3:09 A.M.
Sounds in the night.
They’d woken me up and I lay in the four-poster bed in the Blackhawk guest room, listening. A floor-board creaked again below, and something bumped faintly. Robin, unable to sleep? Darcy, stumbling around under the influence of the sleeping pill his sister had given him, after insisting he spend the night in his old room rather than return to his apartment?
Maybe, maybe not. I tried to convince myself I was imagining a strange presence in the house, but the sounds struck me as furtive.
I slipped from beneath the down comforter, put on my borrowed robe. Cold air drifted under the room’s closed door, as if another door or window was open somewhere. I turned the knob, peered out into darkness. If Robin or Darcy were moving about, they’d have put on a light. Well, maybe Darcy wouldn’t—
Another creak, closer. Where? Probably on the staircase.
I groped on the dresser for my purse, found my small flashlight. When I looked through the door again, a faint glow had appeared in the stairwell. It moved upward, and a shadow spread over the wall: huge, distorted, moving slowly and stealthily.
Intruder. No question of it.
I put my finger on the switch of my flashlight, wishing I had my .357 Magnum instead. I’d let whoever it was come to the top of the stairs, then take him or her by surprise.
Something groaned at the far end of the hall. It sounded to me like the house settling, but the intruder stopped and the light went out. I waited, listening. Caught something that wasn’t a sound exactly, but more like the rhythm of the person’s breathing. Wondered if he’d identified mine. Seconds passed, and then I heard a soft footfall. On the move again.
Now I could see the faint outline of a head against the stairwell wall. The intruder was nearly to the top. I aimed my flash that way, flicked on the switch. Glimpsed a thick-fingered hand and gleaming black metal—
The bullet smacked into the door frame only inches from me, and the shot’s boom set my eardrums throbbing as I dove back into the guest room. I flattened on the floor, trying to think what I could use as a weapon. Footsteps thundered down the stairs, scrambled in the lower hallway, slapped across the porch and down its steps.
I let out my breath in a long sigh, then shakily got to my feet. My ears were ringing. In the hall Robin was screaming my name. I ran out there, collided with her. “That was a shot!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”
I steadied her. “Somebody broke into the house, was coming upstairs. He’s gone now.”
“Oh, my God! He shot at you?”
“Yeah.” I went over and trained my flashlight on the door frame till I located the point of impact. Four inches to the left, and the bullet would’ve penetrated my skull. My hands went clammy; my skin rippled.
Robin’s eyes followed the beam. She shuddered. “Did you… did you see who it was?”
“A man, I think. That’s all.” I glanced down the hall toward Darcy’s room. “How could he sleep through all this?”
“That sleeping pill… I doubled the dosage. He’s out for the night and most of the morning.”
“Is that a good thing to do?”
“His doctor okayed it for when he’s really stressed.”
I wanted to ask her what exactly was wrong with Darcy, but I had more immediate things to attend to. “Robin, have there been any burglaries in the neighborhood recently?”
“No. It’s relatively crime-free.”
“What about suspicious characters? People who might steal for drug money?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Does Darcy have any friends who might want to break in here? Do you?”
“My friends’re pretty much like me—working too hard to think of much else. Darce’s… Well, I hate to say it, but they’re either too stoned or too lazy.”
“Any old boyfriends of yours who might be carrying a grudge?”
“Uh-uh.”
“What about threats? Could your… our mother have received one and not told you about it?”
“No way. She’d’ve told me because she’d want me to be on guard.” Robin’s frown was accentuated by the light from my flash. “Sharon, d’you think the break-in has something to do with the hit-and-run?”
“Big coincidence if it doesn’t. Did the officers you talked with at the hospital give you their cards?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you call one of them while I make us some coffee?”
