Tom carried a crowbar and was prepared to break into the Walker Auto Repair shop, having already observed a week earlier that it was tightly secured. But it wasn’t necessary. Somebody had already broken the pane of glass in the rear door and the door itself was loose on its hinges. He entered the garage through the broken door all the more cautiously, wondering who had beaten him there.
It was dark and his flashlight provided minimal illumination. The air was acrid and he was drawn to the strong smell of ammonia in a corner, near the restroom. In the shadows he could make out a couple of overflowing trashcans filled with empty antifreeze containers and other detritus. That might be expected in a garage, but there were also hundreds of empty cold tablet packages and empty plastic bottles of rubbing alcohol and broken glass beakers. There were used coffee filters, stained red, and a hot plate, and other waste that looked suspicious but wasn’t readily identifiable by Tom.
Tom reached for the hot plate and touched it to assure himself that it was cold. He kicked at some of the trash on the floor and a mouse skittered out. Startled, he jumped back, upsetting one of the trashcans and spilling its contents on the floor. The noise of the aluminum can hitting the concrete floor echoed loudly across the garage, making any effort at stealth that Tom might have entertained irrelevant.
“Speedy mouse,” he muttered out loud, as if to confirm his presence, or his clumsy lack of guile, to anyone who might be lurking in the shadows. He swung the beam of the flashlight to one dark corner of the garage and then another. There was nobody there. He stood perfectly still and tried to slow his breathing so that he could listen intently. The only sounds were the ambient hum of the space, a truck passing by out on the highway, and possibly the ticking of a clock coming from the direction of the front office.
The garage was unmistakably being used for a meth lab. Surely the sheriff had discovered it in the aftermath of Ray’s disappearance, but had looked the other way. Why? Not only did it present a strong lead, but someone eventually would have to clean up the hazardous waste site. Or maybe not.
Maybe a longtime sheriff of Slickrock County was habitually blind to an environmental hazard, just as he had a finely honed sense of when to look away from shady activity that occurred off the highway or behind closed doors. So much on the West End took place at the periphery of what was legitimate. Nobody wanted to think very hard about the enduring waste from uranium mining, which had enriched Dick DeRichter and his heirs and a few others who held the claims; had enabled the United States to build a nuclear arsenal and ultimately establish itself as the world’s only superpower; and had allowed the mine workers to live in a fools’ paradise of company largesse, as if to distract them from the price they paid in ruined health, at least while it lasted. Meth presented the same kind of devil’s bargain to the West End, only without the rationale of defending freedom and the homeland. Like uranium, meth was a toxic substance that was so addictive that people simply couldn’t resist it, despite overwhelming evidence that to use it was not sustainable. Like uranium, meth promised easy riches to whoever produced it and a seductive illusion of power to anyone who used it, but at the same time it threatened to ruin anyone who touched it. Both uranium and meth were explosive. Meth labs were prone to bursting into flames. And like uranium, meth left vile residue where it was produced.
So Dave Best was right. How could Sarah not know her husband was cooking up meth in his garage? She had said that the garage, the business, was his, not hers. Though Ray Walker was evidently a master of compartmentalization, meth addicts were notoriously out-of-control. Maybe that is why he had to flee: the walls between his various selves were collapsing under the pressure of his addiction.
While it was still likely that Ray had run off with Anya, the meth factor changed things. Meth, if they were using it as well as manufacturing it, which was certainly likely, would have made both Ray and Anya reckless and overconfident of their ability to manage the jealous husband, who remained a potential suspect. But it could be even simpler than that. Maybe they were producing the drug to raise money for their escape. The meth dealer necessarily interacted with desperate characters in secret, out-of-the-way locations, and handled large quantities of cash. That reopened the possibility that Ray had been a victim of foul play out on a lonely highway, where he could have gone to complete a transaction. A meth addict might easily decide to shoot his dealer and simply steal the goods. It was a hazard of the trade.
Tom flicked off the flashlight to ensure that he wouldn’t draw attention from anyone out on the street as he made his way to the front office. There was enough light filtering in through the grimy front window for him to see what he was doing. He quickly found what he was looking for in the single filing cabinet next to the desk: folders containing bills, paid and unpaid. He found a U-Haul bill for a truck rental, to be picked up in Grand Junction on June 4th and dropped off in Albuquerque a few days later. And he found a copy of a lease for an apartment in Albuquerque, rented to Anya Nemerov, guaranteed by Ray Walker.
