Tainted Trail

  “You didn’t get too banged up last night?”

  “My jeans are shot, but no, I’m fine. How’s Kraynak?”

  “Bitching about being stuck in bed,” Max said, and patted Ukiah on the shoulder. “I got the planner.” He held up a daily planner identical to Alicia’s. “And the inserts. Put them in order once we get to the restaurant, and I’ll put them into the planner.”

  “I can put them in,” Ukiah offered as they walked up to the casino’s doors.

  Max ground the cheroot out in a large sand ashtray by the door. “I want to get some food into you first.”

  Max took hold of Ukiah’s arm, and when they opened the doors, Ukiah realized why. The casino was dark, crowded, smoky, and loud. Rows of video slot machinea blinked bright, complex screens. After the clean emptiness of the parking lot, the confusion hit Ukiah’s senses like a fist.

  Max caught his elbow as he checked, and murmured, “It’s okay. Just follow me.”

  They pushed through the crowds to the restaurant beyond the slot machines. Luckily the eating area was nearly empty and quiet. A hostess greeted them at the door and seated them at a table with four place settings.

  Max handed Ukiah the packs of inserts. “Here, put them in order, then get some food.”

  Ukiah shuffled the inserts into order, starting with the “To Be Done Sheets” and working to “Address/Phone Pages with Alpha Tabs.” Handing the sorted packs to Max, he went up to the buffet.

  When he returned, Max was using a fork to start a tear in the shrink-wrap of the last insert. Once open, Max discarded wrap, cardboard stiffener, and title sheet off to one side.

  “I don’t see the point,” Sam said, as Max threaded the pages onto the six metal rings. “It’s a lot of money for blank pages.”

  “Ukiah has a photographic memory,” Max said. “He saw Alicia’s planner. He can recreate any page he looked at.”

  “The Kodak kid.”

  Max pulled out a box of yellow pencils, and a small, blue, barrel-shaped pencil sharper. He handed them over to Sam to make herself useful. “Alicia used number-two pencils. Apparently geologists expect everything to get wet, and ink smears.”

  Sam opened the box so it could be reclosed, spilled out the pencils in a neat pile, and began sharpening them. “And it matters if we use the same type of writing implement or not?”

  “Who knows?” Max turned the calendar section and leafed through until he hit the first week of August. “Let’s start with her leaving Pittsburgh.” He tapped the day. “Then work on through to after she disappeared. Here.”

  Max gave Ukiah a small yellow pad of Post-it notes. Sam held out the first sharpened pencil, looking doubtful about the whole experiment. Ukiah shifted his plate over to eat with his left hand, so he could write with his right.

  “There didn’t seem to be anything of interest during these days.” Ukiah started filling in the day labeled AUGUST 1, SUNDAY, with the normal work hours of a day ticking down the side. Alicia had mostly ignored the hours, the day flowing unscheduled down the page, falling wherever it would fit.

  Check tent for leaks. Field notebooks—Pitt bookstore? Laundry soap. Dryer sheets. Imodium. Tums. Neosporin. Check supply of bandages in first-aid kit. (A check mark beside this.) Sun block. Bug repellent. (A doodle of what might have been a dead bug on its back, little x’s for eyes, legs curled.) Ziploc bags—all sizes. See if Rose can drive stick!!! (This was underlined many times.) Get duffel bag from Uncle Ray. Check Ukiah weather.

  The last was a weird jolt, his name leaping out at him. Ukiah, the town.

  Bookstore, coin laundry, supermarket. Nothing of menace. On the otherwise blank opposite page was a Post-it note, stating, Erotic Laundry. Handsome man’s dryer, in hot ghost embrace tumbles, my silk lace panties. Ukiah flipped to the next day. The page was split in half with a drawn line. Next to the hours, she had written, Wake up, pack, swap cars, get gas, pick up Rose. On the other side of the line, was Tent, duffel bag, shoe bag, books, MAPS, MONEY!!!, phone, CAR RECHARGER—don’t forget to transfer to van!!Alicia’s memory had been a joke with her family. Eventually she hoped to be a college professor, which would make her the stereotypical absentminded professor.