Detective Loretta Willson and her partner, Bob Castner, looked tired; both quickly accepted Robin’s offer of coffee. Willson, a thin blonde whose body and facial features were all sharp angles, sat on a sofa in the parlor, placing her mug on a table next to an evidence bag containing the bullet the lab techs had dug out of the door frame upstairs. Castner, dark and as round as his partner was angular, leaned against a bookcase, warming his hands on his mug. At a glance from Willson, he set it on the top shelf and took out a notebook.
Willson looked at me and said, “Ms. Blackhawk tells us you saw the intruder.”
“Only briefly, and I can’t describe him. I think it was a man. Not tall, necessarily, but big-boned, judging from the size of his fingers.”
“He fired at you?”
“Toward my flashlight, anyway.”
“Why didn’t you call nine-one-one as soon as you were aware someone was in the house?”
“By the time I realized he wasn’t a member of the household, it was too late; he would’ve heard me make the call and gotten away. So I tried to get a look at him instead.”
“Do you customarily confront intruders when you don’t know if they’re armed or not?”
“Customarily? No, but…” I handed her the business card I’d tucked into the pocket of my jeans when I dressed. “It was a conditioned reflex.”
Willson examined it, held it out to Castner. He raised his eyebrows and said, “That’s why the name’s familiar. The Diplo-bomber case, right? I read about you in People.”
The People magazine profile haunted me the way a bad judgment call haunts a losing coach after the Super Bowl. I merely nodded.
Willson said to Robin, “What about you, Ms. Blackhawk? You see him?”
“The shot woke me. He was gone before I figured out what was happening.”
“You have any idea what he was after? Valuables? Cash?”
“We don’t own anything very valuable. And we don’t keep much cash on hand.”
“What about your mother’s legal files?”
“They’re locked up in the office.”
Willson looked at Castner. “They tampered with?”
He shook his head.
“She keep any files upstairs?” Willson asked Robin.
“I suppose she might. She works in her bedroom late at night. But why would somebody be after them?”
“They could contain information someone wanted to obtain—or suppress. We’ll take a look around up there, and then I’d like to get started on all her active cases. Don’t worry, Ms. Blackhawk, we’ll get this guy. Our unit has a sixty-seven percent clearance rate.”
I said, “From the way you’re talking, I gather that you agree the break-in is related to the hit-and-run?”
Willson’s mouth twitched in irritation. “Ms. Mc-Cone, maybe in San Francisco the police share their theories with civilians, but it doesn’t work that way in Boise. I’m not even sure why you’re here. Is it on business?”
“No.”
“And your connection to the Blackhawks is…?”
Robin said, “She’s my sister.”
“… My information is that your mother has only two children—yourself and your brother Darcy.”
“Sharon’s my half sister. My mother put her up for adoption before she married my father. We met for the first time yesterday.”
“I see.” From Willson’s speculative expression, I gathered she found my appearance in Boise as convenient a coincidence to the hit-and-run as I did the break-in.
I said, “This information isn’t for public consumption, of course. Saskia Blackhawk didn’t know my whereabouts, or that I’d located her. She was run down before we had a chance to meet.”
Willson threw me a withering look, but Castner’s lips curved up in amusement; he seemed to enjoy someone taking a firm hand with his brusque partner.
“My sister,” I added, “is willing to cooperate with your investigation in any way possible. As I am.”
Robin nodded, standing up and squaring her slim shoulders. “Let’s get started on my mother’s files. I’ve watched enough cop shows to know that time’s important in making an arrest. I want you to nail the bastard.”
Saskia Blackhawk was an active and committed attorney. She carried a large caseload, ranging from major federal suits such as the Coeur d’Alene fishing rights and the Spirit Lake development to minor pro bono work for individual Indians. She’d consulted, although not argued, on a groundbreaking case concerning Indian trust accounts, in which a federal judge held in contempt Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin over their departments’ mismanagement of income from native lands, dating back to the 1880s. And just last week she’d taken up the cause of a group of Nez Perce who were being forced by a private college in Lewiston, Idaho, to take out prayer permits in order to worship at a sacred peak in the Seven Devils Mountains, where the school’s astronomy department had installed costly telescopes.
