Cold Black Earth Read online

  “Want to have a drink? I’m in Warrensburg.”

  “Hot damn. Can you hold out where you are for a while? I just got off work. I’ll need to stick my head under the pump for a second before I break the land speed record getting down there.”

  It had been a long time since Rachel had experienced this, having her spirits lifted so abruptly by the sound of a man’s voice. “Take it easy. I can kill time here. Just tell me where to meet you.”

  “Give me an hour. You know where Duffy’s is?”

  Duffy’s was a tavern just off Main Street that had been dingy and disreputable the last time Rachel had been around. Since then, it had been bought by somebody with deep enough pockets to redecorate and expand it into a beer-and-burger joint with multiple TV screens, a sound system playing generic rock music not quite loud enough to drown out conversation, three pool tables and two waitresses. It was moderately full, and Dan stopped a couple of times to shake hands and slap shoulders as he made his way down the room toward the booth where Rachel sat.

  When he reached her he bent to kiss her, not making a production of it but lingering just long enough to show he didn’t care who was watching. “This is where the local yuppies and rich folks drink,” he said, sliding onto the bench across from her. “I damn near got in a fight with Sandy’s lawyer in here one night just after the divorce.”

  “Good thing you waited.”

  “No shit. If I’d run into him a week earlier I’d be living in a hog house.”

  When he had ordered a drink, Dan reached for her hand across the table. “So. How you holding up?” He had shed the up-tempo bonhomie and he looked a little worn, a little tired, but pleased with the company.

  Rachel returned the squeeze of his hand and released it. “I’m hanging in there. No nightmares for a couple of nights, and I can stay up after Matt goes to bed without getting freaked out by every little noise. But I’m still scared. And getting scareder. Roger says my dad once got in a fight with Otis Ryle’s father.”

  “So?”

  “Well, one theory is, Ryle’s settling old scores.”

  Dan frowned and said, “I think that’s horseshit. I think he’s just a fuckin’ head case. I think Ed Thomas and Carl were just unlucky to cross his path.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’ll still be scared till they catch him.”

  Dan nodded, looking grave. “It sucks, don’t it? I get up in the morning and it takes me a few seconds to remember, and then all of a sudden I feel sick. I think about Carl and . . .” He broke off, looking away and shaking his head. “My aunt’s taking it real bad.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ah, hell. I didn’t bring you out to get you all depressed. You look nice tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What are you guys doing for Christmas? Matt going anyplace?”

  “He hasn’t mentioned it. I was hoping to have a nice quiet homey type of Christmas. I think Emma and her husband are coming up from Peoria. I don’t know if Billy will be involved. But then we weren’t going to talk about depressing things.”

  Rachel took a sip of her drink and her eyes went to one of the muted TV screens above the bar. “Oh, my God,” she said.

  The set was tuned to a Quad Cities station and showed a talking head with the line at the bottom of the screen reading Dearborn County Nightstalker: Hideout Found?

  24

  Dan twisted to follow her look. “Holy shit. Let’s hear this.”

  He slid off the bench and went to the bar, Rachel following. “Can you turn up the news here?” Dan called to the bartender.

  The barkeep gave him a dirty look but produced a remote from under the counter and began to study it as if it were the Rosetta Stone. “Come on, genius,” Dan muttered. On the screen the image had changed to show a Dearborn County Sheriff’s Department cruiser parked by the side of a gravel road. A couple of deputies and a man in plain clothes holding a clipboard were standing next to it, looking off into a stand of trees.

  The sound came on, just audible above the music. Dan and Rachel leaned over the bar, straining to hear. “Illinois State Police detectives found traces of recent occupation in the barn, including stockpiled food and bedding materials. But it is the discovery of remnants of burned clothing near the barn which makes investigators think they may have found the place where escaped murderer Otis Ryle, suspected in two recent killings, has been hiding.”

  The older of the two detectives who had sat at Matt’s kitchen table a few days before appeared on the screen, saying, “His clothing would have been bloody after either of these two killings, and burning it would be the best way to get rid of it.”

