Back to Lazarus (Sydney Brennan) Page 5

  I grinned and he went on.

  “Hell, yeah, both shoes drop-kicked their asses at the same time. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, companies started going belly up or moving out of state. But people didn’t notice all at once. See, they were suddenly preoccupied with their parents and spouses and children getting sick and dying. Turns out for Lazarus, the unusually low unemployment rate went hand-in-hand with an unusually high mortality rate, just on a slightly delayed timetable.”

  Ralph relaxed back into his chair and took a sip from the glass at his elbow. “It was a hell of a thing. I went up there for a while, trying to help collect the stories so somebody could file suit—the kinda thing you and I did in Beaufort—and I’ve never seen anything like it. Just about the whole damn town is a Superfund site now, full of PCBs and mercury and lead and—oh, wait. I forgot. There is no Superfund ‘fund’ anymore, so that designation isn’t worth the triplicate paper it’s filed on.“

  Uh-oh. I knew if he got going on one of his rants I’d be lucky to get out by midnight, and I’d have to be even luckier for Diane to let me in the house next time. “But you digress….”

  “Digression is an old man’s prerogative.”

  “You’re not really an old man.”

  He took the hint, and I asked him what he knew about Isaac’s attorney, Sam Norton.

  “Screaming Sammy? He was a piece of work. They don’t make ‘em like him anymore, thank God.”

  “Was—past tense?”

  “Yeah, Sammy died years ago. When would this have been?”

  “The murder was October of ’80, so we’re looking at 1981.”

  “He was already in his declining years by then. I think he died in 1983. Screaming Sammy was known for his cross-exams and his closing arguments. He was absolutely merciless with cops and snitches, not to mention State Attorneys. I swear to God, I saw him call out the prosecutor one time. It was a plea day—no jury. ‘Mr. Curtis,’ he said, ‘you have insulted me and you have insulted my client. How about you and I stop bothering the Court with this nonsense and take it outside?’” Ralph chuckled. “He was almost as bad in front of the jury, but he usually pulled it off with an air of righteous indignation.”

  “So he was a decent attorney?”

  “I’d have asked for him myself in his day, but I’d say by 1981 his day was long past. Find out if he had a second chair. If so, that’s who did all the work.”

  Ralph shook his head and laughed condescendingly. Or maybe it just sounded condescending to me. “Sydney, as usual, you sure know how to pick ‘em. Screaming Sammy, a Superfund site, a client who lies to you with a family who hates you—“

  “She hasn’t really lied to me.”

  “If that’s what you think, then you’re just lying to yourself.”

  “What is that, a koan? Thank you, Obi-Wan, for your astounding insight.” He’d touched a nerve, and I smiled to take the edge off my sarcasm.

  “You just watch yourself over there. The cops cleaned house a few years ago, as they do periodically, but there’s bound to be a few assholes left. Around the time of your murder, they ruled Stetler County like a cracker cartel. Anybody who didn’t go along ended up behind bars or wishing they could be so lucky. Don’t do anything stupid to piss them off.”

  “Come on, Ralph. You know me better than that.” As I left, he gave me a face that looked suspiciously like Diane’s “men are such dumbasses” expression. I chose to ignore it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I hate it when Ralph is right. Of course I’d said the same thing, had the same doubts about Noel’s candor, but to hear Ralph say it out loud… Yep, Noel and I were definitely having a talk.

  I spent the next day on the phone, starting with my buddy Tan-ya at WFC. She got back to me within half an hour about Isaac’s body.

  “Yes, ma’am, Mr. Thomas’s remains were released to a Mrs. Ida Pickett, who was identified as Mr. Thomas’s sister.”

  She insisted I call her Tanya but kept calling me “ma’am.” I was starting to understand Ralph’s ageist paranoia. There had been no autopsy prior to the body’s release. Tanya confirmed that Ida Pickett’s address was the same one on the visitation request, and was about to hang up when I remembered the other reason I called.