It was a seven-hour drive from Radium to Albuquerque, across the high desert of northwestern New Mexico. Tom arrived after ten p.m., too late to try calling Anya, so he checked into a Motel 6 on the edge of the urban sprawl, next to a truck stop so brightly lit that the air itself seemed juiced. There was a Waffle House across the parking lot. Truck traffic thrummed past on the interstate.
The talking heads on late night cable were analyzing Bush’s comments that he “had earned political capital” in the election and “planned to use it” and the president’s pronouncement that he didn’t put much stock in polling, despite poll results suggesting that the war in Iraq was not popular, noting that there had just been an election that polled opinion in the United States and Americans had voted for another four years of Bush Administration foreign policy.
What did it all mean?
Tom used to care but clicked the TV off and lay awake in his bed, feeling exposed under a thin sheet. The motel room curtain did not block all the light and the room was cast in a yellow hue. Shortly after he fell asleep, a shrill fire alarm went off, jolting him awake.
He pulled on some shorts, opened the door, and stepped outside onto the balcony. There were no flames, no smoke, no sirens, and no move from anyone to evacuate.
“You see anything?” he asked a paunchy guy who had emerged from a nearby room wearing only a towel.
“Nah.” The guy shook his head and retreated back inside. Tom followed his lead and turned the air conditioner up high to drown out the noise. After a few minutes, the alarm went silent.
He woke up shivering before dawn and went down to the Waffle House. For a moment he thought that the waitress was Angela Walker: thin, stringy hair, blotchy complexion, sunken eyes rimmed in dark eyeliner, only this girl’s teeth looked like they’d been filed to sharp points.
“Rough night?” he asked.
“Hell yeah,” she said. “I got called in when the girl on the night shift walked off, and after I worked all day yesterday. A customer pulled a gun on her ’cause he thought she was ignoring him. A fucking tweaker.”
“Damn,” Tom said.
“She’d have been all right, prolly. We’re used to whackos on the night shift, but this one fired a shot. Bullet hole is right up there.”
She pointed to the ceiling.
“I was at the Motel 6 and didn’t hear a thing,” Tom said.
“There were sirens and all kinds of commotion.”
“Who’d have thought slinging waffles is a high-risk occupation?”
“How about that?” she replied. “In Bush’s America.”
Tom followed the directions Anya gave him to her apartment, not far from downtown in a rundown building.
“You are here because of Ray,” Anya said when she opened the door, a simple confirmation that Tom was the reporter from Radium who had called an hour earlier to ask if he could meet with her. She had been extremely wary of him at first, but gasped and quickly agreed to talk to him when he told her that Ray was missing.
“I had a bad feeling,” she’d said. “He has not called me in two weeks and nobody answers at the shop.”
Tom knew then that Ray wouldn’t be there. Anya had not acted like a person with something to hide. But that only deepened the mystery once again, and made an interview with her all the more worthwhile.
Anya extended her hand. She was just as Sarah had described her: poised, outgoing, and forthright, angular, blonde and blue-eyed. Tom had seen her shopping at the West End Merc, always with her son by her side. He had wondered about them.
“Please, come in.”
She spoke with a thick Slavic accent. The boy, in his early teens with a round face, was dark where his mother was light, his close-cropped hair and eyes a deep shade of brown, evidently inherited from his absent father. He sat at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cold cereal.
“This is Nicolai. Nick,” Anya said. Nick nodded pleasantly, and then listened intently as the adults talked.
“What do you mean when you say Ray is missing?” she asked.
“Nobody has seen him or heard from him in two weeks,” Tom said.
“And so you thought that maybe he was here, living with me.”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry,” she said, her blue eyes filling with tears. “He is not here and we are not lovers, but it is my fault. I am sure that the man who thinks he owns me, Mark Brubaker, has done something.” She spit out Brubaker’s name with contempt, and repeated his full name in the next sentence as if she enjoyed lacerating it with her tongue. “Mark Brubaker is a very cruel man, a primitive man. I told Ray that he should not help Nick and me because this animal would do something for revenge. But Ray only laughed at this danger. He did not think Mark Brubaker could hurt him.”
“Did he think that you and Ray were lovers?” Tom asked, uncomfortable to be talking so frankly in front of the boy. But Anya apparently shared everything with her son.
