After lunch with Angie and after processing invoices so that he would get paid – a task he could no longer afford to put off – Tom called Sarah at home to make plans to see her. He wanted to know how the social worker’s visit had gone and tell Sarah about his talk with her daughter. He hoped the social worker had helped devise a plan for someone to watch Tyler during the working day. Otherwise, he worried, that responsibility would somehow fall on him, too. Angie would probably ask if she could bring him to work with her and the social worker would allow it if he agreed, and that was all he needed: an endlessly crying inconsolable meth baby at the office.
“It went well,” Sarah said, when he asked her how the home visit had gone. But she sounded distracted and offered no details.
“I thought I could come over and cook dinner for you and Ray tonight,” he said, improvising. “It’s time you sampled my famous spaghetti.”
“Why, that would be so nice,” she said, “but….”
“But?”
“It’s been a long day, that’s all. Can we do it tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And I have a headache,” she added.
“So let me come over and I’ll watch Tyler for you.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Angie and I had a good talk.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It would be better.”
“All right then,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
But her diffidence was infuriating. Hadn’t they moved beyond this point? He had come clean with her, had confessed to murder, had helped bail her daughter out of jail, they had made love, and she was still playing games. She hadn’t hesitated to call on him for help when she needed it, but was blowing him off now when it wasn’t convenient, and for reasons she didn’t bother to explain. Was it a mother and daughter talk that he would be interrupting? Impossible. Or was she suddenly self-conscious about the chaos of her life, which she’d rashly opened up to him, and so she was tactically pulling back? Equally doubtful.
Something else was obviously going on.
Tom drove out to Sarah’s doublewide and parked a short distance away. He retrieved his binoculars from the glove compartment and watched Ray Jr. shooting hoops. His suspicion that she had some kind of secret engagement was confirmed when Sarah emerged from the doublewide carrying the baby. She strapped Tyler into a child seat in the back seat of her car and got behind the wheel. Her sense of purpose was palpable.
When she drove past where Tom had parked behind some cottonwoods, he turned to follow her, leaving his headlights off. Before reaching town, at the battered marquee for the Uranium Drive-In, she turned off the highway. Tom knew that this was her preferred meeting place. But who was she meeting? He parked where he found the most inconspicuous vantage point for observing the intersection of the drive-in entrance and the highway.
Only a few minutes passed before another car turned into the drive-in. Tom’s heart skipped a beat. It was a car he’d seen less than a week before: Albert DeRichter’s polished black Hummer.
Tom’s sense of betrayal was complete. Not only was the Uranium Drive-In his place, his and Sarah’s place, now violated, but she was in some sort of league with Albert DeRichter, her missing husband’s half-brother, who had professed absolutely no interest in Ray Walker’s disappearance when Tom had asked him about it; the same Albert DeRichter whose name meant something sinister to Mark Brubaker and whose brothers were convinced was a sociopath, and with probable cause.
Tom had already constructed a mental image of the West End with Albert DeRichter operating at the center of it, pulling all the strings. But not Sarah, too, he thought morosely. He knew that Sarah had often been less than forthright with him, but until this moment had not seriously considered that her underlying motives might be corrupt. Now he felt that he had too easily chalked her evasiveness up to fear or embarrassment.
Tom couldn’t readily identify the stitch in his side, a tight knot that reminded him of what it felt like when he ran too hard for too long as a child. Was it jealousy? Paranoia? Or a sense of impending doom? The anxiety only mounted while he waited for Sarah to finish her assignation with DeRichter. They must be fucking. Why else would they take so long?
It was about an hour before the black Hummer drove down the driveway and turned to the north. Tom was prepared to follow him, planning to confront DeRichter and ask him point blank why he was meeting secretly with Sarah Walker, a reckless course of action that at the moment seemed necessary. But then Sarah’s car emerged and turned south, back toward her home. He wanted to confront her, too, and Tom turned his wheel to follow her as he pulled onto the highway. Then he swerved back north and followed DeRichter from a safe distance. He would deal with Sarah later.
