No deviations interrupted Regina Torrance’s daily routine.
She simply couldn’t allow it.
To permit any was to risk everything.
Regina had a strict mode of operation that was so rigid, so unyielding, that any, even the slightest change, could send her back to bed for a week. She lived with her wife, Amy, in a leaky cabin with an outdoor shower and an outhouse in the hills above Snow Creek. Completely self-reliant. They raised vegetables. Trapped squirrels for meat. Despite the fact that she had only one eye, Regina was an expert with a rifle.
Doves were lean, but tasty. Squirrels were oily and frequently on the chewy side. For protein, the couple relied mostly on nuts, eggs, and goat cheese from their trio of Nubians. Each had a name, though she never said them aloud.
Amy was on the sofa. She had been ill for quite some time. Her hair was long and braided, a pretty chestnut swag that ran over the pillow like a northern Pacific rattlesnake. She wore a blue nightgown trimmed with white piping. Both were convinced it was her best color, and it rotated frequently in and out of her wardrobe. She lay still while a conversation passed between them on a familiar loop.
“Brought coffee for you.”
“Boy goat is rangy.”
“Broke a jar of tomatoes.”
“Darn it all! I’m feeling a change in the weather.”
“You look like you’re feeling it too.”
Regina touched Amy’s cheek and then bent down to kiss her. Like Regina, Amy was lean, sinewy. Her shoulders were cabinet knobs and her legs were a web of veins and scars. Amy’s eyes caught the light streaming in between a narrow gap in the curtains at the window.
“Beautiful morning!”
“Indeed! Going for a walk now. Wish you were feeling up to it.”
“Next time! Promise.”
Regina pulled the curtains tight and went outside.
The ground around the barn was spongey from a nighttime rain, and the clouds dragged over the top of the trees, holding them up like circus tent poles. Regina fed the animals and started her walk, first along a narrow path that had once been a driveway. It had been at least a decade since cars had access to the ramshackle home the women shared. That was fine. No one lives in the hills above Snow Creek if they don’t want to be alone. It’s all about being isolated. It’s solitary, not solidarity. People there mind their own business.
When Regina and Amy first fell in love, they just wanted to live and love. It was about being with each other. No constant avoidance of stares if they should hold hands. They didn’t join in the Pride movement, because their love was about them, not about being part of a group.
Snow Creek wasn’t far from Seattle, but it took a ferry ride to get there. And don’t even think of finding their place without detailed directions. That’s the way they liked it. Sure, in the beginning, the pair made frequent trips back to the city. In time, however, they just stopped returning to their old home.
Their abdication of city life was complete.
They said their wedding vows under a mammoth cedar that they eventually cut down for the house they built. Friends still came over at that time, though not many. Some came with skills to help with the farm, others to remind them that they were giving up the city and all that Snow Creek had to offer for a drippy forest and a meandering creek.
“We like the drippy forest,” Amy told one of the doubters.
“Creek’s not too bad, either,” chimed Regina.
Their friends stopped coming after a couple of years, but the women didn’t mind. Especially Regina. She’d been the one to first broach the subject about living off in the wilds, and Amy considered it merely an adventure. Something they’d do only for awhile.
Awhile became forever.
As Regina continued her walk along the creek and then down through the woods, she paused for a beat. She thought she’d heard something. It was a familiar noise, but not one she’d heard in quite some time. It was the sound of traffic.
Two cars.
By Snow Creek standards it was beyond a traffic jam. Gridlock, really. Completely annoying too.
Regina looked up toward the noise, remembering that there had been a logging road in that vicinity at one time. She wondered if the loggers were scouting the area for another big green bite out of the hillside.
Please no.
She stood still. Like a deer. Her eyes scanning through a veil of evergreens. The wind picked up and the fringe of forest cover parted a little, though not enough to afford a better view. She moved a few steps closer.
Arguing.
What are they saying?
She couldn’t quite hear, yet fear gripped her anyway. Something bad. Something terrible was happening.
What are they fighting about?
Next, there was the sound of a car door slamming, then another, and branches snapping and, finally, a loud whoosh as something rolled from the road down into the ravine.
A beat later, flames shot upward into the soggy sky.
