I admired Bohler’s tenacity. Despite the near certainty that nothing would be found on that slope, she urged her searchers on until every square foot had been probed. It wasn’t until two o’clock that she scrambled up the hill for the last time, red-faced, sweaty and furious.
‘There’s not one damned soft spot on this whole hill,’ she said.
I felt red-faced and sweaty, too. I’d been so wrong.
The rest of her team trudged up with the news crews and disappeared around the side of the house at the front.
‘My boss wants me in his office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said. She held up a hand when I opened my mouth. ‘It was me, too, Elstrom, not just you. I was too willing.’
She left without saying a word to Jenny, standing next to me. Perhaps she hadn’t recognized her; her appearance was so changed.
Jimbo, lugging his camera, was the last to make his way up the hill. It took him longer because he was using a cane to favor his leg. He didn’t look at Jenny and he didn’t look at me as he headed to the front.
‘You’re a good man, Dek,’ Jenny said. ‘You attempted justice here today.’
‘I guessed wrong.’
‘You put yourself on the line for the killing of someone who was deceitful to you. That’s to be admired.’
‘It blew up in my face, and in Bohler’s. And it will blow up in Amanda’s face as well when word gets out I’m behind all this. Perhaps it landed hardest on your face, though I can’t figure out why you were beaten. There’s nothing here.’
‘Maybe whoever attacked us got something wrong.’ She touched my shoulder. ‘I called my station in San Francisco. I’m heading back tomorrow. They’re being generous, insisting I take a couple more weeks off, read books I’ve meant to read since college and let my bruises fade. Then it’s back to the pumpkin patch.’
‘The pumpkin patch?’
‘Pumpkins, remember? That night in San Francisco when we met for dinner, I’d just aired a most unmemorable piece on pumpkins. Pumpkins are the reason why the Wade story was so important to me. I can’t waste more time reporting on pumpkins.’
A quick glance at the set of her face told me she wasn’t really thinking about pumpkins. She was thinking about her husband, who died reporting war.
I walked her to the front of the house and guided her with a firm elbow down the drive and past the guard in the shack. The Channel 8 van had pulled up, idling.
She stopped me a few yards away. ‘That night, in San Francisco, we talked about our ghosts. Do you remember?’
‘I remember everything about that night.’
‘The way you talked about Amanda,’ she said. ‘You were nervous, remember? Not wanting to hurt me?’
I nodded.
‘Our ghosts,’ she said. ‘My dead husband, your ex-wife. We must cherish them.’
She squeezed my hand and let it go. A cameraman helped her into the back seat. They drove away.
I turned to go the other way down the road, to where I’d parked the Jeep.
And almost ran into Timothy Wade.