Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(94)
Peter turned in his seat to look at her. His cracked ribs didn’t like it, but he wanted to see her face. He needed to be careful with her, he knew.
“June? We need to talk about your dad. What kinds of things he was doing when you saw him last. Where you think he might be.”
She stared back at him, her freckles standing out like a red spray on her pale skin. What he first thought was shock was actually a cold white anger.
It made him a little afraid.
“I’ll give you directions,” she said. “If we go straight there, the valley’s about a four-hour drive.”
“We need a car,” said Lewis.
“We need more than that,” said Peter.
He peered out the windshield at the sky. The clouds had lifted and he could see a faint shape just below the gray, circling slowly. If the light caught it just right, he’d see a glint of gold. It would follow them, he was sure now.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and put in the number he’d memorized the day before.
A calm voice answered. “Semper Fi Roofing, this is Manny.”
“Manny, it’s Peter. Got a minute?”
45
PETER
They stopped at a car wash near the airport to get the blood off the Escalade’s cracked rear window. They were seven or eight miles south of June’s burned apartment, but the golden shadow still circled overhead, barely visible just below the high clouds, its outline fading in and out of view as the cloud bottoms roiled and shifted. Peter felt the static fizz and pop with the sight of it, and found himself hoping for rain. Maybe it would be less claustrophobic.
After the car wash they found a waterlogged parking lot and smeared mud on the back gate and the floor mats and seats to make sure the rental company cleaned the hell out of the Escalade. It was better than setting it on fire, Peter figured, and less likely to get anyone’s attention.
They left the SUV at the rental drop inside the Seattle airport parking structure, then walked over the pedestrian bridge to the rental desks by the luggage carousels, where Lewis arranged for a white Dodge Caravan using a driver’s license and credit card in another name, as if he’d just stepped off a plane with the rest of the tourists. They walked back over the bridge to the structure, picked up the van, transferred their gear from the Escalade, then joined the long stream of anonymous cars flowing down the spiral exit ramps to the highway.
Peter watched out the wide rear window as the golden shadow in the sky became smaller and smaller behind them, finally disappearing into the distance.
At a sporting goods store past Tacoma, June pored over the USGS topographical maps. Peter pushed down the static as he and Lewis filled a shopping cart with a backpack, a sleeping bag, and other critical gear for a night out in the woods. Lewis picked up two pairs of long-distance walkie-talkies, a Winchester 760 deer rifle with nice bright optics, five extra magazines and a hundred 30-06 rounds. When the clerk asked if he needed a Washington gun permit, Lewis said no, he already had one, and produced the paperwork. The permit was in a different name altogether.
They stopped for lunch at a diner outside Longview, sitting by a big front window with Mount St. Helens peeking through the overcast while they ate omelets and French fries and drank dishwater coffee. When the waitress took the plates, Peter unrolled one of the topo maps June had selected and put it in front of her. “Mark it up,” he said, handing her a pencil. “Draw the valley as you remember it.”
“I don’t remember much,” she said. “And what I do remember will be fifteen years out of date.”
“We’ll talk you through it,” said Lewis. “You’ll be surprised how much it’ll help.”
The map showed an elongated teardrop shape with a wandering creek or river down the middle. The elevation lines were far apart at the bottom, indicating nearly flat terrain. Around the edges of the valley, the lines were so close together they were hard to distinguish. Steep ridges or cliffs.
“The waterfall is up here at the point,” she said, making a circle, then added two squares at the top. “My dad’s house, and the lab. Maybe that’s bigger now.” More squares scattered down one side of the river. “Sally Sanchez, the ag researcher, she helped raise me after my mom left. This was the cottage where she stayed. The big house was where the researchers stayed, the people who came to work with my dad. The farm foreman’s cabin was here by the equipment barn.”
“Who was the foreman?”
“Mr. Monroe. He came after Sally did. He ran the big equipment, the tractor and all that stuff. My dad didn’t like him, but Sally said we needed him. I think my dad would have used horses if he could.” She drew some lines with squiggles on top around the buildings. “Apple and cherry orchards, most of this side of the river. This is the bunkhouse for farm help.”
“What kind of help?” asked Peter.
“Fruit pickers, mostly. Every few years some carpenters would stay there when they were putting up a new building. By the time I left Mr. Monroe had two full-time workers who lived in the bunkhouse. There might be more now.” She drew big rectangles on the other side of the river. “Farm fields here.” Then triangles on sticks for evergreen trees, which she scattered around the perimeter. “Woods around the edges, where it gets too steep for agriculture.”