Harmless (23 page)

Alex turned off his flashlight as they entered a grove, moving slowly past the skirts of the old evergreens. Alex’s sure but cautious footsteps revealed that he knew what was
up ahead. This was their destination. It probably had been the whole time.

The night seemed less gloomy, though there was no trace of sunrise yet, and as they walked the light grew stronger, gathering the quality of blue flame—chemical, single-purpose. Finer lines appeared in the tree branches, and far ahead a bright green line seemed to hang in the air like a thick mist.

Alex grabbed Joseph’s injured arm near the bicep, and the sharp pain drowned out the light. “I think somebody’s here.”

“There are
people
here?” Joseph had never wanted to see another human face so badly. “What is this place?”

Alex let out a rush of air. “A grow-op. A big one.”

“Derek!”

“Yes, and it’s not just pot he’s into.”

“If Derek’s here, he can drive us home.” Joseph’s imagination had already raced ahead to the reunion scene with Franny.

“Do
not
try to talk to him,” Alex said. “Out here, he’s a different man than the one you met. This is
his
place.”

“But he thinks you’re a fucking genius. I’ll tell him we got lost searching for the girls. We don’t give a shit about his dope plantation.”

“Don’t we?”

“I don’t.”

Alex chewed that over. “He’s not what he seems. He’s all business.”

“Come on—his
business
is playing the badass drug dealer. It’s like being a rock star all over again. He’ll do the right thing.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid!”

Joseph stepped back from Alex’s rage. “Is he working with those vets?”

“They’re not the problem. He told me he needed investors to help grow his business.” Alex stepped closer. “He asked me to come in as a partner. He said
someone
has to grow the stuff, so why not us, and create some jobs while we’re at it. I told him he’d ruin the area by bringing in organized crime and the cops. He’s been paranoid ever since, thinking I’m going to rat him out.”

“Then this is perfect.”

Alex frowned.

“He helps you out by driving us home, and then you owe him.” Joseph waited for three seconds. “I have to see who’s there.” Joseph wasn’t going to budge. Not if it meant finding out the truth about Franny. He was sick of playing this game of half-confessions with Alex.

“Okay, if it’s just Derek, maybe we talk to him.” Alex was giving in too quickly for Joseph’s liking. Maybe he just wanted an ending to the story he’d put into motion God knows how many hours ago. What a relief it would be, after so many nightmarish twists and reversals, to put down the pen and hand over the narrative to someone else.

“You go a few paces to your left and walk to the light,” Alex said. “I’ll go to the right.”

So Alex wanted them to separate. Had
that
been his plan all along? Take Joseph to the grow-op, where they come upon bad men. Shots are fired. Joseph gets killed and Derek goes to jail, eliminating two of Alex’s enemies with one shot.

It added up, but Alex had seemed genuinely surprised when he saw the lights.

“Watch out for booby traps,” Alex said. “If things go wrong then
run
—that way, east, toward the sunrise. Run that way and you’ll reach the highway.”

Run to the east, to the sunrise, to the highway—Alex left Joseph to puzzle the meanings as he loped into the trees. Joseph moved a few paces to his left and started walking toward the light, trying to maintain a mid-crouch posture to minimize his body mass. Soon the stripes on his shoes were reflecting the light like miniature aisle lights. He stopped to rub dirt on them and heard movement in the trees to his right. Alex was close. What had he told Joseph?
Run to the east
—right into the path of his rifle sight.

Joseph squeezed his eyes shut. What did he really
know
about Alex’s plan? Everything that had happened after they smoked the One Night in Bangkok joint was as open to interpretation as a dream. Joseph had his evidence—Alex’s lies, the earring, the raised rifle at the shack—but that didn’t prove Alex rigged any of the night’s disasters. The possibility of the girls being snatched by war vets was a long shot, but so was the backstory to any abduction.

We turned our backs for ten seconds
.

We’d known her soccer coach for five years
.

She never took a shortcut before that night
.

He patted the knife in his pocket and kept walking. There was only one story that mattered: getting out of here alive and back to Franny.

