At The Edge

25

Maria and Dan were in the public library reviewing a Sunday-magazine newspaper insert article about the death of Catherine Swanson.

"I'm sure the body in the mine was the photographer, so we know he didn't kill her."

"It was a body without a head," Maria said.

"Clothing matches. He was skinny like the photographer."

"OK, I'll concede that. I think you should leave town for a while."

"No way."

After a short argument and a longer discussion, Dan changed the subject, explaining that he had to meet some clients the next day even though it was a Saturday.

"It's a bit of a problem," Dan said.

"Why's that?"

"Pepacita's going to visit her family. And worse yet, Nate was supposed to stay with his friend John Barge. Debbie Barge is great, but I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that her live-in boyfriend is into drugs. Now that Lynette's gone…"

"Are you working up to something?"

"Well, I'm in a bind."

"You know I'll do it," Maria said between bites of her tuna sandwich. "I just want you to ask, instead of sliding all around it."

''He's liable to have an attitude. The boyfriend was taking them for a ride in his drag boat."

"I can deal with it."

On the first floor of the castle, there was a large ceremonial room. History was prominently featured with swords and body armor from various eras, even equestrian armor, and all manner of ancient fighting implements. The floor of the long rectangular room was gleaming mahogany from a nearly extinct species. The walls were redwood and the ceiling Japanese white cedar. Functions for up to 200 could be held in this room.

Off of the ceremonial room lay a relatively small study. This room looked much more Western and prominently featured several large computer screens. Yoshinari sat in front of one such screen that displayed a detailed map of northern California. Shohei had just called by satellite phone. Groiter had disappeared at a Santa Rosa airport. Shortly after he entered a public eating establishment, a helicopter took off and Groiter could not thereafter be found.

Shohei could wait in San Francisco and collaborate with Satoru, or he could go to Palmer and wait. Yoshinari studied the map. There was nothing of great interest in San Francisco. Maria Fischer was from Sacramento. Dan Young was from Palmer. Kenji's laboratory was near Palmer and Corey Schneider was there as well.

"Go to Palmer. You have a radio that will monitor the police?"

"Yes."

"Use it. The pressure on Kenji is great. Groiter may do whatever he's working so hard to conceal at any moment. Let me know the minute you hear anything out of the ordinary."

"Ossu."

Yoshinari flirted with the idea of sending more men but thought better of it. More men meant greater risk of exposure. And Shohei was incredibly talented.

He dialed his daughter.

"Micha."

"Father," she said softly. "How wonderful to hear your voice."

"How are you, my daughter? Beautiful flower in my garden."

"I would love to see you and Mother."

"Maybe we will take that shiny plastic bubble of a thing and aim it at America."

"Father, it's a Gulfstream GV. Kenji envies you."

"Nothing but wires and metal. No beauty. But if it will take us to you, maybe there is something to be said for it."

"Something is on your mind."

"How did you know?"

"Mother comes on the line first when you are not worried."

Yoshinari smiled. His daughter was indeed observant. "How is Kenji?"

"He paces in the night. His teeth grind in his sleep."

"So what do you think is worrying him?"

"He keeps me far from his worries."

"Yes."

"And if I ask, he gets angry. So I don't ask."

"I see."

"How is my granddaughter?"

"She is well. You should come and see her. Already she paints like Mother. She has your love of the garden."

"I will come soon."

"Rest easily, Father. You will figure it out. You always do."

He hung up. For better or worse he had just told his daughter that he was very worried. Now she would be doubly alert. Turning off the screen, he rose to retire to his garden. And wait.

David Dun

At The Edge

Corey looked out the window of the study. Through a break in the overcast, a shaft of sunlight beamed through the shadows. Looking down at her glass-topped desk, she saw that both the sun and the clouds were reflected there in an interplay of gray and gold.

Sitting back in the oak chair, the straightness of it feeling good against her back, she focused her anger and reviewed the plan. Maria was supposedly in Palmer this afternoon and was to remain through the weekend. But that information had come from a fund-raiser who had talked to Maria's assistant; it was two days old. After thinking it over for a minute, Corey picked up the phone.

"Maria Fischer's legal assistant, please."

"This is John."

"John, this is Terry Hatcher. I'm an attorney and I'd like to consult with Maria Fischer. Will she be in this afternoon?"

"No, but she'll call for messages. Would you like her voice mail?"

