The Moon Stands Still Page 4

  “Let’s get all this out in the open.” Grant seemed to be addressing me so I looked up for another slap to the face. “I know all about how the Bureau released you. We don’t usually let go of good agen—”

  “Alright, alright.” McLeod lifted his right paw. “Take it easy, Pierce. Let the past bury its dead dogs.”

  He glared at McLeod. “She was fired.”

  McLeod’s paw made a seesaw gesture. “There’s no point arguing about this right now. Fact is, we’ve got Cooper bills. Let’s get on it. Pierce, more than anybody, I know how you want this case closed. Since Raleigh dug up the money—”

  “We should be interviewing her as a suspect.”

  “Good thinking.” Jack stepped away from the wall. “She wasn’t even born when Cooper hijacked the plane. But I’m sure she had something to do with the crime.”

  McLeod rose behind his desk, a grizzly at full height. For all his faults, including mangling the English language, the man kept a tight grip on office politics, strangling the worst of it with his command. Which was probably why the Bureau kept promoting him even as malaprops meandered from his lips. Staring up at his bulk, I felt like a kid in the principal’s office, sitting between recently divorced parents who couldn’t stop arguing with each other.

  “You two, take a break.” McLeod looked at them but pointed at me. “Raleigh, you stay.”

  Behind me, I heard the door swing open. It closed with a firm click.

  McLeod sat down again. “You understand what’s going on?”

  Yes. Nothing romantic.

  “Sir, I think it would be best for all of us if you explained my role here and what you’re expecting of me.”

  “Here’s the deal. Pierce owns this case. He’s worked it like a dog for decades. And he’s The Finder. Guy can find anything, anywhere. But Cooper’s eluded him, just like he’s eluded the entire resources of the federal government. But now, Pierce is three months away from retirement. I can see the hunger in his eyes—he wants to be the one to close this case. Before he retires.”

  I recalled that Bureau rules forced all agents to retire at age fifty-seven. No exceptions. Which explained his resentment toward me. A young discredited agent, possibly stealing his glory at the last minute. I didn’t really blame him.

  “Way back when,” McLeod continued, “Jack did a little work on the Cooper case. Last night, when he called me at home and said you’d found this money, he asked to be part of reopening the Cooper investigation. And you might want to know, he really pushed to bring you on board as our consultant. But, like I told him last night, we can’t have any conflicts of interest here.” McLeod paused. “Any conflicts, Raleigh?”

  I shook my head. “I’m working on a state case. There’s no connection to this matter.”

  “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. Now go downstairs, Jack’s worked up the contract. Sign it and you’re cleared to go.”

  I stood.

  “One heads-up,” McLeod added. “Around this part of the country, Cooper’s turned into a cult hero. Don’t talk to them press. About anything. Not even one ‘no comment.’ You remember what I always told you?”

  I wasn’t sure. The bear had told me so many things. But I found the exact thing he wanted me to say right now. “A closed mouth gathers no foot.”

  McLeod beamed. “Welcome back to the Bureau, Raleigh.”

  6

  Numb as an iceberg lost on the Arctic Sea, I rode the elevator down to the Violent Crimes Unit. Ten days before Thanksgiving, the atmosphere rippled with an insistent murmur. Agents inside their cubicles enunciated orders into phones, pushing matters forward before the winter holidays brought the federal government to a standstill. As I passed the cubicles, several faces turned toward me. I didn’t look back.

  Jack’s desk was right where it’d been when I worked here. Only the desk was cleared of all the hot-babe photos. Some weeks ago, a former colleague told me that only one photo stayed on Jack’s desk. A photo of me. But I guess she was wrong. There were no photos on his desk.

  I stepped closer. He was typing on his keyboard, oblivious to my presence. I kept my tone nonchalant. “McLeod says you’ve got some paperwork for me.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You’re on board?”

  “Of course,” said the iceberg.

  “Great.” He slid the paperwork toward me. “Initial the statements, sign on the last page, and you’re good to go.”

