After the Rain (32 page)

Dale crossed
to the TV/VCR, pushed in a tape, and picked up a remote.

“Electrics hooked into battery system. Shouldn’t be a problem long as she’s idling. Ah, I’m new at this, so the quality is uneven. Ours will be better. I just wanted you to see…”

Under the sheet, Nina took advantage of the darkness to test the slack in her bonds. She had to get control of her breathing, she had to gather her strength. She had to begin to resist.

The screen filled with scrambled gray static, then Nina was looking at a black-and-white photo of a young blond woman, pert, attractive. The length and cut of her hair appeared a bit dated. With a chill she remembered Dale’s odd question when they met.
I’ll bet you went to the prom, didn’t you?
When the camera panned, she saw she was looking at pictures from a high school yearbook. The camera zoomed in close enough to read the block of type:

Back to the jerky static, then to green. Too much lawn for a yard. It was a park, the trees not quite fully leafed out. White letters and numbers punched the date into the bottom of the screen: June 11.

Last month.

The camera picked up a running figure. A woman in brief running shorts, a sports top, and a Walkman: blond, in shape, tanned. The video was framed in black, some kind of window. Then it moved, unevenly panning across seats, a dashboard, a rearview mirror, and a windshield. The camera was shooting from inside a van.

Now the woman was closer, the camera picking her up out the passenger window as she jogged on a path. The path wound along a wall of shrubs.

A man Nina recognized as Joe Reed stepped from the bushes in front of the jogger. Powerful. Confident, his arms wrapped her up as he quickly stabbed an object into her thigh. Not a knife. One of those needles Dale stabbed her with.

Dale hit the pause button and explained in the patient tone of a tour guide who liked his job, “Epipen. Same thing I hit you with at the bar.” His patient profile was sidelit by the flickering screen. “Joe took out the epinephrine and replaced it with ketamine.”

Nina went back over the struggle in the Missile Park. How long had it taken the drug to take effect after he jabbed her thigh? Several minutes to put her completely out.

Dale hit a button. “Play,” he said in a dreamy voice as the tape resumed and showed Joe hauling the woman back into the shrubs. Quick, efficient. The snatch had taken less than five seconds.

The camera went to static, then focused again. This time on a box of Coco Puffs cereal, a used bowl, a milk spill on a tabletop, and the front page of a newspaper. As the camera panned, it caught a sweep of sunlight and shadow and a feel of kitchen windows open to a
summer morning. The sound of a lawn mower. Now the paper came into focus. The
Grand Forks Herald.
It zoomed in on a color photo below the fold.
LOCAL WOMAN MISSING
.

Some of the sharpness had mellowed on the face but it was the same girl in the yearbook picture. Older now. A grown woman. Nina braced for nausea.

All this time Dale stood next to the bed, his left arm folded across his chest, and his right arm cocked up so he rested his chin in the palm of his right hand. In his left hand was the remote. Dale was absorbed.

The static blipped away. The video came on.

At first it was a confused jumble. The camera swinging over a bare mattress on a filthy floor. The light bouncing off blue cinder-block walls.

Ginny Weller startled up from the darkness, squinting, hands up defensively, starting to scream. She had backed herself into the corner. Her tank top was soiled, as were her arms and legs. An advancing shadow fell across her face, blacking out her image. Joe Reed’s cold, clipped voice gave direction in the background:

“Go on, Dale. Show her who’s boss. Don’t take any shit.”

Ginny put up a fight and Dale had to wrap her in his thick arms and smother her down. He jabbed her with one of those pens. The picture ended.

Dale turned and spoke in a bland voice, “I couldn’t stand to touch her when she was all squirmy and sweaty and dirty. The thing was, she wasn’t ready for me. So, the way it worked out, I had to prepare her.”

Prior to 9/11, Nina traveled back and forth between her posting in Lucca and the Joint Special Ops Task Force in Sarajevo. JSOTF targeted Serbs wanted by The Hague, and some of the pickup raids required covert female operators. During these operations she became acquainted with a Ranger captain named Jeremy Stahl. They had in
common that both were the same age and both were going through career-related strife in their marriages. They were alone and attempting not to be lonely. Their flirtation was chaste and did not go beyond a few good-night kisses.

One early fall evening they went to a bar in Measle Alley. The street took its nickname from the Bosnian practice of commemorating their dead by painting red dots the size of large dinner plates on the street or sidewalk where they had died from shell or sniper fire. It was hard to walk a straight line anywhere down Measle Alley without stepping on a dot.

They drank beer in a bombed tavern that was missing most of its roof. They could watch the stars come out as they ate bad Bosnian pizza.

Jeremy was a beautiful man, much as Nina imagined Broker must have been when he was young, still in uniform, and standing in the close shadow of death.

Shawing more bravado than good sense, they drank and discussed the worst things in the world. What had she said? Something about never seeing her daughter again.

Christ. What good were words or thoughts? Nothing got you ready for this.

Ginny Weller lay on a white sheet that spread like a puddle of clean snow in the grubby basement. Her chest rose and fell softly. Drugged. Except now she was nude. She had been washed clean of dirt. The white bikini patches of her breasts and crotch gleamed against her smooth tan.

