A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(31)
“She’s doing something else now.” Furtive glance over one shoulder. An evasion? A lie?
“Do you know where Asia lives?”
“I do.” Dragging sweat-soaked strands from her forehead. “I can’t tell you how.”
“Why Asia?” I asked, handing E. Desai my card.
“If anyone knows anything about your person, it would be Asia.”
11
Slidell dropped me at the annex, then blistered off to the Law Enforcement Center, on fire to review the Jahaan Cole file. Knowing he’d be at it for hours, maybe days, I went alone to see Asia Barrow. Skinny had argued against it, of course. I’d promised to be careful and keep in touch.
The address E. Desai gave me was in Mooresville but not the pricey lakefront area favored by bankers and lawyers making the daily slog uptown for the privilege of owning Catalinas and riding mowers. The unfashionable rural part, too far east of I-77 to be of interest to anyone not conversant in John Deere.
From the interstate, the nice Waze lady speaking through my cell phone directed me onto a two-lane winding through fields and scruffy woodland. A farmhouse here, a trailer there. A complicated transformer station. Thirteen miles, then she sent me onto a road with no markings at all. I drove through what must have appeared on a Google Maps satellite view as a knobby green finger of forest. Ten minutes, then I was informed that my destination was on the right.
A rusty mailbox leaned at an angle never intended by its installer. No number, no name. No red flag to be raised for outgoing correspondence.
I looked ahead and behind me. Saw only pavement shimmering like sand in a desert mirage. Not a vehicle in sight.
Bad idea? Probably.
I made the turn.
The driveway was dirt with sporadic patches of gravel. I passed below a mix of pine and hardwood for a long two minutes. Suddenly, the road dipped, changed its mind, and turned sharply uphill.
The few loner clouds were now buddying up into larger clusters. As I crept forward, wishing the intrepid Waze lady was riding shotgun, shadows mottled my windshield, staccato moments of darkness and light filtering through overhead needles and leaves.
Another eon, or thirty seconds, then I crested a hill.
And braked hard. Foot shaky on the pedal, I reached for my water. Drank. Rescrewed the cap.
A structure squatted at the back of an oblong clearing measuring about sixty yards by twenty. It was small, more shack than house. The green paint, faded and peeling, made me think of the anoles that molt and leave their skins stuck to the annex pillars. Blue-and-white curtains hung, limp and dejected, in windows to either side of a sagging front door. The windows were screened and open. The door was screened and closed.
A covered porch stretched the length of the building, adding a certain je ne sais quoi to the architectural style. Not so the junk piled along it. Newspapers. Scooters and bikes. A console TV designed to fit into a corner. An old window air conditioner. Stacked Tupperware tubs, their contents resembling shadowy creatures intent on escape.
A chrome-and-leather chair sat to the left of the door. Beside the chair, a floor-model ashtray, the kind once placed outside elevators and in hotel lobbies.
On the lawn, had there been grass, was a scattering of items that hadn’t made the cut for the porch. Tires. An ancient Frigidaire washer. A blue toilet with a Hoover upright rising from the bowl. A plastic playhouse molded into the shape of a castle, cracked and coated with mud.
To the right of the house, beside the driveway access point at which I’d stopped, stood a small shed. A muted droning suggested it housed a generator. A black Chevrolet Silverado was parked outside, rear bumper tight to the east-facing wall. The truck, old and dinged, fitted well with its shabby surroundings.
The plastic bottle popped loudly in my hand. Startled, I released the grip I wasn’t aware I’d tightened.
Why such apprehension? The place was depressing, sure, but menacing?
Feeling a bit foolish, I turned off the engine.
But was it foolish? What did I know about Asia Barrow? I’d been directed to her by a stranger who didn’t seem overly bright.
According to E. Desai, Barrow had been the life coach assigned to the faceless man, Felix Vodyanov. His treatment by Yuriev, combined with the thumb-drive list of meds, suggested Vodyanov had a condition requiring mood regulators, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. Barrow had left Sparkling Waters for reasons E. Desai chose not to disclose.
Not exactly a road map to the Zodiac killer.
After texting Slidell, I got out and quietly closed the car door. My footsteps chafed across dusty soil that, following a rain, would surely be a sea of mud. Above the whir of the generator, I heard a wind chime, not the usual melodic tinkle, more a metallic clanking, like engine parts begging for oil.
As I approached the house, a red-tailed hawk swooped up and looped low in the sky, framed by a cloud whose belly was the color of a bruise. The avian air show did nothing to calm my nerves.
At the base of the stairs, I called out.
No voice. No movement. No barking dog.
Five treads up to the porch. Seeing no doorbell, I opened the screen and knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Still no response.
The air was so hot I felt I was standing in a kiln. Wiping sweat from my face, I stepped to the right, around the air conditioner and the TV. Eyes shaded with both hands, I leaned close and peered through the screen.