The Divide (36 page)

“Are you allowed to do that? I mean . . .”

“Yes, sir. We are.”

Earlier, in his office, back across the river in the Federal Building, he had already told Ben about the other incidents. The arson attacks where similar graffiti had been sprayed on the walls. They had taken place in three different states, which was one of the reasons the FBI was involved. The other reason was that these were clearly acts of ecoterrorism.

Ben had just laughed. Terrorism? Sacramento, Reno, Portland? The idea of Abbie whizzing all over the West, setting fire to things, was too absurd for words. And as for this Denver deal, Jesus. Andrews had smiled sympathetically and looked down at his notes. Then he asked about her boyfriend, the one who called himself Rolf. He wanted to know if Ben had ever met him or spoken with him and Ben said that neither he nor Sarah had.

They had gotten all Abbie’s cell phone records and were painstakingly going through every call she had received or made since she got it. There were some calls from a number in Sheridan, Wyoming, Andrews said, from the home of a Mr. Ray Hawkins. Did the name mean anything to Ben?

“That would be Ty. If I remember rightly, his dad is called Ray. Ty and Abbie were close for a while. Though, lately, I don’t know. My wife would know more about that.”

Ben walked around the little apartment, without knowing what he was looking for or why indeed he had asked to see the place at all. But, God knew, he had to do something. Andrews’s cell phone rang and he pulled it out and went out the door to answer it. All Ben could hear were many repetitions of
yes
and
okay
and
right
and then he was back in the room again, putting the phone back in his pocket.

“Mr. Cooper, I have to tell you that our Denver office has this morning released your daughter’s name and photograph to the media. I didn’t know it was going to happen that soon.”

“Jesus Christ.”

At that moment the cop appeared in the doorway.

“Sir?”

Andrews walked over to him and the cop quietly told him something.

“Okay, thanks.”

The cop went back down the staircase. Andrews turned to Ben.

“We better get going. There’s a TV crew on its way.”

“What? Jesus.”

“We need to go.”

But they were too late. As they came down the staircase, a truck and a van with some kind of satellite thing on the top was pulling up in the street, the doors opening and people piling out with cameras and microphones. The cop put out his arms to try to hold them back but it was too much of a job for one man.

“Mr. Cooper? Mr. Cooper? Could we have a word, please? Mr. Cooper?”

Andrews tried to shield him as they walked to the car.

“Please, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “If you could just let us through? Thank you, thank you very much.”

But it was no good.

“Have you heard from Abbie, Mr. Cooper?”

“Gentlemen,” Andrews said. “Mr. Cooper will no doubt be issuing a statement later. He’s not in a position . . .”

“Do you have any idea where Abbie is, Mr. Cooper?”

They were at the car now. Andrews was opening the passenger-side door for him but everyone was crowding in and jostling him. Ben managed to lower himself into the seat but didn’t duck low enough and bumped his head. Andrews was trying to shut the door but the reporter had the microphone stuck in under Ben’s nose.

“Mr. Cooper, did Abbie do it?”

“What the hell do you think?” Ben shouted. “Of course she didn’t do it!”

The door slammed and he hit the lock and tried not to look at the camera and the faces still calling their muted questions through the glass. He felt like a criminal. Andrews was in the driver’s seat now and starting up the engine.

“I’m so sorry.”

Ben was too shaken to speak. He just shook his head in disbelief.

 

 

 

“The thing is, Mr. Cooper, we haven’t seen that much of her lately,” Mel said. “Since she and Rolf started seeing each other, they just, kind of, hang out together, just the two of them.”

They were sitting in a corner of a rowdy restaurant called The Depot, up near the railroad. The walls were hung with paintings of the Wild West, though done with irony in bright neon colors, pinks and purples and lime greens. The music was loud but at least it meant they could talk without being overheard. Mel was facing him across the table with her boyfriend, Scott, while Ben was sitting next to the older guy with the beard who they’d introduced as Hacker, though apparently it wasn’t his real name. They’d all ordered steaks, the biggest Ben had ever seen, to which the three of them had by now done justice. Ben had barely touched his. He just wasn’t hungry.

