Читать книгу Hell's Roundabout - Benjamin Vance - Страница 9

Monday morning was slow. Army served two subpoenas and gave one warning ticket the entire morning. Most of his morning was spent as a traffic slowing dummy on highway 395 south. He had time to make written and mental notes though. He wondered at the speed and momentum of things getting transported through the Earth or air and what velocity it would take to completely explode a car or bury tons of mining equipment in bedrock. Of course, given the size of our Earth and its strange propensities, moving 200 tons of mining equipment in the blink of an eye would be less than swatting a gnat. Tornados are made from air and they can dismantle a semi- tractor like it was opened with a can opener.

Early evening found Army and Charley in the library; Charley doing his homework and Army researching accidents. He started with newspaper articles on the library computer retrieval system and quickly found it was incomplete or improperly compiled. He asked about actual articles and realized he would never find what he was looking for if he couldn’t be more focused in his research. Just as he was medulla-deep in thought again, his cell vibrated. It was a New York area code and his hopes were confirmed after he softly said, “Hello”.

“Hi Army it’s Chiara. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Sorry I didn’t call you yesterday, but I was gone all day.”

“No problem Chiara, It’s good to hear your voice.” He grinned as he asked, “How’s the weather?”

She caught on and said, “Sunny and warm … at least for here. How is it in sunny California?”

“Oh it’s a little cool, but otherwise sunny for here too.”

He heard her giggle a little and it sounded good for some reason. She got to the point quickly and said, “Since we talked to Mr. Anderson, several people have approached me at the craft shop and let me know there’s always been a mystery associated with the mine. One very old lady told me people have disappeared from around the mine for ages. She even heard about a wagon losing all its metal parts in a freak storm. She said the wagon was torn to pieces and only the wood remained. They never found the teamster or two of the horses either. She said it was like something just cut four horses loose and let them roam. She gave me three instances other than that one. She claimed people just didn’t want to know about it and they call Mr. Anderson senile because he tells everyone.”

Army responded, “Chiara, maybe he tells those stories to help him justify his job or something. I can understand that an old caretaker would get caught up in those tales and perhaps justify his disappearance if he came up missing one day, I don’t know.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that Mr. Anderson may not be as crazy as people would like us to believe. Maybe people just don’t want to accept that stuff themselves, or don’t want to believe it could happen to them. That’s probably why very few locals go to the place. Superstition is a powerful thing.”

“Funny, I just had that discussion with my boss on Saturday. We found some really strange things on my end of the puzzle and he basically asked me to keep it quiet; in a good way though. He’s had his suspicions for years, but was hesitant to say anything for fear of being ridiculed. He’s the Sheriff of the county and this story is becoming tantamount to an alien abduction story, so I can see his point.”

They talked about what Army and the crew found on Saturday and for some reason he left out the part about Lucy and Sonora going. He told her about the burned hand and about the tires still in the face of the cliff and he heard her sniff. Realizing she almost knew for certain the hand belonged to a friend of hers he said, “Chiara we may be dealing with a time aspect here too. The Sheriff told me a huge pile of mining equipment buried itself in the road near our subject hill, but he said it happened 17 years ago. The mining equipment from your mine disappeared what, about 50 or 60 years ago? So, the car and body parts may not be Mrs. Peterson at all. It may be someone from another part of the state or another time.”

“Fat chance, but thanks for telling me that anyway. I just know she’s gone Army, I feel it. I get those feelings sometimes; always have; scares me some too. Maybe I spend too much time in my own company. Listen, I’ve bored you enough, just thought I’d tell you the rumors out here. Keep warm and remember all us poor New Yorkers back here in the cold.”

“I’ll only remember one New Yorker Chiara, and if you find out anything else, please call. I’m doing research right now in the library. Bye, and thanks again for calling.”

He hoped the comment about remembering only her wouldn’t put her off; for some reason he didn’t want to get on her bad side. He could actually imagine her face while she was talking to him. He thought that was a little strange, but he didn’t think it strange that a car could travel through solid rock in the blink of an eye? He just shook his head at his own wacky reasoning.

His research at the library was getting him nowhere so he resolved to investigate more thoughtfully. The next day he called the local newspaper and asked someone in the editor’s office if they had a research department. Of course they did and it was all computerized and he was put on a list for access. When he told the lady he was from the Sheriff’s office she told him to come in anytime in uniform and he’d get access. The next evening he did just that and settled behind one of three 72-inch screens and typed in various prompts until he got the right response. He thought it odd how topical headings and prompts varied from archive to archive.

