In Plain View (5 page)

She couldn’t stop thinking about that picture her aunt had taken. The one with the dead guy.

It was scary. One of those guys looked sort of like somebody she used to know, maybe. It was hard to remember his face though. That was scary, too. Jenny didn’t like the idea of forgetting faces.

She needed to get another look. Maybe she could find another picture. A long time ago there was one in her mom’s bedroom, but now it was gone. Where could it have gone? Jenny didn’t take it and Aunt Maddy never even opened the door to this room.

Jenny pushed her way out of the closet and thought for a minute. Maybe there was another picture somewhere. Her mom always had special ones tucked in her underwear drawer.

Slowly, quietly, Jenny searched.

When she found what she needed, she put everything else back exactly the way it was. For another time…like maybe tomorrow.

The trip up the hall was quick, but heading downstairs, Jenny had to be careful. The stairs were noisy and Aunt Maddy woke up at the least sound. She was a light sleeper. Jenny’s mom used to say that people who slept well had no imagination or a very clean conscience, which seemed to explain pretty good about Aunt Maddy.

Some nights, Jenny was glad her aunt woke up easy. Not tonight though. She didn’t want to talk about this. Aunt Maddy didn’t like her very much as it was.

All the grown-ups Jenny knew had gotten weird since the accident. Teachers stared at her. The neighbors pretended like they didn’t see her. None of her mom’s friends called anymore. Maybe they’d all forgotten her mom, and her. Even the special friend.

Her mom kept a flashlight on top of the fridge in the basement for tornado drills and storms. Jenny had to stand on a plastic box to reach it. Her aunt’s photo work was on the table near the washing machine.

Jenny took the picture from her mother’s room and laid it next to the ones her aunt had made that day.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

It was him.

11:27:09 p.m.

Maybe his luck was changing.

The house was quiet and dark. He almost went inside. But this time he was watching very carefully. He saw the faint light click on and off in Gina’s bedroom—a nightlight, or the closet light maybe? A few minutes later, a light popped up in the basement window.

One of the girls must be awake.

Good thing he hadn’t gone there. He wouldn’t have been breaking the law or anything. He had a key. But there was no sense getting them all excited until he’d had a look.

The right thing to do was wait. Wait and watch.

Sooner or later the house would be empty. Then, he’d go in and see if maybe Maddy O’Hara had found something that belonged to him. Something that might make her hot to play reporter.

Watching was the smart move.

From now on, he’d watch her carefully. And he’d know when she’d gone too far.

7:03:28 a.m.

College Boy arrived on time and raring to go for our first interview. Unfortunately, Jenny’s school wasn’t open at the crack of dawn. Failing to anticipate the intersection of work and family can be fatal in my business.

On the other hand, the survival instinct kicking in with a vengeance does add a certain edge to the morning.

“This is my niece, Jenny,” I said as we piled into the truck. “We’re taking her with us.”

“Hi,” Jenny said.

“Hey.” He nodded hello and offered his hand to guide her over a spaghetti pile of cables and stick bags, so she could strap herself into the spare jump seat. “Wow. You two are related?”

Jenny hit me with her big-eyed, blank look—the mask of trouble. She resembles the female side of my family: smooth brown hair, round dark eyes, and the translucent skin of an Irish elf. Even for a kid, she was small.

Looks-wise, I got my dad’s package: the Viking strain of Celtic blood, tall and broad, plenty of freckles, wild hair which is politely known as red, but actually closer to orange, when I don’t color it—which is never. I’d dyed it fatal-blond right before the job interview. I’m all for irony. Now Ainsley and I looked more like relations than Jenny and I.

“I’m the black sheep of the family,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

Ainsley took a convoluted back route of smaller roads to get us to the site of yesterday’s incident and avoid the morning rush hour. We passed fields, farms and for sale signs.

September was a good time to be in Chicago—another two months, we’d all be freezing our asses off. The rising sun cast a perfect yellow light on dead grass and reddened sumac leaves. I opened the window to snap a few pictures and the autumn air rushed me, crisp with the scent of endings and beginnings. The wind helped blow away the last of the dusty, creepy feeling that had followed me home last night. I was on my way to work. Life was good.

Since I was busy hanging my head out the window taking pictures, Ainsley focused on getting Jenny to chat. It didn’t take long for the two of them to bond; they were practically peers. As soon as we parked, Ainsley set her up with something to watch in the back of the truck. What he was doing with cartoons in stock, I don’t want to know.

It took twenty long minutes to prep for our quickie on-camera interview with Al Lowe, the man whose land had been the site of yesterday’s tragedy. The fact that College Boy had managed to find the man and schedule an interview on such short notice was such a pleasant surprise, I didn’t bug him about his pace. There were always other things to cover.

“Fill the frame with the subject. Don’t try to shoot me. I hate reporters in the story. You’ve seen the kind of stuff I do, right? We’ll cut around my questions and tie everything together with a narrating voice-over. Got that?”

