Blood of the Reich

12

Summit Bank, Concrete, United States

September 4, Present Day

Y our descent from Benjamin Hood is on your mother’s side,” Barrow said as they continued driving up the Skagit Valley, Rominy purposefully numbed after emptying more than half the wine bottle. She was an occasion-only drinker, but had decided this qualified as an occasion, even if she’d been slightly embarrassed at having a third glass in front of Jake. “If the records are correct, your grandmother, Hood’s daughter, was an only child. When she married she lost her maiden name, and the chain of descent continues through your mother, who also took her husband’s name. It’s no surprise, given the circumstances, that you haven’t heard of Benjamin Hood.”

“So how have you heard of him?”

“It started as a historical feature story on a local figure everyone has forgotten. Tibet explorer moves to rural Washington and dies in unappreciated obscurity, that kind of thing. But then I began digging up these enigmatic documents suggesting that Ben Hood hadn’t just gone to Tibet, he’d found or seen something there that other people wanted. Federal government people. But access to his old place is barred by some nutty Dotty Crockett type upriver, and the only person with right of entry is an heir. Which, I eventually figured out, is you.”

“What did Hood find or see?”

“That’s unclear, but the Nazis were after it, too. So I think, wow, this is the kind of yarn I could sell to American Heritage or Smithsonian, or maybe get a book contract, once it ran in the paper. Nice Depression-era mystery. But then there were odd clicks on my phone, and I found a bug on my desk.”

“Bug?”

“Listening device.” He waved his hand as if this was an everyday irritation. “I realized some other folks were looking into this story, too, but not just to make a freelance fee out of it. Either they want what Hood found or they want to make sure no one else ever gets it. It turns out there were Nazis in Tibet, too, and suddenly I’m being shadowed by skinhead goons. I realized I’d better find you and figure out just what exactly is going on.”

“I have no idea what’s going on.”

“But you have the genealogy to find out.”

“I didn’t ask to be dragged into this!”

“Of course not, but you’re key. Which is why you’re in danger. And it was dumb luck I learned enough to warn you. And there is an inheritance, apparently. You can thank me later.”

“After my knees heal.” She felt truculent about being caught up in something without being asked first. It wasn’t fair.

“That wasn’t planned. Before we could be properly introduced, ‘boom’! And, well, here we are.”

“Here we are where?”

“Concrete.” Once more he turned the pickup off the main highway, driving them past some gigantic dull-gray concrete silos that, in faded red letters, indeed announced Concrete. “Guess what they made in this place? It built some big dams upriver.”

“Benjamin Hood lived in Concrete?”

“Nah, he’s up on the Cascade River, which is where we have to go. But he did his banking here, and that’s where you come in.”

Rominy looked out at a rain-stained, pocket-sized town punched into more of the valley’s lush forest. She’d heard of it but never been here.

Barrow turned onto Main Street. “This burg is actually modestly famous, because De Niro and DiCaprio made This Boy’s Life here. The Tobias Wolff memoir? Wolff lived up in the Seattle City Light company towns, Newhalem and Diablo, but he came down here for high school. Hollywood, baby.”

They parked. Downtown was a block-long clump of architecturally uninspired buildings about as charming as a gas station and as typically American as baseball and Barbie. Tavern, hardware store, Laundromat, food bank-unsurprising, since there was no sign of money-and, more heartening, a surviving movie theater. Many of the time-warp buildings were built (as she should have guessed) of painted concrete. There were old lodge halls for the American Legion and Eagles and an eight-foot carved wooden bear, incongruously rearing under a gazebo built to keep the rain off. Summit Bank had a reader board displaying the temperature (67 degrees) and a sign, SINCE 1914. Inside was utilitarian as a post office. Paneling painted white, forest green carpet, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that gives off the warmth of Greenland’s ice cap. The clerks, however, smiled. A vault door gave a peek toward safety deposit boxes.

“When Hood lived up here, this was the State Bank of Concrete,” Barrow explained. “He left a will and a safety deposit box for his heirs, but guess what? No heirs. Until you. And a mystery seventy-plus years unsolved. Until now.” He grinned and went up to a teller. “Mr. Dunnigan, please.”