He read three articles about accidents at the intersection of County Road 19 and State Highway 133. Two of them were common “minor injuries received” accidents, but one was a multiple death accident involving two cars. One car and its occupants were burned beyond recognition. The accident occurred prior to the era of DNA analysis, so the identity of the occupants was based on dental records from retrieved jawbones and a surviving license plate. The officer in charge at the scene told the reporter that the weather was a factor in the accident. Army wrote down the time and date so he could check weather data and Sheriff’s reports.

Charley called his father and asked if they were going to eat supper. He looked at his watch and found it was 8:30 p.m. He apologized to Charley and left immediately thanking the archivist profusely. It had taken two and one half hours to retrieve and thoroughly read three accident reports, and he had thirty more years to cover. It looked like some more weekend work was definitely in store.

When Larry asked Army if he and Charley wanted to go fishing Saturday he knew he dare not decline lest someone find out about his research project and pass it to Larry. Larry had a small Boston Whaler which Army loved, but was not about to replicate on his own dime. Knowing how much Charley liked to go out with him and especially talk to Marlene, who went on several of Larry’s boat trips, as long as someone else went along, Army accepted.

They had a fun trip, and finished at noon with a live well full of seven big Crappie and two trout. Of course Larry got to keep the trout, because although he’d not caught a single one, Army couldn’t stand his whining when he couldn’t keep some. Since Marlene caught a nice one too Army was glad to be fair and let Larry do all the cleaning to impress Marlene. Army and Charley got home about 2:00 p.m., thankfully without any fish to freeze, and Army explained to his son that he had some research to do at the newspaper. He invited Charley to go if he wanted, but based on the one late research night during the past week, Charley opted out and stayed home.

Army arrived at the archives about 3:00 p.m., and started where he’d left off. A bored young female archivist came over to ask if he needed any help. Initially, he thanked her and told her no; reconsidered later and asked her if she could take some dates and look for accidents with fatalities west of town. She turned out to be a genuine help. Being intimately familiar with the archives, she found ten accidents in about 90 minutes. He couldn’t believe it. She even found the one that resulted in the roundabout being constructed. He was ever grateful, especially after she printed the articles for him to take home and read at his leisure. He didn’t realize he could print them, such was his lack of computer acumen.

After returning home, preparing a meal for two and cleaning up afterward, he spread out his cache of pages over the kitchen table and proceeded to staple related ones together. He attracted the attention of Charley, who asked if the papers were about accidents. Of course he knew, but Army swore him to secrecy and asked Charley if he would write down the date, day of the week, and any reference to weather on the days of the accidents.

Charley asked, “Dad, do you want me to write down what the weather was like on those days too?”

Army stopped what he was doing, looked at Charley and asked, “Can you do that?”

“Sure, Lucy showed me a site where we can find the exact weather on any day in history; hopefully. I guess you can trust it before computers came out. It’s put out by the weather service and we used it in a report in school, so … .”

“Super, Charley, go ahead and find the weather data and write it in the margins. You start first and give me one to read after you finish. Just write down whether it was raining, stormy, snowing, or sunny, you know. I’ll read one first to get all the details, but you take the rest and go to it Son.

Charley’s research took about 40 minutes, and then Army asked him to write down the months of the year and put a dot for each accident beside the month it happened. It didn’t take long and when he finished, there were five dots beside December, three at November and two at January. That seemed odd, because most severe storms occurred in the summer.

After some more machinations they decided to remove one of the December accidents because the fatality was due to a heart attack. Otherwise, they all fit the pattern of the one that occurred two weeks earlier; most of at least one vehicle was all but exploded and all passengers in at least one vehicle were mutilated beyond recognition. The only hiccup in their pattern was that they’d not all happened at the same place. One had occurred on county road 19, or Cabin Road as it was called unofficially, almost a quarter mile north of the horrendous accident of two weeks earlier. Although most of the accounts did specifically state the closest mile marker to which the accident occurred, the reports still allowed at least a half mile error in one or both directions.

Army and Charley gathered some valuable, enlightening and frightening data, but he didn’t know what to do with it. If something in the hill or the mountain behind it was causing the accidents, what was it? He thought of everything his imagination and experience would allow; geologic anomalies, time travel, magnetic forces, tornadoes, and even severe micro bursts of weather. He even entertained out-of-control military experiments from Area 51 or some other secret installation. However, he couldn’t imagine anything on our Earth allowing solid objects to be flung through solid rock.

If he could just determine what minerals were in the mountains around town, he might be able to draw some conclusions or at least develop some theories. For that information he would go to the bureau of mines. However, that would take at least a day off, so he put Charley onto it to check if the information was on line. That pretty much took up the whole day Saturday.

Sunday was sunny and beautiful and for some reason he woke up thinking of Chiara. He was fixing breakfast when his cell phone rattled. It was Les Gilbert and he said the Sheriff couldn’t be reached and he didn’t like Larry, so he called Army to let him know he’d faxed a DNA report to the Sheriff’s office. It looked like one could be about 85% certain that some of the body parts found were those of Mrs. Lois Peterson. A chill went up Army’s spine.