  “I know it’s a long shot, kid.” Max said. “There is a chance that her kidnappers picked her by random. But they did take the planner, so there might be something in it.”

  “She had it so stuffed with paper, I could barely get it snapped shut again.” Ukiah flipped to the next page, his fingers moving on automatic. “I tried to glance at every page, figuring that I might want to review it in my head. Still there were lots of things I know I won’t be able to recreate.”

  “Do the best you can.” Max went to fill his plate from the buffet. Sam finished sharpening the last pencil, and slid it into the box with the others. She followed Max to the buffet. They stood, plates in hand, heads together, talking quietly.

  “The hash is good.” Sam scooped some onto her plate. “You know, nothing happened.”

  “When?” Max leaned close to get some too, their shoulders brushing.

  “Last night. Just because we were in the same bed, doesn’t mean anything happened. I don’t go for his type.”

  Max paused behind her to rub a large pleased smile from his face. “His type? What type is that?”

  Sam half-turned to shoot a narrowed look at him, and then intently prodded some helpless scrambled eggs. “Please! He’s drop-dead gorgeous. Complete eye candy.”

  “So you only like ugly, old guys?”

  “Brat,” she muttered. “I like the GQ look as much as the next hot-blooded woman. So maybe I drooled a little when he got off the plane. And straight out the shower, he smells good enough to—”

  “He’s all but engaged to an FBI special agent,” Max said, cutting off her monologue.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “A little pistol on wheels stationed in Pittsburgh. She nailed him two days out of the gate.”

  “Cradle robber.”

  Max shrugged. “She’s one of those focused people. She figures out what she wants and goes after it.”

  “You think that’s the best way? Want it. Get it.”

  “I like to be sure I know what I’m getting. No surprises. But, yes.”

  “And what if the thing doesn’t want to be gotten?”

  Max slanted a look at her beside him, and then focused on the wedges of cantaloupe. “People aren’t things. You don’t buy them. They never belong to you.”

  “Even your partner?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He’s carrying a pistol, so that means he’s at least twenty-one, even though he looks like a college freshman. Yet you order his food. You take care of him like he’s a puppy. Being on the outside, looking in, I can’t tell who’s to blame. Sometimes people are dependent because they can’t take care of themselves, and sometimes it’s because they’re not allowed to take control of their life.”

  Max took his turn torturing the eggs, the muscles of his jaws working as he considered and discarded things to say. Finally he tapped a small spoonful of the eggs onto his plate. “Look, what’s between Ukiah and me isn’t up for discussion. What we were talking about was what happened last night—which was nothing. Nothing happened between you and Ukiah, even though you were in the same bed together.”

  “You actually believe that? Or is that sarcasm?”

  Max turned to face her, a hint of anger in his eyes. “First off, I don’t feel the need to mark my territory and growl like a dog protecting a bitch in heat. If you’re interested in me, great. If you want my partner, well, you’ll have to work that out with Special Agent Zheng, but that’s none of my business. Secondly, I know my partner. I can’t explain to you in simple, short sentences, but I know nothing happened last night.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a carefully neutral voice. “Simple short sentences? Are you saying I’m stupid?”

  “Have you never trusted someo
ne so much that it couldn’t be put into words?”

  She gazed at Max a minute, and then turned away, looking troubled. They drifted apart, making pretended studies of the containers of food. Separately they returned to the table, and ate without speaking.

  “How are you doing?” Max asked Ukiah, breaking the silence.

  “Last day,” Ukiah said, writing out Sunday. Geologist: I am like an ant, crawling over mother earth, biting at her bones.???:Does earth feel pain, as I off my rocks,???

  “There was a red flag marking this day, but I think it was just to make the current day easy to find. She kept it closed up and in a Ziploc bag. The days after this were blank. I’ve put in the Post-it notes. On some pages, they were blocking out text. Mostly it seemed like shopping lists, things to do, really odd things that I think are poems, stuff like that.”

  Max commandeered the planner and covertly finger signed “Go, food” to Ukiah, indicating that he should hit the buffet again. When Ukiah returned, Max had made a list on a Post-it note and passed the planner to Sam. She flipped the pages, looking stunned.

