Chapter 10

THURSDAY, JULY 2

When Tate arrived home for lunch on Thursday, he found that Pat Alcivar, Greta, Emily, and I had joined Louise. She was serving PB&J sandwiches for lunch, with glasses of cold milk. We’d parked our cars out by the river, so Tate wouldn’t see them and know that something was up.

He stopped short when he came into the kitchen, then asked, in uncertain sarcasm, “What is this? An intervention?”

Alcivar said, in his soft voice, “Pretty much, Tate. Please sit down, my friend.”

It went downhill from there. Tate went into full defensive mode. It was disheartening to see a man -- Tate, for that matter -- in a sheriff’s uniform, whining and complaining in such a juvenile manner. He excused his own behavior time and again, then accused us of abandoning him when he was especially vulnerable.

After about forty minutes of the circular arguments, I finally said, “What the fuck are you talking about, Plummer? Did someone, somewhere, give you some sort of written guarantee that life wouldn’t now-and-then kick you in the guts and leave you writhing in the dust, or that you’d always have warm breezes and smooth sailing? Because none of the rest of us have that sort of contract. Now I realize that maybe things have piled up for you lately, but it’s damn well time you show some balls, the same balls that have gotten you through the past forty years.”

Alcivar said, “He’s right, Tate. It’s time to set aside this pettiness and to assume your proper role in our community. The time is now. You must get back in harness.”

Emily said, “Tate, being sheriff is a lot bigger than your hurt feelings; you need to put that into perspective.”

Greta said, “Grow up, you dumb-ass. Time to put on the big boy pants again. You do not want all of us pissed at you.”

Louise said, “I’ll tell you the same thing they’re telling you, Tate: We love you. We want you back.”

Tate was bent forward in his chair, his arms resting on his head as if warding off blows, but then he turned and gaped at Louise for a few seconds, after which his face started to crumple. He mumbled, “Be right back,” stood, and hurried off down the hall. We heard a door close.

“That’s our bathroom,” Louise said.

Greta said, “Great lunch. We should do this every week.” That earned a couple snorts and a few grim chuckles. Then she asked, “Do you think it worked?”

I shrugged. “Tate’s not stupid.” I chuckled myself and said, “Greta, remember when we took the rig (i.e., the mini-motorhome) up that Forest Service road in California, near Lake June? Besides being narrow and muddy, the road was steep and it clung to a mountainside. But the map showed a campground with the road looping through it, so we knew we could turn around there and drive out again. Except there was a ford through a stream just before the campground, and it turned out the approaches were too steep for the motorhome’s tail overhang; we’d have gotten hung up by going down the slope of the ford. We’d either get irreversibly stuck or we’d rip the cabin frame off the chassis.

“It seemed the only choice I had was to back up almost twelve miles along the narrow, muddy, steep, mountainside road that had brought us there.

“I remember the despair I felt, knowing how dangerous it would be to back down that road. But I finally realized we either had to abandon the rig or back it out of there. So I started backing. Scariest driving I ever did, especially since the primary braking was being done by the front wheels, which caused the rear end to slide and fishtail. Like I said, scary as hell.

“Luckily, after only a couple miles, we came to a spot where a cabin had once stood, in a shallow side canyon. There were the remnants of a driveway, mostly buried in the same rockfall that had destroyed the cabin. It took us about an hour to clear enough space, but finally we were able to back and fill to turn around.” I was shaking my head at the memory.

I shrugged, “I suspect Tate’s dealing with that same sense of despair and, hopefully, he’s accepting what he has to do to get past it.”

We helped Louis clear the table while we were waiting, and both Emily and Pat Alcivar took bathroom breaks.

Finally, Tate returned to the country kitchen’s large crew table.

He stood behind his chair at the end of the table, gripping the chairback. It looked like he may have washed his face, though his eyes were noticeably red and the tissue near them looked swollen.

He looked around at us as he said, “I don’t really understand what’s taken hold of me. I know I’m being an asshole, but I can’t seem to break out of it. Somehow, it seems safer, even more sensible, to just tell all of you to pound salt, rather than to deal with how I’ve been acting. This unapologetic explanation is about as far as I can bring myself to dealing with it, otherwise I feel the urge to just tell all of you to fuck off while I go back to the office.” He looked down at his tight grip on the chair and shook his head as if disbelieving what he saw.

