Old Chaos (9781564747136) (34 page)

“The commissioner in?”

“Yeah. Come in. She’s with her husband.” She led Maddie through a high-ceilinged hallway, past a huge, empty kitchen, and out into a glassed-in porch that overlooked a patio. The handsomely designed patio pavers were the same as those used in the driveway. Someone had to keep all those blocks weeded. Tall ceramic urns had not yet been planted with the non-native flowers Cate allowed herself. There were nice benches and chairs. Cedar.

Bitsy pointed to a flowered lounge chair. “Have a seat. Want coffee?”

“Sure. How you doing, Bits?”

“Fine. Back in a sec.”

She was. The coffee, black and thick the way Maddie liked it, steamed on the cool air.

“Been here long?” Maddie took an appreciative sip.

“ ’Bout a week. I’m filling in for the housekeeper. I’ll go get Mrs. Bjork for you.” And she whisked from sight.

Maddie blinked and settled back to enjoy her coffee. She supposed Bitsy wasn’t in the mood for a good talk. There were low ter-ra-cotta trays of narcissi and jonquils set out on the glass-topped tables scattered around the porch. That was called forcing. Maddie wondered whether camas could be forced. Apart from the flowers, there was no sign of life in the bright room, certainly no mess of living. It was quiet. The minutes stretched.

At last Bitsy returned. “More coffee?”

“No, thanks. What’s the problem?”

“The mister’s being difficult today.”

“Isn’t there a care-giver?”

“Yeah. She’s resting. He was bad last night, too.” Bitsy heaved a sigh. “Look, Maddie, it ain’t a good time for a visit. Why don’t you come back some other day? And, uh, call first, huh?”

Maddie got up and handed her cousin the cup, which was a pretty stoneware mug. “Sure. Talk at you later.”

Bitsy showed her to the door. As Maddie drove off it struck her as odd that her cousin was “filling in,” and that one care-giver was on duty day and night with only Cate Bjork to spell her. The Bjorks couldn’t be having serious money problems, not in a house like this one. Maybe the commissioner had trouble keeping hired help.

Maddie regained the county road without incident. As she drove back to Two Falls she thought about the house. She liked the design, much more than she’d liked the McCormicks’ new house. She’d seen very little of the Bjorks’ interior, but she’d seen enough to know that two people would be lost in a place that size, isolated from each other and from the world, even with servants in residence. It was a house that didn’t make sense.

What could justify it? If the Bjorks entertained large numbers, twenty or thirty people at a time, with some of them spending the night. If they had five children, eighteen grandchildren, and two old grannies to shelter. If they wanted to turn the house into a B&B. Maddie tried to remember whether Cate had entertained widely before the election, before her husband became ill, but nothing came to mind, which meant she hadn’t entertained many local people. Maybe the house was symbolic. That, at least, was not an alien concept.

Maddie thought of the longhouses—lodges, so called—of the Klalos and other tribes in the area. They, too, had been very large, though not as large as the Bjork mansion. They had housed small villages. Within larger villages, they had housed kin-groups, with the totem of the clan standing proudly outside in the rain.

Nobody wanted to live crammed together like that now.
Maddie
didn’t. She liked her privacy. Still, she could imagine how intense the ties would have been among the people living in a longhouse, how secure a child or an elder would have felt in the enveloping busyness and warmth. She smiled to herself. And how many petty quarrels would have flared around the cook fire at the heart of things.

Beth managed to gather herself together by the time the county prosecutor, Ellen Koop, then Lt. Prentiss and Rob showed up to talk over the evidence and decide what could be released to the press and what could not. Meg had dropped by earlier on her way to the library, bringing a fresh batch of cookies, and Dany had made a big pot of coffee, so Beth didn’t have to lift a hostessy finger. She spent the time worrying.

Ellen came first. A stocky woman about ten years younger than Beth, Ellen had battled her way to the top in the prosecutor’s office after five futile years in a big Portland law firm. She was smart, disillusioned, and very successful. Like Mack, she was a shoo-in at election time. Her conviction rate was high, because she was careful not to prosecute unless she had solid, untainted evidence to back her up. Between Mack, with Rob’s able help, and Ellen, Latouche County had an enviable conviction rate.

Dany showed Ellen to a seat on one of Hazel Guthrie’s uninteresting sofas and whisked from the room.

For a short while they made polite conversation. Ellen asked about Peggy, commiserated again about Mack, and hoped that Beth’s leg was healing properly. “Can’t be too careful about broken bones at our age.”

That was kind. “As far as I know, my leg is okay. It hurts a little, but that’s to be expected. How’s Reg?”

Reg was Ellen’s husband, an organic farmer who did well with pesticide-free apples and peaches. He also raised llamas for comic relief. Or so Ellen always said.

“Do you know what that madman wants to do?” Ellen demanded, interrupting a polite llama query.

The doorbell rang. Since nobody regarded Reg as other than massively sane, Beth gathered that Ellen meant Rob.

“He just wants me to give a brief press conference. There are bound to be rumors floating around about Inger’s death.”

“Oh, my dear,” Ellen said, pitying her.

Forestalling explanation, Lt. Prentiss entered, followed by Rob. Prentiss was scowling, Rob impassive. He had abandoned the blue sling. He gave the two women a nod of greeting and leaned on the tall-backed chair. Prentiss sat on a straight chair by Beth’s recliner and glowered. His close-cut mustache twitched.

“What’s happening?” Beth asked with resignation.

Ellen and Prentiss spoke together, looked at each other, and fell silent.

