Someone interrupted her. She put her hand over the mouthpiece, then came back on to say she had to take a call from yet another reporter.
“Good luck,” I said, sounding just like Jennifer Gale.
“Good luck,” she said back.
As with Jenny, “good luck” sounded now like “good-bye.”
I had no more energy for news. I called Plinnit.
“About those DNA results,” I said.
“You’ve been lying to me, Elstrom. You know where Sweetie Fairbairn is.”
“There’s an army of reporters outside, waiting for a news conference at Rivertown City Hall. I’m thinking about going over there and telling them about how a police officer might try to deliberately mislead with incomplete DNA. You didn’t recover anything from under my fingernails that’s conclusive enough to use in court.”
“You scratched it off, on that hall carpet.”
“That hall carpet,” I repeated, but it was for myself. My mind had lurched onto something I’d known before, but was beginning to understand only now.
“What?”
“Back at the Wilbur Wright, you said your officer was cut in the living room, and that’s where you recovered the attacker’s knife?”
“Yes. What are you thinking, Elstrom?”
“You’re sure you recovered the knife in the living room?”
“Right where Sweetie Fairbairn dropped it.”
There was nothing more to say. I hung up on him.
Alta hadn’t been clawing at the hallway carpet to find a knife. She’d been scratching to find something else she’d dropped. A very frayed old postcard, of a covered bridge with octagonal windows.
Alta had seen a destination in that picture, a place where Sweetie might run.
It took only ten minutes on the Internet to find the bridge. It was in Indiana.
I called Leo. “My credit card’s maxed out. Alta Taylor is headed to Indiana to kill Sweetie Fairbairn.”
“I have four hundred in my wallet,” he said. “Will that be enough?”
I told him I didn’t know if there was still time.
CHAPTER 71.
According to the Internet, Parke County was smack-dab in the middle of the western side of Indiana, and claimed to have more covered bridges than any other county in the state. The bridge with the octagonal windows that spanned Miller’s Ravine was built in 1878, and was about smack-dab in the middle of Parke County. It was there, smack-dab in the middle of apparently everything, that I was going to try to find Sweetie Fairbairn.
I took the fast roads, 294 into Indiana, then 65 south, to a maze of country two-laners. My plan was simple. I would work outward from Miller’s Ravine in increasing concentric circles, stopping at gas stations and stores and diners, anyplace a newcomer might find work. I was not seeking to ruin any sanctuary she might have found; I would not flash a picture, nor ask if anyone had seen her. I merely wanted to warn her that her sister-sick, runty Alta-was coming for her, dressed as a man or dressed as a woman… and that she liked knives.
It was a fool’s plan, statistically destined not to work. It was all I could think to do, at least until Leo’s four hundred dollars ran out.
The bridge had been painted since it had been photographed for Sweetie’s postcard. No longer a weathered gray, it glistened now, restored to its original red.
I walked through it and back, making echoing footsteps, pausing to admire its odd octagonal windows. It was a fine old bridge, a piece of historic infrastructure protected by people who valued such things.
It must have looked bucolic, maybe even romantic, to a girl or to a young woman on the run from a killing in Minnesota.
I wondered if it had looked the same, years later, to a woman now much older, and running from so much more.
For seven days, I worked in circles out from the Miller’s Ravine Bridge. The towns were smaller than Hadlow, and had very few stores, but there were intersections to be checked, as well; bumps in the road with a lone gas station or a tiny grocery that might have offered work to a woman.
I worked diligently, and doggedly, sunup to past dark. I slept in the Jeep every other night, ate dry cereal for breakfast, cheese crackers for lunch, and the cheapest diner food I could find for supper-all so most of the money I borrowed from Leo could go for gas.
I worked mindlessly, never letting myself pause to think it was preposterous that Sweetie Fairbairn had run to those smack-dab parts in the first place, that a picture on an old postcard had showed a destination to a woman in trouble.
Never, though, did I let myself allow that my road trip wasn’t only about Sweetie Fairbairn, that it also had something to do with getting away from Rivertown and being at the jack-ready for the phone to ring, not knowing who I wanted to hear from most-Amanda or Jennifer Gale. Slipping into such thinking might be to disappear into a dark tunnel indeed, and I wasn’t yet ready for that.
I set my phone to go directly to voice mail. Each of the ladies called once, as though in perfect symmetry. Amanda said she was swamped with meetings about the Sweetie Fairbairn fiasco and would probably have to cancel our trattoria date.
Jennifer’s message was much more direct: “It was his Ma.” She laughed. I laughed as well, at the idea that Elvis Derbil’s mother, the mayor’s sister, had been the one to suggest he spread his greasy wings and peddle his altered oils beyond Rivertown.
Both Amanda and Jennifer ended their messages by wondering how I was getting on. I did not call either of them back, as I was not at all sure how I was getting on.
Leo called every day, because he knew how I could disappear, chasing impossibilities. His calls I returned because he made me laugh, especially on the evening I decided it was time to head back to Rivertown. I had done what I could with my time and his money, and now I was out of his money.
He sounded unusually chipper. I asked if he’d won a big lottery.
“More fabulous,” he said. “Ma’s laid up in bed; sciatica.”
“That’s fabulous?”
“Even Bernard said it was a blessing.”
“Bernard, the accountant nephew-?”
“Of Mrs. Roshiska’s, who’s now in the hospital. Threw her back out.”
“From…?”
He laughed a laugh that was almost a shriek, and said he had to go. “I have much to do. I’ve thrown out the dancing DVDs. Ma’s handyman has already taken down the poles and disconnected the special lights. I myself pulled up the gold-flecked floor tiles and down the red velvet drapes. Ma’s doctor said to get all the stuff back from storage before Ma gets back on her feet.”
“Doctor’s orders to stop pole dancing?”
“All praise the doctor.”
As with his earlier calls, he hung up without asking if I’d gotten any leads to Sweetie Fairbairn. Nor had he offered to loan me more money to perpetuate my obsession for a second week, or a third. He is my friend.
I had enough money left for one more cheap dinner and two tanks of gasoline. I headed northwest, bound for one last town that evening, and three more the next day on my way back to Rivertown.
Hill’s Knob did not look to possess a knob, though where the ground had actually risen might have been obscured by the dense, intertwined weeds that lined both sides of its cracked blacktop main street. No one in the business district was there to mind, since most of the town had burned. Only two buildings remained: an empty old gas station, missing its pumps like Ralph’s in Hadlow; and the husk of something that once was a general store, judging by the signs for bait and men’s socks that still rested, sun-curled and faded, behind its filthy windows.
The only indication that any commerce was alive anywhere nearby was a billboard for a diner called Blanchie’s, five miles farther on. It advertised the best apple pie in four counties. Apple pie would do nicely for dinner, especially since driving five counties away to find better seemed unreasonable.