at my feet with my hands.

The sirens grew in the distance, but the last of the flames were already flickering out on their own. I knelt down on the gravel next to Nola and put my arm around her. I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound trite and hollow.

As the sound of Nola sobbing was drowned out by the deafening sirens, now almost on top of us, I realized how much she already meant to me, and how much it hurt to see someone hurt her. In my chest, I could feel my muscles tightening and hardening in a rage that wanted to lash out. But before I could let it, I had to find out who was responsible.

27

The firefighters doused the field with water, trampling what little had been left unconsumed.

“You’re just trouble, aren’t you?”

I thought it was an odd thing for a firefighter to say to a grief-stricken victim, but it wasn’t one of the firefighters, and he wasn’t talking to Nola.

It was Chief Pruitt, looking down at me through his signature aviators.

Nola looked up at him, too.

“You might not want to get too close to this one, ma’am,” he told her. “He’s nothing but trouble.”

I got to my feet and looked down at him. He smiled.

“This is arson,” I said flatly.

“Oh, you think so?”

“She’s been receiving threatening phone calls. Whoever did this texted her right before it happened, then sent her a picture on her phone.”

“Is that right, Ms. Watkins?”

Nola nodded.

“And you don’t have caller I.D.?”

Nola looked down and sighed.

“The number was private,” I told him. “She uses the phone for business, so she couldn’t block it.”

“Is that right?” he said.

She nodded again.

“How long has that been going on?”

“About six months,” she replied quietly.

“And you never reported it?” He said it with enough doubt and accusation that Nola’s head snapped up to look at him. He shrugged. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I mean I never heard of any of this trouble.” He flicked a finger in my direction. “This was a quiet little town until this one showed up.”

“A quiet little town?” I said with a laugh. “You’ve had two meth houses go up in flames in the last six weeks.”

Pruitt’s face turned a deep red, and his cheeks started to quiver. “Those houses were not in my jurisdiction.”

“Oh, I get it. So if it’s just outside your jurisdiction, it doesn’t concern you, is that it?”

“It was outside my jurisdiction because those scumbags wouldn’t dare try to pull anything like that in my town.”

I laughed again. “You’ve got known drug dealers driving around your quiet little town, as recently as this morning. But I guess you’re not concerned about that, either.”

“The only drug problem I know of around here is that little pothead over there.”

As if on cue, I heard the screen door slam across the street and turned to see Moose stumbling down the steps, blinking in the sunlight.

“And as for these imaginary drug dealers, well, nobody else is seeing any trouble but you.”

I took a step closer. “Well, maybe people aren’t telling you about it because they don’t think it’ll do any good.”

“Better be careful, Carrick,” Pruitt said. “I know all about you and your anger issues. Be a shame to slip up and get kicked off the force for good, now, wouldn’t it?”

Nola looked up at him, confused. She had stopped crying.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Watson, didn’t you know? Detective Carrick here is suspended. Apparently he assaulted a fellow officer and interrogated a suspect by putting a gun to the kid’s head. Isn’t that right, Carrick? He’s supposed to be in anger management class, too, but I don’t think he’s going.”

Nola looked over at me, her eyes filling with the same cold anger I had seen when she stormed out of Branson’s. “Doyle, is that true?”

I started to deny it, but Pruitt had his facts right, even if he was ignoring the subtleties of the situation.

“Yeah, I’ve been doing my homework on you, Carrick,” he continued, “and you better not try to pull any crap in my town.”

Moose walked up, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. “What’s going on?”

Chief Pruitt turned to leave with a smug look on his face.

“Don’t you want to see the phone? See who’s making these threats?” I called after him. “You know, police work?”

“I’ll have someone call you for a statement, Ms. Watson,” Pruitt called over his shoulder. “I got more important things to do than investigate a bunch of burnt weeds.”

We watched him walk away. Then Nola turned to look at me. “Doyle, is that true?”

I didn’t answer her, instead turning to Moose. “Where the hell were you?”

“What?” he asked, groggy and bewildered. “I was asleep, I guess … I heard the sirens.”

Nola turned on her heel and marched inside.