I said, “And yet you’re not doing that. You’re standing there trying to deal with this.”

He looked at me. “Frankly, Gary, it’s only because Louise is here that I’ve stuck it out. I can’t turn my back on her as easily as I could the rest of you.”

His shoulders slumped and he pulled out the chair and dropped into it, as if he’d lost the strength to keep standing. He crossed his arms on the table and began to lower his head toward them, when he appeared to change his mind and pushed himself upright.

Looking at Louise, he said, “About three years ago, I had ... for a few weeks I...” He paused to look at his hands, which were now rigidly gripped in front of him. He sighed wearily, then looked at Louise again. “I was ... involved ... with Evelyn Durkee.” His face was pleading and he was shaking his head. “It was a mistake, maybe the worst mistake in my life. It was over ... it didn’t even last a month. I’m so very sorry.

Holy fucking shit! I thought to myself. Talk about a can of worms. I could see the shock on everyone’s faces. Everyone, that is, except Louise.

Tate had looked down at his hands again and then he said, “What is even more shameful for me is that she’s the one who ended it. I wanted it to keep going.” He looked at Louise once more. “I have no excuse. I’m sorry to hurt you. You, my precious wife, did nothing to deserve this.”

Louise was sitting next to Tate, at the corner of the table, and she reached over and wrapped both of his hands under hers. She said, “Her breaking it off was my idea. I threatened to tell Nick about it if she didn’t.” Louise shook her head. “Evelyn always maintained the illusion that she and Nick could get back together. It was a disaster the first time, but she was desperate to be with him again.”

Now our incredulity was transferred to Louise.

After a moment, Pat Alcivar, on my left, turned toward me and said, sotto-voce, “Maybe we should go.”

I shook my head. “They are both talking about this because we’re here. I don’t think this is over.”

Tate had looked at Louise and nodded, but then tears came to his eyes and, shaking his head, he looked down at their hands, entwined on the table top. He withdrew his and said, “I have no fucking idea what’s going on anymore.”

Still off balance from the revelations myself, I could easily understand the temptation to fall into that pit of despair.

Emily, sitting to my right, leaned toward me and whispered, “Say something.”

I took a deep breath and said, “What a mare’s nest.” I paused for a moment. “That’s the right term, isn’t it, when you’re fishing, and you make a cast, and you end up with a big tangle of fishing line jamming your reel? A mare’s nest?”

“A bird’s nest,” Tate mumbled.

“Ah. My grandfather called it a mare’s nest. Whatever it’s called, that’s what we’ve got here and the only way we keep fishing is if we untangle the line. So let’s keep talking.”

And we did, for another 90 minutes.

At that point, Tate said, “I get it, I’m a human being. I’m not perfect. I screw up, I make mistakes, I hurt those I love,” then he looked around at us and, with some vehemence, added, “just like all of us.”

So we began to untangle the snarl of emotions, actions, and reactions that Tate had begun to reveal.

As with many people who do noticeably good work, Tate’s motives were mostly self-generated. In other words, he wanted to do a good job simply for the satisfaction of seeing the job done right. At the same time, Tate displayed another fairly common trait of that type of person: his demands on himself were, to a large degree, impossibly high. As a result, when things get bollixed up, he blamed himself and had a hard time dealing with the guilt and sense of failure.

And, to his mind, things had gotten bollixed up like never before.

After a while at the untangling and readjusting, Tate’s feelings of dread were still palpable and he seemed to be getting discouraged.

Emily said, “Tate, all that can possibly happen in this, ah, ‘exercise’ is that you identify the problem you have and the circumstances that caused it to overwhelm you. Otherwise you remain who you are. You don’t get to shed that part of yourself, nor would you really want to. It motivates you to do your very best. By the same token, though, a sense of failure quickly shows up when your best is not good enough or when you, imperfect human being that you are, don’t actually give it your best shot. Normally, you can cope with those feelings, because your supposed failures are infrequent and minor. But lately you been overwhelmed by a series of incidents that you’ve interpreted as failures for which you are responsible: you failed to save Evelyn, you failed to be attractive enough to keep Evelyn’s love, you failed Louise in your marriage vows, you failed to be a good enough friend to John, you’re failing to be a good enough friend to others, you anticipate failure in the election, you anticipate failure in finding a job afterward.