Adrenalin surged through Regina’s thin frame, jolting her, playing on her bones like some kind of macabre xylophone. She put her hand to her lips as though she needed to stifle a scream.
Don’t want them to know I’m here!
Regina wasn’t a screamer. Amy was.
Then the fireball gave way to a column of black smoke rising above the treetops. It was heavy, oily and very scary. It took her breath away.
I need to get out of here. Wait until I tell Amy. Oh God. She probably won’t even believe me.
Regina turned to leave and a voice called out from the logging road above.
“Someone’s down there.”
Another person called out.
“Shit no!”
“I saw something move,” said the first one.
“You’re crazy. You saw a deer.”
“No, it was more than that.”
“A bear. A cougar, then.”
Regina didn’t move. She wore a dark shirt and khakis that she rolled up above her dark blue Crocs. She didn’t know why for certain, but she was terrified.
Stay still. Still will make it go away. Make them go away.
She wondered if the animals she’d trapped felt the same way when a snare caught their little legs.
She turned and took in a big puff of air and ran as fast as she could. She never looked back. Not even when she lost a Croc to a root over the trail. She was the rabbit that got away, though she still wasn’t sure what she was running from. She carried that puff of air in her lungs, forgetting to exhale until nearly passing out. When she returned home, she noticed that her bare foot was bleeding. She’d cut it somehow. Sweat had drenched her back, leaving a racing stripe from her neck to her waist. She removed her clothes on the front porch, then let the water of the outdoor shower run over her. It was cold, spiking her body, mixing with her tears.
She hadn’t cried in a long time.
There hadn’t been any reason to.
Regina thought she heard Amy call out. She turned the faucet from her face, twisted off the water and retrieved a stiff, formerly white towel from a peg, wrapped it around her and went inside. She poked her head into the living room. Amy was still asleep. She didn’t like to be wakened. She needed her sleep. Sleep would return her to her old self.
She’d tell her everything tomorrow.
She’d also go back and find out what had happened on what the couple had long believed was an abandoned road.
The next day, despite the excitement, as she now called it, Regina went about everything as she did every single day. No deviation whatsoever. She checked the stove and added an alder log because a good one could last all day. She went into the yard, down a slight incline, to the outhouse and relieved herself. She made a pot of coffee on the woodstove. Dressed. Returned outside and fed the animals. The female goat needed milking, so she did that too.
Back inside she told Amy everything and implored her to stay put.
“I can handle this. Don’t give it a second thought. Something bad went on out there, but nothing happened to us. We’re fine. We’re good. Do not worry.”
Amy nodded.
Regina kissed Amy and went for her long walk, her heart beating harder the closer she got to the place where everything had happened. She kept her eyes peeled for her missing Croc, though it was nowhere to be found.
That’s my last pair. Maybe I can use Amy’s old pair. Purple’s good.
The forest was quiet, and the air had thickened. The change in weather had come. Early summer rains had finally given way to the warmth of high summer. Regina’s garden had a chance now. The growing season in western Washington is somewhat short and unpredictable. Last year Regina and Amy had a bumper crop of ripe tomatoes. The year before, nothing but a bounty of the fried green variety.
She stood still and listened. Nothing. Then she started to climb up to the road, her eyes searching for the spot where she’d heard the couple arguing, where she heard the car and saw the channel of smoke filtered through the trees.
Tires had cut ribbons of mud, and footprints were scattered about like fallen leaves. She rested a moment, taking it all in, before making her way to the obvious location where the crash and fire had occurred. Tracks led to the edge of the rutted road.
She stood there looking down into a ravine, and once more filled her lungs out of fear.
A body, blackened and motionless, lay splayed out in the bushes.
Oh no. Oh God, no. This is horrible. Someone will come.
It took only a moment before she went into action. Regina concocted a plan to make sure that no one could find the burned-out truck or where it left the road on its way to oblivion. It would be no easy task. Concealment is hard work. She knew that from experience. She and Amy didn’t want visitors. They just wanted to be left alone. Live their lives without the intrusion of the outside world.
How to do this? How to stay safe? Keep people away?
The slash pile left by the loggers beckoned her.
Erase.