  “Oh, this is so weird.” She lifted a Post-it note with the cryptic number OR 364.1523 B26. Ukiah had faithfully copied what he had seen as he flipped through the pages. On this page it had been Call Uncle Ra . . . un block, D batteries, CHOCOLATE, newspaper. Check Ukiah weather. Ukiah history: obits. There had also been a doodle, the bulk of it hidden by the Post-it note. By lifting the square of yellow, Sam revealed the perfectly square blank spot. “It looks like one of those model homes, all decorated as if someone lives there, until you noticed the books are blocks of painted wood.”

  “OR 364.1523 B26,” Max read off the Post-it note. “What do you suppose that is? A telephone number?”

  “That’s not a local exchange.”

  Ukiah consulted his memory. “It’s not a phone number in her address book.”

  “OR could be Oregon or the word ‘or.’ B26 sounds like a vitamin.” Max shook his head. “Maybe it’s a map reference number.”

  “Or something that has to do with geology,” Ukiah said.

  “Is the other geologist in town?” Sam asked.

  Max shook his head. “Kraynak put her on a plane last night.” He winced. “I have no idea how we’re getting Kraynak’s van home. Kraynak wants to fly Alicia back when he finds her, and now he’s in no shape to drive it back to Pittsburgh.”

  “I occasionally work as a driver,” Sam grinned. “Money up front for expenses, fifty dollars an hour that I spend driving, and return airfare.”

  “Drive stick?”

  “Yup.”

  Max studied Sam, a minute of stillness. “We might take you up on that. Otherwise, it’s up to Ukiah and me, and I’d rather avoid that if I can. We’re stretched painfully thin now; we really need to take on another investigator.”

  Max usually avoided leaving town; financially it didn’t make sense to drop all their cases to pursue just one. Their part-time investigators, Chino and Janey, were currently covering the ongoing cases, but neither of the two had the experience, skill, or temperament to cope with a long absence. Ukiah wondered why Sam had no qualms accepting out-of-town work; was it because she had little work to neglect?

  “How many miles is it to Pittsburgh?” Sam wondered aloud, somewhat gleefully.

  “Two thousand three hundred and fifty-five.” Ukiah pulled the number out of his memory.

  Sam looked surprised, then even more pleased. “Twenty-four hundred? That’s over thirty hours of driving. Three or four days to do it.”

  Max gave him a questioning glance, picking up a glass of water.

  “Mom Jo and I drove it after she—” Ukiah started, then stopped as Max frowned him into silence over the rim of his glass.

  “That’s a good ventriloquist trick you’ve got there,” Sam said dryly to Max. “But you better practice the drinking water routine. He stopped talking.”

  Max slapped a napkin over his face and snorted water. “Brat!” he said after he finished laughing.

  “So what did your mother do that I’m not supposed to know about?” Sam asked.

  “Embarrassing family vacations aren’t the agenda of the day.” Max said. “Finding Alicia is. She came to town four times, and these are the places we know she would have visited.”

  Ukiah glanced over the list Max had made. “She had some color brochures stuck in the pages too. I think they were tourist sites in the area.”

  “Okay. We can hit those too.”

  Ukiah described them, and Sam guessed from the description which site they represented. Max added them to the list. For being in the area for such a short time, Alicia had managed to visit an impressive number of places.

  “Do we split up, or work together?” Sam asked.

  “Well, we’ll cover more ground split up,” Max said, obviously unhappy with the thought.

  “I’m fine,” Ukiah said. “I’ve got my pistol, it’s daylight, and I’ve got my phone.”

  Max frowned at Sam. “And you probably think I’d be domineering if I don’t let him solo.”

  Sam held out her hands, palms up. “Hey. You decide without trying to please me. I might talk big, but the fact remains someone plowed over your big cop friend. I’m not going to open my yap and be responsible for something ugly on down the line.”

  “Three is overkill.” Ukiah said. There was slim hope for Alicia, if kidnappers took her and demanded no ransom. Every hour could be critical. They had wasted so much time since last night, yet they couldn’t have done more, not with Kraynak in the hospital and himself hurt so bad. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Fine. We’ll split up.”

  Sam picked up her coffee. “What I would love is a picture of Ukiah’s father, so I know all the players.”