“You have agreed that most of those failures either haven’t even happened or are not your responsibility or were never under your control. Intellectually, you know that. But your emotions are responding to a deeper picture you have of yourself which, as we’ve talked about, has advantages and disadvantages, but it doesn’t go away. What you need to do is keep reminding yourself that the feelings are based on your expectations of yourself, not on how you can actually operate in the real world. But the point is, the part of your performance that is essential is not how you feel about yourself, but how you operate in reality.”

Greta said, “You’re like one of your fish stories. You tell about catching a fish this big,” and she held her hands a couple feet apart, “but the fish was actually this big,” and she reduced her hand spread by half. “Over time, you actually come to believe the fish was that big,” and she spread her hands again. “Your story and reality are two different things.”

“I do not exaggerate the size of the fish,” Tate insisted.

Greta jibed, “And lying like that simply adds to your guilt burden.”

(Thursday, July 2)

FRIDAY, JULY 3

Tate, in jeans and his uniform shirt, drove the wagon. Beside him sat Louise, in a frilly, old-fashioned dress and sun bonnet. In the rear, Greta and Emily, in jeans and well-fitted T-shirts, were stuffing the facial tissue “flowers” in place on the chicken wire.

I ended up walking, dejectedly, about twenty feet behind the wagon. I was dressed in bib overalls and plaid shirt, carrying a broom and scoop shovel, and dragging an old metal garbage can -- no wheels on the can, just the noise of metal scraping on pavement. It was just one more cue for folks to tuck into their memories of the opening salvo of Tate’s campaign for sheriff. I even had occasion to harvest some of the road apples dropped by the two-horse team.

In all, it got the laughs we were after, and we heard several people call out their assurance that they’d be voting for Tate.

(Friday, July 3)

SATURDAY, JULY 4

With the expectation that many from Coldwater County would be going over to Plattsburg for the Fourth to enjoy that larger town’s more elaborate festivities, only a few community events had been planned in Coldwater County. There was a pancake breakfast in Foughbury, a fundraiser that was being sponsored by their volunteer fire department and their EMT ambulance service. Both Tate Plummer and John Durkee made hand-shaking forays there. Louise, in the role of Tate’s campaign manager, had gone with him.

Both candidates also stopped by another fundraiser, the high school band hot dog stand in the Safeway parking lot in Leaufroide.

Tate and Louise had the remainder of Saturday afternoon free, so they attended the impromptu wienie and burger roast that we were having at out place. We’d invited all the Health Center team managers and their families. And we’d extended the invitation to Chet and Lindsey, and Denny Kelly, as well as Stan, Nora, and NIna.

We provided meat, buns, and beverages, everyone else brought “pot luck” or a “covered dish,” the terms pretty much interchangeable, meaning participants bring whatever food item they prefer, in sufficient quantity to share with the group.

Not unexpectedly, talk at our cookout eventually turned toward the question of the Health Center’s future. All the team managers were there, as well as their spouses, except that the unmarried Nita Bradley had brought her roommate, a nurse at the hospital. Everyone’s mostly younger kids were in the yard, where I’d set up a slip-and-slide for them.

On the deck, we’d jury-rigged a large table out of plywood and sawhorses, so there was room for all of us to sit down on the motley collection of lawn and household chairs. I’d warned people to bring their own seating. Myself, I was using the happily vacant snake bucket as a stool.

After we were all seated with full plates, Frank Garrison said, “Liz tells me that you guys are thinking about separating from the County, maybe hooking up with Margaret Deveaux’s program. D’you think you can make it without the County? After all, it was only about six or seven years ago that the County had to step in and take over and run things.”

Since he’d been looking at me, I felt inclined to respond. “That’s the big question we need to answer for ourselves, Frank. Fact is, I still feel pretty punchy from the last few weeks of going at it with Burt Rauch. That’s left a bad taste in my mouth for being associated with the County.” I shrugged. “On the other hand, being part of the County feels more secure than going it on our own.”