"I'd like to talk with her in person. Where could I reach her tomorrow?"

"I can take your name and number and get back to you."

"Certainly. But you know, I was told she was going to be in Palmer tomorrow and I was hoping I might catch her there."

"I believe she will be in Palmer. If I could just take your number, I'll tell Maria you called."

"I'll be out. I'll have to call back."

The harlot and the pimp, she had taken to calling them. The phrase felt good and bolstered her determination. At the German's insistence the three of them were to have one more meeting before the big event. If Jack was nervous about her, he was incoherently frightened by the German. Now she was convinced Jack would put his heart into this thing to save himself. Wisely, he had sent his entire family to Mexico. These days he looked like a man who had seen his darkest moments, and when September brought this year's crop, she imagined he might move out of Nolo County altogether.

Startled by the ringing phone, she answered, certain that it would be the German.

"Corey?" It was her aunt. She would know the voice anywhere. A shock. They hadn't spoken in two years, and then it was about a dying cousin. She hadn't cared then, and she didn't care now.

"What?"

"I know you don't like us bothering you, but we thought you should know."

"Know what?"

"A few weeks ago a man came here. A private investigator. He wanted to know all about you. He was very nice. He said it was about an inheritance and they were trying to locate you."

"And you had to talk to him." She knew her aunt would talk with anyone if they made her feel important. Corey hated her all over again. "What did you tell him?"

"Well, everything in general, about… you know."

"About Max, his drinking, his suicide, the rest?"

"More or less."

"Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"You told him about me. About my real father."

"Well, it seemed pertinent to the inheritance."

"Shit." Corey slammed down the phone, cracking the handset There was no use talking. It had been some henchman of the German. Immediately she understood how he knew to lock her in the closet. To pump her. She wasn't stupid! She wasn't stupid!

She flung her coffee cup against the wall. It left a dent in the Sheetrock where it shattered. Goddamn manipulating bastard. He had made an ass out of her. He wasn't anything to her. Not a goddamn thing. And he had worked his way into her. Coddled her. Told her how wonderful she was. Humiliation burned in her, then turned to rage. She promised at that moment to reverse everything or die, and then spent a good hour figuring what she would do.

Corey planned to go along with the German until an opportunity to do otherwise presented itself. She detested the Spaniard who followed the German everywhere, but one thing, the only thing, she now appreciated about the German was his penchant for meticulous planning.

Corey checked out the equipment in the van, as she knew the German would. She had to admire Jack's handiwork. Gutting the interior of the van had been easy, but Jack had gone to some effort to arrange for the installation of the round table bolted to the floor-one of those Formica and plywood creations found in cheap cocktail lounges. Behind the table, likewise bolted to the floor, a gray vinyl bench seat faced the rear doors.

Resting the Colt AR-15 on the pile of sandbags she had arranged on the table, Corey assumed a firing position. The rifle's green-camouflaged plastic stock felt smooth and businesslike against her cheek. The lightness of the way it felt in the firing brace, close to her, an extension of her, came from the thousands of times she had fieldstripped, assembled, and fired rifles like this. Like a ritual, a mantra. Ivan the Terrible had taught her well. When you pick it up, it must become you: you think through it, breathe through it, live through it.

She pressed the foot pedal and watched with satisfaction as the rear window lowered-all the way down in just four seconds. None of it was terribly fancy or high-tech, but it was all sturdy and would serve its purpose well. If anyone followed the van, they would get a surprise.

She drove to Jack Morgan's place, forty-five mind-numbing minutes of twisty driving to the sounds of the local country-western station. The house was dark, and only a sliver of light shone from the barn. She headed straight there and parked by a white Ford Taurus with absolutely nothing memorable about it save a small antenna protruding from the back window.

In the barn she found the familiar fifty-five-gallon drums and the tractors; at the far end near the hayloft was the German in his black hood. No way was this man ever going to let any of them identify him. The Spaniard waited off to the side, running his eyes over her body as obviously as he could. She approached the German and stopped about ten feet short. She felt unnerved and knew that was precisely what he intended. Jack sat in a folding chair about ten feet away, jiggling his knee like a nervous kid.

"Are you ready?" the German asked.

"I am."