She selected a skeleton-like fir tree branch from the slash. She surveyed the scene one more time, scanning for every telltale sign that someone had been there. Walking backwards from the furthest edge of all indicators, she began to sweep away the muddy tire tracks. Methodically. Forcefully. It took some doing, but she worked her way to the edge of the logging road where the truck had plummeted downward. Back and forth, the fir branch swished away everything. It was sandpaper. It was a cleaning cloth. A vanishing act.
She stopped and regarded her handiwork. It wasn’t perfect. Regina was fine with that. Nature isn’t perfect, after all.
Brushing her forearm against her sweaty brow, she looked one last time, before disappearing down the trail, still walking backwards and adjusting forest deadfall to vanquish her own tracks.
A hundred yards in, she turned around and started for home. Everything would be fine.
And indeed, it was.
That night Amy returned to their bed.
“I was so worried.”
“Me too.”
“Are we going to be all right, Regina?”
“Yes, love.”
“No one will take me away.”
“Never.”
“Are you sure they won’t come back?”
“No. I have a plan though. At least I think I do. I have to do something. I’ll go back for the body and get rid of it once and for all.”
“Too risky.”
“Not now, Amy. Later. I’ll wait awhile. When I’m sure that no one is coming back. When no one is looking for him.”
Amy snuggled against Regina’s breasts, and Regina stroked her long, shiny braid. She pulled the faded blue eiderdown to cover their shoulders. In that moment, all seemed perfect. Like nothing bad had ever happened. Or ever could. Safe and sound. Secure. Regina’s hands traveled downward, pressing so lightly, so tenderly against her wife’s body.
Regina breathed in Amy’s sweet scent.
“I love you, Amy. Stay right here.”
She kissed her tenderly.
“You are everything to me and you will always be my love.”
“I love you, Regina.”
“Always and forever.”
I know it is only tomato soup left at the bottom of the cup from yesterday’s rushed attempt at lunch. I know that. I know blood. And yet it’s like a little trick to me, maybe tic is a better word. Something, among many, that I can’t shake. I have seen so much blood. In my life. At my job, of course. As I sit at my desk at Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, with posters of the magnificent Olympic Range looming over me, I think of the things that spark a memory of blood. A child’s finger painting pasted proudly in the window of her classroom. The smear of brick red lipstick on the collar of Sheriff’s starched, white shirt. The explosion of juice left by falling cherries on the sidewalk in front of my home in Port Townsend, Washington.
Sometimes I wish I had been born colorblind.
Or I came from a place where the color red was meaningless. Innocuous. Just another color. Like the blue of the Pacific or the green of the firs and spruce trees that stumble down the snowy Olympic Mountains to the foothills, and finally, the meadows below.
Blood oxidizes and dries to a nice coppery brown. That’s good. Dry blood doesn’t cause me to catch my breath. Just fresh blood. Only cherry. Only scarlet.
The light on my desk phone flashes.
Red again.
I pick up.
“Detective Carpenter,” I answer.
“My sister is missing,” a woman says, pausing as if that should be enough information to catch my interest. In fact, it is. My cases of late have been property crimes, burglary mostly, and a missing dog.
That’s right. A dog.
The woman’s voice is hesitant, and I can immediately tell that it took courage to call. Not because she’s afraid of dialing the number, but because in doing so she’s fearful of what she’ll find.
What I might find.
“I’ll need to know more,” I say. “Ms.?”
Her words begin to tumble through the phone. “Turner. Ruth Turner. My sister Ida—Ida Wheaton—hasn’t responded to anyone in the family for weeks, maybe a month. It isn’t like her. Not at all.”
I wonder how close Ruth could be to her sister if she’s not sure when anyone has heard from her.
“I’ll need more details,” I tell her.
Hesitancy fills the line. “Of course,” she finally answers. “I’m outside in your parking lot. Can I come in and talk to you?”
“I’ll meet you at the front desk.”
I hang up and catch my reflection on the surface of my now very cold coffee. My hair is dark and clipped back at the nape of my neck. I wear no makeup other than a single application of mascara and a touch of blush. My lip color is courtesy of Chapstick, owing more to the breezy weather off the water than a need for lip coloring. I know I could do more with myself, but doing more only attracts more attention from men. I don’t want that right now. I doubt I ever will. I get up, bumping my desk, and the reflection disappears into a succession of ripples. My mother used to say I was beautiful. And even though that was a long time ago, and her word means very little, I know I’m many things. That might even be one of them.