Speeding down the highway, it occurred to Tom that his own behavior was every bit as suspicious as DeRichter’s or Sarah’s. What was he doing? He could easily be tagged a stalker. He imagined his interrogation by Sheriff Martin, upon being investigated for spying on Sarah Walker, a woman who had already suffered so much, a married woman whose missing husband might still be found. Would the sheriff accept his explanation that he was a journalist pursuing a story? Would the sheriff accuse him of playing detective? Or would the sheriff simply conclude from the abundant evidence that Tom Austin had lost his bearings?
Tom parked a short distance from the gas station where DeRichter had stopped to fill his tank, watching this most unremarkable activity through his binoculars, transfixed. DeRichter nodded to an acquaintance at the next pump.
Why had DeRichter met with Sarah Walker? It might be expected that Albert and Sarah knew each other; they were in-laws, after all, except that there was no openly acknowledged relationship between Ray Walker and the DeRichter family. The secrecy could only mean something nefarious. Otherwise, why wouldn’t Sarah meet Albert DeRichter in public at the Maverick? Or at her home? Or at his? Why would they choose to meet at the Uranium Drive-In? She had, after all, chosen the same location to meet with Tom precisely because it was discreet.
Obviously, Tom concluded, as he resumed following DeRichter down the highway, it was because Sarah was the one having the affair; she and Albert, not Ray and Anya, were the threat to the Walkers’ marriage. Either she or her lover or both of them were responsible for her husband’s disappearance. That would give them every reason to keep their relationship secret, for at least a reasonable time, which was why she had leaned on Tom and had not asked Albert for support when she needed someone to help her with Angie. The fact that her lover was her husband’s stepbrother only made it all the more unsavory, more dangerous, and more likely to have ended, as it apparently had, in violence.
Tom tailed the Hummer all the way to the gate to the Uranium King Ranch, where DeRichter turned off the highway and Tom turned around to go back home.
He was heartsick.
After another restless night, polluted with images of Sarah and Albert plotting against him, making him the dupe in their scheme and having sex in the back seat of the Hummer, Tom went to the Maverick for breakfast and took his customary seat at the counter next to Dave Best. Sally quickly delivered two eggs over easy with hash browns, crisp bacon and sourdough toast. The eggs had hit the griddle when she saw him across the street, heading her way. If, one day, he felt like scrambled eggs for a change, it would be too late.
“Do you know Albert DeRichter?” Tom asked Dave as casually as he could. “Did he play ball with you as a kid?”
“He wasn’t much of an athlete and he was a few years older. He was in Denver for years. Now that he’s been back, he pretty much keeps to himself up there on North Mountain. He was always the fuck-up. You know, the spoiled rich kid constantly getting in trouble. He fell off his bike when he was about ten and was never the same after that. It was hard on him because his big brothers were such Eagle Scouts.”
“Now he’s the one in the old man’s good graces and the brothers are out of favor.”
“Could be.” Dave shrugged. “I think I heard something like that.”
“Do you think he and Ray Walker were friends? Or did they know each other?” I mean, how does that work? You knew that Ray was Dick’s son, so did Albert DeRichter know they were half-brothers? Did you all know when you were kids?”
“I guess we did. But maybe not. Who remembers?”
“There are all these open secrets in Radium. Everybody knows everyone else’s personal shit, but they also know who they can tell and who they can’t tell. And I guess I’m one of the people you can’t tell anything.”
“Nah, you’re the guy who knows more than anyone else. You’re the newspaper guy always asking questions.”
“I’m the guy who can’t tell the truth from a hole in the wall.”
“Well, you’re still pretty new here,” Dave said. “Haven’t even been here ten years and you haven’t married in, so no family ties.”
“Can you blame me?”
“We’ll find you a wife sooner or later,” Dave laughed. “I guess it’s pretty messy. Maybe that’s why we protect each other. Isn’t everyplace like that?”
“No,” Tom said. “Not like this.”
“Huh. I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve never lived anywhere else.”
“Molly says it has to do with the Utopianists, and the fact that they were the first ones here. What do you think about that?”
“Makes sense,” Dave said. “For most of the last hundred years and even today you don’t practice polygamy out in the open. People around here know to keep their family lives private.”
“What do you mean today? How many people are there who still practice polygamy? There can’t be more than a few families.”
“It’s actually coming back. Kind of a trend. There’s more poligs now than there were. More than you think.”