  “Oh, Tanya, one other thing. I noticed when I was going through Mr. Thomas’s records that he had a medical transfer not long before he died. The paperwork on the transport was there, but that was it. I didn’t see a referral or test results—I can’t even tell what tests were done.”

  “Mmm, that’s odd. We copied everything we had in our files and gave it to you. Was he sent to Latham?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t know how it happened or why, but they must have kept his medical records. Maybe Mr. Thomas was supposed to return for more tests or treatment, and they didn’t want to risk the records getting held up if they went back with him. It wouldn’t have been proper procedure, but unfortunately not everyone is as careful as we are about our records.”

  She’d been very good to me, so I bit my tongue on a sarcastic reply that was pure reflex. “I’m sure you’re right. Thanks again, Tanya.”

  That done, I stared at the phone for a while. I checked my email, then checked outside for the snail-mailman. I straightened my desk and washed my teacups. When I reached for the broom to sweep the front steps I decided enough was enough. I’d been putting off my last (and most important) task before seeing Noel this evening. Band-aid, I thought, picking up the phone and dialing the numbers so fast I had to redial. Besides, it couldn’t be as bad as Grandma Harrison.

  She answered on the third ring.

  “I’m calling for Ida Pickett.”

  “This is she.”

  “Ms. Pickett, my name is Sydney Brennan. I’m calling from Tallahassee. I’ll be traveling around Lazarus soon and I was wondering if I could come by and speak with you.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re selling anything.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And you just want to talk?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I reassured her.

  “You’re not a reporter, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m an investigator.”

  I could her sigh on the other end. “This is about Isaac, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  The seconds dragged by. Finally she spoke again. “Sydney, did you say?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sydney Brennan.”

  “Well, Sydney, when should I expect you?”

  She gave me her address and directions to her home from the interstate, and I told her I’d call when my plans were settled, but I hoped to see her by the end of the week. She hadn’t asked any questions, and that surprised me. Perhaps she was writing out a list and saving them all for when I showed up on her doorstop. Latham Correctional Institute, where Isaac had been transferred, was also on my road trip schedule. I called to let them know I’d be coming by soon with a release to pick up his records.

  Noel tapped on the screen door just as I was hanging up. The door was unlocked, as always, and she let herself in, peering around the door first, as if the screen were opaque. “Am I interrupting?”

  “No. Just planning a road trip.”

  “Really? For little old me?” Noel tried to deliver a coquettish drawl, but perfect diction clung to her speech tenaciously.

  “Yes, in fact, for little old you. Come on in. I have news.”

  I told her about the records from WFC, that they appeared incomplete but I was checking on the rest. “Your father went to Latham C.I. for something medical a couple of weeks before he died.”

  “What do you mean, something medical?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the information I’m hoping to pick up. It was a medical transfer for only one day. It could have been for tests or treatment. The records weren’t at WFC.”

  “Do you think it had something to do with his death?”

  “I don’t know. It could have. Considering the
proximity in time, we can’t rule it out.”

  “So he could have been diagnosed with some sort of terminal illness, or a debilitating disease.”

  “It’s possible.”

  Noel raised an eyebrow and creases appeared on her mouth. My unwillingness to commit was beginning to annoy her. She took a deep breath. “What else?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “What is it that you’re having such difficulty telling me?”

  “It’s pretty big.”

  “By your demeanor I’m certain it is, but I’m a grown woman, and so are you. Just cut the games and tell me.”

  It was my turn to take a deep breath. “Noel, your father was not an only child.” I paused to let this sink in. “He had a sister. Your aunt. She’s still alive. Her name is Ida Pickett, and she lives in Lazarus.”

  Noel stood up and walked out the door.

  At first I thought she’d left, but when I rose from my own chair I could see her silhouette through the screen door, settling down on the concrete front steps. I crossed to the fridge, retrieved a baggie of fresh cookies from home, and went out to join her.

  “Cookie?” I offered.