  The screen cut to a view of an old barn, swaybacked and unpainted, seen through trees. “Where the hell’s that?” said Dan. “You recognize it?”

  A voiceover said, “Investigators are analyzing tire tracks found near the barn to see if they match the truck stolen from the scene of the first murder. The killer is believed to be in possession of the truck. It was hoped he had left Dearborn County, but after the latest killing, police are warning residents that he may have chosen to go to earth in the area, where he lived as a child.”

  A shot of corn stubble in empty snow-dusted fields followed. “The abandoned barn near Regina, Illinois, is on land recently purchased from an absentee owner by a local agribusiness company. They say to their knowledge the barn has not been in use for at least twenty years.”

  The next face to appear on the screen was one they knew. “I’ll be damned,” said Dan.

  Frowning at an off-screen interviewer, Mark McDonald was saying, “This is a parcel we just bought, from an owner down in Florida who hasn’t lived on it since she was a child. The barn’s derelict. We were planning to tear it down. Whatever was going on in there before we acquired the land has nothing to do with Dearborn Agricultural Enterprises.”

  “Oho,” said Dan. “Caught you, you son of a bitch. Hiding a murderer in your barn.”

  The report had caught the attention of the drinkers along the bar and somebody said, “I wouldn’t put anything past those bastards.”

  “Him in particular,” said somebody else.

  On the screen the anchor was back, saying, “Illinois State Police and Dearborn County sheriff’s deputies raided the site this morning after receiving an anonymous tip, officers say. They found tantalizing clues, but no trace of Ryle.”

  “What kind of clues was that?” said a drunk at the end of the bar, struggling to focus. The news program had moved on to the next story and the bartender muted the set.

  Dan shook his head. “It’s horseshit. They don’t have anything.”

  Three stools down the bar a man said, “What I want to know is how the cops let him get away. I mean, what they should have done is just sit on the damn place till the guy came sneaking back and then slapped the cuffs on him. Don’t go raising a ruckus, making a big production of it, just to get your face on TV. All this fuss and Ryle’s still out there.”

  His neighbor said, “It does seem like they’re taking their sweet time about reeling him in.”

  “I mean, how hard can it be? They know what he’s driving. And there can’t be that many abandoned barns in this county.”

  “Let’s go,” said Dan. “There’s nobody here knows anything more than we do.”

  Back in the booth he took a drink of beer and stared past Rachel for a few seconds. “He’s not sleeping out in an old barn,” he said finally. “Not in this weather. He’s got a place to go. He’s got friends.”

  “That’s what Roger said. He thinks maybe he’s moved in on some old person, somebody easy to manipulate.”

  Dan nodded slowly. “That would make sense. He wouldn’t even have to have moved in. All he needs is a key. There’s houses that are empty but not derelict. They’re not abandoned. They’re waiting for a renter, whatever, they been empty for a few months but the owner’s still coming by to cut the grass, check the doors and windows. There’s plenty of houses like t
hat. If the detectives are smart, that’s what they’re looking at.”

  “You should talk to Roger.”

  “Ah, they don’t need my help. They know what they’re doing.” He took a drink of beer and said, “Hey, listen. What would you say about getting away for a couple of days, just you and me? I got some vacation time coming and we could go somewhere. There’s some nice places over by the river, we could rent a lodge with a fireplace, go cross-country skiing, hike, just lie around by the fire, whatever.”

  Rachel hadn’t seen that coming. “Sounds nice,” she said, after a moment, less than emphatically.

  “Rushing things? Going too fast?”

  She gave him a frank look. “Truthfully? I don’t know yet. The other day was like grabbing a lifeline. You don’t think, you just grab. Now we’re back on shore and we’re both old enough to know there’s more to this than jumping into bed. What I can tell you for sure is, I’m leaving again, probably in a few weeks. This is just a visit. Factor that in.”

