Sweepers (41 page)

She leaned forward when he was spent, keeping him inside, and kissed his face, his lips, his chin, his lips again, whispering to him while he stroked her back and her hips with his hands. She stretched out full length on top of his body, -with his arms wrapped tight around her.

After a little while, he suggested they go upstairs to his room.

“What are-your intentions, kind sir?” she asked, reaching for the robe.

“Whatever my lawyer recommends, Counselor. Unless you’re out of ideas.”

“Silly man,” she said. “What a silly man. Only you’re going to have to help me walk.”

FRIDAY. dressed in Karen came down for breakfast just before eight her uniform and carrying a large leather civilian purse. The breakfast table was set in the dining room, but no one seemed to be about, so she went into the kitchen’ where she found Hiroshi and - Kyoko having a cup of tea. As Kyoko started to get up, she asked Hiroshi if he would bring her car around to the side of the house. Hiroshi frowned but then nodded and left to get the c*. at down witk Kyoko and asked if she could have Karen’s some tea. Kyoko took one look at Karen’s face, smiled hugely, and hastened to get it.

“Train is still asleep,” Karen said, blushing. “I think he is very tired.”

The old woman just looked at her over the fun of her cup, and Karen was careful to avoid eye contact. “I’m going over to the Marine Corps base at Quantico. I think it best if Train was not disturbed.”

Kyoko nodded once but still didn’t say anything. Karen sipped her cup of tea for a few minutes, suppressing a grin of pure pleasure. She finally looked over at Kyoko. Then they both smiled, exchanging one of those knowing looks women have been trading since the beginning of time. Karen got up when she heard the car, thanked Kyoko for the tea, and went out the back door to intercept the Explorer. Hiroshi stepped out and gave her a remote device for opening the main gates.

“Train-sama does not go with you?” he asked.

“He needs his sleep, Hiroshi. He stayed awake to watch the night before last in the hospital. I’m just going over to the Marine base. I’ll be back by noon. Let him sleep, all right? He’s been up for almost two nights.”

Hiroshi looked unconvinced. “There is no danger where you go? Do you wish Hiroshi to go with you?”

She looked at him and wondered how much Train had told him. “I don’t -think so,” she replied. “I’ll be sa on the base, Hiroshi. There are lots of big Marines there. He has my car phone number if he’s worried.”

Hiroshi nodded, then hesitated, as if he had one more question. But then he bowed and closed the door for Karen.

She drove off as quietly as she -could, not wanting to wake Train. He’d be pretty agitated when he found out she had gone 4f on her own, but after last night, she was determined to do two things: first, hurry this Sherman thing to a conclusion. She knew Jack would never open up if Train was present. But if she could make him talk and establish that he was acting in concert with Galantz, they should be able to force Mcnair to move, which damned well ought to precipitate something. Secondly, she wanted to demonstrate to Train that she was an equal part of this team.

An hour later, Karen drove back out of the Marine base front gates and turned fight into tiny Triangle, Virginia. Her trip out to the airstrip had been a complete bust: Jack Sherman had not shown up for work. And when she had asked for his home address, the civilian clerk behind the counter had refused to give it out, citing the Privacy Act. Since Karen did not have Train’s database file with her, she now needed to find the boy’s address. She could, of course, admit defeat and go back to Aquia, but she was determined not to do that. She checked her car phone to see if there had been any calls, but there were none. Good. Still asleep, then. With any luck, she could get back before he even woke up. Then she saw the sign for the Triangle post office.

She turned the Explorer off Route One and entered a side street that led to the post office. The assistant postmaster turned out to be a retired Marine, and he perked up at the sight of Karen’s three stripes. She turned on her best smile in an effort to ease his bureaucratic conscience. After a few minutes of Navy-Marine. Corps banter, the postmaster produced the box with the postal box registration cards.

“Here’s your boy,” he announced, pulling an ID yellow

“Shows an address of number four card out of the file box.

Slade Hill Road. Which explains why he has a box. I think I’vd seen this guy. Skinny, rat-faced fella.”

“Sounds like him. We’ve interviewed him once over at the Marine base where he works. But he didn’t show up this morning. How do you know him?”