When Robin finished summarizing some two dozen files, the sun was slanting in the windows of Saskia’s office and the four of us were both exhausted and wired from too much coffee. Castner, the note-taker of the partners, got up and paced around, consulting his pad.
“Okay,” he said, “the timber interests in the Coeur d’ Alene case are definitely suspect. But I think we can discount the federal trust case; the feds’re underhanded as hell, but they don’t usually resort to hit-and-run, except on ‘The X-Files.’ Snake River College?”
Willson yawned widely. “I don’t know. Those telescopes’re expensive, but I can’t see a bunch of academics getting exercised enough to resort to attempted homicide. We assign a low priority to that, and we’re still looking at over half those pro bonos and the Spirit Lake thing. You got names, phone numbers?”
“Everything we need.”
“Let’s go, then, so these people can get some rest.”
As soon as the officers were out the door, Robin called the hospital for an update on Saskia’s condition. No change, she was told. I urged her to try to sleep, but she decided to go over there and wait till she could talk with Dr. Bishop; she would, she said, feel better being closer to her mom. Would I stay with Darcy? she asked. Reassure him if he woke before she got back? Of course, I told her, although I badly wanted to go along to the hospital.
After she left in my rental car—her keys as yet unfound—I went upstairs and looked in on her—our—brother. He lay on his back, snoring softly, oblivious to the events that had churned around him. Sleep made his face young and vulnerable, in spite of the hardware and purple hair. I hoped that he’d be strong enough to handle the waiting where his mom was concerned. Hoped that if he wasn’t, Robin could handle him. And, lacking either, that I’d be strong enough to handle both of them.
4:53 P.M.
“Sharon, wake up.”
“Huh?” I swam to the surface slowly. The room was unfamiliar, and I was covered by a blue blanket, but I wasn’t in bed.…
Oh, right, Darcy’s room. I’d sat down in the recliner and must’ve fallen asleep. Robin had probably found me there and covered me, and now she wanted me to wake up.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly five in the afternoon.” Her face came into focus, deeply shadowed and strained.
I struggled to sit up. The bed was rumpled, Darcy gone. “Saskia—is she—”
“No change. But you’ve got a visitor. A man. He says he’s your father.”
Austin DeCarlo, here in Boise? At Saskia’s house?
I untangled myself from the blanket and stood, experiencing a flash of vertigo. My skin felt tight and tingly—a consequence of too little sleep, too much coffee, and no food.
Robin asked, “Is he your adoptive father, or…?”
“My birth father.” I started for the adjoining bathroom.
“Then he’s—”
“Give me a minute.”
I shut the door against her question, used the facilities, splashed water on my face. In the mirror my skin looked grayish and unhealthy; my hair needed washing. I ran my fingers through it, said, “What the hell,” and went back to Robin.
“That man downstairs,” she said. “He was my mother’s lover?”
“Yes. I located him a few days ago, and he told me where she was living.”
“How did he know? I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“Come downstairs with me, and I’ll introduce you.”
Austin DeCarlo, clad in a blue business suit and red-and-blue-striped tie, stood in front of the fireplace in the parlor, looking up at the painted elk hide. His manner was formal as he turned toward us.
“Sharon, I came as soon as I heard about Kia. How is she?”
“She’s been in a coma since the hit-and-run.”
“Did you get to meet her?”
“No.” I drew Robin forward. “This is Austin DeCarlo, my father. Robin Blackhawk, my half sister.”
DeCarlo extended his hand, but Robin sucked her breath in and backed up, her face hardening. “Austin DeCarlo, the Spirit Lake developer?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was your father?”
