Neither Gisborne nor Baggetto tried to stop me from getting into my car. As I bounced down the gravel road to the highway, I kept checking my rearview mirror, but neither of them was following. I got off at the first exit and doubled back, pulling onto the shoulder on top of an overpass, watching the silo through my binoculars.
Baggetto was just leaving. I watched the dust cloud he stirred up until he reached the paved road and turned westbound onto the highway, where I lost him in the mass of cars. He might be going to Fort Riley or Lawrence, or taking the long way around to circle back on me.
Gisborne stood by his squad car, talking on his phone, then went into the missile site. If he had a key to the gate, he didn’t use it—like me, he sidled through a gap in the fence. Once inside, he walked over to the loading bay, but the concrete wings blocked my view, so I couldn’t tell what he did there. After a few minutes, he wandered around to the side, to the surface where the snakes had been resting, and tapped it with his boot. My binoculars weren’t strong enough to see whether the snakes scampered off. He walked around to the annex with its black-painted windows and tried the door, which didn’t open.
As if he could feel my eyes on him, he scanned the landscape before sidling through the gap in the fence and returning to his car. I watched him drive down the county road and turn south, past the silo, toward the highway entrance. I thought maybe he’d spotted me, but he continued south, turning into a building complex at the limit of my vision’s range.
Local offices for Sea-2-Sea, my map app told me, where Bram the hippie hater hung out. I didn’t need to gate-crash—I could picture what I’d find, Gisborne and Bram powwowing over what I’d been doing at the silo. They’d look at me with guilty or aggressive or guiltily aggressive faces. All I’d learn was that they didn’t want me in Douglas County.
I got back into the Mustang, trying to figure out what I could do or who I could do it to. My most pressing thought as I drove to town was how bad my shoes smelled and how much my feet hurt. Underneath that discomfort I wondered how Gisborne had known I was at the silo. My best guess was that when I touched the Sea-2-Sea fence, besides zapping me it sent a message to the company’s computers. They might have cameras in the fence posts—I’d been so startled that I hadn’t taken the time to check for surveillance.
Back at the B and B, I bundled all my filthy clothes into the washing machine the owner provided her guests, scraped the mud off my shoes, then took a long, hot shower. After that it seemed like a good idea to draw the curtains and lie down. I was dozing off when I started thinking about Colonel Baggetto: What had really brought him to Lawrence, and then to the missile silo?
Lying in the darkened room, I called the university’s military office, identifying myself as a freelance writer for the Douglas County Herald.
“We heard that a colonel from Fort Riley gave a guest lecture to the cadets this morning. Is he still on campus? His name is . . .” I pretended to be looking at notes. “Baggetto. Dante Baggetto. We’d love to do an interview with him, find out what he thinks about—”
The secretary who’d answered cut me off. “We didn’t have any special lectures here this morning. Maybe the colonel was meeting privately with the staff. If you’ll hold for a minute, I’ll check. What did you say your name was?”
“Martha Gellhorn.” It was the first journalist’s name to pop into my head. Fortunately, the secretary didn’t seem to be a student of women’s history.
I drowsed while she checked. “Sorry, Martha, but none of the girls report any visiting birds in their logbooks today. Who told you he was here?”
“One of the cadets.” I burrowed deep in my mind for the kid who’d been with Baggetto at the hotel last night. “Marlon. Marlon Pinsen.”
I could hear the woman typing at the other end, and then she said sharply, “Martha, you need to start double-checking your sources. We don’t have anyone enrolled in the ROTC program named that, and I don’t even find him in the university’s student database. This is sloppy journalism, and it doesn’t help either of us.”
“And you should always call back a paper before volunteering information to strangers.” I hung up.
I sat up, no longer sleepy, and turned on my bedside lamp. Colonel Baggetto had gone out of his way to lie to me last night. He could have let me walk away with nothing but a smile—last night I hadn’t cared who he had drinks with or what had brought him to Lawrence.
I logged on to my subscription search engines, but they couldn’t tell me much about Baggetto. He’d been born in Providence, Rhode Island, attended a science-and-math academy, and gone from there to West Point. He’d graduated nineteenth in his class, done three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of army intelligence.
After the third tour, he’d undergone advanced training at the Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth—only forty miles from Lawrence—and completed a master’s in computer engineering at Columbia in New York. He’d been sent to Fort Riley three months ago, right after his promotion to colonel. That was it. Nothing personal, other than that he’d never married anyone of any sex.
I’m bone ignorant about the military, but it looked like Baggetto was being groomed for great things. Which meant he wouldn’t be in Lawrence, or talking to me, if it was trivial. Or if it might hurt his career.
Which meant it was somehow tied to Sea-2-Sea, because he’d been at the hotel with Bram somebody along with the bogus cadet. I couldn’t remember Bram’s last name—I kept thinking Stoker, naturally—but the Net found it for me. Bram Roswell, head of R&D. M.B.A. from Wharton, undergraduate degree in agribusiness from Kansas State University, which happened to be near Fort Riley. I wondered if that was significant, if Roswell returned to his alma mater to root for football games and then got together with army intelligence officers at night to plan . . . what?