  Good to go.

  I initialed my obligations to the truth. All my responsibilities to the Bureau. And my agreement to report immediately any conflicts of interest that might arise in the course of this investigation. I signed at the bottom of the last page, testifying to a true and authentic statement at the risk of prosecution. I slid the paperwork back toward him.

  “Good.” He typed another sentence, then closed the document. “I was going to get an early lunch. Want to join me?”

  My stomach was so empty I could eat a telephone. “I need to get back to the office.”

  His gaze traveled over my face, his eyes a clouded turquoise color. “I’m glad you’re working with us.”

  Glad? The iceberg drifted on the surface of a frigid sea. “Should be interesting.”

  “And McLeod’s glad to have you back, too.”

  He waited, as if expecting me to say something.

  So I did. “See you around.”

  I turned and crossed my old training ground, that fierce bullpen of ambitious special agents, the place where I screwed up too many times to count.

  And I vowed that would never happen again.

  On Second Avenue, I stopped at Jerry’s Juicy Burgers. Twice a week for the last six weeks, Jack and I had eaten lunch in here, Jack positioned at the table in back to keep an eye on the entrance. Now I stood at the cash register, facing the young guy named Silas, and ordered two double cheeseburgers, two large fries, and one chocolate shake.

  “And extra mayo on the side,” Silas added, ringing up the order on the cash register. “And I’ll hold one burger.”

  “Why?”

  “For that guy. Your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “And this order’s to go.”

  You’re good to go.

  Away.

  I carried the white bags of therapeutic salt and grease into the Smith Tower. Patterson was here now but I told him to stay seated.

  “I feel like taking the stairs today.”

  I climbed all twelve flights by lunging across every other step, begging the burn in my thighs to incinerate the sharp splinter lodged in my heart. By the fourth floor, I was bickering with myself. Why didn’t Jack ask me first? By the sixth floor, I’d come up with the exact words he could’ve said. “Here’s the deal, Harmon. We need to play it cool for this case. But nothing else has changed. We’re still dating, we’re still exclusive—” But by the twelfth floor, I was ready to be honest with myself. The exact words I wanted to hear were, “I turned down the Cooper assignment. I’d rather be with you than work this case.”

  Heaving like a fugitive with cops in pursuit, I made my way down the tiled hallway to my office. He didn’t even bother to explain it to me in his phone message! Passing Lezlee’s office, I heard somebody yelling. I knew exactly how they felt. I keyed open my door. Madame jumped off the couch and came wagging toward me.

  I raised one of the bags. “This is an authentic doggie bag.”

  She waited patiently while I uttered a grumbling grace—which perhaps made it no grace at all—and then we ate. I dipped my fries in mayo, ran a computer search on Washington State pegmatites, and within ten minutes the iceberg was melting. Comfort food, geology, and a woman’s best friend. It worked, sometimes.

  After washing my hands of grease, I unrolled my U.S. Geological Survey maps of western Washington. The name “pegmatite” was a descriptive term, not chemical. It referred to an igneous rock—former magma—that had cooled slowly, developing large but amorphous crystals. My maps showed several pegmatit
e outcroppings, but none within even fifty miles of the Pacific coast. Two commercial quarries mined pegmatites, one north of Seattle, outside the town of Granite Falls. The other was near the state capital in Olympia.

  Taking the rock from my pack, I held it up to the north-facing window where further down Second Avenue, the Space Needle’s discus peeked between the glassine skyscrapers. Under November’s gray glow, the pegmatite’s mica sheets flashed silver. The darker minerals glimmered like spilled ink. And I ran my finger down the cored-out cavity, feeling those spiral striations of the grinder. Somebody cored this stone like an apple, but took the core and left the rest. Why?

  With my ruler, I measured the cavity’s base—nearly seven inches wide—then calculated the possible carats. Depending on the chemistry, this missing crystal might be worth tens of thousands of dollars. That was the simplest explanation for Why.