  He nodded once. “Not everything has to be all serious and complicated and long-term. I don’t have any illusions about your life and mine. But I think we could have a nice few weeks.”

  That was pretty much what Rachel had been hoping to hear. This time she was the one who reached for his hand. “Give me a day or two on the getaway, OK? Right now I can’t think past what I’m going to have for dinner.”

  “You hungry?”

  “Not especially.”

  After a finely timed pause Dan said, “What do you feel like doing?”

  Probably exactly what you want to do, Rachel thought. She remembered driving in along Main Street from the strip, looking at the scattering of businesses that were hanging on. Why not? she thought. I am an adult and not accountable to anybody and most of all not ready to be driven back out into the dark countryside. She gave Dan Olson a cool look and said, “I want to drive out Main Street, buy a pint of bourbon at the liquor store, and then check in at the West End Motel for an hour or two. I’ve never had an affair in a sleazy motel.”

  “Hot damn,” said Dan. “I swear, you must be reading my mind.”

  Soon I will be ready to face the dark countryside, Rachel thought, sitting up in bed. Right here, right now, I feel safe. A car purred by in the street outside. The faint light coming in around the edges of the curtains showed ghostly outlines: bed, armchair, desk, TV. The darkness concealed the frayed cushions, the peeling laminate, the missing drawer handles. But the sheets were clean and the plumbing worked, and the room wasn’t going to do much harm to her credit card bill. Rachel listened to Dan’s even breathing for a time and then swung her feet to the floor. She went and used the toilet and drank a glass of water and then came back and sat on the side of the bed. She held the pint bottle of bourbon up to the light and saw it was nearly empty; she set it back down. She didn’t want any more to drink. She pulled her legs back onto the bed and clasped her knees to her chest.

  I have gone halfway around the world, seen strife and suffering and joy and love and pain and loss, and wound up back here in a shabby motel room on Main Street in Warrensburg, she thought. With Danny Olson. Of all the exotic adventures she had had, this was the last one she would have predicted. Yes, she thought. Lying around by a fireplace with this man for a couple of days sounds pretty good.

  Beside her Dan stirred, coughed, cleared his throat. “Remind me next time to skip the booze.”

  Rachel smiled in the dark, sliding down to rest on an elbow, running a hand through his hair. “You didn’t seem to be impaired very much.”

  “I’m impaired as hell now.” His great brawny arm snaked out and pulled her down on top of him. “My mouth feels like an asbestos recovery site and somebody’s been pounding nails in the back of my head.”

  Rachel lay in his arms, refusing to think beyond the next hour. He was massive and warm and apparently pleased to be holding her, and for now that was all she needed. After a while Dan said, “I must have done something right this year. Here I was expecting the usual lump of coal and instead I get you. And it ain’t even Christmas for a week yet.”

  Rachel burrowed deeper into his embrace, luxuriating in the warmth of skin on skin. “A present that unwraps itself. A special bonus.”

  He laughed, his chest heaving under her cheek. “Damn, you’re something. Say something in French for me.”

  “J’ai faim.”

  “That sounds sexy. What’s it mean?”

  “It means ‘I’m hungry.’”

  “For real? Me, too. We could hit the pancake house out on Gunderson.”

  “Pancakes at ten o’clock at night?”

  “They go good with coffee. I’m gonna need a couple of gallons.”

  The South Asian clerk in the motel office did not seem at all surprised when they checked out. They climbed into their separate vehicles and wheeled out onto the street. Pancakes at ten o’clock at night proved to taste much as they did in the morning, though Rachel went for decaf to wash them down. They made small talk, Rachel laughing at Dan’s scattergun humor. And then there was no more avoiding it.

  In the parking lot they stood where the Chevy and Dan’s truck sat parked side by side, keys in hand. “Well, it ain’t very romantic, but I can think of a few dates I’ve had that would have gone a lot better if we’d had separate cars,” Dan said. “You want to lead or follow?”