“You had enough to deal with, without me dumping that on you. Now that he’s here, though—”
“Now that he’s here, I’d like to spit in his face!” She glared at DeCarlo. “First you knock up my mother and leave her. Then—”
“Ms. Blackhawk, I realize we aren’t meeting under the best of circumstances—”
“Circumstances? Circumstances that you created! You’re the one, aren’t you? The one who tried to kill my mother?”
DeCarlo frowned. “Kill Kia? Why would I—?”
Robin made an enraged sound, half grunt and half scream, and hurled herself at him. Her fists pummeled the air, and then his chest. DeCarlo fended her off, his hands on her shoulders, while I grabbed her from behind.
“Robin, calm down!” I said. “He wouldn’t’ve come here if—”
“He shouldn’t’ve come here at all!” She broke my hold, slamming me against the wall next to the archway. By the time I caught my breath and started after her, she was halfway up the stairs, sobbing harshly. I let her go.
DeCarlo came over to me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“Jesus, what was all that about?”
“Why don’t we sit down.”
I felt terrible about the whole business. I should have prepared Robin. An oversight, because I was disoriented and tired and surprised Austin was here? Or had I subconsciously pushed the confrontation, hoping to learn something from his reaction? Was my mind really that devious, even when half asleep? Was I really that cruel?
“Exactly why are you here?” I asked him.
“I heard about Kia’s accident from my attorney. I thought you might need my support.”
His reasoning was preposterous. In forty years he’d made only the one attempt to locate me, and now he was rushing to my side, wanting to be a daddy.
My expression must have given away my thoughts. “All right,” he said. “I was presumptuous, but I can’t help the way I feel.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“From your office.”
I’d called the agency machine last night, left the address and number. “You should’ve phoned first.”
“I realize that now. Why does Robin think I tried to kill Kia?”
I explained the circumstances of the hit-and-run. “The police are looking at everyone in an adversarial relationship to her and her causes. You’re a top priority.”
“Because of Spirit Lake? That’s crazy.”
“Is it? Where were you last night, Austin?”
“Oh, come on!”
“Where?”
“With my friend Nicole, making up for leaving her at the restaurant the night you found me.”
It made sense, and I wanted to believe him, but… “We need to talk about Spirit Lake,” I said. “Before the police contact you. Does anyone in Monterey know you’re here?”
“My executive assistant, and he won’t give out information.”
“Good. We can’t talk here, though. Why don’t you check in to a hotel?”
“I have a reservation at the Grove.”
“Then go there, and I’ll be along after I smooth things over with Robin.”
He nodded and stood. For a moment he hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more, but then he turned and left. I stayed where I was for a few moments before I went upstairs to comfort my half sister.
7:02 P.M.
I walked across the downtown plaza known as the Grove toward the hotel of the same name, dodging rollerbladers whose skates rumbled on the brick-work. Mist from a fountain that sent columns of water high in the air caressed my face. The evening was warmish, and people strolled along or sat at the outdoor tables of the cafés. A young woman with electric green hair and a filmy pink dress twirled a rainbow-striped parasol; she was soon joined by two men dressed in black leather and metal ornaments, whose dye jobs made them look as if they were wearing skunks on their heads. Unlike many cities’, Boise’s downtown district was far from dead after office hours, and highly entertaining.
Austin DeCarlo’s hotel was clearly one of the best in town, and his thirteenth-floor suite had to be their finest. As he settled me on a sofa with a mountain view and poured me a glass of Chardonnay, I reflected on the irony of my situation.
No one in the McCone family had ever possessed the ability to attract much money; my parents and aunts and uncles had pretty much lived hand-to-mouth or on credit. My brothers and sisters and I worked on weekends and during the summers as soon as we were of age, and when I decided to go to college after a two-year stint as a department-store security guard, it was understood that it would be on my own nickel. For years after graduation I paid off student loans while working at low-salaried jobs, and had it not been for a cash reward from a grateful client, I might never have owned a house. A second reward, this one from the federal government, bankrolled my agency’s expansion. I was doing well, but out of lifelong habit, I still counted every penny. Now, though, I had a rich father who could buy anything he pleased. Could buy me anything I pleased—as long as I pleased him.