A search of news stories reported Roswell’s appearance at various charity functions in Lawrence, Kansas City, and Dallas. Another story revealed that Roswell was active in Patriots CARE-NOW—Concerned Americans for Rearmament Now. He was shown with a former undersecretary of defense for nuclear arms getting a medal at their annual dinner.
Was whatever brought Baggetto and Roswell together somehow connected to Doris McKinnon and the digging she’d been doing? Had McKinnon’s decision to dig brought Emerald Ferring to Kansas so hastily? Ferring had relied on Troy Hempel since he was seven and began cutting her lawn for her, but she turned to August Veriden, a stranger, because she couldn’t wait five extra days for Troy Hempel to come home.
True, August was filming her origin story: they’d stopped at Fort Riley and taken pictures, they’d gone to her childhood home in North Lawrence, but the real reason they’d come to Kansas was to help Doris McKinnon. I felt sure of it, but I’d love to have confirmation. Especially an e-mail or tree-mail that laid out what had worried Doris so much she’d turned to her old friend’s daughter for help.
I called Free State Dogs to check on Peppy, who was having way more fun than I was, and got dressed again—wool slacks instead of jeans, a cashmere knit top in my favorite rose, and the one good jacket I’d brought with me. All I needed was lunch and a burner phone and I’d be ready for action.
I found the phone store first. Three disposable phones, which I could rotate, each with six hundred minutes. I drove on into town and stopped at one of the zillion student cafés downtown for a sandwich. Hummus on homemade bread, delicious. Coffee, mediocre. I poured it out and walked over to the Hippo.
A handful of what looked like regulars were chatting with the bartender. I took my coffee into a corner and called Troy’s mother.
“Ms. Hempel, I don’t know how much Troy has told you about what I’ve encountered in Lawrence, but it’s a worrying situation,” I said when we’d covered the preliminaries—Troy was at work, I knew; it was she I was looking for. “Did Ms. Ferring ever talk to you about a woman named Doris McKinnon?”
“Troy told me you found her—found her dead yesterday.”
“Did he also tell you the police think young August Veriden is the likely culprit?”
“Oh, yes.” She didn’t try to keep bitterness out of her voice. “And you, what do you think?”
“I don’t think anything. I don’t have any facts. I hope I find August before some trigger-happy local LEOs do. Have you heard from Ms. Ferring? I think you are one person she might consult.”
“I don’t know. God’s truth.” Ms. Hempel sighed heavily. “She’s known me for twenty years, and I think she trusts me, so it scares me that I haven’t heard from her.”
“Could she have gone back home, back to Chicago?”
There was a pause on Hempel’s end before she said, “If Ms. Emerald came home, she’s kept it quiet. There aren’t any lights on in the house.”
I wished I were face-to-face with her: interrogations by phone leave out the cues of truth and lies and the shaded areas in between. Ms. Hempel could be telling the literal truth—no lights in Emerald’s basement—all the while shielding her neighbor in her own home.
“What about the real reason she decided to go to Kansas?” I asked.
“To make a documentary about her life. We told you that when Troy decided you were the best person to look for her.” Her voice was still bitter, the subtext demanding what I could possibly do to merit Troy’s confidence.
“I’m sure Ms. Ferring and August have been in Lawrence, as recently as last week, but I haven’t found any trace of them since. It looks as though Ms. McKinnon took them out with her to dig up a field in the middle of the night. Something troubled Ms. McKinnon, something important enough that she wanted August to film it. In the middle of filming, an SUV drove into their midst. I don’t know if they were chased away or captured.”
There was a longer pause, and then Hempel burst out, “I wondered why Emerald was in such a rush to go down there. Troy would have taken her as soon as he got back from Israel, I told her that. He’d make sure she traveled in comfort. She didn’t need to go off with some stranger who couldn’t look after her. But all she’d say was she had the urge to go now, that she wasn’t going to impose on Troy, make him drive all over the country when he had an important job to do.”
There was a history buried in the long comment, hurt feelings, perhaps injured pride that Emerald hadn’t confided in her, but I didn’t try to sort that out, just asked if the Hempels had a key to Ferring’s house. “Can you go in and see if you can find anything, a letter, an e-mail, from Doris McKinnon?”
Hempel was taken aback: What kind of person did I think she was, breaking into a neighbor’s house and going through her things?
“You’re the kind of person who would do a great deal if you feared for a friend’s life,” I said quietly. “And I’m afraid for Ms. Ferring’s life.”
That changed her attitude at once. If Emerald’s life were in danger . . . well, why hadn’t I said so? She’d call around to some of the other people in the neighborhood, see if they’d heard from her.
“Do it in person, okay? I don’t know who or what we’re dealing with, but they went up to Chicago and trashed August Veriden’s workplace and apartment, looking for something they think he has. For all I know, they may be tapping your phone, although I hope not. I’m going to leave a message on Troy’s office line, with a number you can send a text to if you learn anything.”
I was feeling panicky. Not good. I wanted to be in Chicago, to check on Emerald’s acquaintances myself, but I needed to stay here until I got some inkling of what Baggetto and Sea-2-Sea and Sheriff Gisborne were doing.