Wide Open (13 page)

“Storms.” Death, destruction, power.

“It’s pretty cool, huh. It’s like, well, it’s not exactly the company logo. There’s a … more stylized version. But it’s the … heart. That’s what Martin says. If we keep that in mind, that it’s about how powerful and destructive and awesome weather can be, then we won’t … we’ll respect it. And it won’t be like the atom bomb or something.”

“The atom bomb?”

“Or something.”

She tugged at Hallie’s sleeve. Hallie took a last look at the atrium floor, then allowed Lorie to lead her back to Dell’s office. It had already been completely cleaned out except for two cardboard boxes sitting on the otherwise empty desk.

“Dell worked here?” Hallie asked, because this didn’t look like Dell at all.

“She was mostly … You need investors to get something like this off the ground. That’s what Dell did. Especially local investors, because you want people to ‘buy in.’ And local people, they’ll support you no matter what if they’ve got a stake.”

Hallie looked at her, and after a minute, Lorie shrugged and added, “That’s what Martin says, and he’s, you know, he’s pretty brilliant. It’s been rough, Dell’s death. I mean, because, of course, Dell’s dead, which is awful. But for the company, too. People aren’t sure what’s going to happen now. Because she was, like, the local face, you know, someone people recognized.”

Hallie opened one of the unsealed cardboard boxes and poked through the meager contents. It hurt, like poking at a wound, the small number of things that made up a life. The box held a wooden pencil holder with three pens, a mechanical pencil and a fine-point marker still inside, a calendar with pictures of cowboys on horseback, a book titled
Leadership and Teams,
which Hallie couldn’t believe Dell had ever opened in her life, half a dozen molded plastic toy soldiers, and a handheld anemometer.

She started to open the second box, when Lorie said, “So, you’re all good here, right? I mean, I don’t want to rush you, but Martin’s out to Cleary’s half the day, meeting with those local investors I was talking about, and I’m supposed to be with the construction guys because they screw things up. You wouldn’t believe— And I’m not really all that good at it, because you know me, I get along with everyone and people—my mom used to say that people—”

“All right, Lorie.”

“—take advantage of me, but I don’t know that that’s true, I mean, I like people.” She was chewing on a fingernail as she talked, nervous and excited at the same time. An adventure, Hallie figured, that Lorie had never expected in her life, being part of a startup company with enough money for modern construction and hiring people from out of state. “… and so, you know, I have to go.”

“I’m fine, Lorie.” Hallie finished opening the second box as she spoke.

Staring up at her from a two-week-old newspaper was a picture of the ghost from the fountain.

14

“Lorie!”

“What?” Lorie’s tone was wary, as if she could feel the change in the room, just from that one word.

“Why did Dell have this?”

The article was about someone named Sarah Hale, who’d apparently been missing for six months. There were conflicting reports about where she’d been last seen—either in a mall in Rapid City or somewhere up around Seven Mile Creek.

Lorie looked into the box, still chewing on her fingernail. “Well, it’s the newspaper,” she said.

“No, this … this … this disappearance. What do you know?”

Lorie shook her head. “She was from Rapid City?” Like it was a quiz. “It was kind of a big deal at the time, but, you know, no one knew her.”

“This was after Dell came back?”

“Uh, yeah?” Lorie edged back toward the door. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine.” Hallie took a deep breath. “Go.”

She reread the article. Then she stacked the boxes one on top of the other, carried them out, and stood for several minutes with the boxes leaning against the balcony railing as she studied the lightning bolt mosaic on the floor. She watched the ghosts outside, floating against glass panes they couldn’t penetrate.

Two construction workers burst through a small outside door on the west side of the atrium. One of the men held his arm, palm up, while the other man hustled him along.

“Accident,” Hallie heard the second man say to the receptionist. “Cut his hand.”

The receptionist, young as she was, didn’t waste time on,
Oh!
or
Gosh!
or
What should I do?
She jumped up and headed to the back of the building. The man who’d cut his hand shook his head, like it wasn’t so bad. He held his right hand—the one that wasn’t injured—underneath the other. Blood seeped through his fingers onto the floor.