Up to that time he’d just been presuming. After the Coroner’s call, Army considered it a fact; something terrible had spread the body of Mrs. Lois Peterson from New York to California, probably at the speed of light, and it was no wonder her body and car came apart. His mind pondered how much of her and her car remained in the rock of that dark, clay-colored cliff. Still, it didn’t explain the destruction of the Davis’ and their vehicle. They’d been driving in California … or had they?

He knew what he had to do, so he called Chiara and left a message. He didn’t have to wait long though. He and Charley were cleaning up breakfast dishes when she called. As soon as he said hello, Chiara said, “The DNA says it was Lois, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, Chiara it’s about 85% certain, I guess it’s based on her brother’s and his son’s DNA. I don’t know how they do that, but I bet it’s almost a 100% certainty based on what we saw and Lois’ age. I’m sorry; I know you thought the world of her. Is there anything I can do?”

He heard Chiara try to choke back the tears, but it quickly evolved into a sob and an unsuccessful attempt to suppress it. He softly told her he was sorry and that a report would be sent to the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office and the information would probably be formally delivered to Lois’ Nephew so he could order all the necessary death documents and arrange a funeral.

Between blowing her nose and gulping the sobs back, Chiara said, “We’ll have to arrange a memorial service at the church. Her nephew is unlikely to have one. He’s an agnostic, so he’s uncertain about what ‘God’ he should serve; he’s not a church kind of person in any case. We’ll make sure she has a beautiful service.” Then she broke down completely; sobbed goodbye and hung up. Army was left with a dead phone, his ears ringing and his pulse pumping. For some reason he wished he could hold her and tell her everything would be okay, even if he didn’t believe it completely.

He always attributed his paucity of geologic knowledge to the fact that almost every term for rock was so complicated as to stick on his tongue. He didn’t know, or care about, the difference between Igneous, Metamorphic or Sedimentary rock, especially if it came from the Cenozoic, Mesozoic and Paleozoic ages which he could never keep track of in his head and really had no reason to … until the accident. He needed to find someone with an open mind and lots of knowledge on the subject, perhaps an associate geo-whatever professor at U.C. Davis. He would attempt to reach someone the following day. Meanwhile he had a son who needed attention and he intended to give it.

After supper, he and Charley were watching some unreal, reality show they could both make fun of, when his cell phone rattled. Before he answered he thought he needed to change the ringtone to something less nerve-wracking. He noticed the New York area code and his heart leapt a second before he answered on the third ring. He said hello and thought for a second no one was there; then a soft, tentative whisper of a voice, “Hi, Army, I’m sorry I hung up on you today, but I just couldn’t talk; it was too much for me. I’m kind of over it now though and wanted to apologize and say thank you. I wish you could be at Lois’ memorial service. I talked to Pastor Shells and told him about her death and he agreed to have a memorial Friday, so we’re going ahead with it before the official notice. We’ll probably get the notice this week sometime anyway.”

“Yeah you probably will. I’ll make sure the Sheriff knows and he’s a pretty sensitive guy, so … .”

“Well, I’ll get out of your hair, I just wanted to say thanks again and apologize.”

“Don’t go Chiara, talk some more. I enjoy hearing your voice.” He didn’t know where the hell that came from, but Charley looked at him strangely as Army got off the couch and went into his own bedroom, leaving the door open to listen for his son.

“Thanks Army, I need to talk to someone right now, I think.”

They talked about her life and her one real love; pottery. She asked about his life, but he was superficial and brief. He wanted to learn more about her; wanted her to talk. She talked about her college years, employment years, engagement years, and no marriage years. She came right out and told him she was 30 years old. She could laugh at herself, and he sensed a couple of times she’d forgotten about Lois for the moment. He sought not to bring her back to the subject with every verbal maneuver possible. Then she asked about Charley. He was okay with the conversation revolving around his son, because he couldn’t have been prouder of him.

He told her about Charley’s love of fishing, his quick wit and intellect and he almost told her about Charley helping with the wreck history. He found himself laughing at her wit and uncompromising frankness when it came to her life’s foibles. They talked and talked and Army didn’t want to quit until he looked at his alarm clock. Then he apologized to her for keeping her on the phone so long with the time difference being severe. They reluctantly hung up and Army went into the living room, to find Charley fast asleep on the couch. He took off his shoes and socks; carried him into the bedroom where he removed Charley’s pants and snuggled him down into bed under quilts and comforters. He turned the light off and just stood there admiring his son and listening to the warm, welcomed echoes of Chiara’s bubbly laugh.