So why didn’t it matter to me?
Austin settled into an oversized chair; he’d changed to jeans and a sweater, and his feet were clad in moccasins. He lounged low, stretching out his long legs, a glass of Scotch in hand.
“You get things straightened out with Robin?” he asked.
“Yes. She allowed as how she’d acted out of proportion to the situation. You didn’t see her at her best; normally she’s quite levelheaded.”
“And the brother? What’s he like?”
“That’s another thing entirely. But I didn’t come here to discuss Saskia’s family. We need to talk about Spirit Lake. The police will be looking at you as a suspect, both in the hit-and-run and the break-in at the Blackhawk house. They’ll gather background on the dispute over the project. They’ll gather background on you and your past relationship with Saskia.”
“Jesus, I can prove where I was last night—”
“I know that, but the police might contend you were setting up an alibi because you’d hired the hit and the break-in. We need to talk everything over and find a way to diffuse those suspicions.”
“You believe me, then.”
I didn’t know what I believed, but I said, “Yes. Tell me about the project.”
“It’s an unusual property, with interesting potential. Do you know anything about Modoc County?”
“Very little.”
“Well, the Modoc Bioregion actually includes all or part of seven counties: Modoc, Siskiyou, Lassen, Shasta, Tehama, Butte, and Plumas. It’s one of the most unspoiled and diverse in the West: contains forest, mountains, high desert, wetlands, and volcanic fields. And it’s relatively unsettled: Modoc County has less than eleven thousand population, the others some half million combined. Spirit Lake is alkalai, in the high desert, but to the east it’s forestland and to the west the acreage encompasses lava fields that’re more spectacular than those of the national monument near Tule Lake.”
“This is all very interesting, but what’s it got to do—”
“Sorry. I’m enthusiastic about the property, and I digress. Anyway, I’ve known about the area for a long time, and a few years ago I heard that the lake and acreage were available for purchase from the Department of the Interior. It seemed the perfect place for an exclusive luxury resort. So I bought the land, had surveys done and plans drawn up. But now everything’s blocked by this damned lawsuit, and the Modocs’re being backed by a powerful consortium of environmentalists.”
“Does this consortium have a name?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What do you know about them?”
“… From what my attorney’s investigators have been able to find out, they’re a group of wealthy philanthropists who want their good deeds to go unpublicized.”
“And?”
“… That’s it.”
Some investigators. “Okay, who’s the spokesperson for the Modocs?”
Austin’s lips twisted. “Mr. Jimmy D. Bearpaw. He lives in Sage Rock, the nearest town to the lake. He’s a professional shit-disturber, meaning he goes around getting Indians—regardless of their tribe—all fired up about causes. Then he sits back and enjoys the trouble he creates. This… consortium has deep pockets, and Jimmy D’s burrowed into one of them. He’ll do anything they tell him to.”
“Shit-disturbing—it’s a pattern of behavior with Bearpaw?”
“Yeah, it is. Up in Oregon, over in Nevada. Six, seven ‘causes’ in the past ten years, and when it’s all over, the only person who’s benefited is Jimmy D. Gets his name and face in the papers, gets to feel important. And everybody else loses and gets stuck with enormous legal fees.” Austin grimaced. “People like him do the Indians more harm than good.”
“And people like Saskia?”
“More good than harm. But because she’s so well intentioned and dedicated, she can be naive about the likes of Jimmy D. I tried to tell her that last month, and she walked out on me.”
“You saw her last month?”
“Yes. I flew up here, invited her to dinner. She refused, but she agreed to a public meeting. Ordinarily she wouldn’t’ve spoken to one of the principals in a suit she was arguing, but I think she was curious as to what kind of man I’d become. I know I was curious about her, and came away very impressed, except for her one blind spot.”