I’m a little flummoxed as I make my way to reception. Outside in the parking lot? Who does that? And why didn’t she just come inside?
Ruth Turner stands awkwardly next to the desk. She’s lean, tall, gangly and hunches over to sign her name on the register. Not more than mid-fifties, her hair is gray and white and long, swirling into a bun that resembles the wasp nest that hangs over my garage. She’s wearing a long dark dress over a white cotton blouse. Her shoes are black Oxfords, shiny on top yet scuffed in the places where her foot rested as she drove from wherever she came from. She wears no makeup, save for a light touch of mascara on her lashes. Despite her austere appearance, when she turns to greet me her eyes are warm and full of emotion. They radiate a combination of hope and worry.
I reach to take her hand. I feel a slight tremble in my gentle grasp.
“Detective Carpenter,” she says, her eyes now puddling, “thank you for seeing me.”
I don’t like tears. My own or anyone’s. I give her a reassuring smile and move quickly to defuse her emotion. Tears get in the way of truth sometimes. I know that from personal experience.
“Come back here with me, Ms. Turner,” I say. “Let’s see what we can do.”
“Call me Ruth.”
I nod and lead her to a room that we use mostly to interview children. The furniture is colorful, and its walls are adorned with pleasant posters of breeching orcas and lighthouses at sunset. It’s a far cry from the foreboding space of the interview room next door. That one is all white and gray with a decidedly claustrophobic milieu, which is in line with its purpose.
Make the subject uncomfortable.
Help them focus.
Make them want to get the hell out of there.
In other words, get them to spill their guts.
I sit across from Ruth and I take in everything I can about her. Her body language. Her ability to look me in the eyes. Her tics; if she has any. She does. She blinks harder than necessary after each gasp of her story. I can’t tell if she’s trying to wring out more tears or if that’s just how she is.
She tells me Ida, and her husband, Merritt Wheaton, live in the hills above Snow Creek.
It’s an area with a bit of a reputation.
“Off the grid?” I ask.
“Right,” she answers. “It’s something that Merritt wanted to do. Ida didn’t mind. We come from kind of a conservative background. Raised in Utah and Idaho. Dad hand-picked Merritt for Ida.”
I bristle inside at “hand-picked,” but I don’t let on.
“You said on the phone that you weren’t sure when the last time was that anyone had heard from your sister. Yet now you are concerned about her welfare? Did something happen?”
Ruth looks away and blinks hard. “No. Not really.”
“Not really,” I repeat.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Last time I talked to her she was a little off.”
“How so?”
She hesitates before answering. “She disrespected her husband for the way he disciplined the kids.”
Up till then, Ruth hadn’t mentioned any children. She sees the look on my face before I even ask her about them.
“Sarah is almost seventeen and Joshua is nineteen. You know teenagers can be a handful no matter how you raise them. It takes a firm hand to make sure they stay on the straight and narrow.”
I asked for a definition of “firm hand.”
She suddenly seems wary and pulls her arms tightly against her body. A defensive move.
“You probably wouldn’t approve,” she tells me, “but from where we come from, Detective, it has served us well. Our children are taught that there are consequences for misbehavior. Rules provide the structure for a holy life.”
“What kind of discipline?”
“The usual,” she says. “Spankings when small. That kind of thing. Withholding privileges when older. Extra chores.” Ruth fidgets with her wallet. I notice that she carries no purse. She takes in more air and considers what to say. I give her the space, the time to continue. “We are Christian. Good people. We’re not a part of some fundamentalist group that lives in a commune.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” I say, though I did. “I was just thinking about the children. Wondering if you knew what school they attended. It might be the best place to start. We can do that with a phone call.”
She looks at me right in the eye. “There is no school, except what Ida teaches. Her kids, like mine, and like my sister and me before them, are homeschooled.”
Of course.
“All right,” I tell her, getting up, “I’ll drive out to Snow Creek for a welfare check.. . .
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