“What did you call them?”
“P’ligs. Poligs. You know, polygamists. Pligs.”
“Do I know them?”
Dave just grinned at him.
“People I know are in plural marriages? Is that what you’re telling me? But they’re able to keep it secret?”
“Sure.”
“Have you got more than one wife, Dave? Another wife besides Ginger? Or two more wives, maybe? Are you supporting three families by selling groceries and supplies at the Merc? Or have you got secret businesses, too? Are you selling meth along with the bread and milk?”
“Now Tom, you know if I told you that, I would have to kill ya.”
Dave was so deadpan that Tom didn’t know how to react until Dave punched him in the shoulder.
“Hey man, lighten up,” Dave said. “I’m just kidding ya. Ginger would kill me.”
“But you are LDS?”
“Well, yeah, everyone’s LDS, pretty much. Some are just more hypocritical than others.”
“But they’re not all pligs. Is that what you call them? Some kind of slur like nigger or spick or kike.”
“Yeah, pligs. And it’s not a slur, exactly. It’s what they call themselves. And no, not all. A lot are mainstream.”
“I’m starting to feel like the town fool,” Tom said, “the last guy to know something that’s obvious to everyone else. I think that maybe everyone in town knows what happened to Ray Walker except for me. The sheriff knows, Sarah Walker knows, Albert DeRichter knows, even you know. And the big search was just a show you all staged to keep me in the dark.”
“No.” Dave shook his head sadly. “Ray’s really gone. That one’s a true mystery. Nobody knows.”
“You really don’t know?”
“I wish I did.”
Tom tried to work, but it was difficult to stop thinking about Sarah and Albert DeRichter having sex. When he did manage to chase that image away, it was replaced by the thought that Sheriff Trace Martin was closing in on him. Or he imagined that the odor of Mark Brubaker’s death was trapped in his sinuses, that the smell would be there forever, and he found himself trying to guess who had the bloody fire poker. He dreaded having to make good on his offer to hire Angie Walker, but she showed up as planned, only a few minutes past 10 a.m.
“How is Tyler doing?” he asked.
“He’s good,” she replied dully, and explained that the social worker had arranged for daycare from a certified foster care provider so that she and Sarah could both go to work.
“The social worker doesn’t want us to lose our jobs and have to go on any more public assistance. If she’s gonna pay for daycare I don’t see why she can’t just give the money to me instead so I can stay home and take care of my own kid,” Angie said. “It really sucks how she’s ordering us around.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“And I have to take him to the doctor in Junction tomorrow. So, um, can I have the afternoon off?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Now Angie sat across the room painfully pecking at the computer keyboard to type the school lunch menu. She’d been at that one menial task for an hour, a chore he could finish himself in five minutes. The slow click, click of her finger tapping out words like pizza, one … letter … at … a … time, was a source of irritation that ratcheted up as the morning wore on.
He had an overwhelming desire to confront Sarah, to demand that she tell him everything. He was convinced that only the truth could quiet his monkey mind and restore any sense of peace. Ray Walker’s disappearance had grown into an obsession, a glaring symbol of everything he couldn’t begin to comprehend, not just the hidden meanings behind uranium mining and meth abuse and polygamy as a way of life and the rest of the antique mores of life on the West End, but the riddle of life itself: inchoate human yearnings, duplicity, and evanescence. His impulse was to hunt Sarah down and take her by the shoulders and physically shake sense into her, to speak forcefully and insist that she confess to her affair with Albert DeRichter and tell him exactly what happened to Ray. He would promise that her secrets were safe with him, but then would use the information to blackmail her:
Drop Albert DeRichter for me and I won’t report that you murdered your husband.
Then she would be unable to use his confession that he had killed Mark Brubaker against him.
It all fit so perfectly. Sarah was the guilty party, she was the unreliable witness, she was source of every red herring, each one designed to throw him off the trail. It was symptomatic of his own tortured psyche that he had fallen in love with her. How else could he explain his raging hurt?
At noon, he gave in to his obsession and finally called her. Unaccountably, she sounded happy to hear from him and agreed to meet him after work. They could have met at her place but he suggested another spot instead: the drive-in.