Wasn’t he full of surprises! “By blind spot, you mean Bearpaw?”
He nodded. “We argued about him, and she blew up. Nobody as high-powered as Kia likes to have her judgment questioned, particularly by a former lover.”
A former lover who had abandoned her when she was a pregnant teenager. I was surprised she’d agreed to see him at all. “Did she say anything about me?”
“She asked if I’d ever tried to find you. She hadn’t made the effort either, but in the back of her mind she was hoping someday you’d contact her. I wish I’d known then what I know now.”
Meaning what? Was he envisioning a happy reunion of our little family, all the hurts and abandonments of the past forgotten? If so, he was the naive one.
“Well,” he added, “do you see any way to diffuse the police suspicion?”
“Yes. Get the detectives over here and tell them what you just told me.”
“Okay, I will. Then what?”
“Go home to Monterey.”
“What about you? Are you staying on here?”
“Probably not. Robin’s boyfriend—he’s a dentist in Salt Lake—is due to arrive tonight. She’ll have the support she needs, and will let me know as soon as there’s any change in Saskia’s condition. I think I’ll fly back to San Francisco tomorrow and then head up to Modoc County.”
“Why?”
“I’m curious about the Spirit Lake property and about Jimmy D. Bearpaw. If he’s the kind of person you describe, he just may have disturbed some shit here in Boise last night.”
Robin had said she planned to go to the hospital to sit with Saskia that evening, and suggested I meet her there. I was now officially a member of the family, vouched for by my half sister, and would finally be able to see, if not speak with, my birth mother. I felt both eager and apprehensive about doing so, a push-pull mechanism volleying my emotions from one extreme to the other, so I decided to delay for a while, on the grounds that there was something I should do first.
In front of the hotel I took out the rental car company’s map and located the Eighth Street Marketplace, a short walk across the plaza. Milford’s Fish House occupied the northwest corner of the attractive renovated warehouse complex. I walked past its entrance and turned on Eighth as Saskia had, toward a distant line of trees that marked the river. This was an area of small businesses—linen supply, interior design, caterers, auto repair—all closed for the night; in spite of the nearby restaurants and shops, it was relatively deserted. Under a streetlight I stopped and again consulted the map. Assuming Saskia had not known any shortcuts, she probably would have taken a direct route along Eighth to River Street, and River to Tenth.
Traffic whizzed by me on River, but once I turned in to the short block I felt very isolated. The street was little more than an alley, with a van line’s depot and a wholesale florist mart facing each other at its foot, and various other businesses interspersed with parking lots beyond them. I walked toward the far end, past deeply shadowed loading docks, broken glass crunching under my feet.
The street dead-ended a block away at the freeway connector. There were a couple of dark houses surrounded by weedy yards and a few vacant lots littered with debris—an ideal place for a car to idle unobserved until its driver’s target appeared. I turned around, scanning my surroundings: chain-link fences barred entrance to the parking lots; one of the security spots above the door of a janitorial supply flickered on and off; the windows of an agricultural consulting firm were covered by bars.
The evening was rapidly cooling, and a wind sprang up from the river, bringing with it the smell of stagnant water. The traffic noise on River Street was muted by the buildings, and the only sound in the alley was the hum of a generator. Last night Saskia had stood approximately where I stood now. What had she been thinking? Who had she expected? What had she thought when she heard the car’s engine rev, saw its headlights careening toward her? What had she done? How had she felt?
I shrugged off the useless speculation, began walking back toward the river. Saskia had come here voluntarily, probably without questioning the choice of place. I took out my notebook, began copying down exact names of the businesses. The police would already have canvassed them, looking for some connection to Saskia, but perhaps Robin would know something they’d failed to turn up.
Robin was alone at Saskia’s bedside: a wilted, weary figure slumped in a plastic chair. I hesitated in the doorway, and when she felt my presence she motioned me forward. I hung back, my emotional volleyball game at a heated pace. Once I went over to the white-sheeted form hooked up to the IV and monitor, my life would take yet another turn.