  Rachel had given it some thought: Did she want an escort home? She could ask Dan in for a nightcap; Matt would still be up and it would be a cozy end to the evening. But there was the potential for awkwardness, as well: Her instinct was to keep this intimacy insulated from her brother’s friendship with Dan.

  And there was her independence to consider. She had enjoyed the tryst but perspective was returning, a sense of how far and how fast she wanted this relationship to go. “I can make it home by myself. It’s a straight shot up 150. It’s faster for you to take 34 over to the interstate.”

  “I just thought I’d offer. You seem a little jittery, that’s all.”

  “I am a little jittery. But there’s not far to go once I get off the highway. I’ll be all right.”

  Dan gave her an appraising look and nodded. “If you say so. I don’t mind following you.”

  She stepped into his embrace. “Thanks. But I’ll make it.” They kissed, making it last. Rachel pulled away and said, “That was fun. I’m living out a twenty-five-year-old fantasy.”

  “Man, that’s pressure. I gotta live up to your image from twenty-five years ago?”

  “You’re doing fine.” Her hand lingered on his cheek as she left him.

  Driving up 150, Rachel felt the dread starting to creep back, stronger than the afterglow from lying in Dan Olson’s arms. “I don’t want to think about that,” she said out loud. Lights passed by in the dark, inhabited farmsteads scattered across the endless acres, and occasionally a hulk glimpsed in the dark, a barn or maybe a house with no lights showing.

  When she turned into the driveway of the farm, her heart sank. A couple of lights burned in the house, but Matt’s truck wasn’t there. She parked the Chevy near the back door and sat with the engine idling.

  She put her hand in her purse and felt for her cell phone, instead finding the revolver. I am not going to play the frightened child again, she thought. She pulled her hand out of her purse and cut the ignition. She sat still until she became conscious of the rearview mirror and caught her breath, suddenly aware of the darkness behind her. She twisted abruptly on the seat to look over her shoulder. There was nobody there, only the familiar expanse of lawn stretching toward the road, into the darkness.

  Damn you, move, thought Rachel. Either drive down the road to Clyde and Karen’s again, or rein in your imagination and go into your house and go to bed.

  Rachel remembered hearing a sergeant in a convoy on the way in from Baghdad airport say that everybody was afraid and that the trick was to learn to function with fear.

  All right, then, function. Rachel took a deep breath an
d opened the car door. She got out of the car, locked it and then swept the farmstead with a look, seeing nothing but familiar things, made sinister in the light from the halogen lamp high on its pole. She hurried to the back door, unlocked it and slipped inside, locking it behind her.

  The overhead light in the kitchen was on, casting its light down the steps to the back door. From the yard, Rachel had seen that a lamp was on in the living room. The rest of the house was dark. It’s empty, she thought. There’s nobody here. He doesn’t break into houses; he waylays people on the road. Anyway, how could he know where you live?

  She stood listening for a long time, her back to the wall beside the back door. She heard nothing but the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the kitchen clock, the miscellaneous creaks of an old wooden house.

  Rachel slid her hand back into her purse and gently released her keys. She shifted her fingers a little and found the grip of the revolver. She pulled it out.

  Start at the top of the house and work down, she thought. You will have to check the attic. You will have to check every closet; you will have to look under all the beds. You will have to go down into the dark basement and check every nook and cranny. Keep your back to the wall.

  She went up the steps into the kitchen, scanning, holding the gun out before her. She set her purse on the table and stood listening.

  And if he’s in the basement and comes softly up the stairs behind you while you’re in the attic? What if he is waiting by the circuit breakers, ready to plunge the house into darkness and come swiftly after me with the knife before I can find a flashlight?

  Rachel’s heart was pounding. The rational part of her mind knew that the house was empty, but the part that had seen Ed Thomas’s arm in the mouth of a coyote was stronger.

  I can’t do this, she thought.

  Rachel took a deep breath. Plan B, then. When your lines are too extended, you pull back on a secure position. Gun at the ready, she went briskly down the hall toward the lighted living room. Halfway along the hall was the door to the den, closed.