“Exactly,” Terry Sloan said. “The County is more stable than an independent, non-government not-for-profit.”

Matt Sloan, Terry’s husband, said, “I dunno, hun. The County’s just another government bureaucracy with a bunch of jerk-wads running it, just like that crook, Burt Rauch.” Sloan, a building contractor, was a medium-height man with a narrow waist and trim upper-body musculature who obviously could still wield a hammer. Like several of the men and women, he was wearing a hat, in his case, a ball cap with Sloan Construction embroidered on the front. I was wearing a woven straw planter’s-style hat.

I asked, “So, what does that mean, Matt? You think we should cut free of the County?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “Look,” he said, “I don’t pretend to understand the type of do-gooder work you guys do. Terry has me convinced that things in the Valley would be noticeably worse if you guys weren’t around and we just let everyone go to hell. And I guess I can understand some of it.” He looked off toward the kids running through the water streams, then looked back. “My Mom’s cousin has a son who’s retarded, and the kid was just dragging around the house before Developing Abilities came to town. I mean, I guess he went to school and all, but at home he was just a...,” he shrugged apologetically, “well, a pest.” Matt gave us a believe-it-or-not grin. “Nowadays, I take my vehicles to him for oil changes -- well, at least I take it to where he works, at the oil change garage that Developing Abilities operates. He’s changed a lot, but I sure as hell couldn’t tell you how they did it.”

He sighed. “So, I don’t know what I’d do,” He paused a second, and then added, “Except for this: I’d choose whichever way allowed me more freedom to do the things I wanted to do.”

“Despite the risk?” Terry demanded.

He looked at her, shrugged, and said, “There’s nothing we do without risk, hun. You could get hit by a car, and working for the County wouldn’t stop that from happening. The best damn move I ever made,” he bent his head toward Terry, “after marrying her, was to set up my own business. It’s been shaky at times, but I’m not stuck working under someone else, and I can chose the projects I want to get involved in. Is it scary? Sometimes. Can I crash and burn? It could happen, especially if I’m not careful -- and maybe even if I am.” He pointed to his cap and said, emphatically, “But it’s my name on the hat, and I’m doing the work I want to do, and I’m doing it the way I think it ought to be done.”

Later, Chet, Lindsey, Tate, and Louise were sitting at the kitchen table with us. The worst of the makeshift furniture and serving clutter had been cleared away and we were drinking coffee, while Greta, Em, and Louise were sipping rusty nails on the side. I mentioned that we were getting a high-end espresso machine for the bakery.

“We are?” queried Greta. “Since when? I don’t remember making that decision.”

I gave her a neutral look while my brain, on the verge of panic, rapidly googled itself for “How do I get out of this?”

When that didn’t produce anything useful, I said, with bewilderment evident on my face, “It just might be possible that I screwed up. I think I may have skipped the box on the decision tree where it says ‘Team Manager.’ And, try as I might, I can’t seem to come up with a plausible rationale, let alone a half-assed excuse, for that oversight.” I shrugged, shook my head, and spread my hands. “So I got nothin’, Greta. It looks like I might have screwed up.”

“Again,” she said.

“Without conducting an audit of my various faults, I will take responsibility for this one. I usurped your franchise in a thoughtless moment. You have my genuine apology. I know how it feels to have my prerogatives side-stepped, so your exasperation and ire is understandable. It may not be too late to cancel the order if that would be your choice.”

She sat there, frowning, giving me a squinty-eyed appraisal. I could see the gears turning, and I was surprised to see when they stopped, and the tension in her face relaxed, to a large degree.

“Damn it, Gary. I hate it when you’re straightforward about your screw-ups and don’t try to weasel out of them. Here I build up a big head of steam and you just casually reach by me and open the safety valve.” She shook her head in defeated frustration, then demanded, “Tell me about the damn coffee-maker.”

So I did, giving Denny and Barney full credit for the proposal.

Then Greta reached into her pocket and pulled out the silver-on-green Femarole box and held it up. “And now would you care to explain this?” she demanded.