Moose watched her go, then turned back to look at me. “What happened?”

“Someone torched the heirloom patch. Gasoline. She got a call right before it happened. They sent her a picture of the fire.”

“No shit!”

“No shit.” I looked at my watch. It was just after three. “And you were asleep?”

“Yeah, I guess I was.”

“What’s up with that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, must be coming down with something.” He scanned the scorched field, shaking his head.

“Do me a favor,” I said, “go keep an eye on Nola. I don’t want her alone right now.”

He looked at me with his head to one side, then shrugged. “Okay.”

I waited until he had followed Nola inside, then I walked around the smoking remnants of the heirloom patch as quickly as I could without breaking into a run. I plunged into the thick line of Siberian elm, knowing what I’d find before I got through it.

Emerging on the other side, I saw a rolling expanse of stubble, row after row of corn stalks, all cut off at the ground. I hate to admit it, but as angry as I was about what was happening to Nola, it was the twist in the case that made my pulse quicken.

I called Danny the way I usually did when I found something in a case and I didn’t know what to make of it. When I had told him what happened, he was quiet for a moment.

“Corn?” he said with a snort. “Jesus, Doyle, you’re desperate, aren’t you?”

I was going to say that if he had seen Nola Watkins, he’d want to find out what happened to her corn, too. Instead I told him to fuck off.

“So what’re you doing now?” he asked.

“I’m going down to the town hall, see if I can figure out who owns this land where the other corn was growing.”

“Why? Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

“I just want to know what’s going on.”

He laughed. “I’m telling you, Doyle, there’s plenty of movies out there you haven’t seen. Hell, you could just about catch up on what the rest of the country’s been watching. Maybe start picking up on some of those cultural references that are always going over your head.” He laughed, but it died out quickly. “You know, your local law enforcement already called to find out what your story is.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He spoke to Lieutenant Suarez, so you can imagine how that went.” He sighed. “Doyle, you got like seventeen days. Don’t fuck it up.”

28

Dunston Town Hall was a low brick building that looked like a small post office. Behind the counter was a surprisingly friendly woman in her late fifties with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. The nameplate on the counter said
NOREEN GOOD
.

I gave her what I hoped was a charming smile and said, “Hi, Noreen…”

To which she countered, “Hi, Doyle.”

To which I didn’t counter anything, because I was not expecting that. Instead, I laughed nervously.

“I was at Branson’s when you tussled with Cooney,” she explained with a sly smile. “Your name’s come up a few times since then.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not Cooney’s auntie or anything.”

She leaned toward me over the counter. “So what can I do for you?”

“I need to look at some real-estate records. I’m trying to find out who owns a parcel of land near my mom’s house. Just south of Bayberry, just east of Valley Road.”

She came around from behind the counter. “I can help you with that.”

She led me toward a wooden door with a window,
PUBLIC RECORDS
stenciled across it. As she opened it, a voice called out behind us, “Hey Noreen, you seen Mitchell or Tompkins?”

“Both out sick,” she replied without turning around.

“Couple of sissies, those two, I swear. If I ever—”

The voice stopped just as I turned around and saw Chief Pruitt standing in the doorway, wearing his mirrored shades in the fluorescent-lit lobby.

“Where the hell are you taking him?” he demanded.

Noreen gave him a look to make it plain she was unimpressed. “I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t let him in there,” he said.

“Francis, I know it’s probably hard for you to see in here with those ridiculous sunglasses on, but can you read what it says on this door here?” She stepped out of the way to make sure he could see it.

Pruitt didn’t utter a sound, but I’m pretty sure I saw his lips moving.

“That’s right,” she said, “
Public
Records. My, you are making such progress.”

He stared at her for a second, his face turning red. Then he turned on his heel and left without a word.

“Don’t mind him,” she said, ushering me into the records room. “He takes protecting this town very seriously.”

“Really?” I asked, following her down an aisle of shelves.

She shrugged. “There’s been a lot of new faces in town lately, a lot of change. People are suspicious of outsiders. And I’m not talking about the Mexican workers or any of that—that’s something different. I’m talking about outsiders who come in and tell folks the way they’ve been doing things for generations is wrong.”