“Slade Hill is a one-lane mud track, goes up a steep hill off a Cherry Hill Road. There’s a pair of trailers halfway up, and then this guy. Our delivery trucks can’t get in end out except when it’s bone-dry, which is almost never’ That’s assumin’ they’d want to. Buncha biker lowlifes up there.

The old Slade house up on top, all falling in. Plus the snake problem.”

He looked obliquely-at Karen. “You sure you wanta go up there?”

“I need to talk to this guy,” Karen said. “And what’s this about a snake problem?”

“Like I said, Slade Hill Road goes mosta the way up a snaggle-assed hill that’s s’posed to be crawling with snakes.

You know, it’s one a those places. Lotsa rattlesnakes just happen to be there, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Right,” she replied, trying not to show her apprehension. Snakes were not-high on her list of favorite things.

This guy,” the postmaster said. “He never hasta know where you got the address, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Always happy to help out Navy law. But like I said, that’s a medium-rough crowd out there along the river Still kinda wild back in there. You be careful, Commander.’

“Appreciate the heads-up,” she said, and thanked him again. She went back out to the car. “Snakes,” she said as soon as she had the engine running. She exhaled, got out her Prince William County detail map, and found Cherry Hill Road.

It took fifteen minutes to get there and locate Cherry Hill Road. She thought about the jurisdictional problem she might be creating, then dismissed it. If she could get Jack to talk, Mcnair could deaf with any jurisdiction problems.

The road narrowed as it curved around toward the river, and at one point she had to pull the Explorer to the right and almost stop to make room for a pickup truck coming toward her. The good news was that Jack wasn’t likely to call the cops just because some Navy people were harassing him with questions. But she was sure she was on the right track.

With Sherman missing, his son had become the vital lead.

The only other wrinkle was Carpenter. He had ordered them off the case, effectively. What was that term Train usedfreelancing?

She concentrated on her driving as the narrow road climbed into the low hills bordering the river. The twisting road became even narrower, and she had to slow, both to avoid surprises and to size up the territory.

There were no developments down here, only single-home plots. Along the upper p art of the road, the houses were presentable, if modest: a mixture of regular construction and prefabs, with neat, well-tended lawns, established trees, and, usually, one or two elderly vehicles. As the road canted downhill, closing in on the river, the dwellings became mostly trailers. The edges of the road became more ragged, and she had to steer around some major tank traps disguised as potholes.

“Anywhere along in here,” she murmured to herself, holding the map in her lap. Slade Hill Road wasn’t on the map, but it did show some lines leading off Cherry Hill along in here. She decided to ask for directions when she saw a very fat man rolling a green plastic trash barrel down to the road from his house.’The man was about sixty; he was decked out in an armless T-shirt and red shorts whose tops were well shielded by his paunch. He had sparse brushcut gray hair and what looked like a few days’ growth of b-and littering his jowls. There was a large tattoo of the Marine Corps globe and eagle on his biceps. He peered suspiciously at the Explorer as Karen stopped, rolled down the passenger-side window, and leaned across to talk to him.

“I’m looking for Slade Hill Road. Am I close?”

“Round the next bend, first dirt road on the left. Watch yerself, lady.

Buncha assholes up there. Bikers and shit.”

Karen thanked him and rolled the window back up as she pulled out.

Lovely, she thought. If he thinks they’re assholes, they must be some . serious assholes. She came around the next curve in the road and saw what had to be Slade Hill Road on the left, a badly rutted dirt track leading up a fairly steep hill. The entrance was flanked by two piles of white garbage bags lying in the rain ditch, both of which had been ripped open by scavenging dogs. She put the Explorer in four-wheel drive and turned left into the muddy dirt road. The vehicle slipped sideways for a moment but then gained traction and began to climb. For the first hundred yards, there was nothing but heavy trash-littered underbrush and sad-looking trees on either side, with deep runoff ditches limiting the road to a one-way passage. ‘ There must have been a spring or seep up at the top of the road, because it was wet. Then she passed a rusting, burned-out trailer on the left, surrounded by six or so junked cars and heaps of moldering trash and blackened debris from the fire.

Two scabrous dogs came yapping out of the wreck and ran after her car, then quickly gave it up. The road zigged to the right, and Karen had-to maneuver the vehicle carefully over a deep erosion rut that ran diagonally across the road.