Dale’s shadow preceded him as he approached the mattress. He performed an awkward shuffle, some personal dance of discovery and joy in his nakedness.

He knelt, then got on all fours. Nina watched the limp spiral of
Ginny’s arms and legs as Dale tried to position her beneath him.

Nina forced herself to watch everything. He might reveal a pattern, a weakness. The flicker from the screen clubbed her steady eyes. After his second toadlike orgasm, Dale crawled beside the still figure and experimented with touching. Caresses. A kiss.

Helpless, Nina found herself sinking into a corner of perfect grief and hatred. No escaping the single thought that smashed her again and again:

Kit. Kit. Kit.

Seven years old. She didn’t know things like this waited out in the world, in the shadows. Just that single thought crashing down like a bludgeon, over and over.

Dale paused the video and explained: “I must’ve got the dosage wrong, or maybe she had a lot to eat before we took her. Because she aspirated—that’s what they call it—threw up and choked her airway. Got a little snuffy there toward the end.” He hit the play button.

His last robotic climax was complicated by the onset of his victim’s rigor mortis. When it was over, Dale rewound the tape and opened the curtains. Just as the daylight flooded in, a fist slammed the side of the camper, echoing deep through Nina’s body.

“C’mon, for Christ sake,” George Khari yelled. “Finish up in there.”

Like they were working. Like they had taken a break
.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dale yelled back. Then he turned to Nina and grinned. “I’m going to be real careful with you, so you last all the way to Florida.”

“C’mon, Dale, we gotta get on the road,” George yelled again.

“Coming,” Dale said, moving forward. He stopped as he pulled the curtain aside, turned, threw her a last exultant grin, and held up his right hand, like in a Boy Scout salute—thumb to little finger, three fingers extended. “You see that? Three times. I bet even Ace couldn’t do it three times in a row.”

Point to point,
the distance from Langdon to Lake Elmo stretched the outside limits for the Black Hawk’s fuel range, even adding in its emergency thirty-minute reserve. The pilots arranged for a refueling stop at the Minnesota National Guard training ground at Camp Ripley, just outside of Brainerd.

The flight plan took them over the Red River Valley, then south toward the Twin Cities. Estimated flight time: two and a half hours. That would put them on the ground in Minnesota between 3:30 and 4:00 in the afternoon.

Broker had never flown in the Black Hawk. Times had changed. As soon as he climbed in, he saw that this bird was special. None of the old noise, or death-on-the-highway reek of av gas, or exposed raw electrical circuits that he remembered from the bare-bones Vietnam Hueys. The cabin was carpeted and lined with two rows of bucket seats that faced in, like a conference room. There were even pockets for drinks in the chairs. Fabric dressed the walls to cover the soundproofing. The pilot and copilot were screened off behind a cockpit door. The crew chief tried his best to make himself invisible, squirreled back in a forward nook.

After they were airborne, Holly talked briefly on a headset, then pulled it down around his neck. “The crew is not happy, but they’ll get us there.” He leaned on his elbows over a complex communications console and rubbed his eyes.

“This is all pretty fancy,” Broker said.

“It’s the MDW.” Holly allowed himself a grin. “Military District of Washington model. Got the VIP package. Everything but a shower. Probably one of the reasons they’re pissed at me. Technically, this bird is a little over my pay grade, but I took it anyway.”

Yeager pointed to the radio. “Who can you talk to on that?”

“Anyone in the world,” Holly said. “But we ain’t breaking radio silence, because if we do, somebody is going to tell us to like, ah, land immediately.” Then he pointed to the cell phone on Yeager’s hip. “Keep trying to reach Fuller.”

Yeager tried again, got the machine. They settled in and waited. Broker realized that with the doors closed, they could carry on a normal conversation. But right now nobody felt like talking. An hour went by that way. Off to the northeast Broker spotted the triple puddle of Leech Lake, Cass Lake, and Lake Winnibigoshish.

Should he call his folks and tell them about Nina’s disappearance? Should they discuss the tactics and timing of telling Kit that her mommy was missing?

Another part of his mind counseled that this pursuit of Dale Shuster was pure denial. According to this part of his mind, he should be getting ready to identify a corpse and make funeral arrangements.

Yeager tried the Fuller number again, with the same result. The machine. He tried directory assistance for construction firms in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area with “Fuller” in their name. No luck. They sat and stared. The steady whack of the rotors torqued up the tension. Holly especially seemed to be getting wound tighter and tighter.

“Pretty smart,” Holly finally said. “Using a piece of construction equipment as a delivery system. Hell, we’re used to seeing them sitting
all over the place. Drive right by, never give it a second thought.”

“We gotta wait and see,” Broker cautioned.

“Bullshit. Why go to all the trouble to mill out solid cast iron?” Holly’s voice trailed off as his eyes drifted out the windows. “I just worry we’ll be too late.”

Yeager sat calmly and listened. He had the look of an A student playing hookey; amazed pressure was building in his wide eyes.

Broker realized he’d been holding the pack of cigarettes since they took off. Holly reached down, produced an ashtray, asked for a smoke. Then Yeager put out his hand. “Left mine in the car.”

