Knife River, page 24
Paul rushed down the narrow hall, grumbling to himself, making his way toward the front door, where it sounded like Rufus was making his protective stand. Shane was only three years younger than Paul, but the accident that had taken their mother all those years ago had left Shane with the mental and emotional capacities of a six-year-old.
Paul’s brother could be mercurial and prone to grand fits of petulance, but he loved his dog, Rufus—all animals, really—and loved his family with everything he had. The trouble was that as Shane’s body continued to grow, so did the natural urges that accompanied the changes, and his retrograde curiosity and childlike inability to filter his utterances and emotions had become a source of frequent embarrassment to Paul, feelings for which Paul wished he had more patience.
Shane’s bedroom door opened a crack as Paul passed down the hall, and Paul felt newly remorseful for thinking unkindly about his younger brother. It was clear that Shane was frightened by the commotion and had been waiting for Paul to take the lead.
Rufus was barking the same way he would bark at a stranger or a stray animal that had wandered too close from the woods. Paul had rarely heard the dog this fiercely protective before, and his stomach clenched tight as he switched on the porch light in hopes of scaring off the intruder. But the light only served to make Rufus much more unruly, and Paul’s dad had just reached number seven in his countdown to death. Almost out of time, Paul grabbed the baseball bat from the umbrella stand, made eye contact with Shane, and tugged the door open, ready to swing if necessary.
Rufus stopped barking at the sight of the two boys, made a mewling sound, and nestled himself between them. Paul glanced at his brother, and the expression on his face was neither shock nor revulsion; rather, it was an expression of blind terror.
In the silence, Paul could hear his father’s footfalls stalking down the hall toward them, red-eyed and angry, but Shane couldn’t pull his gaze away from what he now saw.
It was one of Shane’s prized shoats, one he’d raised up from a piglet for 4-H. The animal had been splayed open from throat to anus, left to bleed out on the blistered landing, its entrails steaming in the cold, its tiny heart pumping its last as the two boys stood speechless.
The dog backed away as Paul’s dad reached the doorway, smelling of stale cigarettes, squinting at the bright light and the bloody mess that had been left for them to find. It was clear that a human being had done it; this was no accident or animal attack—this was intentional, savage, and unnecessarily cruel. Paul could hear his brother begin to sob, and he pulled Shane close, where the younger boy buried his face in his elder brother’s chest.
Shane was mumbling something to himself, but Paul couldn’t make out the words that were lost in his brother’s grief and repulsion.
“Get that mess cleaned up before the coyotes come after it,” Paul’s father said, then he turned and shambled back down the hallway to his bed. “And make sure that damn dog stays inside the house.”
A HALF hour later, Paul had finished cleaning up. He had disposed of the carcass and entrails, hosed off the blood from the stairs and porch rails, and gone to the kitchen to wash up. He found Shane sitting cross-legged on the floor underneath the kitchen table, the room lit by a single naked bulb over the sink. Rufus rested his head in Shane’s lap as the boy stroked the dog’s ears, rocking back and forth, repeating the same phrase over and over as tears continued to stream down his face.
“Gut you like a pig … Gut you like a pig … Gut you like a pig …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
JESSE AND CRICKET resumed their vigil at the hospital Monday morning at first light, and I drove northward through the clear blue morning, past the blossoming pear and cherry trees that marked the gateway to Meridian’s main street, where the tourist crowds had thinned down to a trickle. The grama in the fields along the highway were growing faster now that spring was taking hold in earnest, some already standing so tall as to obscure all but the eyes and ears of the white-tailed does that roved the rim of the ravine.
I followed an empty stinger truck that had a bumper sticker reading america, love it or leave it for several miles, until I lost him in a cloud of greige exhaust as he downshifted and turned onto a logging road where a roadside barbecue and fruit stand was preparing to open for the season.
A few minutes later, I pulled up to the intercom box at the entrance to Len Kaanan’s place, pressed the button, and announced myself. I could hear a commotion in the background as Kaanan himself wrested the phone away from whoever had answered it.
“I asked you to call first,” he barked.
“How would you define the activity that’s taking place right now?” I asked. “How ’bout you open up this gate and let me in so I can do my work.”
Ten minutes later, Kaanan and I were seated in the screening room upstairs at Half Mountain Studio, where three rows of finely upholstered leather club chairs had been arranged before a commercial-grade theater screen, replete with heavy velvet curtains the color of claret wine. The room appeared to have been newly cleaned, fresh vacuum marks still in evidence on the deep pile Karastan, but the odor of stale cigarettes, pine solvent, and something else I couldn’t identify lingered in the air. The walls were papered in some kind of exotic animal print, lined with both framed photos of Len Kaanan posing with the artists he’d produced and gold records with plaques engraved with sales statistics.
Mickey London was hollering at someone over the telephone as he paced a flattened footpath in the carpet that abutted the projection room in back, chewing on an unlit Montecristo. I looked to Len Kaanan, who had seated himself in the row ahead of me and one chair to the right; I noticed a surrealistic painting by Joan Miró on the wall that looked entirely out of place.
“Everyone seems a little tense this morning,” I said to Kaanan.