  Max looked at Ukiah, puzzled.

  “Rennie,” Ukiah said. “Indigo says he flew into Portland yesterday.”

  “Oh, shit! That’s the last thing we needed!” Max pulled out his PDA and played with it a few moments. “Here. This is him.”

  Sam viewed the picture a moment, sipping her coffee, and then suddenly spit it all back out. “This is the FBI Most Wanted list!”

  “Yes, it is.” Max reached for his PDA. “I don’t have any other picture of Shaw.”

  Sam leaned out of reach, scrolling down through the entry. “Wanted for arson, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, burglary . . . kidnapping . . . manslaughter . . . murder—oh my god, you weren’t kidding! He is a homicidal lunatic! And he’s coming here?”

  “See, I’m not the only one he has that effect on,” Max said to Ukiah.

  “He’s not that bad,” Ukiah said meekly. “Once you get to know him.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Pendleton, Oregon

  Saturday, August 28, 2004

  Sam had guessed that OT Trading—Main in Alicia’s diary meant the Oregon Trail Trading Post. Peering into the windows, the place looked a likely site to interest Alicia. Just from the window Ukiah could see baskets, buckskin dresses, moccasins, seashells, and furs cluttering the front of the store. Ukiah nearly itched with curiosity, wishing he could go inside. It looked like no store he had ever been in.

  But the doors were locked. A red-and-white CLOSED sign hung in the window, listing hours. Saturday, it turned out, was the only day it wasn’t open. Closed Saturday, but open Sundays? In Pittsburgh, stores tend to only close on Sundays. Often they even had extended hours on Saturday. Closed Saturday? Was it a culture thing? Did Native Americans celebrate their holy day on Saturdays? Or was he making a huge assumption, and Jewish people actually owned the store? He knew the Jews celebrated Sabbath on Saturday. The office of the Bennett Detective Agency in Pittsburgh was located next to the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, which had a heavily orthodox Jewish population.

  Ukiah leaned his forehead against the glass, frowning as he thought about those Jewish families walking to temple. Somber black clothes, side locks, and skull caps.
His family attended church each week, but there never seemed to be that solidarity, that belonging those Jewish families must feel. To be surrounded not only by those that believe, but were the same, down to genetic similarities. To be able to see it stamped on the face, the color of the eyes and hair.

  He thought of Jared and Cassidy Kicking Deer. His family. His people. What church did they belong to? What did they believe? Were they in church today? Did they sing the same hymns? Did they even believe in the same God? He peered into the darkened store, at the beaded shirts and headdresses, and felt bewildered and lost.

  The second store was open. Alicia’s planner had labeled it as Beads—22 SW Dorion.BLUE HAWK BEADS proclaimed the sign over the door, and once again, Alicia’s attraction to it was obvious. Loud rock music played on the sound system. Incense perfumed the air. On the right there were tiny square bins of beads upon beads, and on the left a display case full of stone-and-silver bracelets, stone pendants, beaded barrettes, and buckles. A treasure trove to the eye.

  The saleswoman was checking out a customer, so he crouched down to study the beautiful exotic knives in the nearest display case. The handles were of antlers, banded with a strip of bright woven seed beads. The blades themselves were stone, chipped away to sharp edges. One was displayed with an elaborate sheath beaded and fringed with leather. He gazed at them, wondering if they were traditional. Were they on sale here because all Native Americans wore one? Or simply because they were beautiful?

  “Can I help you?” The saleswoman could have been a soul mate for Alicia: a halo of red hair instead of brown, but the same tall, sturdy build, bright smile, and clothes completely unique. The woman wore a tight tie-dye dress that flared out midthigh to a full skirt, a jasper necklace, and a beaded chain that tied into her hair and hung down her back.

  “What are the blades made of?”

  “They’re obsidian. Aren’t they beautiful?” She came to lean on the display above him. “The artist creates the edge by flaking the stone by hand.”

  “What are they for?” he asked.

  “I suppose you could use them as knives, but they’re mostly for display.” She seemed confused by the question. “They’re traditional artwork. These were the blades that the natives used before the white man came. They’re somewhat fragile, the blade will chip if you knock it against something hard. They’re too expensive to actually use, I would think.”