Rob said, “I’m sorry to seem mysterious, Beth. A bunch of information came in since I talked to you. I asked Judge Rosen to issue an arrest warrant, and Ellen and Ed think I’ve jumped the gun.”

Arrest warrant? He couldn’t mean for Larry Swets. “For Matt Akers?”

“No.” He squared his shoulders. “I intend to arrest Catherine Bjork for the murder of Inger Swets.”

I
T WAS DUSK, almost five, before Rob was ready to move against Catherine Bjork, and only then because Beth and Ellen came around to his way of thinking. Though he had no reason to fear for Lars’s safety, he had been feeling stirrings of alarm since Kayla told him that Cate had fired another care-giver.

He’d verified that, and Linda had secured proof that the three care-givers’ numbers appeared repeatedly on Inger’s phone records, including the ones listed on the morning of the mudslide and, very early, on the morning of her own death. And Inger had called the commissioner from the courthouse using Cate’s landline, right after the interview in Rob’s office. Prentiss kept insisting there could be an innocent explanation. Rob didn’t think so. Neither did Judge Rosen, fortunately, or, with reservations, Ellen and Beth.

To his credit, Prentiss cooperated once the decision was made to act that afternoon instead of waiting for Tuesday morning and fuller results from toxicology. A state patrol car sat at the intersection of County Road 2 and Highway 14, and Prentiss had also alerted cars patrolling the highway east and west of the intersection.

Because he would be coordinating things from a patrol car, Rob called on Jake to drive him again, and deployed two other county cars along Highway 14. He stationed a car just north of the entrance to the Bjorks’ private road.

Jake had pulled over onto the shoulder near the intersection of the two roads, and Rob was about to give the signal to move, when his cell phone rang. The radio crackled, alive with voices. When he saw that his caller was Maddie Thomas, Rob stuck his finger in his left ear and slammed the phone against the right.

“What is it, Maddie?”

“Something weird is going on with Commissioner Bjork,” Maddie said.

No shit. Rob opened his mouth to interrupt, but she went on, “I just had a call from my cousin Bitsy. She’s working out there.”

“Where?”

“At the Bjork place. She’s the temporary housekeeper.”

Rob sat up straight. “Yeah?”

“She says Cate Bjork left in the BMW more than half an hour ago with her husband and a couple of suitcases. Didn’t say why, didn’t say anything. And listen, Cate just drove through Two Falls with her pedal to the metal. I saw her car. Damned near ran into old Mrs. Ritchie’s pickup at the light—”

“Thank
you, Maddie. That’s great information. Gotta go.” He broke the connection and patched through to Prentiss, who responded immediately. To Rob’s surprise, Prentiss was talking from a patrol car about halfway to Two Falls. He said he’d head east to the bridge. He was a hands-on kind of guy.

Jake revved the engine.

Rob jabbed his finger east. “Go. Fast. She’s beyond Two Falls. Lights. Siren when you need it.”

As the car rocketed onto the state highway, Rob saw another state car pull out ahead of them. “Forget the siren and lights. Follow the state car.”

“Aw.” Jake let it go at that. He knew better than to indulge in conversation.

The other car was moving fast, and Jake hung on its tailpipe while Rob tried to straighten things out. If they’d moved an hour earlier…He didn’t waste time fuming. There was no point cluttering up the road with four county cars, so he told three of them to stand down and directed the fourth to hang out at Two Falls, in case Cate changed her mind and turned back to take the other route to Interstate 84, crossing the Bridge of the Gods.

It wasn’t likely. She had chosen to go east. That meant she could speed on to Biggs Junction, where US
97
headed north past Gold-endale to Yakima and a sizeable airport, or south to Bend, Oregon. But US
97
was a slow road. More likely, she would cross the Hood River Bridge and turn back toward Portland on the Oregon side. That bridge was closer to her house by a good twenty miles than the Bridge of the Gods and much closer than the bridge at Biggs Junction.

If she didn’t know she was being followed, she would sail across, hop onto Interstate 84, and imagine she was home free. She wouldn’t be. The Oregon police would stop her, but he would save a whole lot of paperwork if he could prevent her from crossing into another state.

Rob decided to keep the chase as inconspicuous as possible. No lights, no sirens. Yet. Then he asked the Oregon police to close the Hood River Bridge. They didn’t like the idea of hot pursuit across a two-lane bridge, with innocent citizens crossing both ways, any better than he did. They promised to close the span at the toll gate. Rob set about closing it at the other end. Prentiss assured him that would be done. Jake and the state cop ahead of him, already doing eighty, picked up speed as the cars passed Two Falls.

Rob closed his eyes and tried to visualize the Hood River Bridge. The exercise led him to his obvious omission. He called Hood River County and asked for a patrol boat on the Columbia. He also asked Prentiss to send a boat out to watch the Washington side. Prentiss suggested asking the Yakama to alert their fisheries boat, too, and promised to warn river traffic. Rob thought of poor, miserable Larry Swets.

They sped on in the deepening gloom. He was glad of the darkness only because Cate was less likely to notice the unusual number of cop cars on the highway. It wasn’t raining, one small blessing. He thought of the steel grate surface of the bridge on which a driver could lose control in wet weather. Not for nothing was the speed limit on the bridge twenty-five miles per hour.

“We missed her. She’s nearing the bridge.” Prentiss, sounding stressed.

“Anybody else?” Rob meant another vehicle.

“Looks like one set of lights coming this way, about a quarter of the way across.”

“Shit.” Rob wished he could see exactly where the cars were. Jake and the state cop ahead sped up.

“I’m going after her,” Prentiss said.

“Wait! No!”