Finally Robin got up and came to me. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I shrugged, the urge to flee strong upon me. I could feel familial obligations and demands reaching for me like greedy tentacles. The air in the room seemed thick; I could hardly breathe. Bad enough to have one wildly dysfunctional family, but now I had two—three, if you counted Austin and his father. How was I to meet the expectations of so many people?
As if to reinforce my confusion, Robin said, “I told Darce who you are this afternoon. He’s half crazed by jealousy, but he’ll get over it.”
“Why would he be jealous of me?”
“No rational reason. Darce doesn’t even want to share Mom with me.”
“He’s got a lot of problems, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but they’re self-created.”
“You said he was the all-American kid through high school and college. What changed that, besides the influence of his crowd?”
“Dad’s death.”
“They were close?”
“The opposite. They always fought, and they had a really bad argument the day Dad had his heart attack. Darce felt guilty, so he got into drugs and now—well, you’ve seen him.”
“Is he in therapy?”
“When he goes, which isn’t often. Anyway, enough about him. The doctor had good news for us: Mom’s started to drift in and out of the coma. Earlier she was restless, tossed around and muttered stuff that nobody could understand. She’s been quiet since I got here, but the doctor says the activity’s a very good sign.”
Some of my edginess dissipated. “Robin, that’s great!”
“Yeah, it is.” She nodded at the bed, obviously expecting me to go over there.
I couldn’t do it—not in front of Robin. On the one hand, I felt like an interloper; on the other, I resented having to share such a private moment. Yet how could I ask her to leave—
“Look, Sharon,” she said, “I need to call my boyfriend—he’s probably at the house by now. Will you stay with Mom for a while?”
“Of course,” I said. Thank you, I thought. My new sister had understanding and tact beyond her years.
After she left I remained where I was, watching the regular peaks and troughs pulse across Saskia’s monitor. The room was cool and quiet; I took deep breaths, and when their calming influence spread through my body, I closed the distance between the door and bed and looked down at her.
A jolt of recognition shot through me, as if someone had flipped a switch and illuminated my life all the way back to my conception. There was no mistaking this was my mother.
Saskia and I resembled each other as strongly as people had said. We had the same oval facial shape, the same high cheekbones, the same tilt of nose. Her eyebrows were like mine, one set a fraction of an inch higher than the other. Her mouth was like mine, and the lines that bracketed it told me this was a woman who laughed hard and often. Looking at her, I had a glimpse of how I’d look in my late fifties, and was not displeased.
Tentatively I reached out and touched Saskia’s hand where it lay against the sheet. It was dry and cool, the nails clipped short and unpolished. Again I felt the jolt of recognition, heard myself say her name.
She gave no response.
Tears stung my eyes as I watched her still face. So many years lost, and now—
Suddenly Saskia’s lips twitched. Her fingers spasmed on mine, and she moved her head from side to side. Alarmed, I looked for the call button, but before I found it her eyes—brown like mine—were wide open and focused on me.
I blinked and tried to disentangle my fingers from hers. She held on tight, staring fiercely at me. I couldn’t tell if she actually saw me or not. Her tongue moved over her dry lips and she said something in a whisper.
I leaned closer. She whispered again.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”
Her eyebrows knitted together, and she seemed to be forcing herself to concentrate. “Find…” she said.
“Find?”
“… Cone…”
Cone? McCone? Was she referring to me? “Saskia, I’m—”
“Cone,” she said. “Sinner…”
Yes, she had to be flashing back to the time she’d become pregnant out of wedlock and later given me up. “It wasn’t a sin—”
She tossed her head, extremely agitated now, squeezing her eyes shut. “Find,” she muttered.
Then she lapsed into unconsciousness, leaving me holding the frayed ends of a connection that extended back before my birth.