About fifty feet ahead of him the woods ended at a wide grassy area lit by powerful halogen lights. He moved from
one tree to the next, his eyes wincing at the widening bands of light between their branches, some of which trailed what he guessed were spiderwebs. He reached a maple tree a few feet from the clearing, one of the few non-evergreens in the grove, and waited for his eyes to adjust. Soon he distinguished Derek’s blue pickup truck in front of the solid wall of pulsing light. It was parked on the far side of a work area the size of two tennis courts, the headlights illuminating a garden shed draped in pine branches and a large shack beneath the clearing’s single remaining tree. The shack was made from plywood and painted green, with two metal chimneys protruding from the roof and a metal door that hung open, revealing a barrel of chemicals and one end of a gleaming steel table inside. About twenty yards from the truck the pot field began—a dazzling green sea of waist-high plants and the odd pine tree standing out against the surrounding darkness. One of Alex’s vets, an old hippie in khaki with a bushy ponytail the colour of rat fur, stepped out from behind the shack carrying a garbage bag and went inside.

Maybe this was Alex’s Plan B—having destroyed the local gonzo porn studio, he and Joseph would end the night on a morally uplifting note by burning down the county meth shack and setting the pot fields on fire. Then why had Alex still led them into this lion’s den after he realized that Derek was here?

No, he’d been the one to insist they check out the grow-op, not Alex.

Joseph clamped his thoughts shut. It didn’t matter. He’d picked a good hiding spot. Three quick steps would take him back to the safety of the woods. Or he could step into
the clearing, giving Derek a full view of his unthreatening, ragged figure.

Derek, it’s me. Alex’s friend from this afternoon. Rebecca and Franny went missing. Alex and I are lost
.

Derek would help—anything to impress Alex—and if Joseph walked into the clearing, Alex would have no choice but to put down his gun and follow. Joseph could pull it off. He’d partied with plenty of drug dealers over the years. He knew how to ingratiate himself with tough men. Don’t suck up to them, and don’t challenge them at what they think they’re good at. His only enemy was himself—his deep need to know, indisputably, if Franny was okay. He couldn’t appear too desperate, too weak.

He heard derisive laughter coming from beyond the reach of the lights, and then a man materialized at the edge of the field, followed by two others who stepped out of the bright green sea. The two men were bikers in jeans and black T-shirts under denim vests. The man in front was Derek, looking very pleased with himself, beating a rock anthem against his thigh as the two bikers exchanged a private nod. The bikers weren’t wearing their colours, but they didn’t have to—an extraterrestrial would know they were hard men, their molecules packed tighter than a normal man’s, like sharkskin. The skinnier one was the leader. He had a predator’s face, all wedged power and black eyes.

“I still do the odd acoustic show,” Derek said to the other biker, a large bearded man, at least six-foot-four and a yard wide at the shoulders.

“
Unplugged
.”

“Exactly, bro.” Derek was using his raconteur stage voice.

The bigger man was secure enough in the role of the Muscle to do the talking while his boss sized up the operation, his head moving while his eyes remained as still as windows. They’d probably been partying at a strip club, the bikers indulging their new business partner in an all-access sampling of the local wares before heading to the grow-op.

The lead biker, his assessment completed, hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and said, “rock and roll,” a cue for everyone to appreciate the field of pot plants. He rose up onto the balls of his feet, a posture that showed his sinewy body’s coiled strength—even his thin ponytail could do double duty as a weapon. He
was
a weapon, a long blade of a man, and when he turned his gaze toward the trees, the exact distance between him and Joseph—twenty strides—impressed itself into the soles of Joseph’s feet.

“That’s prime botanical, buddy,” he said.

Derek nodded too many times. “We’re miles from the highway, ground’s higher here, drains well, good tree cover.” His lurching voice made him sound like an actor two rehearsals behind the rest of the cast. He’d probably done too much coke and too much talking—exactly what the bikers wanted. “No one comes back here. I put the word out.”

The leader’s expression said he’d be the judge of the security arrangements.

“How many more weeks?” the big biker asked.

“Eight, tops.”

The biker turned to his boss. This wasn’t good.

“It was a dry spring,” Derek said, his agricultural report reluctantly confirmed by the old vet, who’d come to join the men. “Driest in fifty years.”

Stop talking, Derek
, Joseph thought.

“It was a bitch getting the water tank down that logging road.”

“That’s a
road
?”