I wanted the black skeleton of the oak tree behind the man being interviewed. It looked different today. More mysterious.

We heard Lowe’s truck before we saw him. He went off-road and parked ten feet from where we stood.

“Thanks for coming out to meet us, sir.”

I offered my hand as he slammed the door. Lowe was a perfect interview to get us started. He wore jeans, a Cubs jacket that had seen better days and a squared-off bill cap. His face and hands bore the weathered tan of an outdoor work life. Everything about him said farmer—pure, old-fashioned, regular guy. Whatever he had to say, people would believe.

“Beautiful view,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lowe replied. Midwesterners could pack more meanings into “yeah” than Eskimos had words for snow. This one meant,
sad. What a shame.

Ainsley fumbled with the tripod behind us, trying to lock down an even footing for the shot I wanted. Not easy. The ground was all torn up by the cars, trucks and men that had been trooping around the day before.

Lowe kept his back to the camera and stared out across fields that came together like a quilt beneath the eternal-blue morning. It wasn’t the kind of sky that recorded well on video. The technology could never get the color right.

I stood beside him and gazed unblinking into all that color until vertigo brought me back to the earth. The view to the horizon held nothing but dirt and straw and the scalloped border of a tree line. I dug my hands into my pockets and tried for a happy quote. “Reminds me of ‘the pleasant land of counterpane.’”

Lowe looked at me, surprised. In a grave, rusty, morning voice he spoke the words,

“My dad used to recite that one,” he admitted with a bashful crook of his head.

“Mine too,” I said. We were having a moment, so I didn’t mention that I was full grown before I’d understood the word was
pane,
not
pain.

“Almost ready,” Ainsley said.

Farmer Lowe and I chatted about hay harvest and dairy feed, while the Boy Wonder locked and loaded. By the time we got to bovine hormones, Lowe was at ease; I was on suppressed impatience.

“Ready,” Ainsley finally called.

Interviewing is part skill, part talent, part luck of the draw. When it works, you become the glass through which someone else is seen. Sometimes, you blend transparently. Sometimes, you reflect. Sometimes, there’s an invisible wall. I ran down the establishing facts with Lowe quickly.

I could feel his resistance before I asked, “Were you the one to find the body?”

“No.” Lowe studied his boots. Kicked over a clod of dirt. “The authorities knew before I did. I got a call from a neighbor who’d driven by, saw all the commotion.”

“About what time was that?”

“Neighbor called as I was finishing my pancakes.”

“Could it have been that neighbor—over there?” I looked across the field, beyond the fence and the line of shrubs even farther back.

The buildings appeared exactly as they were yesterday, the perfect icon of farm, like an illustration from a kid’s picture book. The second-story barn window stood open. No sign of binoculars watching.

“Old Mr. Jost? I couldn’t say,” Lowe mumbled.

Ainsley popped his head around the camera. “Has he even got a phone?”

“There’s a booth out back,” Lowe answered. To me he said, “The Amish don’t allow phones in their homes. It’s one of their rules. No wires to the outside world on their homes. They get around it by putting the phone in a separate little building, like a phone booth, that’s outside apart from the house.”

“An Amish family lives there?” I couldn’t help pointing. “In that house?”

“Yeah.” Lowe turned away from me and the relentless stare of the camera.

“What about cell phones?” I asked, thinking of the girl in the bush. “No wires on a cell phone. Do they allow those?”

“No. Don’t think so,” he snorted. “They’d have to charge it somewhere.”

“Oh yeah.” I laughed. Joke on me.

“Is that it?” Lowe’s reluctance suddenly took a shape I recognized.

Gently I asked, “Did you know the man who died?”

His chin dropped to his chest. There was silence for a good twenty seconds.

“Suppose it’ll come out sooner or later… Yeah, I knew him. Damn shame. Seemed to be getting along alright these past few years. Boy’s name was Tom. Tom Jost. He was adopted by my neighbor over there—” Lowe jerked his head in the direction of the farmhouse, “—years ago. Kid had a hard life and old Jost tried to do right by him. I respected him for that.” He half-turned his back to the camera, mumbling. “Some hard years for a while there. Teenage stuff mostly, not too bad. But Old Mr. Jost is religious, you know, so he didn’t see it that way. Boy left the farm, never came back.”

Except to die.

“Why’d he choose this tree?”

No answer.

“Do you know why Tom chose this tree?”

Lowe’s whole face tightened and I wished he’d have been facing the camera, instead of looking over at Mr. Jost’s farm. “Guess I do.”

“Why?” I whispered.

The quick glance he shot my way held all sorts of implications, but I needed words for the tape.

“This going to be on TV, Miss O’Hara?”

“Yes, we hope so.”

“The Amish don’t care to be photographed, you know.”

It was a warning.
Stay away from Old Mr. Jost.

“Yes. I’ve heard that.”