“That’s all you know about this consortium of environmentalists?” Hy asked.
I pulled the covers higher around my shoulders so they covered the hand that held the receiver. It was cold in Boise tonight, but Robin—as frugal as I—had turned down the heat before we went to bed.
“That’s all Austin could tell me,” I said.
“Well, I’ll make some calls, see if any of my contacts know of them. Now, what’s this about going to Modoc County?”
“I need to check something out. Have you ever been there?”
“Once, a long time ago. Somebody or other was trying to crap up the forestland, and I was there to protest.”
“You get arrested?” For years following the untimely death of his wife, environmentalist Julie Spaulding, Hy had managed to get himself incarcerated for unruly behavior during protests in any number of jails across the Western states—his way of dealing with his grief.
“Nope, not in Modoc. Folks up there are pretty mellow. They just laughed at us, called us yarn people.”
“Yarn people?”
“You know—sandals, natural foods, back-to-the-land. Politically correct, with no sense of humor.”
“None of which applies to you. D’you ever miss it?”
“Getting busted? No.”
“I mean the environmental work.”
“Well, I still do some fund-raising for Julie’s foundation, but as for chaining myself to a tree on a rainy morning before I’ve even had a cup of coffee? Forget it, McCone. I’m too old for those kind of antics. So when d’you want to go to Modoc?”
“Tomorrow, if you don’t need Two-seven-Tango.”
“I don’t, but it’s probably not a good idea to fly.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of airport closures up there lately, and it’s not easy to get hold of rental cars. You want to keep a low profile, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you land at one of those small fields in a flashy number like Two-seven-Tango, you’ll really be calling attention to yourself. Here’s a solution to the problem: I’ll pick you up at SFO tomorrow and we’ll fly to the ranch, borrow Pete Silvado’s truck, and drive it to Modoc. That rattletrap’s perfect protective coloration.”
Pete Silvado was one of the Paiutes who worked Hy’s small sheep ranch; his truck was a rusted-out green Ford of uncertain vintage. “You think he’d loan it to me?”
“To me, in exchange for the use of my Land Rover.”
“You want to come along?”
“Why not? I wrapped up that risk analysis for the prospective client this afternoon; now it’s up to Dan Kessell to get him to sign on the dotted line.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning at SFO.”
LISTENING…
“Does this consortium have a name?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What do you know about them?”
“… From what my attorney’s investigators have been able to find out, they’re a group of wealthy philanthropists who want their good deeds to go unpublicized.”
“And?”
“… That’s it.”
“This… consortium has deep pockets, and Jimmy D’s burrowed into one of them.”
I’m getting to the point where I can read you, Austin. Those hesitations before you speak of the consortium tell me you know or suspect more about them than you’re telling. But what? And why won’t you confide in me? Instead, you sidetracked me onto Jimmy D. Bearpaw, who’s probably a minor player in the scenario.
Didn’t work, but all the same I’ll take a look at Mr. Bearpaw. Could be that the answers to some of my questions lie in Modoc County.
“Find…”
“Find?”
“… Cone…”
“Saskia, I’m—”
“Cone. Sinner…”
Plenty of silence around those cryptic words. She’s referring to me, of course. Knows she’s in bad shape and wants to see the child she gave up in case she dies. Only natural for her to have been thinking of me recently. After all, she met with Austin last month for the first time in nearly forty years.
But what’s this about a sinner?
Saskia was raised Catholic, Robin told me that. But like me, she rebelled against the Church, left it. Of course, that doesn’t mean some vestiges of its teachings aren’t lodged in the back of her mind. Lord knows there are plenty in mine.
The Church says it’s a sin to bear a child out of wedlock. And that child is said to be born in sin. Maybe she feels she compounded the sin by giving me up. Or…
Dammit, neither Saskia’s nor Austin’s silences are telling me much. I don’t really know either of them, so how can I begin to understand?