It was Mel he had wanted to talk with and when he’d arrived here—late, after another long and devastating phone conversation with Sarah—he had been surprised to find the others waiting with her. Mel had sounded wary when he’d called her that afternoon, after the media nightmare had at last subsided. Perhaps Abbie had told her bad things about him. Or perhaps she was just shocked, like everybody, by what was going on. At first she was reluctant to meet, but she eventually agreed. Scott and Hacker had no doubt been enlisted as moral support. By now, though, everybody was feeling a little more relaxed.

“So can you tell me about Rolf?” Ben asked. “All we really know is that she met him in Seattle.”

“You know, Mr. Cooper,” Mel said. “We hardly ever got to meet him. Said hi a couple of times. That’s really all.”

“Is he a student here or what?”

Mel glanced a little nervously at Scott and then they both looked at Hacker, as if he should be the one to answer. Hacker cleared his throat.

“No. He put it around that he was doing a Ph.D. at Washington State. But it’s not true. I know a lot of people there and nobody’s ever heard of him. In Seattle he was living for a while in a squat with a few others. That’s where we picked Abbie up after she got hurt in the demo. I got a friend of mine to check the place out. There’s nobody there anymore.”

He took a drink of his beer and went on.

“Tell you the truth, I don’t think his real name is Rolf at all.”

“Why’s that?”

“Mr. Cooper, I’ve been involved in active environmental stuff for quite a few years now. Been known to do a little monkey-wrenching myself, now and then.”

“Monkey-wrenching?”

The three of them shared a smile.

“You never read
The Monkey Wrench Gang
? Edward Abbey?”

“Oh. No, actually, I haven’t. But I know what you mean. Spiking trees, that sort of thing.”

Hacker pretended to look shocked.

“Perish the thought. Yeah, that sort of thing. Anyhow, you get to know people. There’s, like, a kind of network. And once in a while some character drifts in who clearly has his own agenda, if you know what I mean. Word kind of gets around.”

Ben didn’t know what Hacker was talking about and his face must have shown it. It was as if the guy was trying to tell him something without having to spell it out. Hacker looked at Scott and Mel. Scott nodded and Hacker leaned closer to Ben and went on.

“A few years ago there was some pretty heavy stuff going down. Some in Oregon, mostly northern California. Letter bombs in the mail, pipe bombs, that kind of deal. Most of the targets were federal agencies, the BLM, the Forest Service, logging and mining companies. Nobody got killed but quite a few were injured. Some senior executive of a lumber business got his arm blown off. Thing is, there was a guy around at that time who a lot of folks figured was involved. Slight European accent, German, Swiss maybe. Rangy, kind of good-looking. Called himself Michael Kruger or Kramer, some name like that. Eventually three or four people got arrested, went to jail for a long time. He just vanished.”

“You think that’s who Rolf is?”

Hacker held up his palms.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Have you told anybody about this?”

Hacker laughed.

“The cops, you mean? No, sir.”

“Well, is it okay if I do?”

Hacker sat back and picked up his beer and gave a wry smile.

“Man, I figure they know all about it already.”

Ben asked him what he meant, but Hacker wouldn’t elaborate. He just asked Ben if the FBI was intending to issue Rolf’s photograph and details as they had Abbie’s. Ben could only repeat what Andrews had told him: They hadn’t yet gotten any ID on the other person involved that was strong enough to go on. Hacker gave a skeptical laugh.

“Yeah, right,” he said. And finished his beer.

As they said good-bye in the street outside the restaurant, Mel shook his hand and said she was sure Abbie wouldn’t have done anything stupid and that everything would be all right. Ben smiled and said he knew it would. She kissed him on the cheek and turned briskly and walked off with the others. Which was just as well because for some reason this small gesture of affection made the tears come rushing to his eyes and he cried all the way back to the hotel.