The road bent back to the left, still climbing, and then widened in the vicinity of two more trailers that looked as if they had been dropped from the air several years ago and then landed haphazardly in a muddy clearing. The trailersbutted up against each ociter at -an angie, and the junction was draped in”Sheets of heavy clear plastic like some kind of air lock. There were signs of life, in that the trash and garbage looked fresh. A new crew of scavenging dogs, feeding happily on a white garbage bag, ignored the Explorer as it ground past. There were four large motorcycles parked under a makeshift lean-to constructed out of dirty plastic panels supported by two old refrigerators. A faint wisp of smoke was coming out of what looked like a woodstove stack cut through the roof of one of the trailers. Karen kept going, watching her rearview mirror to see if humans or otherwise had come out to check on her intrusion into this sylvan paradise.

Maybe the purported snake problem up here is of the twolegged variety, Karen thought. She was suddenly glad it was morning, guessing that all the reptiles were still-in hiding.

She kept climbing in first gear, the road now showing less sign of use.

The lower tree branches were beginning to scrap’e against the top and sides of the Explorer, and the tire ruts were not so pronounced. Then the track just ended, or effectively did, because there was an enormous dead tree lying across the road. It had obviously been down for many years, but even half-rotten, the massive trunk meant that she would have to turn around.

She stopped but kept the engine running. This has to be the top of Slade Hill, or almost so,, she thought. She looked through the windshield to see if the road continued, but it didn’t look like it. She tried to remember what the postmaster had said about a house up there, but she finally decided to maneuver the Explorer around so that it faced downhill. Then she shut it down and got out, wishing she had worn the trousered working uniform I instead of the skirted variety. Her toes were curling in her dress shoes until she remembered that she kept a pair of Bean boots in the back. She changed shoes and then extracted her oversized bag, slinging it over her shoulder and then locking the car.

There was hardly a sound up here among the stunted trees and heavy underbrush, as if the native fauna had long since fled in disgust. There appeared to be the beginnings of a path on the river side of the clearing. She walked a few yards down the path before spotting the top of a trailer about feet off the road, back in a jungle of vines and weeds. e smell of a dysfunctional septic system competed with the odor of rotting vegetation and old tires at the edge of the dirt road.

Single-wide paradise. She could imagine some covert marijuana patches out in those_ woods, and maybe a meth boiler room down below at the double trailer. Above to the left, there was a ridgeline outlined by old trees, where patches of gray limestone appeared as silvery smudges against all the burgeoning greenery of spring. There might have been the ruins of a house back in those trees, but she could not tell. And no birds, she noticed. Not a peep from what should have been a hillside full of birds. Did snakes at birds?

This has to be the place, she decided reluctantly, although there was no mailbox or anything else with a number 4 on it. She started in toward the trailer along the dirt path, which was littered with an amazing variety of trash, beer cans, plastic shopping bags and ancient oily articles of clothing.

Stepping through the low underbrush, she wished she had a big stick to sweep the grass ahead of her. She felt a bramble bush put a good-sized tear in her right stocking. After about thirty feet, the path opened up into a clearing, where a badly damaged trailer lay half on, half off its cinder-block fqundations. The top of the trailer on one end looked as if it had been hit by a falling tree, although the tree was not in evidence. Electricity and telephone wires snaked down from a pole on the dirt -road to the comer of the trailer, so presumably somebody did live here. Off to one side, there was a motorcycle hootch built just like the ones at the trailer’s below. Battered packing crates constituted its sides and a plastic tarp stretched across some two-by-fours for a roof.

There was room under it for a couple of bikes, -but only one motorcycle was present for duty. It looked quite large, and it was partially covered by a moldy-looking shower curtain.

There was a mound of bags and clothes stacked to one side of the bike.

She wondered if that was the motorcycle she had seen at the church, but all motorcycles looked the same to her. She looked around for dogs. She heard a sound, and sure enough, two brown rats skittered out from beneath a pile of rotting mattresses and dived into a hole under some pallets. If there was a big snake problem up here, it wasn’t big enough, she thought. Time to go being on the door. She walked up to the front of the-trailer, kicked aside a white plastic bag of trash, and knocked on the front door. There was no response. She tried it again. The sound reverberated inside the trailer, as if it was empty.