Tate said, “He found that in one of the sheriff’s Tahoes.” He sighed. “John Durkee’s former patrol vehicle.”

“Damn it,” Greta said in exasperation. “Don’t I get to stay mad about anything tonight?” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “What was it doing in a sheriff’s vehicle, anyway?”

“That’s the million dollar question,” I said. “I’d been wondering if it had anything to do with Evelyn’s murder.” That led to a brief discussion during which, between Tate and me, everyone was brought up to date on Evelyn’s case and my speculations.

Greta looked perturbed. She turned toward me. “So you’re saying that those four people being at that cabin that particular weekend, and the occurrence of several odd events in the days following, is too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

“Pretty much.”

“And what were you doing Memorial Day weekend?”

“If you’ll recall, we took the camper over to Iron Oxide Beach.”

“So Emily and I are your alibi for the presumed weekend of Evelyn’s murder.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“But aren’t you also involved with those same odd events, to one degree or another?”

“Only after the fact.”

“So you claim, but how do we know that? How do we know that you’re not the mastermind behind all of it?”

“To what purpose?”

“World domination, of course.”

“Do you have a point you’re trying to make, ‘cause I’m not following this.” I didn’t know if Greta was making fun of me or if she was trying to pull some idea from the confusion.

She looked at me with some skepticism. “Seems to me you’ve been ascribing motives to people and significance to their whereabouts and companions. Can’t I do the same?”

“Well, sure, but this started as a consideration of Evelyn’s murder, and an application of Occam’s Razor would--”

She cut me off. “Now you apply Occam’s Razor, now, after you’ve been hacking away at this with your own less-than-sharp wits? Consider that you’ve identified the murderer without the first bit of evidence or solid justification. Did you Occam’s Razor that?”

“She’s got you there, Gary,” Emily chimed in.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” Tate said.

Louise gave him a sour look. “You haven’t been paying any attention to him at all. At least he’s been thinking about it. You’ve just been sucking sour grapes.”

“Alright, alright,” Tate said, “I suppose that’s true. Let’s not start all that up again, okay?”

“Start all what up again?” Lindsey asked.

Louise said, “We had a bit of an intervention with Tate Thursday afternoon, the four of us and Pat Alcivar. We talked my husband into taking his head out of his ass.”

Tate was looking away, shaking his head.

Chet said, “Nice work.”

Tate stood up and said, “Would anyone else like to go fishing?”

Louise said, “Sit down, take your medicine. I wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t started tossing bullcrap at Gary.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He sat down.

“You need to say that to your friend, Gary,” Louise insisted.

He looked at me. “She’s right. I was kicking you when Greta and Emily had you down. I’m sorry. But it looked like too much fun to resist joining in.”

I was tempted to take a verbal swipe at him, but just said, “Forget it.”

Then Lindsey said, “Greta, you seemed to be making a point, like Gary said, but we kinda got off track. What are you saying?”

“Gary said that his speculations started with Evelyn’s murder, but then he jumped right to Nick as his suspect of choice. And since Nick was at the Fossil Creek cabin, then somehow the others at the cabin might be associated with the murder, however loosely, and all tied in with John’s decision to run for sheriff, and his termination of his friendship with Tate, and the MHU bribery scheme.”

“I didn’t say that,” I protested.

“Not in so many words,” Greta contended, “but all of your speculating revolves around that group’s significance.”

After a moment, I said, “Okay, I suppose you’re right. What do you suggest?”

Emily said, “Odd as it may seem, I think the mountain has come to Mohamed; I think Greta is suggesting a butterfly hunt.” She was, of course, referring to chaos theory and the so-called Butterfly Effect, by which a butterfly, flapping its wings in one place could set off a chain of subtle and not-so-subtle effects that could cause the formation of a typhoon on the other side of the world a hundred years later. It suggested that apparent chaos arose from a succession of logical or scientifically recognized events that could only be traced if their origin were identified.

I said, “I’ll make more coffee.”

“And a batch of rusty nails,” Greta added.

“I might try one of those,” Lindsey said.

“Me, too,” Chet said.

“Me, three,” I said.

Emily said, “I’ll make a big batch while Gary works on the coffee.”

Louise asked, “Please remind me: what are the rules for a butterfly hunt?”

