Deceit

FORTY-SEVEN

I’ve forgotten to mention something.

I told you right at the start. I’m a little shaky on the time line-on specificity. What happened when. When what became known or just suspected.

I called that laboratory-Dearborne Labs. In Flint, Michigan.

Remember?

That letter from Dearborne Labs in Wren’s cabin. To Mr. Wren: Preliminary results of your specimens have confirmed your concerns. Please see attached lab workup.

But the attached workup wasn’t attached.

So I called them.

I wanted to know if Wren’s medical problem had anything to do with him fleeing town.

“Hello,” said a young-sounding woman’s voice.

“Hello,” I said. “Hello, this is John Wren. I sent you some specimens a while ago and I never got the results back. Naturally I’m concerned about my health and would like to get an answer one way or another.”

“Your health?”

“Yes. You tested some specimens and I’m waiting for the results.”

“Right. You mentioned your health?”

“That’s right.”

Silence.

“We test soil specimens here, Mr. Wren.”

“Soil specimens.” I echoed stupidly. “Right. That’s why I’m concerned. Because I haven’t been feeling good and I thought there might be something in the soil.”

She asked my name again; she told me to hold. Then she came back on the phone and told me the results had been sent to me more than three years ago. Why was I calling now?

“I forgot,” I said.

As it turned out, there was something in the soil.

“You were right,” she said.

“Okay. Great. Remind me what I was right about.”

“It’s hot.”

“Hot? What do you mean?”

“You might want to get yourself a Geiger counter, Mr. Wren. The soil you sent us-it’s radioactive. Can I ask where you got it from?”

She could ask, but I didn’t have to answer.

I hung up.

I was still concerned about Wren’s health.

Back in Wren’s cabin, when he’d called me from Fishbein.

When I attempted to take the edge off and chat about fishing rods.

I told you. I’d done a story on a professional fishing contest up in Vermont. I’d sat around with men whose arms resembled twisted cord, who liked kicking back at night sucking on filterless Camels and swapping fish stories.

I fit right in.

I took notes for the article. I picked things up.

That’s what journalists do. We learn a little about everything, just enough to be wrong.

The men talked about their rods as if they were old girlfriends. Debating the merits of one over another with a nostalgic and loving eye.

I asked Wren about the rods leaning up against his wall. What kind they were.

He’d hesitated and said: trout rods.

There are all kinds of fishing rods.

Freshwater and saltwater, fiberglass and graphite, casting and fly.

There are twelve-foot rods, four-foot rods, and every size in between.

There aren’t any trout rods. Or flounder, tuna, or swordfish rods, either. That’s not how fishing rods are categorized-by the fish. Anyone who took fishing seriously, who’d retired to a deserted fishing camp to spend his days pulling lake trout of the water, would’ve known that.

One other thing.

Everyone has cleared out. I used to see them in the parking lot when I peered out the windows. Salesmen, RV-ers, families caught between point A and point B, even the semipermanent residents like myself who took their motel rooms by the week.

No more.

The motel’s deserted. It’s down to me.

It’s what you do before a siege.

You clear the area.

You isolate the target before you go in.