Lowe turned and pointed a finger at the oak. “That tree is over a hundred years old, you know. The town moved the road for that tree.”

The morning sun was fully awake and the leaves on the sunny side were glowing.

“Seen a lot, that tree. It was worth moving the road around it.”

I nodded. “It’s a beautiful tree.”

“I suppose that boy would have found himself another tree someplace else,” he said and it was almost a question. The rest wasn’t. “There are things worth trying to preserve, Miss O’Hara. Even when you can’t.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. He was speaking a local dialect of neighborhood history, a language I’d never understand without translation. I hesitated, searching for what to ask next and I lost him.

Lowe made his decision. He stuck out his rough, tanned hand and shook my own—goodbye. Interview over.

Damn.
“Well, thanks for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. Lowe.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“No.”

I’m not so young I can’t remember back to the days when shame was still serious business. As a kid, I remember people averting their eyes at something awful, instead of reaching for their camcorders.

How many times did I hear the words,
hurry, don’t let anyone see. What will the neighbors think?
Bad enough. But now the pendulum’s swung so far the other way nobody can turn on the TV or open a newspaper without somebody flashing their streaky underpants in your face. How is that an improvement?

The problem isn’t that it’s so painfully tacky, it’s that we have only so much time, so much compassion, for our fellow human beings. I want to focus on trouble that matters. Ending wars, and hunger, and the sickness we know how to cure if we’d only pay attention. If the freaks would stop distracting us.

Which is a long way of explaining that even though people like farmer Al Lowe made my job harder, I can’t say I always mind.

I followed him over to his standard issue, rusty pickup. “Mr. Lowe?”

He climbed in the cab and slammed the door shut before he answered. “Yeah?”

That one meant,
don’t push your luck, lady.

“No camera. I’m just wondering, do you have any idea who alerted the authorities about the body? Could it have been your neighbor?”

“No. Had to be someone before that,” Lowe said. “Sorry.”

I said,
thanks
, but it bothered me. Usually, it was easy to find the person who’d tipped the authorities on something like this. Even if it was a random bystander, they generally had an emotional stake in telling the story again. The thirty-second hero was an easy interview to bag.

“One last thing—have the police identified the body as Tom Jost?” I didn’t want either of us getting into trouble for not passing along important information.

“Oh yeah.” Lowe hooked a hand over the steering wheel and his mouth registered a nasty-tasting frown. “They know.”

Questions started popping in my head, but Lowe slipped the truck into gear and revved the engine.

I nodded and he returned the gesture. With the big bill on his cap, it looked like he was tipping his hat to me; a move that registered as perfectly midwestern, formal and yet familiar. I bit my tongue and stepped back to watch the truck drag a line of dust into the air as he cut back onto the road.

“Keep it rolling,” I told Ainsley. “I want the truck.”

Jenny popped her head out of the door. “How much longer?”

I started to say we were done, when I noticed action up at the Jost farmhouse. Somebody had come out to gather the laundry. A pair of little girls and a boy were dodging between sheets draped in rows, playing at hide-and-seek as the wind flicked the bed tails. If I strained to listen, I could hear the squeals as they popped in and out.

“Shoot it,” I ordered Ainsley.

He looked around, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Those kids playing?”

“Yeah.” And this one meant,
trust me.
“Quick, College. Before it’s gone.”

He zipped the camera off the tripod and propped it on his shoulder for the shot. I had a sinking feeling that we’d lose the image because he wasn’t used to shooting hand-held, or worse, he couldn’t see the picture I wanted. Sometimes that happens. They just can’t see.

“How much longer, Aunt Maddy?” Jenny whispered.

I was startled to find her right there, at my side all of a sudden. “I don’t know. Not long.”

“Oh man!” Ainsley finished all his maneuvers and turned to face us, the camera still resting on his shoulder. He sounded pumped. “This was great. What next?”

I wanted to walk up to the farm and knock on the door, but Jenny was quietly pulling my sleeve to check my watch. I took the hint. “We better head back to the station. Check in with Gatt. And we’ve got to drop Jenny on the way. At school.”

“Sure,” Ainsley assured her with a smile. His sandy hair seemed to change color to suit his environment. In the morning sun, he was blond as a prom date.

“I’ll help strike.”

“No. I’ve got it.”

I admit I was itching to help wrap the equipment. You learn to pack fast when the aftershocks are bringing the building down around your ass. Unfortunately, Ainsley’s progress was about as urgent as the seasons changing.

By the time we delivered Jenny to school, then found a gas station with a quick mart, the best part of the morning was gone.

This is another thing I wasn’t used to in my new life—the dead weight of other people’s needs. On my own, I’d have a story half in the can already. It took my college boy twenty minutes just to fill the gas tank and buy us a newspaper.

“What the hell took you so long?” I crabbed when he finally returned.

“Not much of a morning person, are you?”

“I’m a busy person, College. Busy, busy, busy.”