Derek’s face reminded Joseph of a fish in an algae-choked tank, eyes and lips bulging for oxygen. “It
used
to be a road,” he said. “No one uses it, especially since the forest fires.”

“No?”

Joseph leaned back into the safety of the dark.

“I’d know if anyone set foot on that road,” Derek said, staring at the ground. “One of us is usually out here, and we have this big … big wall, made of branches and leaves, at least ten feet tall.” He was trying to make the wall sound almost mythical. “It slides right into place so you can’t even see the break in the woods from the main road. Jimmy here designed it.”

Jimmy, the old hippie, was reluctant to take the credit.

The leader shrugged. “Every bud is sold,” he said. “You deliver the goods, we take it from there. And we get a cut of the meth, but you know that.”

Derek clearly didn’t, but he tried hard to hide his shock. “I’ve got some boys who’ll help out with the harvest in exchange for a share.”

The leader smoothed his flat hair and frowned—amazingly, Derek didn’t disintegrate in a cloud of smoke. “What are you telling me, buddy?”

“They put in a little money up front, I give them a cut. Of
my
share.”

That explained Derek’s “piece of the pie” text—Mike had
invested in the harvest. No surprise there. Mike’s salary probably couldn’t even keep up his half of the mortgage payments. The money must have been tempting for Alex too, with his store struggling and two kids to put through university, but he’d never participate in the gangsterization of the local economy.

“You better be able to handle them,” the leader said.

“I got it covered.”

“Hey man, you guys planning a reunion?”

Derek turned to the big biker, who lifted an air guitar and sang, “
Talk to me laaater
.”

Derek smiled because he had to do something.

“
Talk to me laaaaaaater!
That was a good track!” The big guy started dancing with surprisingly nimble feet, though his thick, tapering legs barely bent at the knees. “
Talk to me laaater!
”

Derek finally recognized the chorus of Hardwar’s one near-hit, and he easily assumed the modest ex-rocker pose. “The boys are scattered to the four winds. Gavin’s gone all Mister Corporate.”

The Muscle ran Eddie Van Halen finger trills down his air guitar: “
Dee-dee-dee—nannel, nannel! Dee-dee-dee—nannel, nannel! Talk to me laaater
. Sing it, man.”

“It’s ‘Talk
About It
Later,’ ” Derek corrected between fake laughs.

Joseph had had a pothead roommate in first year whose one party trick was to flick his lighter in people’s faces and ask if he was freaking them out. That and his hearty fake laugh, which Derek was conjuring with eerie accuracy as the biker baited him.

“Sing it!” the big man shouted. “
Dee-dee-dee—nannel, nannel!
”

“We got some clubs up north,” the leader said, disintegrating the air guitar. “Shitholes, but money pits if you know how to work them. Your band could headline on Saturday nights. Bill it as a reunion tour.”

Derek stared down at the ground again as the leader assessed him with the melancholic expression of a man long disappointed by the privileges of power. Joseph stepped further back into the darkness, his fingers brushing another hanging spiderweb.

“I’ve got a
new
band,” Derek said. “We do bluegrass, Old Time Country. Lots of the Carter Family, Hank Williams.”

“That cowboy shit?” The big biker let out a whoop and made the yodelling noises of a cartoon cowboy in love. “You can’t peel to country music.” He did the first steps of a mincing, strutting dance while lethargically picking open the buttons of his vest—a burlesque variation on the line-backer-in-a-tutu routine. “
My truck burned down. My barn blew up. My girl blew the preacher
.” He ended with a falsetto exclamation that demonstrated, more than any show of force, his familiarity with sudden, brutal violence—the pool cue to the skull, the eye gouged with a thumb, the testicle-crushing kick.

“I’m talking about your
real
band,” the leader said. “Folks love the oldies.”

Oldies
. That had to hurt.

“I’d have to call up the boys,” Derek said, realizing it was not a request. “They’ll bitch ’til they’re blue in the face but they’ll be there. It’ll be like old times.”

Formal negotiations concluded, the leader nodded and flashed a hammy smile his men must pray to see on bad nights. “The clubs are packed in the summer and hunting season,” he said. “Pussy, dope—tourists love it. Winter’s dead. That’s when we got to get the locals in.”