“An educated person cannot know how a primitive animal thinks,” she said. “He knew Ray Walker was my boss. But Mark Brubaker is paranoid and he is cruel and he wanted me to stay in Radium for all of my life as his slave. He thought he owned me because he paid for us to come from Russia. He did not understand that I am a mother and I must help Nicolai to study maths and physics. I was trained as engineer in Russia, as chemical engineer. That is why we are here, in this city, for the school, for my son, so he can have future. For me, it does not matter. I will fix windshields for all of my life, since Ray taught me how and I cannot get job in America as chemical engineer. Can I get you coffee?”
They sat with Nick as she poured coffee and sliced coffee cake and put it on plates. She stopped abruptly, her careful composure suddenly broken. She sobbed, and Nick quickly went to her side and put his arm around her.
“Maybe you should go now,” Nick said to Tom.
“It is okay, Nicolai,” Anya said. “I am glad Mr. Austin has come here with news, even if it is bad news. I am just so sorry for Ray. I accept his kindness and now look what happens! I had the needs of a mother, and so I let Ray help me, but I meant him no harm. Now his kindness led only to his murder.
“But Nick now must go to school. You must go Nicolai or you will be late. I will be safe with Mr. Austin. He is a good man. Like Ray.”
Nick eyed Tom suspiciously as he packed his books, dawdling until Anya spoke to him in Russian. They talked for a few minutes and only after they apparently reached some kind of understanding did Nick reluctantly back out the door, leaving his mother alone with the stranger.
“He worries about you,” Tom said, after Nick had left.
“He is very good boy,” she agreed.
“He must be upset to learn that Ray is missing.”
“Yes. He is upset. But I told him there is nothing he can do and I will tell him everything when he comes back home from school. First of importance, he must not let anything to interrupt his studies.”
“You are a good mother.”
“I am trying,” she said, and she sank down onto a tattered sofa and buried her face in her hands. “But…”
It was awkward to stand over her, so Tom sat next to her.
“But what?” he asked.
“You can see that I am all alone, with no man,” she whispered hoarsely, “and this is what makes it very much more difficult.”
“Where is Nick’s father?”
“He was in the army in Chechnya. He was lost there. Now, I do not know…. I think he must be dead.”
“So you decided to take Nick to America?”
“There was no future in Russia for him. So I listed with an agency and they sent me to Mark Brubaker. Only it was not Mark Brubaker in the photograph. And this agency was not for romance, but to sell women for slavery. But I learned of this treachery only when I came to Radium.”
She was not nearly that naïve. Surely she had known what would be expected of her when she accepted the tickets and visa, certainly forged, to go to America to live with a strange man who had paid her way. And yet Tom was impressed by her sheer determination to escape dreary circumstances and find a better life, if not for her, for her son, even if she had to sell herself to do it. And she had done it at least twice, first by escaping Russia and then by escaping Radium. Now she was calculating whether Tom would be her next provider.
“You have not had an easy life.”
She answered with a sob and pressed herself into his arms. He could so easily take advantage of her neediness, and it was almost tempting. She was an attractive woman. But the price of getting involved with her would be high, in the form of endless complications, as Ray had apparently found out. She must have offered herself to him in just this way.
“Ray must have found you attractive,” he said, “and difficult to resist.”
“Do you find me attractive?”
“Yes, of course.”
He could feel her breath against his chest and her fingers fluttered suggestively on his shoulder. But he didn’t make the next move and after a few beats she pulled away from him and quickly recomposed herself.
“But Ray is married and nothing came of this attraction,” she said.
Her disappointment seemed directed more at Tom than at Ray, but it was nothing to take too seriously. To quickly find another man to rescue her was her most finely honed survival skill. As if to distract herself from that very thought, as if she felt just a twinge of shame, she quickly reverted back to the safer subject of Ray’s disappearance, taking more responsibility for it, perhaps, than was justified:
“Yes,” she said dramatically. “Nothing came of our friendship except for his death.”
“What makes you so sure that Brubaker killed him?”
“What else can it be? There were many times I feared for my life, and for Nick’s life, from this animal, Mark Brubaker, when he would be a crazy man and violent.”
But Tom knew there was another strong possibility, related to the fact that Ray Walker was running a meth lab out of his garage. Ray was always willing to help others, Sarah said. He would give a stranger the shirt off his back. Ray treated Nick like a son, Anya said. He was the father Nick never had. Could this sainted man – who resisted the unquestioned temptation of Anya to stay faithful to Sarah, and at the same time may have risked his life to help Anya and Nick – possibly also be a crankhead? Why not?
“You must arrest Mark Brubaker!” Anya exclaimed. “You must make him tell us where Ray is.”