“I’ll see if he’s available.”

“Tell him Mr. Barrow and Ms. Pickett-Hood are here to see him. He’s expecting us.” Jake stood tall like it was his birthday, glancing around impatiently. Rominy studied him again. Her companion, she admitted, was intriguing, smart, and a bit of a stud. He was built like a fitness freak, and his eyes seemed lit with blue fire. Certainly more interesting than another evening home with Netflix and Haagen-Dazs. Instead of savior or kidnapper, Jake was making himself, she realized, a partner.

Curiosity kept her with him. And it was reassuring he’d taken her somewhere dull, like a bank.

“I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do here,” she whispered.

“Inherit, remember?” he whispered back.

Mr. Dunnigan was a balding, portly bank vice president in a white no-iron synthetic shirt and JCPenney sport coat, who reigned behind a Formica desk of faux oak. He picked up a stack of manila folders and took them into an adjacent small conference room with wooden table and hard chairs, looking at Rominy as if she were a ghost. Which she supposed she was in a way, if what Barrow claimed was true. The missing heir of Benjamin Hood! Who?

“Congratulations, Mr. Barrow,” the banker began, dropping the folders with a thump. “As you know, I was skeptical of your research.”

“You sound like my editors.”

“The DNA test, however, convinced me.”

“DNA?” Rominy asked.

“Yes, Miss, it’s been so long since Mr. Hood’s death and his family history is so truncated-goodness, such tragedy-that a mere genealogical table wasn’t going to convince me an heir still existed. That’s when Mr. Barrow suggested the use of DNA evidence, which is surprisingly quick and affordable. We had a rather gruesome relic

…” He paused, looking at Barrow.

“A finger.” The reporter shrugged. “It must have meant something, because Hood kept it in his safety deposit box after he lost it from his hand.”

“He was attached to it,” Dunnigan said, smiling. Apparently, bankers in Concrete possessed quite the wit.

“Wait a minute,” Rominy said. “You matched my DNA to his?”

“Yes, dear. An impossibility for earlier generations, but science marches on.”

“But how did you get my DNA?”

Dunnigan looked surprised at the question and turned to Jake. He in turn looked uncomfortable.

“How did you get my DNA, Barrow?” Rominy asked again.

He cleared his throat. “Saliva.”

“Saliva? When? ”

“I got it off a Starbucks cup. I fished it out after you left a store.”

“Are you joking? When was this?”

“A week ago.”

“You’ve been following me to get my saliva?”

“To let you inherit, Rominy,” he said patiently, as if she was a little dense.

“That’s illegal. Isn’t it? ”

“My bank cannot condone anything improper,” Dunnigan added.

“Of course it’s legal,” Barrow said blandly. He turned to the banker. “My newspaper’s lawyers checked this out. As long as you’re not taking samples from a person’s body without permission-like clipping their hair-it passes the test. We’ve done this before. It’s fine, so long as it’s from discarded organic material.”

Dunnigan frowned, then shrugged.

“Discarded like a Starbucks cup,” Rominy said.

“Yes.”

“That’s sick.”

“Do you think you would have let me run a swab inside your mouth?”

“Maybe, if you’d ever explained yourself in a normal way.”

“I had to be sure or you would have run like a rabbit. ‘Hi there, you might be due a missing inheritance so do you mind if a run a Q-tip?’ It sounds like molestation. You would have dumped espresso down my pants and been furious if it wasn’t a match. So I did something that didn’t disturb you one iota, and we compared Hood’s finger to the saliva you left on the cup.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Maybe so, but because of it you’re sitting in a bank about to get a look into Benjamin Hood’s safety deposit box. How many times do I have to tell you I’m trying to help you?”

“You’re trying to help yourself.” She closed her eyes, momentarily wishing she could will this day away. But when she opened them they were both still looking at her with troubled and not unkind expressions. There was sympathy there. And Jake did have that compelling little scar. She sighed. “The DNA shows this Hood character and I are related?”