“My artist is lying in a coma and I have a film project that is likely to remain unfinished. The record label and the movie studio have millions invested here, and both are climbing the walls, and frankly, so are we.”
“Care to come clean with me?”
“Excuse me, Sheriff?” Kaanan said. “Can you please repeat yourself?”
His complexion flushed, and the expression on his face was one of rage and puzzlement.
“You said something to me before,” I said. “You asked me whether I was familiar with Ian Swann’s story. The implication was that it had something to do with Meriwether County. I’ve been trying to figure out what you meant by that, but recollections in this town seem to be a little spotty. So I’m asking you straight out: What’s Ian Swann’s story?”
Len Kaanan stood and faced me, slipped his hands into the pockets of his pleated slacks, his lips drawn tight as he scanned the rows of photos on the wall.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “He never told me.”
“You said it took courage for Ian to come here.”
“It was the whole point of the movie, Sheriff. You’ve probably noticed we’ve been shooting B-roll all over town. Once the concert was finished, Ian wanted to do a sit-down; he had some kind of dramatic reveal in mind.”
“But he never told you what it was? I find that difficult to swallow.”
Len Kaanan moved deliberately along the periphery of the room, stopping from time to time to study one of the gold records on the wall. He halted in front of Ian Swann’s first album, pursed his lips, and sighed before he spoke to me.
“Ian Swann is an artist, Sheriff. Creative people have a unique mindset and temperament, and I’ve learned not to push them when they don’t want to be pushed.”
“It didn’t strike you as odd that his car gets vandalized when he comes to town, and he gets himself assaulted two days later? Now this?”
“Some projects are cursed. It’s an accepted fact in the film business. Look at Rosemary’s Baby, or The Exorcist, or even The Wizard of Oz.”
“And you figured that’s all this was? Just a run of unfortunate luck?”
“What was I supposed to think? This was Ian’s story, and he was going to tell it the way he wanted to. Period. And it didn’t involve cluing me in beforehand.”
“And what about his manager?”
“He knows even less than I do.”
“Are you prepared to help me out, Mr. Kaanan?”
“Seems like we have a one-sided relationship.”
Mickey London was still pacing at the back of the room, the phone pressed to his ear, his face so red it looked like he might burst a blood vessel. These people were exhausting to be around.
“If you don’t like the nature of our association so far,” I said, “you really won’t like the direction it takes if you’re not more forthcoming from this point onward.”
Kaanan studied me, obviously unaccustomed to being challenged.
“What can I do to help you, Sheriff?” he asked.
“I’d like to begin with the footage Cricket and her crew shot from the wings of the stage and go from there,” I said.
He stood and strode to the projection room, opened the door, and transmitted my request to the projectionist, then gestured to Mickey London to finish his call. By the time Kaanan returned to his seat, the lights had dimmed and my daughter’s raw footage from that terrible night began to flicker on the screen.
ONE FILM can at a time, we watched the backstage preparations for the Friday evening concert as they unfolded: the staging of the set decor, sound reinforcement tests, the musicians and their roadies tuning and prepping instruments, mugging for the cameras, and the installation of myriad cords and cables that would drive the light and sound across the stage and open amphitheater.
Midway through the fourth reel, the fog I recalled from that day began to fill the seating basin beyond the rostrum, then rolled slowly across the stage itself. I remembered well the premonition I’d felt when I had seen it for myself, the cold, damp embrace and claustrophobic envelopment of the mist.
At first, the crew working on-screen appeared oblivious or simply unmindful of it, focused on their tasks as time before the show rapidly wound down. However, as the stage was swiftly overtaken, the work there turned to pandemonium. I focused my attention on the catwalk that hovered over center stage, paying particular attention to the lighting rig that was soon destined to spectacularly fail. I watched the man who was working on that section, noticed him eyeing the incoming vapor, hands working furiously as he tested electrical connections before drawing a long, steel-handled tool out of the tool belt he wore around his waist. He was bareheaded and wore a green plaid shirt with a black bandanna tied around his neck, slipping in and out of the frame. Something about his body language seemed familiar as he worked the wrench on several bolts along the tension grid, his head seemingly on a swivel, taking inventory of the other workers’ positions on the skywalk as he worked the anchor pins.
All at once, the man in the green shirt on the high scaffolding disappeared in the miasma, and the entire screen went smoky gray as the site was consumed within a cloud. It was impossible to tell how much time passed before Cricket and her crew were able to resume shooting, but my recollection was that it had been nearly fifteen minutes until the haze had cleared enough to see again. When the film resumed, the angle was the same as it had been before the fog had interrupted filming, but I could see that the man in the rigging was no longer there.
“Who was that man in the rigging above center stage?” I asked. “The one in the green shirt?”
Len Kaanan shot a glance to Mickey London, who was standing in the rear of the room, leaning his back on the wall. London shrugged and chewed his cigar stub with disinterest and returned his attention to picking a hangnail off his thumb.
“I guess we don’t know,” Kaanan said.
I recognized the man on film was not one of those killed later that night, but I could not get a decent angle on his face. I twisted in my chair to make eye contact with London, who returned my gaze with bored contempt.