I said, “We’re looking for the best defined and uncomplicated first link in the chain of events, the first flutter of the butterfly’s wings that eventually led to the storm that swamped the islands on the other side of the world.”

Then I added, “I’d say the worst of the storm was Evelyn’s death, so we need to find its original contributing act. Or does someone see it differently.”

Greta said, “Sounds about right.”

Tate added, “I’m on board.”

The others nodded or made similar approval.

But then no one said anything. Finally, Louise asked, “How far back do we go?”

Chet said, “We go back to the first thing we’re sure of, relevant to the murder. Anything else would be speculation.”

I said, “So we know she left her home at ten hundred Monday morning. According to an elderly neighbor lady’s observation, she was in a nice yellow-checked sun dress and high-heeled sandals, so sort of dressy for a brat roast. She was alone and turned her car left on county road twenty-five.”

Lindsey said, “Left? You mean she turned west? West on county road twenty-five is driving away from Leaufroide and toward Coldwater Junction. The brat roast was at Riverside Park here in Leaufroide.”

I said, “Oh, wow. I sure missed that one.”

Tate shrugged. “Same here. But then, I may have missed most of it.”

Emily asked, “Does any of this say anything about the pregnancy test?”

“No,” I said. “Some of the autopsy blood-work suggested a pregnancy. Any association is based on my speculation about the suspicion that Evelyn was pregnant and that she was eviscerated to prevent the father from being identified.”

Lindsey observed that, “If Evelyn was pregnant, she must not have been far along, as apparently no one had noticed any changes in her shape.”

I said, “We’re moving into speculation and away from certainty, which we’ve only begun to define.”

Greta said, “She was dressed up more then might be expected for a casual cookout, she was alone, she left earlier than necessary for her stated destination, and she headed the wrong direction.”

Emily said, “Another way to look at that is to say she either lied to her mother or she had changed her mind after talking to her mother. In either event, we could say that she left at the proper time for her intended destination, she headed the proper direction, and she was dressed to impress someone in particular.”

“Good, good. That’s what we need. Tate, what’s west of Limekiln on County Road twenty-five?”

“Ah, it’s only a couple miles to the National Forest boundary. There are two farms before that, the uh, Givenses and the Hardys. Then, about nine or ten miles west of Limekiln, still in the Sacagawea National Forest, County Road twenty-five terminates at State Route thirty-nine. There are remnants of an old coal mining town and a coke oven there, from back in the railroad’s steam days. The town was called Carbon. It’s National Forest land now. Some folks set up camps there in mushroom and hunting seasons, but no one lives there anymore. Some Forest workers and lumber outfits park their cars there and carpool to their job sites, or ride in the company vehicles.”

He paused, looking off toward the wall, then continued, “If you turn left, it’s about five or six miles to Coldwater Junction. If you turn right...” he paused again, “State Route thirty-nine will eventually intersect State Route sixteen which provides a roundabout way to get to the south end of Fossil Creek Reservoir, near the dam, but there are several small towns and recreation sites along both state highways before you reach the reservoir.”

“Again, let’s not get into speculating,” I warned the group, when Tate’s mention of the reservoir seemed to enliven them. In fact, the faster route to Fossil Creek Reservoir involved driving west to Plattsburg and taking other highways north from there.

I asked Tate, “Was there anything to indicate what Evelyn was intending to do? Do you know if she was friends with either of those farmers west of Limekiln?”

“Nothing I know of. I think both of those farms were part of the Durkee ranch, back In the day. But I don’t think Evelyn had any real friends in Limekiln. She was just too, uh, unusual for most of those folks. And her periodic target practice with the rifle kept everyone wary. The only people I know who saw her on any regular basis were John and Wanda, but they don’t live in Limekiln.” John and Wanda Durkee lived about 10 miles southwest of Leaufroide on County Road 8, along Hooper Creek and about 25 highway miles from Limekiln.

“What target practice?” Chet asked.

Tate explained Evelyn’s history of shooting from her back yard into the adjoining National Forest land and the one incident in which she’d been shooting into the town’s small commercial district, for which she’d been committed to a Vinley Act hold in the state hospital in Plattsburg.