“Yes,” Dunnigan said, visibly relieved she wasn’t going to throw a fit.

“What happened to all the other descendants? After three generations, there should be a zillion of them by now.”

“Only children after mysterious accidents to their mothers,” Jake said. “A drowning, a car crash. Nobody ever put it all together because of the changes of names and growing fear of even discussing the Hood relationship, I’m guessing. Nobody put it together until I did. And I realized there was one final survivor: a survivor because she was left in a campground, adopted by strangers, a girl who knew nothing of her own past.”

Had her real parents been protecting her? Had they known they were about to die? Were they being chased? “And you think this was somehow the work of Nazi fanatics, leftovers from World War II, who didn’t want whatever my great-grandpa found ever getting out?”

“Possibly.” Jake glanced at the banker, and then shrugged. “Or the American government.”

“The Americans? But Great-grandpa was American.”

“He left a hero, a government agent, and came home a dropout. Why, we don’t know. That’s the mystery I’m trying to unravel. I thought we had more time until that bomb went off.”

“What bomb?” Dunnigan looked alarmed.

“Watch the news tonight, Mr. Dunnigan. But don’t worry, we’re well past them. Don’t call the press and they won’t call you. But let’s not linger, shall we? What if reporters find the same paper trail I did and trace Rominy up here? Or cops do? Or Nazis?”

“Exactly.” Now the banker was brisk. “Let’s get the pretty lady on her way.” He took the folders and began spreading papers out on the table as if dealing cards, suddenly in a hurry to have them gone. “Here are the genealogical tables Mr. Barrow assembled, birth certificates, address reports, news clippings, and the DNA testing documentation. It’s been quite an exercise in investigation, because Benjamin Hood was apparently quite the recluse. We never saw him; he was a complete hermit. He was represented by a woman; possibly your great-grandmother. But we have the will, the bank records, and information on the Cascade River property.” He glanced at Rominy. “Are you a fan of compound interest, Ms. Hood?”

“Of what?”

“The way savings can accumulate over time. Mr. Hood left a relatively modest savings account here when he died in 1944 and it by rights now belongs to you. It was a little over $8,000. Which has become with compounding interest…”-he searched a table of figures-“a healthy $161,172, after deductions for the safety deposit box, taxes on the Cascade River property, and our administrative fees. Would you like a cashier’s check? We’d like to clear out the account.”

She was stunned. First her car gone, now this? Was she on drugs? She looked at Barrow.

“Now do you understand why this is important?” he asked. “And this is just the tip of the iceberg.” He turned to Dunnigan. “We may need travel money. I suggest thirty thousand dollars in cash and a check for the rest.”

“That’s quite a lot of cash to carry around,” the banker cautioned.

“Not for long. She’ll be careful.”

“I’m afraid the young lady is going to have to speak for herself.”

Rominy was dazed. “Thirty thousand?” Her annual salary wasn’t much more.

“Just for a day or two until we figure out if we need to go to Tibet,” Jake said.

“Tibet!”

“Hang with me just a little longer, Rominy. It will make sense.”

“Right.” She threw up her hands. “In twenties, please.” Wasn’t that how they did it in the movies? It didn’t seem like real money. “And you can transfer the balance to my account in Seattle.” Her voice sounded small even to her. But she wasn’t taking a check Barrow or neo-Nazis could run off with.

“I think we may have difficulty accumulating that many twenties in this branch. Now if you could give us a day or two…”

“Whatever bills you have, Mr. Dunnigan,” Jake said. “As much as you can spare. We’re a little pressed for time, remember?” He gestured toward the door. “Don’t want anyone following us here.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Sign these forms, and I’ll start the arrangements.”

Hand shaking at the thought of so much money, Rominy signed everything put before her. Then the bank vice president gave her a small brass key. “This is yours for the safety deposit box, should you decide to keep it. I trust you want to look inside?”

She still had a headache, but what answer could she give?

“Yes. Let’s see what all this fuss is about.”