They lit up. Broker stared at the crumpled blue pack. Five left.

When Mille Lacs Lake was a shimmer in the distance, the pilot contacted the tower at Camp Ripley. They dropped to treetop level and eased down on the landing strip, topped off their tanks, and were airborne again.

Half an hour later they were over the silver ribbon of the St. Croix River, where it winds toward its juncture with the Mississippi. They banked and began a gradual descent southward along the river, then turned west. Holly was on his cell. Then he went forward and conferred with the pilot. Looking out the window, Broker saw a sight from twenty-six years ago. A red smoke grenade popped in an empty field next to a rural intersection. The Hawk swooped down and landed next to the smoke.

Seeing Broker eyeball the smoke, Holly grinned. “Like old times, huh?”

A gray government Chevy Nova waited for them next to the dissipating red smoke. Holly told the pilots to stand by, and then he, Broker, and Yeager ran to the waiting car.

The ground contact Holly had been talking to was a young, black Army MP sergeant from Fort Snelling. He had a Hudson’s map open, with the route to the Fuller address indicated in yellow Magic Marker. He was in uniform and he was wearing a sidearm.

“Let’s go,” Holly said.

Irv Fuller lived less than three minutes away on four wooded acres. A sign next to the address announced
PRIVATE DRIVE
. House numbers had been chiseled into a large granite boulder.

“Ole Irv looks like he’s doing all right,” Yeager said as they drove up a long asphalt drive screened by evergreens. The house was deceptive on approach, showing a limestone-faced Tudor, casement windows, and cedar shake in the front. But it was built into a hill with a third-story walkout on the back slope over a swimming pool. A large Morton building sat off the driveway apron. The doors to the Morton building and the three-bay garage were closed.

They got out and snooped the house. A gray-and-white cat stared at Broker from a window; otherwise, it looked like no one was home. The MP sergeant sat in his car reading an Easy Rawlins paperback while Broker, Holly, and Yeager continued to nose around.

“So, what do you think?” Broker asked.

“I see an office in there,” Holly said, pointing through a window. “Maybe there’s business cards, stationery, invoices…”

They had walked a circuit around the back, looking for a likely window, when a horn beeped out front.

Then they heard the purr of an engine coming down the drive as they jogged around front and saw a Mercedes sedan pull up to the Chevy. The MP was out talking to a blond woman dressed in gymrat Spandex, sweatband, sport top, and cross trainers. The woman was tapping her foot and had her arms folded across her chest.

As they walked up, Yeager speculated, “Irv’s first wife, Ginny Weller, was better from the waist up. I’d say Irv’s generally moving south in his life. This one’s better on the bottom.”

She was attractive enough but Broker thought she’d better back off on the tanning booth unless she was working on donating her skin for a crocodile purse. She was uncertain, seeing an Army uniform and gun belt and then Yeager’s uniform in her driveway.

“Is something wrong?” She asked.

“Mrs. Fuller?” Yeager asked.

“Yes. Sydney Fuller.”

“I’m deputy Jim Yeager, Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department in Langdon—where Irv’s from. We know each other.”

“Yes…” She shook her head. “He’s all right. I just dropped him off at the job an hour and a half ago. Before I went to my step class at the—”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s somebody else from Langdon we’re looking for who might be in contact with Irv. Dale Shuster.”

Sydney oriented quickly. “Sure. They had some business recently. Irv bought some machinery.”

“We really need to get in touch with Irv.” Yeager nodded to the house.

“You’ll need his cell.” She gave Yeager the number and proceeded to talk, relieved this was a routine visit: “We took a run over to the Dells for two days. It’s the rain. The site was too muddy to work. We came back after lunch and I dropped him off to look it over. He figures by tomorrow they can start digging.”

“And where’s the site?” Yeager asked.

“Prairie Island.”

Yeager saw Holly immediately react and flip open his cell phone. At the same time, Broker’s eyes went wide and hard. “What is it?” Yeager asked Broker.

Broker moved forward, rasing his hand up to silence Yeager. “Did you say Prairie Island?” he asked Sydney Fuller, his voice struggling to stay calm.

Still smiling, she was made a little uncertain now by Broker’s intensity. “Yes,” she said, “Irv landed the contract to…”

Suddenly she winced and put her hands to her ears. “What’s that noise?” she gasped, staring at the way Holly abruptly circled his hand and ran out on her lawn, phone jammed to his ear. Totally un-prepared for the Black Hawk appearing in a fury of spinning machinery
over her line of evergreens, she screamed and waved her arms. “My flower beds!”

Broker came through the flowers and mulch churning in the prop wash, grabbed her arm, shook her to get her attention, and yelled, “You mean the power plant?”

Aghast at the whirlwind whipping her yard, she shouted, indignant, “Yes, goddammit, the power plant.” She yanked her arm away. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Fuck! Let’s go!” Broker shouted to Yeager and started to sprint for the chopper. Yeager turned to Sydney Fuller, his face a question mark.

Sydney yelled, “Prairie Island, the nuclear power plant, okay?”

Yeager turned and ran.