"Fischer will come out of the Palmer Inn on Saturday morning, as usual. We have reason to believe she's going on an outing. Follow her. If you get a good opportunity, take her. If not, bide your time. I don't want any screwups. Make sure no one is watching when you grab her. The rifle is a last resort. If we haven't got her by Saturday evening, we've devised a ruse to get her out of the hotel very early Sunday morning. But that's the end of the time window, so we want to try to take her before that. Jack, you do what Corey tells you."

They then proceeded to go over the details of the plan. Over the weekend Jack had completed the remodeling of the barn, finished the Sheetrock, and installed a solid wood door and a two-way mirror, all to the German's specifications. From inside the interrogation room, it was impossible to discern that you were in a barn. Maria would see only white walls, fully carpeted floors, fluorescent bulbs, and the large mirror. As the German and Jack had planned, the room could be dismantled in minutes, leaving no trace of its presence save a few nail holes in the rafters.

Corey knew she would get only one chance to double-cross the German, and if she failed, she could end up dead- or worse. She had to get all the evidence he had on her, and then she had to kill him.

''Hi,'' Maria said as Nate climbed into her old Jeep Cherokee.

"Hi." He sat there, arms crossed and a grim look on his face.

"Nate, I think I understand how you feel. I'll bet that drag boat sounded pretty good. If you don't want to go somewhere today, I'll understand. We can stay home and you can play around the house."

He shrugged. "Maybe we should go someplace."

"Did you bring your boots?"

"Uh-huh." He pointed to his pack, which he'd tossed in the backseat.

"Your father didn't fill you in on what we're doing, did he? It was supposed to be a secret." Nate just grunted, a "no" from the sound of it. "Well, we were going fishing, but you can stay home. Really, it's OK."

"I wanna go," he said, making it sound like a groan.

''I suppose you don't like trout fishing,'' she said casually as they entered the National Forest. "So would you like to leave the fishing poles in the car or take them with us?"

"I don't care," Nate said, looking straight ahead.

Something has got to change, she thought. She went to the back of the car to get her pack. "We were going to scout places to fish. That was my big surprise. But I guess we don't have to do that."

Nate's eyes flickered at her for just a second. ''We could take the pole," he said.

"Who would use it?"

"Well. Um. I would."

The boy squelched his enthusiasm masterfully, she thought to herself. Poor kid.

Soon they started up a steep incline through the forest, mostly second growth that had filled in since the early 1900s, the redwood trees some four and even five feet thick at the base. They climbed quickly, Nate with his head down and a determined look on his face. After a time the path came to a rushing stream, then followed it up the hillside. Eventually they came to a fork in the trail. To the left the trail continued alongside the stream, toward a waterfall, from the roaring sound in the distance. To the right the trail moved off into the trees, up the mountain. "This way," Maria said, pointing left.

Finally they came to the end of the trail: a small gorge with a roaring cascade at one end, which sent a cool mist floating through the rays of sunlight pouring down from overhead. Spanning the gorge was a thick log, which from the look of the damp green stuff covering it would be quite slippery to walk across.

"Pretty nice place, huh?" Maria whispered, looking at the crystal-clear water from the falls as it poured over some boulders in the gorge below. A shiver of pleasure ran through her; there was nothing like this, the feeling of being closed in by lush green-the trees, the moss, the lichen.

"It's like a magic forest." Nate pointed his finger. "That'd be a good place to fish."

Looking downstream, Maria saw a still pool off to the side of some rushing waters, covered over by a couple of old, fallen logs. Perfect place for trout to hide. "Yes, it would," she said. "But to get down there, we'll have to cross the log."

Together they looked at it. An old Doug fir, it was over one hundred feet long, the topside worn smooth and slightly flat, and pockmarked by burrowing bugs and the spiny, sharp cork boots that loggers wear. Four feet through at the big end, nearest Nate and Maria, the log spanned a chasm fifty feet across and perhaps forty feet deep at the center.

"Well?" Maria asked, smiling.

Nathaniel looked at her, wide-eyed. "I don't know," he said, bewildered. "How?"

"Well, you could walk or crawl."

Nate peeked down at the rocks in the stream far below. "Are you going too?" he finally asked.

"Of course," she said. Maria recalled the feeling she'd had the first time she had to cross a sheer drop like this one, which could kill with one slip. A sensation of a cool draft, even if there is no wind, the feeling of lightness that is an adjunct to dread.

"If you go, I'll go," Nate said. "I think."