“I can’t arrest anyone. I’m not a policeman. I’m a journalist.”
“I will call and tell the sheriff that Mark Brubaker killed Ray Walker!”
“What about the meth lab, for Christ’s sake?” Tom said.
“What lab?” Anya asked.
Tom told her about his discovery in the corner of Ray’s garage.
“This is new,” she said. “There was no meth when I was there. I know about meth. Mark Brubaker, he is crankhead.”
The long drive home allowed Tom plenty of time to turn the evidence over in his mind. It could be a coincidence that someone used the abandoned auto repair shop for a meth lab after Ray’s disappearance. The fact that it had been abandoned by its owner was, after all, widely publicized and by Tom himself. He had run a photo of the deserted business on the Forum’s front page. Any meth addict could have deduced that the shop would be a safe refuge, and that would explain why the door was broken.
If meth dropped as a likely key factor in Ray’s disappearance, the theory that he had been done in by Mark Brubaker now rose in probability. It was not surprising to hear that Brubaker used meth. Long-distance truckers were a high-risk group for the drug, using it to keep themselves awake on long hauls. Brubaker was clearly unstable. Sarah had identified him as someone who chose to live in the remote West End because he wanted to be left alone and he had bought himself a mail-order bride, so he was perfectly comfortable operating outside social norms. What was most persuasive was that the woman who knew him best described him as violent and did not doubt that he was capable of murder. She had her own reasons for hating Brubaker, though, and assumed a burden of guilt over Ray’s disappearance, and might therefore be quick to point the finger at what, for her, was a pat explanation. Still, Tom concluded, he could hardly ignore the likelihood that Ray had been dispatched by a jealous husband with a meth habit and possibly psychotic tendencies.
But perhaps Dave Best was right and Sarah and Anya were wrong and Ray was involved with meth. Depending on how far gone he was, Ray could have become psychotic himself and disappeared on his own into the chaos of a growing addiction, more or less as Tom himself had once run away. He might have simply driven his truck out of town to spare his wife and children his agony. He was, by all accounts, a kind man at bottom. The true horror of addiction, Tom knew, is that the addict is fully aware of his own destructiveness, to himself and anyone who cares about him. He just can’t help it. So maybe in an entirely rational moment, Ray Walker decided to dispatch himself. Maybe Ray simply swam further from the shore than Tom had.
If Ray was manufacturing meth, too, he was dealing with shady characters, reintroducing that possibility to account for the mystery. And then there was Ray Walker’s troubled relationship with his father, Dick DeRichter. It wasn’t long ago, Tom recalled, that he had developed a theory that the Uranium King might have had something, or everything, to do with his illegitimate son’s disappearance. That seemed less likely now, following Albert DeRichter’s evident lack of interest in the matter, but could not be entirely discounted.
And what about Sarah Walker’s effort to discourage Tom from investigating the story? He was not necessarily wrong that she was terrified he would discover that Ray was living with Anya and that she simply preferred not to know the ugly truth. But she had insisted that Tom would not find Ray with Anya, and as it turned out she was right. So there could be something else she wanted kept secret or was afraid of. She was not without guile, and it would be a mistake to underestimate her.
Finally, there was the relatively benign theory that Ray had suffered a one-car accident and had run his truck off the road, and that despite the search by his friends and neighbors, the wreck simply had not been found yet. It was entirely possible in the canyonlands. Whispering Jim had not been found when he was trapped in a slot canyon, even when the area was intensively searched. The car-wreck theory was not only benign, but simple, and therefore probable for that reason alone. Sure, there were plenty of suspicious circumstances surrounding the life and disappearance of Ray Walker, but that did not mean that the most innocent explanation for the mystery was wrong.
In any case, Tom was no closer to understanding what had happened to Ray Walker than he was the day Deputy Billy Pederson first told him the auto mechanic was missing.
“I will probably never know,” Tom muttered to himself.
Mysteries have tidy solutions in movies, but not in real life, he thought. But Ray Walker was a deepening enigma. The more Tom learned about him, the less he understood him.
He was driving past the turnoff to the ruins at Chaco Canyon, where people had lived for a thousand years and had then disappeared. Nobody knows why they left Chaco, although there are theories: maybe a prolonged drought, maybe decades of warfare. A recent theory held that they’d been terrorized by cannibalism on the part of tribes from the south, and had dispersed, their culture destroyed. People lived at Chaco Canyon almost four times longer than the United States is old. Then they vanished from the earth and nobody will ever know for certain why.