A flash, as if the lights had gone off and come back on, and Hallie saw something dark run along the lightning bolt etched into the floor, like an electric current or water, flowing faster and faster until it was spreading in several directions at once, until it covered the floor. Until—

A second flash, the lightning bolt on the floor and the symbols on the sandstone strips between the windows lit up like Christmas lights, followed by a
whump
like a compression blast that Hallie could feel in her chest. She took a step back, but it was done, everything back to normal, the lightning bolt, the symbols along the windows. She looked down. The receptionist had returned, was opening a first aid kit. The two men waited patiently for bandages and antiseptic.

Like nothing had happened.

Shit
.

It was here—right here. She had no idea what it was. But it was sure as hell something. Something no one else saw. Jesus.

Was this what Dell had known—? But she couldn’t have seen it. So how had she known?

And what was it?

Double shit
.

She set the boxes down and slipped along the short upper hallway. There were four doors: The first one led back to Dell’s office. The next was a conference room with high-backed leather chairs and a glass and iron table. The third was another office half again as big as Dell’s, modern yet relaxed, leather chairs, wood floor instead of carpet, wool rugs, an old oak desk, and one entire wall of bookshelves.

Martin’s office.

Hallie stepped inside. There was a faint odor of smoke and something else Hallie couldn’t immediately identify. The desk was clear except for a computer monitor and a leather desk blotter.

On one of the lower bookshelves, just below eye level, Hallie spotted a roughly carved bowl of polished caramel-colored hardwood. Closer inspection revealed the same lightning bolt design carved on the inside, along with a half-dozen crudely drawn symbols. Hallie scraped at one of the symbols and it flaked off—dark red. Paint? Or blood?

Beside the bowl were a dozen handkerchiefs, pressed and neatly folded, each one with lightning bolts embroidered at the corners.

Blood and lightning bolts? Again. What did it mean?

She crossed to the desk. The monitor was off, and she didn’t bother to turn it on. There were three notes tucked into the blotter—an out-of-state phone number, something that looked like a recipe, and Dell’s name. Hallie looked at the third note for a long minute. She had worked there, right? They’d worked together. But there was something about the way it was written, just her name, just that, traced and retraced, underlined a dozen times.

Dell.

Maybe it was well past time to talk to Martin Weber.

Hallie left the office and grabbed the boxes in the hallway, took the steps at a quick trot, passed the receptionist without a word, and was out the door. The ghosts—Dell and Sarah Hale—fell in behind her, like waves in her wake.

The wind rose as she wound the pickup up to seventy along the county road. Dark clouds had moved steadily up from the south all morning, low against the horizon. From the corner of her eye, Hallie could see Dell, flickering in and out over the passenger seat. Sarah Hale never flickered at all, steady against Hallie’s elbow, a cold so deep, it burned.

She took the corner at the Bear Tree Gas ’Em Up too fast, bumping onto the shoulder and sliding back out onto the road. Someone honked at her from the oncoming lane; she didn’t even look at them. It was like she couldn’t drive fast enough, like she’d finally found her anger or her heart was finally pumping, like the trip home and the funeral and maybe even Dell’s death had been not quite real, like she’d kept expecting to wake up. Hadn’t she been in Afghanistan? Shouldn’t she be the one who’d died?

She stopped at the four-way and waited as a loaded grain truck rumbled through the intersection. She rubbed at her cheekbone just below her right eye.

Dell had tried to call her; that’s what Cass had said, and Boyd—hadn’t he said the same thing? Dell had wanted to talk before … before she died. And Hallie didn’t know why, hadn’t known anything, still didn’t know anything, but she knew where to start.

Martin Weber.

Because Uku-Weber had lightning bolts and Dell and a ghost in the fountain. And Jennie Vagts … Hallie had her phone off the seat, flipped open and starting to dial before she realized that she didn’t have Jennie’s number.

She tossed the phone with a loud, “Fuck!” Then regretted it because Lorie might know.

“It’s not all on you,” Eddie had told her once. But if you saw what needed doing, you had to do it. Right? She wanted Eddie back—Eddie’s ghost—wanted him here to remind her. Of what, she wasn’t sure. Of war. Or fighting. Of going down.