“Does the name ‘Sasquatch’ or ‘Bigfoot’ mean anything to you?”
London took his time before he shook his head.
“Nope.”
“Can we move ahead chronologically and pull the reels from the time leading up to the accident?” I asked Kaanan. It was clear that Mickey London had zero interest in assisting my investigation in any way whatsoever. Kaanan went back to speak with the projectionist again, and I waited as the film was threaded and the lights went down again.
This time, the image unspooled on a scene from several hours later in the day; the day had faded into early evening, the first few rows of guests and invitees visible in the illumination that bled from the footlights and spots, revealing an audience composed of faces that bore little resemblance to rock concert fans of an earlier era.
The house lights on the screen faded to black, and Ian Swann and band converged on the stage. The crowd erupted just as I remembered from that night, but I fixed my attention as I sat there that morning on the activities of the backstage crew rather than the performers. Another thirty minutes elapsed and I felt myself move closer to the edge of my leather club chair, knowing from hindsight what was about to happen on the screen.
My attention was rewarded a few minutes later, and I recognized the man in the green shirt and black bandanna in the scaffolding again.
“Freeze it here, please,” I said.
The projectionist did so, and I stood and approached the screen, studied the visage of a man in the sidewash of the spotlights, a face as plain and lifeless as a grocery bag but for the deep-set eyes and sculpted sideburns I had seen before. His attention was focused far below him on center stage, his hands gripping a tether or rope of some kind.
“I need a still photo of this shot,” I said to Len Kaanan.
“We can’t let you do that,” Mickey London said before Kaanan could reply. “Footage belongs to the production company.”
“The hell you can’t,” I said.
“Show me a warrant.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said, stepped out of the room and jogged to where I’d parked my truck. When I returned, I was carrying the Polaroid camera I kept in my glove box. Without another word, I stepped toward the screen, framed the man in the green shirt inside the viewfinder, and snapped two photos in rapid succession.
I heard Mickey London coming up behind me and I whirled on him.
“Take one more step and I will drop you,” I said.
“Give me those pictures,” he spat and reached for the Polaroids I held between my fingers.
“Step back, or I’ll cuff you for obstruction,” I said to London. Over my shoulder, I addressed Len Kaanan without breaking eye contact with the manager. “I’ve got what I need for now,” I said. “I appreciate your help, Mr. Kaanan. I’ll see myself out.”
London’s pupils were spun down to pinholes, his expression darkened by a mixture of loathing and condescension. He showed me an odious grin and moved to the telephone table in the rear corner of the room. He picked up a paper box and turned, tossing it at me without warning. I caught it with my free hand, set the camera down, and opened it. Inside was a plastic sandwich bag that appeared to be filled with something resembling wood cinders.
“That’s Ian’s brother you’re holding in your hand,” London said. “You can take that to the hospital and give it to my client when you see him.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I asked. “You didn’t have the decency to wait and ask anyone what Ian would have wanted?”
“Who should I have asked? Your daughter? Ian’s groupie of the month?”
The last word had barely crossed his lips before I dropped him to his knees with a vicious rear hook to the bridge of his nose. Viscous blood streamed over his upper lip and stained his teeth an ugly shade of pink, his eyes quivering inside their sockets as he recovered his focus. He attempted to rise to his feet but I knocked him backward with the sole of my boot, then knelt and crammed the butt of his soggy unlit cigar into his mouth.
“Stay on the floor, you mouth-breathing shitstick,” I said. “If you don’t, what happens next is really going to hurt.”
London spat the shredded cigar on the carpet, ran the back of his wrist across his face, and smeared a trail of blood and saliva along his cheek. I smiled as he winced when he discovered his nose was broken.
“If you say something like that again, London,” I said, “I will peel off your skin and nail it to my office wall. If you don’t believe me, give it a try. Do it now. I’m standing here in front of you.”
Len Kaanan stepped up beside me, and to his credit said nothing about what had just happened.
“My apologies for any damage to your carpet, Mr. Kaanan,” I said. “Send me the bill if it requires special cleaning. As for this inbreeder, I’ll let the doctor in Meridian know Mr. London will be coming in. The physician’s name is Dr. Carlton. The doc’s young, but he’s done this kind of repair work for me before. He’ll know what to do.”
I DROVE to the Cayuse Motel in hopes I’d catch Dewayne Gomer and show him the Polaroid of the man I suspected of sabotaging the lighting rig that cost three men their lives and put a fourth one in a coma. The midday sun shone through the pines at a low angle, spears of gold threading the forest and illuminating a small herd of deer as they climbed a steep switchback in single file.
I parked in the dirt lot of the building labeled bar, pushed through the heavy steel door and into the darkened interior. Dewayne Gomer was seated at the rail much like before, but this time, he wasn’t alone, conversing with a painfully thin, sinewy woman sitting beside him, a tanned dishwater blonde who looked like low-rent trouble, and whose sudden rupture of laughter resembled the bray of a frightened jackass. Dewayne Gomer shook a cigarette out of a pack on the bar top, lipped it while he tore a match out of a cardboard matchbook.