  She took one and broke off a piece, leaving chocolate marks on her index finger and thumb. “Mmm. Good. Peanut butter?”

  “Yep.” I broke off a piece of my own. “They’re no-bake.”

  “What do you mean no-bake? You have to bake cookies. If you don’t they’re just dough.”

  “Not these. You heat the gooey stuff on the stove, and then when you mix it with the oatmeal it cooks.”

  “Freaky.”

  “Magic.”

  We sat in silence through another cookie each, staring at the trees and buildings silhouetted against the orange dusky sky.

  “Sydney, I don’t know about this.”

  “They’re actually not that bad for you.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Noel was serious again. “It’s not going to get any better, or any easier, is it?”

  I wanted to tell her the truth, but my eyes were transfixed by a smear of chocolate on her full lower lip. It made her look so young, so vulnerable. It made me want to lie. I compromised.

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head at me, much the way Ralph had the night before. “You don’t know much, do you?”

  “Nope.” I licked my lips and ran my tongue across my sticky teeth, checking for obvious bits of oatmeal. “Noel, what was Hainey like?”

  She considered for a while, or maybe she was just trying to decide whether to answer. When she did, her voice was strong and neutral, the voice I was used to hearing her hide behind.

  “We lived on the outskirts of Hainey in an older house. It was gray or light blue, and it had a small, square front porch with white railing. Sometimes I'd do my homework there. The houses in that area weren't very close together, but I don't remember them having big yards either. You could walk to a couple of businesses—bars mostly, but maybe a church too."

  “Was it a big town?”

  “I don’t really have a sense of how many people lived there. I've never been good at estimating things, and I don’t think I saw much of Hainey as a kid. I can tell you that it was big enough to have strip malls and pawn shops, and small enough that at that time it still had vacant fields and mom-and-pop country stores as you left the center. When we lived there, the asphalt was just starting to win out over farmland. I think it was a sad time, a time of transition. Even as a child I could feel it, a kind of hopelessness that made people ugly."

  “I didn’t like it.” With that last bit, her eyes and voice lost the distance they always held when she described her childhood. Noel rose and stretched out the concrete kinks and numbness. “I’ll see you in a few days, Sydney.”

  “I want to go talk to her. Your aunt.”

  She stopped with her hand on her car door, then turned to face me. From where I sat, I couldn’t see the chocolate any more. “Then do it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ten miles after exiting I-10, I had yet to see a sign announcing my imminent arrival in Lazarus. In fact, I had yet to see much of anything. My jeans were sticking to my legs, and I needed to stretch. I’d had a long day of driving already, the boring kind that made me wish I was a dental hygienist or a cable guy (cable gal?).

  The pine corridors of the interstate, where a few trees effectively screen the clear-cut fields on either side, had given way to weeds on State Road 31. There were weeds in abandoned industrial parks, weeds in fields with lone rotting oak trunks and doorless barns of dishwater gray. Barbed-wire fence fragments curled at the edges of empty pastures, their years of rust the most vivid color in the slowly passing landscape.

  I never did see a sign for Lazarus, but eventually one-story buildings of corrugated metal and concrete block appeared, along with motor homes and simple brick apartment complexes. I turned left when I came to a convenience store with two gas pumps, as Ida Pickett had directed. The word “diesel” was painted in white stenciled garage sale letters on one pump. The other pump appeared unlabeled and, looking at my half-empty fuel gauge, I was glad I was driving a rental car today. I try to be careful what I feed my own dear Cecil.

  Maple Street had a few trees but none that looked like maples to my untrained eye. The houses were modest, almost uniformly painted white, with neat front porches and browning but appropriately cropped lawns. I thought I’d made a wrong turn when the street dead-ended at a twelve-foot high chain-link fence. Then I realized the street hadn’t dead-ended, but split so its lanes wrapped around the obstruction. A large sign on the chained gate had a “Warning” in red capital letters, followed by an alphabet soup of government agencies and numbers. It wasn’t until I had nearly passed the restricted area that I noticed the empty monkey bars and riderless swings swaying in the breeze.

