Lemoyne slowed down, swung out of the fast lane and on over into the exit lane. Auburn-Grass Valley exit. Tamara shifted position on the futon, sat up straighter. Some little town near Grass Valley was where Lemoyne’s second wife was from. Did she still live there, her and his real daughter? Like maybe in a trailer in the woods? Going there to see them for some off-the-hook reason, introduce Angie to Angie? Dude was so weird, he was capable of just about anything.
Off the freeway now, onto a busy side road. And into a Chevron station. For some reason she registered the gas prices’ sign: $2.39 a gallon for regular. Goddamn oil companies, still screwing Bay Area drivers left, right, and back door.
They stopped alongside a row of pumps. Lemoyne hadn’t said a word since they’d left San Leandro, but now she heard his voice, the words muffled by the plastic partition, “You keep quiet back there, Dark Chocolate. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.”
Dark Chocolate. Second or third time he’d called her that. One of those half-and-halfs that hated the fact they were mixed race, wished they were all black or all white and wound up resenting both. Your equal opportunity racist.
She said, “Angie’s feeling sick to her stomach.”
“That’s too bad.” As if he meant it.
“Let me take her to the bathroom.”
“No.”
“You want her to throw up on herself?”
“We don’t have much farther to go. Another hour or so.”
“I don’t know if she can make it that long.”
“You better see she does or you’ll clean her up when we get there. Clean up back there, too. I hate the smell of puke.”
He opened the door on the last few words, slid out quickly, and shut the door behind him.
Lauren started to cry.
Outskirts of Auburn on 49. Broad avenue lined with shopping malls and business parks and car dealerships and fast-food places. Heavy traffic, endless string of stoplights. Then the lights got farther and farther apart, and the road narrowed into two lanes and climbed steadily into the foothills.
Lauren was quiet again. Still taking deep breaths to keep her gorge down, her face scrunched up with the effort it took. Afraid to throw up, afraid of what he might do. Good little girl. Smart, sweet-tempered. What’d she ever do to have a thing like this happen to her?
What’d I ever do? What’s deserving it have to do with shit happening to you?
Still climbing, still a lot of traffic. Pine woods-they were in the foothills now.
More signs: Grass Valley. Nevada City. Highway 20-Marysville.
Exit lane again. Swinging off onto Highway 20.
Pretty soon they were heading down a long, steep grade. Day was clear and warm, sunlight hitting the windows and making it muggy inside the prison cell. Air was bad, too, from the goddamn cigarettes Lemoyne kept smoking. She called to him to turn on the air conditioner, they were suffocating back here. He ignored her.
At the bottom of the grade the freeway ended at a stoplight and another sign. Left: Penn Valley. Right: Rough and Ready. Rough and Ready-that was the name of the town Lemoyne’s ex-wife was from. He turned right at the intersection, onto a narrow secondary road that climbed and twisted through thick forestland.
She tried to remember exactly where Rough and Ready was, how isolated. No use. Must’ve looked at a California map two or three hundred times the past five years, but always for specific counties, cities, roads; you just didn’t notice all the other names, the hundreds of small towns and secondary roads that covered the state. Not if you were a confirmed urbanite, you didn’t.
The constant flicker of sunlight and shadow hurt her eyes. The sharp twists and turns bounced her and Lauren around even more. Seemed to go on a long time like that, but it couldn’t’ve been much more than five minutes before Lemoyne slowed down and Tamara saw they were in Rough and Ready. Old-fashioned little place, must’ve been a Gold Rush town-they passed an ancient building that said Blacksmith Shop on the front of it. Then they were out of the village and Lemoyne picked up speed again.
But not for long. Less than a mile. Another slowdown, then a left turn past a country store onto a lane hemmed in by woods, then a right turn onto another lane with an uneven surface that rattled her teeth and shook a few more whimpers out of the child.
One more twist, and they were onto an unpaved surface-driveway, also hemmed in by trees-and finally, after maybe a hundred jolting yards, the SUV bucked to a stop. Tamara lifted up onto one knee so she could see better through the side window, out front through the partition.
Appalachia.
That was her first thought. Meadowlike clearing surrounded by forest, a creek or something running through on the right side. And a trailer at the far end. Junky and about half a century old, one of those silver jobs that looked like giant sow bugs-all spotted with rust and half-buried in weeds and grass, dry pine needles and cones from a tree behind it spread over its top like dead hair. Fifty or sixty yards to the left was an old barn in better shape than the trailer, the corpse of a car angled in alongside. Off to the right, sitting in more weeds, was one of those molded plastic kids’ playsets, slide and teeter-totter and climbing bars; the colors on it were bright, as if it’d been repainted not too long ago. A narrow shed leaned sideways in that direction, too, ready to fall down. Or maybe it was an outhouse. Didn’t have a half-moon in the door, but it sure looked like one. An outhouse!
Wasn’t anybody around, not now and not for a long time. Lemoyne’s ex-wife and daughter didn’t live here, if they ever had. Only one who came here was that sick bastard when he was in a mood to have fun.
Her skin began to prickle and crawl, the last of her small hopes to crumble away. Middle of nowhere. Nobody was going to find them in a primitive hole like this, not soon, probably not ever. If she couldn’t find a way to save Lauren and herself, they weren’t gonna be saved. Not in this life.
Lemoyne was out of the SUV, unlocking the hatchback. In spite of herself she jerked when he threw the hatch up. The Saturday night special was in his hand again; he waved it at her. “All right, come out of there. You first, and be careful with my little girl.”
She obeyed, scooting out on one hip and leg, lifting the child when she was on her feet. Lauren whimpered and clung to her, blinking in the sunlight. He patted the kid on the head with his free hand, smiling down at her almost tenderly.
“Here we are, Angie,” he said. “Home.”
Now what?
17
Waiting for Runyon, I couldn’t sit still. Up and down, shuffle papers, make yet another call to Tamara’s cell number, make yet another call to her apartment, hunt through her desk and paper files again, pace around all three offices, stare out the front windows at the narrow expanse of South Park. Enforced inactivity in this kind of situation is the worst kind. I needed to be doing something, and there was nothing to do yet. Dead time, wasted time, Where was she, what happened to her? repeating over and over like song lyrics you can’t get out of your head.
When the telephone went off I was all over it like a bear on a honeypot, but it had nothing to do with Tamara. And that was almost as much a relief as a disappointment. Too often the worst news comes by phone.
“I decided there’s no reason you shouldn’t know what was in the envelope,” Cybil’s voice said without preamble.
“Yes?”
“It’s the manuscript of an unpublished novel Dancer wrote a long time ago,” she said. “It’s about a group of New Yorkers, mostly writers and artists, and what happens in their home-front lives and relationships on a single day-June 6, 1944. The idea being that it’s a kind of D-Day for them as well. He called it Remember D-Day. Not a very good title, but then it’s not a very good novel. An interesting idea poorly developed.”
“Where does amazing grace fit in? Or does it?”
“One of the female leads is named Grace Cutter. Known as Amazing Grace to the male narrator.”