  Since the host geology would help reveal the missing crystal’s chemistry, I took an unglazed ceramic tile from my pack and scraped the pegmatite’s dark base across the surface. The stone left a dark brown, nearly black streak. Iron, possibly, but tainted with something even heavier. With a magnet, I tested for magnetism and felt a slight pull. My mind ran through a list that included magnetite and chromium. The usual suspects. But no help at all right now.

  I was lifting my cell phone to call Peter when I saw the time.

  Madame lay on the couch, rolled onto her back, small paws in the air. Belly full and satisfied. Not one canine care in the world.

  I regretted changing that. “Madame,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

  Go.

  Away.

  7

  Pegmatite in my pack, clothes changed for running, I wove The Ghost through traffic for ninety minutes. Between the stop-and-gos, the dog tiptoed over the gear shift and settled into my lap. And licked my chin.

  When I pulled into the parking lot of Western State Hospital with no time to spare, the gray granite building climbed toward the softer gray clouds, as if implying this fortress for the insane would never be anything black and white. Only gray.

  “Ready?” I said in a voice that sounded like the nurse holding the long needle. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

  She quivered in my arms as I signed the visitor’s log. Gaelynn, the receptionist, reached over the counter to pet her.

  “That’s exactly the kind of dog I want. What’s her breed?”

  “Mutt.”

  Gaelynn buzzed the door, and upstairs the red-haired nurse waited, everything moving like clockwork. Like trains that run on time. Like nothing was at all strange or scary or sad about this whole routine in which my own mother welcomed the dog and refused to see me.

  “See you in an hour,” I said to Madame as the door closed.

  I ran.

  I ran across the street to the sprawling 340 acres of Fort Steilacoom Park. November wind whipped cold air and swirled dried brown leaves into tiny cyclones dancing around the historic barns and antique tractors. Once upon a time, the asylum’s mental patients farmed these acres. It was part of their therapy. Now iron plows sat idle, the forged elements returning to the earth as rust. Work. It was my therapy, too, and each time my mind drifted back to Jack, I sped up, sprinting from the thought. I focused on river soil and D.B. Cooper. A cored-out pegmatite and Krystal Jewel and the single suspect dubious to Tom O’Brien. And I thought about Tom’s reply, when I asked if she’d been sexually assaulted. “Not that night.”

  I had no right to feel sorry for myself.

  Forty-five minutes later, I crossed back to the hospital grounds. In the parking lot, I slowed to a walk and took out my cell phone to call Peter.

  “Howdy-do,” he answered. “How’s the offer with the lab?”

  “We have a case.”

  “Hot diggity.”

  “Don’t get too excited. I’m not sure how much help we can offer.” I described the pegmatite, its murderous use, and Tom’s doubts about the main suspect. “Right now, I’d describe the rock as an average pegmatite. Mica splotches like dollhouse windows, puddles of milky quartz, and some darker mineralogy that could be a mix of iron and magnetite. The most interesting part of it is a seven-inch coring in the base. Somebody removed something.”

  “Mineralogy?”

  “I’m working on it. I got a streak. Darkest brown, almost black.”

  “Heavy metals.”

  “My thought, too. My USGS maps show two peg quarries in western Washington.”

  Peter made a humming sound.

  I checked my watch and started walking toward the asylum’s entrance. In the front door’s glass, I saw my reflection—a woman wearing lycra running gear, her ponytail a wind-whipped mess. That woman didn’t look like somebody carrying a broken heart. I forced my feet to keep moving and focused on Peter. “What are you thinking?”

  “You ever get a gander at a chrome tourmaline?”

  “Not in person.”

  “Thing’ll hypnotize you. I’m talking about the greenest green on God’s green earth.”

  Green as Jack’s eyes? I yanked open the front door. Stop it. “Valuable?”

  “Depends on how much quartz is in that pegmatite. How much did ya see?”