  Having just missed 915 Maple, I pulled the rental to the curb to walk back. I’d occasionally had glimpses of figures behind curtains and screen doors, but at 917 Maple I had my first confirmed human sighting since leaving the interstate. The man’s hair was fully gray, but the freckle-like moles spattered across his dark cheeks gave him a boyish appearance. He poured water from a gallon jug into a watering can, then walked to some soil-filled buckets and began watering the plants inside. Looked like mustard greens from where I was standing, but I couldn’t be sure. He noticed me as he began watering, gave a small nod of acknowledgment, but continued to watch as I walked up the front steps of 915.

  The screen door rattled under my knuckles when I knocked. I could see the shadow of a form approaching, backlit from what appeared to be the kitchen. Isaac’s sister unlatched the door and pulled it open, standing back to let me enter. She wiped her hands on a dish towel as she spoke.

  “Come on in. I figured you’d be thirsty after the drive so I made some iced tea.” My face must have reacted because she laughed as she put a hand on my shoulder and turned me toward the kitchen. “Don’t worry—I used bottled water. For the ice and the tea.”

  Before stepping into Ida’s kitchen, I got a fleeting impression from the rest of the house of tidy surfaces, walls of photographs, and the faint scent of some kind of flower. She led me to a formica-topped table, the kind with an inch of stainless metal fringing the edge. As a child, the narrow parallel grooves had made me think of lanes in an ant racetrack. Ida indicated a chair for me while she went to the refrigerator. She returned with a pitcher of tea and a Tupperware container of ice cubes.

  “See, I wasn’t kidding about the ice cubes.” Ida gestured at an array of full water containers in the corner. “It’s a shame to have to live this way, but…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

  “I hope you don’t mind sweet tea.”

  I sipped appreciatively and sighed. “Mother’s milk.”

  That drew a chuckle from her. “I knew I heard a hint of the south in your voice.”

  Her own voice was like slow velvet. She leaned back in her chair, drapin
g one arm over its wooden back. “My tea used to be the talk of the neighborhood. I always put a little bit of fresh mint in it—blasphemy around here, but it tasted so good everyone pretended not to notice.”

  Ida set her tea glass down and rested her elbows on the table. “I don’t grow fresh mint anymore. I guess you saw Mr. Phillips next door, with his greens and tomatoes in buckets. The EPA man told him it wasn’t safe to eat anything that grew in the ground around here, but Mr. Phillips can’t give up his fresh vegetables. So he buys bags of soil along with his bottled water. He says it’s still better than the fake stuff they sell in the grocery store.”

  “Ms. Pickett, I—“

  She interrupted. “Please, call me Ida. I never was a ‘Ms.,’ and my husband Ernest died a couple of years ago. I haven’t felt much like a ‘Mrs.’ since then.”

  “All right then. Call me Sydney.” She nodded and I went on. “Ida, I noticed the playground when I came in.”

  Her eyes grew shiny with tears. “Kids can’t even play outside. If we had any kids left around here, that is. Most of the families moved away when the truth started coming to light.”

  “How long has it been like this?”

  Ida let out another throaty chuckle. “Well now, that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? It depends on whose lawyers you’re talking to. The plant’s been here for about 60 years, but it’s only in the last 20 or so that we started to notice the people dying of cancer, women with miscarriages and children with birth defects. And there were other things too. More subtle things that nobody’ll ever prove.”

  “Like what?”

  Ida considered for a moment. “Well, I don’t know how else to put it. People acting crazy. Getting violent for no reason, or not much of one. I’m sure someone could come up with some big, societal explanation for it, and that’s probably part of it, but I can’t help but think… I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone could turn out right. I always wondered about Isaac and Vanda, growing up in the middle of this.”

  Ida leaned forward to pour me a refill from the sweating pitcher. “So Sydney, why exactly are you here?”