Maria smiled. A tough guy-sort of-just like his dad. "I have a safety harness in my pack. You can put it on, and it would catch you if you fell. I will be right with you. You can do it, Nate. I'll show you how and I won't let you fall."

"OK."

Maria quickly removed two harnesses. Then she donned some Gore-Tex climbing gear and helped Nate into some rubber pants.

''You do this a lot?'' Nate watched as her fingers adjusted the harnesses.

"Yup." She snapped a tether from her harness to Nate's.

"Sit," she said after leading him to the log. Following her instructions, he climbed up on the natural bridge, straddling it.

"Look at that tree on the other side," Maria said. "Stare at it. Don't look down."

She sat immediately behind him, Nate almost in her lap. Then, picking him up, she scooted him forward. "Look at the tree,'' she said, encouraging him to repeat the movement on his own.

Within minutes they were across. When they stood, Nate turned to her, respect in his eyes.

"We did it," he said, a tinge of excitement in his voice.

"Yes, we did. And it took two of us. So you would be making me feel safe if you promised not to do that by yourself. OK?"

Nathaniel nodded.

Then they fished. Assembling a small collapsible rod, she taught him how to use a fly with a barbless hook and a bobber. Small trout took the fly repeatedly. After reeling them in, Nate and Maria released them. After they'd reeled in a half-dozen small trout, Maria led Nate to a pool near the base of the falls. The shore was crowded with huckleberry and thimbleberry, so they had to crowd past the many spiny stems and damp, leafy branches to get to the creek's edge. There she pointed to a log that angled across the pool's edge, above a back eddy that made the foam move upstream past an old alder log.

As they neared the log, Maria hunkered down, indicating to Nate that he should do the same. Together they crept the last few feet to the log and the deep pool beyond it. Even with the roar of the falls, the place had a tranquillity that they didn't want to disrupt with shouting, so they gestured as if sharing secrets.

Standing behind Nate, Maria placed her hands over his, then gently cast the fly near the falls, letting the fly drift down the stream's center and into the eddy, where it moved back up past their log like a tiny float in a parade. It was a special caddis fly, with gray wings and a tiny silver strand around its furry body. Jutting out from the body were little whiskers that stood the fly on the water, each whisker making its own tiny dimple in the glassy surface. Without warning, a swirl appeared where the fly had been, and the reel began to sing as the line peeled out across the creek. Nate shrieked. "Keep the tip up," Maria said calmly in his ear, reaching to tighten the brake on the reel. Then the line went slack. "Reel quickly," Maria urged.

As Nate took up the slack, the fish once again swam for the far side of the creek, bending the slight rod in a half circle and eliciting another cry from Nate. Then the eighteen-inch-long silver-sided monster exploded from the water, shook its head, and dropped the fly as easily as a child spits out a pea.

"Oh man!" Nate shouted, his face lit with excitement. When Nathan's enthusiasm had about peaked for one day, they packed up their stuff and due to the ease of descending made much better time. They wound down the trail in the quiet forest, hearing only an occasional scampering, the blowing of a startled deer, and the mad whir of a blue grouse.

"I'm going to the outhouse," Nate said.

The park service maintained a pit toilet at the other end of the lot. She nodded as Nate trotted off, then turned to load her stuff into her Cherokee. She pulled an apple from her pack and leaned on the tailgate, watching a red-tailed hawk. A nondescript blue van pulled into the lot and parked one space over. Nate was taking a while. Walking to the driver's-side door, she opened it and reached down to pick up her tennis shoes, thinking she would remove her boots.

The sliding sound of a van door made her realize with a start that someone had been taking their time in getting out of the van. She was unlacing her boots when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Then suddenly she was assaulted by searing pain in her eyes and nostrils. Her lungs felt as though they were being filled with a thousand angry hornets. As she felt her knees buckle, strong arms grabbed her. Burning mush filled her chest; terror gripped her mind. Something horribly confining, even suffocating, was over her face, and she was suddenly, vaguely aware that she was lying down.

"Where's the kid?" she heard.

"Forget him. Let's get the hell out of here."

Soon she calmed enough to realize that the cloth bag over her head was tied at her throat, that her hands and feet were tightly trussed, and that she was on the floor of a large moving vehicle. Then she thought of Nate, the engaging smile under his cowlick.

At least he had been spared.