  “Abundant.” Tourmaline, a silicate mineral like quartz, took on jewel tones depending on the metals also present, such as aluminum and chromium. “There’s plenty of quartz to produce tourmaline.” I stepped inside the asylum, waved to Gaelynn. She buzzed the door. I headed up the stairs, my legs feeling like heavy metals had invaded my bones. “What about magnetism? It was mild, but it was there.”

  “That means chromium’s still possible,” Peter said. “You check Moh’s scale?”

  Moh’s scale measured a mineral’s hardness. That test was going to be my next step, but time ran out. Because a dog needed to get to an insane asylum. At the third-floor landing, I leaned my ear against the locked door. Noise. Voices. All indistinct yet troubling. Like people underwater crying for help. I stepped back and remembered the phone. “Peter?”

  “Not going anywhere, cowgirl.”

  His tone, it told me he knew.

  He knew my schedule, what time I had to be here with the dog. “Thanks.”

  “No problemo, amigo. But if you got a minute right now, can I ask you a question straight up?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “No fussin’ around, you think we can solve this one?”

  I stared at the locked steel door, waiting for it to open. “What works in our favor is, nobody’s tracked the pegmatite. That’s an advantage for us. On the negative side, it sounds like the entire trail went cold so quickly they wound up pinning the crime on the easiest suspect.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Alright, I’m trustin’ your judgment. Take a stab at this one. And just keep asking the right questions. Eventually answers show up. Problem is, they’re usually riding into town on an old broke-back mule. Know what I’m saying?”

  The door swung open.

  “Here you go—” Sarah stopped, seeing the phone at my ear. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Sorry.”

  I nodded my thanks, accepted Madame, and headed downstairs, telling Peter goodbye.

  The dog wrapped her paws around my arm.

  8

  Eleanor Anderson was eighty-four-going-on-sixteen and kept a daily appointment with a martini.

  At five o’clock on the world’s longest Monday in recent memory, I found her sitting in her favorite chair in the living room of her rambling Victorian, sipping the daily four-olive dirty martini. All of that was normal. What I didn’t care for was the way she was smiling at me. Or how her dark eyes sparkled with mischief behind the rhinestone frames of her glasses.

  “What?” I said.

  “I heard the news today, oh boy.”

  “From who, the Beatles?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.” She gave the martini a delicate sip. “They’re saying somebody found some D.B. Co
oper money.”

  I listened to Madame in the kitchen, lapping water. Dehydrated from crossing the Sahara of insanity. I lifted my can of Coke and guzzled.

  “Young lady.” Eleanor fixed her glittery gaze on me. “That’s the same money you and Lani dug up. Isn’t it?”

  “Eleanor—”

  “I could charge you rent.”

  “Don’t say a word to anyone. Especially reporters.”

  “So it was D.B. Cooper’s money!”

  “No. It was bank money. Which means it belonged to other people.”

  “Oh, please.” She withdrew a toothpick of olives from the glistening drink. “Finders keepers.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “In almost half a century, nobody’s found all that money. Now it should be declared community property.” She bit down on an olive, chewing and thinking. “The news report said the FBI was investigating. Is Jack involved?”

  I guzzled more Coke.

  “I see,” said the woman wearing glasses.

  I polished off the soda and suppressed a belch so powerful it made my eyes burn. At least, I told myself that’s why my eyes were watering.

  “Oh, no.” Eleanor sat up. “He’s reverted to acting like a troglodyte?”

  “You remember my boss at the FBI, Allen McLeod?”

  She thought about it. “The man with all the malaprops?”

  “He got promoted.”

  “Naturally. Managers often rise to the level of their incompetence.”

  “Jack convinced McLeod to hire me as a consultant.” I hesitated. The words ached in my throat. “The only requirement is, Jack and I can’t be romantically involved.”

  “You’ll find another job.”

  I stared down at my Coke can.

  “Raleigh? You did turn down that job.”

  I looked up. Eleanor was a blur. “Jack agreed to the terms right away.” I pressed my palms into the aluminum can, crushing it. “Apparently he wants us to be friends.”