Hallie pulled into the parking lot of Cleary’s Downhome Diner and Lounge. She parked next to a rusted yellow pickup with a home-built camper on the back. Pete Bolluyt’s midnight blue, dual rear-axle pickup sat right up near the door, shining like it just came off the showroom floor despite the late-morning gloom.

She reached into the pickup bed and closed her hand around an eighteen-inch prybar. It felt light, like it weighed nothing. She toyed with the idea of smashing Pete’s windshield. Could feel it, like a vibration in her fingertips, the satisfaction that would come from swinging and smashing, from the sound of shattering glass. But she didn’t. Because satisfaction—at least Hallie’s personal momentary satisfaction—was not the point right now. She turned away from Pete’s truck and headed in.

It took her a minute to adjust to the light inside the bar, even though it had been gray and gloomy outside. To her left, she heard the ping and clang of a pinball machine. Hallie hadn’t been in Cleary’s since ninth grade, when she’d come—driving the old red farm truck, though she hadn’t even had a permit yet—looking for her father, who hadn’t been home in two days. The bartender was still Prue Stalking Horse, just hanging up the phone and turning toward the door as Hallie entered. Her face was expressionless, like she could see clean through a person—and maybe she could. Hallie’s father had once told her that Prue knew everyone’s secrets, knew their weaknesses just by looking at them.

“Does she know yours?” Hallie’d asked him.

“That’s why I go there,” her father had said.

Hallie’d always thought Prue was Norwegian, despite her name, because everyone was, but her father said she was from Iceland, and she looked like an Ice Queen, white-blond hair, pale blue eyes, unblemished ivory skin.

Shit. Why was she thinking about this now?

She saw Pete at a round table across the room, underneath a window with a neon
MILLER
sign hanging from it. Tel Sigurdson and some retired West Prairie City banker Hallie recognized but couldn’t name were also at the table. Next to Pete, facing Hallie, but with his gaze fixed on the papers in front of him, was Martin Weber.

She hadn’t seen him in four years, and he hadn’t changed. Seriously, hadn’t changed one hair on his head. Exactly the same—red-blond hair cut long, thin gold wire-framed glasses, sharp features like a rabbit or an aristocrat, Hallie had never been sure which. Four years ago, when Hallie first knew him, Martin had been attractive more for what he said and did than for how he looked. He’d talked about the history of South Dakota as if it were a story anyone would want to know, about the latest gadgets from Japan, about Eastern philosophy and how to build a better generator. But it wasn’t just lectures about things he knew; he asked her questions like he really cared about the answers. He’d been the only person she told—back then—about wanting to see the world and make a difference. Stupid because she’d sounded like an army recruiter, but he never acted like it was stupid or like she shouldn’t want what she wanted. Sometimes, though, she’d noticed a look in his eye, flat and distant, as if in that moment, nothing—none of them—mattered.

The place was almost empty. Hallie skirted a couple of tables as she crossed the room. The prybar burned like dry ice in her hand. She glanced to her right. Dell was holding the prybar, too, ghost-cold sucking the heat right out of the metal.

Pete’s eyes narrowed as she approached them. Then his lips twitched up into a grin. He nudged Martin, whose head popped up. He didn’t smile, just looked at her, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“Martin,” Hallie said.

“Do you think you’ll need that?” he asked, his head tilting toward the prybar in her hand.

Hallie took a step backwards, set the bar carefully on an empty table. “I want to talk,” she said, which wasn’t entirely true, because she really wanted to hit something. She didn’t care if it was Martin Weber or Pete Bolluyt or one of the glass entry doors.

“You want to talk to me?” Martin said. He said it like a question, like he didn’t know who she was. And maybe he didn’t, because Pete leaned over and whispered something in his ear. One eyebrow raised. “I—,” he began.

“Don’t—” She held up the index finger on her right hand. Because she couldn’t stand it right now, listening to him say how sorry he was, how great Dell was. “I’m going to ask questions,” she said. “You’re going to answer them.”

He managed to look both amused and sympathetic. Tel Sigurdson rose from his chair. “Hallie.”

“You can go, Tel,” Hallie said.

Tel looked at her for a long moment, looked at Martin, who nodded toward the restaurant door. “It’s fine,” he said. “She’s upset.”