Lemon’s empty van was parked in front of the house. Indoors, I deduced from the yelps, my cat had treed Hannibal on the third floor. His noises were pitiful, but I ignored them and made tracks for the fridge. I’d missed lunch and a consultation with my gut told me I wasn’t going to hold out till dinner. A carton of milk smelled okay. There were eggs. I could make what I call a frittata, what Sam used to term, less kindly, scrambled eggs and leftovers. I found some suspicious Chinese food in a goldfish container, tossed it in the sink. Eureka! Salami, some cold roast potatoes in a deli take-out box, an onion barely starting to sprout. I stuck a lump of butter in the frying pan.
Lemon appeared as soon as the onion started to sizzle, drawn by the aroma.
“Good work,” I said.
“Guy doesn’t appreciate Hannibal, what’s he doing working with dogs?”
“Eggs?”
“Sure. Did I give you enough time?” He disappeared before I had a chance to reply, maybe to rescue his dog. Construction vests in a heap at the bottom of a closet. I cracked an egg sharply on the side of a white pottery bowl. Two missing girls, Veronica James and possibly Krissi Horgan. Two dead people, Leslie Ellin James in 1993, Kevin Fournier on the Horgan site. I broke eight eggs, splashed in milk, whipped the mixture with a fork till it frothed. The various bits of information seemed as separate as the ingredients spread on the countertop, a chunk of salami here, an egg there. I glared at the phone, willed Claire Harper to call now. The onion sizzled and I turned the flame low, added the potatoes.
Lemon reappeared. “Hey, I looked in the shed, but there wasn’t any Jeep.”
“Empty?”
“Nope.”
“Did you get any plates?”
“Sorry. Looked like a Porsche or a Jag or something in there. Nice car, but I couldn’t read it. Sorry.”
“Walters says you’ve got no business owning a dog.”
“Hannibal owns me, so it’s okay.”
“Roz around?”
“Online. Checking that design.”
“Ask her if she wants food.”
He sauntered out. I dumped thinly sliced salami in the pan, inhaled the smell, added the egg mixture, stirring, keeping it from sticking to the pan.
“She says go ahead, she’ll grab something later. Oh, and give you this.” He slapped an assortment of printed pages, some stapled together, some loose, on the kitchen table. I hadn’t sat there since Leland Walsh stood behind me, hands pressing my shoulder blades.
I divided the frittata onto two plates, found that Lemon had already set two places at the table. I sat in the same chair Walsh had used, imagined him smiling, holding the ice pack to his head. The eggs were so hot I burned my tongue. I read the handwritten note on top of Roz’s pile while I sipped Pepsi.
“Eddie’s running the prints,” read the first line. “No problem. More than 6000 hits on Leslie James Harrow. Massacre victim. Either 19 or 21, depending which site you hit.” On the subject of Waco, Roz, using Google as a search engine, had scored over 10,000 hits. “Some way-out stuff,” she’d scrawled. “Here’s a sample.”
I started to read, kept on reading while the eggs congealed on my plate. There were photos, appalling shots of the devastation of April 19, 1993. Some sites featured straightforward descriptive passages, some passages of heat-seeking purple prose, declaring the Branch Davidians martyrs, used as guinea pigs for chemical warfare, as targets for experimental assault rifles. I read the manifesto of the New Revolution, the call to arms of the Kingman Militia, what passed for logic from the Patriot Sons of Valor.
Were the Branch Davidians, a reclusive Seventh Day Adventist sect, dangerous, a threat to themselves and others? Did they hoard illegal firearms and sexually molest their children? By the time I’d finished scanning the material, I realized I’d never know, so I focused on another question: Were the offshoot groups out to avenge the Branch Davidians dangerous? I could answer that one with a resounding yes. Proof rested in the ashes of Oklahoma City.
Leslie James Harrow, 19, was listed among the victims. And there: Zachariah Harrow, infant. Another photo that should have hung on the Jameses’ wall.
At the tail end of several Web sites were what amounted to hit lists. The head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was identified, pictured, his home address given. Louis Freeh, former head of the FBI. Janet Reno, of Justice. Senators who’d chaired the investigating committees that had exonerated the FBI. Judges who’d sentenced surviving sect members to jail. Several sites applauded Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, for his heroic role in evening the score. The Republic of Arizona Freemen thanked him for taking the blame, although they were confident he had not acted alone.
I didn’t hear Roz till she spoke. “I’ve got a lead on the wavy circle.”
“What?”
“A tat man. A guy does tattoos. Either I’m gonna run up and see him, or he’ll drop by. He’s in New Hampshire. Depends on his schedule. Hey, I didn’t know all that shit about the FBI roasting babies at Waco, did you?”
“Roz, you can write anything and stick it on the Web. There’s no gatekeeper.”
“Like a newspaper.”
“Not like a newspaper. A newspaper’s got an editor, a publisher, a legal staff.”
She gave me a look that said “big deal” and I hoped the literature hadn’t converted her. Roz’s politics are weird, but they’ve always been odd verging on anarchy rather than odd verging on extreme right-wing.
“That Eddie guy says he wants his report. Seemed kinda disappointed I hadn’t brought it.”
I’d locked it, unfinished, in my desk. I’d taken two or three unsatisfactory runs at it—chronologically, most important discoveries to least important discoveries, person by person. Finally I’d tried to split events into two groups: those that were definitely site-related, like missing tools, rats, a permanently locked storage shed; those that might be personal, related to the Horgans’ marriage, like the aborted Fournier-Liz meeting, the Marian-Gerry flirtation, the constant tension.
I considered Krissi. Was the girl the key to the Horgans’ personal problems? Did she know Veronica well? Could they have run away together, a young girl with a crush, an older lesbian? But what the hell did those construction vests piled on the floor of the closet mean? Were they used in dog training? Was I trying to manufacture a substantial connection where only the most inconsequential of connections existed, the link between dog trainer and client? I kept seeing that black Cherokee in the shed, the one with New Hampshire plates, and then later the same night, a Jeep with New Hampshire plates visiting the Horgan site, driving slowly, without headlights.
The Cherokee is an ordinary vehicle, I told myself, scraping cold eggs into the sink. Common as dirt. Maybe the fevered prose and conspiracy theories of the Waco Web sites were leading me off the deep end. I drank Pepsi, bit my lip, and let the kaleidoscope of images spin, hoping to catch a thread, a theory, something that would bind the separate ingredients like eggs and milk, transform them into a new substance. On the Horgan site: dead rats, live rats, missing tools, a storage shed with no key. At the Horgans’ home: an empty dog dish, a missing daughter, tension verging on paranoia. At Dana Endicott’s: a missing woman, a missing Jeep, a missing photograph.
Why steal that photograph? Let’s say Veronica knew that Dana had hired me, never mind how. Or hired someone. The photo could have been stolen so an investigator wouldn’t make the link between Veronica James and Leslie Harrow. Therefore the connection was important …
My cell made the run up the scale that passes for a ring, and I grabbed it. Claire at the DMV had a news flash: The plate I’d called in belonged to a silver Jaguar on the New Hampshire stolen vehicles list. I don’t think I said a word, but I may have because Roz and Lemon looked at me strangely as I hurried out the door.