"I also know they're looking hard at Creed Lindsey, and you know it's sort of a shame for either of'em."
"In what way?" I asked.
"Well, now. Dr. Scarpetta, Max ain't exactly here to defend himself."
"No, he isn't," I agreed.
"And Creed couldn't begin to know how to defend himself, even if he was here."
"Where is he?"
"I hear he's run off someplace, not that it's the first time. He done the same thing when that little boy was run over and killed. Everybody thought Creed was guiltier than sin. So he disappeared and turned up again like a bad penny. Now and again he just goes off to what they used to call Colored Town and drinks himself into a hole."
"Where does he live?"
"Off Montreal Road, up there in Rainbow Mountain."
"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with where that is."
"When you get to the Montreal gate, it's the road going up the mountain to the right. Used to be only mountain folk up there, what you'd probably call hillbillies. But during the last twenty years a lot of them has gone on to other places or passed on and folk like Creed's moved in." He paused for a minute, his expression distant and thoughtful.
"You can see his place from down below on the road. He's got an old washing machine on the porch and pitches most his trash out the back door into the woods." He sighed.
"The plain fact is. Creed wasn't gifted with smarts."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning he's scared of what he don't understand, and he can't understand something like what's going on around here."
"Meaning you also don't think he's involved in the Steiner girl's death," I said. Detective Mote closed his eyes as the monitor over his bed registered a steady pulse of 66. He looked very tired.
"No ma'am, I don't for a minute. But there's a reason he's running, you ask me, and I can't get that out of my mind."
"You said he was scared. That seems reason enough."
"I just have this feeling there's something else. But I guess there's no point in my stewing over it. Not a darn thing I can do. Not unless all of 'em want to line up outside my door and let me ask'em whatever I want, and that sure isn't likely to happen."
I did not want to ask him about Marino, but I felt I must.
"What about Captain Marino? Have you heard much from him?" Mote looked straight at me.
"He came on in the other day with a fifth of Wild Turkey. It's in my closet over there." He raised an arm off the covers and pointed. We both sat silently for a moment.
"} know I'm not supposed to be drinking," he added.
"I want you to listen to your doctors. Lieutenant Mote. You've got to live with this, and that means not doing any of those things that got you into trouble."
"I know I got to quit smoking."
"It can be done. I never thought I could."
"You still miss it?"
"I don't miss the way it made me feel."
"I don't like the way any bad habit makes me feel, but that's got nothing to do with it." I smiled.
"Yes, I miss it. But it does get easier."
"I told Pete I don't want to see him ending up in here like me. Dr. Scarpetta. But he's a hardhead."
I was unsettled by the memory of Mote turning blue on the floor as I tried to save his life, and I believed it was simply a matter of time before Marino suffered a similar experience. I thought of the fried steak lunch, his new clothes and car and strange behavior. It almost seemed he had decided he did not want to know me anymore, and the only way to bring that about was to change into someone I did not recognize.
"Certainly Marino has gotten very involved. The case is terribly consuming," I lamely said.
"Mrs. Steiner can't think of much else, not that I blame her a bit. If it was me, I reckon I'd put everything I got into it, too."
"What has she put into it?" I said.
"She's got a lot of money," Mote said.
"I wondered about that. " I thought of her car.
"She's done a lot to help in this investigation."
"Help?" I asked.
"In what way, exactly?"
"Cars. Like the one Pete's driving, for example. Someone's got to pay for all that."
"I thought those things were donated by area merchants."
"Now, I will have to say that what Mrs. Steiner's done has inspired others to pitch in. She's got this whole area thinking about this case and feeling for her, and not a soul wants someone else's child to suffer the same thing.
"It's really like nothing I've ever seen in my twenty- two years of police work. But then, I have to say I've never seen a case like this to begin with."
"Did she actually pay for the car I'm driving?" It required great restraint on my part not to raise my voice or seem anything but calm.
"She donated both cars and some other business people have kicked in the other things. Lights, radios, scanners."
"Detective Mote," I said, "how much money has Mrs. Steiner given to your department?"
"I reckon close to fifty."
"Fifty?" I looked at him in disbelief.
"Fifty thousand dollars?"
"That's right."
"And no one has a problem with that?"
"Far as I'm concerned, it's no different than the power company donating a car to us some years back because there's a transformer they want us to keep an eye on. And the Quick Stops and 7-Elevens give us coffee so we'll come in all hours. It's all about people helping us to help them. It works fine as long as nobody tries to take advantage." His eyes were steady on me, his hands still on top of the covers. "} guess in a big city like Richmond you got more rules."
"Any gift to the Richmond Police Department that is over twenty-five hundred dollars has to be approved by an O and R," I said.
"I don't know what that is."
"An Ordinance and Resolution, which has to be brought before the city council."
"Sounds mighty complicated."
"And it should be, for obvious reasons."
"Well, sure," Mote said, and mainly he just sounded weary and worn down by the revelation that his body was not to be trusted anymore.
"Can you tell me just what this fifty thousand dollars is to be used for, besides acquiring several additional cars?" I asked.
"We need a chief of police. I was pretty much the whole enchilada, and it don't look too good for me at this point, to be honest. And even if I can go back to some sort of light duty, it's time the town has someone with experience in charge. Things aren't the way they used to be."
"I see," I commented, and the reality of what was happening was clarifying in a very disturbing way.
"I should let you get some rest."
"I'm mighty glad you came by." He squeezed my hand so hard I was in pain, and I sensed a deep despair he probably could not have explained were he completely conscious of it. To almost die is to know that one day you will, and to never again feel the same about anything.
Before I returned to the Travel-Eze, I drove to the Montreal gate, went through it, and turned around. I went back out the other side as I tried to think what to do. There was very little traffic, and when I pulled off on the shoulder and stopped for a bit, people passing me probably assumed I was but one more tourist who was lost or looking for Billy Graham's house. From where I was parked, I had a perfect view of Creed Lindsey's neighborhood. In fact, I could see his house and its old boxy white washing machine on the porch.
Rainbow Mountain must have been named on an October afternoon like this one. Leaves were varying intensities of red, orange, and yellow that were fiery in the sun and rich in the shade, and shadows crept deeper into clefts and valleys as the sun settled lower. In another hour light would be gone. I might not have decided to drive up that dirt road had I not detected wisps of smoke drifting from Creed's leaning stone chimney.
Pulling back out on the pavement, I crossed to the other side and turned onto a dirt road that was narrow and rutted. Red dust boiled up from the rear of my car as I climbed closer to a neighborhood that was about as unwelcoming as any I had ever seen. It appeared that the road went to the top of the mountain and quit. Scattered along it were a series of old humpbacked trailers and dilapidated homes built of unpainted boards or logs. Some had tar paper roofs while others were tin, and the few vehicles I saw were old pickup trucks and a station wagon painted a strange creme de menthe green.