Sarah had told him to call her after meeting them, no matter how late it was. So back in his room, lit only by the bedside lamp and the flickering blue of the muted TV, he dialed the number that had once been his. But all he got was the answering machine. The voice was still Abbie’s, recorded at least two years ago.

“Sarah?”

He thought she might pick up but she didn’t. He left a brief message then decided to try her cell.

“Benjamin?”

“Hi. I tried the house number.”

“We’re at Martin and Beth’s.”

“Joshie too?”

“Yes. We had to get out. It was like a siege. Newspaper reporters, TV crews. We had to sneak out the back. It’s a total nightmare.”

She sounded numbed, fragile, right on the edge.

“They said on the news she’s wanted for murder.” And now her voice cracked. “Oh, Benjamin . . .”

“Sweetheart.”

She was sobbing. He could hardly bear to hear it.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“Please come. Please.”

 

 

 

It was one of those perfect fall evenings, clear and warm and still, everything saturated in a golden light. The maples in the Ingrams’ backyard were a blaze of amber and red, their shadows leaning long across the lawn. Sarah had been staring at them for a full five minutes. She was out on the deck, leaning against the wall by the open doors to the kitchen, smoking another cigarette. It was getting out of hand. She had smoked half a pack today already. She was going to stop. Tomorrow.

“Sarah?”

Beth was standing at the door. She had taken the day off work to stay with her.

“He’s here.”

Sarah followed her inside and through the kitchen to the hallway then across the polished woodblock floor and the elongated triangle of sunlight that fell on it through the window halfway up the staircase. Beth opened the front door and walked out into the glow, the cab pulling away down the driveway, Benjamin standing there in his long stone-colored raincoat, putting down his bag so Beth could give him a hug. Sarah stood in the doorway, shielding her eyes against the sun and watched him walk toward her. He looked tired and strained around the eyes and he was giving her this beautiful, brave, sad smile. Oh God, she thought. At such a time, their world so suddenly askew, how could he not be hers?

He opened his arms and she clung to him as if to life itself, her shoulders, her whole body shaking as she wept. He held the back of her head against his chest and stroked her hair as he always used to. And when at last she could look up at him, he kissed her on the forehead and gently wiped her tears with his fingers and neither had yet spoken a word.

Beth was watching them, mopping tears too. They followed her into the house with their arms still around each other and in the hallway stood again and hugged.

“You smell of airplanes,” she said.

“It’s my new cologne, kerosene for men.”

“Oh, Benjamin. Tell me this isn’t happening.”

“Is Joshie here?”

“He wanted to go to school.”

“Are the reporters still camped out at the house?”

“I drove by around two this afternoon,” Beth said. “There was still one or two. Alan says once you’ve made the statement, they’ll probably leave you alone.”

Beth had put them in touch with a lawyer friend of hers named Alan Hersh who specialized in high-profile cases where there was a lot of media interest. He had been liaising on their behalf with the police. The plan was to hold a press conference the following morning at which Benjamin and Sarah would appear and read an agreed statement. Hersh even wanted Josh to be there too. Sarah was dreading it.

They went into the kitchen and Beth made them sit down and poured them each a glass of wine and though it wasn’t even yet six o’clock they put up only token resistence. Benjamin asked after the Ingram boys who were both away at college. Beth said they were doing just great. They soon ran out of small talk.

“Did you hear they arrested Ty today?” Sarah said.

“They
what
?”

“I had a call from his mother. She was in a terrible state. The father of the boy who got shot in Denver owns the company that’s been drilling gas on their ranch. They’ve had a lot of trouble with him. Apparently he’s ruined the whole place. The police know about Ty and Abbie and all the calls he made to her cell phone. They seem to think he must be involved in some way, maybe even that he was the other one in the van with Abbie.”

“Ty?” Benjamin said. “No way.”

“That’s what I said. But they say he has a motive.”